74 thoughts to “Open Thread Non Petroleum, Feb 28, 2024”

  1. https://electrek.co/2024/02/27/us-renewables-2023-solar-in-the-lead/
    Renewables provided over 22.7% of US electrical generation in 2023, according to newly released end-of-year US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data.

    EIA’s latest “Electric Power Monthly” (with data through December 31, 2023) reports that the combination of utility-scale and small-scale (e.g., rooftop) solar increased by 16.1% last year. Small-scale solar alone grew by 20.1% – faster than any other energy source. In December alone, small-scale solar increased by 21.4% while total solar grew by 30.7%.

    As a result, by the end of 2023, solar was 5.6% of total US electrical generation. Small-scale solar accounted for 30.9% of all solar generation and provided more than 1.7% of US electricity supply last year.

    Solar generation has now nearly matched hydropower (also 5.6% of the total) and should surpass it within the next few months to become the second largest renewable energy source, behind only wind.
    Similarly, the mix of solar (5.6%) and wind (10%) is closing in on coal (15.9%) and seems well-positioned to overtake the fossil fuel this year. Including biomass and geothermal, the mix of all non-hydro renewables (17.1%) has already surpassed coal, which dropped in the US electricity mix by 18.8% compared to 2022.

    The combination of all renewables (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) outproduced nuclear by almost a quarter (24.7%). Notwithstanding the recent addition of the Vogtle-3 reactor in Georgia, nuclear-generated electricity increased by 0.49% in 2023, while that of renewables grew by 0.52%.

    Together, renewables provided over 22.7% of US electrical generation in 2023, up modestly from 22.4% in 2022. Solar’s strong growth, coupled with a 2.3% increase in geothermal, was offset by a 2.1% drop in power from wind turbines as well as 5.9% less hydropower and an 8.4% fall in biomass-generated electricity.

    Nonetheless, renewables strengthened their position as the second largest source of electrical generation, behind only natural gas (42.4%).

    “Led by solar, the mix of renewable energy sources have once again expanded their share of the nation’s electrical generation,” noted Ken Bossong, executive director of the SUN DAY Campaign, who reviewed the data. “They now produce significantly more electricity than either nuclear power or coal and are on track to widen the gap in the year ahead.”

    This link is not exactly what I would call unbiased, lol, but it throws some light on where the solar industry is headed.

    Just one company is probably going to produce enough panels domestically, annually, to equal the power out put of at least three or four nukes. Of course it’s still intermittent power, but engineers,trades people, and corporate managers will certainly find ways to make good use of it, thereby reducing the emissions associated with burning fossil fuels while also substantially extending the life of our one time gift of nature supply of fossil fuels.

    And the longer we have enough fossil fuels to keep the wheels turning, the longer we have to come up with ways to store some of that power, and adjust our lifestyles to using it efficiently…… meaning we have more time to come up with better and better technologies for generation, storage and efficient use of renewable electricity.

    We already know how to cut energy use by eighty percent or more in a residential setting. Sure building a net zero house, or one eighty percent of the way there is expensive…….. but compared to the likely future cost of electricity, and possible interruptions in supply due to wars, natural disaster, and plain old depletion, such a house may very well prove to be a world class bargain.

    I’ve been talking to a lot of people in the solar industry, and among electric car enthusiasts as well, and a decade or two down the road, assuming Old Man Business As Usual manages to stay on his feet, a substantial percentage of new houses, and as great a percentage of upgraded existing houses, will have solar systems with double or triple the rated capacity needed to run the home…… so that enough juice can be generated on sunny days to charge batteries sufficient to cover two or three days of cloudy weather.

    And once the house batteries are charged, there’ll still be plenty of surplus to charge up the family car half or more of the time.

    A prosperous family with two cars will likely be able to drive one while one is charging, alternate days, and seldom have to purchase any grid juice for their cars.

    And if, rather WHEN,we have two way connections, vehicle to grid, or home to grid, the amount of peak demand fossil capacity will be reduced to a significant degree…… meaning fewer peaking plants, and cheaper gas prices all around……… meaning cheaper fertilizer as well as countless industrial chemical products.

    If I were young enough to build a new house, I would have ample thermal storage in the form of stone in a pit under the house with pipes and wires to enable the storage of heat gathered with thermal or electric solar panels.

    Stone used this way can also be chilled when home grown domestic solar juice is in otherwise excess supply, potentially saving half or more on air conditioning bills.

    There won’t be much juice going to waste…. not after we have a few years to figure out how to make good use of it.

    1. US solar up 52% in 2023 as nation deploys 35.3 GW of capacity

      and

      More than 50 GW of new solar projected in 2024

      Meanwhile in China:

      China’s new PV installations hit 216.88 GW in 2023

      and globally

      BloombergNEF says global solar installations could hit 574 GW this year

      BloombergNEF says in a new report that developers deployed 444 GW of new PV capacity throughout the world in 2023. It says new installations could reach 574 GW this year, 627 GW in 2025, and 880 GW in 2030.

      1. Back in the old days, not that long ago, when The Oil Drum site was still up and running, countless self described engineers, and quite a few real ones as well, flooded the site with anti renewable talking points, some of which were justifiable, but most of them were either pure bullshit, or else obviously the sort that could be solved, given time, such as cost problem.

        The grid would never be be able to handle more than ten percent or so of wind and solar power, etc.

        Now there are places that routinely have fifty percent or more wind and solar when the weather is good.

        Now we’re barraged with a propaganda campaign designed to convince the red hat rubes, and anybody at all who isn’t paying attention, that there won’t be enough space in the country to bury old turbine blades, and that wind turbines are driving our feathered friends to extinction.

        Wind turbines generate several times more electricity over their working life than coal or gas, in terms of pollution. All the turbine blades in the world would probably fit in one of the former “hollows” or valleys near my home that exist between adjacent mountain peaks or ridges..

        Some of of these valleys no longer exist…… because they’ve been filled in with overburden and other waste generated by coal mining. The trees are gone, the streams and fish are gone, the birds, the deer, and other wildlife are gone…permanently.

        The anti renewable people who post here, as best I can remember, seldom if EVER have anything at all to say about the falling costs of renewable energy, or technologies and business practices that enable us to use a greater percentage of renewable electricity every year.

        And they generally have nothing to say about ways that we can, if we must, use renewable electricity to reduce the need for critical products such as diesel fuel or ammonia.

        Maybe it will cost twice as much to mine gravel using renewable electricity as it does using conventional grid juice. Maybe we’ll just have to learn how to deal with twice the wholesale or quarry gate price of gravel.

        Sounds doable to me….. compared to doing without. I once worked in gravel mine…… forty years ago. It was entirely electrified except for the diesel fuel we used to run a couple of big loaders and the trucks that hauled the broken stone to the crusher. Even the big drills used to punch the holes for the explosives used to break up the native stone ran on electricity.

        Sure managing the long heavy cords was a pain in the ass…. but electric motors are at least three or four times cheaper, and last three or four times longer than even the best diesel engines……. and electricity at that time to run those motors cost no more than a third what off road diesel cost.

        Now it wouldn’t be any big deal to run that quarry, which is still producing, on one hundred percent wind and solar power. The trucks can be electrified by using caternary power lines along the haul road, and a relatively tiny battery for turning around to get loaded and to turn around at the crusher.

        As a matter of fact, going this route will probably be cheaper that using diesel fuel within another decade, maybe two at the most.

        So…… the only real problem would be that production would have to be halted or reduced in case the wind and sun aren’t cooperating, meaning in turn that the juice would have to be diverted to more important uses. Gravel can be stored outside in piles by the tens of thousands of tons…… indefinitely.

        Running the equipment longer hours on good days, or running it on weekends, would be enough to maintain the usual average monthly or annual production.

        And the anti renewable people generally have nothing at all to say about the fact that underground mining is pretty much entirely electrified already.

        I’m ready to bet that within ten years it will be practical and economical to pour concrete embedded with wire, so that any otherwise surplus juice can be fed into it to warm up slabs and other concrete or masonry within the heated envelope of a new building… There by creating a de facto thermal battery for a pittance.

        A smart grid, and a smart heat pump, will work together to turn the heat pump on longer in either heating or cooling mode, and keep it on longer, thereby raising or lowering the desired temperature by a couple of degrees, not enough to notice the difference……. while saving a substantial amount on gas or coal to run the grid’s centralized generating plant.

        If the building has plenty of thermal mass inside insulation envelope, it will be possible to run the HVAC almost entirely on wind and solar power for days and maybe even weeks at a time.

        SURE it’s going to cost quite a bit to maintain sufficient gas fired but little used generating capacity to cover inevitable times when wind and sun aren’t up to it.

        We’ll pay that cost…… because paying it will be the cheapest and most practical way to solve the intermittency problem. Doing without isn’t exactly a desirable option.

        Furthermore it’s reasonable to assume that even if the per kilowatt hour price of electricity in constant money goes up by say twenty five percent over the next ten years……. we’ll be using those kilowatt hours more efficiently…… so that the real money actual cost to the consumer might actually fall in the case of people who have newer houses and appliances, etc.

        Lets not forget that every gas and oil field will eventually deplete to the point it must be abandoned, and that while there’s plenty of coal, enough to last for generations, it’s going to be more and more expensive, due to higher costs of production and transportation to market…….. not to mention the climate problem or the national and economic security problem…… moving coal across oceans and across national borders will inevitably be impossible, at times, going forward.

        One obsolete forty year old helicopter or jet can carry enough rockets to sink any ship……. other than a navy ship built to take it. And it’s already a given that SOME people who just MIGHT to decide to sink a few coal carries, or oil tankers, already have the necessary missiles to do it from hundreds of miles away.

        Sure a super tanker is supposed to be more or less unsinkable as the result of almost any accident…. and the crew is supposedly trained, and equipped, to fight any fire confined to any particular part of the ship. But the crew is very small, compared to the size of the ship…… and if it’s attacked by competent terrorists with the intent to sink it, there will be multiple fires, and multiple holes in the double hull below the water line as well. Crude will be pouring out as water rushes in. The oil will burn, because that will be an integral part of the plan.

        She’ll sink, and most or all of a million barrel cargo will be washing up on beaches.

        We live in dangerous times, and as I read the cards, the needle is not only out of the normal range, it’s already passed the yellow, and edging into the red zone.

        Some retired military people I know believe it’s well into the red, and has been, for quite some time. And given that they’re professionals, they’ve forgotten more about such things than I’ll ever know.

    1. Nothing new here folks, vote Gill Stein to establish a third party in America. Don’t be distracted. There is no difference between the R’s and the D’s.

      “The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship of Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation of Nazi policies.

      For months prior to the beginning of World War II in 1939, German newspapers and leaders had carried out a national and international propaganda campaign accusing Polish authorities of organising or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland.[12] On 22 August, Hitler told his generals:

      I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn’t matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.

      Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (…) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (…) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (…) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood.”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Nazi_Germany#Media

      “Neutrality

      “The new Reich has endeavored to continue the traditional friendship with Holland [sic]. It has not taken over any existing differences between the two countries and has not created any new ones.”

      German guarantee of neutrality, 6 October 1939[7]

      During World War I, the Dutch government, under Pieter Cort van der Linden, had managed to preserve Dutch neutrality throughout the conflict.[8] In the Interwar Period, the Netherlands had continued to pursue its “Independence Policy” even after the rise to power of the Nazi Party in Germany in 1933.

      Despite its policy of neutrality, the Netherlands were invaded on the morning of 10 May 1940, without a formal declaration of war, by German forces moving simultaneously into Belgium and Luxembourg.

      Casualties
      By the end of the war, 205,901 Dutch men, women and children had died of war-related causes. The Netherlands had the highest per capita death rate of all Nazi-occupied countries in Western Europe (2.36%).[53] Over half (107,000) were Holocaust victims”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_in_World_War_II

      False or misleading statements by Donald Trump

      Fact-checkers from The Washington Post[1] (top, monthly), the Toronto Star[2] and CNN[3][4] (bottom, weekly) compiled data on “false or misleading claims”, and “false claims”, respectively. The peaks corresponded in late 2018 to the midterm elections, in late 2019 to his impeachment inquiry, and in late 2020 to the presidential election. The Post reported 30,573 false or misleading claims in four years,[1] an average of more than 20.9 per day.

      During and after his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. The Washington Post’s fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day.[1][5][6][7] The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of 6.1 per day.[2] Commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of Trump’s mendacity as “unprecedented” in American politics,[13] and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities.[14] Scholarly analysis of Trump’s tweets found “significant evidence” of an intent to deceive.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump

      “OPINION
      In the cult of Trump, facts and critical thinking are forbidden

      The impression that many supporters of Donald Trump give off is one of unconditional love. Speaking to Trump supporters and watching them talk about him, I get the sense that they are so deeply entranced by Trump that they believe that he actually cares about them, and that he always speaks the hard truth.

      It’s so strange, but also deeply familiar. It’s the sort of unquestioning affection toddlers have toward their parents. It’s also the sort of devotion inspired by some of history’s most vicious dictators. I’m not saying that Trump is a dictator, but it’s clear that he’s benefitting from a similar cult of personality.”

      https://www.dailynews.com/2024/02/03/in-the-cult-of-trump-factual-thinking-is-forbidden/

      1. “Maybe there’s just some ennui about nihilistic lawlessness in 2024. If a former president can commit financial crimes – and still run for office and probably win his party’s nomination – well, what’s a little petty shampoo theft, in the grand scheme of things?”

        1. The Rule of Law died along time ago. Too bad the Dims are going with Biden. He’s exactly the kind of empty suit that the American People, and I use that term loosely, will reject at all costs. Dim voters don’t look or sound too motivated, or committed, so to speak; MAGA hats look manic, as usual.

          https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/

          Biden approval slips to 38 percent: Gallup
          “40 percent of respondents support his handing over the war in Ukraine, and 30 percent approve of Biden’s response to the war in Gaza. Only 33 percent approve of the job he is doing on other foreign affairs.”
          https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4484792-biden-job-approval-slips/amp/

          I was kinda hoping for Biden Vs Haley in 2024, they’re both pretty much the same low key bullshit.

          1. President Joe Biden’s accomplishments have been remarkable, especially considering the cultlike devotion to Donald Trump of most congressional Republicans. Trump opposes everything Biden proposes, completely disregarding our country’s welfare, caring only about his election. Among Biden’s many accomplishments, despite Republican opposition:

            1. Funding for the Internal Revenue Service to audit tax cheats that will many times more than pay for itself.
            2. Expansion of benefits and services for toxic-exposed veterans.
            3. Executive orders protecting reproductive rights.
            4. Increased wages for everyday Americans, now exceeding inflation.
            5. More people working than any time in American history.
            6. Rallied the world to support Ukraine to thwart Russian aggression against democracies.
            7. Managed and tamed the COVID pandemic.
            8. Representation on the U.S. Supreme Court for two large, under-served American constituencies by appointing the first ever public defender or Black woman (Ketanji Brown Jackson is both).
            9. Rebuilding our long-neglected infrastructure to benefit all Americans, reversing failure of the previous administration.
            10. Reducing climate change, funded partly by taxing the richest, although insufficient to counteract the previous administration’s huge tax cut for the wealthiest.
            11. More people with health insurance than ever.
            12. Historic student debt relief for needy families.

            https://www.columbian.com/news/2024/feb/29/letter-bidens-accomplishments-add-up/

            1. Any yet he’s sucking in the polls. I wonder what it could be?

              I spent yesterday on the phone helping a friend who has very expensive health insurance figure out how to take her 2 year old to the hospital with a five day fever without going broke.

            2. WASHINGTON (AP) — Wartime aid for Ukraine was left hanging in the Senate Wednesday after Republicans blocked a bipartisan border package that had been tied to the funding, then struggled to coalesce around a plan to salvage the aid for Kyiv.

              After GOP senators scuttled months of negotiations with Democrats on legislation intended to cut back record numbers of illegal border crossings, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tried to push ahead to a crucial test vote on a $95 billion package for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies — a modified package with the border portion stripped out.

              But a deeply divided Republican conference was scrambling to find support for the wartime funding, even though it has been a top priority for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. It was the latest sign of the longtime Republican leader’s slipping control over his conference and underscored how the traditional GOP tenet of robust foreign involvement is giving way to Donald Trump’s “America First” nationalism. At stake is the future of Ukraine’s defense against Russia.

            3. Intense propaganda works wonders. The key is to distract people from real problems and focus on anecdotes with no statistical significance (like imaginary friends with high insurance bills) and on meaningless issues that spark strong emotions.

              It’s also important to maintain a relentless stream of lies on all topics, with out worrying about self-contradiction, in order to muddy the waters for meaningful discussion.

            4. Oh look, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw’s total compensation went up 37% last year, even after his company’s massive and disastrous train derailment in East Palestine.

              Shaw got $13.4 million in total compensation in 2023, up from $9.8 million in 2022.

            5. Biden’s biggest problem is that he EATS ICE CREAM. I am deeply shocked by this and am eternally grateful to Fox News for spending a week in meltdown mode making it clear to the American people what is really important in this day and age.

        1. A political party that doesn’t have any representatives at the state or national level isn’t worth considering for president.

    1. Perhaps some long extinct, and until now frozen in the ice virus, will pop up at a Dubai lounge.

  5. Hard to believe

    ‘Nobody Really Knows What You’re Supposed to Do’: Leaking, Abandoned Wells Wreak Havoc in West Texas

    “Despite there being no record of the well that erupted on Wight’s ranch, the commission paid $2.5 million to plug it and clean up the spill to “ensure safety,” a spokesperson said. The spokesperson said the commission is seeking to identify the person or company responsible for drilling it.”

    $2,500,000.00 to plug one well?

  7. Wikipedia list of Chinese EV manufacturers:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Electric_vehicle_manufacturers_of_China

    Brace yourself for a price war in the EV sector, and likely a trade war as well. Big Western car companies are seeing the writing on the wall and either getting out or trying to rethink their strategies to make EVs radically cheaper.

    In other EV news the tech industry is giving up hope on autonomous vehicles. The latest is that Apple canned its EV project after spending $10 bn on it. It was an autonomy project. The hope was not to sell cars, but to sell an operating system for cars.

    All the tech money in AI is now shifting to generative AI. You’ve probably already noticed the flood of AI images and websites. In fact the internet is turning into a platform for AI generated gunk. Hollywood wants to replace actors and studios. Tech companies are hoping to fire all their programmers and let AIs program computers. Humans just can’t keep up. Meanwhile autonomy has been pushed to the back burner.

    In a side note, generative AI is trained on internet data. Now that the internet is being flooded with AI generated text and images, it will be training itself. It’s anyone’s guess what that will lead to.

    2. “In a side note, generative AI is trained on internet data. Now that the internet is being flooded with AI generated text and images, it will be training itself. It’s anyone’s guess what that will lead to.”

      Humans are fed on the same circular source of ‘information’. That only explains a small portion of our poor results in utilizing our collective internal resource.
      Our ‘training’ is extremely poor. In fact, most people are intentionally trained to exalt in falsehood.

      1. What will be interesting to see is the war between generative AI and The Algorithm. I mean the algorithm that decides what users see in the internet, whether it’s search engine results or social media feeds.

        Content providers have already developed advanced methods of search engine optimization (SEO) to get past the gatekeepers and connect with users. With the rise of AI generated content, the arms race should heat up considerably.

        Energy consumption from server farms is already growing quickly. It won’t be long before most internet content is generated by AI. AIs battling it out to control what information humans have access to will only accelerate energy consumption.

        This may sound crazy, but vast sums are being invested in this. Nvidia, a chipmaker that supplies the AI industry is now the second most valuable company in the world, having squeaked by Apple and Saudi Aramco. Number one is Microsoft, which is currently leading the AI pack.

    1. Thanks for the good links Jim.
      I am sure we will get partly there.

      [I’ll leave the definition of ‘we’ and ‘there’ for others to define].

      1. Our Repug friends have a solution?

        “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.”

        — North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson (R)

    2. Right now utility ‘renewables’ are powering over 33% of the Victorian part of the AEMO grid with rooftop another possibly 20-30% as it’s sunny outside across the state (number not published anywhere), and the wholesale price of electricity is again negative, just like it is most sunny and windy days between early Spring and late Autumn. The last 2 years have seen back to back 25-30% rises in retail electricity prices.

      The large utility scale renewable projects are often turned off during the middle of the day to avoid paying to sent their power into the grid. Meanwhile coal power is still being produced during the day as they can’t turn off the generators to restart them in the evening. Overnight coal power is often over 80% of the grid as we tend to get wind more during the day. Often hydro and gas make up a lot of the other 20% of power needed.

      The economics of large scale utility renewables has become such, that even with the huge subsidies, the forward new projects in this state have collapsed in the planning. There is nothing new committed to being built that wasn’t planned a few years ago, ie before the price went negative for a lot of the day light hours.

      The storage that’s needed for night and winter is in the hundreds of thousands of Mwhs, yet no-one is planning any large scale batteries of more than 1 thousand Mwh, with most plans of a few hundred Mwh.

      So when I read this type of BS ….” Over the past decade, wind and solar have become the cheapest sources of power generation almost everywhere on the planet.” … I continually think of the question I’ve asked several times on this forum… If that statement was in any way true, then why are there no large scale aluminium producers going off grid using their own solar, wind and batteries?? ZERO world wide!!!! Yet being attached to the grid has extra costs of being associated with the grid compared to being off-grid (all the regulatory and connections costs etc).

      The silence and deflection of this is full of biased thinking. When/if solar and wind (with appropriate backup) were in fact cheaper or became cheaper than fossil fuels, then every major aluminium smelter would go off grid because it would be cheaper than remaining on-grid!! How is this hard to understand?? It’s economics 101!!

      I’ll start believing in solar and wind for industrial purposes being ‘cheaper’, when companies take heavy industries off grid to make base industrial products, without subsidies, because it’s the cheapest option.

      The reality is that over the last 20 years the world has added about 32,000Twh of fossil fuel use, mostly for non electrical uses, while solar and wind have increased by just 3,500Twh.

      Without the fossil fuel increase during that time, none of the solar and wind could have been built as they rely totally upon fossil fuels for every stage of production. Future growth in these non-renewable ‘renewables’ will also come with higher fossil fuel use, which makes the size of the ‘build out’ much higher.

      It’s a case of more, more, more which degrades the environment in the process. We are chasing our collective tales with renewables, using more fossil fuels in all the mining and processing to make ‘more expensive’ reliable electricity.

      Why don’t governments bring in new rules for all new mining and industries, that they have to run off entirely solar and wind power and their own battery backup, if they really were cheaper than fossil fuels? It would be win, win, making the ‘transition’ so much faster, if there was a transition happening at all.

      Come to think of it, governments wouldn’t have to do anything at all if solar and wind with backup really were cheaper than fossil fuels. Every industry from mining to heavy steel, concrete and fertilizer production would be scrambling over each other to go off-grid on their own power as the market dictates ‘cheapest wins’ all else being equal.

      There is obviously something very wrong with the narrative that solar and wind are the cheapest forms of power. How come people prefer this myth than the reality that it’s still way more expensive??

      Does adding subsidised solar to your roof to reduce power bills make sense? Absolutely, we haven’t paid a power bill in over a decade because of our solar panels on the roof of the house and the overly generous feed in tariffs the governments gave. But thinking RUNNING equipment is not vastly different to MINING, PROCESSING, and MANUFACTURING equipment is where the entire ‘renewable future’ argument falls to pieces.

      Notice there is ZERO argument in those articles for making any of it with just renewable electricity and the appropriate energy calculations in every step.

      In the ‘And finally’ bit, the 5 megatrends to get to net zero energy. How can anyone get past number one without laughing out loud?? Exponential growth on a finite planet, yes sure that will end well…

      Then this… “I believe society has reached a tipping point beyond which it is unthinkable not to deal with climate change, pollution and environmental degradation.”
      I believe the same, but also believe that using more fossil fuels, to build lots of renewables, meaning more CO2 in the atmosphere, more environmental destruction with the new mines, more land cleared for the factories and processing plants, the wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines and batteries, does the exact opposite to what we need to do.

      We need to build less, burn less, clear less and re-wild as much degraded agricultural land as possible, but most importantly reduce population as fast as possible as over 8 billion humans in a world where 4 million humans ‘living naturally’ wiped out most megafauna over a period of 100,000 years, does not compute with anything close to sustainable, let alone continued exponential growth…

      1. You seem to be struggling with the contradictory goal of on the one hand saving the biosphere from humanity, and on the other hand supplying the human economy with energy and materials.
        And everyone should be struggling with the same quandary.
        There simply is no compatibility of these goals.

        The sooner the production and combustion of fossil fuels peaks and begins the long decline,
        the sooner it will be that human population peaks and begins the long decline. Roughly a 20 year lag I suspect.
        My condolences if that is bad for your investments. You can always simply switch to something else less conflicting.

        1. Hickory….
          “There simply is no compatibility of these goals.
          The sooner the production and combustion of fossil fuels peaks and begins the long decline,
          the sooner it will be that human population peaks and begins the long decline.”

          Except I don’t think the decline will be anywhere near as slow as what you expect it to be, because of feedback loops of energy, fertilizer and food depletion. Plus human usual historic reactions to such shortages, of trying to take from others…

          I’d prefer we didn’t burn more oil, coal and gas, and we had a lot more rewilding to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, plus any ‘new’ mines, ‘new’ processing facilities, and ‘new’ factories were compulsorily all powered by solar, wind and batteries.

          1. Hideaway,

            Note that fertilizer can be produced from methane while methane used to generate electricity can be reduced. Also there is a huge amount of human and animal sewage that could be transformed into fertilizer if needed. In 2021 World Aluminum smelting consumed about 6% of total electricity net generation. Based on Statistical Review of World Energy for total electrical power generation and the website below for aluminum smelting.

            https://international-aluminium.org/statistics/primary-aluminium-smelting-power-consumption/

            1. The company I worked for had a project to replace and upgrade the electrical generation system for a major sewage treatment plant using the (principally methane ) gas from the anaerobic reactors to generate power. The power generated was only a fraction of that required to run the plant , but still useful, while the sludge from the reactors was used as a soil conditioner for tree growing areas. It was not considered prudent to use the sludge for food crops because of contaminants such as heavy metals and other nasties.
              At the wrap up of the project, the project engineer took a professional photographer with him to get some business development quality photographs, and when they arrived at site they were both handed standard site safety gear, hardhat, goggles and foam earplugs.
              The engineer showed the photographer the pictures he wanted and at that point the photographer said “Whoa man, that’s a HEAVY smell, I can’t work in there”. The engineer responded “You are a professional, hired to do a job, other people work there all day, every day. Now, put your safety gear on and do your job”. The engineer then went up to the control room for his meeting, but within a few minutes they were interrupted by a call from the field operator saying ” We have a fellow down here wandering around, taking pictures. He says he is with the Engineering Company, but he does not look like an engineer. He has long, stringy hair, a lot of earrings, and his foam earplugs are shoved up his nose!”

            2. Dennis, you seem to be the master of the hand wave, we can do this….
              “Also there is a huge amount of human and animal sewage that could be transformed into fertilizer if needed.”

              I’ve heard that many times from many different people, but not once has anyone bothered to do an energy calculation on the building of all the necessary equipment, and energy used in the process and transport back to and onto the fields that grow the produce, all without the use of fossil fuels. Perhaps you just volunteered to do these sums?

              ” In 2021 World Aluminum smelting consumed about 6% of total electricity net generation.”

              I’m not even sure what world total aluminium electricity consumption has to do with the discussion. I’m talking about the constant claim I hear by people that solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuel electricity production, (like the article linked above) yet no-one can point to a single aluminium smelter that has decided to go off grid with their own solar, wind and backup…

              It would make total economic sense to go off-grid on their own power from solar and wind if they were indeed cheaper than the still mostly fossil fuel powered grid. Yet no-one is doing it!!

              How can you not see that something is very, very wrong with the narrative and claims about how cheap solar and wind are, if market oriented industry is NOT going with the ‘cheaper’ option??

            3. There are many things that an outsourced large grid offers other than electricity. Namely, quality of service, continuity of service and overall stability.
              Large consumers don’t go off grid because it doesn’t make sense. It adds a lot of complexity to the management and maintenance of the facility in exchage for a piss poor service quality (no frequency regulation, variable voltage…) with an uncertain output.

            4. ZAKATAN, yet plenty of aluminium smelters were able to set up their own power plants providing most of their power consumption based on a coal fired grid, including their own coal power stations, like Point Henry with the Anglesea coal power station, or Lynemouth smelter and Coal power station.

              Even the planned Adaro giant aluminimum smelter (Indonesia) is based on 2 new 1.1Gw coal fired power plants. No mention of wind or solar which are meant to be the ‘cheapest’ source of electrical power. Why is that??

              There is nothing good about what Adaro is doing, opening new coal mines and basing industry off cheap coal power, however telling ourselves lies that solar and wind are ‘cheaper’ sources of power does not change the reality that coal fired power is what we built our civilization upon and is still way cheaper than solar and wind power with backup.
              In Kalimantan, a large rainforest area, what is better for the environment? Should Adaro clear tens of thousands of hectares to build the solar farms necessary or just rely on the coal to power the aluminium smelter, or do neither. My choice is do neither, it’s human numbers that are in massive overshoot and with much smaller numbers we wouldn’t need that aluminium at all.

              Instead they will build the coal power plant and aluminium smelter as the aluminium is needed for growth, especially all the new solar panels that need a lot of aluminium to make..

            5. Hideaway,

              The Aluminum smelters want to run their factory 24/7, some of them will use power from the grid and some will produce their own power. The fact is that Aluminum smelters use a lot of electricity (about 6% of the World total), if they built a smelter near a good source of wind and solar and got their electricity from the grid, much of the electricity used would likely come from wind and solar. As more and more of the supply of World electric power comes from wind and solar rather than coal and natural gas, the carbon emissions will be reduced. In many areas solar and wind are cheaper, as costs continue to fall for wind and solar and costs rise for coal and natural gas as resources deplete it will become clear even to you that wind and solar are in fact cheaper sources of electric power.

            6. Dennis, it’s like you don’t have the ability to comprehend the absurdity of this statement of yours….
              ” as costs continue to fall for wind and solar and costs rise for coal and natural gas as resources deplete it will become clear even to you that wind and solar are in fact cheaper sources of electric power.”

              Can you please answer this… as solar and wind totally depend upon fossil fuels for their entire production, with none of the manufacturers changing to all electrical processes based upon just solar and wind, how on earth do you expect them to get cheaper when the input resources are depleting (your words) and the costs rise??

              Moreover every aspect of solar and wind from the factory workers to the mines providing the raw resources rely totally on oil. The workers in factories rely on agriculture, which is totally reliant on oil/gas for all movement and fertilizers. Factories also rely upon the mines, in increasingly in remote areas all relying upon diesel..

              We reached economies of scale, we make the products out of thinner materials (yet expect them to last longer), we off shored the production to cheaper labour countries that burn lots of coal, we did it in an environment of low to zero interest rates, in a time frame when energy from fossil fuels was becoming cheaper (2008-2020).

              Now all these factors are set to reverse, with even the IEA admitting solar and wind went up in cost in 2021-22, (when fossil fuel energy price rose), yet somehow you have a belief that the cost of solar and wind, fully built with back up will get cheaper…

              Right now, in early 2024, the cost of a Twh of energy from solar and wind are around $US35M for utility scale projects, not counting any backup, that’s existing new plants like the 720Mw New England Solar Farm in a sunny location.. Compared to how we built and operate the system of $US1.7M/Twh for refined oil from Saudi Arabia (and probably Texas going back decades), or $US1.7M/Twh for even a small gas project in Western Australia, or $US9M/Twh for an expensive newish coal powered plant in Queensland Australia..

              If the energy cost goes up, then we can’t operate and maintain the system we’ve built, especially as the grades of ores are falling, meaning more energy to mine every tonne of copper, nickel, zinc, tin, potash, phosphate, let alone the rare earths..

              We are in deep, deep overshoot, something you don’t seem to understand and building more, of anything, only puts us deeper into overshoot.

              Last time I looked, solar panels had aluminium frames, made from mostly new aluminium, so the increase in aluminium needed for expanded solar panel production, will come increasingly from places like the Adano new smelters based on cheap coal and a cheap workforce in Indonesia, while the aluminium smelter in places like southern Western Australia close down, just as the state turns to mostly expensive ‘renewable’ energy and closes their last coal fired power station..

              We only get increasing solar and wind from increasing fossil fuel use, causing further climate damage, which is ONE out of many signs of overshoot.

              Would you think that destroying hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest on Borneo to build large solar farms is a better outcome than mining coal for Adaro’s new aluminium smelters?? I would prefer neither to happen, but as the price of aluminium, because of demand from increasing use in solar panels, continues to make the mining coal profitable, they will continue with their plans.

              On a planet where 4M humans were causing a lot of megafauna extinctions before we had agriculture, expecting the planet to support 8B humans is just absurd thinking. Renewables are just a continuation of ecocide…

            7. We will continue to progress; doing more and more with less and less; until we’re doing everything, with absolutely nothing at all.

              (…. there’s probably a sweet spot)

            8. A pile of silca is not energy in a fuel sense, but it did consume a ton of fuel on it’s way to being installed, generating a small amount of electricity (which is not energy).

              A pile of wind turbine blades are energy converted into composite petroleum based materials that can generate electricity (not fuel).

              Both of these represent the conversion of fossil fuel energy into unreliable resources of electricity.

              In essence, they are derivatives of fossil fuel. They are similar to a battery that can store and transmit energy over time.

              In both cases they convert solar energy (rays and winds) to electricity (not fuel).

            9. “A pile of silca is not energy in a fuel sense, but it did consume a ton of fuel on it’s way”

              The same thing can be said of the aluminum blocks and steel sleeves that make up an internal combustion engine. The analysis is underwhelming.

            10. Hideaway,

              It is the relative cost that matters, as the solar industry matures it will get better at installing utility scale and residential solar, wind may be close to the minimum cost it will achieve in inflation adjusted dollars and perhaps real cost might rise a bit as fossil fuel becomes more expensive, but fossil fuel costs will rise more than the cost of wind and solar so the relative costs of these sources of energy will fall relative to fossil fuel.

          2. “the decline ” rate after Peak Combustion Day
            is entirely unpredictable. Too many uncertainties.
            I don’t have expectations, other than to put heavy weight on the big factor of
            bad human behavior.

            1. bad human behavior—-

              “His rants, twisted words, obscene insults, mauled language and inability to compose a simple declarative sentence leads experts to say he is suffering multiple signs of dementia.”

              Seems our Republican Friends seem to like it?

              It keeps things interesting, I guess?

            2. But is it entirely unpredictable?
              If we take an optimistic URR estimate then we have 50 years of oil supply.
              This implies annual decline of 2%, resulting in a final URR of ~2,500 Gb.
              According to Dennis this is not an unreasonable estimate (if demand constrained).
              If not demand constrained and there is more oil, then it might be slightly less ~1% or 1.5% decline. Reality is likely something much uglier, where most oil is left in the ground.
              A scenario could be decline of 5-8% and final URR of ~2,000 Gb in 2050’s timeframe.
              Additionally, humans will not sit ideally by in the face of scarcity, coal plants will fire back up and continue to supply relatively cheap electricity (I believe German is case and point for this)…

            3. Kengeo,

              Note that a 2000 Gb scenario is very unlikely as the resources exist and are likely to be exploited if there is demand. Under highly unlikely scenarios such as a large asteroid striking the Earth, World War 3, or another Worldwide Pandemic perhaps only 2000 Gb of C plus C gets extracted, otherwise the F95 to F5 range is 2500 to 3500 Gb. Lower would be better for the Earth System to have a chance of stabilizing climate, lower population growth and lower levels of consumption generally would also help.

  9. Alice has done a good job on this book review.

    https://energyskeptic.com/2024/the-tremendous-material-and-energy-toll-of-the-digital-economy/

    Technology isn’t saving the planet it’s killing the planet. I’ve said before I learned to drive in a 1928 model A Ford with its original flathead four cylinder. It was still in operation in 2000. I’d dare say had we not developed the automobile past that point there would be no crisis. Technology has only accelerated energy consumption and shortened life cycles of everything it touches. What’s the definition of insanity? More of the same and thinking you’re going green?

    1. That’s a great point, was just thinking the other day…the greenest car on the road is the oldest that gets a reasonable MPG…unless you are pedaling for your miles none of it is green…even that had some net carbon generation that can’t be offset. Greenwashing and politics go hand-in-hand, in both cases you are just evaluating the lesser of two evils.

      1. The model T got 25mpg and you could service it yourself with a few wrenches and a screwdriver. Considering how bad the roads were back then the reliability was a real achievement. I’d love to see a Tesla manage a road from 1900.

    2. JT …
      “Technology isn’t saving the planet it’s killing the planet”. Got it in one simple line. Shame so many here believe that technology can save everything when it’s human technology since first putting fire to use that is causing ecocide.

      1. JT/ Hideaway/Dennis

        I agree that technology is not saving the planet. Much is hype form the cornucopians who cannot get their heads around the real issue of resource depletion and population overshoot. The bad news just keeps on coming . Wind Turbines are may be turning, but into disaster for many economies that have bet heavily. The myth that costs will keep declining are all but over. The west turbines producers are in deep trouble financially and are on the hook to pay large warranty claims. Three factors limit what Wind turbines can do. Mass – increase the rotating mass and the centrifugal loads increase exponentially. For maximum power the output the rotor has to be light weight, which reduces durability. Building in durability reduces performance. A vicious triangle. Currently the max output is around 5MW. Larger turbines quickly add more mass on an exponential basis, limiting the maximum size for an umber of reasons. Have a read on this link. It is not negative to wind turbines but illustrates the challenges.

        https://www.slideshare.net/EWEA/upwind-design-limits-and-solutions-for-very-large-wind-turbines

        Then we have all the hype about green hydrogen. To be produced from “cheap unreliables”. Clearly the cheerleaders of this technology have have even less brains than the cheerleaders at a football match. Simple thermodynamic analysis will quick;y demonstrate that there is going to be a problem. Colossal amounts of power (52kWh+ per kg) and an un-interrupted power supply is required as these plants have only limited downturn. Add in the cost of the de-min water and the expected life and its a case of “Houston, we have a problem”.

        The well known Inaccurate Energy Agency has recently updated its hydrogen review and has noted high costs and slow progress persist. I wonder why.

        https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ecdfc3bb-d212-4a4c-9ff7-6ce5b1e19cef/GlobalHydrogenReview2023.pdf

        Then there is the EV market, particularly the BEV market that is so dear to Dennis. Such is his belief he thinks that Peak Demand save the day and eke out the remaining fossil fuels to keep the party going. Dennis even advocates the production of ammonia from sewage sludge and natural gas . The bad news is that sewage sludge is already deployed in many western countries to produce biogas, but the volumes are tiny almost to the point of being negligible. Biogas is also harvested from land fill sites. Most ammonia is produced from natural gas via the Haber Bosch process. Synthetic ammonia requires hydrogen, either from natural gas or from the hallowed green hydrogen. Fear not there is also the prospect of “gold hydrogen”. According to the USGS it is abundant in the Earth’s crust. All that is required is for wells to be drilled into the bed rock where the hydrogen will reside in vast quantities by the oxidation of iron (rusting) by water. We are all going to be saved, but first we have to drill the holes, and lots of them; then we will need a gathering system, and a storage system, and a distribution system; all built with fossil fuels. Can you even imagine what this will cost. The biggest snag is, it is only a theory. Like abiotic oil, none has even been proven to exist in any quantity that might be remotely economically possible.

        Then there is the EV market, particularly the BEV market that is so dear to Dennis. Such is his belief he thinks that Peak Demand save the day and eke out the remaining fossil fuels to keep the party going. The sales do not quite support the hype. All that is required is more incentives- i.e. OPM to subsidize those willing( stupid enough) to buy, but even those punters were getting scarcer by the month. What we now have is manufacturers starting to back pedal, and the mighty Tesla have irritated their customers by offering deep discounts to move the metal. So how is the used car BEV market going to look. The message is out. Who wants a used battery and an iPad on wheels. Moreover who is going to pay for the cost of disposal at the end of life. Pretty soon this is going to loom large. What is the lifespan of an EV, assuming it does not self immolate.? 8 years to the end of life of the battery? Who is going to pay for the dismantling of the battery. Having watched the Munro breakdown of a Tesla I can see a very, very expensive recycling process.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7qel8tjHMs

        The Musk fix is to place the battery in liquid nitrogen and freeze it and then grind it in small pieces and then recover the metals/ minerals. Now the only way to produce liquid nitrogen is by air separation and that require a lot of energy. When the battery is placed in the nitrogen things are going to get a little lively. Please go and watch the video. The battery is essentially embedded in a aluminium pan, which forms the chassis. A front or rear end shut makes a right off highly possible. Due to the way the battery stack is produced there is virtually no way of economically repairing it; even if you could find someone willing to risk trying.

        What really bothers me is why so many people cannot grasp EROEI. The idea that we can keep on producing oil resources irrespective of the energy inputs seems to be embedded in the minds of the cornies. As long as the price increases to a level that makes it profitable is not an option. We tried that with biofuels and high oil prices only made biofuels even more costly. EROEI is like swimming against a tide. At some point you find you are being swept out to sea, irrespective of how hard you try to swim.

        1. Carnot,

          The average annual rate of growth for plugin vehicle sales Worldwide from 2012 to 2023 is roughly 40% per year. If we look at EROEI at point of use, wind and solar have higher EROEI than fossil fuel.

          See https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7098

          The fact is Wind costs have fallen over the past ( from $95/MWh in 2011 to $32/MWh in 2021, both in 2021$), perhaps thay are now as low as they will go see

          https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/84774.pdf

          For solar LCOE fell at a 16% annual rate from 2010 to 2021 in the US, but PPA prices have stagnated from 2019 to 2021 see

          https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/utility_scale_solar_2022_edition_slides.pdf

          Note that my expectation is that the relative cost of wind and solar compared to fossil fuel powered electricity will decrease as fossil fuel becomes more expensive.

          1. Dennis,

            You might like to follow the link which is two days old.

            https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-3-5-new-data-points-in-new-yorks-unfolding-energy-implosion

            It is easy to quote old out of date data. Wind energy is not cheap and any rise in fossil fuel pricing squeezes the cost higher through the supply chain. I have studied the LCOE for both PV and Wind and they are pure BS. Go talk to the factory owners in Germany and see what they say about the Energieweende. The road to bankruptcy. PV is no better because it is intermittent at best.

            As for your 40% growth stats give me a break. What is the % of BEV’s in the car population. It is still miniscule and EV’s are having minimal impact on gasoline demand and zero impact on diesel, especially when diesel generators are secreted behind the charging stations, due to lack of grid capacity

            1. The growth rate is for BEVs and plugin hybrids. Globally BEVs were 11.1% of light duty Vehicle sales in 2023 with plugin hybrids at 4.7% of global light duty vehicle sales (15.8% combined). BEVs only comprise 2% of the World fleet roughly 28 million of 1300 million light duty vehicles.

              See

              https://www.ev-volumes.com/

          2. Dennis, please note the number from your document about wind cost $32/Mwh, which is very close to the example of an actual wind farm I gave of $35M/Twh (2023).

            Also note that we are still getting energy from fossil fuels relatively much cheaper at $1.7M/Twh from both oil and gas in the 2020’s. However what is most important is that we built the system, all the longer lasting bits from mostly cheap energy in the past. As everything from bridges to the education of people from the past wears out (entropy) we need to replace it with ‘new’ much more expensive energy (say wind at $32/mwh).

            The background cost of energy embedded in the system is never counted in the EROEI calculations of the papers you and Nick G always refer to. They set boundaries to prove solar and wind are ‘good’. They are basically GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).

            The relative energy cost is irrelevant as civilization runs on an EROEI basis of somewhere between 6-20 to 1. If it tried to run on a lower number it wouldn’t and couldn’t work. Hunter gatherers had an EROEI of 1.5 which gave them some spare time. A lion doesn’t chase mice because the EROEI is too low.
            To run a civilization we have to have a large energy surplus from our energy sources to allow only a relatively few people be involved in the energy collection part of society while allowing teachers to teach, accountants to run numbers, lawyers to sue, etc etc,

            As oil, gas and coal deplete and the dollar and energy cost rises, then so also do all renewables and nuclear, as they are built from fossil fuels. We also have the double whammy of decreasing ore grades of everything (even iron ore) on average, meaning more energy used in building (everything!!).

            If all the $1.7M/Twh energy disappears, which it will do, then after a lag, (there is a lag because the scientists educated when energy was really cheap, eventually retire, so must be replaced by new scientists educated by much more expensive energy, plus the bridges, the excavators, the factories themselves), there will be less of everything because of less cheap energy to make any of it happen..

            It doesn’t matter about the relativities, it’s the absolute energy that counts, which is why Lazard’s LCOE work is all useless. Solar, wind and nuclear can’t get cheaper than fossil fuels when they are made by and totally rely upon fossil fuels for their operation, it’s not possible in terms of the laws of physics!!

            It’s one of the reasons I keep harping on about the building or making of ‘stuff’, starting with the simple like Aluminium smelters running off grid on their own renewable energy. They simply can’t if they want to remain competitive. The next point on aluminium smelters I was going to get into was how the equipment inside needs to be made from just solar and wind, plus the trucks that transport both the bauxite and the final product and the mining etc, etc.

            We have a total system we call civilization, that runs on cheap energy provided by fossil fuels, all the so called replacements are in fact just derivatives of fossil fuels, they don’t exist nor can they be built without fossil fuels. Nor is anyone anywhere even trying to build any of it without the use of fossil fuels!!

            Thank you Dennis, as you have highlighted the reasoning behind the cornucopian argument being the ‘relative cost’. Because the ‘relative cost’ has come down with some fancy accounting in the LCOE calculations (like adding CCUS to coal), it all sounds doable. However please note that when fossil fuels all went up in cost in 2021-2, so did the cost of renewables.
            The assumption is of course that renewables will continue to get cheaper, how about you question that assumption given lower ore grades at mines meaning more energy needed to do the mining, or perhaps the higher cost of replacing bridges all the trucks need to use, using the no longer cheap energy?

            It’s the absolute cost of energy that counts, giving enough extra energy to run our civilization, not the relative difference between fossil fuels and renewables/nuclear that counts. When fossil fuels get to expensive on an EROEI basis our civilization will not be possible, we are rapidly heading that way. This is strictly the physics argument, ignoring every other problem we have caused by our overshoot..

            1. Hideaway,

              The EROEI analyses use lifecycle analysis which considers embedded energy. Many studies that look at fossil fuels consider only the EROI at the wellhead and do not include all energy expended both in producing the oil, but also transporting, refining, and then distributing to the final consumer, the losses are significant.

              Note that for every new energy source that has been utilized there was built infrastructure that existed prior to that energy source being utilized.

              Found this paper, have not read it in detail yet

              https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44232-9#Tab1

            2. Dennis, you continue to point to papers that rely on statements like this…
              ” As the technology matures, necessary embodied energy for the technology will be affected56 by the improvements in material types and innovations in processes. Thus, ongoing technology improvement on CED values holds a significant position in dynamic EROI analysis. Particularly, for PV and battery the interpretation of CED values by using average energy learning rates (ELR) ensures to reflect their future technological improvements.”

              Yet reference (56) states this …..”Lower financial production costs should correlate with lower values of embodied energy.”

              That’s great, because currently the embedded cost of renewables and nuclear is way above the fossil fuel cost we built the system of civilization with, and your reference relies totally upon the continued technology and material improvements into the future, to get to where is needed.

              Every single paper you point to has the same assumption with no evidence any of it can happen once we get into an environment of constantly falling total energy production when oil production decline accelerates to the downside. They all assume everything ‘else’ continues as normal, a very stupid assumption.. None of them assume reality of continuing lower ore grades for every ‘material’ requiring MORE energy to extract them..

              Once again I’ll go back to real world numbers, that correspond with LCOE from Lazards for wind and solar current costs. (For Alimbiquated, it’s the total cost of setting up the system and running it, not just the solar panel price).

              Saudi oil, refined into products, $1.7M/Twh, it’s a lower cost before refining!!!
              A small gas project with gas processed and into pipeline, including cost for pipelines to consumers $1.7M/Twh
              Kogan Creek power station $9M/Twh
              Mt Gellibrand Wind Farm $34M/Twh with ZERO backup!!
              New England Solar Farm $35M/Twh includes 30 MINUTES battery backup!!
              Hinkley PC nuclear $66M/Twh assuming it doesn’t go higher!!

              Each of the above are real world costs, with wind, solar and nuclear ongoing operating and maintenance costs coming from the industries own numbers (so probably low!!)

              The above reference of yours clearly states ” Lower financial production costs should correlate with lower values of embodied energy” meaning, that higher production costs have higher embodied energy cost, which makes perfect sense..

              The entire point of the renewables and nuclear argument is that the prices of these energy forms will get cheaper into the future, eventually going below fossil fuel costs as those costs rise. In other words it’s the ‘relative’ argument which is nonsense.

              Both wind and solar today are 20 times higher energy cost than the cheap oil and gas that we built the system with. We still have a small amount of it left, as per the above numbers.
              Do you really think that solar, wind plus the appropriate backup will get to 5% of the current energy cost of building them?? I don’t, as we have made all the easy improvements, which is why they are so much cheaper than 20 years ago. However just being a fraction of the cost of 20 years ago, by itself tells us nothing about the energy cost of building them.

              In the real world over the last 20 years the energy from fossil fuel use has gone up by 10 times the increase in solar and wind energy during the same period.
              Renewables are not replacing anything when we look at the big picture.
              Sure in the west we can shut down the odd coal power station, while the places that produce all the equipment needed to build renewables (mostly China) open up 2 or 3 new ones to build everything in their society including the factories to make the ‘stuff’ we use in the West. (Building the civilization including schools, hospitals etc is part of the energy cost of getting solar and wind from China, something none of the papers you refer to ever cover!!

              Extra Aluminium will be needed for the extra solar panels to be built in the future. A new large smelter is the one planned by Adaro in Borneo, using coal fired power to do it. So once again I’ll ask you, should Adaro burn the coal to power the new smelter or should they erase a few hundred thousand acres of tropical rainforest to place enough solar panels for the operation??
              I say neither. That means less aluminium available for solar panels and everything else.

              My point being it’s an entire system with everything interrelated, solar and wind are 4 times the cost of fairly new coal fired power right now, and probably much higher if we built simple, inefficient, very polluting coal power stations, like the ones of old. Plus the intermittency adds a huge energy cost in the building the batteries or pumped hydro or whatever. They are also 20 times the price of refined oil products from cheap Saudi wells, or gas in consumers hands.

              The answer provided by every single research paper written by Cornucopians is that ‘people in the future will figure it out with better (cheaper) technology and materials’.

              Dennis, I’ve asked this before, could you do some real world numbers on this bright green future, instead of pointing to papers the whole time that are mostly full of GIGO. The above numbers I’ve given are real world, anyone can go and check them if they are prepared to do the research. If you think they are way out, then prove it with a real world example or 2.

          3. Dennis
            “Note that my expectation is that the relative cost of wind and solar compared to fossil fuel powered electricity will decrease as fossil fuel becomes more expensive.”

            What don’t we understand about wind and solar being derivatives of fossil fuels. As fossil fuels increase in cost the cost of solar and wind increases. But it’s not a linear relationship it’s exponential because net energy is decreasing. Net energy is what these industries consume. It will always be cheaper to burn oil and gas directly for power generation than build wind and solar and wait 20 years hoping for a payout. ()Labor is also a big factor)

            Ask any banker and they’ll tell you derivatives are the weakest link. What it does to finance it does to energy. It’s all bets in the wrong direction.

            Just think about it. We already are seeing wind projects cancelled but not oil and gas drilling. Yet!!

            Why is wind more vulnerable? It should be obvious.

            1. In fact solar pays of its “energy debt” in a couple of years.

              It’s also worth mentioning that car companies used horse drawn wagons when they were building their car factories. That didn’t save the horses from the hamburger factory though.

              But that isn’t the key problem.

              The relationship between solar panel prices and energy prices certainly isn’t linear. Panel prices fell by about 99.8% between 1975 and 2022 in constant dollar prices, according to this:
              https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices?time=earliest..2022

              That’s old data. In the last year alone prices have fallen an additional 40% or so.

              I would love to see the your math showing any correlation between solar panel prices and energy prices.

              I think one reason you are so confused is that you think solar panels are somehow “energy”. They aren’t. The energy comes from the sun. It makes no sense to compare solar panes and energy prices.

              A solar panel is more like a steam turbine than it is like a barrel of oil.

              A better comparison is LEDs. LEDs are just solar panels running backwards in time. The components are more or less the same, since physics is time symmetrical. Between 2010 and 2019, prices fell by about 94%.

              https://www.freeingenergy.com/facts/led-bulb-light-cost-price-historical-decline-g213/

              There is no correlation to energy prices, and no reason to think there should be.

      2. Not sure how the costs of wind or solar are calculated over time but both have been heavily subsidised for …always. Also both have gone way down in price as their popularity waxes and wanes where producers “dump” product at fire sale prices to move inventory. Is any of this factored in?

        Also as Hideaway mentioned all of the legacy infrastructure was built with cheap almost free energy, it was also built with all mining and metals 100X more abundant, easier to extract, and therefor much more economical. That trend is headed south fast.

  10. Hopefully Doug is still OK, but in his absence last month saw a 4 ppm year on year increase in CO2 at Mauna Loa and last year showed over 3 ppm on average (both records).

    1. Not unconnected the sea surface temperatures so far this year are beating last year by about as much as last year beat the previous record. From a simple correlation you could conclude that green initiatives are making things worse not better and you can forget any notion that climate change was only going to be disastrous to our children and grand children.

        1. Which is consistent with the claim that any transition to renewables would produce a near term increase in fossil fuel demand.

      2. George, if you start eating tree bark now maybe it’ll be palatable by the time you’ll need to eat it to survive.

        1. BARK-PEELING, FOOD STRESS AND TREE SPIRITS – THE USE OF PINE INNER BARK FOR FOOD IN SCANDINAVIA AND NORTH AMERICA

          https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/33768

          Def needs hot sauce

          I recommend 5 gallon pails, Mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, and dried beans & rice. 5 gallons is about 80 cups; 40 cups of beans and 40 cups of rice per bucket. At 2 cups of rice and 2 cups of beans per day a bucket will last 20 days; 18.25 buckets per year. Get some multivitamins too. It can be augmented with shopping, gardening, foraging, hunting, fishing, whatever.

  11. GREENLAND LOSING 30M TONNES OF ICE AN HOUR

    “The Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years and in 2021 researchers spotted warning signs of a tipping point. A recent study suggested the collapse could happen as soon as 2025 in the worst-case scenario. A significant part of the Greenland ice sheet itself is also thought by scientists to be close to a tipping point of irreversible melting, with ice equivalent to 1-2 metres of sea level rise probably already expected. The study, published in the journal Nature, used artificial intelligence techniques to map more than 235,000 glacier end positions over the 38-year period, at a resolution of 120 metres. This showed the Greenland ice sheet had lost an area of about 5,000 sq km of ice at its margins since 1985, equivalent to a trillion tonnes of ice.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/17/greenland-losing-30m-tonnes-of-ice-an-hour-study-reveals

  12. We mustn’t forget India!

    INDIA’S FUEL DEMAND JUMPS

    Sales of diesel, the most widely used fuel in India, jumped by more than 6% in February 2024 compared to both February 2023 and on a daily basis comparison with January 2024. High factory activity and increased demand for trucks drove the higher diesel consumption in India last month. The country’s diesel demand is all but certain to hit a new record high later this year, exceeding 2 million bpd for the first time ever in June, Viktor Katona, lead crude analyst at Kpler, told Reuters.

    “Before the end of this decade, India is set to become the single biggest driver of global oil demand, replacing China.”

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Indias-Fuel-Demand-Jumps-As-Its-Economy-Roars.html

  14. WARMEST US WINTER ON RECORD

    Last month was the warmest February on record globally, the ninth straight month of historic high temperatures across the planet, Europe’s climate monitor said earlier this week. Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) last month said the period from February 2023 to January 2024 marked the first time Earth had endured 12 consecutive months of temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than the pre-industrial era. The UN’s IPCC climate panel has warned that the world will likely crash through 1.5C in the early 2030s. Holding warming to below 1.5C has been deemed crucial to averting a long-term planetary climate disaster. Planet-heating emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, continue to rise when scientists say they need to fall by almost half this decade.

    https://phys.org/news/2024-03-winter-warmest-mainland.html

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