Talk:Sustainable energy

message: I noticed that the lead only has one reference. Would anyone object if I converted this one reference into the long ref style? The reason why I am asking is because the lead is transcribed to efficient energy use with the excerpt function. As that other article uses the long ref style, it would be more convenient if that one single ref was also in long ref style. Related to that I am actually surprised that the lead does not have any further references. I know it's not mandatory to have refs in the lead but I think it's useful, now that leads are often transcribed to other articles. This article has been transcribed to:
* Government spending 
* Bioenergy 
* Climate change mitigation 
* Pellet fuel 
* Osmotic power 
* Biomass (energy) 
* Efficient energy use 
* Nuclear power debate 
EMsmile (talk) 12:14, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  References in the lead section? 

message: As I've said previously on this Talk page, I'm actually in favour of merging the Renewable energy and Sustainable energy articles because there is so much overlap between them. But overlap doesn't mean the two topics have the same definition. Sdkb asked for examples of what's one but not the other that we can all agree on. Here goes:
;Renewable but (according to some) not sustainable :
* Corn ethanol in the USA: "Worse for the climate than gasoline"
* Palm oil production in which forests are cleared to plant monocultures of palm trees.
* Forests cut down to make wood pellets: Burning wood for power is ‘misguided’ say climate experts
* Whale oil
;Sustainable (according to some) but not renewable (see article for sources):
* Nuclear power
* Coal with carbon capture and storage  
* Natural gas with carbon capture and storage 
The idea that "non-renewable energy sources can be sustainable" is very controversial, but we can agree that there is a debate about it. And I think we can easily come to consensus that not all renewable energy is sustainable. Some renewable energy projects are uncontroversial, but for other renewable energy projects there is an important debate over sustainability. If we start the article by saying that renewable energy = sustainable, we are not leaving room for that debate. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be most productive if you would formally initiate a merge discussion per WP:Merging, and change the title of this section to reflect your comments are its first post. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:43, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not want to wait for the outcome of a merge discussion before changing a short description that I believe is erroneous. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 20:47, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: These are articles that will be getting views over the long-term (as opposed to ones getting a pageview spike because of a news event), so I think WP:NODEADLINE applies. It feels to me like having a merge discussion needs to be a precursor to having a short description discussion, since if we end up with Sustainable and renewable energy then we'll have different considerations than we do now, and if not we'll at least have a clearer understanding of the definitions of the two, which is something that will help out the SD discussion. I do think your examples above are very helpful.  talk 21:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with Clayoquot. The current SD was wrong and definitely not consensus-agreed. Hence we are better off with no short description for now, until that merger discussion is complete. For that reason, I've just set the short description to "none" again which is how it was for months. I think we've had some good proposals for SDs above which we could have implemented. But the one with "replenishable sources" was not one of them. EMsmile (talk) 08:31, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Examples