Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please. Thanks.
59 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, December 19, 2024”
Comments are closed.
Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please. Thanks.
Comments are closed.
“History remains very much alive. We are today witnessing a battle between nationalism and liberalism that will write our own time indelibly into the history books of tomorrow.”
Could our energy problems be ovah???
Lasers, hot rocks, endless energy
Nobody ever said Late Capitalism would be fun. It is good for a few laughs, though.
Posted yet?
Art Berman, putting it all on the line. He’ll make both sides happy – ‘we can not quit oil’ and ‘we must quit fossil fuels or the human project will destroy the world’.
He trashes renewables, and gives the opposition the benefit of good intentions.
‘We must implement a solution in the next few years’ and ‘we have no idea what the solution is’.
Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/12sBWD_xqL4?si=56NupYWAVJ6AzdBq
This is good. The audio quality is poor, but there is a full two-hour discussion with Art, covering the usual ground and more. No one is so open, accessible, and honest about the human (energy) predicament as Art is. Interviewer is good, too, pointed questions, not a blabbermouth.
I need a dose of Art every so often when I need reminding how bad things are, because there ain’t no one to talk to about it around here.
I’ve been following this site and others for a long time, and I disagree with this sort of panic now. I once thought like that! I was once a fast doomer. But nothing has happened for 16 years now. Yes, we will have multiple steps down, but this is a long process, not an event.
It’s just old people and old things scared of their own demise. A story as old as history. Trump is reflective of this as well.
I know this hurts, but what you people actually can’t stand is that you won’t be the ones debating and discussing things in 2050 and 2100, because, well, we’ll all be gone. This is about your own personal mortality, not about peak oil.
Just one look at people like Gail Tverberg and James Kunstler, for example, and it’s written all over them. And they have lots of useful stuff to say! But they’re old. They’re on their way out anyway.
But really, guys, this is all about our personal mortality. We all want to go on forever, that’s the truth.
“the U.S. The SEIA currently expects the U.S. solar industry to install 40.5 GW in 2024” when the final tally comes in.
With a capacity factor of [conservative] 0.2 that new solar install is equivalent to output from 9 new nuclear power power plants [assumes CF 0.9 and 1000MW reactor size].
Not only much quicker to install but also much less expensive.
Hickory …. “With a capacity factor of [conservative] 0.2 that new solar install is equivalent to output from 9 new nuclear power power plants [assumes CF 0.9 and 1000MW reactor size].”
It is not equivalent to 9 nuclear power plants, nor even close.. The NPPs provide 24/7 power, the type continuous efficient industrial applications require. Solar has a peak at midday on sunny days and can have days on end of downtime in winter.
Add a couple of TWh of storage and you get close to the NPPs, but probably only 7-8 after allowing for efficiency losses into and out of the ‘storage’.
Here in Australia the inputs of more solar are raising the cost of electricity to users as the over 30GW of rooftop solar (all with huge subsidies) is starting to cause enormous problems to the grid, putting out of business all utility generated power, including solar and wind. The rate of new utility solar and wind installations have crashed as there is no money in it, despite huge government subsidies!!
Decent storage, to run industrial applications at optimal efficiencies is just too expensive.
Electricity demand is not steady 24/7. The output of nuclear power plants, like the output of solar, does not match demand.
A good example of this is the Ludington pumped storage plant, built to allow nuclear to follow load.
The primary reason nuclear hasn’t needed more storage like this is that nuclear is only 20% of US generation. If it was more, like France, it would run into real limits. France, of course is embedded in the European grid, so it can balance with imports and exports.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant
Hickory
Are you being serious?
Solar power between 5pm and 7am between November and February produces exactly nothing. The 200Gw of installed solar produces less electricity at 4pm then one nuclear power plan.
Do you know how much battery storage it would take to keep the lights on at night and at times there is little wind?
The output equivalency I indicated is on an annual basis…not moment by moment.
The nuclear CF average world in 2023 is 81%, but in the US it was up to an impressive 93%. Especially impressive consider that we have an old fleet with average age of 42 years. The plants have to shut down to refuel for 6 weeks each 18 months.
“The US utility-scale solar generation fleet averaged a 24.2% capacity factor from January through December 2022″….although I rounded down to 20%
I completely understand and acknowledge that there is a high degree of value that goes for constancy of production. And yes…the countries utilities understand that concept in excruciating detail. And they understand all of the associated costs and challenges with the various options.
And putting it all together they collectively decided to deploy a decent load of new PV generating capacity this year. And one new nuclear plant came on-line….much delayed and far over budget- $17 Billion.
“Vogtle Unit 4, a nuclear power reactor in Georgia, has a net capacity of 1,117 megawatts” [1.1 GW]
According to the US governemnt Energy Information Administration (EIA)
-No nuclear reactors are under construction now in the United States.
-The United States will deploy 65 gigawatts (GW) of solar power in 2025
By the end of 2025 the US will have 40 GW battery storage deployed, the vast majority of it deployed in the latest 3 year period. By 2030 the electricity available from battery storage will be as much as that available from the nuclear fleet.
Data centers will want it all.
For comparison on cost of deploying new generating capacity in the US
the latest Vogtle nuclear plant that came online this year came in at about $17 B/GW, while
the cost for utility scale PV in the US is $1B/GW , roughly 2024
Sarcastically I’ll add…its just a little easier to get PV installed than to build a new nuclear plant, to get a loan and a permit, to construct, and to operate.
Hickory
Electricity is needed on a second by second basis. To talk about annual production is meaningless. It is exactly what those in the wind Ind want you to think about.
I notice you did not even attempt to cost storage, they don’t want you to think about that either.
You might as well be talking to a tree stump. This group has tunnel vision to the extreme .
Right Ervin, it’s hard to believe the ignorance of the fact that fossil fuels are a limited energy resource. That have the ability to make planet earth the only livable space known to man uninhabitable.
The selfish short term non-thinkering who are willing to sacrifice good technical advancements for the short term perfect are a disgrace. The me, me, me society of today are mentally ill and don’t understand the process of technical advancements.
Thanks for pointing this out again Ervin. We are on course to turning earth into a dead stump.You must be the kind of guy who cares about their grandchildrens future.
How do you put a financial cost per barrel to destorying a habitable earth? You can’t. It’s just all about me, me, me now.
Hickory, at a 25% capacity factor you’d need 4x $1B, or 4GW of solar, to get the same GWh as nuclear. Daily, with PV you have 4GW for 6 hours so need to store 18 GWh. Assume BESS at $300M/GWh (debatable) requires another $6B. So now PV is $10B versus $17B for nuclear. Still a bargain.
Seems that I’ve ruffled some feathers simply pointing out that the country is on track to deploy a significant amount of PV, and no new nuclear for the time being/intermediate term.
A secondary point is that the price/cost of capital of the relative deployments explains the biggest part of this disparate deployment rate.
I’m not presuming to decide for utilities and energy developers what is the best combination of new generation modality, amount of storage, upgrades to transmission, and such….that is their job.
I am simply pointing what their actions actions show us about their conclusions.
What a naive way to work out the sums, no allowance for efficiency losses into and out of batteries and no allowance for differences between summer and winter, plus no allowance for a rainy day..
Please tell us where we get a perfect 6 hours of sunshine every day…
Yeah like it or not, new nuclear isn’t going to make any impact before 2050, and a huge amount of solar and storage is going to be built in the next decade.
How many GWH (GigaWattHours) will that storage supply? It’s easy to produce High Power, but how much Energy does it store? 40GW doesn’t mean much if it can only store .05 GWH.
My backup battery at 48 volt has a 600 AH capacity and can be discharged at 1C (600A). That’s 28.8KW. It’s also only 28.8 KWH. One Hour for that 28.8KW. The Brand New LiFePo4 cells alone cost $79/KWH.
I have 5KW of solar Panels. During the winter day here in Oregon, I’m lucky if I get a peak of 200 watts. Often less. I built this not to run my house, but to give me a basic backup for when the power is out for a few days. No water heater, no electric stove. Just fridge, freezer, well pump, microwave, Internet and a few lights. More than a few days and I’ll have to start a generator. Yes, in the summer I have no worries about running the batteries down, but come fall it gets iffy.
How long can that battery storage produce 40GW? What’s the $/KWH of that battery storage?
That’s a perfectly reasonable question. My experience is that a standard capacity is four hours, so 40GW would suggest 160GWhrs.
But I haven’t researched it thoroughly (don’t have the time, at the moment). So…rather than asking Hickory, why not take that on as a project for yourself?
The battery capacity issue is pretty complex, since various installations have differing specs as far as duration and actual usage. I haven’t looked to see if their is an accurate blended number.
I have noticed that stationary storage costs are coming down quicker than mobile, and that there is a lot of momentum in that industry. Also, there are newish chemistries that may make a big difference in deployment over the next 5 years. Zinc Air, Sodium Ion, Iron Flow, for example.
To glimpse the complexity of the cost analysis…have fun-
https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2024/utility-scale_battery_storage
Hey Hickory,
The 2024 LBL utility scale solar report for the US shows a cumulative net capacity factor “around 24%”. Their data on utility scale storage is a little more dated, showing $500/kWh for 2022 installations.
https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/Utility Scale Solar 2024 Edition Slides.pdf
Given the more up to date and dramatic reduction in battery pack costs for autos to below $100/kWh (see Bloomberg), it will be interesting to see how utility scale storage costs develop.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-09/china-s-batteries-are-now-cheap-enough-to-power-huge-shifts
“The future of data centers is about to make a huge draw on the power grid. According to a DOE-backed report from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, U.S. data center energy use could nearly triple by 2028, eating up as much as 12% of the country’s electricity.”
And thats still just the beginning. Consider that around 2028 we may start to see escalation/mass deployment of AI enabled
-robotics in industry, military and commercial operations
-autonomous vehicles
-government operations
-financial, education and medical sectors
-entertainment, communications
“Trump’s Cabinet picks aren’t just unqualified and inexperienced—they’re morally bankrupt”
“morally bankrup” might not be a negative in Trump World?
Early adopter, since the government doesn’t have money to backstop all the damage-
“It will be a whole new business atmosphere in Italy starting on January 1, 2025. That’s because the federal government there [Italy] will require every company to buy climate insurance as internal financial support to offset losses from floods, landslides, and other natural hazards.”
Been a while since I’ve posted anything. This is a test to see if I’m still in the system using an entirely new internet connection and computer. I don’t have any old passwords etc.
Welcome back MAC, I had to approve of your post because you were a new poster. I hope I do not have to do that again. Anyway, your posts have been missed. Please keep up the good work.
Thanks, Ron
Hideaway
This post is for you.
https://energybadboys.substack.com/p/wind-and-solar-up-to-12-times-more
Germany has spent 1 trillion Euros on wind and solar and massive upgrades to infrastructure.
A few weeks ago they were producing 2Gw of power when Germany needed 60Gw.
How many nuclear power stations can you build with 1 trillion Euros?
Germany is committed to spending over €1 trillion on climate and environmental sustainability investments by 2030. This includes investments in wind and solar power, as well as other measures to future-proof the country’s energy system:
In 2024, solar power generated a record 62 TWh, accounting for nearly half of the increase in Germany’s total renewable generation.
Germany has built the majority of its wind turbines in northern Germany, where wind conditions are favorable. However, the country’s energy grid can’t always transport all the electricity produced in windy areas to other regions.
The Renewable Energy Act (EEG) introduced feed-in tariffs to help drive the growth of renewables. The EEG was financed by a renewables levy on electricity bills, but this was scrapped in 2022 to help protect consumers from high power prices.
Germany receives money from the sale of CO2 pollution permits through the European Union’s emissions trading system. This money is used to fund decarbonization measures, such as the Climate and Transformation Fund.
Germany is phasing out its nuclear power plants, but is also developing fusion reactors.
Other costs associated with future-proofing Germany’s energy system include upgrading power grids, handling increased demand from electric cars and heating systems, and meeting climate commitments.
Are you so dim that you can’t understand that electricity needs to be delivered on a second by second basis? Only a know nothing talks about electricity generation in a year.
What is the cost of other sources when 70 million people need 60Gw of electricity per hour and 200Gw of installed wind and solar are delivering 5Gw per hour over a 2 day period?
Funny how both Germany and China have become poster boys for renewable energy production and adoption of EV’s respectively. Yet neither have any answers as to how they are going to reverse the current collapsing economies within them.
Take a look at market set interest rates in China. The entire curve from the 1 month bill to the 30 year bond is yielding 2% or less. Hint, interest rates are likely going negative in China.
All those Chinese yuan that some countries are excepting as payment are going to lose value in a hurry.
If you look at the dollar index which is mostly weighted in Euros which Germany uses. The index is at 108.00 There is some technical resistance on that chart between 110.00-113.00 if it gets above this level there is nothing in the way of resistance above. Dollar index can go to 120.00 or 130.00 or 150.00 or higher.
We are talking forced liquidation globally. Assets of all kinds will be sold. Even oil futures contracts will get liquidated.
We are basically talking an unwinding of the largest carry trade there is. Which is the dollar.
“Can Biden’s Green Boom Survive Trump’s Wrecking Ball?”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-12-24/can-biden-s-green-boom-survive-trump-s-wrecking-ball?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTczNTA1MzAxNywiZXhwIjoxNzM1NjU3ODE3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTT1pZTzJEV1JHRzAwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJFQjMzQUE3MEVBN0Q0QjdFOUJEMjRENjc4OTY3NjRDQyJ9.Q1l3qmkOSOMXeClTM6ysIcPQah-RgpYgGde4BX3rclo
Rgds
WP
Hideaway said “[John] What a naive way to work out the sums”.
I thought you liked it when system costs were pointed out, not just the components? I suggested Hickory’s $1B/GW for solar needed to be maybe 10x, or $10B/GW to be anywhere close to nuclear. And still you find fault? Sigh.
Loads of Oil,
What did your utility say when you asked why they are not building 1 or 2 nuclear plants right now?
Was it the lack of construction labor or difficulty at arranging the financing?
Or just not cost competitive with nat gas, solar and wind?
An oldie but goodie.
Merry Christmas to all!!
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/12/imagine-no-possessions-2
185,000 (Used)
A bargin?
An update about a people that like to have lighting 24 hours a day, along with refrigeration, street lights, air conditioning, the internet, functioning hospitals and everything else in a modern world that makes life better.
The government of Guyana has, of today, placed into service 100 MW of electricity from two power ships fueled by oil to provide base load electricity for their country. The math says that needing 1.6 barrels to produce a Megawatt, in a month upwards to 4,900,000 gallons will be needed.
As many of you know, Guyana was one of the poorest countries in the world and thanks to oil 800,000 people can hope to have a life even close to the people that post on this website .
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Can-Guyana-Avoid-The-Oil-Curse.html
Is Guyana’s oil wealth a blessing or a curse?
My 2 cents, both. Will be a blessing for some and a curse for others.
I read the Georgetown paper’s website every day and the current government has the welfare of its citizens first and foremost. Hospitals, roads, clean water, electricity, schools and everything else that can improve the lives of the people of that country. It’s a joy to see so much good being done every day.
I hope you are correct.
Exxon seems like a huge winner. That’s why Chevron was trying to get in there!!!
People may like lighting all day, but people don’t build nukes. Governments or big companies supported by governments build nukes and there are usually two motivations: to make money or to hide subsidies for a nuclear weapons program. A few (like the recent Summer and Vogtle projects) are done for ideological reasons, but that’s a losing game. Making money on nuclear seems like a fading dream as well.
The idea that the energy industry exists to keep the lights on is basically bullshit. The industry exists to make money. Good luck making money on a fuel based electricity source when renewables are around.
There does seem to be a 3rd reason for nuclear power: PR, to gain acceptance of nuclear weapons.
That seems to have been Eisenhower’s motivations for announcing “Atoms for peace”. It was, of course, a disastrous beginning of nuclear weapons proliferation – the poster child for this is Iran. India, Pakistan and N. Korea are much bigger problems, of course, but they’ve faded into the background because no one has any idea how to solve the enormous problems they present.
Waste disposal, cost overruns, melt downs, uranium supply & reprocessing, weak load following: all of these are trivial compared to the completely unsolved and generally ignored problem of weapons proliferation.
The guys who make a point of pointing out that renewables are intermittent and expensive somehow manage to overlook the absolutely obvious facts involving the long term depletion of affordable oil and gas.
Those of us who have put in the time necessary to understand the history of the oil and gas industry understand that we’re now into a second century of war, hot or cold but war nevertheless, involving control of our one time gift of nature finite supply of oil and gas.
Except for the fact that a huge portion of the world supply is located in ” sand country” most of us would barely be aware of the existence of places such as Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.
It’s quite reasonable, in the opinion of a lot of knowledgeable people, to assume that Russia has invaded Ukraine primarily because Ukraine has a lot of oil not to mention some of the worlds best farmland and various other mineral resources.
It’s obvious to even a six year old that since it never rains oil or gas, every oil and gas well must eventually run dry to the point it can’t be kept in production. With consumption growing for the easily foreseeable future, it’s a sure bet there will be oil and gas wars out the ying yang. This isn’t an if issue. It’s a WHEN issue.
Churchill understood it back in WWI when he lead the way switching the Limey’s navy from coal to oil. The oil question had as much or more to do with the way the western countries partitioned the various parts of the Middle East so as to ensure our long term access to that oil.
We have the worlds largest military establishment by far……… not because we expect Russia or China or anybody else to invade us across the Atlantic or Pacific…….. but largely to make sure the oil will continue to flow our way, and the way of our friends.
Sure renewable juice is expensive……. if you just look at it in the very short term.
But it’s super cheap considering the longer term alternative….. doing without oil and gas or getting by with a hell of a lot less and paying a hell of a lot more for it.
There’s a day coming, probably within the lifetime of a lot of us in this forum, when we will be damned glad for whatever renewable juice we have available………. because having it will mean we can divert more of our shrinking supply of oil and gas to CRITICAL industries that really do have to run around the clock around the calendar.
And for what it’s worth, maybe half of what we tend to think of as critical IS NOT……. except in terms of short term economic disruption. We don’t REALLY need fancy new cars by the millions, or aluminum drink cans by the billions or throw away food packaging by the millions of tons.
We can and we will learn to do without such things, or get by with a rather minor fraction of what we use today, unless the renewables industries scale up to shoulder the fossil fuel load thereby freeing up oil and gas to be used for critical purposes…… such as back up generation when the wind, sun, and storage aren’t up to the job.
If we’re smart enough to keep the pedal to the metal, there’s a real possibility quite a few of us can continue to enjoy a modern industrially based life style. It won’t be the same as now. We won’t be driving F250’s to pick up beer. We’ll build new houses or upgrade old ones to get by with only a very minor fraction of the energy we use now for heating and cooling…… and if we use one fifth as much, well, paying three times as much for it won’t be such a tough deal, will it?
I grew up in a little bitty rough sawn farm house but I had the whole world outside as far as I could go in a day. Then I lived in a single room with a room mate in college. Then I lived at times in cramped apartments without more than a postage stamp sized back yard. I got used to it. Hardly even noticed it, after a while.
If necessary we will get used to driving cars that will go only forty or fifty miles on a charge. We’ll get used to buying dry beans and soaking them and cooking them in a pressure cooker, because that’s the cheapest way to eat beans.
Renewable energy will continue to get cheaper every year, in real terms, because once built, wind and solar farms etc last a very long time and can be refurbished for a very minor fraction of new from scratch construction.
Millions of people are going to lose their jobs as times change for the worse. They will necessarily be supported on welfare or make work jobs. They’ll work for a roof over their head and beans for their belly, because that’s going to be the way of it, once the energy shit is well and truly in the fan. Cheap labor means cheaper renewables. Automation and recycling means cheaper renewables. Getting by with far less energy means renewable energy WILL BE affordable…..at least to the extent we really HAVE to have it.
Lights ……. check. Refrigerator check. Refrigerators can be made today to run on ten percent of the usual amount of juice the ones at your local big box store use. It’s not majic. It’s just leaving out the doo dads and using plenty of insulation and defrosting by hand, etc. We have one in my family that was bought prior to the Korean war that’s still running just fine, never been repaired at all. The ones I have had myself have averaged lasting maybe ten years. Getting them fixed has proven to be so expensive that hardly anybody bothers. You just junk the old one and get a new one.
If I were young again I would build a net zero house, or something pretty close to that standard. Given what it’s going to cost to heat and cool and run appliances for forty or fifty years this would be a no brainer decision and it wouldn’t REALLY cost that much……. IF we standardized the building code for this purpose.
Get used to it. It’s coming.
Yes indeed. Good to hear you.
OFM
It won’t be the same as now. We won’t be driving F250’s to pick up beer.
If you live in a well designed place, you can walk to the beer store.
Survivalist warned everyone about Musk a long time ago.
I could tell from the hitch in his step (he moves like an oversized toddler with a full diaper).
Merry Christmas all!
Brazil shuts BYD factory site over ‘slavery’ conditions
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xj9jp57r2o
China spending $2.2 trillion on fossils fuel subsidies.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/global-fossil-fuel-subsidies-rise-despite-calls-phase-out-2023-11-23/
China is all too aware of the absolute need to keep the power grid stable and ensure every factory and business does not lose any productivity due to power cuts. The people who said that coal plants would be stranded assets have no idea what they are talking about.
I wonder what percentage of backup China has using batteries 😂😂😂
Been a long time coming.
AMERICAN SHALE PATCH IS ALL ABOUT DEPLETION NOW
• Goehring & Rozencwajg: U.S. shale production peaked in late 2023 and is now declining.
• Geological depletion rather than market dynamics poses the biggest challenge.
• Novel technologies like CO2 injection offer hope for extending oil field lifespans.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-American-Shale-Patch-Is-All-About-Depletion-Now.html
“Ireland just replaced the Israeli embassy – with a Palestinian museum.”
We shall see where this goes—-
At last some interesting debates on ruinables instead of politics which is a major turn off for me. I caanot name one competent western government.
I see the usual suspects are still massaging the cost of ruinables as being cheaper than fossil fules but cannot explain why delivered electricity is so high, which is more important thet the cost of electricity delivered in the middle of the ocean from an intermittnet source. (check the recent stats in Europe on offshore power) Then there is the convenient blindness of the the resources required for ruinbables ( land, metals, minerals, polymers) and the resources that must be deployed to produce these short lived and unreliabale sources.
Then there is the so called EV transition which will solve all the worlds problems. I wish. I note that increasingly these resource monsters are proving to be ever more costly both to own and to the enevironment. As is normal with Jevons paradox would be buyers are incrasingly focused on performance rather than thrift, with 200, 300,400 and higher motor power with all the attendant consumption of electricity and wear on tyres and roads.
Mankind has two problems that are being ignored; population and resource depletion and all I here is that the population of Korea and japan is falling. No-one mentions the explosives population gorowth in Africa, the ME and Indian sub-continent. Meanwhile mass illegal migration is a major issue in the west.
ruinables
Are schoolyard taunts all you got?
EV transition which will solve all the worlds problems
Strawman argument. Nobody claims this except you.
all I here is that the population of Korea and japan is falling
Oh and China. And Eastern Europe. India’s growth rate is now under 1% per annum. It has fallen by half since 2010.
Alim
How have you calculated the future population growth?
All these experts would like to know how they are wrong.
https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs
Carnot, your phrasing implies that you think competent government exists outside of the west. Could you share which you believe to be competent and why?
New posts are up
https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-december-2024/
and
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-december-27-2024/