Energy Sprawl in the Renewable‐Energy Sector: Moving to Sufficiency in a Post Growth Era

Renewable‐energy technologies have exhibited rapid price drops in recent years, leading to hopes that such technologies will rapidly replace the entire fossil‐fuel‐energy sector. But renewable‐energy systems have been manufactured in a fossil‐fueled infrastructure. Renewable energy has been functioning as a relatively minor adjunct to the overall energy system rather than displacing fossil fuels. If we expect renewable energies to replace rather than merely supplement the fossil‐fuel infrastructure, “energy sprawl” will be a major issue. The energy return on investment (EROI) of renewables is likely to be far lower than the EROI of fossil fuels in their heyday. If renewable sources were eventually to produce all required energy, the energy‐provision sector would comprise a much larger share of the economy than at present and provide less net energy surplus to other economic sectors. This article examines key problems for wind‐ and solar‐photovoltaic‐energy industries, including: the dependence on fossil fuels to manufacture renewable‐energy equipment; the need to move beyond renewable‐energy “sweet spots”; the increasing need for new infrastructure, including storage and long‐distance transmission; and the difficulty in providing the types of heat needed for many industrial processes. Because the era of abundant, affordable energy that has fueled economic growth is coming to an end, we will need to look beyond providing our existing services with greater efficiency and question which forms of these services are actually needed for sufficiency.