A Guest Post by Islandboy
The EIA released the latest edition of their Electric Power Monthly on March 26th, with data for January 2019. The table above shows the percentage contribution of the main fuel sources to two decimal places for the last two months and the year 2019 to date.
In January, the absolute amount of electricity generated rose back to levels not seen since the end of summer in September 2018, probably as a result of the need for longer hours of lighting during the longer nights coupled with the increased needs for heating in the middle of winter. Coal and Natural Gas between them, fueled 61.49% of US electricity generation in January, with the contributions from Nuclear and Conventional Hydroelectric declining. The contribution from Natural Gas was up at 33.25%, from 31.71% in December, with the amount generated rising from 106,978 GWh to 118,935 GWh. Generation fueled by coal increased from 96,825 GWh to 101,019 GWh resulting in the percentage contribution falling from 28.70% to 28.24%. The amount of electricity generated by Nuclear plants increased from 71,657 GWh to 73,701 GWh with the resulting contribution actually declining from 21.24% to 20.60% in January. The amount generated by Conventional Hydroelectric increased from 23,728 GWh in December to 24,544 GWh in January with resulting contribution decreasing to 6.86% as opposed to 7.03% in December. The amount generated by Wind increased from 21,154 GWh to 22,493 GWh with the resulting contribution rising very slightly from 6.27% to 6.29% in January. The estimated total solar output rose from 4.962 GWh to 5,859 GWh with the resulting contribution rising from 1.47% to 1.56%. The contribution of zero carbon or carbon neutral sources declined from 38.59% in December to 37.41% in January.
The graph below shows the absolute monthly production from the various sources as well as the total amount generated (right axis).
The chart below shows the total monthly generation at utility scale facilities by year versus the contribution from solar. The left hand scale is for the total generation, while the right hand scale is for solar output and has been deliberately set to exaggerate the solar output as a means of assessing it’s potential to make a meaningful contribution to the midsummer peak. In January 2019 the output from solar at 5,590 GWh, was 2.94 times what it was four years ago in January 2015.
The chart below shows the total monthly generation at utility scale facilities by year versus the combined contribution from wind and solar. The left hand scale is for the total generation, while the right hand scale is for combined wind and solar output and has been deliberately set to exaggerate the combined output of solar and wind as a means of assessing the potential of the combination to make a meaningful contribution to the year round total.
The chart below shows the percentage contributions of the various sources to the capacity additions for January 2019. In January Natural Gas contributed 4.86% of new capacity, with 33.29% of new capacity coming from Solar and Wind contributing 60.57%. Natural Gas, Solar and Wind made up 98.72% of new capacity in January. Natural gas and renewables have made up more than 95% of capacity added each month since at least January 2017.
A portion of the capacity added that was not fueled by Natural Gas, Wind or Solar was a 6.5 MW Conventional Hydroelectric facility, owned by a company involved in sugar manufacturing, based on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. There were also two battery installations, one a 10 MW facility in Gilbert, Arizona and the other a 1 MW facility set up by the Southern Indiana Gas & Elec Co. in Indiana. The only other facility that was not fueled by Natural gas, Wind or Solar was a 2 MW diesel unit set up by the City of Tipton, Iowa. The 74 MW of Natural Gas fueled capacity added, consisted of four 18.5 MW Natural Gas Internal Combustion Engines at the Hopkins plant in the City of Tallahassee, Florida. In January 2019 the total added capacity reported was 1,523.5 MW, compared to the 1,617 MW added in January 2018
The chart below shows the monthly capacity retirements for January 2019. In January the only retirements reported were a 121 MW Combined Cycle Gas Turbine, owned by an independent power producer in Florida, a 3.8 MW Natural Gas Steam Turbine in Tuscola Illinois and the 312 MW Conventional Steam Coal plant at the Henderson Municipal Power & Light Station Two in Henderson, Kentucky.
Following the posting of the November 2018 edition of this report, a request was made for a graph that better represented the scale of the capacity additions and retirements. Below is a chart for monthly net additions/retirements showing the data for January 2019.
Below is a table of the top ten states in order of coal consumption for electricity production for November 2018 and the year before for comparison
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/with-tax-credit-idaho-power-secures-record-low-price-for-utility-scale-solar/
Idaho Power announced recently that it had secured a 20-year deal to buy power from a 120MW solar farm being built by a company called Jackpot Holdings for $21.75 per megawatt-hour (MWh). The price is less than 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), which appears to be a record-low price for solar energy in the United States.
The price isn’t a perfect reflection of solar panel cost… due to Federal tax credits.
Still, industry watcher and investor Ramez Naam tweeted last night that, without the ITC, he estimates the price per kWh for the project would be about 3 cents per kWh, which is still extremely cheap.
People that don’t GET IT, in economic terms, tend to bitch about subsidies of this kind.
Renewable energy subsidies drive down the cost of coal and natural gas, and everything that’s made with or out of coal and natural gas as well.
So the individual who pays a few cents in such subsidies stands to earn a BIG profit on his ( forced as a tax payer) investment, by way of lower prices for his next new car ( made out of steel made using coal) and cheaper food, because farmers ( yours truly here ) spend megabucks on nitrate fertilizer, made out of natural gas, which enables us to sell grain dirt cheap, thereby enabling other farmers to sell livestock dirt cheap…….. thereby in the end helping make meat here in the USA cheaper than just about any other place in the world, in relation to our wages and salaries.
Fuel free solar electricity for thirty, forty or fifty years or longer is one hell of a deal…… considering that coal and gas deplete, and WILL get to be very expensive, sooner or later.
When the panels do eventually degrade and produce significantly less , well, most likely they will be easily and quickly replaced right on the same mounts, with new panels that produce maybe half again or even TWICE as much, lol.
https://electrek.co/2019/04/05/solar-battery-plant-la/
California as usual is leading the way, but even supposedly cherry red places such North Carolina are doing very well, on a per capita basis.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/an-offer-utilities-cant-refuse-the-low-cost-of-utility-scale-solar/529373/
Utilities of all kinds and in many places are accelerating from zero to 100 on solar in response to record-low prices,” Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) research manager and paper lead author Daisy Chung told Utility Dive.
Contrary to the word from Washington, D.C., utility-scale renewables are not “badly behaved coal plants” that threaten grid reliability and national security, Seb Henbest, lead author of the Bloomberg New Energy Finance New Energy Outlook, wrote July 25. “By 2050, we’re painting a picture of an electricity system utterly reshaped around cheap wind, solar and batteries.”
…
Southern Company and its four subsidiaries are “bullish on solar,” VP for Energy Policy Bruce Edelston told Utility Dive. They added a cumulative 375 MW for four Southeastern states in 2017 and have a pipeline that will likely deliver around 200 MW annually for the foreseeable future, he said.
“The price has come down substantially in the past couple of years and is now competitive with coal and gas,” he said. “We would not be buying so much now if it was not the cheapest option.”
SEPA used to be Solar Electric Power Alliance. It is illegal for Southern to own Distributed Generation Assets that are not on their Property. It is also illegal to buy and Sell Electrical Power in most Southern’s Service Area. SO is also the largest contributor to the Edison Institute who’s primary mission is to stop 3rd Party rooftop Solar. Just dandy & wonderful folk.
After WWII, the English voted Churchill and his party out, even though he was the best loved man in the kingdom for the previous hundred years or longer……. because they were sick of the old order, and wanted something new and different.
Sometime in the next few years, the public is going to bust the fossil fuel lobby dam into gravel and mud, and the rules are going to change, when it comes to solar and wind power….. just as the rules are changing in marijuana law.
Big pharma, ignorance and stupidity on the part of the public kept pot illegal for a century… but within ten more years, it will be legal just about everywhere within the USA, or at the worst, possession will be a matter dealt with like a minor traffic ticket.
I laid it on a Trumpster a while ago, a neighbor who is diabetic and was bitching about the price of his insulin…… HE didn’t have anything much to say after I told him his fourhundred and fifty dollar bottle of Humulin sells for thirty two bucks in Canada.. and that the maker is making money on it at that price……. because them there Canadian commie socialists have got their shit together, in terms of looking after the PEOPLE of Canada…. where as the R’s have got their shit together when it comes to looking after the rich people who own big pharma.
People all thru the red south won’t be whole lot longer coming to understand that solar power is in their own best personal and collective interest, that it will mean LOWER rather than higher electric bills for them.
Share of electricity capacity additions in the United States from 2010 to 2018, by resource
Wind capacity additions increase then decrease, same with solar though not as much. Natural gas appears to not only have gutted coal additions but is eating into solar and wind additions.
Gone Fishing,
Natural Gas will peak and increase in price while the cost of solar will continue to decrease, natural gas use will fall as this occurs, probably will begin by 2023, hopefully sooner.
Sure, that might happen if wind power was still growing exponentially. It’s not. With subsides about to drop out it does not look good for wind after 2019. After a small surge this year I expect wind power expansion to slope off.
Other countries are paying about 60 cents a watt for Class A panels. With the new tariff on imported cells and modules that adds 33 to 40 cents per watt to systems in the US, where prices are higher already. This does not bode well for increasing the rate of PV installations.
Wind subsidies fall 80% in three years
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1463602/wind-subsidies-fall-80-three-years
I am more concerned about the methane leakage from expanding natural gas systems.
I don’t see a strong commitment to PV and renewable energy from the federal government or the people of the US. Some states and localities have shown strong commitment but overall the commitment is inconsistent and variable with time.
Much as Obama was for renewable energy and it grew quickly, it was during his terms that fracking of natural gas and oil rose to a crescendo. Now we have a much different tone in the federal government toward renewable energy.
The most likely scenario for the next ten years is a mix of all energy sources without aiming at renewable energy.
I find it really interesting how perspectives differ. I have looked at a number of indicators to come to a significantly different conclusion. One thing I mentioned in the EPM reoprt is that since January 2017, every month had capacity additions where a combination of NG and renewables made up at least 95% of new capacity, in some months it was 100%. The conclusion is that, apart from NG, utilities are investing next to nothing in FF powered plants. Another thing I noticed is that January 2019 was somewhat similar to January 2018, with wind and solar making up some 93% of new capacity in January 2019 and some 96% in January 2018. In February 2018, of the relatively small amount of new capacity (~300 MW) 94% came from the combination of solar and wind.
Without looking for an explanation, I begin to wonder if these high proportions of renewables might become the rule rather than the exception and what might precipitate this? The conclusion I draw is that electricity generation is driven by the bottom line, the lowest cost source, allowing for the lowest prices for consumers while still offering reasonable margins for producers. The top post from Dennis alludes to a record low price for electricity from solar in Idaho. Note that Idaho does not have the best solar resources in the US, far from it. Nor have the price reductions of solar technology reached their limits, again far from it. As a result, I believe we are witnessing the beginnings of what Tony Seba has been driving at. Solar, more so than wind, is a disruptive technology and the cost curves suggest that costs will go down to a point where nothing else can compete when the sun is shinning! At that point, both producers and consumers will chose to use the lowest cost source available at any given time.
Then comes the question of storage and how the cost of storage will affect final costs of electricity. Here’s some news I saw today>
Innolith Claims It’s On Path To 1,000 Wh/kg Battery Energy Density
1 kWh per 1 kg of weight! But can the dream come true?
Innolith, the Switzerland-based company with labs in Germany, announced that it is developing the world’s first rechargeable battery with an energy density of 1,000 Wh/kg (or simply 1 kWh per kg of weight). Such high energy would easily enable the production of electric cars with a range of 1,000 km (620 miles).
Innolith Energy Battery is reportedly utilizing an innovative conversional approach in the chemistry instead of traditional intercalation-based materials in lithium-ion batteries. Innolith assures that it already achieved a few breakthroughs and expects that the new batteries could be ready within 3-5 years with initial pilot production to be launched in Germany. It’s not “just around the corner” and there is no certainty about the outcome, but it’s great to hear that there are new ideas for cars in 2025-2030.
A more infornmative (longer) article is here:
Electric car battery with 600 miles of range? This startup claims to have done it
This is a claim for batteries with four times the energy density of the best cells currently available and three times what is expected to be the next step up in energy density. Also being claimed is improved safety (non-flammable), improved cycle life and reduced manufacturing costs. If this turns out to be real, it will be a game changer. My point in posting this is that it is just one of many announcements about new battery breakthroughs that we are getting on a fairly regular basis. I expect that, baring an outright collapse of civilization, at least one of these battery technology breakthroughs will amount to something real.
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I am starting to see how cost reductions in solar PV and battery technology could overwhelm the existing energy players, just like Seba is saying they will.
One of their labs is roughly around the corner here.
When this is true, electric flight for short and medium distances would come, too. It would be enough for example for all these Europe or USA inner state flights.
And we will see lots of drones of every size, I mean lots. For example the Amazon April fool video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB7gqGrmt8g
would be able to come true.
Here’s an interesting article about electric sea planes.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/06/how-maritime-harbour-air-is-switching-over-to-100-electric-seaplanes/
If you look at some of the flying taxi prototypes that are coming out, you may notice that most of then don’t have a tail or wing flaps. They steer using gimbaled propellers instead, like a rocket. The should greatly reduce drag and make them more energy efficient. I don’t know if it could be scaled to jumbo jet size.
Island Boy. I like to follow the news on battery innovation, even though I don’t understand the science/engineering at all.
It seems like enough brainpower and money is being directed at the problem , that we are likely to see one or several of these companies hit a home run within the decade. Can’t come too soon.
It will change the game in a massive way.
btw-Idaho has a pretty big dry grassland/desert area that gets more annual irradiance than anywhere in Florida. Same level as Abilene TX for example. Not at all shabby.
Well, we need to get something better than lithium ion, and it hasn’t happened on a scale that we use—-
Although we have had efficiencies, we are still dealing with early 1990’s Japanese technology—–
It has been quite a while.
Islandboy, I focus on NG for two reasons. One, it is a dangerous global warming/climate change fuel. Two, every MWh of NG capacity is about equivalent to 2.5 for PV due to different capacity factors. I prefer to see NG gone completely but seeing it down at 20% of added PV+ wind would be better. Now it’s equivalent to about 75% with capacity factor thrown in.
I’m of the opinion that not too many more NG fired plants are going to get built. The US will need a fleet of power plants to fill the gaps when renewables aren’t up to it until things like demand response an storage mature to the point that such plants aren’t needed. For now NG fired plants are a good complement for renewables with their short start up times and greater ability to ramp their output but I’ve got this feeling that as the costs of electricity generated by wind and solar continue to fall, quite a few NG plants are going to find it hard to sell their output when the wind is blowing and/or the sun is shining.
In five years time we might begin to see what is in store for the electricity sector but, it might not be all that different from what is happening now. I have this sense that tipping points are being approached and that once they have been passed, the pace of change will be dizzying. I can’t quite put my finger on it but, I’m just have this strong feeling that those of us who are still around in ten years time are going to witness a radically different state of affairs.
It might just be that I perceive that events are following Tony Seba’s script more closely than any projections made by any of the usual suspects.
Gone fishing,
Perhaps you are correct, much will depend on relative prices. It is likely natural gas will become more expensive while solar and wind will continue to fall in price.
Gonefishing,
I am thinking that solar may be the lowest cost option relative to both wind and natural gas. In that scenario wind capacity growth may slow as you have suggested (though with improving technology it may still be competitive in high resource areas such as the Great Plains and Texas in the US even with reduced subsidies) however solar may still take market share from natural gas throughout the US especially in the sun belt, but as costs continue to fall, throughout the nation even as subsidies expire.
Every citizen needs to cut their use of energy by 50% within two years. Preferably by not using it rather than substituting it.
Gonefishing,
A nice goal. Will be harder for those who are already efficient. Will you be able to cut your energy use by 50% from current level in 2 years? I am thinking about solar, but that would still be energy that I use. Maybe you mean fossil fuel energy.
I have already cut mine well below that level but still intend to cut more internal and external energy use.
My goal is to be near or at zero external use within 2 to 3 years. The last 20 percent is the toughest but it pays to just keep at it.
Of course the biggest signal we want to send is to cut off the use of fossil fuels inputs in any form.
All during this cutback also cutback the use of disposable items and material items in general.
Expand the garden to cut back on external agriculture and use local sources when possible.
The easiest way with a car is to consolidate trips, eliminate unnecessary trips, keep the car well maintained, ride share when possible.
Just eliminating air leaks in the house and providing proper window shading for summer can cut heating/cooling use by 20 percent.
I insulate unused (non-south facing) windows in the winter. That cuts the heat loss through them to 1/6.
There are lots of creative methods to save energy which I use and probably a lot more other people use. Turning it into a hobby or a fun game for the family can make it a psychological positive and train the young ones to think in a new way about energy, products and materials.
I figure Americans can get down to 20 percent of the energy they use now and fifty percent of the products they use now. The first 50% for most is the easiest since most of that is unneeded, expensive and wasteful.
Spread the example to others.
Here is one hardy soul that let the house temp fall to 45F in winter. I make my low temp cutoff at 50F.
This Cold House
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/opinion/this-cold-house.html
Maybe Americans can stop being so coddled and swing with the seasonal temps. At least until they build R30 and R40 houses with some passive and active solar heat.
We are warm blooded, right? We do have clothing, right?
Good points GF.
Another very important step [perhaps even more important] for people to take is to keep their fossil fuel travel down to less than 6000 miles per year.
That includes all land air and sea miles.
If you want a higher number, switch to kilometers, and you get up to around 9000 km/yr.
If you (the generic you, including you) don’t take personal measures to achieve this, are you really concerned about the issue? Or just like to talk.
Yes, agreed!
I’m currently giving some assistance to a group of entrepreneurs tackling the problem of plastic waste in the environment. Like fossil fuels, the solution is, first and foremost, to end all production of petrochemical based polymers.
Anyone one who thinks this is wishful thinking, some kind of utopian dream or radical anti capitalist socialism a la the supposedly uneconomic Green New Deal, or some such. Hasn’t yet grasped the full impact of the perfect storm of disruptive science and technological forces setting up to blow the old system into the dustbin of history!
Cheers!
Fred, I worked on biopolymer research to substitute for petropolymers back in the 90’s. We were successful but the products did not compete at the time. Maybe the time has come, but they better hurry.
Gone fishing,
I guess you didn’t understand my comment. Will you be able to cut another 50% from where you are now. My point was that those who have already become efficient (say by 50% or more) will find it increasingly difficult to cut another 50%. And once that is done it becomes harder and harder.
Also in your original comment you said “energy”, I suggested perhaps you mean energy derived from fossil fuel (as in electricity produced by coal or natural gas or natural gas or oil heat, or gasoline or diesel used in a car, boat or other vehicle or jet fuel.
Can you clarify what you mean by internal and external energy?
External energy is essentially fossil fuel energy at this point. Some is renewable or nuclear coming down the grid.
Internal energy is what I actually use in the home and car, from whatever source including the sun.
Material energy can be food, products, services.
The most important to cut is FF energy. I am aiming at zero for that. I also have reduced my material and internal energy use.
All energy needs to be cut severely, FF mostly, but all energy (consumption).
Dennis, if you are using external energy such as fossil fuel or grid electric it’s always possible to cut that down. Even to zero.
My last 20 percent (to zero external energy) is the toughest and most expensive in time and money but that is where I am aiming. Maybe I will only get to 5 percent but still that is good.
Houses can now be energy positive or run themselves and electric cars. Me, I just aim toward net zero and a low energy lifestyle.
I use 3-4 kWh of electricity per day. As Mexican electricity is discounted, last bill (bimonthly) to .799MXN for the 1st 150kWh and 0.964 for the next, before hitting the full rate it makes it difficult to justify costly savings or adding things like solar. Even DIY solar would take me about 18 years to pay back. If, with rising temperatures, I may need to put in A/C then solar might be practical. Unfortunately there is talk of moving our zone from 1B to 1D which would push up the discounting making it harder.
NAOM
Total bill was 225MXN with 560.58 discount.
So the only fossil fuel energy you use is the 3.5 kWh of electricity per day?
Ah, the fine art of pattern recognition and analysis!
I look at that chart and I see solar power pretty stable over the 2013-2018 period, with a slight outlier in 2016. I do agree that this chart appears to show that NG is displacing wind – that suggests that NG is falling in price faster than wind.
For real analysis we need more data. In particular, it would be interesting to see price trends for these three power sources. It might become clear just how long the growth of NG can continue. In other words, I doubt NG can compete with solar forever on price, as the fundamentals support continuing price declines for solar, but not for NG.
OTOH, there is a clear need for either explicit carbon taxes, or implicit carbon penalties through regulations (probably mostly from renewable capacity targets). And, yes, there’s no sign of that on the Federal level in the next two years. After that, it might get interesting!
Nick G,
A nice idea but the data is not aggregated that way at least by the EIA. So price trends are difficult to find.
The idiot speakith ( yet again)-
Trump says the noise from wind turbines causes cancer.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/politics/chuck-grassley-trump-wind-energy-cancer-idiotic/index.html
It’s all because of his German oranges…
I can’t believe it didn’t all end here for Trump….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNXgjnBpxGI
… but that’s what America has become. Time to cull the herd. I can’t wait for the famine.
US of America is a worse country than many of us who live here would like to believe. That is all becoming apparent now. T. is no isolated phenomenon.
‘That is all becoming apparent now. T. is no isolated phenomenon’-
That is certainly true. Native Americans, and minorities of just about every color and religion can tell you a thousand horrific stories. So can the Vietnamese. ‘Goodness’ of this country has been only a small part of this country story since the start.
A lot of white Americans are in that category too, and more soon will be there.
Makes this seem like a good idea
https://cheezburger.com/8461320960/who-sponsors-your-congressman
NAOM
As long as the economy remains strong like now, Trump is headed for a reelection. He will probably lose the popular vote again, possibly by an even bigger margin, but the electoral college math is easily there for him to win.
Oh Yeah!
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So tell me which states of the 2016 electoral college map the Dems are going to flip then? I can see Michigan and Pennsylvania, but that’s not enough. Additionally, New Hampshire could flip to the GOP, and so too could Nevada if enough right-leaning Gary Johnson voters from 2016 go with Trump. Minnesota, Maine At-Large, and Colorado will also need better Dem turnout if there isn’t a strong Libertarian campaign there to siphon votes away from the GOP.
I have no idea who the next president of the US will be, it might even be a Republican, but I’m 100% sure it won’t be Trump! He’s going down! He is way too toxic and damaged to survive!
You have to much confidence in the American education system
Old, Online, And Fed On Lies: How An Aging Population Will Reshape The Internet
Craig Silverman
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/old-and-online-fake-news-aging-population
Although many older Americans have, like the rest of us, embraced the tools and playthings of the technology industry, a growing body of research shows they have disproportionately fallen prey to the dangers of internet misinformation and risk being further polarized by their online habits. While that matters much to them, it’s also a massive challenge for society given the outsize role older generations play in civic life, and demographic changes that are increasing their power and influence.
Older people are also more likely to vote and to be politically active in other ways, such as making political contributions. They are wealthier and therefore wield tremendous economic power and all of the influence that comes with it. With more and more older people going online, and future 65-plus generations already there, the online behavior of older people, as well as their rising power, is incredibly important — yet often ignored.
Four recent studies found that older Americans are more likely to consume and share false online news than those in other age groups, even when controlling for factors such as partisanship. Other research has found that older Americans have a poor or inaccurate grasp of how algorithms play a role in selecting what information is shown to them on social media, are worse than younger people at differentiating between reported news and opinion, and are less likely to register the brand of a news site they consume information from.
No I don’t! But I do have confidence that younger Americans want better lives and that they are fed up with the status quo on all levels. Furthermore current xenophobic ultra nationalist tendencies notwithstanding the US is not an Island but is part of the planet. The old guard is crumbling and there is no chance that it will survive. Trump, Brexit, Victor Orban and Jair Bolsonaros of the world are just temporary steps backwards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD0UvlWvYX0
‘Why we Need a Green New Deal’ – Rutger Bregman speaking at the Norwegian Nobel Institute
Cheers!
Geoff, you could be right. I think quite a lot depends on who the democratic voters put forward to run.
I know GF has expressed great disdain for the idea, but seems better than putting them where plants would be growing.
Solar on reservoirs- “Siting photovoltaics on water is proving reliable worldwide and the PVs could meet almost 10% of U.S. electricity needs at market-competitive costs, according to NREL.”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/floating-solar-offers-unique-bargains-us-utilities-are-missing-out/551693/
What I’d like to see is this idea taken farther by restoring coastal wetlands for space to put solar panels on. Then, the water itself should be put to work by planting fast-growing biomass (which would absorb CO2) and later harvesting said biomass in order to burn it for energy while capturing the additional carbon released through burning. The captured carbon could be sold off for use in industrial processes.
Henry. You have totally lost me on that one.
I withdraw my support for your position on the planning board.
If you farm wetlands for biomass, you destroy the wetlands.
That’s America, shred nature. After being the poster child for wetland destruction, I hear California is trying to save it’s last bits.
For now and for the fore see able future, there’s simply no way in hell we can capture CO2 at any price that is less than the price of simply burning more coal and or gas…. with maybe the sole exception of using it in relatively minor quantities injected into oil wells, or sold in bottles to welders, etc.
The way to go is outright conservation, electrification, and fuel efficiency, if we must burn anything other than biowaste, for now and as far as the eye can see, in terms public health, national security, the overall economy and the environment.
If carbon capture EVER works, other than simply burying it, it’s going to take a number of breakthru’s in the technology. It ALWAY’S takes a lot more energy to break CO2 bonds than can be recovered by burning the carbon again……. and if it’s GOING to be burned again, then we might as well continue burning gas and good quality coal… we will be way better off, in terms of the energy budget, and in terms of the environment as well, if we put the saved energy to good use.
Anybody who knows the real score knows that collecting and pumping it deep underground is going to cost two or three times as much, for a LONG time to come, as it will cost to simply avoid burning fossil fuels in the first place.
Now as far as GIVING UP burning fossil fuels altogether, I’m in favor of that, in principle…… but as a practical matter, it’s going to cost one hell of a lot of money to get rid of the last small increment of fossil fuel, such as for long range aircraft and some types of machinery that currently employ ICE engines, etc.
It’s hard for me to see putting super duper batteries in big farm tractors that will be sitting around most of the time….. such batteries would be much better utilized in trucks that are used almost every day. I don’t see overbuilding the grid to enable farmers to have their own superchargers, one every few miles out in the boonies. Running a two hundred horsepower tractor takes as much juice as it does to run an eighteen wheeler, loaded. Trucks can back off on level ground and going down hill. There ISN’T any backing off pulling plows, or running a combine. The biggest Tesla car battery out there today wouldn’t run a big modern combine more than maybe twenty or thirty minutes.
We might actually be better off burning a modest amount of fossil fuel, in order to avoid the high marginal cost of going cold turkey, and putting the savings into other environmentally sound projects….. such as buying up privately owned land and adding it to the park system, where it can serve us well providing ecological services that might otherwise be lost.
Environmentalists should be careful about picking line in the sand fights, which they are sure to lose all too often, and negotiate their positions realistically.
I argued some time back that if the NEW pipelines intended to transport tar sands oil to the Gulf Coast weren’t built, the oil would move in old pipelines, and on trains, and that the people of Canada would eventually find the temptation of all that money too much to resist, and build new pipelines themselves, and deliver the oil to their own coastlines…… all of which is happening, or will happen, within the easily foreseeable future.
The environmental camp would have been WAY better off to negotiate and score some good sized tracts of land that could have been put into nature reserves……. permanently, and taking that path might have been enough to actually have put HRC into the White House…… because the R’s beat the living shit out of the D’s, in terms of the perceptions of the working classes of this country, by portraying the D’s as anti work, anti prosperity, as environmental extremists determined to put American workers on welfare.
Whether this argument was true, or just partisan bullshit, did not and will not matter in the future……… WHAT MATTERS is what voters actually BELIEVE.
The working classes believed Trump and the R’s would take better care of them than the D’s would , and this enabled the R’s to win an election that everybody, except the R type true believers, thought the D’s had in the bag.
So sad, so stupid.
Lots of plants grow under water, a plethora of life lives there. They need the sunlight far more than we need the power.
I certainly would not want to see panels floating on environmentally sensitive wetlands but I doubt that is what is happening. I seems these projects are mostly on artificial bodies of water. Not only that but there are ways to grow crops under raised solar panels on land so I’m sure the same can be done on bodies of water. If nothing else I’d like to see some hard data on the biological and ecological effects on phytoplankton and aquatic food webs. Many natural ponds for example are covered with floating vegetation like lily pads that block sunlight. If nothing else we now have transparent solar panels that could be supported by pontoons and still allow sunlight to penetrate the water. These are mostly engineering and design problems with already existing solutions. Having said that I’d certainly like to see more rooftops and parking lots covered first.
https://www.ted.com/talks/marjan_van_aubel_the_beautiful_future_of_solar_power
Marjan van Aubel promotes extreme energy efficiency through intelligent design.
Read the first sentence GF- ‘man-made bodies of water’
We are talking about spots like this-
https://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/san-luis-reservoir
Probably not too many eligible spots in your part of the country [ogdensburg?].
Its not some sort of ecological disaster, like airplanes. Or cutting down a forest for a PV installation, or destroying any kind of habitat for an airport.
Many of these water holding facilities are the same ones being touted as pumped hydro electric storage. Think about that process- its not very friendly for aquatic life either.
Dams have been a massive fish killer in the west for example. The Columbia River salmon and trout run used to be one of most incredibly robust in the world. Now a trace flicker.
All in the name of hydroelectric and irrigation, and flood control.
Pumped hydro storage projects- what they look like
https://www.geiconsultants.com/projects/eagle-mountain-pumped-storage/
http://leapshydro.com/
https://www.sdcwa.org/san-vicente-energy-storage-facility
“Read the first sentence GF- ‘man-made bodies of water’ ”
Of the 110,000 lakes in the US, almost half are “man-made”. Most of those (>98%) are home to many species of life. Aquatic life and semi-aquatic life (fish, insects, birds, plants, mammals are at the tipping point or beyond. )
Sure there are toxic, acidic and alkali polluted waters but the cure for that is not to further abuse them by covering them with mechanisms but to stop polluting them and clean them up. Much of the freshwater life is greatly reduced or absent now because of various industrial/societal pressures. Adding another factor to push them over the tipping points is not a solution for anyone or anything.
I also do not have the naiveté to believe that extensive testing and legal instruments will will be instituted or stop the improper use of new systems. We have a planet full of those exceptions. When the laws get in the way, the laws are changed and exceptions are made.
A society that holds moving electrons as much more important than a living planet is doomed. I don’t expect anyone here to fully understand that, there is far too much techno-hopium and just outright blindered anti-life comments here to believe that.
Sure it is good if we reduce fossil fuel burning and other disastrous habits. PV helps, but it is much better to not need the external energy than to suppose that we should build our new culture just as the one we have now with different energy sources. We should be working even harder to avoid energy use than to substitute it.
Once all the south facing and appropriate roofs and waste areas are covered with PV then time to look hard at why we need more.
BTW hydro pumped facilities are rare and will take decades to build if ever built. Just as I saw that the diesel algae farms that wanted to use up the ponds would be a disaster, I realize now it won’t take much to push the last amphibians over the edge along with many other species.
Around here we are getting rid of the dams, meeting resistance, but they will all go with time and bringing back the full flowing creeks.
You speak of New Jersey, a small place that has 1/3 of it’s land under protection even though it is the most densely populated state. A place where they do not cut down forests to put in a huge amount of PV (sounds mythical to me). Roof tops, parking lots, commericial lawns, abandoned farms, etc. No forests cut.
Solar Installed (MW): 2,732.87
National Ranking: 6th (7th in 2018)
Enough Solar Installed to Power: 450,548 homes
Percentage of State’s Electricity from Solar: 4.17%
Solar Jobs:6,410
Solar Companies in State:591 (86 Manufacturers, 372 Installers/Developers, 133 Others)
Total Solar Investment in State:$9.15 billion
Prices have fallen 47% over the last 5 years
Growth Projection and Ranking: 2,007 MW over the next 5 years (ranks 11th)
Number Of Installations: 99,670
I think you will find that it is agriculture and infrastructure development that has leveled the forests. It is the habit of eating large amounts of meat that has cleared more forest and prairie than anything else.
Now the forests are dying and burning on their own, so we shall see.
I relent. As you insist- The National Renewable Energy Lab is all wrong on their attempt to highlight the potential of floating solar on water storage reservoirs.
And of course this notion applies to pumped hydro storage for electric generation.
Anything else you want to cross off as viable innovations while you are in the mood, have at it.
I’ll stick with my assertion, however, that we should remove all airports as soon as possible.
btw- I brought up NJ in this context just to point out that I don’t think they have many sites that would be appropriate for floating solar. Most of the surface water I know of there is natural lakes, streams and wetlands. I’ve spent plenty of time on the upper Delaware, and the pine barrens. Canoes and inner tubes.
Really. Lots of damned water in NJ.
https://newjersey.hometownlocator.com/features/cultural,class,dam.cfm
I guess, taking a wise and thoughtful approach to changing the environment is not acceptable in the US. It’s Eco-Blitzkrieg all the way and fight it later to no avail. Look what has happened here in the last decade. I must be un-American and anti-MAGA.
Where are all these pumped hydro stations anyway? I know of one.
Yeah, I know, why worry about the last domains for wildlife when most of it has been covered over already? According to the media they are all going extinct anyway, so why be concerned?
I have a horrible attitude. You know, think and check things out before running amok in the world. New concept I know, probably not acceptable. It’s tough being green versus “techno-green”.
Speaking of New Jersey energy storage.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-jersey-sets-aggressive-target-2-gw-by-2030-for-energy-storage/524422/
Little state with big plans. Heaven knows they certainly invented much of the techno-world and keep doing it.
And speaking of subaquatic life without sunlight…
https://dailygalaxy.com/2019/04/blown-away-by-enceladus-only-body-beyond-earth-with-all-requirements-for-life-as-we-know-it/
Blown Away by Enceladus –“Only Body Beyond Earth With All Requirements for Life As We Know It”
The Global Ocean of Enceladus Has Been Heated for Billions of Years –“A Chemical Feast for Microbes”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=s6xl9abYL2k
I’ve been looking at our solar vs our FF energy predicament for awhile. I have a 5 kw array and now drive electric. My array produces around 300 kwhr in January and nearly 700 kwhr in July. Before switching to driving all electric, my highest energy consumption was in January at around 2200 kwhrs leaving a deficit of 1800 kwhrs that has been made up by our local electric utility.
I am assuming that solar and wind will eventually be the mainstays of our energy support base and that NG (maybe “oil” from western Colorado Shale Oils, coal, and nuclear) will be our goto supplemental source fuels for heat and power in the later half of this century and onward.
As FF energy becomes scarcer and more expensive, solar and wind are likely to pick up the slack. If my experience with solar is real for a lot of the rest of us, winter time energy usage is going to need a lot more solar converted electricity per person.
While the emphasis is on battery storage, solar conversion also needs to be addressed with higher efficiencies, and longer lived and more durable panels. For me to be truely “energy independent in January”, I would need to double my array with panels that are 4 times as efficient (~60%) as my current array. My total production would then be around 2400 kwhr; 200 kwhrs over max usage.
This leaves 200+ kwhrs for recharging an EV that uses around 3 miles per kwhr in winter; a 600+ mile range. That’s very doable and around break even.
From February to December, I would be generating an excess. In July, I would be generating around 5600 kwhrs with a need of only around 700 kwhrs. That’s a lot of excess power that could be utilitized for transporation, farming, mining, manufacturing, etc.
Some excess could be stored in Innolith or Honda fluorite batteries if they come to market. What would happen to any overproduction of electricity from solar? Would it be like having a 500 amp-hr battery and drawing just 2 amps? Would the excess damage the local solar and or grid systems? Would we have to cut back on production somehow like pulling back power plant generation when demand slackens? I’m not an electrical type. I’m wondering how you all see it?
How do you manage to use 2200 Kwh in just one month? Do you heat pure electric?
I can’t imagine hitting these numbers otherwise – this is 3 kw continuical usage.
I don’t use that in a year, for 2 persons. But I have gas heating and partly cooking.
I am fully electric (cooking, laundry, bathing, etc.). The 2200 kwhrs was an abnormally cold and fairly cloudy January. Our mildest January usage was 1267 kwhrs.
So most of January usage is heating?
Do you use a heat pump, or even a heat pump combined with geothermal?
Many new modern houses here use this – here electricity is 25 cents. You really don’t want to use that much.
Another collegue has a fully isolated flat (passive house). This winter, not that cold, she had not to heat at all – body warmth and household stuff was enough.
Peter,
Probably air source heat pumps would be good, maybe an induction stovetop would save some energy and also a dryer that condenses or just air dry your clothing, also heat pump water heater would save some electricity.
Also awnings on windows, better insulation and sealing air leaks in house envelopes and air conditioning ducts might be helpful. Generally the average in the US is quite bad, you should be about half the average, perhaps even one third as the average US home is quite inefficient.
Peter. Don’t count on the efficiency of the panels going up much.
To get from 12 to 20% has taken 4 decades and a massive global effort.
Be thrilled if reasonably priced panels get up to high 20’s% efficient.
The key is add more panels, or purchase US Solar Bonds when (if) they become available.
Also, as Eulenspiegel suggested- heat pump.
For example- https://dandelionenergy.com/
Average PV efficiency now is ~18% which is amazing if you think about it. When you get above that in North America you have to jump wire size since NEC derates PV conductors by factors of 156% for no good reason. South of 36 degrees latitude you most likely want lower efficient panels unless you are rooftop Limited. Every 4 panels standard size saves .1 +/-50% Ton of Air Conditioning by shading the roof/ Blocking the Suns IR.
Yipe! That is about 15x my usage!!! It would help us get a perspective on your local climate if you gave a rough location. Sounds like you could do with an efficiency makeover, maybe cheaper than more panels?
NAOM
I’m actually in the fairly benign climate of North Carolina. My utility company says I’m about average for a 2,000 sq ft house.
Your comments have made me shutter to wondering if
Clearly waste more kWh than used. Disconnect any resistive heating to the Air or that runs for more than 30 mins/day. Invest in one of these and let it tell you where the bleeding is.
https://sense.com/
Thanks, doesn’t exactly get cold around there but I am a bit warmer down here in Mexico. Not sure what you mean by “Your comments have made me shutter to wondering if”. Post whatever details you are curious about, there are quite a few here who have experience in energy conservation and you may get some good tips and end up with more money in your pocket – a bonus. Here is one gadget I have found useful
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MWO07T6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
NAOM
You don’t live in California.
San Francisco had the lowest residential electricity usage at 3,791 kWh per year.
My usage, Wales, UK, is 549 kWh per year. Studio apartment.
I live in Germany and use about 4500 KWh per year. 3 people in a townhouse, 156 square meters. I heat with gas.
alimbiquated,
Does the 4500 kWhr include the gas or is that electricity only? Typically in the US we use therms for gas (therm is about 100 cubic feet of natural gas) not sure what the measure is in Germany. Seems cubic meters is the measure there. Note 1 therm is about 2.83 cubic meters. I use about
250 cubic meters of natural gas per year (heat and hot water and stove top) and about 3600 kWhr of electricity before I got the Tesla, haven’t tracked it closely since getting the Tesla, but might be using an extra 300 kWhr per month for charging the Tesla (have travelled about 9000 miles over 6 months, actually it is probably about an extra 400 kWhr per month as the average has been 266 whr per mile so 9000*0.266=2394 kWhr/6 months is 399 kWhr per month.
In fact it is likely to be higher than this as this doesn’t account for charging losses, pre-heating car in winter etc.
Electricity only. I use MUCH more energy by burning gas for heating than electricity, 4:1 I think. The utility gives me the number in KWh on the invoice.
I think a lot of Germans are switching to gas power plants in their basements that provide hot water, electricity and heating to avoid the electricity tax.
Kool—-
I bet mine in Mexico was close to that.
In Micronesia, I lived almost a year without any.
Or running water.
1477kWh for the last year.
NAOM
excess leccy can be used to generate ammonia
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-catalyst-ammonia-fuel.html
the issue maybe one of pollution though when it’s burnt to make power…..
Forbin
Fun to see all the response on personal FF use and efforts to conserve and convert to PV. I think we need to use a common metric: I’ve done about 35 of 50 PV site assessments in the last month and a half and the amount of electricity used is all over the map. I’m amazed how many people immediately start talking about space heating and insulation when the topic is electric use. Most people have no sense of the need, possibilities or opportunities for conservation. Just throw a big PV system at the load. The amount of electric use varies from 5 to 75 kWhr per day.
In my house, we use about 12 to 14 kWhr/day, all handled by a net metered PV system, after years of serious attention and am stuck finding ways to further reduce. Used Chevy Volt and 5 more panels in the near term plan. Details in an upcoming message.
For your consideration, here are the factors that I think are most important:
Climate: location and Heating Degree Days (HDD) which will relate to space heating demands
# of people in the household which mostly affects hot water and electrical use
Size of house and level of insulation = space heating
Space heating: NG, propane, wood or electric. Also type and efficiency of equipment
HWH: ditto
Cooking: gas or electric
Lights: have the fixtures been switched to LEDs?
Major appliances: old refrigerators, washer/dryers, too many freezers, aquariums, hot tubs, stock water heaters, engine block heaters, etc.
Transportation: # of vehicles, average mileage, average miles. Amount of air travel
TPTB made it Law by Code that most USA Homeowners can not install significant Distributed Generation Capacity behind the Meter by limiting interconnection size. This is Malice (or confused government educated bureaucrats ) since these electrons SUBTRACT NOT ADD. It’s common in Countries except the USA to have PV Local Generation Capacity match service capacity. But behold, The Germans to the Rescue with DG Ready Service Panels.
https://www.downloads.siemens.com/download-center/Download.aspx?pos=download&fct=getasset&id1=BTLV_48926
————-
Important to note that by design HA (High Availability) electrical service required for critical Infrastructures and/or Resiliency can not be achieved in Front of the Meter.
Piomass
https://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2019/04/piomas-april-2019.html
Looks like March 21st was the annual maximum
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www.moyhu.org/blog/polview.html
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop.ver1/data/graph/plot_extent_n_v2.csv
At cloud doomsday Earth’s temperature soars 8 degrees C, 14 degrees Fahrenheit. We hope that will never come, but if we go there, that is the end. New science from the lead author, Tapio Schneider at NASA. Then from the Post Carbon Institute, Jason Bradford predicts the tide of humans into cities will reverse. The future is food, and local – and we can prepare now for the end of fossil fuels and continuing climate threats.
https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/04/when-clouds-cannot-continue-the-great-warming.html
Good interviews there. I like Jason Bradford’s recent report from PCI.
Let’s watch what happens in the Arctic. It’s a very cloudy place and is warming fast.
Yeah let’s watch what happens in the Arctic.
Oh, wait, unfortunately we might not have much time left to watch…
https://www.sciencealert.com/carbon-emissions-today-are-vastly-worse-than-earth-s-last-warming-event
Carbon Emissions Are Now 10x Higher Than When The Arctic Had Crocodiles And Palm Trees
On the other hand… Who knows what will happen.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-warp-speed-evolution-is-transforming-ecology/
How Warp-Speed Evolution Is Transforming Ecology
Darwin thought evolution was too slow to change the environment on observable timescales—ecologists are discovering that he was wrong
Hippos in the Thames, crocs in the Arctic, sounds good. Maybe the elephants will move north too.
Oh wow, that’s amazing!
A good listen—-
Yes Survivalist- that segment from the Post-Carbon Institute is outstanding (Jason Bradfords)
Everyone would be smart to listen to it (about half way down the page).
I’m glad you liked the interview. I got his report from PCI and quite like it.
Oh Yeah, I remember Jason from the old TOD days.
Ay, yi yi.
Another person (Bradford) with no imagination about replacing fossil fuels: they aren’t essential for anything, including farming. Urban dwellers aren’t going to be forced back to villages by the lack of natural gas, petrol or coal.
It’s funny how many people who think of themselves as progressive environmentalists are thinking just like old-fashioned oil & gas guys.
EVs are cheaper and have better performance. Wind and solar are cheaper, and don’t kill millions with direct air pollution. Moreover, they’re much more reliable because they’re much more widely distributed: everyone has sunshine, and most have wind.
Liquid fuels are convenient, but…who said fossil fuels are the only source of liquid fuels? And, sure, battery powered combines would be inconvenient, but…more inconvenient than subsistence farming by former city dwellers? Seriously?
Fossil fuel is obsolete – a dead man walking.
It’s funny how many people who think of themselves as progressive environmentalists are thinking just like old-fashioned oil & gas guys.
To be fair, understanding the changes all around us is not something that even people who are aware of them, are really equipped to do.
Nick G- you join Caelan and Fernando on the ignore list- nothing relevant for me. Adios.
He’s a shill for Musk
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitposting
In 50 years your going to see the real cost of burning fossil fuels for energy and they are “a dead man walking”. That’s cold and wrong to put Nick in the same category as those two, who want to live in the past. When Nick is looking at the future.
When he just outrights dumps on someone who is working hard on transition (Post Carbon Inst) with the same old line, I’m just not learning from it. Its between now and 50 yrs that I’m more interested in.
Of course we must move off fossils. But to think we can do overnight, without a massive downsizing first, is silly enough for me to say Adios.
Well, it’s true that you and I strongly disagree!
But, I actually have an informed opinion. If you’re curious about real issues, and want to have a realistic understanding of how things will really happen, you should pay attention to informed people who disagree with you.
In this case: it’s silly to suggest that there will be a massive migration from cities to farms. As Old Farmer Mac has often said, fuel on the farm is dramatically more useful than for most other uses, and farmers will very easily out-bid other consumers. When fuel hits $6/gallon, consumption will fall dramatically in other sectors, especially passenger transportation. When fuel hits $10/gallon farmers will still use it, but other consumers…not so much.
Heck, fuel could hit $20/gallon and you still wouldn’t see a massive migration of urbanites to farms.
No matter how fast peak oil hits, there will be enough fuel for farmers. And 50 years is more, far more, than enough time for tractors to use other fuels, or to electrify, etc., etc., etc.
Now, Climate Change appears to demand that we reduce consumption as quickly as possible. But how would that kind of planned conservation and efficiency demand subsistence farming? It really, really wouldn’t. People will implement a lot of other, far cheaper and more effective solutions before they go back to work on the farm.
“enough for me to say Adios”
Well that will just be your mistake. Five years ago Nick was criticized for advocating the correct future of EV’s.
“without a massive downsizing first”
Actually Hickory, we can walk and chew gum at the same time and that’s how it will happen.
“Overnight” that’s just a cheap attack
“I’m just not learning from it” “It’s funny how many people who think of themselves as progressive environmentalists are thinking just like old-fashioned oil & gas guys”
Maybe Nick’s talking about you Hickory
“he just outrights dumps on someone who is working hard”
Actually, Nick spent 80 % of his comment lying out his opinion and why. He disagrees with the previous poster. Challenge him, don’t attack him.
Yea solar and wind are cheaper and more reliable. So I guess fossil fuel and energy companies using ff must hire semi-retarded people to advise them on how to run their business.
Do you not realise how ridiculous you sound Nick G?
As compared to who ? “Iron Mike”
SolarEV Nick will be eating your lunch in the next decade. It’s called evolution.
Maybe you should be calling yourself Plastic Mike and get current.
Instead of arguing on semantics answer the question? Do you think ff companies are run by retards? Or actual business people who know wtf they are doing?
The most profitable company in 2018 was aramco. A ff company.
Lol “it is called evolution”. I am speechless at that sentence.
Cut the emotion out of the posts and argue on logic. Because judging by your comment you seem really emotional. Calm down
No Mike, I don’t think your retarded. But you do seem a little insecure.
Instead of arguing on semantics answer the question? Do you think ff companies are run by retards? Or actual business people who know wtf they are doing?
IM. no they are run by insider experts who know their businesses inside and out! Which is precisely why they are the least likely of all to see what’s coming!
Kinda like why the business experts at Kodak despite having invented digital camera technology failed to embrace the very technology that led to its downfall!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2012/01/18/how-kodak-failed/#14b3d7866f27
How Kodak Failed
(Update 1-19-2012 — Kodak has filed for bankruptcy protection.)
There are few corporate blunders as staggering as Kodak’s missed opportunities in digital photography, a technology that it invented. This strategic failure was the direct cause of Kodak’s decades-long decline as digital photography destroyed its film-based business model.
A new book by my Devil’s Advocate Group colleague, Vince Barabba, a former Kodak executive, offers insight on the choices that set Kodak on the path to bankruptcy. Barabba’s book, “The Decision Loom: A Design for Interactive Decision-Making in Organizations,” also offers sage advice for how other organizations grappling with disruptive technologies might avoid their own Kodak moments.
Kodak exes were blinded by the light… pun not intended!
So too oil and other fossil fuel business execs need to grapple with the disruptive technologies of wind, solar and battery tech that is about to eat their lunch right out from under their noses!
Cheers!
Totally agree Iron Mike. He is just a wishful thinker/cheerleader.
I go to other places for that stuff. Like out in the forest.
It’s conceivable that we won’t reduce our fossil fuel consumption quickly. It’s certainly possible that a projection that we will do so is wishful thinking – there are certainly a lot of forces opposing such a transition.
Just as tobacco companies fought to protect their profits for so long, so successfully.
But, that’s not what Bradford is talking about, if I understand him correctly. My sense is that he’s saying that peak oil/FF will force urbanites to move to farms. That’s….enormously unrealistic. I’d suggest that’s wishful thinking.
I realize that to an old oil and gas guy, my comment sounds ridiculous. That’s the box that I suggest that you start thinking outside of.
Now, is Aramco enormously profitable? Of course. So are the companies selling opioids. Both industries are selling products that, in their place, are enormously useful and valuable. They’re lifesavers, when used properly. But, they become toxic when over used.
Similarly, tobacco companies were, and are, enormously profitable. Does that mean that we can’t change our mind, as a society, about whether tobacco is really a good thing to consume??
Nick G,
It is not a question of morality and ethics. You stated wind and solar are cheaper, more reliable, and ff is obsolete.
So it is a question of business. These large ff companies know how to operate their business to turn profits. If they see other opportunities which are cheaper and more reliable as you stated, they would start investing heavily and completely change their business structure. But they aren’t so far. So either they are wrong, or you are wrong.
No large corporation is moral i tell you that much. They are in one way or another corrupt and couldn’t give a shit about the environment and the future of humanity. All they are concerned with is making a profit, which they are extremely good at. So i would tend to believe them when it comes to business than you.
It is not a question of morality and ethics.
Not exactly. It’s a question, in part, of pollution and hidden costs. Tobacco carries enormous hidden health costs which are paid by the consumer, not the company. So, the company makes a lot of money and the consumer pays the health cost, and the society pays the healthcare bill.
The same thing is true of fossil fuels, right? FF causes enormous pollution, but the FF company doesn’t have to pay for it.
Iron Mike,
Have you heard of the United States Leather Company? It was one of the original 12 companies in the Dow Average in 1896. My guess is that it was highly profitable in 1896 and was one of the largest companies in the US in 1900, it was liquidated in 1952.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Leather_Company
In 2100, the same may be the case for Exxon Mobil. Note that the US Leather Company became the Central Leather Company in 1909 and went back to its original name in 1927.
United States Leather Company was dropped from the Dow in 1905 and Central Leather was part of the Dow from 1912 to 1923.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_components_of_the_Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average
I believe Nick’s point is that things are likely to change and many fossil fuel companies will fold as fossil fuel gradually gets replaced as an energy source by cheaper alternatives.
Fossil fuels will peak in output and will gradually become more expensive while wind and solar will continue to become cheaper so that fossil fuels will no longer be able to compete.
In 1900 buggy whip production was a booming business along with saddle and buggy manufacture. Not so much the case today.
Dennis,
How are you going to compare companies operating in 21st century with the wealth of knowledge available through the information highway to a 19th century company when the industrial civilization just begun? I cant fathom that comparison. You think Aramco engineers, geologists, business associates etc etc, can’t see the end of oil? Really?
You guys are just grasping at straws and using confirmation bias to prove your point. There is many companies from the early 20th century that are still around also. Shall i use them as examples to confirm my bias?
Bottom line, aramco is a well run company, they have a lot of brains and know what they are doing, more so than a bunch of nobodies commenting on a forum, hence they were the most profitable company in 2018. And they are an energy company which is a primary industry. They know when their reserves will end and or when demand for their product will end, and they will adjust their business model respectively.
Iron Mike,
I argued that FF is obsolete, by which I meant that it has clearly visible shortcomings that mean that it will be replaced, sooner or later. An analogy would be leaded gasoline: as soon as people understood that it was toxic, it was clear that it was going to be replaced. Now, 30 years later there are still a few countries using it (and poisoning their citizens) but even there it’s end is in sight.
If I understood you correctly, you argued that the profitability of a company proves that it’s product is not obsolete. Dennis provided counter examples that showed that this argument is weak – it’s perfectly possible to be enormously profitable, and be out of business pretty soon after. General Motors’ bankruptcy is another pretty good example of that.
Finally, ARAMCO employees know perfectly well that their product’s lifetime is limited. They have said so publicly many times – look at the publicity around the ARAMCO IPO – it’s all about the end of oil. They’re working as hard as possible to transition to solar, petrochemicals (which are not “fuels”); electric vehicles (the KSA sovereign wealth fund just invested a billion dollars in an EV company, and there are other similar EV investments); etc., etc.
Sadly, transitions are very hard. Just look at Porsche, VW, BMW and Benz: they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the EV age by Tesla and the diesel FUBAR. Look at GM – no one working there believed that they would go bankrupt, even a year or two before it happened. And…look at Kodak.
Nick G,
Every source of energy has shortcomings. So do renewables. They aren’t some magical beans solution. They still have to abide by the laws of thermodynamics. FF are basically solar on steroids.
I respectfully disagree with you and Dennis. As i can easily provide counter examples of companies that are still around from the early 20th century. I don’t see Aramco the same way as Kodak. They have minimum debt to cash flow I believe. They have a AAA rating i believe as well. So by what measure would you label a companies success?
Anyways lets agree to disagree. I wouldn’t had even commented on this thread if you never mentioned wind and solar are cheaper and more reliable and ff are obsolete. No joke.
Well, here’s a basic question:
Do you agree that fossil fuels (including oil, gas and coal) generate large amounts of pollution (including green house gases)?
Iron Mike,
Some companies are around and others are not, that is true, Fred gave the example of film, I used to use film cameras, but not any more, that happened relatively recently, you believe business men are smarter today, I do not. Nobody knows what the future will bring. The only thing that never changes is that things never remain the same. You seem to believe that because oil companies are profitable now that this will always be so, I disagree. Oil will become more expensive, demand will fall faster than supply as substitutes become cheaper and oil companies will never believe it can happen, until it does.
Also note that you implied that because a company is profitable that its product cannot become obsolete. Only one example is needed to disprove such an assertion, that’s basic logic my friend.
Note that just because a company is currently profitable does not mean that will always be the case.
Do you ride a horse? Me neither. In 50 years a vehicle with an internal combustion engine will be like a horse, our grandchildren will think they are quaint.
Dennis,
Read what i wrote. I never said their product cannot become obsolete. I said they can project when their product will become obsolete and change their business structure accordingly.
I said i believe they are smart enough to see it coming, you said they don’t, lets agree to disagree.
Iron Mike,
Perhaps they can predict the future, there is a tendency for most businesses to not see the end of their business, typically they do not change to some other business as their expertise is in a single industry, instead the business folds, like Kodak, United States Leather Company, and Sears. Perhaps oil companies have some special attribute that enables them to see the future and adjust their business to fit the times while many other businesses have failed to do so.
From my perspective this seems unlikely.
See
https://learn.stashinvest.com/famous-companies-bankrupt-no-longer-exist
Many Oil companies are likely to shut down as oil production decreases in the future. In fact since 2015 about 167 oil and natural gas producers in North America have filed for bankruptcy. See
http://www.haynesboone.com/-/media/files/energy_bankruptcy_reports/oil_patch_bankruptcy_monitor.ashx?la=en&hash=D2114D98614039A2D2D5A43A61146B13387AA3AE
At some point even the most profitable oil companies are likely to fail as demand for oil wanes and oil prices fall to a level where it is no longer profitable to produce oil on a large scale.
Netflix’s Our Planet Says What Other Nature Series Have Omitted
Ed Yong
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/wildlife-series-finally-addresses-elephant-room/586066/
Repeatedly, unambiguously, and urgently, Our Planet reminds its viewers that the wonders they are witnessing are imperiled by human action. After seeing a pair of mating fossas—a giant, lemur-hunting, Madagascan mongoose—we’re told that the very forests we just saw have since been destroyed. After meeting the endearing orangutans Louie, Eden, and Pluto, we are told that 100 of these apes die every week through human activity. We see Borneo’s jungle transforming into oil-palm monocultures in a time-lapse shot that is almost painful to watch. We’re told that Louie and Eden’s generation could be the last for wild orangutans.
If you muted the series, it would look almost identical to any other wildlife documentary. You could sit back, content and relaxed, gawping at nature’s splendor. But Our Planet seems to have no interest in letting you be contented. Though the film is still entertaining and beautiful, its narration imparts its shots with a more complex emotional flavor. It’s like watching an American drug ad during which a voice-over reads out lists of horrific side effects over footage of frolicking, picnicking families.
Frankly, it’s about time.
Carbon pricing
Unless the United States adopts a carbon price it will never reduce CO2 emissions in time to make a difference.
A carbon price and higher fuel taxes have worked in Europe and particularly well in the United Kingdom.
Most of the electricity that was produced by coal has been replaced by wind power.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb
In the United States coal is in the most part being replaced with gas. The graph below shows how much natural gas consumption has increased in the last 10 years.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=natural_gas_imports
This is good news
https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/04/04/us-coal-exports-reach-five-year-high-in-2018/
In the UK the average car uses half the amount of petrol as a car driven in the US.
All in all US CO2 emissions are disastrous and little is changing.
Agree Hugo.
We could use a simple carbon tax (no cap and trade crap) that was part of an Energy Policy
Revenue would be used to build renewable production, and give low income people grant money for insulation, energy efficiency renovations.
I have to admit to being wrong on some things, often my wife would say. Probably GF too.
Electric air travel may become viable for light loads.
Harbour Air up in BC is switching entirely to electric float planes, with a 1 hr flight time capacity.
They fly 500,000 passengers/yr. Their flights are generally short hops of 30 minutes.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/06/how-maritime-harbour-air-is-switching-over-to-100-electric-seaplanes/
It’s perhaps worth noting that most of the destinations they fly to could also be reached by boat, which I suspect would require less energy than flying.
https://www.harbourair.com/flight-info/flight/locations/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_bfw6Jq84QIVox-tBh1DVAmyEAAYASAFEgIeJ_D_Bw
Electric flight will never be more than a novelty for those residing within the wealthiest economies.
Electric flight will never be more than a novelty for those residing within the wealthiest economies.
That was also the kind of mindset that kept people from imagining transcontinental passenger flights back in the days when Wilbur and Oliver Wright were testing their heavier that air flying machine back at Kitty Hawk.
They made their first flights only a little over a hundred years ago.
Spoken like a true techno-cornucopian in denial. So then, by your rational everything is possible with electric planes because somebody once said people couldn’t fly transcontinental, and then people did. Brilliant Fred, you should teach philosophy of logic.
Enjoy the famine. I’m sure you won’t see it coming.
That’s a pretty twisted way of attributing things to me that I most definitely did not say. All I’m saying is that give the pace of change in our lives it is a very unsafe bet to make prognostications such as:
Electric flight will never be more than a novelty for those residing within the wealthiest economies.
And you base that particular assertion on exactly which philosophy of logic?! Just so we are on the same page!
The odd thing about that comment is that it focuses on the wealthy. One hears concerns about new tech benefiting the wealthy from progressives, but I think it’s really an insidious bit of propaganda which originated from the FF industry: “you liberals hate the poor, but we conservatives want to take care of them(!) with cheap fossil fuels”.
And, it makes no sense here: electric flight is cheaper than ICE flight. So electric aviation won’t be more expensive. The problem is range: carrying enough battery capacity to cover the energy expenditure needed for a desired range.
And…that’s the point I was making above: the alternatives to FF are cheaper and better (with some niche exceptions, like aviation’s range problem). The transition won’t be nearly as painful as some fear. Most of the pain, of course, will be inflicted on FF exporters and those companies (like ones in the car industry) that choose to continue to invest in the old, rather than the new.
It wasn’t intended as a proof, just an illustration to expand your sense of what’s possible.
Oh, is that what it was Nick. You cornucopian techno-optimists are in for a nasty wake-up call when the trends in reality don’t meet up with your hopes for what is a possible future. Too much Hopium; mainlined straight in the jugular.
non sequitur
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy
It seems that perhaps Fred and Nick think long haul electrical powered flight will soon be enjoyed by the poor, cuz it’s gonna be so cheap… just like Tesla’s sarc :/
No Hopium required. No need for Unobtainium.
The tech is here now. It’s affordable, it works…it’s here.
The political trends are the problem. We’re not choosing to reduce our FF consumption as quickly as we need to deal with Climate Change. But peak FF? Nah. that’s not the problem. We have all the energy we need, and it’s cheap and available. We’re not going to be forced back to the farm by peak energy.
Now if we can just stop vandalizing our environment…
It seems that perhaps Fred and Nick think long haul electrical powered flight will soon be enjoyed by the poor, cuz it’s gonna be so cheap… just like Tesla’s sarc :/
I can only speak for myself, and that isn’t even close to what I think. For reference I’ll tell you about having grown up in a developing country where the poor were never going to have access to telecommunications because the price of copper wire to all their homes was way beyond what they could afford. Today all of those people have wireless internet on their smartphones.
Now I don’t make any claims as to pretending to know what the future has in store for our industrial civilization.
I have no idea if humanity has any future at all for that matter. I do know a bit about bioscience, evolutionary history and the current state of our ecosystems and the data tells a rather grim story! Having said that I also know that things are changing very fast.
Up until this point I have tried to give you the benefit of the doubt but you seem hell bent on mischaracterizing everything I say, putting words in my mouth, insulting me personally and being rude and condescending.
So I see no further point in responding to anything you might say from here on out!
Tesla Model 3 standard range about $32,450 until June 30, 2019 when federal tax rebate decreases from 3750 to 1875, on Dec 31, 2019 the tax subsidy decreases to zero. Range 220 miles.
It’s worth mentioning that although airplanes are marvels of modern tech, and supersmart companies send billions designing them, they are not at all close to optimal.
You can see this with the 737MAX debacle, if you are following it. Boeing spent billions designing that airplane, and the result is a very good vehicle, but it is also a kludge — a 1960s designed upgraded for modern world and not quite cutting it.
For example, the Airbus 320 is fly-by-wire, but the 737 still has a mechanical connection to the pilot, despite the weight and complexity of the system. Why? Because Boeing can’t afford a re-design.
Modern airliners are also slower than they were in the 60s, because they use fuel efficient turbofans. The 737 is also too low to the ground, because jet engines were much smaller in the 60s. Boeing screwed up dealing with the 737’s short legs without massively redesigning the plane.
In the 60s everyone expected planes to get bigger and bigger and faster and faster. But the jumbos are dying, with the Airbus 280 now canceled and the 747 only used over water. Hub and spoke is on its way out. Corporate jets are killing first class. Flight times have increased and modern engines don’t work well over Mach 0.85, so forget supersonic flight. It’s more important to be quiet and conserve fuel. Also low speed landings are much less stressful for the air frame.
So what will planes look like in 50 years? It isn’t clear. Current designs invest huge amounts of fuel dragging the tail through the air. Could gimbaled engines replace them? Takeoff is a big problem too, because its requirements are so different to cruising. Will planes become VTOL? Can electric hybrids deal with the issue? Is there any way to deal with the vast expense of jet engine maintenance?
Nobody really knows because no manufacturer or government can afford the vast risk and expense of a radically new airliner design. But the new generation of air taxis and drones may be a path that gets us away from last century’s designs. These designs could start small and go from there. Electric engines are certain to take a bigger role.
Fred
People who invent things do not care if less intelligent people think it cannot be done. They invent anyway.
We all know it is a question of how much power can be stored in an area the size of current aviation fuel tanks. At the moment the batteries required to fly a 737 would not only take up the fuel tank space but the cargo hold and the entire passenger cabin. It would need a huge catapult system similar to an aircraft carrier, because batteries cannot discharge energy quickly enough for takeoff. It would then only be able to fly about 50 miles.
Good article covering some of the problems.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/its-2018-why-arent-there-electric-airplanes-yet
Liquid hydrogen is the only real alternative at the moment
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1109041_why-liquid-hydrogen-may-make-sense-for-airplanes-replacing-jet-fuel
Electric flight is coming soon to corporate jets, and corporate jets are killing first class. But first class is an important source of profit for airlines and the manufacturers of airliners.
As always in capitalism, the question is not one of technical excellence in the sense of 1950s style “bigger faster stronger” ideology. The question is what makes money. Given a choice, passengers prefer slower, quieter machines. Jet engines waste a lot of fuel and are extremely expensive to maintain. Those are two of the biggest issues facing airlines today. Any niches electric planes can fit into will be filled quickly. What is left over will maintain the older designs.
Electric flight is coming soon to corporate jets,…
No, they are not. Electric flight may or may not come to corporate propeller driven flights. But you cannot make a jet with electricity. However I am sure you meant electric flights will replace corporate jets.
But you cannot make a jet with electricity.
Of course you can!
https://lilium.com/
The Lilium Jet
The world’s first electric vertical take-off and landing jet.
https://lilium.com/technology/
Electric Jet Engines
The electric jet engines work like turbofan jet engines in a regular passenger jet. They suck in air, compress it and push it out the back. However, the compressor fan in the front is not turned by a gas turbine, but by a high performance electric motor. Therefore, they run much quieter and completely emission-free.
Perhaps people just don’t understand how jets work? Hint: squid are jet powered… No fossil fuels required!
Note: due to recent attacks on me personally and being called a techno cornucopian I was going to add a disclaimer about my views but I decided that if people don’t already know my views and are going to twist everything I say then it’s not worth the effort and I really don’t give all that much of a fuck what people do or do not think about me.
Bottom line there is nothing in physics that says you can’t have a electric powered jet!
Note that this vehicle is VTOL has no tail, because it can point its engines where it wants them, like a rocket. It uses less energy than a conventional plane.
Zunum has a more conventional design.
https://zunum.aero/
But it will be a hybrid, not completely electric.
EDIT: It’s interesting that Zunum says its key advantage is that it is quiet, allowing it to land where conventional planes cannot. Even if it flies more slowly than a conventional plane, it can win by cutting time on the ground.
You are not wrong, Hickory! None of us can possibly hope to keep up with the current blistering rates of change. What may have been unimaginable even a few years ago, is now reality. And that rate of change is occurring simultaneously across hundreds of different technological fronts!
What leaps out to me are two things. One, the specs and efficiency of the electric motors.
https://www.magnix.aero/products/
And two, In terms of economy, the cost is the same as upgrading to a turbine engine. The benefit is that electric motors don’t need to be rebuilt every 2,500 to 3,000 hours. Maintenance is much lower.
The article says magnix provides a full package, motors and battery pack but their website gives no information about the battery packs. I would like to know more about that.
At the end of the day these planes are still retrofits and I assume that what happened with the automotive industry is bound to happen with aviation as well. The legacy manufacturers are out competed by start ups that design completely new products from the ground up.
In any case, all electric flight is already here today!
Good points Fred. What surprises me about it is that the weight of the batteries does not torpedo the project entirely.
Which is precisely why I’d like to know more about the batteries they are using.
In other news, given that this is, after all a peak oil site… 😉
https://www.treehugger.com/fossil-fuels/remember-peak-oil-its-back.html
It seems that the biggest Saudi field is losing its punch.
Years ago we used to talk a lot about peak oil, the prediction made by M. King Hubbert that the easy oil was going to run out, that it was going to get harder and harder to find the stuff, and it was going to get more and more expensive to get out of the ground. Hubbert wrote in 1948: “How soon the decline may set in is not possible to say, Nevertheless the higher the peak to which the production curve rises, the sooner and sharper will be the decline.”
But according to Eric Reguly, writing in the Globe and Mail, there is trouble ahead, because that prediction about Saudi oil may not be that far off. He writes that the giant Ghawar field used to produce ten percent of the world’s oil, five million barrels a day.
In fact, Ghawar is not as resilient as we were led to believe. We just found out that its output has fallen substantially since Aramco previously came clean on its reserves and production. If Ghawar is losing momentum fast, peak oil – remember that theory? – might be closer than we had thought. And Ghawar is just one of dozens of enormous conventional-oil reservoirs scattered around the planet that are in various stages of decline.
Those include the North Sea, Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, and Reguly reminds us that Mexico’s Cantarell reservoir used to supply 2.1 million barrels a day and is now down to 135,000.
Yet we are pedal to the metal with growing the fossil fuel based global economy!
More cars, trucks, planes, ships, factories, airports, roads, with more people and fossil fuel based agriculture. What could possibly go wrong, eh?!
Fred asked “What could possibly go wrong, eh?!”
As weather chaos increases exponentially, as food and water sources deplete, the redistribution of wealth will occur not through aid but through migration and death. Civilization will spasm violently.
The “protectors” will soon run out of energy and ammunition and the scavengers will have at the leftovers.
The structure of techno-industrial civilization is built upon little resilience. It is dependent upon a very stretched out linked system that fails upon disabling a few links. Also, the capital system supporting high tech industrial will break down as weather chaos and social chaos eats away at it faster than the system can repair itself or more likely, wants to repair itself.
The entire system is based on bleeding and never healing. It must constantly bleed the earth for stored energy in an ever faster way to keep up with it’s own results, but of course does not keep up. The blood runs out. The results will be catastrophic failure, similar to running an internal combustion engine past it’s redline.
In order to feed, cloth, house, transport and pacify the very beings that the system keeps producing in ever greater numbers it must not only increase but become cheaper and more efficient at it’s endeavors as well as show “growth and progress”. An impossible system with a very definite ending.
Lucky for us, the very stress we have put on the environment will crash the ecosystems enough to end this dangerous hamster wheel-red queen civilization system we have produced.
To reverse the tragedy of the commons (“”That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common.”) we must care for the world, the environment, the life on this planet and in the end ourselves. There can be no compromise on this so it is not political.
Sound impossible at this point?
To those who wish to call me a techno cornucopian because I sometimes report on technological change and disruption to our current system, the truth is I’m much more on the same page as George Mobus from https://questioneverything.typepad.com/
I think this comment by GF, is very much in the same vein.
To be clear whatever happens I am 100% sure that our current system is doomed. However it does not automatically follow that all of humanity will go extinct and that there will be no new systems or that humans will not scavenge the remains of the old system and continue being tool makers and create new systems and self organize into radically different organizations. I have some hope that the ones who make it through the next extinction event bottleneck will have evolved something that George calls eusapience. I also agree with Tyler Volk’s ideas about something that he calls combogenesis.
According to Volk’s combogenesis theory, nationalism and populism a la Trump, Brexit, etc… are expected reactions to transitioning to the next level. Furthermore arguing that, say, renewables will never be able to sustain us at our current lifestyles and that we will all become poorer totally misses the point. Which is that most of might end up dead and therefore the point is moot but more importantly it assumes that our current lifestyles are fantastic and that everyone in the world would be better off if they lived like us. And that my friends, is pretty much a lie that we have been sold!
Geoff Riley’s comment up thread is a good example of the mass delusion!
As long as the economy remains strong like now, Trump is headed for a reelection. He will probably lose the popular vote again, possibly by an even bigger margin, but the electoral college math is easily there for him to win.
The transpolar drift is faltering—sea ice is now melting before it can leave the nursery
https://m.phys.org/news/2019-04-transpolar-drift-falteringsea-ice-nursery.html
Water warms 80 times faster than ice.
Spring Arrives in the Arctic
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2019/04/spring-arrives-in-the-arctic/
Any thoughts on the Innolith battery? I know battery breakthroughs are a dime a dozen in the lab but this one is actually in the field being tested and it’s from a Swiss company, not known for their hyperbole. 4x increase in density/lowering of price in 3-5 years. Works off a lithium ion set-up.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/04/swiss-startup-innolith-claims-1000-wh-kg-battery-breakthrough/
Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion Coming Soon
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-03/battery-reality-there-s-nothing-better-than-lithium-ion-coming-soon
It has been quite a while–
Japanese in the early 1990’s to commercialize.
To be fair Li-ion technology has come a long way since the 1990s
https://www.tdworld.com/energy-storage/evolution-li-ion-batteries-garage-grid
Hi Thomas, Innolith’s innovation works within the existing Li ion paradigm, as far as I can tell. So all the sunk costs in factories are not a factor re: this particular advance (assuming it’s legit).
When it comes to battery chemistry, and prospects, it certainly seems that most people have no leg to stand on when trying to evaluate the up and comers.
I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that a substantial improvement will surface from somewhere over the next 5 yrs.
Maybe this is just hope speaking, but a serious global effort is underway.
[“Jean-Marc told us:
“I don’t believe a single second that we are going to keep the standard of living that we have today on Earth, with seven billion people, and just renewables. You can just forget that. It will never happen. Never. We can live only with renewables with five hundred million people, and the standard of living two centuries ago..”]
I agree wholeheartedly with the gist of this statement. A few points- we are now at 7.7 B (10% higher than stated), and maybe he is pessimistic with the projection of 500 million. It may be double that.
Regardless, those that think we can do some quick switch away from fossil fuels are delusional about this. I understand the desire for the delusion, the reality is too painful to wrap ones mind around.
How do we downsize billions of humans in a mere few decades?, without tearing ourselves to bits and pieces. There is only one way from an energetic standpoint to accomplish that, and it is to keep using fossils for decades (if they last), since we have started so late and slow on the replacement project, and we haven’t even started to downsize.
At current rates of growth and projection, an additional 1 billion people will be alive in 15-16 yrs from now.
It seems to me that the only way we will put the emergency breaks on will be extreme circumstances. Poverty so severe that children don’t survive at high rates. That elderly don’t survive at high rates. That the young and fit are fighting with each other for control of roots of prosperity.
Its a tragic recipe of circumstances, and this doesn’t even take into account the destruction of the biosphere that is in full swing.
Thats how it looks to me, in a snapshot.
Please tell me how I’ve got it all wrong.
Couldn’t agree more with you Hickory.
Well, you haven’t really given the basis for that idea. I’d say that looks like an idea based on the situation we faced oh, around 1980. At that point, it was vaguely reasonable to think that biomass was the only renewable resource – the LTG scenarios were based on that idea.
Now, of course, we know that wind and solar are more than viable. Humans generate about 12-20 terawatts of energy, and solar insolation drops about 100,000 terawatts continually on the Earth. There’s more than enough energy to support however many humans we might have.
Now, if we destroy our environment, all bets are off. But…that’ s not limits to growth, that’s just…vandalism. Unnecessary destruction of our environment via pollution, systematic extinction and casual habitat destruction.
Your question appears to be about the long term. If you’re asking about the short term, the primary answer is that very roughly 50% of human energy consumption is unnecessary (or if not unnecessary, very low value), even in the very short term. Think single passenger SUVs, trucks and container ships at unnecessarily high speeds, bad thermostat settings, i incandescent lights, etc. That consumption can be eliminated pretty quickly, in order to get through a bottleneck kind of transition.
“Its a tragic recipe of circumstances, and this doesn’t even take into account the destruction of the biosphere that is in full swing.
That’s how it looks to me, in a snapshot.
Please tell me how I’ve got it all wrong.”
You don’t have it all wrong,Hickory.
People like Ron owned the doomer argument, up until ten years or so back. I was one with them, utterly convinced that everything I had ever or ever would learn about biology and the big picture allowed no other conclusion…… and that after spending a life time reading history and science.
But a few years back I was finally able to convince myself that renewable energy plus improving efficiency plus changes in our collective lifestyle, meaning giving up our WASTEFUL energy hog ways just MIGHT make it possible for SOME OF US to continue to enjoy a life wherein there’s food in stores, doctors in hospitals, kids in schools, and heat in houses in the winter, indefinitely.
The way I see things now is that the various countries of the world are like a fleet of old rotten wooden sailing ships at sea in a class five hurricane. Some of them, meaning some of us naked apes, may make it to port. Most or maybe all of them, maybe all of us will perish in the overshoot storm, in terms of industrial civilization, but a few lifeboats with a few people WILL make port, for dead sure. Humanity isn’t going extinct anytime soon, although we may indeed have to go back to the lifestyles of previous centuries.
The biggest hole in the doomer argument is that it presumes that the entire global economy and the entire global ecostructure will crash beyond hope of ever flying again.
But the Earth is after all a hell of a big place, with lots of oceans and mountain ranges and deserts separating various countries, and the old farmer perspective leads me to believe that the coming crash is far more likely to arrive piece meal than globally and within a short time frame.
Cows are dying in some places because of drought, and in others because of floods, but some farmers have always been able to save some cows, lol, and some farmers have never lost a single cow to either drought or flood.
Most of humanity, barring extraordinarily good luck, is going to live hard and die hard as the result of overshoot.
But look at the global map, and at the countries that are in the WORST shape, in terms of resources and overpopulation, and there’s simply no way you can argue that these countries are DEFINITELY going to bring down the rest of the world with them.
Indonesia, Haiti, Africa collectively, cannot invade the rest of the world. The people in such places are going to die back, collectively, but not simultaneously. There’s no good reason to believe that they will all hit the wall over the space of just a very few years. Such countries aren’t able to make war on the rest of the world, and the PEOPLE of such countries aren’t physically capable of emigrating to other richer still ( temporarily at least) viable countries in the face of the barriers that will be erected to stop them, once the shit is TRULY in the fan, once people start arriving not by the thousands but by the millions.
I really do hate to sound like TRUMPSTER, as my indispensable and treasured helper HB so fondly refers to me, but anybody who thinks the people of ANY country anywhere in the world are going to accept refugees in such numbers is a blooming idiot.
Fences and moats WILL be built, the guns WILL be manned, and the soldiers manning the guns WILL shoot to kill. Naval gunboats WILL sink refugee ships entering territorial waters….and each ship need be sunk only once. Anybody who has ever read history MUST understand the truth of this incredibly bleak picture.
There are only a few countries with the ability to wage war in the conventional sense more than a few miles beyond their borders. India, China, Pakistan, etc, could nuke other countries, and invade NEARBY neighbors, but these countries are NOT capable of invading other countries far away, putting boots on the ground….. ESPECIALLY countries such as Russia, or any Western European country, or the Americas.
There’s no GUARANTEE, but the overpopulation problem is probably going to solve itself IN PLACE, in places all over the world.
The richer countries, ones such as Canada, Russia, the USA, those of Western Europe, Brazil, etc, have enough resources in relation to their populations to weather the storm…….. with GOOD LUCK and good leadership.
We KNOW now that we can live very well on one fourth of the energy we use per capita here in the USA. We KNOW that educated women ( and men as well) aren’t interested in having more than one or two children, and birth control is INCREDIBLY cheap, if the decision to make it freely available is once made, politically.
We KNOW that once population peaks and starts declining, peacefully, in countries such as the USA, Italy, etc, that we have roads enough, masonry and steel buildings enough, an existing electrical grid big enough, etc, that we need not ever enlarge on this sort of infrastructure, we need only to maintain such of it as we need. We will gradually come to need less of this stuff as our populations gradually decline, in countries that manage to turn the corner…. IF any countries actually succeed in doing so.
We KNOW that we can give up living in places without water, or places it goes to fifty below in the winter for months on end, and move to places that are better suited to low energy lifestyles, as the population gradually declines. The younger people have been abandoning these less favorable places for generations already, excepting some sun belt cities.
We KNOW that it’s possible to give up fossil fuel electrical generation, and we KNOW that a patch of desert ground only a hundred miles by a hundred miles is ample to provide the entire USA with solar power. We KNOW how to build HVDC transmission lines, and we KNOW how to build super energy efficient houses that actually use less energy than is produced ON THE PREMISES. We KNOW that we will soon know how to build super safe self driving cars powered by the wind and the sun that will make the ownership of a personal car unnecessary even for people who depend on cars to get from home to work.
We KNOW that we can, if we must, live on only a rather minor fraction of our current gross agricultural output in countries such as the USA, and be the healthier for doing so, simply by cutting way back on red meat and such.
The real question is whether we will put all this knowledge to use, or whether we will continue on our current reckless path, and suddenly realize it’s too late to turn the overshoot corner in countries such as our own USA, Canada, Western Europe collectively.
A lifetime spent on a random walk thru the literature of the world has left me utterly convinced that our best and probably our only real collective hope is that Mother Nature and ill tempered, mean and aggressive men bust us upside our collective head with enough sharp chunks of WAKE UP BRICK to get our collective attention before it’s TOO LATE.
Some of the regulars here ,such as GF, argue that such WAKE UP events are already commonplace……… and he’s right…… in that the handful of people who are already awake understand the game and the score, and how far behind we are in terms of winning …. of surviving.
But such events are still NOT EVEN CLOSE to common enough to get the attention of the large majority of us naked apes.
Suppose we get our WAKE UP here in the USA, and we undertake public works projects on the scale at which we are collectively capable of doing so………
Building a nation wide system of HVDC transmission lines wouldn’t cost peanuts, compared to the cost of building the interstate highway system. Changing the tax laws to allow a tax credit or subsidy for ANYBODY who purchases a new pure electric car, and putting an escalating gas guzzler tax on new vehicles is not out of the question…. one the people of the country know the score.
Teaching the boys and girls ( who will ALWAYS be the boss of the family, in reality) in high school that feeding their own babies to be lots of red meat will cause them to grow up to have serious health issues is not an impossibility.
My farmhouse, built primarily out of masonry block (cinderblock) with a baked on enamal steel roof will last centuries at least, barring fire, if well maintained. Most of my furniture is APPRECIATING in value from year to year, and will likewise last centuries, barring fire.
Sustainability is NOT an impossibility…… not anymore, not with the progress that has been and will be made in the fields of renewable energy, energy efficiency, conservation, etc.
OFM said : “But the Earth is after all a hell of a big place, with lots of oceans and mountain ranges and deserts separating various countries, and the old farmer perspective leads me to believe that the coming crash is far more likely to arrive piece meal than globally and within a short time frame.
Cows are dying in some places because of drought, and in others because of floods, but some farmers have always been able to save some cows, lol, and some farmers have never lost a single cow to either drought or flood. ”
From the information I have been gathering, even in some advanced areas, the rate of healing is now slower than the rate of damage. It is only a matter of time, not long, when the rate of loss generally exceeds the rate of repair and then civilization will shatter and retreat. There are some indicators now that show a retreat from global civilization to more regional ones.
Also, the healing (repair of damage) is often incomplete and of lower quality than was previously enjoyed. Threadbare comes to mind.
“so fondly refers to me”
Make sure you put that in your book in my chapter
Its a tragic recipe of circumstances, and this doesn’t even take into account the destruction of the biosphere that is in full swing.
Yep, all the rest of this is noise, to occupy the delusional, as they avoid the subject.
Hickory,
I disagree that we can’t live without the current energy industry. In fact, I strongly suspect that the industry mostly lives for its own profit and contributes little to society or the economy. All cheap energy does in a developed economy is promote waste. We needed the energy industry a century ago, and poor countries still often suffer from energy poverty, but in rich countries it is mostly flagrant waste. This waste isn’t just in our daily habits, it is baked into the design of almost every machine and building we have.
The role of renewables in this story is that they are profit killers. They will destroy any profits made by selling fuel or generating electricity. This will be the downfall of the energy business. The age of oilmen in solid gold Roll-Royce motorcars is ending. It doesn’t matter that solar doesn’t work at night. Your fossil fuel business will still go down the tubes.
This will lead to a shift in he industry from production to storage, transport and conservation. We have the technology to massively reduce consumption, and now the incentive is there as well.
Seriously, you must have wondered at least once why people waste so much energy. The answer is not that they are stupid and lazy. The answer is that producing and selling energy is extremely profitable, so there is a lot of incentive for waste. For example, countries that produce oil end to use it inefficiently. When the profit disappears, the waste will disappear as well.
Alim… “I disagree that we can’t live without the current energy industry.”
Sure, we can live without as much energy. Much much less. I spend no time worrying about extinction.
But I don’t think for a minute that nearly so many billions can be sustained without the big fossil fuel Carbon pulse we are gorging on .
The bottleneck will be very painful to humanity.
People who have been through hell- like African slaves, Jews of Europe, Indigenous people of all over, know these things more than most.
We have overshot. Its simple as that.
There is no long line of people volunteering for downsizing.
Bingo!
We have a winner.
“those that think we can do some quick switch away from fossil fuels are delusional about this”
90% reduction within 30 to 40 years
90% reduction within 30 to 40 years
That is an interesting projection, and I think its reasonable enough to consider. If we get that far into FF reduction, most of the falloff in consumption will happen in the last 10 yrs of that period, I assert.
Lets assume you are dead on (sorry to use that terminology) with the projection. How do we get there, from here.
If the path was extremely gradual, lets say 2.5% reduction per year, I think the global economy could adjust reasonably well. If countries behave themselves that is. Some nations will collapse, The petro states for example. Russian economy will be in severe trouble at some point on this path, for example. Perhaps some countries that have poor prospects without fossil fuel will deconstruct. For example, how does S. Korea come up with all the energy to keep their heavily industrialized and overpopulated economy going. Will they lead the world in organized downsizing?
Regardless. a 40 yr period is enough time for a motivated humanity to begin serious downsizing and escalate deployment of modern technologies of energy production and consumption. This slow, steady, highly motivated, and disciplined path to downsizing is the best path we could to find ourselves on. Lets not be self-deluding about it however- it will be tragic for for a huge number of people, and the environment.
And when will people start to collectively wrap their mind around downsizing? We have not even approached the embryonic stage of that process.
And then there are all sorts of scenarios for that 40 yr period that far from smooth, in fact severely chaotic. Lurching episodes of shortage in various parts of the world. Violent reactions to loss of security and prosperity. Migrations, depression, food disruption… all sorts of possibilities to economic disruptions.
What are the symptoms we should expect to see in early downsizing scenarios.
It ranges from ‘simple’ things like pension funds and social programs of medical funding failing due to lack of funding and poor performance of the investments in a stagnating economy. [mostof the developed countries are already in poor shape in this regard]. Another is protectionism- from policies of tariffs and brexit, to white nationalism movements, to the development of walls. Keep in my that walls aren’t just physical barriers, They are also walls to keep out ‘havenots’ or ‘non-believers’- and the information that defines who you are is already in full catalog.
There is a lot more to say here. But someone can pick up the ball if they wish.
One more comment on this this- some may say we don’t need to downsize. We will come up with enough energy, enough food, enough artificial soil. enough geoengineering, enough metrosexuals/asexuals, enough true believers who will follow their big hat leader.
Well, I don’t buy into this line of thinking for even a minute.
For one reason or another, We need to begin serious downsizing pronto, if we are to have even a slim chance of a smooth scenario.
“How do we get there, from here”
For starters, the internal combustion engine needs to be regulated out of existence. Everything needs to be converted to electric. 2030 needs to be the end of production of light weight vehicle ice and 2035 for heavy vehicles. The electrical grid needs to be co2 free. Which means a few days of current production of energy storage, solar panels on every roof that is attached to the grid and cheap battery production. Water and space heating needs to be converted to solar. All new structures need to be energy net positive.
If your downsizing means the reduction of globe population, I agree. The first thing that needs to be done is to stop destroying more virgin land for addition population. Building up should be the only direction of new construction with little exception. By the way, Trump make it official over the weekend the U.S. is full. So when is he going to tell his tribe who are anti birth control, no more children ?
More and more states are passing laws making it illegal to enact bans on plastic bags. The states in red plus now also Tennessee don’t allow plastic bag bans, fees, or taxes to reduce plastic bag use. However this could be a good thing.
States with Enacted Plastic Bag Legislation
Your cotton tote is pretty much the worst replacement for a plastic bag
By Zoë Schlanger
https://qz.com/1585027/when-it-comes-to-climate-change-cotton-totes-might-be-worse-than-plastic/
To understand the impact of reusable bags on the environment, one has to hold two very different things in mind. One: Plastic bags do not biodegrade and are stuffing the oceans, marine life, and our food supply with plastic bits. Two: Considering all the other environmental impacts besides litter, a cotton tote or a paper bag may be worse for the environment than a plastic one.
In a 2018 life-cycle assessment, Denmark’s ministry of environment and food agreed with previous similar studies, finding that classic plastic shopping bags have the least environmental impact. This assessment does not take marine litter into account—so as far as that gigantic problem is concerned, plastics are almost certainly the worst, since they don’t break down on a timescale meaningful to human or animal life.
But when taking into account other factors, like the impact of manufacturing on climate change, ozone depletion, water use, air pollution, and human toxicity, those classic, plastic shopping bags are actually the most benign of the current common options.
Such an analysis as this one about plastic versus cotton is always a bullshit analysis, because it always depends on the assumptions made in formulating it.
I buy groceries in plastic bags, and throw away a zillion of them over the course of a decade.
I wear shirts, pants, and underwear made out of cotton. DITTO hundreds of millions of other people, billions of other people.
The MINUSCULE amount of cotton needed to make a grocery tote for EVERYBODY is so small it can’t even be computed, in any meaningful way, compared to the quantity of cotton used for clothing….. meaning in practical terms, the pro plastic bag argument is nothing but pure sloppy fresh over the boot tops bullshit.
Now JUST in case I might be wrong, lol, then the REASONABLE thing to do, in terms of the environment, would be to make a more or less “lasts forever” grocery tote out of nice thick woven PLASTIC, lol.
“Now JUST in case I might be wrong, lol, then the REASONABLE thing to do, in terms of the environment, would be to make a more or less “lasts forever” grocery tote out of nice thick woven PLASTIC, lol”
Being that I come from one of the two blue states on the map that has outlawed disposable plastic bags. I can speak from a voice of experience. It’s really not about the fact that they are made of plastic, but they are so light in weight that they get away from the user after they are empty. Any kind of wind will pick them up and blow them into the environment. They were everywhere. Since the enacted of the plastic bag legislation, I have seen a noticeable reduction of trash litter at the beaches, parks and most of all the ocean.
Now when one shops at the grocery store and you don’t bring your own reusable shopping bag. Most of the stores offer to sell you a heavy duty reusable plastic bag for 10 cents.
This is all about convenience vs. one small step in saving the environment
… aaannd, in the Law of Unintended Consequences Department, when San Diego banned plastic bags a few years back, hepatitis A rates skyrocketed amongst the homeless population.
Although seldom mentioned in official reports, the dearth of containers (plastic bags) with which the homeless would put their fecal matter is suspected to have played a major role in this epidemic.
Now lets be honest with our self here. That’s a homeless problem, not a plastic bag problem.
Bingo. Considering the number of homeless in the city, it is criminal that there are no public hygiene facilities.
Talk about a strawman argument! That’s a problem that is a consequence of a society that values the capitalist profits of the few over over the basic necessities of society at large.
It is even more criminal that we have homelessness at all!
That’s right Fred, we need to bring them up the economic ladder a bit so the MAGA magnates can suck the blood out of them on a monthly basis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCC8fPQOaxU
Hey maybe the homeless could just fling their feces right in the faces of people like Warren Buffet!
Might be fun to watch…
Makes a man want to pretend to be homeless.
The obvious question is why wern’t facilities provided before? The problem existed before so why was nothing done?
NAOM
NAOM/Fred
I hesitate to enter into any discussion regarding homelessness.
Not because I am unfamiliar with the subject.
Quite the contrary, in fact.
For over 20 years I have worked in Ground Zero for American Homelessness – San Francisco – and closely interacted with over a dozen homeless shelters and various private and governmental agencies whose primary functions are to ameliorate the plight of this population.
It is a beyond extraordinarily difficult task for myriad reasons.
“… why weren’t facilities provided before?” is a logical question.
The answer is that there were and are numerous facilities all over town, most notably, perhaps, the beautiful kiosks up and down Market street (Google THAT topic for a surprising education).
A distressing, fundamental issue is that helping down and out folks invariably attracts a larger cohort of disadvantaged which leads to a greater strain on resources by well intentioned people.
This growing – localized – situation quickly spirals downward when neighboring entities such as businesses, school bound children, just anybody in the vicinity confronts feces, needles, urine stench, used toilet paper, trash as a ‘new normal’ in their lives.
To protest these conditions invites the opprobrium of NIMBYism as an upscale neighborhood on the Embarcadero is now experiencing.
A renowned religious facility allowed its covered entranceway to be utilized for nocturnal shelter for a small cohort for months.
When the morning ritual of hosing down the nightly ‘deposits’ of feces/urine became overwhelming, a small sprinkler system was intermittently activated to discourage the transients.
For this high egregiousness, the religious institution was harshly excoriated for its ‘uncharitable’ behavior.
A few weeks ago I pulled into a highway rest stop outside the city at mid night.
The parking lot was 100% full of – seemingly – Mobile Homeless (aka living in their vehicles) who congregate nearby rest rooms.
These are the heart breaking realities of a growing segment of US society that might better be served with a larger amount of cooperative spirit that seems so lacking in this hyper politicized age.
These are the heart breaking realities of a growing segment of US society that might better be served with a larger amount of cooperative spirit that seems so lacking in this hyper politicized age.
On this point I think we are in complete agreement!
However especially in San Francisco, all of the issues you discuss in your comment are exacerbated by the extremes of a corporate capitalist system that is completely broken.
I recommend this book or watch his talk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EnmH95016w
Douglas Rushkoff: “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus” | Talks at Google
People don’t realize that 40 percent of the American population are struggling financially, headed toward foreclosure, eviction, living with relatives and friends or eventually homeless or dead. Not to mention not being able to afford medical care or proper food.
Meanwhile the MAGA magnates suck the blood out of more of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCC8fPQOaxU&t=2s
People don’t realize that there have been about 20 million foreclosures in the last 14 years and who knows how many people have been kicked out of rental units.
That is like tossing out the whole population of New York state out of homes.
A New York Times article talks of 83 million eviction records from 2000 to 2018, apparently referring to rental units. That might involve several people per eviction notice.
Agreed, there is no simple answer, the whole solution stack needs to be fixed starting with making sure people get paid a living wage and affordable housing is available without the fear of eviction. Unfortunately that smacks of – horror – socialism! We have a transient population here but it is different being mostly drug users, crazies and drunks but accommodation can be found for those who are on low wages. For anyone visiting our local hotels you might not realise that the smartly dressed receptionist in your 5 star hotel is paying about 1500MXN per month to live in a single room apartment.
NAOM
$80 per month sounds cheap, but what would her wages be?
Minimum wage is abot 89MXN per DAY! She would be doing better than that but, for example, a cook (the head not assistant) in a street lunch cafe might get about 1500MXN per week. I don’t know what the police are paid now, as it has gone up, but a few years ago it was about 3000-3500MXN per fortnight. Her wages would not be much higher, if at all. One compensation might be being able to pick up a meal in the staff canteen, depends on resort, but they are not terribly exciting, pretty basic. If you vacation in Mexico I suggest asking workers what they get paid, I am sure you will get a few surprises.
NAOM
EDIT to add
Many are paying about 1/4 of their wages for rented space to live.
I have been using fiber reinforced plastic shopping bags with synthetic webbing handles for over a decade now. Purchased from the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. They are just starting to show signs of wear, the threads (appear to be cotton) are starting to come loose now. Will take a minor amount of sewing to repair them, the reinforced plastic is still quite good.
Made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled material. The bag material is fully intact and when that goes the straps can be re-used elsewhere.
A&P’s Reusable Bags Benefit Foundation
https://progressivegrocer.com/aps-reusable-bags-benefit-foundation
More and more states are passing laws making it illegal to enact bans on plastic bags. The states in red plus now also Tennessee don’t allow plastic bag bans, fees, or taxes to reduce plastic bag use. However this could be a good thing.
Doesn’t matter! Plastic like fossil fuels are not only unnecessary they are uneconomic in the long run.
Petroleum based polymer plastics are obsolete! Biopolymers produced by genetically engineered yeast then 3D printed locally and reused locally are the future. There won’t be any waste stream to worry about because the waste is reused as a resource and even if some of it gets into the ecosystems, nature has a couple billion years of R&D that says it can deal with that waste, unlike plastics. Legislating against plastic bans is laughable!
Here we need plastic bags to put out rubbish. If plastic bags were banned from checkouts I would need to buy bags to put out the rubbish. However, I do try and avoid getting more bags than I need and sometimes have to empty out excess bags filled by the packers – then give them back!
The problem goes much deeper though. I watched a deliveryman putting plastic bottles of flavoured sugar water on the shelves. Double whammy, bottles that will just go to landfill plus they were in plastic wraps of 6 bottles, heavy duty plastic. More for the landfill. While that wrapping could easily be sent back up the chain for recycling it will not. It could be replaced by reuseable crates. I am seeing this more and more, plastic bags at the checkouts are just the tip of the iceberg.
NAOM
Here we need plastic bags to put out rubbish. If plastic bags were banned from checkouts I would need to buy bags to put out the rubbish.
Plastic and plastic bags are not the problem. The problem is that they are made from petroleum based polymers which do not break down in the environment.
If the bags are made from biopolymer plastics that doesn’t happen!
I wish I could post the video showing off the concepts behind a startup I’m working with. The idea is to change the mindset that petrochemical based plastics are necessary at all! And also to redefine the idea of what we think of as disposable.
We need to put an end to the take-make-waste extractive industrial model which we currently have.
Yup, plastic bags are very useful when selecting fruit, veg and meats for hygienic reasons. Keeps both the food and whatever you put it in (backpack, fridge etc) clean. Switching to non-oil based bags is a must. I plead that whoever does this will think the whole path through. I am fed up with bags and containers that degrade on reuse! Plastic yoghurt carton I was storing nails in disintegrated when picking it up, shards of plastic and nails everywhere. A reusable tote bag turned to dust when I tried to pick it up – who the blazes makes a reusable bag out of degradable material?!?!? There is also the need to look at the whole supply chain too and change open paths to closed loops.
NAOM
There is also the need to look at the whole supply chain too and change open paths to closed loops.
Yep!
The nice thing about biopolymers is that they can be designed at the nano through the macro level to degrade or to last as long as necessary.
If you want your bag to be reusable for a long time that can be done.
This is the focus of cutting edge materials science and design.
Personally I’m interested in architecting and 3D printing of chitosan and spider silk composites …
Cheers!
Didn’t they have this figured generations back? ie. Hemp.
Would you want to keep a hemp bag with a kilo of chicken breasts in it in your fridge? It’s applications like that where plastic bags have their uses. Now, if you can make bio-polymers from hemp…
NAOM
Now, if you can make bio-polymers from hemp…
Actually you can! 😉
http://www.titanbioplastics.com/home.html
Titan Bioplastics is a biopolymer-based consulting firm with a variety of hemp and biodegradable based material technologies. Our technologies are adapted for use by clients to transform current product materials to sustainable ones. This includes customization of bio-composite formulations for industrial applications. While material biosciences are a developing segment of industry, our science team has over 30 years of commercialization experience in formulating. Our science team expertise consists of the top 1% of scientists in the field of biodegradation, biopolymers and Nano technology applications.
The petroleum age has been over for a while now even if most people don’t know it yet!
The real fossils are those who still believe the ultimate power of nation states, centralized authoritarian governments, corporate monopolies, centralized power generation and infinite growth.
The future is distributed on all levels from networked city states
to local production systems, to distributed manufacturing via technology such as 3D printing using abundant natural raw materials, etc… etc,,,
Cheers!
BTW when I was at university back in the 70s you probably needed triple PhDs in Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Genetics and millions of dollars in equipment to do the groundwork for any of the work like that.
Any third year Biology undergrad can pretty much do this in his or her garage with a few thousand dollars and what is today considered some pretty basic general knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx8TcGrCOSI
Spider Beer Overview: Making Yeast Produce Black Widow Silk
Cheers!
Will catch up on those links later. Now all I need is to be able to get polyhemp bags and cups at the right price. 🙂
NAOM
Trains went from coal fired steam to ICE to electric. This happened because it made economic sense, not because of utopianism. This is how I see the electricity market:
Solar: Ambient radiation->electricity(1)
Wind: Ambient wind -> mechanical energy->electricity(2)
Hydro: River->trapped water-> mechanical energy->electricity(3)
Combined cycle gas 1: Gas field->fuel->internal combustion->mechanical energy->electricity(4)
Combined cycle gas 2: Waste heat (in hot water)->mechanical energy->electricity(2)
Open cycle gas: Gas field->fuel->internal combustion->mechanical energy->electricity(4)
Coal: Coal mine->fuel->hot water->mechanical energy->electricity(4)
Nuclear: Uranium mine->ore->fuel->hot water->mechanical energy->electricity(5)
Diesel:Oil field->crude->fuel->hot water->mechanical energy->electricity(5)
The numbers at the end are the number of steps to get to electricity. Combined cycle gas is a hybrid solution with an average of 3. I predict that the market will move quickly in the direction of fewer steps/arrows in the next decade.
EDIT: You might argue that “internal combustion” should be removed as a separate state, but it doesn’t change the overall picture much.
Also, you might add “Cleaned up waste” as a last state to coal and nuclear, bumping them up to 5 and 6 respectively.
Great way to look at it. But continuous process open loops must be closed.
Add at least 4 more to Nuclear for . Uranium Ore enrichment to reactor grade /spent fuel cooling/casking and final Biosphere isolation. 4 to coal for blending/size reduction/exhaust scrubbing and toxic ash isolation/containment/2nd life.
solar: intheground resources-> processed (using FF) into panels-> installed-> ambient radiation -> electricity (5)
another way to see it.
another way to see it.
Well, that would already be a slight step up from what we have now!
FF: intheground resources-> processed (using FF) into more FF-> to run thermodynamically inefficient power genaration plants-> electricity…
On the other hand, just because they are used now, no where is it written that FF are absolutely necessary to produce solar panels. As a matter of fact we now know they are not necessary at all! You can Google it yourself!
yes I agree a slight step up.
another way to see it, using x amount of FF now to make a panel to save >x in the long run.
No, that is for the plant not the fuel. The above chains are for the fuel producing the energy. If you did the same for nuclear the result would be horrendous, just think of all the processes going into concrete and steel while the CO2 being emitted in the process.
NAOM
For sure. but breaking out the entire upstream supply chain would be breaking out the major chunks of the global economy.
it’s important to define the continuous flow of costs/resources to generate kWh once fixed costs are capitalized. Many of the Westinghouse PWR’s vessels were built here in Pensacola. These generation facilities in US were never designed to hold much more than a decade of “spent” fuel. New batches are continuously generated by fission. It is an ongoing operational cost with a 6-year local buffer for cool down for safe transport. Decades worth of radionuclides in such small uncontained pools is insanity. God bless all lifeforms downwind.
That’s nonsense, and shows that you don’t understand the difference between fuel and power plant.
The point is that solar costs zero at the margin. That means that as long as prices are non-negative, it is in the interest of solar producers to keep producing. The cost of the power plant are irrelevant, because the incentive to keep producing remains whether or not the owner is making money. A money losing gas plant shuts down to save fuel costs, but solar keeps on producing even if its owners are bankrupt.
OK, if you ignore the cash flows and sunk costs, all the continuous operational process cost are not under a single “plant” roof. Wait – there is no roof at all with PV.
Yeah. It’s interesting that solar is spreading in the Permian Basin to power the oil rigs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-04/solar-is-going-to-keep-oil-flowing-in-the-texas-shale-patch
The amazing thing is that gas is so abundant that prices are negative in the oil patch, and being flared off in huge volume. So why isn’t it being used to generate electricity? In this niche at least, gas can’t even compete with solar and wind when prices are negative. Not a good sign for the industry.
There ARE SOME people who are already awake, in terms of renewable energy and sustainability.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/06/norway-doubles-investment-in-renewable-energy-by-sovereign-wealth-fund/
And the TESLA THREE is now the best selling luxury car in the USA. Only Mercedes and Beemers outsell the THREE, and only if you combine ALL the various models each of these companies sell here.
Electric cars will likely be cheap enough to outsell comparable conventional cars within a decade, across the board.
Pretty soon there will be a REAL market for light electric delivery vehicles with a range of two hundred miles, and probably even less.There are tens of millions of potential sales in this market, as the ones in service now wear out.
Tesla made up 1.1% of all U.S. sales in 2018. Just saying.
Bro you are either an ignorant mathematically illiterate moron, or perhaps you are just trolling! just saying!
Tesla’s sales are quite irrelevant in the big picture. Why? Because overall EV sales are growing exponentially and more and more players are coming on board.
Question: would you like $100,000 cash right now?
Or
Would you prefer 1 cent? Which I would double every day for 30 days.
Note: at the end of the first week you would have a grand total of: $1.28 with three more weeks of doubling to go. So what will it be, eh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvzzsUQHMpw
MATH DUDE Unit7-3 Exponential Functions
A lot of assumptions there. Speaking of Tesla, the last quarter sales are down. I could assume that each quarter sales will continue to decrease, then I would prefer the 100,000 cash rather than owe money in the future. It all depends on which assumptions you take. If the world can transition from fossil fuels to electric, there may be some unintended consequences, such as losing the aerosol masking effect, thereby increasing the speed of climate change. I like to read this blog, but I keep an open mind. I don’t have time to research much, raising a family and all, but sometimes get frustrated with all the technical hopium. Thus the occasional pebble in the shoe.
If the world can transition from fossil fuels to electric, there may be some unintended consequences, such as losing the aerosol masking effect, thereby increasing the speed of climate change.
Good point! so we should therefore continue burning as much coal as we can until that runs out as well. That way we can get the worst consequences of climate change even faster, right?!
But not to worry we can probably use geoengineering to introduce massive amounts of soot like particles into the atmosphere without burning any carbon at all… Win win! No CO2, no greenhouse effect, no sea level rise, no ocean acidification etc… etc… And we can continue to have the aerosol masking effect! /sarc
Maybe we could use finely powdered graphene or buckyballs and hire Space X to dump it into the stratosphere!
Oh, chill out Fred! 🙂
(that is a global dimming joke)
Technical hopium is being backed up by the heavy hand of European law.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/04/tesla-sells-european-emissions-law-lifeline-to-fiat-chrysler/
FCA is failing to meet European emissions standards, so the EU is forcing them to subsidize Tesla.
Sergio Marchionne, the late CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, had said that the company lost either $14,000, or $20,000, on every Fiat 500e, depending who you believe.
Good riddance to FCA!
That old business model won’t work today! There are a half dozen startups that will just eat their lunch. Case in point.
Compare that loss per vehicle to the full retail cost, after their recent price increase, of a brand new Sono Motors Sion.
The Sion costs 25,500 euros at market launch. I don’t think they will be losing any money at that price point.
As for The heavy hand of European law. When it comes to CO2 emissions, I expect it to get even heavier. Good Bye ICEs!
Fiat 500e?
A friend in Sonoma had one, and I drove in it regularly–
But she wants a new Tesla 3.
I like the Fiat 500e—
Global plug-in vehicle sales hit 2.1 million in 2018. Tesla delivered almost 300,000 in the past year and is accelerating. China sold 1.2 million in 2018, a 70% increase over 2017!
December sales of plug-in vehicles have tripled in two years. That rate means that in two years from last December about 1 million will be sold just in that month alone.
Electrifying!
Republicans Freak Out As Data Shows That Their Party Is Dying Off
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn5tqz6V0kY
I’ve been saying for a long time now that demographics rule, and that barring extraordinarily bad luck, the USA will have government similar to Western European governments.
Sportswriter: Trump cheats like a mafia accountant at golf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INxGbTHybvc
We are failing to stop climate change:
From IEA report
We released our second annual report on global energy trends last week, highlighting that energy demand worldwide grew by 2.3% in 2018, its fastest pace this decade, thanks to a strong global economy and higher demand for heating and cooling.
Natural gas emerged as the fuel of choice, posting the biggest gains and accounting for 45% of the rise in energy consumption. Solar and wind generation grew at double-digit pace, with solar alone increasing by 31%. Still, that was not fast enough to meet higher electricity demand around the world that also drove up coal use.”
As a result, global energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.7% to 33 Gigatonnes (Gt) with coal use in power generation alone surpassing 10 Gt and accounting for a third of total emissions. The majority of that was from coal-fired generation capacity in Asia, with a fleet of young power plants that are decades short of average lifetimes of around 50 years….”
The target of reducing CO2 emissions by 5% each year is as far away as ever. In order to achieve that renewable energy needs to meet 100% of all growth in energy demand. Once it has done that, it then has to replace the existing coal and gas use.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/10296/economics/top-co2-polluters-highest-per-capita/
People who put all these positive comments about electrification really make me laugh. Can you imagine the United States closing half it’s coal and half it’s gas power by 2030? Not a hope.
We need to stop all CO2 emissions by 2040 to have any hope of having a planet to live on. Even if we managed that, most of Greenland and the Antarctica would still melt because of the pollution we have caused over the last 100 years.
“People who put all these positive comments about electrification really make me laugh. Can you imagine the United States closing half it’s coal and half it’s gas power by 2030? Not a hope.”
Yes, there is a big difference between what can be done and what will be done. The difference lately is heavily enabled by business sociopaths.
“We need to stop all CO2 emissions by 2040 to have any hope of having a planet to live on. Even if we managed that, most of Greenland and the Antarctica would still melt because of the pollution we have caused over the last 100 years.”
True, that would be a best case scenario. I doubt if we have that much time.
Natural gas is even more dangerous than coal because of the methane leakage. The pulse of methane in the atmosphere is highly dangerous since it will increase the rate melt of ice faster than CO2 at the poles and promote the melting of permafrost. Once these amplifying feedbacks get stimulated it will not matter if we stop burning fossil fuel since their effect is at least twice what fossil fuel is doing, much longer lasting and have potential for large bursts of GHG into the atmosphere along with the albedo and eco-system changes.
That is the tragedy.
It actually can be done
Hi Jason,
Renewable electricity, at least, is no more hopium than Henry Ford’s Model T.( For some reason every body I know, and I know a lot who are into old cars, calls it a T Model. )
Elon Musk is the renewable energy Henry Ford. He hasn’t invented the stuff his company builds. There were solar panels and batteries and electric cars before he was even born.
But he’s the one man in the whole world who will be remembered as the father of the electric car industry, and the home grown solar power industry, and the grid scale battery industry, never the less.
My great grandparents took a look at the T, and said maybe it might make it to town if the roads were dry, and maybe they would get one, once they could be had cheap second hand. Shortly after that, the first conventional ( internal combustion engine rather than steam powered ) tractors appeared in the neighborhood, and while they didn’t buy one right away, being already possessed of horses and mules, and the equipment to work them, and pasture and corn to feed them, paying for gasoline and oil and parts didn’t look like that good a deal. Their farms, both sides of the family, were small, and plowing and planting and such were minor operations, because we were orchardists even back then.
But it didn’t take them long to come to the conclusion that a tractor sitting quietly in a shed, using nary a drop of oil or gasoline, for weeks and even months on end cost a hell of a lot less, bottom line, than feeding and caring for horses and mules…….. even though the naysayer joke ran something like this:
When you take me out to your barn some frosty morning, and show me a brand new free baby tractor, I’ll buy a mother tractor myself.
The day is long past when you need to do research to understand one, that fossil fuels are depleting resources that won’t last forever, and two, that once built, wind and solar farms run fuel free more or less forever…… with routine maintenance of course.
The one big reason I don’t already have a fair sized pv set up of my own is that the cost of PV has been falling so fast I’m earning a bigger return DELAYING the purchase, and continuing to use grid juice from one year to the next. Plus of course when I do buy, I will be getting better quality with a better warranty for my money, because not only is the price falling, the quality is improving as well.
ot:
1864 — US: 13th Amendment passes, abolishing slavery. Does not include wage slavery
Or debt slavery either!
A 2011 article on the global warming catastrophe by Andrew Glikson.
Droughts and flooding rains: life on a warming planet
It is not clear whether deep reduction in carbon emissions will be sufficient to stem the amplifying feedbacks associated with greenhouse gas warming and ice/melt water interactions. Barring an indefinite maintenance of sulphur aerosol emissions, deep emission cuts need to be accompanied by atmospheric CO2 draw-down by means of fast-track tree planting, application of biochar methods and chemical CO2 sequestration.
The alternative bears no contemplation.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-01/gliksontwodegrees/2738910
Back in 2010 (seems so long ago) Andrew Glikson warned us about planetary boundaries. From his latest interview he seems to believe we have now crossed some tipping points. Here is the 2010 article.
Planetary boundaries
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-11-16/27234
Yep!
http://www.findaspark.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/doughnut-economics-infographic.jpg
And that graphic is dangerously understating the actual realities.
I’d say ocean acidification is definitely past the tipping point!
On the other hand this is still the prevailing thinking in this very thread!
Bottom line, aramco is a well run company, they have a lot of brains and know what they are doing, more so than a bunch of nobodies commenting on a forum, hence they were the most profitable company in 2018. And they are an energy company which is a primary industry. They know when their reserves will end and or when demand for their product will end, and they will adjust their business model respectively.
That would be funny if it weren’t so tragic!
Why shoot the messenger Fred. I am not advocating what they do, it takes two to tango. There is a lot of demand for their product otherwise they wouldn’t be profitable right?
World oil production and consumption has been increasing year on year for a long time if i am not mistaken. So again it takes two to tango.
Why shoot me, i am just stating facts.
Talk about coincidence. Both our responses got posted at the same time and both say to stop buying the stuff.
So would you agree that maybe the Norwegians aren’t all that dumb either?!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-08/norway-is-walking-away-from-billions-of-barrels-of-oil-and-gas
Climate Changed
Norway Is Walking Away From Billions of Barrels of Oil
If you want to engage in a dialogue address the points i posed. Don’t start your confirmation bias and linking game.
OK, so why did Kodak go bankrupt despite the fact that their executives were really smart guys! Why couldn’t they read the writing on the wall that digital photography was going to eat their lunch? You don’t see any lessons that Aramco might learn from that?
You seem to be saying that because their executives are experts in the oil business they won’t suffer from the same kind of lack of vision that took down Kodak. They know better!
I’m saying that they of all people are most at risk of falling into that very trap!
BTW, how’s that Aramco IPO doing? How much of your personal assets are you going to bet on them?
Fred i have no interest, or in cahoots with aramco lol I cant stand them to be honest. Like most corporation they are corrupt to the core.
This is all i am going to say.
You mentioned Norway fine. But do you not agree, oil production and consumption has been increasing year on year for a long time (cbf checking exact dates)?
If you don’t agree then we aren’t looking at the same data.
If you do agree, then you have to say people consuming oil are as much to blame as producers of oil.
If you don’t agree, then we shall agree to disagree.
Now back to aramco lol
I can’t see them going the same way as kodak, two reasons
1- they are a primary industry company. Energy is much more important than photography. They have little debt to cash flow rated AAA.
2- The technology they have and the wealth of knowledge acquired by science in the last 100 years. I believe they are smart enough to see what will happen and project accordingly.
To be honest i hope you are right and they go bankrupt. And with it the Saudi regime.
But do you not agree, oil production and consumption has been increasing year on year for a long time (cbf checking exact dates)?
Yes, so far that has been true. And human population is also still increasing. However I expect both to stop increasing in the not too distant future.
However I also expect the relative percentage of renewable energy to start increasing exponentially and to continue increasing for a long time yet to come.
Of course that assumes the shit doesn’t totally hit the fan…
Edit: and as for:
To be honest i hope you are right and they go bankrupt. And with it the Saudi regime.
I don’t think that is out of the question!
Mike,
>Energy is much more important than photography.
There are two reasons why this remark is problematic. First, energy is flagrantly wasted, so reducing output is certainly an option. Second, the oil industry isn’t really in the energy business, it’s in the business of energy storage business — storing energy in moving vehicles, which oil does very well. Oil is not competitive in electricity generation (though gas obviously is). As batteries break down the barriers between transportation and electricity, the oil industry’s life will get harder.
And again industries don’t disappear because of stupidity. They disappear because of new technology.
“Bottom line, aramco is a well run company, they have a lot of brains and know what they are doing”
If people stop buying their products, then they will switch to producing solar power.
Exactly, and in my worthless opinion. People won’t.
People rightly criticize big oil companies, but hardly blame the consumers of oil. The way i see it they are merely supplying a demand.
As you point out if people stop using oil, then they oil companies will die out, but in all honesty i have no hope in humans. Thats just me.
Humans got suckered into a deadly trap that is extremely difficult to leave. The system will break, change will happen, is happening.
Sure and heroin dealers are just as blameless. They are merely supplying a demand for opiates which they pretty much created in the first place.
Are you that stubborn seriously?
Read my comment again before spouting nonsense.
Your ego is too damn big.
Do you agree that collectively, humanity is addicted to the lifestyle provided by fossil fuels? If so, why would you imagine they would go cold turkey all on their own when the oil majors have engaged in a massive misinformation campaign about the risks of continuing to use their products?
I think it’s too simplistic and a misnomer to compare a drug addict and a lifestyle addict.
I can appreciate were you are coming from, but i think most people (or maybe its my own circle of friends and family etc) don’t even think about any of this stuff. So i am biased hence i said in my worthless opinion people won’t change.
Going on, my circle of people don’t even analyse their own lives with regards to technology, energy, economy, growth, climate change etc. These topics don’t even come up, and if they do it is for entertainment purposes.
I think people are biologically programmed to seek progress. Now in this particular topic we are discussing is lifestyle. Not sure how it is in your neck of the woods, but here almost everyone is chasing money. Why?
Essentially it seems to me money = energy. The more money you have, the more energy you can expend. And again i believe this to be a biological driver, possibly for attracting mates, or one of the motivations.
It seems to me essentially as long as people have their entertainment, pleasures, healthcare, high standard of living (and the possibility to progress to higher standard of living), they don’t care about anything that is not an immediate threat to them or the system which supports them. Hence i don’t see them changing.
I am not saying i am right, just how i currently see this situation. For e.g. today i was on a climate change forum and there is people who are not trolls, who believe we are going back to a glacial period soon. Not one or two people, a few of them. So especially in regards to climate change i cannot see any pertinent action occurring. Energy transition is possible as long as lifestyles are maintained without popping the bubble of illusions the western world is contained within. That’s my view in a nutshell.
Energy transition is possible as long as lifestyles are maintained without popping the bubble of illusions the western world is contained within.
I think that it is much more likely that the bubble of illusions will be popped regardless! Change is already upon all of us.
I highly recommend this book:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2018/01/16/quarks-to-culture/
The primary achievement of his book is the clear articulation of the temporal sequence in which the smallest particles combine to form atoms, which form molecules, then cells, and eventually organisms. He further extends his analysis to dynamically related tiers that ascend to animal herds and hives, tribal associations, and eventually large societies. Volk goes beyond current concepts of emergence, complexity, self-organization, and autopoiesis with a sustained and impressive presentation of “combogenesis,” his own term for the innovative creativity of the physical, biological, and cultural realms.
Which is why ideas like MAGA are wishful thinking. It’s like a highly evolved multicellular organism wanting to revert back into trillions of individual independent amoebas.
Right now human societies are in the throes of a major transition to a new level of combogenesis. Many of the groups that do not successfully complete this transition will be going extinct. Perhaps that will include of all of us!
Cheers!
I’ll check out the book, i like the title having done a bit of QM at uni.
Right now i am reading Times arrow and evolution.
I think, a exponential decline in population is possible, but the very birth of such a transition might lead into a world war for resources. I sometimes get the feeling Russia and America still haven’t gotten over the dramas of the cold war, and if i remember correctly they have both recently dropped out of the nuclear disarmament treaty or something like that. So I assume they are modernizing their nuclear stockpiles which is quite worrying.
Cheers
Iron Mike,
Oil will be in short supply by 2025 (probably by 2023 in fact) and oil prices will rise. This will speed the transition to plugin vehicles (which have been growing at 58% per year in sales annually for the 2014 to 2018 period while oil prices have been low (compared to 2011-2014). Eventually sales may be great enough by 2030 that demand for oil may decrease faster than the supply of oil (I expect peak output will be 2025 for World C+C output). At that point oil prices may not fall enough to make ICEV competitive with EVs which will continue to fall in cost as production ramps and economies of scale and competition reduce EV cost. This is the mechanism by which oil companies will eventually fail as high cost oil producers get driven from the market, Saudi Aramco might be the last to fail as they produce relatively low cost oil. Eventually oil will become a niche product, though perhaps not for 40 or 50 years, difficult to predict.
“Oil will be in short supply by 2025 (probably by 2023 in fact) and oil prices will rise”
Don’t step out to far on that limb, Dennis. I’m pretty sure Trump’s Wall won’t be able to confine the technology that has doubled US production. Less than 2011 to 2014 pricing will furnish global demand increases for more than the next decade.
We need to regulate the demise of the internal combustion engine
Huntington Beach-
“We need to regulate the demise of the internal combustion engine”
The relative rise of EV’s and decline of petrol at reasonable pricing will likely ‘de facto’ result in the demise of ICE sales faster than any collective nationwide or global agreement to regulate. Particularly considering how poor the policy making mechanisms of our world are.
Huntington Beach,
Perhaps you expect the US tight oil experience to move to other nations. Most other nations don’t drill as many wells as the US (about 500,000 total wells drilled about 10 times more than all of the rest of the World) and tight oil requires a lot of wells to be drilled. I assume tight oil will not be developed successfully outside of the US to any great extent, Vaca Muerta and some development in Canada are the exceptions, perhaps there will be some development in China as well.
You are correct that I am assuming close to zero output from tight oil outside the US and my guess is this will be approximately correct. Even if not, the tight oil is unlikely to be developed as quickly elsewhere as was the case in the US, other nations oil industries are just not as nimble as the US industry.
Also from now to 2025 it is likely that demand growth will outstrip supply growth, especially after 2022 (tight oil will grow by only 250 kb/d from2023 to 2025 while World demand growth may continue at 800 kb/d each year). So we are likely to see $110/b oil prices in 2017$ from 2022 to 2025, potentially rapid EV growth will mitigate this.
I agree carbon taxes or large fees on ICEVs would be a good idea, but in the US it probably won’t happen, except perhaps in California and Massachusetts.
I am hoping the market will take care of it with falling battery costs and higher oil prices, probably wishful thinking.
Dennis- “Oil will be in short supply by 2025 (probably by 2023 in fact)”
Do you have any idea which big countries will be the first to suffer from this shortfall? Who is most dependent on imports from countries that will be declining in their exports, who has the least economic strength to pay the higher prices?
Here is a listing of those with the highest dollar value of imports as of 2107-
1.China: US$162.2 billion (18.6% of total crude oil imports)
2.United States: $139.1 billion (15.9%)
3.Japan: $63.7 billion (7.3%)
4.India: $60.2 billion (6.9%)
5.South Korea: $59.6 billion (6.8%)
6.Netherlands: $37.4 billion (4.3%)
7.Germany: $36.2 billion (4.1%)
8.Italy: $26.1 billion (3%)
9.Spain: $25.7 billion (2.9%)
10.France: $23.8 billion (2.7%)
But these are not necessarily the countries most at risk. I don’t have good data for which countries are most dependent on imported oil/GDP/capita, or which have to higher ratio of oil imports/cash reserves-debt, for example.
My point is, this is about 4-5 yrs from now, and some countries may become much more quickly destabilized than others. Its a big distinction. First shoe to drop, so to speak.
Hickory,
Many of the nations on your list (US is a big exception) are working hard to reduce their dependence on fossil fuel as oil prices increase they will work harder and market incentives (EVs will be much cheaper to own than an ICEV) may spur a rapid transition to non-fossil fuel transport.
If high oil prices allow the 58% growth in plugin vehicle sales to continue to 2025 then oil demand may start to fall faster than oil supply and oil prices may be kept in check and perhaps even start to fall, this will tend to reduce oil supply faster and might increase demand a bit.
It will depend on how fast battery and EV prices fall as economies of scale may accelerate the downward trend in prices along with competition among vehicle producers.
Lots of moving parts, prediction is difficult.
As far as imports and exports, I assume exporters will use what they need and export the rest, the oil will go to the highest bidder on World Markets. The high oil prices may make it difficult for exporters to justify subsidizing oil at home.
Better to give oil credits to citizens and allow them to trade their credits for cash, this would tend to bid up the price of a barrel to the World market price and people would then tend to conserve the expensive oil. This would lead to more oil available to trade on World markets as consumption internally for oil exporters would decrease even though the oil is essentially being given to citizens for free as credits.
It would be like the person has a choice of using this barrel of oil to ride in an inefficient vehicle or buy a more efficient vehicle and sell the excess oil on the World market at $100/b.
Dennis,
Your prediction of peak oil is reasonable.
What will occur afterwards, assuming your prediction is correct, i can only guess and most probably be wrong. So i hesitate to bother. But as you know yourself as oil prices rise in your prediction, so will discoveries one would assume.
There is a possibility natural gas will take over if and when oil starts to deplete.
It seems to me there is enough human accessible ff to knock the climate back to the Cretaceous, in a relatively short period of time.
Iron Mike, I agree that there is enough FF burning upcoming in the next two decades by the 8-9 billion people, including lots of wood, peat and coal, such that we will be running the global warming experiment hard. Very hard.
There are very long thick tails of production on the fossil fuel graphs after peak.
Iron Mike,
Coal will peak by 2030, and natural gas by 2035, that is just due to the available resource and does not take into account declining demand as prices of fossil fuel rises and the price of substitutes such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear fall. The total resource is likely to be close to RCP4.5 as far as carbon emissions, with substitution we may end up between RCP3 and RCP4.5, call it RCP3.7, though the closer we can get the RCP 3, the better.
Yep, all that methane saturation that is not escaping into the atmosphere eventually changes to CO2. Then the plankton die more and besides less O2, less ocean life, one of the carbon sinks is diminished further.
This should be celebrated around the world, as a model for behavior in the earliest stages of downsizing-
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/08/health/japan-sexual-inexperience-intl/index.html
I like the Hungarian model of waiving income taxes for families who have 4 or more children. A country without enough children is doomed for economic and demographic catastrophe.
Ne mondd! Kíváncsi vagyok, és mi a véleményed erről?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghkkXAmdN0s
Elindult a Fidesz EP-kampánya
Quite the reverse, old chap. Population growth is set to cause a very major buggerup and likely to lead to a massive crash which might reduce the human population to a few million scavengers. The Japanese trend is the model and you need to remember that the less people the more resources for each.
NAOM
Jon- “A country without enough children is doomed for economic and demographic catastrophe.”
True, and on the other hand a country that has grown into a position of severe overshoot is doomed to suffer as well.
Hungary, for example, imports more than 60% of its net energy consumption. How will it do if it losses those imports, or the ability to pay for them.
Extremely difficult position to be in. Especially now that we are close to peak of global production for crude oil, and soon thereafter coal, and soon thereafter nat gas. Trees in Hungary will have been cut down by then. And migration pressures from the south will be much worse.
Hungary, for example, imports more than 60% of its net energy consumption. How will it do if it losses those imports, or the ability to pay for them.
Yeah, but having spent time on small farms in rural Hungary recently, the impression I got was that outside of Budapest, The people are a lot more ‘Anti-Fragile’ and therefore more resilient than most Americans think.
As a person of Hungarian heritage I actually think that the contracting population is a feature and not bug!
BTW the majority of the Hungarian people are smart enough to see through Orban and Fidesz’s no tax for children family planning scam and are not falling for it!
Cheers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhwEmS3-tf8
ANTIFRAGILE BY NASSIM TALEB ANIMATED BOOK REVIEW
So, are they ready for de-growth? Like most people who study economics and operate in this world, they see downsizing as the worst scenario, as Jon portrays.
“most people who study economics see downsizing as the worst scenario”
Do you have a link for that ? or is that your opinion ?
So, are they ready for de-growth?
If you mean the people in Budapest, perhaps not. As for the people out in the countryside on those small farms, they don’t study economic theory and barring ecological catastrophe due to climate change they know how to survive.
I’m with Fred, as usual. I haven’t any first hand knowledge of Hungary or other such countries, but people are people, and times they are a’changing, for sure.
Here in my neck of the woods, not more than maybe one younger couple out of a dozen will ever have three or more kids.
And the younger generation is fast coming to understand that in more cases than not, their parents are going to be leaving them substantial assets…….. such as a nice well maintained house.
Small families in farm country mean that the farm can be preserved, the life style maintained, rather than the property being endlessly subdivided among numerous heirs, or sold off. Smaller families mean fewer neighbors, less intrusion in one’s personal affairs, as time goes on.
Maybe we ALL go to hell in a hand basket, maybe some of us manage to sidestep the overshoot crisis.
Tesla is apparently successfully ramping up the number two plant in New York, which is supposedly dedicated to producing solar roofing tile as it’s primary product.
There is a niche market for BIPV – Building Integrated PV. @ 3-5x normal price. Most of us better off with modular/maintainable solution with more capacity. Tesla needs to Focus on Cars and Rockets and then figure out how to compete in the Generation space. Hope I’m wrong.
I don’t see building integrated pv staying super expensive very long, unless somebody like TESLA locks up the biz by way of patents thereby keeping other companies out of the solar roofing business.
New construction has to have a new roof, lol, and once the art and science of integrating solar tiles or panels into roofing is mature, the installation cost will be mostly offset by the labor cost and materials that would have gone into the new conventional roof.
Some people have argued that a solar roof will not perform very well, with too many of the panels poorly oriented in relation to the sun.
I don’t see a savvy new home architect/ owner /builder having any real problem at all putting the southern exposure of the roof at the perfect angle for the location, and at the perfect east west orientation…….. and simply installing a CONVENTIONAL roof on the northern exposure.
So……. this could be one of the not so rare situations where something worth doing is worth doing only half way.
Holy Green Scam
“One of three scam artists behind a $54 million Ponzi scheme was sentenced to prison for her role in the biggest ‘green energy’ scams in US history, according to NBC New York.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-08/bill-clinton-honoree-thrown-jail-over-biggest-clean-energy-scam-american-history
Appears I’ve made more BioChar the old Fashion way than these financial wizards did.
http://www.micropower.us/BC Amazing life-giving super soil miracle. Just consumed my last delicious half of giant grapefruit. ( The fortified half was Friday eve) Figs trees gifted 3 Batches in one season. The Catalysis effect is in the soil for decades
And this is different from Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme or any other in what way?
How about Herba Life? And Shale oil? Etc… Etc…
Get ready fo fly like a Boeing?
Point being – BioChar is a Miracle for the production for both Fuel and Food.
Even if that were true, which it isn’t, (it’s just charcoal added to soil for chrissake) but a ponzi scheme is still a ponzi scheme.
Especially when it comes to miracles, caveat emptor still applies!
US solar and wind did not keep up with increased demand.
Aviation and trucking increased, industrial production increased by nearly 6%, CO2 emission increased by 300 million tonnes. The equivalent of the emissions produced by 80,000,000 extra cars.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/climate/greenhouse-gas-emissions-increase.html
Not one mention of the increase in methane emissions, a very powerful GWG coupled to natural gas production and use as well as agriculture. Methane emissions are not accurately tracked.
Goodbye Arctic ice. Hello weather chaos and global warming.
Meanwhile Turkey just spent 12 billion on airport expansion.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/04/08/this-airport-will-cost-12-billion-to-make.html
The massive growth of Turkish Airlines is one of the major reasons for Istanbul New Airport, which officially opened in October of 2018.
But I’m sure they will recoup the costs on the parking fees alone!
Turkeys fly low and fast, spend most of their time on the ground. Operate on renewable bio-fuels. 🙂
Much better investment than those big highways.
Are you suggesting that unlike eagles they are not susceptible to being eliminated from the gene pool by flying into the spinning blades of wind turbines. Perhaps soaring with eagles is a tad overrated, eh?! 😉
Problem with that scenario. Turkeys taste good and have a lot of edible meat, so are avidly hunted (legally and illegally). The wild turkey population has been eliminated from my area for almost a decade now, mostly by illegal hunting.
Odds are the eagles will survive longer than the turkeys since turkey hunters do not shoot each other at high enough rate (dress in camouflage, sit still mostly hidden and sound like a turkey – what could happen?).
Large regions do not have wind towers, so a portion of the eagle population will survive.
Anyway, Ben Franklin thought the wild turkey should be the symbol of the new country.
The bald eagle is a killer, a scavenger and steals from other birds. The symbol of our country.
Problem with that scenario. Turkeys taste good and have a lot of edible meat, so are avidly hunted (legally and illegally). The wild turkey population has been eliminated from my area for almost a decade now, mostly by illegal hunting.
Maybe the good folk at Impossible Burgers will come up with an Impossible Turkey Drumstick!
http://time.com/5181524/impossible-burger-plant-based/
The Meat Industry Has Some Serious Beef With Those ‘Bleeding’ Plant-Based Burgers
I love watching all those people invested in industrial meat production starting to worry… It’s another area of business ripe for disruption.
Global energy production was 153,000 TWh in 2017
Solar produced 400 TWh increasing by 100 TWh in a year and wind was 1,100 TWh increasing by 163 TWh
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources
To put the pathetic increases of solar and wind into perspective.
Gas increased by 960 Twh
Oil increased by 750 TWh
Coal increased by 296 TWh
Total gas ,coal and oil increased by 2,000 TWh
This is where we are 20 years after signing the 1997 Kyoto protocol.
Those numbers are frightening. Damn.
Iron Mike,
Look at percentages.
Fossil fuel increased by 2000/152000=1.3%,
Wind and Solar by 17%.
If these rates continue then wind and solar replace all fossil fuels by 2050.
So damn, renewable energy is growing very quickly. I also assumed fossil fuel use continues growing until 2050 at 1.3% per year, total fossil fuel output is likely to peak by 2030 and then decline by 1% per year or more, which would mean that renewables could replace all fossil fuel by 2047, in reality there will be some fossil use that is difficult to replace with wind and solar power so replacement of all fossil fuel use is unlikely by 2047, but most energy uses might be eliminated by 2050.
Dennis,
Keyword:
if these rates continue
Which i doubt it will. But who knows.
Fossil fuel production is increasing but only at a very slow pace.
Renewable energy production is growing at a break neck pace.
Before long renewable electricity plus electrified cars and trucks will start seriously cutting into the demand for fossil fuels.
As Dennis often remarks, the prices of fossil fuels MUST go up, as the existing mines and wells play out, and new wells and mines must be brought on line, at ever higher costs, overall, even as the cost of wind and solar electricity will continue to FALL, and the prices of electric cars and trucks continue to fall.
What the world really needs, maybe, is a hot little resource war, one that’s not likely to go nuclear, but that will keep the super tankers in port for a few months. THAT would put maybe five or ten million people in the mood to buy an electric car, IMMEDIATELY, lol.
PV and wind power currently produce almost enough electricity to power all global cars and motorcycles if it were electric. They will very soon produce enough power for all global land transport. The big problem is production of electric vehicles is lagging way behind as is the infrastructure to charge them and store electric power.
That would eliminate most oil burning and a chunk of natural gas/coal burning that supports the oil industry.
Two trillion watts of installed wind and PV capacity by 2023. After that is anyone’s guess.
Gonefishing
Can you actually see the graphs?
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-energy-sources
Oil produced 53,000 TWh of energy, about 55% is used for land transportation which is about 30,000 TWh.
Solar and wind produced 1,500.
Which is 5% of land transportation needs.
Getting facts right is important.
>5% of land transportation
However, electric motors are about four times as efficient as ICE. In addition, the low energy density of batteries forces EV manufacturers to build energy efficient vehicles. Most of the energy the oil industry produces is pissed away. In addition, the industry consumes a lot of energy.
Oil is a wonderful way to store energy in a moving vehicle. Car companies have reacted by going hog wild for the last 50 years, building increasingly bloated ridiculous contraptions for marketing reasons.
Marketing people have come up with all kinds of fantasies to justify raising vehicle prices, like the idea that steel is “tougher” than aluminum or plastic. “Plastic is for toys, aluminum is for pots and pans, steel is safe,” so a morbidly obese steel vehicle is best.
It’s gotten so weird that Tesla is the only US car maker. SUVs and pickups have been marketed so heavily that all the profit is in those markets.
The best analogy I can think of is how the fall in memory prices by Moore’s Law has led to software bloat. In the computer business we say, “Hardware giveth, and software taketh away.” In the American transportation sector you might say “Texas giveth, and Detroit taketh away.”
To make a long story short, the constraint of using batteries instead of liquid fuel is likely to massively reduce the energy consumption of the transportation sector. It seems like a paradox, because electricity is much cheaper than liquid fuel.
For a bit of historical perspective, I looked at consumption of energy from crude oil in 1880 at 33.33 TWh, growing to 397.22 TWh in 1910, that’s roughly 12 times more energy in three decades. I ‘m pretty sure there were people around in that time frame who would have been saying that this oil thing won’t amount to much, after all it only accounted for less than 5% of energy consumption from coal in 1910.
Fast forward one hundred years or so and primary energy consumption from solar was 33.83 TWh in 2010. In this case however it has grown to 442.62 TWh by 2017, that’s more than 13 times more energy in just seven years.
Looking at the percentage of primary energy supplied by each source, oil supplied just 0.35% of primary energy 1880, growing to 2.54% by 1910. In comparison, with similar numbers of TWh produced solar has gone from 0.0024% of primary energy in 2010, to 0.288% in 2017. At that sort of growth rate solar would contribute more than one hundred times as much to primary energy consumption every seven years. If we were stretch out the time to grow the contribution one hundredfold to ten years, by 2027 solar would be contributing more than 28% of primary energy and
almostmore than half of all primary energy by 2030.While I do not believe solar is going to be providing most of global primary energy supply by 2030, I do not believe it is going to take another three decades for solar to become the dominant source of electricity globally. Check me back in 2025 and barring some sort of global catastrophe, I’m sure we’ll have a lot more to talk about.
I first became aware of Peak Oil in late 2007 a d a lot has changed since then. The pace of change seems to be accelerating if anything. FF have scale and momentum on their side but, solar and less so wind have spectacular growth rates on their side. I do not see anything limiting growth of solar PV manufacturing capacity by a factor of ten over the next decade at most. Do you?
One final thing. unlike FF, each unit of solar PV capacity installed is going to stick around and keep producing for another thirty years or so with very little in the way of maintenance or operating costs. After the modules reach end of life, they will either be repurposed (sold to less affluent consumers) or probably be recycled to go another thirty years. It is getting harder to compete with solar on costs and it’s only going to get worse, a lot worse.
edit in bold on 4/9 at 6:55pm.
Those are old numbers, 2016 and 2o17. You need current production, it’s 2019 now. Those are not actual terawatt hours but calculated equivalents. You also need to realize that a good portion of a barrel of oil is not diesel and gasoline. Maybe consider too that ICE are low efficiency so mostly produce heat not motion.
No problem in my calculations, 2000 TWh electricity is enough to move 1 billion EV cars 8000 miles in a year (250 wh/mile). Since the global average is about 6000 miles per year then there is plenty of power left over for all those E bikes and E motorcycles.
Wind and PV are growing fast. The problem is not enough EVs. Plenty of wind and PV power to be had. By the time EV’s catch up, PV and wind will be producing much of world energy. (If we have that long to play the grow civilization game).
Gone fishing
The average mileage is 8,000 miles per year. The 2,000TWh would power at best 600 million small cars. There are 1.1 billion cars in the world and most of them are not small.
Model F Series the best selling vehicle in the US.
http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2018/06/may-2018-ytd-u-s-vehicle-sales-rankings-the-best-selling-vehicles-in-america/#2
There are also 300 million large trucks in the world. Of the 97 million vehicles sold this year 93 will be burning petrol or diesel and 70 million will still be on the roads in 10 years time.
Hugo, please try to stay on track and not gish-gallop.
I won’t bandy unsupported minor details since the whole FF system is self-parasitic, highly toxic, and bound for collapse anyway. It’s a dead man walking and I am getting tired of re-commenting on the same old thing that was proved years ago.
Here is a British view:
What if underlying electricity demand changes during the time it takes to make our transport transition? Demand might fall if efficiency gains continue. It might rise if we start to electrify heating, or if the country sees a post-Brexit manufacturing boom (feel free to challenge one of my assumptions there). Both government and National Grid forecasts are for electricity demand to rise.
If underlying demand is 25% bigger than today, at around 411,000GWh per year, that means we’ll have needed to increase supply by 82,250GWh anyway, even if we do nothing to electrify transport. In other words, the latter (changing to EVs) is a problem a quarter the size of the former (growth in other demand). Conclusion: don’t forget to think about other changes in demand when thinking about the impact of EVs on the electricity system as a whole. Maybe we’ll be building or replacing new infrastructure anyway?
Certainly I’d suggest that demand reduction and efficiency needs adding to clean generation as a key policy goal to continue in parallel with EV growth. With it, the transition to EVs will be much easier (and less expensive) than without.
*****
Put all these assumptions together and that whole EV fleet can be kept running with an additional 20,620GWh of electricity generation; just 6% more than today’s total. Just one new nuclear plant or four or five large offshore wind farms would cover that; or – given that I talked about local generation – perhaps 20GW of new distributed solar capacity.
https://greycellsenergy.com/articles-analysis/evs-electricity-demand/
For those interested in efficiency, a link in the above article shows a world record set by a Model S of 540 miles on one charge. Now the Model S is not the most efficient EV out there now, in fact several beat it by a mile.
What is the potential efficiency of EV’s? Probably in car form about .15 kWh/mile overall and in smaller forms much more. In the overall picture what we have now is fine. We are not energy constrained, we are fossil fuel constrained.
BTW- EV’s can run within their own solar footprint with today’s tech (meaning no outside source of power). Or for those delusional folk that think we will continue to need fossil fuels in the future, a world full of EV’s could run on the just the energy used to refine petroleum.
If you are not looking ahead, you are way behind.
Disclaimer: No, EV’s won’t solve world problems, just one method when combined with solar and wind power to stop producing so much GHG and get the civilized world on a better road to nowhere.
No, I don’t believe we have enough time at our laggard pace of change, but I could be wrong and pace of change can also change. We just need to really think and be creative. Respecting nature must be at the top of the list.
Enjoy the nice northern hemisphere spring, Greenland is hot today (relatively speaking of course). The Arctic as a whole has chilled down to +3.5C above average today.
In my neck of the woods.
Electricity generation:
https://www.energymatters.com.au/energy-efficiency/australian-electricity-statistics/
As you can see coal is the lions share.
Article yesterday: Power grid not ready for spike in EV vehicles.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/power-grid-not-ready-for-spike-in-electric-vehicles-20190408-p51c0q.html
Article yesterday: Power grid not ready for spike in EV vehicles.
How many articles would you like me to post that either bust that myth outright or at least give plausible reasons why that is not true. And that is not even taking into consideration things like the expansion of smart microgrids, and EV to grid storage capabilities.
You don’t have to take my word for it, I’m sure you can Google it yourself too.
There are a lot of people in Australia and elsewhere who are threatened economically by Solar, Wind and EVs.
Fred,
Once again you’re shooting the messenger. I am just informing people about the current situation regarding energy policy and the politics behind it is in Australia..
You can send your links to the current liberal government who are currently in power, though i must warn you, they loves coal.
There is a federal election in May though, so you may want to wait.
Hey Mike, just curious if you’ve ever visited https://reneweconomy.com.au/ ? If you have, what are your thoughts on the news as they present it. If you haven’t, would it be too much to ask for you to have a gander and give us your perspective as an Australian resident?
Once again you’re shooting the messenger. I am just informing people about the current situation regarding energy policy and the politics behind it is in Australia..
No, and don’t take it personally. I’m just saying or informing you and others who might be interested that there is a flip side to the coin.
And I’m quite aware of the political situation in The Land Down Under… 😉
Sweet Nothings and Too Much To Expand
Expansions of anything only go so far, such as where there’s little or nothing left to expand with, in or on, or where there’s too much of what is expanding.
Brings to mind Doug ‘whispering’ sweet nothings like that into Fred’s ear. ❤️
???
Depleted ecosystems and resources and expanding populations wanting them. Stuff like that.
Carl was great.
Hawaii aims for more cheap solar and battery storage to replace coal and gas
Hawaiian Electric is preparing for the end of fossil fuels on the islands by beginning the second phase of its ambitious renewable energy resource procurement plan, seeking almost 300GWh of annual renewable solar power and 1,378MWh of energy storage capacity.
This will be the second phase of an already successful renewable resource procurement plan which, only earlier this month, saw the company award six grid-scale solar and battery storage projects for a total of 247 MW and almost 1 GWh of battery storage, and at prices of less than 10c/kWh, easily cheaper than the supply it replaces.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/hawaii-aims-for-more-cheap-solar-and-battery-storage-to-replace-coal-and-gas-48854/
In case anyone would like to convert their vintage Aston Martin from ICE to EV…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PREftlfZuXA
Aston Martin DB6 Volante mk2 classic electric conversion | Fully Charged
Haves, Have Nots and What’s Left
Cornucopian Renewable-Energy Claims Leave Poor Nations in the Dark
Topic-related elsewhere:
My 2¢:
We are talking about finite, already-depleted resources now, vis-a-vis a population of ~8 billion now (as opposed to, say, ~3 billion), vis-a-vis vested and sometimes corrupt/sociopathic, interests, vis-a-vis from within a baked-in failure of a system– ‘crony capitalism’– that continues to fail us and the planet in this fantasized or fantastic transition…
Once everyone and their dog get on the bandwagon (as if), and all that needs to be surmounted is surmounted (as if), let’s watch what happens to, say, rare earth metals, prices, costs, struggles over remaining and depleted land and resources, labor/have/have-not struggles, new protest/resistance/rebellion movements, new forms of waste and assorted ecological impacts– all against the backdrop of our current electric/electronic ecocidal lifestyles.
Want fries with your electric gizmos, electric bikes, electric cars, home battery-packs? It might cost you, you, you, and you, etc…. more than you or anyone/everyone else and the rest of the planet can afford.
Get real.
Trump Threatens Nuclear War If Russia Protects Venezuela
Most of us here are aware of the disappearance of the glaciers of the world, but maybe not so much aware of how much they are currently contributing to sea level rise.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mountain-glaciers-are-major-contributors-to-rising-seas/
Here’s the original source, one well worth bookmarking.
https://www.eenews.net/
And this last one is simply so awesomely beautiful and so mind stretching that I’m posting it all over the place!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-spot-beautiful-optical-illusion-bottom-sea-180971902/
Why Calling US a ‘Democracy’ Is Both False & Dangerous to Do
Re plastic bags, the paradox
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47161379
NAOM
The analysis presented in the link about plastic bags is based on totally unrealistic bullshit assumptions allowing the conclusion that a cotton shopping bag would have to be used fifty years to recover the total cost of it.
I understand that the use of plastic packaging, taken all around, is actually a good thing, because it saves more than it costs, except for the trash problem. Good packaging does indeed mean more food makes it to the consumers table, with less spoilage, less food poisoning, etc.
So I’m not in favor of a ban on energy conservation grounds, or purely ecological grounds… other than TRASH.
That sort of analysis misses NOTHING, except the totally relevant fact that just picking up the plastic bags that wind up on the roadsides in that length of time is probably fifty times as costly as the supposedly fifty times as expensive reusable cotton bag, lol.
Ron and old people like him have used an unfairly large amount of resources according to the Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/10/climate-crisis-todays-children-face-lives-with-tiny-carbon-footprints
Seriously what 20 year old is using a quarter of the resources that a 20 year old did in 1950? They are almost certainly using more. How many 20 year old in 1950 took flights around the world.
Seriously what 20 year old is using a quarter of the resources that a 20 year old did in 1950?
My 20 something year old son doesn’t own a car and has no intention of ever owning one.
The future will be low carbon for most humans whether they chose it or not and whether they like it or not.
OOOPSY, 25% is still five times too high. Maybe someone can invent a way to use FF trolls (stealth or outright) to decarbonize the world.
Maybe someone can invent a way to use FF trolls (stealth or outright) to decarbonize the world.
.