Was the technology available where the world could have actually gone green sooner without a long term impact on society?

Question

It’s 2023, we are witnessing a huge shift towards clean energy and tons of money and research is being poured into renewables.

But it’s got me thinking, if we did this 20-30 years ago would all the new technology we see today be pretty standard by 2023? Or has there been some big innovations in recent years that would’ve only had been possible in recent times?

A couple examples

Batteries, we are still yet to fully utilise these for energy grid storage and electric vehicles are only now just getting up to the range that a petrol car can do. Would that have been possible in the past considering the first commercial lithium ion battery was released in the 90s?Solid state batteries seem to be like a real boost for renewables yet they are still to be properly used.

Solar panels, wind turbines and other power generation technology. Would they be stock standard or was their efficiency and cost just not possible to overcome until recent times?

Airplanes and other long haul transport, biofuels are what seems to the most likely alternative unless batteries get much better. But these seem to be much later down the track.

In: 403

Answer 1

The premise of your question is dubious, since “going green” inherently has a massive impact on society – oil’s byproducts were only cheaply available for research purposes because of the massive scale of oil production.

Shipping cheap things over the oceans is only inexpensive because of the massive scale of oil production.

Mining machinery and processing plants are only inexpensive because of the massive scale of oil production.

Even today we cannot just stop this without billions of people losing access to food, which is grown inexpensively using fertiliser being made available by the massive scale of oil production.

The richest countries got richer due to their investment in oil, they would not have “invested” in decentralised means of cheap energy production, since that business isn’t nearly as profitable or controllable.

You should not forget that the only reason we have 8 billion people around today, is due to the unsustainable practices since industrial revolution – anything that stops / impedes the growth will cause many, many people to die.