The Five Things Keeping Us From Going All-Electric

Electrification is all the buzz.

As more governments, corporations, investors and consumers commit to reducing the world’s reliance on carbon-intensive fossil fuels, they are frequently turning to electricity as the power of choice. The International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organisation, projects that close to half of world energy consumption could be in the form of electricity by 2050, up from about 20% today.

It makes sense: Electrification is often the fastest and cheapest way to decarbonise our energy consumption. The technologies to decarbonise electricity already exist and are, for the most part, readily deployable at a large scale by the private sector.

But here’s a sobering fact about all the talk of the “electrification of everything”: It isn’t likely to happen. At least, not soon. We can’t go all the way down the electrification road for a host of reasons—nor should we want to. For one thing, it would place unnecessary limitations on other viable solutions to rising greenhouse-gas emissions. It also ignores existing technical, regulatory and strategic constraints on electrification.

None of this is to say the world shouldn’t be shifting to new—and cleaner—electricity. And not just because of its role in fighting climate change. Among other things, electrification via renewable energy is playing a pivotal role in energy security for a variety of countries where oil and gas is scarce and expensive, and where volatile fuel prices threaten economic growth and fiscal stability. Clean energy helped Germany and other European countries cope with the loss of natural-gas imports from Russia last year. New clean energy is also helping key economies like China and India reduce air pollution.

But even with its environmental and strategic benefits, electrification won’t be the be-all and end-all for the foreseeable future.

Here are five reasons why:

1. Some things can’t be electrified

There are a lot of industries that are too difficult or expensive to be electrified for the foreseeable future. Do you want to know why there is no major commercial airline currently operating electric long-distance flights? It’s because the battery weight needed to hold enough energy for a trans-Atlantic flight would be greater than that of the airliner itself.

The weight of the battery and driving range is also a barrier for electrifying 18-wheeler trucks, though that electrification technology is further along than that for large jets. Freightliner has a big rig called eCascadia, but its range is only 250 miles, recharging takes over 90 minutes, and the e-truck is two to three times more expensive than its diesel-fuel version.

That may change as the battery and charging-station technology develops. A new study by the Environmental Defense Fund says that long-distance battery electric trucks could be cost effective by 2030, but other solutions are also possible by then, such as hydrogen, waste-to-energy, biofuels and tailpipe capture. (More on that in a moment.)

High-heat industrial processes, such as those for blast furnaces, cement kilns and petrochemical plants, are another commercial activity that will be hard to electrify, because electric high heat can be challenging and expensive for some industrial applications.

One key problem is that any unplanned downtime or fluctuation in temperature levels—caused by electrical fluctuations or disruptions from weather, accidents or a failed circuit breaker—not only can ruin the end product but also possibly damage billions of dollars of industrial equipment. While that scenario can be averted with automated backup energy systems, as is done routinely for nuclear plants to prevent a meltdown, it’s still an expensive add-on cost.

Protecting against disruptions in electricity supply could be expensive for some heavy industries that currently use coal or natural gas to fuel their heat processes. PHOTO: MASON TRINCA FOR THE THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

2. Cheaper alternatives may be coming for the most difficult-to-electrify areas

Electric power doesn’t have a monopoly on innovation. As a result, it could be risky for some industries to invest in some electrical solutions at the moment, knowing there might be a superior, cheaper technical solution down the road. Alternatives such as biofuels, hydrogen or biogas and fossil fuels with carbon sequestration offer the potential to be superior sources of power.

For instance, Remora, a startup based in Wixom, Mich., is designing a device that can collect tailpipe CO2 directly while a truck is in operation, compressing it for later sequestration or sale. Several airlines have started to use jet fuel made from purified biogenic waste that can be mixed with oil-based diesel fuel—so-called drop-in fuels that don’t require special or new fuel-transport infrastructure. Hydrogen made from renewable energy also could eventually be a solution for fueling planes and trucks.

Heidelberg Materials, a global manufacturer of building materials, is studying carbon capture and storage for its Mitchell, Ind., operations that would allow it to continue to use a fossil-fuel energy source while adding equipment that would separate CO2 emissions from other waste gases before, during and/or after combustion activities. Heidelberg would then transport its waste CO2 to be permanently injected into deep geological storage or to be reused making other products in a way that it doesn’t wind up back in the atmosphere.

These examples have the advantage of using existing energy infrastructure rather than retiring it before its end-of-life service.

3. Access to land, a surfeit of complaints

Yes, there is plenty of uninhabited land in many countries, and especially in the U.S. But uninhabited doesn’t always spell accessibility.

For one thing, in highly urbanised regions or densely populated countries, it can be difficult to find sufficient empty land to support alternative-fuel installations. Around the world, in places as diverse as India and Africa, renewable-energy developers often have trouble getting permits to buy or lease the necessary acreage. And in many areas, including the U.S., local populations can object to living near wind and solar farms, or near the power transmission and distribution lines that they require.

Consider this: It would take a wind farm on about 100,000 acres to generate the same amount of electricity as a one-gigawatt nuclear plant that typically occupies less than 1 square mile, or 640 acres. Princeton University estimates in a high-renewable-energy scenario, where solar and wind would account for virtually all electricity generation for the U.S. in 2050, the number of wind turbines would require roughly 244 million acres of uninhabited land—even assuming efficiency improvements. The current U.S. electrical system only uses about 20 million acres for the power generation business, including fuel-source production (e.g., coal, natural gas, solar, wind, nuclear and hydro), and power plants. Today’s power lines take up 4.8 million acres in the U.S., but that could increase sharply the more renewables that are added.

For a small country like Japan, that renewables-footprint requirement seems insurmountable, even if its nascent offshore wind business gets off the ground. But even for a large nation like the U.S., construction of wind and solar farms often gets held up by groups who want to use the land (or sea) for something else. In the entire U.S., there are two small offshore wind platforms currently in operation, with a third, larger one, nearing completion. The Biden administration is trying to change that at the federal level, but local factors are often hard to sort out.

Moreover, all that uninhabited U.S. land isn’t necessarily contiguous with large energy-using metropolitan regions or located where the most commercial-scale resource of renewable energy is available. For instance, many large U.S. cities aren’t contiguous with Midwest or offshore wind resources or Southwest solar.

4. Difficulty getting the necessary permits

Since the energy resource used for electricity generation often isn’t located in populated areas, that means more transmission lines will be needed, and more lines means more permitting, which can be a time-consuming, multiyear process.

In addition to potentially requiring new transmission lines, new renewable projects also have to receive technical approval to be allowed to connect into existing grids to prove that adding more electricity won’t destabilise existing service. Again, that can take years for regulators to study and approve. The U.S. Congress has talked about permitting reform, but a solution to the problem isn’t currently on the horizon.

The U.S. isn’t the only place with transmission-construction and grid-connection obstacles. In India, land permitting for solar energy can be a bureaucratic nightmare and remains a barrier. In Germany, local opposition to new high-tension transmission lines to carry offshore wind energy from the country’s northern shores to its southern factories blocked projects for years before the Ukraine crisis. In Africa, governments that can access foreign aid for construction of wind and solar installations have had more difficulty financing the transmission lines to carry the power generated to populations and industry. All of this will continue to slow down electrification.

5. Electricity grids are highly interruptible

It isn’t just the occasional squirrel that’s the problem. In recent years, we have witnessed weather systems that knocked out power for huge swaths of the U.S. at once. The war in Ukraine is a reminder that cyberattacks against the grid could be catastrophic if too many aspects of daily life are tied to a singular infrastructure. Already, there are many vital services that cannot be conducted without access to electricity, like lighting, telecommunications, data centres and financial services. Broadening that to our entire fuel system and industrial operations seems risky, if not downright irresponsible.

There will be technical solutions to the risks of electricity disruptions, but it will take time and money to implement them. Households, governments and regional grids will all have to invest in backup systems that can be turned on seamlessly using automation when the larger grid goes down. That could take decades—and an enormous amount of money. BloombergNEF estimates that it could take as much as $17.3 trillion to expand the grid and $4.1 trillion to maintain what is there now, for a total of $21.4 trillion.

Ultimately, there is little doubt that the world is heading for the electrification of a lot more things. And that’s good—for energy security, stable economic growth and reduced greenhouse-gas emissions.

But it’s also clear that a goal of electrifying everything is neither possible nor desired, and putting all our power eggs in one basket would be a fool’s errand. Innovation is by no means isolated to the electric domain. Many forward-looking businesses are experimenting with new ways to squeeze emissions out of industrial processes, and to replace fossil fuels in transport and building applications, in some cases with assistance from governments. Power to them. Rather than naysay what’s not electricity, let’s hope they unlock superior solutions.

In Singapore, it’s not unusual for total strangers to ask, “Have you eaten yet?” A greeting akin to “Good morning,” it invariably leads to follow-up questions. What did you eat? Where did you eat it? Was it good? Greeters reserve the right to judge your responses and offer advice, solicited or otherwise, on where you should eat next.

Locals will often joke that gastronomic opinions can make (and break) relationships and that eating is a national pastime. And why wouldn’t it be? In a nexus of colliding cultures—a place where Malays, Indians, Chinese and Europeans have brushed shoulders and shared meals for centuries—the mix of flavours coming out of kitchens in this country is enough to make you believe in world peace.

While Michelin stars spangle Singapore’s restaurant scene , to truly understand the city’s relationship with food, you have to venture to the hawker centres. A core aspect of daily life, hawker centres sprang up in numbers during the 1970s, built by authorities looking to sanitise and formalise the city’s street-food scene. Today, 121 government-run hawker centres feature food stalls that specialise in dishes from the country’s various ethnic groups. In one of the world’s most expensive cities, hawker dishes are shockingly cheap: A full meal can cost as little as $3.

Over the course of many visits to Singapore, I’ve fallen in love with these places—and with the scavenger hunts to find meals I’ll never forget: delicate bowls of laksa noodle soup, where brisk lashes of heat interrupt addictive swirls of umami; impossibly flaky roti prata dipped in curry; the beautiful simplicity of an immaculately roasted duck leg. In a futuristic and at times sterile city, hawker centres throw back to the past and offer a rare glimpse of something human in scale. To an outsider like me, sitting at a table amid the din of the lunch-hour rush can feel like glimpsing the city’s soul through all the concrete and glitz.

So I’ve been alarmed in recent years to hear about the supposed demise of hawker centres. Would-be hawkers have to bid for stalls from the government, and rents are climbing . An upwardly mobile generation doesn’t want to take over from their parents. On a recent trip to Singapore, I enlisted my brother, who lives there, and as we ate our way across the city, we searched for signs of life—and hopefully a peek into what the future holds.

At Amoy Street Food Centre, near the central business district, 32-year-old Kai Jin Thng has done the math. To turn a profit at his stall, Jin’s Noodle , he says, he has to churn out at least 150 $4 bowls of kolo mee , a Malaysian dish featuring savoury pork over a bed of springy noodles, in 120 minutes of lunch service. With his sister as sous-chef, he slings the bowls with frenetic focus.

Thng dropped out of school as a teenager to work in his father’s stall selling wonton mee , a staple noodle dish, and is quick to say no when I ask if he wants his daughter to take over the stall one day.

“The tradition is fading and I believe that in the next 10 or 15 years, it’s only going to get worse,” Thng said. “The new generation prefers to put on their tie and their white collar—nobody really wants to get their hands dirty.”

In 2020, the National Environment Agency , which oversees hawker centres, put the median age of hawkers at 60. When I did encounter younger people like Thng in the trade, I found they persevered out of stubbornness, a desire to innovate on a deep-seated tradition—or some combination of both.

Later that afternoon, looking for a momentary reprieve from Singapore’s crushing humidity, we ducked into Market Street Hawker Centre and bought juice made from fresh calamansi, a small citrus fruit.

Jamilah Beevi, 29, was working the shop with her father, who, at 64, has been a hawker since he was 12. “I originally stepped in out of filial duty,” she said. “But I find it to be really fulfilling work…I see it as a generational shop, so I don’t want to let that die.” When I asked her father when he’d retire, he confidently said he’d hang up his apron next year. “He’s been saying that for many years,” Beevi said, laughing.

More than one Singaporean told me that to truly appreciate what’s at stake in the hawker tradition’s threatened collapse, I’d need to leave the neighbourhoods where most tourists spend their time, and venture to the Heartland, the residential communities outside the central business district. There, hawker centres, often combined with markets, are strategically located near dense housing developments, where they cater to the 77% of Singaporeans who live in government-subsidised apartments.

We ate laksa from a stall at Ghim Moh Market and Food Centre, where families enjoyed their Sunday. At Redhill Food Centre, a similar chorus of chattering voices and clattering cutlery filled the space, as diners lined up for prawn noodles and chicken rice. Near our table, a couple hungrily unwrapped a package of durian, a coveted fruit banned from public transportation and some hotels for its strong aroma. It all seemed like business as usual.

Then we went to Blackgoat . Tucked in a corner of the Jalan Batu housing development, Blackgoat doesn’t look like an average hawker operation. An unusually large staff of six swirled around a stall where Fikri Amin Bin Rohaimi, 24, presided over a fiery grill and a seriously ambitious menu. A veteran of the three-Michelin-star Zén , Rohaimi started selling burgers from his apartment kitchen in 2019, before opening a hawker stall last year. We ordered everything on the menu and enjoyed a feast that would astound had it come out of a fully equipped restaurant kitchen; that it was all made in a 130-square-foot space seemed miraculous.

Mussels swam in a mushroom broth, spiked with Thai basil and chives. Huge, tender tiger prawns were grilled to perfection and smothered in toasted garlic and olive oil. Lamb was coated in a whisper of Sichuan peppercorns; Wagyu beef, in a homemade makrut-lime sauce. Then Ethel Yam, Blackgoat’s pastry chef prepared a date pudding with a mushroom semifreddo and a panna cotta drizzled in chamomile syrup. A group of elderly residents from the nearby towers watched, while sipping tiny glasses of Tiger beer.

Since opening his stall, Rohaimi told me, he’s seen his food referred to as “restaurant-level hawker food,” a categorisation he rejects, feeling it discounts what’s possible at a hawker centre. “If you eat hawker food, you know that it can often be much better than anything at a restaurant.”

He wants to open a restaurant eventually—or, leveraging his in-progress biomedical engineering degree, a food lab. But he sees the modern hawker centre not just as a steppingstone, but a place to experiment. “Because you only have to manage so many things, unlike at a restaurant, a hawker stall right now gives us a kind of limitlessness to try new things,” he said.

Using high-grade Australian beef and employing a whole staff, Rohaimi must charge more than typical hawker stalls, though his food, around $12 per 100 grams of steak, still costs far less than high-end restaurant fare. He’s found that people will pay for quality, he says, even if he first has to convince them to try the food.

At Yishun Park Hawker Centre (now temporarily closed for renovations), Nurl Asyraffie, 33, has encountered a similar dynamic since he started Kerabu by Arang , a stall specialising in “modern Malay food.” The day we came, he was selling ayam percik , a grilled chicken leg smothered in a bewitching turmeric-based marinade. As we ate, a hawker from another stall came over to inquire how much we’d paid. When we said around $10 a plate, she looked skeptical: “At least it’s a lot of food.”

Asyraffie, who opened the stall after a spell in private dining and at big-name restaurants in the region, says he’s used to dubious reactions. “I think the way you get people’s trust is you need to deliver,” he said. “Singapore is a melting pot; we’re used to trying new things, and we will pay for food we think is worth it.” He says a lot of the same older “uncles” who gawked at his prices, are now regulars. “New hawkers like me can fill a gap in the market, slightly higher than your chicken rice, but lower than a restaurant.”

But economics is only half the battle for a new generation of hawkers, says Seng Wun Song, a 64-year-old, semiretired economist who delves into the inner workings of Singapore’s food-and-beverage industry as a hobby. He thinks locals and tourists who come to hawker centers to look for “authentic” Singaporean food need to rethink what that amorphous catchall word really means. What people consider “heritage food,” he explains, is a mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian and European dishes that emerged from the country’s founding. “But Singapore is a trading hub where people come and go, and heritage moves and changes. Hawker food isn’t dying; it’s evolving so that it doesn’t die.”