Back to post / website. View/add comments for this article.Naysayers claim that it would be too expensive to replace all our coal power plants with renewable energy. They may be right...but it is an irrelevant point. HUman advancement is continuously finding better ways to do things with less energy. A modern fridge is 98-99% more efficient than one sold in 1972. Experts believe that there is still a further 40% of savings that we can squeeze from these models. This means soon our fridges will consume just 0.4-0.8% of the electricity versus a 1972 model...and keep things just as cold! Emerging LED lighting systems use 80-90% less energy than compact fluorescent lamps...and those compact flouro lamps use 80% less energy than the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs we were recently using. The total savings from these two generations is 96%! With most appliances, there is existing technology that can help us save energy now...and future savings are always coming. Therefore we don't have to worry about renewables matching the same scale as coal (or nuclear) power. By keeping up with the technology curve, and taking old appliances out of service, we can do more with less...and reduce our electricity demand to a size that can be easily met by renewable energy.
