A new paper recently published in the international journal Energies explores the energy-related, technological, and consumption patterns necessary to achieve a sustainable future on this planet in a way that benefits everyone – human and otherwise.
Rather than portraying the current lack of sustainability as a function of the uptake of carbon emissions, the paper introduces a “Renewable Energy Equivalent Footprint” (REEF) which “depicts a hypothetical world in which the electricity and fuel demands are met entirely from renewable energy”.
The paper lays out how powering our civilisation in such a manner would require a large-scale electrification of the current