Unlikely. We'd just use the leftover energy for new things.
If 1kg of coal represents 1000 Wh, your generator loses 1/2 to waste heat, you only generate 500 Wh of usable electricity. Some analyses will state that renewable power has to replace the 1000 Wh of embedded energy within the coal, when it only needs to output 500 Wh.
If you use solar panels and generate 500 Wh directly, you have cut your energy use in half, even though the output has remained the same. An EV has a battery of ~80 kWh, equal to 2-3 gallons of gas, yet it can go a few hundred miles, a 3-4x ratio of efficiency, compared to an ICE.
I’ve never seen anyone measure coal power by the amount of chemical energy stored inside, unless they are specifically referring to using it as a heating source. For electricity generated by coal it’s always measured as output.
Now compare size and weight of the battery with 3 gallons of gas. I can carry hundreds of miles of travel on my person if it's gas, I can't carry much battery though.
Particularly handy if heading off in a straight line, I to the wilderness.
Most of us are running errands around town.
I figured an EV is worth about 60mpg with a fair comparison to a gas car.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/01/electric-vehicles...
Modern internal-combustion engines have 35% to 40% efficiency, with even efficiencies of over 50% for the very big 2-stroke Diesel engines used in ships.
Nonetheless that remains about half of the efficiency of electric vehicles and the energy efficiency of the latter can be greatly increased over this ratio by the recovery of the kinetic or gravitational energy, when braking or descending.
And so on.
P.S. Since I drive a stick, I coast a lot. I live in a hilly area, and have a pretty good feel for just how and where I can shift into neutral and coast. I also coast towards a red light with the goal of reaching the intersection just when it turns green. (Moving forward from a dead stop uses lots of energy.)
Anything with electronic fueling will cut fuel during engine overrun. Staying in gear while coasting uses zero fuel. If you pull the clutch, the engine has to fuel enough to idle instead, which is actually a really inefficient fueling regime.
It propels a car about 10 miles. About 1 mile per kWh
Charging my electric car via AC at 7kW to replace the power used to drive 90 miles in autumn takes 26kWh according to the meter, so 3.5 miles per kWh.
Same thing with battery power density - it’s the rocket equation. Heavy batteries don’t go far. To go farther you add battery, then more battery to carry enough power to carry the larger battery. Increase the specific energy rather than the mass, and all the extra power goes into going faster or farther.
Meanwhile, fossil fuels are only 'cheap' because the users are pushing the negative externalities off on everyone else in the world. Priced properly they'd be even more costly than they already are.
The crux of Jevon's paradox is that you’re lowering the cost of revenue below the sale price.
If I can generate $10 a sale then I’ll do no sales if it costs me $11 . If gas drops from $4 to $2 then I’ll do as many sales as I can as $9 is less than $10.
Pre-industrial revolution most people in my country own enough clothing for everyday and then maybe some extra stuff for "best" appearance like church. Making a shirt requires hours of labour from skilled workers. The machines eliminate one of those jobs ("hand" weaving, using a loom that you operate at human scale, replaced by enormous machine looms which produce much more fabric and much faster with far less human labour) and streamline others so that the price of a garment collapses. So people buy a lot more garments. You probably own enough clothes that you can wear different clothes each day for at least a week, likely more, and you think nothing of it.
Most people won't buy so many clothes that they can't even wear items once, but many get pretty close, and so worldwide we produce hugely more clothing per person than before the textile mills were first built.
Just took my house onto off-grid solar, yet my energy consumption now exceeds when I was on utility grid power.
Naturally we ration things when they're expensive. But now I don't feel the need to turn off the lights or appliances when I leave my home, and my EV driving has gone up knowing that "fuel" is essentially free from here on out. And to soak up excess solar, I run multiple computers and servers 24/7 with reckless abandon.
"Free" fuel for you just pushes the externalities elsewhere.
I was brought up to "save energy ". Lights switched off when not in thevroom, that sort of thing.
Now I gave solar on the roof. There's an excess production capability, so now, during most days it doesn't matter if stuff is on or off. That especially applies to AC which I'll happily turn on on hot summer days. In effect I use more "because it's there to be used".
My EV is coming soon and given I can charge it on solar I plan to do a lot more day-trips-out over weekends etc.
So you're right, availability and affordability- but electrifying is great (for me) for both those things.
It is something overlooked by various reports of "In X amount of time, Y is projected to consume Z% of electricity" that the average increase in world electricity production is about 3% per year.
As fast as solar, wind, etc electricity production grows, the number of people requiring it grows along-side.
Also, 'renewable' is misleading, 'replaceable' is more accurate, all renewable energy generators wear out as everything does and need to be replaced using non-renewable energy mostly (you can't build solar panels from solar panel energy)
... Why?
And relying on trees is not a great idea either, look at Easter Island, lol.
(GPT has all the answers anyway, no need to ask me, I'm an old man with no issue and no stake in this stuff)
Modern PV typically has an EROEI of ~ 15-30, depending on tech, location, system lifetime, and accounting methodology.
From what I've read, coal might still beat that, but modern oil no longer does. Gas is generally also worse than PV in this regard.
Coal is however also very expensive, which is why e.g. the UK completely stopped using it for electricity.
But even then the numbers are positive, they just don't make good economic sense.
Today's numbers embarrass CCGT which is why these same fools will now tell you the problem isn't solar PV it's the batteries, the batteries are too expensive you see, so it's all pointless according to them. Weirdly the answer is always more Fossil Fuels. No matter what the question is, or what the facts suggest, they can assure you that somehow it turns out the answer was Fossil Fuels.
and that production of hydrogen (as a base for either ammonia or methanol production) will likely come via electrical cracking .. but it might also come as a result of atmospheric carbon sequestration in ultramafic rock: https://phys.org/news/2026-09-orange-hydrogen-western-austra...
You mean data centers. Can't ever have enough of those!