An interesting video from Just Have A Think.
The answer: prolly, yes, because we'll need less than it seems, as only one third of primary energy ends up being used. The rest is wasted.
And the argument that we'll need massive storage is wrong. What we'll do instead is have excess renewable generation capacity, with the surplus output either being curtailed or used for processes that don't require 24/7 availability of electricity, such as desalination and charging EVs. Also, energy return on energy invested is now higher for renewables than for fossil fuels. Finally, battery technology is shifting, with new technologies such as sodium-ion using readily available, cheap minerals. Sodium-ion batteries will cost half of lithium-ion batteries.
However, there's this article which suggests that price of copper (an EV uses 4 times as much as a petrol car, mostly for wiring) is beginning a phase of secular growth. As it happens, the price of copper has fallen since then! Never mind, it happens to the best of us.
My take: as demand driven by the energy transition pushes up prices of certain commodities, advances in technology will create alternative ways to achieve the same goals. An obvious example: after the price of lithium soared, research on sodium-ion batteries took off. Now, sodium-ion batteries are commercially available and have been installed in EVs. They're not yet as energy dense as lithium-ion batteries, but they're much cheaper. And research continues.
If somebody had told you 70 years ago that we would use sunlight to produce electricity, they would have replied, had they even known about it, that it was so expensive that it could only be used for spacecraft. And anyway, where were we going to get all that silicon? Yet here we are. I'm typing this on a laptop with the power several orders of magnitude more than the first IBM computer, using sunlight to power not just it, but also my internet connection. Inconceivable 70 years ago. Routine, now.
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