Selling renewable energy: A review of three new publications

Abstract

Anton Eberhard and Wikus Kruger (Eds.), Renewable Energy Auctions: Lessons from the Global South. Oxford University Press. 2023. 512 pp. £100.00 (hbk). ISBN: 978-0192871701. £66.66 (ebk). ISBN: 978-0191967931.

Pablo Del Río and Mario Ragwitz (Eds.), Handbook on the Economics of Renewable Energy. Edward Elgar. 2023. 496 pp. £215.00 (hbk). ISBN: 978-1800379015. From £48.00 (ebk). ISBN: 978-1800379022.

Georges Hathry, Renewable Energies: The Stakes for Your Company. What does Your Company Gain from Using Renewable Energy? Our Knowledge Publishing. 2023. 76 pp. $48.00 (pbk). ISBN: 978-6206326922.

In the latest COP 28 UN Climate Change Conference held in December 2023 in United Arab Emirates, signatory countries promised a transition from carbon energy sources “in a just, orderly and equitable manner” (UNFCC, 2023) to mitigate, accordingly, the worst effects of climate change, and reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. In the history of COP summits, though vague with respect to how and when the transition will happen, the latest UN conference set a precedent in affirming the necessity of reducing the use of fossil fuels. (Though, notably, China and India, representing more than one-third of the world's population, did not sign the pledge to triple their output of renewable energy and committed to coal power instead.)

Researchers from policy institutes, leading academic institutions and elsewhere have devoted significant effort to explaining the economic benefits transitioning to ‘renewable’ energy and pursuing the commitments made under the auspices of the UN climate change agreements. Monographs and compendiums as well offer advice on how to navigate and benefit from the transition. Some works address legal and regulatory issues such as Promoting Renewable Energy: The Mutual Supportiveness of Climate and Trade Law (Monti, 2023) or focus upon technical and engineering matters as in Fundamentals and Applications of Renewable Energy (Kanoglu et al., 2023).

Looking at each of these themes in turn, we begin with the popular concept of energy security.

Energy security is a recurring theme in the design of energy policy even though there is no consensus on how it should be measured or achieved, or on the relevant time frame over which it should be assessed. Ever since petroleum became critical to modern economic life, people have been concerned about whether its supply was ‘secure’ and would be fairly priced. Of late, such perennial concerns have been used to support renewable energy, but what ‘security’ precisely involves is uncertain.

There are many interesting metrics and indices purporting to measure energy security. It may involve the ratio of domestic supply to domestic consumption, looking at resource estimates or metrics related to economic structure such as producer concentration, energy intensiveness and market conditions. Distinct disciplines, as well, use different metrics. We have the accessibility perspective originating in political science; the availability perspective using geologic and scientific insights; and the affordability perspective with its roots in financial economics (Cherp & Jewell, 2011). According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), energy security signifies “the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price”.¹ Questioning the validity of energy market insecurity, using historical data and the statistical insights of financial option theory, some authors have argued that petroleum markets are remarkably robust and flexible, and perform well even during ‘crises’ (Haar & Haar, 2019). Concerns over security are unwarranted and reliance upon imports is not problematic (Robinson, 2007). As we saw recently when Russia invaded Ukraine, prices did not exceed previous highs, markets cleared without excess demand and supply.

Though there many perspectives on the concept of energy security, and concerns over it may be arguably unjustified, a common theme running through the renewable energy research and advocacy found in the publications under review is that energy markets are inherently insecure, but renewable energy will address this problem.² George Hathry opens his work by claiming that both companies and countries will enhance energy security through renewable energy. This claim is also made in the collection edited by Pablo Del Río and Mario Ragwitz (p. 3.) Similarly, in the work edited and authored by Anton Eberhard and Wikus Kruger various authors claim that only through private investment in renewable energy can the energy insecurity of the nations of the Global South be addressed (p. 2.). Further, it is argued that Brazil can address insecurity in electricity supply through renewable energy (p. 290), even though it has 16,172,000 million cubic feet (mmcf) of gas reserves and produces 3.3 million barrels per day (mmbd) of oil; or that Namibia can address its insecurity of electricity supply through displacing imported electricity from South Africa or imported petroleum or natural gas with renewable energy (p. 405) even though Angola, its northern neighbour has 9,711,000 mmcf of gas reserves and produces 1.4 mmbd of oil. Further, in 2021 the Canadian firm Reconnaissance Africa discovered in Namibia 120 billion barrels of oil in the Kango basin. Argentina has 11,142,000 mmcf of natural gas and produces over half a million barrels of oil per day (mmbd) while Brazil has 16,172,000 mmcf of gas reserves and produces 3.3 mmbd of oil.

The premise of the proposition that renewable energy is a means of addressing supply insecurity is dubious: most countries are net importers of petroleum, as it is critical to energy and the petrochemical sectors of modern economies, and the global 100 mmbd market is remarkably flexible. Though the purpose of sanctions against Russia was to reduce its revenues from petroleum, with the unintended consequences that its discounted Urals crude went east while Europe found new sources, the events attest to the depth and liquidity of the market. The countries of the Global South that Eberhard and Kruger focus on have bountiful access and supplies of hydrocarbons. International energy markets are not ‘insecure’ as renewable energy advocates claim; and replacing low-cost imported energy or domestically produced hydrocarbons with expensive renewable energy, as explained below, conflicts with the received economic theory of trade. That energy may be imported does not make it ‘insecure’, and replacing it through renewable energy may not be economic.³ Although a scenario in which China stops exporting solar PV panels appears remote, we should remember that generating electricity in this manner, like relying upon wind turbines, involves international trade in energy intensive, globally sourced materials.⁴

Not surprisingly, in all three works we find the theme that transitioning to renewable energy will help the environment by reducing GHG. Georges Hathry begins with this message, as do Pablo Del Río and Mario Ragwitz, whose introductory chapter tells us that satisfying the Paris Agreement of 2015 and achieving sustainable development goals requires transformation of our global energy production and consumption system. In Eberhard and Kruger's collection, the role of the Global South in reducing GHG is a recurring theme. In the eight countries examined – Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, India, South Africa, Zambia, and Namibia – the respective authors, as area experts, explain how private investment and market mechanisms may be used to reduce CO₂ emissions, demonstrating commitment to the various COP objectives. Excluding India from the examined countries in the Eberhard and Kruger collection, the CO₂ emissions of the other seven countries sum to less than 4.5 per cent of global CO₂.⁵ Even the United Kingdom, with the sixth-largest GDP, contributes only 1 per cent to global CO₂. Though it may appear meritorious to act locally while imagining a global impact, the facts are not supportive. Arguably, the alternative to ‘free riding’ should be global cooperation.

For countries of the Global South covered in Eberhard and Kruger's work, investing in renewable energy will have no measurable impact upon atmospheric CO₂ or prevent climate change. If the incentives and subsidies being offered to developing countries to adopt renewable technologies in general were instead directed to the world's most-emitting sectors, there would be greater CO₂ reduction at a lower cost. A global agreement on the taxation of CO₂ might be one approach (Shackleton, 2020), and, in contrast to technology-specific incentives, taxing carbon ensures that firms and sectors with the lowest costs of abatement act first. In contrast, offering incentives for renewable energy, grid-level battery storage or carbon sequestration involves governments picking winners – Hayek's ‘pretence of knowledge’. Moreover, disaggregating the effects of policies from general economic trends is challenging and assumption-intensive (Moutinho et al., 2015). Perhaps these authors should recall the observation of the late Professor Milton Friedman: “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”⁶ Apart from achieving COP objectives, the economic case for investing in renewable energy in the Global South remains questionable especially given its minuscule contribution to global CO₂. Even in Europe, independently pursuing COP objectives may appear environmentally virtuous, but is devoid of economic common sense. Altogether, it echoes Marx's mantra: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’

From pre-industrial times to the 1950s, global levels of atmospheric CO₂ hovered around 300 parts per million or 0.03 per cent of the atmosphere. It has now grown to around 400 parts per million or 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere. Though CO₂, as a by-product of the chemical reaction known as combustion, was never a concern until it was associated with climate change, the replacement of technologies using fossil fuels with renewable energy technologies is commonly portrayed as a ‘win-win’, that is, the costs of climate change are averted, and it is better and cheaper than fossil fuels. In all three works, in both presumptions and overt claims, it is argued that the cost of energy will be reduced through reliance upon solar PV and wind-turbine generated electricity. Hathry makes this claim in his chapter 3. Eberhard and Kruger's collection tells us that the reliance upon market mechanisms has facilitated investment and provided cost-efficient electricity tariffs for the provision of clean, renewably generated electricity. According to the authors in the Eberhard and Kruger collection, the criterion for successful implementation of renewable energy is that an independent power project is built and achieves ‘commercial’ operation in a timely manner and offers a low, competitive price of electricity, critically defined using the metric of the IEA and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The indirect ‘ancillary’ costs of providing system balancing and backup as well as network costs are mentioned along with their inevitable ‘socialisation’, that is, the impact upon consumers, but not considered in depth. According to the various contributors, renewable energy is successful if the agreed tariff price is similar to or slightly below the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of the relevant technology, that is, wind turbines or solar.⁷ But does this criterion measure ensure economic merit?

Properly, the use of this criterion ensures only that the prices received by investors–developers of renewable energy reflect their respective costs including an adequate return to capital; it does not imply that such a price will be cheaper, the same as, or more expensive than other forms of electricity generation, like dispatchable fossil-fuel plants or nuclear (US EIA, 2022). To elaborate, while renewable energy is often presented as competitive with fossil-fuel-fired electricity generation, this assertion confuses price per installed megawatt with price per megawatt hour, as determined through the aforementioned LCOE calculation. Remember, though its ‘fuel’ is free, the significant capital requirements are not. Moreover, even in sunny Africa or Brazil, solar PV does not work at night. In most parts of the world, on-shore wind operates approximately one-quarter of the time and off-shore wind about a third of the time. For heuristic purposes, if we assume a weighted capacity average of 25 per cent, we might imagine that constructing four times capacity would yield nearly the same output of one gas-fired turbine normally operating at a typical load factor of 90 per cent. The observation, however, assumes zero correlation between the four sites. Weather patterns are not uncorrelated, requiring instead that one might need a sixfold investment in wind or solar renewable capacity to generate as much electricity as a single gas turbine of the same megawatts. So, while the price of installed capacity has fallen for renewable technology, an LCOE-type calculation of dividing the cost of capacity by the number of hours to reach an average cost, shows that renewable energy is not cheap. Even with Pigouvian-style taxation of CO₂ and other effluents, if it were technologically superior to dispatchable plant like combined-cycle gas turbines and ultra-supercritical coal, debating how it should be supported would be a moot issue.

Comparing LCOE of various forms of generation, however, does not tell the whole story of their respective merits. Though the authors of the Eberhard and Kruger collection acknowledge the indirect costs of renewable energy investment and that such costs may be ‘socialised’ (that is, paid for by consumers), the matter is given limited attention. It cannot be ignored, however. In the Del Río and Ragwitz collection, such topics are explored in depth. In chapter 2, titled ‘The Costs and Benefits of the Energy Transition’, by Barbara Breitschopf, Julia Panny and Anne Held, we have a detailed analysis and explanation of why renewable energy has huge indirect costs. Further, in chapter 8, titled ‘The Grid Costs of Renewable Energy Deployment’, by Joan Batalla-Bejerano, Daniel Davi-Arderius and Elisa Trujillo-Baute, we find a detailed explanation and analysis of the infrastructure needed to make renewable energy generation workable. We learn that, as a highly distributed form of electricity generation, it requires vast investment in transmission cables estimated to cost for overhead lines approximately £600,000 per kilometre, ignoring life-cycle costs. Further, it requires fossil-fuel plants idling at minimum stable generation to be dispatchable when the wind-generated output fails and the sun does not shine. In the UK, according to the energy regulator Ofgem, the non-wholesale cost component of retail energy prices now exceeds 71 per cent.⁸

The costs of random intermittency associated with renewable technologies cannot be overestimated. Argentina has 2,534 hours per year of sunshine; 71 per cent of the time it is either night or under cloud cover. India has 2,361; 73 per cent of the time it is either night or under cloud cover. Even in Zambia, 68 per cent of the time cloud and nightfall may render solar PV infrastructure useless. Though it may be observed that in parts of Africa and India renewable energy will be a primary source of electricity without grid-level backup, making it cheaper, it is still hard to imagine anyone being satisfied with an intermittent and unpredictable supply. While in Argentina, South Africa and Brazil consumers living in urbanised areas expect reliable supply, renewable energy will require fossil-fuel backup or massive investment in grid-level storage, both of which impose huge social costs.⁹

Turning to Europe, it has been estimated that providing dispatchable backup to intermittent renewable energy is costing tens of billions of euros per annum (Haar & Haar, 2017). According to recently published data by the IEA at the University of Cologne, Germany faces a €60 billion funding gap in its support for renewable energy and will need to spend about €10 billion of that on new gas-fired and hydrogen backup plants when low wind speeds or clouds keep windmills and solar panels from contributing to the grid. Further, for Germany, the social costs of reaching net zero by 2030 are estimated to reach €1.9 trillion, or €240 billion per year.¹⁰

To summarise, only one of the three publications provides realistic insights into what transitioning to renewable generation of electricity will cost. ‘Socialisation’ of indirect costs may sound inoffensive, but when one quantifies the facts the case for using renewables to decarbonise electricity generation is undermined, especially in the lower- and middle-income countries of the Global South. From a democratic governance perspective, one wonders how citizens of the Global South would respond if they were canvassed on the trade-offs in transitioning to renewable energy. As we have witnessed in the world's most advanced economies, since the Industrial Revolution economic growth has been supported through inexpensive fossil fuels. Viewed comprehensively, the cost of energy will not be reduced through reliance upon solar PV and wind-turbine-generated electricity, and reliance upon it in developing countries will not make them richer. If it were economic to generate electricity using renewable technology rather than natural gas, petroleum or coal, it would not need policy advocacy; businesses do not require incentives to pursue profits.

Reflecting the widespread transition to the privatisation of electricity generation from state-owned utilities and the use of market forces to deliver reliable and affordable electricity, in all three works reviewed a large role is accorded to private investors and capital in achieving the transition to wind and solar renewable-electricity generation. Hathry targets private entities and addresses how renewable energy projects may be undertaken at firm level. He discusses how to measure energy consumption and the potential savings from renewable energy. Unsurprisingly, the public relations benefits of using and generating renewable energy are also emphasised. A case study in Hathry's work of the major French conglomerate the Bollore Group demonstrates the alleged benefits in this regard.

Lacking, however, in Hathry's work are the larger financial-economic as well as macro insights. It may look good to customers for a firm to signal its virtue of being conscientiously green, but how could higher energy prices really be good for stakeholders if it increases costs? The ultimate incidence must impact consumers, shareholders and employees. Further, we have the burden of the indirect costs of renewably generated electricity, as already explained. In most cases firms are receiving tax credits, subsidies, and other inducements to use or adopt renewable energy. Such incentives have a cost: a subsidy for one entity means higher taxes for another entity. Such incentives may have misallocative effects, directing capital in a suboptimal manner. Commenting upon the upcoming Davos Meeting, the President and CEO of Huntsman Corporation, a publicly traded petrochemical manufacturer, said “the pursuit of green energy is leading to the rapid de-industrialisation of Europe” (Huntsman, 2024). The German think tank Agora Energiewende (2024) reported that the fall in Europe's CO₂ output is primarily due to deindustrialisation. Promoting one's green credentials might yield positive public perceptions, but the costs lead to economic stagnation. Major European car makers have already voiced concerns that the battery-powered vehicle will be the death of the domestic car industry (Fairless, 2024). In addition, Hathry's perspective ignores the impact upon consumers. Higher prices for domestic energy and transportation reduce the purchasing power of consumers, which cannot be good for businesses. Discretionary consumer purchases such as clothing, hospitality, entertainment have been affected by higher energy prices. In the UK thousands of pubs have shut their doors, blaming the cost of heating (Cobham, 2024).

Taking a general equilibrium perspective, apart from the direct beneficiaries of renewable energy investments such as investors earning low-risk subsidised returns, through altering relative prices from their natural opportunity cost and directing capital to where it would not go without incentives, the promotion of renewable energy must have a net negative impact to a country. Even arguments with respect to job creation through renewable energy require major qualifications (Stanef-Puica et al., 2022). Chapter 7 in the Del Río and Ragwitz collection (‘Green Jobs in the Spanish Renewable Energy Sector: An Input-Output Approach’ by Manuel Tomás, Ignacio Cazcarro, Julen Montilla, Cristina Pizarro-Irizar and Iñaki Arto) shows the challenges of measuring the employment impact of renewable energy programmes. Simple mantras claiming that supporting renewable energy will create ‘green jobs’ are not useful. Like many targeted government programmes, identifying the cohort of beneficiaries is easier than showing the widespread negative impact upon contributors and payers. Cynically, such benefits are transitory while the costs, like deindustrialisation and impoverishment, are persistent, difficult to measure and beyond the election cycle.

Though Hathry's observations are of a general nature, the focus of the many authors in the Eberhard and Kruger collection is on how the use of energy auctions may encourage private investors in renewable energy, particularly in the nations of the Global South. Covering Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, India, South Africa, Zambia and Namibia, the respective authors, as area experts, provide detailed and well-explained information on the design, implementation, and outcomes of renewable energy auctions in each of these important locations. Each country-specific chapter provides a mixture of facts, casual empiricism and contextual information on the structure and performance of the existing power generation sector. The detailed information is generously supported by excellent graphs, tables and other exhibits, giving the reader useful insights into how each of these countries sought to address inadequate electricity supply through reliance upon market mechanisms and private capital. The information supplied and observations made do not demonstrate the economic rationality of these investment programmes.

From this work, we learn that renewable energy auctions have become the main approach to contracting utility-scale renewable energy projects. The recent history of auction markets in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and India are appraised and analysed with the aim of improving how they are designed and implemented globally. In each country the focus is on policy choices including how the auction was implemented, what institutions were involved and how the procurement process was undertaken. After decades of reliance upon state-owned or parastatal entities, for all these countries turning to the private sector to supply electricity and relying upon a market mechanism to set the price was a watershed. As a natural monopoly suitable for either public ownership or regulated private ownership, there was a history of antipathy to using the private sector to supply electricity and a market mechanism to set prices. As we learn from Eberhard and Kruger's collection, in some countries private investment focusing upon renewable energy was intended to address chronic load-shedding and deficient performance of the established state-owned monopoly. In India, we discover that the auction process initially was complicated by the autonomy of India's state authorities, but eventually the ambitions to reduce the cost of renewable energy, to attract investors and have projects completed in a timely manner were successful. Facilitating India's programme was the socialisation of direct and indirect system support cost; rather than imposing such costs upon developers, a ‘plug-and-play’ option for developers: government agencies provided land and transmission connection.

In some countries, conditions were already favourable to using private capital and auctions to facilitate renewable energy development; in other countries, new laws, regulations and institution were required. In Chile, we learn that the combination of a positive business climate, low country risk, low non-payment rates and a supportive regulatory system helped to protect revenue streams to suppliers. With advanced capital markets and economic sophistication, successful auctions of the right to build and generate renewable electricity in South Africa should have been straightforward, but attracting private sector investment faced several obstacles. Though South Africa had been the regional leader in renewable energy auctions, establishing the Independent Power Producer Programme in late 2010 to address chronic power shortages as well as demonstrating commitment to UN Climate Change Conference (COP 15), its site selection process was cumbersome and costly for unsuccessful bidders. Further, its compliance programme was complicated while bidder ranking and winner selection was insufficiently transparent, discouraging investors from future rounds.

In countries such as Brazil and Mexico, major structural reforms of the electricity sector, including vertical unbundling of supply from transmission and distribution, were needed to provide suitable and attractive conditions for private investors. In Mexico, an energy regulator was created along with a market operator, and the state-owned utility was segmented into independent entities overseeing various parts of the value chain. In Argentina, the long history of economic instability and institutional fragility presented obstacles necessitating the creation of trust fund by the World Bank to mitigate financial risk to investors. It was successful in facilitating auctions until the crash of 2018 proved it was insufficient to protect investors from sovereign risk. In Namibia, starting from a complete absence of private sector involvement in electricity supply as of 2015, tangible progress was made using innovative financial structures developed by the Standard Bank to lend in the local currency, shielding investors from foreign exchange-rate risk. In neighbouring Zambia, an innovative approach to auction design was used to mitigate key risks and build trust among potential investors. In sum, from the collection we learn that renewable energy auctions have become the dominant method for contracting utility-scale renewable energy projects, in large part due to the ‘cost-efficient’ tariffs secured through this method. Relying upon private capital and market mechanisms, progress in renewable energy by the countries of the Global South has been remarkable, but does this tell the entire story?

While these countries have used a market mechanism to encourage renewable energy investment and relied upon the private sector to build renewable generation, often using the LCOE for renewables as a benchmark for setting prices of renewables, this does not necessarily demonstrate sound economics. The authors in the Eberhard and Kruger collection avoid the salient issue of whether promoting renewable energy, even using market mechanisms, favours prosperity, growth and development. In seeking guidance from this publication, policymakers should reflect carefully. Though encouraging investment in renewable energy through auctions supports achieving COP 15 objectives, the authors in the Eberhard and Kruger collection ignore the issue of whether it supports long-term economic growth and development in their respective economies. Does it build wealth or just encourage rent-seeking? In addition to gas-fired generation being cheaper when considered comprehensively, the geography and geology of these countries makes one wonder why they should pursue renewable energy, if not for achieving UN sustainable development goals or finding favour with NGOs. Argentina, as mentioned, has huge exploitable natural gas and oil reserves. So does Brazil.¹¹ Mexico produces over 1.7 mmbd of oil and ranks just ahead of Brazil in having 16,549,000 mmcf of gas reserves. Angola, the northern neighbour of Namibia, has 9,711,000 mmcf of gas reserves and produces 1.4 mmbd of oil. Though Zambia has a tiny oil and gas industry, its neighbour Mozambique is estimated to have 100 million mmcf of gas reserves, ranking 14th in the world. Altogether, the plentiful supply of hydrocarbons suitable for gas-fired electricity generation, either within or available from neighbouring countries, raises the question of whether unreliable distributed generation of electricity makes sense. The LCOE may be comparable, but it still requires massive investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure as well as dispatchable backup. For long-term economic growth, would renewable energy in the countries of the Global South, or anywhere for that matter, make sense if we were not concerned with the impact of using fossil fuels to generate electricity?

While all the authors in Eberhard and Kruger's collection acknowledge that renewable energy has ancillary and network costs, they all seem complacent about the above concerns. Yes, according to Deason (2018) in a meta-analysis of 45 peer-reviewed studies on the impact of renewable energy, 34 found that full reliance upon renewable energy would increase electricity prices between 41 per cent and 104 per cent. More broadly, according to Alex Epstein (2021), replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy will condemn much of the developing world to eternal poverty. Apart from achieving COP objectives, the economic case for pursuing renewable energy in the Global South remains questionable especially given its minuscule contribution to global CO₂. Perhaps reflecting the level of governance and democracy, the various governments covered by Eberhard and Kruger appear committed to increasing renewable energy output without regard for the costs imposed on consumers of electricity and the long-term implications for economic growth. This also raises the question of how well the citizens of Europe and North America appreciate the negative impact of eliminating fossil fuels from electricity generation.

Reflecting the commitments to the COP/renewable energy agenda, researchers from policy institutes, leading academic institutions and elsewhere have devoted great effort to explaining the economic benefits of transitioning to ‘renewable’ energy and pursuing the commitments made under the auspices of the UN climate change agreements. The three works reviewed here offer detailed insights and advice on how the transition may be facilitated. Intended for policymakers and academics, the two edited collections are by far the most rigorous, with the one edited by Pablo Del Río and Mario Ragwitz the most balanced, offering detailed insights into the costs of transforming how we generate electricity as well as such key topics as employment creation. The collection edited by the University of Cape Town professors Anton Eberhard and Wikus Kruger provides detailed insights into how various countries of the Global South have used market mechanisms and private capital to engender renewable investment. Notwithstanding the use of market mechanisms, whether such policies and programmes are beneficial, offering sound economics, is given limited emphasis. The shorter work of Georges Hathry has a different audience: the business executive wishing to know more about renewable energy and why his or her firm should become engaged. It is uncritical and limited in its outlook, but the case studies are interesting, providing guidance on how and why one should proceed. In sum, short of a technological breakthrough like sustainable fusion energy, these works show that the devotion to renewable energy may require more faith than rationality. Perhaps we should recall the words of the Spanish poet Miguel de Unamuno: ‘Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.’