The role of renewables in the energy crisis

The recent progress of human kind has so far been strongly related to the use of fossil fuels. Nowadays, the uncontrolled growth of their use is producing a series of threats such as local pollution, global warming, and the unbalance between their growing demand and their progressive depletion is creating serious geopolitical frictions which may put at risk our civilization. While the nuclear option is seriously questioned in the Western world, the growth of renewable energy sources (RES) is creating the illusion that they may just replace fossil fuels and become a sort of panacea overcoming all aforementioned threats. Some of the shortcomings of this way of thinking are underlined in this paper. Actually, the correct answer is a combination of two factors: on one side the use of renewable energy sources, but on the other side the adoption of energy efficiency measures in order to rationalize the energy demand.