“There is no scenario where hydrocarbons disappear,” the chief executive of Baker Hughes, Lorenzo Simonelli, said during his keynote speech at this year’s annual meeting in the company. Like other executives from the industry, Simonelli acknowledged and welcomed the energy transition, but he noted that a 100-percent renewable energy scenario was simply not possible. There is plenty of evidence this is indeed the case, despite the hopes and ambitions of many environmental advocates. These hopes and ambitions imagine a world where human activity is powered from electricity only, and this electricity in turn is being generated using only renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydropower. Such a world, however, is unrealistic. Take Germany, for example. The country, which is among the EU members with the most renewable energy capacity, has not produced a single Watt of solar energy since the start of this year. The reason: it’s […]