Something’s been bugging me recently, starting around the time of the presidential debates. Here’s a quote from John McCain: “We have to have all of the above, alternative fuels, wind, tide, solar, natural gas, clean coal technology.” This statement seems to reflect a general consensus among people—at least those people that get published in any media I come across—that there will not be a “silver bullet” technology that solves global climate change and energy independence. From plainspoken John Bernardi, a compliance specialist interviewed on the most recent episode of the Inside Renewable Energy podcast, to well-known academics, it seems like only an idiot would hope for a silver bullet.

I’m not going to tap my fingers on the table waiting for a magic technology, but I’m not betting against one either.  My reasons:

• A bunch of different technologies have the ability to easily generate the entire amount of electricity that the world is projected to use by 2050. I’ve seen stats on this for solar pv, hydrothermal, and enhanced geothermal at least, and there may be more. I’ll add links soon once I dig them up. I’m not saying that capable equals realistic, but being capable is certainly a necessary prerequisite.


• Technologies tend to converge. For multiple competing technologies to exist within the same market at the same time, there must be tradeoffs that would cause consumers with different requirements to choose one over another. In energy, there really aren’t a lot of variables: the two that dwarf all others are supply variability and cost per unit of power. Thus, I can easily see a world where power generation is split between one type of peak load and one type of base load supply. EGS and solar PV for instance. If solar technology gets ahead of wind on a cost basis (and we have a more capable transmission grid), why would anyone build a wind turbine?


• One microprocessor architecture has been dominant for 25 years.  Is it so unlikely that thin film solar could be the next X86?  High altitude wind?

It’s not a sophisticated argument or one based on any insider knowledge, I just feel that much of what is currently accepted as conventional wisdom ignores some basic lessons of technological history. 

Fortunately, this conventional wisdom isn’t really a problem right now.  If there is a silver bullet, we haven’t yet found it.  We need to keep polishing all the bullets we have.