Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please, thanks.
29 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, January 3, 2025”
The FAO [Global] Food Price Index* (FFPI) stood at 127.0 points in December 2024, down 0.6 points (0.5 percent) from its November level, as decreases in the price indices for sugar, dairy products, vegetable oils and cereals more than offset increases in meat…
For 2024 as a whole, the index recorded 122.0 points, 2.6 points (2.1 percent) lower than the average value in 2023.
Did I read EV’s were 51% of sales in China for 2024? 31 millions cars vs 18 for North America?
China is 5 years ahead of EV sales goals.
Does IEA have numbers?
I do not think the whole space when it comes to computer technology (chips) is fully understood, and its impact on technology to all aspects of energy extrapolation, refining and utility really.
It is a little bit an admiration post of how it is possible to expand the expectations even beyond the expectations generated by Murphy’s law when it comes to computer chips. How technology can evolve (silicon purity, laser, chemicals) and of course fossil fuels are involved in the process. It involves everything getting smaller at laser point, with lesser volt getting through at a most likely copper or silver linkage. A win, win uptil a certian point. So you get improved performance at less material throughput.
It is almost too good to be true. But yet what I read was that major companies circumvented material obstacles, and made beoynd expected progress the last 10 years.
Now, the semicondutor industry must also aknowledge the sustainabily battle. (IBM has stated this for a start). Better technology should be balanced against carbon footprint as it stands. “We should explore all elements” one Japanese executive said, to explore all options for progress”. In my mind, if we can reduce the carbon footprint while retaining much of the technology advantages; the performance is good enough or even less is ok probably, at least for the private market. It is not a very big problem in the immediate future. But how to produce the same enormous amount of chips should be on the sustainbilty radar.
It is very relevant, probably someone like Alimbiquated could probably add something. I am am guilty of being 50+, but not by much; it is important to get input into this topic for older people as well. No sources? Chat gpt or gemini. I prefer well formulated opinions, and I hope others do as well.
The main footprint is the power consumption of server farms, not so much chip production. The industry’s solution seems to be doubling down on energy production.
Energy consumption per calculation keeps falling, but the volume is increasing faster.
A lot of this has to do with the modern approach to AI. After decades of trying and failing to build a smart machine, they’ve just started throwing hardware at the problem. Some of these new models have trillions of parameters. They all need to be calculated before the thing works. The training algorithms are relatively well understood, but nobody really knows what the machine learns. If anyone did, they would program it.
And generally, software is getting less and less efficient. Good programmers are expensive, chips and the energy to run crappy software are cheap. Back in the nineties we used to say “Intel giveth, and Microsoft taketh away”.
“Mike Johnson is now celebrating his election as Speaker of the House with a speech, vowing to outlaw all restrictions on oil, gas, coal; eliminate all tax incentives for EV vehicles; promote LNG; cut regulations across the govt.; shut down climate research.”
While Rep. Thomas Massie, the lone GOP holdout voting against Mike Johnson, has essentially become a self-reliant energy advocate trying to live off-the-grid as much as possible. That’s the scary part. He knows too much about the reality of the situation.
As Leaders of a Nation with vast natural resources that God has blessed us with it is our duty to restore America’s energy dominance and that’s what we’ll do. We have to apply Common Sense. We have to stop the attacks (tax?) on liquified Natural Gas. Pass legislation to eliminate the green New Deal – that funding. We’re going to expedite new drilling permits. We’re going to save the jobs of our auto manufacturers and we’re going to do that by ending the ridiculous EV mandates. And as heirs to the American Revolution and the descendants of patriots who defy tyranny in the coming months, we are going to pass legislation to roll back the totalitarian fourth branch of government known as the administrative state.
Couldn’t find where he said he will shut down climate research, but it goes without saying they will try.
It means something about dominance, not much about geophysical reality or national security. Maybe one of the Christian churches will catch a different wave of popular sentiment acknowledging physical reality.
As Leaders of a Nation with vast natural resources that God has blessed us with it is our duty to restore America’s energy dominance
Liberals and other non-evangelicals have such a hard time grasping this world view. One of the most unfortunate verses in the bible (IMHO) is Genesis 1:28
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Mike Johnson, MAGA etc, take this to mean that humans (especially American males) have a god-given right to dominate everything, globally. God help us.
Understood. I moved to Trump country a few years ago. It’s not hard to grasp but the sense of entitlement to lowest cost fuel crosses a whole range of political and religious identities. It’s not just God botherers although they clearly articulate the reason for their entitlement.
We’re going to save the jobs of our auto manufacturers and we’re going to do that by ending the ridiculous EV mandates.
I think this has the car makers tearing their hair. They know that EVs are the future, and that if the US stalls on the transition it will make US car makers badly uncompetitive with Chinese companies. It will be a repeat of Japan walloping US car companies in the 70’s.
This seems to be oil companies promoting their interests at the cost of car makers, consumers…basically everyone.
Come to think about it, a lot of this anti-transition stuff comes from Charles Koch (and his family). AFAIK jis family doesn’t produce oil, it refines it. So it’s this one part of the oil industry that’s harming the rest of the county.
The smart automakers will produce with an eye to the future which is electrified transport. Soon ICEVs will no longer be able to compete and the longer automakers that focus only on only ICEVs the further they will fall behind.
I suggest you save your comments in a word editor, also limit links to 4 or less by dividing up your comment too many links in a comment is a spam identifier.
As far as I am concerned, Trump and the GOP have made a commitment to ensure that China becomes the dominant world power and the US becomes increasingly irrelevant.
When it comes to automobiles, foreign brands are rapidly losing market share in China to the point that some of them are going into crisis mode, Nissan and the Volkswagen group come to mind. China is beginning to export a fair amount of vehicles and while the folks in the US may be oblivious to what is happening the folks in Mexico, Brazil and other places are not. In my neck of the woods Chinese brands are increasing their presence. The majority of new heavy duty trucks on the road here are Chinese and the all the new large (12m or 40ft.) buses are Chinese as well.
China has invested over USD 50 billion in new PV supply capacity – ten times more than Europe − and created more than 300 000 manufacturing jobs across the solar PV value chain since 2011. Today, China’s share in all the manufacturing stages of solar panels (such as polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells and modules) exceeds 80%. This is more than double China’s share of global PV demand. In addition, the country is home to the world’s 10 top suppliers of solar PV manufacturing equipment.
Further down it issues this warning:
The world will almost completely rely on China for the supply of key building blocks for solar panel production through 2025. Based on manufacturing capacity under construction, China’s share of global polysilicon, ingot and wafer production will soon reach almost 95%. Today, China’s Xinjiang province accounts for 40% global polysilicon manufacturing. Moreover, one out of every seven panels produced worldwide is manufactured by a single facility. This level of concentration in any global supply chain would represent a considerable vulnerability; solar PV is no exception.
The company that supplies Jamaica with natural gas (LNG) convinced the decision makers circa 2015 to invest in a combined cycle gas turbine electricity plant and the plant was commissioned in 2019. The combined output of all the turbines (3 x https://www.gevernova.com/gas-power/products/gas-turbines/6b plus a steam turbine powered by the exhaust of the 3 gas turbines) makes it the largest single plant on the island’s grid (see https://openinframap.org/stats/area/Jamaica/plantshttps://openinframap.org/stats/area/Jamaica/plants). The were plans to replace the second largest plant (oil fired) on the grid with another CCGT fueled by NG but the last I heard any news about that was 2022 and by October 2023 there was this: Jamaica Public Service (JPS) plans to shut down two fossil fuel-fired power plants and replace them with RE. Electricity from solar PV plus batteries is very close to being less expensive than anything the local utility can supply if not already so. I expect solar PV to continue to erode the demand for electricity from oil and gas plants going forward and most of the equipment (all the PV panels) is probably going to be supplied by China.
A feasibility study was conducted and published in 2022 that concluded that battery electric buses would provide the lowest total cost of ownership for the government owned municipal bus fleets in the capital city and the resort city of Montego Bay. The LNG supplier to the island convinced the government that CNG buses would be a better investment and underwrote the cost of CNG fueling infrastructure so 100 Chinese made CNG buses have been acquired and only 6 battery electric buses. The operating and maintenance costs of the electric buses have not been made public and I suspect they will not be as it is likely that the government will acquire more CNG buses to replace the ageing diesel units.
So the US will probably remain a major source of fuel and food for places like Jamaica but, that’s about it. Appliances, vehicles, clothing, industrial machinery, and construction materials are mostly coming from China. That is probably the case across much of the world. How are Trumps policies going to change any of that?
The Trump administration appears determined to boost oil for transportation, which will cripple the U.S. car industry over time. I think the car companies know this, but between internal resistance to change (from people whose careers were built around ICEs) and fear of Trump, they seem paralyzed.
The oil industry does not seem to care about the long term damage to…everything outside their industry.
Although, to be fair, the Koch family seems to be disproportionately influential here.
The FAO [Global] Food Price Index* (FFPI) stood at 127.0 points in December 2024, down 0.6 points (0.5 percent) from its November level, as decreases in the price indices for sugar, dairy products, vegetable oils and cereals more than offset increases in meat…
For 2024 as a whole, the index recorded 122.0 points, 2.6 points (2.1 percent) lower than the average value in 2023.
What’s driving decreasing gasoline consumption in China?
EIA: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63764
Did I read EV’s were 51% of sales in China for 2024? 31 millions cars vs 18 for North America?
China is 5 years ahead of EV sales goals.
Does IEA have numbers?
“Although they’re happy to use guns as a wedge issue to bring in male voters who are insecure about their own masculinity.”
Seems to be working
I do not think the whole space when it comes to computer technology (chips) is fully understood, and its impact on technology to all aspects of energy extrapolation, refining and utility really.
It is a little bit an admiration post of how it is possible to expand the expectations even beyond the expectations generated by Murphy’s law when it comes to computer chips. How technology can evolve (silicon purity, laser, chemicals) and of course fossil fuels are involved in the process. It involves everything getting smaller at laser point, with lesser volt getting through at a most likely copper or silver linkage. A win, win uptil a certian point. So you get improved performance at less material throughput.
It is almost too good to be true. But yet what I read was that major companies circumvented material obstacles, and made beoynd expected progress the last 10 years.
Now, the semicondutor industry must also aknowledge the sustainabily battle. (IBM has stated this for a start). Better technology should be balanced against carbon footprint as it stands. “We should explore all elements” one Japanese executive said, to explore all options for progress”. In my mind, if we can reduce the carbon footprint while retaining much of the technology advantages; the performance is good enough or even less is ok probably, at least for the private market. It is not a very big problem in the immediate future. But how to produce the same enormous amount of chips should be on the sustainbilty radar.
It is very relevant, probably someone like Alimbiquated could probably add something. I am am guilty of being 50+, but not by much; it is important to get input into this topic for older people as well. No sources? Chat gpt or gemini. I prefer well formulated opinions, and I hope others do as well.
The main footprint is the power consumption of server farms, not so much chip production. The industry’s solution seems to be doubling down on energy production.
Energy consumption per calculation keeps falling, but the volume is increasing faster.
A lot of this has to do with the modern approach to AI. After decades of trying and failing to build a smart machine, they’ve just started throwing hardware at the problem. Some of these new models have trillions of parameters. They all need to be calculated before the thing works. The training algorithms are relatively well understood, but nobody really knows what the machine learns. If anyone did, they would program it.
And generally, software is getting less and less efficient. Good programmers are expensive, chips and the energy to run crappy software are cheap. Back in the nineties we used to say “Intel giveth, and Microsoft taketh away”.
Sounds like American muscle cars from the 60’s. Just add bigger engines. Better suspension and brakes will come later.
from https://www.lauriegarrett.com/
While Rep. Thomas Massie, the lone GOP holdout voting against Mike Johnson, has essentially become a self-reliant energy advocate trying to live off-the-grid as much as possible. That’s the scary part. He knows too much about the reality of the situation.
https://www.roku.com/whats-on/tv-shows/off-the-grid-with-thomas-massie?id=c27fddb472bb519eafaf1557b47380f7
Transcript of Mike Johnson speech to congress, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEGqwbWXs9E
Couldn’t find where he said he will shut down climate research, but it goes without saying they will try.
Jesus. Roll back the bureacracy that runs gov’t. Sure you will Mikey.
“Restore ….. dominance”.
Hey Mike, what did God do about The Cedars of Lebanon?
Bread, circus and clowns. A herd of clowns.
LEEG —
Any time you hear the phrase “energy dominance” you know someone is talking shit. It means nothing. It’s a tell.
It means something about dominance, not much about geophysical reality or national security. Maybe one of the Christian churches will catch a different wave of popular sentiment acknowledging physical reality.
As Leaders of a Nation with vast natural resources that God has blessed us with it is our duty to restore America’s energy dominance
Liberals and other non-evangelicals have such a hard time grasping this world view. One of the most unfortunate verses in the bible (IMHO) is Genesis 1:28
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Mike Johnson, MAGA etc, take this to mean that humans (especially American males) have a god-given right to dominate everything, globally. God help us.
Dominionists, aka the minions.
Understood. I moved to Trump country a few years ago. It’s not hard to grasp but the sense of entitlement to lowest cost fuel crosses a whole range of political and religious identities. It’s not just God botherers although they clearly articulate the reason for their entitlement.
I love how completely braindead the first sentence is combined with the claim to want to use randomly capitalized common sense.
We’re going to save the jobs of our auto manufacturers and we’re going to do that by ending the ridiculous EV mandates.
I think this has the car makers tearing their hair. They know that EVs are the future, and that if the US stalls on the transition it will make US car makers badly uncompetitive with Chinese companies. It will be a repeat of Japan walloping US car companies in the 70’s.
This seems to be oil companies promoting their interests at the cost of car makers, consumers…basically everyone.
Come to think about it, a lot of this anti-transition stuff comes from Charles Koch (and his family). AFAIK jis family doesn’t produce oil, it refines it. So it’s this one part of the oil industry that’s harming the rest of the county.
NickG,
The smart automakers will produce with an eye to the future which is electrified transport. Soon ICEVs will no longer be able to compete and the longer automakers that focus only on only ICEVs the further they will fall behind.
I wrote a previous comment, and then tried to edit it, and and the system said it had marked it as spam and it has now disappeared Help!
Nick G,
I suggest you save your comments in a word editor, also limit links to 4 or less by dividing up your comment too many links in a comment is a spam identifier.
Oddly enough, there were no links in my comment.
Thanks.
Nick,
Yes I saw that, sometimes the spam filter messes up.
Buckle up. Make the appropriate phone calls.
As far as I am concerned, Trump and the GOP have made a commitment to ensure that China becomes the dominant world power and the US becomes increasingly irrelevant.
When it comes to automobiles, foreign brands are rapidly losing market share in China to the point that some of them are going into crisis mode, Nissan and the Volkswagen group come to mind. China is beginning to export a fair amount of vehicles and while the folks in the US may be oblivious to what is happening the folks in Mexico, Brazil and other places are not. In my neck of the woods Chinese brands are increasing their presence. The majority of new heavy duty trucks on the road here are Chinese and the all the new large (12m or 40ft.) buses are Chinese as well.
According to this IEA web page https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/executive-summary,
Further down it issues this warning:
The company that supplies Jamaica with natural gas (LNG) convinced the decision makers circa 2015 to invest in a combined cycle gas turbine electricity plant and the plant was commissioned in 2019. The combined output of all the turbines (3 x https://www.gevernova.com/gas-power/products/gas-turbines/6b plus a steam turbine powered by the exhaust of the 3 gas turbines) makes it the largest single plant on the island’s grid (see https://openinframap.org/stats/area/Jamaica/plantshttps://openinframap.org/stats/area/Jamaica/plants). The were plans to replace the second largest plant (oil fired) on the grid with another CCGT fueled by NG but the last I heard any news about that was 2022 and by October 2023 there was this: Jamaica Public Service (JPS) plans to shut down two fossil fuel-fired power plants and replace them with RE. Electricity from solar PV plus batteries is very close to being less expensive than anything the local utility can supply if not already so. I expect solar PV to continue to erode the demand for electricity from oil and gas plants going forward and most of the equipment (all the PV panels) is probably going to be supplied by China.
A feasibility study was conducted and published in 2022 that concluded that battery electric buses would provide the lowest total cost of ownership for the government owned municipal bus fleets in the capital city and the resort city of Montego Bay. The LNG supplier to the island convinced the government that CNG buses would be a better investment and underwrote the cost of CNG fueling infrastructure so 100 Chinese made CNG buses have been acquired and only 6 battery electric buses. The operating and maintenance costs of the electric buses have not been made public and I suspect they will not be as it is likely that the government will acquire more CNG buses to replace the ageing diesel units.
So the US will probably remain a major source of fuel and food for places like Jamaica but, that’s about it. Appliances, vehicles, clothing, industrial machinery, and construction materials are mostly coming from China. That is probably the case across much of the world. How are Trumps policies going to change any of that?
I agree.
The Trump administration appears determined to boost oil for transportation, which will cripple the U.S. car industry over time. I think the car companies know this, but between internal resistance to change (from people whose careers were built around ICEs) and fear of Trump, they seem paralyzed.
The oil industry does not seem to care about the long term damage to…everything outside their industry.
Although, to be fair, the Koch family seems to be disproportionately influential here.
“He’s a criminal and a con artist. And that has to be central to everything you cover about him.”
Who could that be?
https://www.app.com.pk/domestic/100000-homes-to-get-free-solar-panels-in-punjab-cm/
Solar has become a populist theme in Pakistan.
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That is since 2013 when the site was launched,
“Leader of Oath Keepers spinoff who called for ‘race war’ is ex-Vegas homicide detective”
—– not a surprise