April 28, 2023: The opening keynote at BCI’s Kentucky convention on April 24 by well-known broadcaster and analyst, Robert Bryce (pictured), proved a perfect foil to those that believe the lead acid battery is doomed to failure as alternative energy demand makes the technology obsolete.
Bryce’s presentation challenged all the underlying assumptions behind what policymakers would like to have us believe will be a smooth and easy transition to sunlit uplands of an abundance of ‘new energy’.
Put simply, if there were a choice between economic advancement, and climate change, the general public would vote with its feet and opt first to keep the lights on and industry running with whatever ‘juice’ is needed.
For Bryce, the energy transition draws parallels with Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
The energy transition is nothing more than a marketing phrase — a myth.
A quick glance around the convention auditorium found plenty of heads nodding in quiet agreement with his analysis, including when he forecast that hydrocarbons are not going to be banished from the face of the planet any time soon.
According to Bryce, energy realism is energy humanism and part of that realism is the fact that ICE vehicles, complete with their tried and trusted cargoes of lead batteries, are here for a long, long time to come.
Even a cursory look at the headlines from Norway to Nebraska shows that the general public are not as enamoured with the push for renewables as government’s and others pushing clean energy agendas would have us believe.
Bryce cited data from BP to show that US hydrocarbon use grew 55% faster than wind and solar in 2022.
And despite in excess of $500 billion being spent on wind and solar, the hydrocarbons share of US primary energy supply was still 81% in 2021, compared to 90% in 1985.
Even with the prospect of increasing numbers of shiny EVs crowding onto the roads, where is the increase in electricity demand to charge them going to come from and who will pay for grid upgrades to cater for the inevitable surge in demand?
According to the Boston Consulting Group, a model utility will need to invest between $1,700 and $5,800 in grid upgrades per EV through 2030 alone, Bryce said.
He also took Tesla wunderkind Elon Musk to task over his ‘master plan’ for converting the global economy to renewables, which would require 240TWh of batteries.
But as Bryce pointed out, manufacturing that much storage would require the output of all of Tesla’s gigafactories including the one in Nevada for the next 960 years.
Even if Tesla could expand its output ten-fold, to 50 gigafactories, achieving the desired result would still be nearly 100 years down the road.
Then there is the question of who will handle all the billions of waste lithium ion batteries. Bryce estimated overall current recycling rates to be around 5%, compared to more than 30% for glass bottles and near 99% for lead batteries.
