Electrotech, not fossil fuels, will power the future
“Electrotech” includes renewable energy, heat pumps, electric vehicles and batteries. (Photo: Katy King / Nesta via Climate Visuals)
During a recent parliamentary committee meeting, Bloc Quebecois MP Patrick Bonin grilled Alberta Premier Danielle Smith about climate change. Her answers were evasive — although she conceded that the planet is warming. Bonin asked if she thought humans were the main factor in Earth’s recent heating. “I don’t know the answer to that. I’m not a scientist,” she replied.
I’m not a premier or a politician, but I know that elected officials’ duty is to the people they represent, not a dying industry that’s wreaking environmental havoc and heating our only home to dangerous levels.
You don’t have to be a scientist to know what scientific evidence shows. All credible scientists and scientific organizations that study climate and climate-related issues agree that the planet is heating at unprecedented rates and that humans are the primary cause — by burning coal, oil and gas and polluting and destroying natural systems such as forests, wetlands and the ocean that absorb and store carbon.
The future is clearly in renewable energy. It’s more efficient, cleaner and costs less than fossil fuels.
News headlines spell out the consequences: “Storm of the century” slams Jamaica. Africa gripped by heat, floods and drought. Wells are running dry.
The future is clearly in renewable energy. It’s more efficient, cleaner and costs less than fossil fuels. It doesn’t pollute air, land and water like fossil fuels, and it breaks the chains that bind us to often corrupt fossil fuel producers. The advantage to coal, oil and gas (and nuclear) is to those who can monopolize and control supplies — something all but impossible with freely available wind and sunlight.
Governments and jurisdictions that promote and rely on fossil fuels are being left behind, blinded by faulty economic assumptions. This year, for the first time, renewable energy generated more electricity worldwide than coal. And it’s expanding rapidly. A report by energy think tank Ember found renewables generated 34.3 per cent of electricity globally in the first half of 2025, while coal made up 33.1 per cent.
The advantage to coal, oil and gas (and nuclear) is to those who can monopolize and control supplies — something all but impossible with freely available wind and sunlight.
“As the world’s energy needs increase and electricity makes up a growing share of final energy consumption, spectacular solar growth, alongside increased wind generation, met and exceeded all new demand,” the report states, noting that global fossil fuel demand remained flat, growing in the United States and the European Union but dropping in China and India.
Ember analysts Sam Butler-Sloss, Daan Walter and Kingsmill Bond wrote in an article that the rapid rise in “electrotech” — which includes renewable energy, heat pumps, electric vehicles and batteries — is “revolutionizing how the world generates, uses and moves electricity.”
It’s partly about physics. “Electrotech makes a thermodynamic mockery of burning fossil fuels,” they wrote. “Combustion wastes more than two-thirds of input energy as unwanted heat. Electrotech bypasses this entirely. Solar, wind, electric vehicles and heat pumps are roughly three times as efficient as their fossil-fired competitors.”
The authors also pointed to differing economics: “Technologies enjoy increasing returns — the more you make, the cheaper they get. But commodities face diminishing returns because the more you extract, the deeper you have to dig.”
As for geopolitics, “The sun cannot be turned off by foreign actors. Sovereign energy matters, especially in a fracturing world. In the fossil fuel system, geographical luck gave a few countries massive resources. In the electrotech world, almost every country can become its own Saudi Arabia.”
Burning extracted fuels is an outdated, wasteful, polluting way to power societies, and it’s putting our health and survival in jeopardy.
Yet, the fossil fuel industry and its political supporters continue to promote costly, often untested methods to keep oil and gas burning, as well as other expensive and dangerous but easily monopolized technologies such as small modular nuclear reactors.
Canada is investing more than $21.5 million to test carbon capture and storage technologies for Alberta. But carbon capture is not a real solution. It’s expensive and so far been used mostly to capture carbon to pump into depleted wells to extract more oil. It fits with Premier Smith’s “emissions reductions” plans, which include rejecting an emissions cap for industry and instead focusing on ways to capture some emissions. Of course, reducing emissions from extraction and production ignores that most fossil fuel emissions, including from dirty bitumen, are produced by combustion.
Burning extracted fuels is an outdated, wasteful, polluting way to power societies, and it’s putting our health and survival in jeopardy. It’s time to move on to the many readily available, affordable, cleaner, more efficient ways to generate power.
David Suzuki
David Suzuki, Co-Founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster. David is renowned for his radio and television programs that explain the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way.
Education
As a geneticist. David graduated from Amherst College (Massachusetts) in 1958 with an Honours BA in Biology, followed by a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961. He held a research associateship in the Biology Division of Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Lab (1961 – 62), was an Assistant Professor in Genetics at the University of Alberta (1962 – 63), and since then has been a faculty member of the University of British Columbia. He is now Professor Emeritus at UBC.
Awards
In 1972, he was awarded the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship for the outstanding research scientist in Canada under the age of 35 and held it for three years. He has won numerous academic awards and holds 25 honourary degrees in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada and is a Companion of the Order of Canada. Dr. Suzuki has written 52 books, including 19 for children. His 1976 textbook An Introduction to Genetic Analysis(with A.J.F. Griffiths), remains the most widely used genetics text book in the U.S.and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Indonesian, Arabic, French and German.
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