106 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, March 8, 2024”

    1. JT

      I think these pure BEV companies are in a bind in the US because of the increased demand for PHEVs. Note that GM has already revised its plans to make more PHEVs

      1. BYD is agrresively expanding and they make a lot of Plugin hybrids if that is what people want. The BEV works fine for me, I no longer own any ICEVs.

    2. Rivian received 68,000 reservations (with $100. deposit) within 24 hours of the reveal event for the R2 model. The postponement of the Georgia plant is to accelerate the production timeline of the R2 model. It’s a solid design, and hopefully they can bring it to production more quickly than the first half of 2026, which they announced. The R2 is 185.6″ in length, so just slightly shorter than a Tesla Model Y at 187″, but has a 2″ longer wheel base. The killer feature is that all seats, including the front two, fold flat. This is a big selling point for car camping.

      What really got me excited though was the R3 and R3X reveal, which was a complete surprise. That Rivian could keep the existence of this vehicle under wraps with no leaks is impressive. The R3 is even smaller than the R2 at 110.2″ in length. Compare with a 2000-2005 Toyota RAV4 which was 166.6″. The R3 has a longer wheel base than the RAV4 by more than a foot though, as it is a genuine off road intended vehicle.
      Like the R2, all seats fold flat. This car just shot to the top of my want list. It may be my prejudices at play, but the R3 seems to be generating greater excitement than the R2.

      Odds are against Rivian, but I hope they make it. Their product is distinctive. Even if Rivian isn’t here to stay. EV’s definitely are, at least for the immediate duration of industrial civilization.

      1. Agree…and yes that R2 will do very well if they get it to market. Probably will.

    3. Single-occupant cars, that use, all over the planet, asphalt, civil infrastructure, constant maintenance, constant energy, and way too many resources are a really a dumb idea anyway. So is posturing about the health of the planet while at the same time supporting their dev. If people are going to relocalize, we’re probably going to need a lot less of them anyway, so it’s even dumb there, since many capitalist businesses, probably especially like cars, need a certain level of mass production scale to be viable.

      1. Gary,

        Many fewer cars will be needed if TaaS takes off, which it certainly will if Autonomous vehicle software is solved eventually (perhaps in 5 to 10 years). People can easily carpool with an Uber like app in cities especially in order to save money. Many fewer cars would need to be produced and for rush hour if people used the carpool feature, many fewer vehicles would be on the road reducing traffic, asphalt needed and vehicles needed. It may never happen, but it may beat walking, or biking 15 to 20 miles. Buses and public transport are probably more efficient above a certain population density, but in more rural areas this is a better solution.

      2. There are lots of good reasons to cut the subsidies to suburbs. They are most of the cause of driving.

        1. There’s no way in hell we’re going to abandon the suburbs in the USA and probably not in any other modern country, no matter how much it costs to get around to jobs, school, shopping, hospitals, etc.

          We have ten times, a hundred times, too much capital tied up in the ‘burbs. Furthermore, there’s generally very little or no land available to build high density housing closer in to city centers. There’s little or no existing available DESIRABLE housing available in city center areas.

          But there are ways to reduce the cost of living in the ‘burbs.

          Zoning can be relaxed, so that lots of professional offices and small businesses can be located in otherwise residential only neighborhoods. There’s no real reason, other than ill considered zoning regulations, that there shouldn’t be doctors, lawyers, accountants, barbers, and plumbers scattered all thru such areas.

          My own dentist’s office is located on a busy highway, but it looks more or less like an ordinary house, except for the parking area. If he were to build a similar new office, with the parking area in the rear, with a privacy fence around it, you wouldn’t know the difference. There’s only about three cars per hour coming in, the same three going back out, one every twenty minutes or so.

          My surveyor’s office IS in an older house located on a busy highway, and it has only three off street parking spots. That’s enough, because the hands on guys drive their work trucks home and not that many customers have any real need to visit the office, given that maps and documents can be seen via email, etc.

          More and more people will be working from home, assuming the work they’re doing still needs doing. The last time I had an x ray done in a doctor’s office, he sent it via the net to a specialist who interpreted it for him. That specialist might have been on the fifteenth floor of a giant hospital building….. or he could have been in his own home office.

          Deliveries ranging from prescription drugs to groceries to small items needed to make home repairs, etc, can and will be made with one vehicle that stops at four or five…… or maybe a dozen houses or more, rather than every homeowner fetching his own stuff. This will be both cheaper and more convenient as well, once people get accustomed to it.

          There’s eventually going to be a glut of very large and FORMERLY very pricey houses on large lots… because the population is going to peak and begin declining, and there won’t be enough people making enough money to live in them as single family homes, even if they could afford the necessary energy…….. because that energy may very well be rationed and or priced on an UP sliding scale, depending on the amount used per household or family. This is already routinely done in some places, so that a couple of hundred kilowatt hours cost x dollars each, but the next couple of hundred cost more, so that using four or five times as much costs the customer ten or twenty times as much.

          So… such oversized houses can be remodeled into two, three, or four or even more apartments at a rather small fraction of the cost of building new from scratch. I’ve had a hand in doing this myself, in the Fan District of Richmond Va, where I lived at the time. This resulted in there being enough people in this relatively compact, formerly run down neighborhood for it to blossom into a highly desirable community with lots of bars, restaurants, offices and various small stores all within reasonable walking or biking distance.

          If I were to ever move back to a city again, it would be to such a neighborhood.

          Motor vehicle laws will be changed to make carpooling pretty much hassle free in terms of owning a van or large car and giving neighbors and co workers a PAID ride on a regular basis.
          Some local churches are already running a bus on a regular scheduled basis to take members to farm markets, where they can buy some things in bulk at very advantageous prices. Other days these buses take church members for an all day visit to a state park an hour’s drive or farther away.

          Maybe a couple of dozen homeowners located close to each other will find ways to create some sort of community organization that will make it possible for them to collectively own and operate just one or two light trucks, which could be enough for everybody, and half a dozen cars, rather than two dozen cars………. even if it’s still illegal to do so otherwise.

          Some people in some neighborhoods in some places are already maintaining near total control of their local streets, so that they can use golf carts or other similar low cost but fun vehicles to get around to all the places they need to go on a regular basis.

          The owners of rental housing and larger office buildings or stores, etc, will discover that it pays to help make affordable housing available close to these businesses, so that after a while some or most of their employees who rent will live relatively close to their jobs.

          Some of the buildings IN office parks will inevitably be converted into housing, given that there won’t be any need for so much office space, because so many workers can will be working remotely, thereby freeing up some buildings to be converted partially or wholly into housing.

          Yesterdays shopping malls will have greenhouses on those huge flat roofs, unless they’re covered with solar panels, and most of the former stores will be partitioned into apartments or condo’s.

          When such measures as these are exhausted, or prove to be unworkable, there will be electric cars, quite possibly fully autonomous, running here, there and everywhere, taking people where they need to go. If a driver IS needed, well, it’s likely there will be plenty of people needing that driver’s job, and having them earning SOMETHING will be a lot better than supporting them on welfare.

          An electric car designed for such constant long term use may cost twice or three times as much as a similar ordinary car built to last ten or fifteen years being used for an hour or two a day.

          But once people get used to using them, one such car can take the place of half a dozen or more individually owned cars, and customers who need one only occasionally and can schedule their rides at off peak hours will save as much as eighty or even ninety percent, compared to owning and maintaining a personal car….. not to mention not having to actually drive themselves.

          ONE industrial grade electric car will run a million miles even in stop and go driving with minimal regular maintenance…. because it will be built to last and to be easily serviced and easily repaired.

          Reserving one for regular use at a fixed time to get to work and home will almost certainly cost quite a bit less than owning and driving a personal car, not to mention having to have a parking space for it, etc.

          Furthermore it goes without saying that such cars will run on wind and solar juice most of the time, maybe as much as eighty or ninety percent of the time within twenty years or so, because wind and solar farms are going to be built out the ying yang all over the place….. out in the boonies. They’ll be tied into the grid via new long distance transmission lines as necessary.

          Such parking lots as are still needed will be covered with solar panels mounted such that cars can be parked in the shade under them, with a charging plug available at each and every parking spot.

          Gas and oil are one time depleting gifts of nature… and we’re going to have more than enough trouble putting our hands on sufficient quantities to manufacture fertilizers, or run back up power plants when the weather turns off bad for a few days, or heat our homes. We’ll likewise still be needing quite a bit of diesel fuel well into the future…. maybe indefinitely.

          It could be, in the end, that it will be necessary to manufacture some or a lot of synthetic liquid fuels using wind and solar power than it is to manufacture enough batteries to run all the necessary heavy trucks, construction and farm equipment, and so forth. There might not be enough raw material available to make that many batteries.

          It goes without saying that going from such speculations to three dimensional reality on the grand scale is going to cost an arm and a leg.

          But the real question is not whether we’ll be able to afford this transition, but rather whether we have any real choice in this matter, other than to allow the economy to collapse to the point that people are dying hard by the tens and hundreds of millions.

          The flip side is that no matter how hard we try, we might fail anyway. There are no guarantees, other than that things are going to get one hell of a lot worse for one hell of a long time, before they get better……. IF they ever get better again, at least not for hundreds or thousands of years.

    4. JT – The world is larger than the US:
      https://www.ft.com/content/b255d7b9-88f6-4481-a3a6-87542d2b728b

      In 2017, Hyundai invested $1.15bn in a new factory in Chongqing, southwestern China, with the goal of reaching an annual output of 300,000 internal combustion engine cars.

      But six years later, the rapid switch by Chinese consumers to electric vehicles has stalled sales, forcing the automaker to sell the factory in December for less than a quarter of the investment value.

      Rgds
      Vince

  2. Global Food Price Index [red line] eases again in February, mostly driven by lower world cereal prices.

    1. Probably best to start learning how to grow your own. Tastes way better too.

  3. This is sad beyond words, especially when you consider all the plants and animals affected. Paywall possible (article is in todays New York Times).

    RAINS ARE SCARCE IN THE AMAZON. INSTEAD, MEGAFIRES ARE RAGING.

    As countries continue to burn fossil fuels and the planet reaches the highest average temperatures measured by scientists, a grueling year of fires is expected around the world. Severe blazes have already ravaged large parts of the United States and Australia, and a worse season is forecast for Canada, where more acres burned last year than had ever been recorded. Another year of devastating fires could be especially damaging in the Amazon, which stores vast quantities of carbon dioxide in its trees and soil. It is also home to 10 percent of the planet’s plants, animals and other living organisms.

    If deforestation, fires and climate change continue to worsen, large stretches of the forest could transform into grasslands or weakened ecosystems in the coming decades. That, scientists say, would trigger a collapse that could send up to 20 years’ worth of global carbon emissions into the atmosphere, an enormous blow to the struggle to contain climate change.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/climate/rains-are-scarce-in-the-amazon-instead-megafires-are-raging.html

  4. Well, I suppose flat is better than the increases we’ve become used to reading about.

    STATE UTILITY EXPECTS CHINA’S COAL IMPORTS TO STAY FLAT THIS YEAR

    “Chinese coal imports this year are expected at around the record levels of 2023, according to an executive at China’s state-run utility Guangdong Energy Group. China’s coal imports jumped last year by 62% to a record high of 474.42 million metric tons, driven by high demand, lower-quality domestic coal, and higher domestic prices. This year, imports are expected to be between 450 million and 500 million metric tons this year, Reuters quoted Wu Wenbin, head of coal management at Guangdong Energy Group, as saying on Friday.”

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/State-Utility-Expects-Chinas-Coal-Imports-to-Stay-Flat-This-Year.html

        1. Well I emailed Trump’s office and essentially told them that if he didn’t win and/or thought the election was rigged, the Red States could consider ceding. Given that I reside in Canada, in a sense, I’ve just interfered in America’s elections.

          Oh and also all those new immigrants could secede too…

          New Palestine, New Israel, New Ukraine and New Venezuela, etc..

          1. Careful what you wish for…if things get scrambled then various parts of Canada will be absorbed by the fragments of what was the USA. That phase won’t take long, but the wars will last the rest of your lifetime.

  7. Global plastic production is up to 460M tonnes per annum according to OECD, with only 9% recycled. It made me go and work out how much oil and gas production was used for ‘products’ instead of being burnt. Answer is
    roughly 16-17M bbls equivalent/day. From the link below and the use of a bbl of oil from Statistica..
    https://www.oecd.org/environment/plastic-pollution-is-growing-relentlessly-as-waste-management-and-recycling-fall-short.htm

    This enormous amount is going to be substituted in the bright green future portrayed by the cornucopians by ‘something’, the usual answer being ‘biomass’. The energy content of all these products are over 10,000Twh per annum.

    Say we use corn as the feedstock for bioplastics and every other ‘product’ we need to run modern civilization. Growing corn would yield about 5Mwh/tonne of dry matter. Large scale production can get yields of 6 tonnes/acre, of dry matter, making 30Mwh/acre (using modern technology). So we only would need about 320M acres of corn growing intensively, which is 3.5 times the area of the current US corn crop.

    Of course we only get the high yield by using modern tractors, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides from fossil fuels, plus using fossil fresh water for irrigation.

    The above production would have to be on top of current food production, meaning ripping up more of the natural world to do it, a lot more tonnes of material being moved from farms to factories, more up keep of roads, lots of new trucks to do the carrying etc.. Adding all this up would mean an overall increase in energy use to make it happen, plus a lot more mining to build all the new factories, equipment in all these factories etc etc.

    In other words more of everything, meaning less natural world, more burning of fossil fuels to build it and higher CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s a dead end, it just means the planet is worse off when we do finally stop/collapse with more destruction of every other life form. The feedback loops is what every Cornucopian totally misses, as any huge increase in agricultural output only comes with a huge increase in inputs.

    ‘We’ as in humanity would need more tractor fuel, more truck fuel, more fertilizers, more pesticides and herbicides, more irrigation water for all this new intensively farmed land, so the amount of land needed for the initial goals of 320M acres would go up, because of the increase in ‘intensively farmed land’.

    If we tried to build all of the above without fossil fuels, then of course we would need a lot more renewables to do it, which brings me back to the question i asked Dennis in last weeks comments…

    Extra Aluminium will be needed for the extra solar panels to be built in the future. A new large smelter is the one planned by Adaro in Borneo, using coal fired power to do it. Should Adaro burn the coal to power the new smelter or should they erase a few hundred thousand acres of tropical rainforest to place enough solar panels for the operation??

    I say neither. That means less aluminium available for solar panels and everything else.

      1. It seems odd to worry about decreased plastic production when plastic is mostly waste.

  9. An honest look at what the feather bedding approach to reporting climate change has got us (a long read but worth it).

    https://www.jonathonporritt.com/mainstream-climate-science-the-new-denialism/

    1. The speed with which the climate is now changing is faster than (almost) all scientists thought possible.
    2. There is now zero prospect of holding the average temperature increase this century to below 1.5°C; even 2°C is beginning to slip out of reach. The vast majority of climate scientists know this, but rarely if ever give voice to this critically important reality.
    3. At the same time, the vast majority of people still haven’t a clue about what’s going on – and what this means for them and everything they hold dear.
    4. The current backlash against existing (already wholly inadequate) climate measures is also accelerating – and will cause considerable political damage in 2024. Those driving this backlash represent the same old climate denial that has been so damaging over so many years.
    5. The science-based institutions on which we depend to address this crisis have comprehensively failed us. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is incapable of telling the whole truth about accelerating climate change; the Conference of the Parties (under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) has been co-opted by the fossil fuel lobby to the point of total corruption.
    6. By not calling out these incontrovertible realities, mainstream scientists are at risk of becoming the new climate deniers.

    Quoting Johan Rockstrom:

    A 2.5°C global mean surface temperature rise is a disaster. It’s something that humanity has absolutely no evidence that we can cope with. There would be a 10-metre sea level rise. There would be a collapse of all the big biomes of planet Earth – the rainforest, many of the temperate forests, abrupt thawing of permafrost, and the complete collapse of marine biology. Over 1/3rd of the planet around the equatorial regions will be unhabitable because you will pass the threshold of health, which is around 30°C. It’s only some parts of the Sahara Desert today that has that kind of average temperature.

    Unfortunately 2.5 is the best we can hope for the way things are going and 3 to 4 this century, and still rising, is much more likely, which is the end of organised civilisations. I think biodiversity loss is a bigger threat as a violated planetary boundary than climate change alone but gets even less attention.

    1. Where I live the loss of birds and insects is especially obvious. A lot more cows though.

      THE BIODIVERSITY CRISIS

      “According to the most recent figures, wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% between 1970 and 2018. The abundance of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles is falling fast, as populations of sea lions, sharks, frogs and salmon collapse. The declines have been particularly calamitous in Latin America and the Caribbean, which has seen a 94% drop in the average wildlife population size. Africa has had the second largest fall at 66%, followed by Asia and the Pacific with 55% and North America at 20%. Europe and Central Asia experienced an 18% fall.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/06/the-biodiversity-crisis-in-numbers-a-visual-guide-aoe

      2. Bitcoin fixes this!
        /s

        More seriously, I consider the loss of animal diversity to be a tragedy under humanist terms, and a sin under Biblical terms.

        Why a sin? Because to assume dominion without assuming responsibility is to ignore “God’s law” which is also nature’s law. The Cheetah does not hunt when it is full.

        We’ve somehow decided that we’re smarter than the laws of nature, but only because cause and effect are separated by a few years. We don’t routinely try to evade the law of gravity because the consequences are within a time frame our puny minds can appreciate.

        But the laws of complex systems are as defined and resolute as the law of gravity, and we’re busy pretending as if they are not. In Biblical terms, ‘wrath’ is what follows next. In biological terms, overshoot and species extinction are on the menu.

        Either way you choose to look at it, we’re being dummies.

    2. “Just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat, a study suggests.”

      Most of this 3% is locations that humans consider worthless to our exploitation.
      Who is volunteering to cease and desist?

      1. HICKORY —

        Our local cattle baron buys up every acre as it becomes available. He claims it is impossible to satisfy the market for his beef.

        1. DOUG —
          Most beef is consumed as ground beef. With a little luck that will get replaced soon by cheaper substitutes in processed food. I recall Taco Bell got “busted” for doing this a few years ago, but it may well be a selling point now.

          1. ALIMBIQUATED —

            Also both my daughters and their husbands have a vegetarian diet, which helps, I suppose. However only about 5% of China’s population identifies as vegetarian or vegan which doesn’t make me optimistic.

            1. Yeah, the Chinese eat a LOT of pork. But like beef in America, much of that pork is ground up and heavily spiced before it hits the table. Fake ground pork is now available in China, but these are early days. We’ll see how it goes.

    3. What to do when you’re completely overwhelmed by climate anxiety
      https://www.vox.com/even-better/24063556/overwhelmed-climate-anxiety-catastrophizing-values-action

      When the subject of climate change is a catastrophe in itself, it becomes incredibly easy to catastrophize the fate of the planet. Alarming news headlines, the increased frequency of natural disasters, and politicians’ failure to promote genuine solutions may lead some to believe in an inevitable future in which extreme temperatures and weather events are constant and currently populated parts of the globe are uninhabitable. It’s important not to turn a blind eye to the effects of climate change, but to view these events realistically rather than project future probabilities as fact.

      When we catastrophize — or think of the worst-case outcome — our body internalizes our stressful thoughts, whether they’re based in reality or not, says Thomas Doherty, a licensed psychologist who specializes in environmental approaches to mental health. “That creates a positive feedback loop of more stress, more catastrophizing, which then inhibits my performance,” he says, “which, of course, makes me less and less empowered. We have to be careful about that. Realistic thinking about a catastrophe is a different thing. We have to build our capacity to think about catastrophes.”

      To help you walk this line between staying in touch with reality and not succumbing to despair, climate-aware therapists offer their advice, from accepting nuance to finding strength in community.

      1. If I were their therapist, I would just tell them to just look at collapse in the eye and embrace it and then ask them for my usual fee.

          1. Amor fati is a Latin phrase that may be translated as “love of fate” or “love of one’s fate”. It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary.

            Thanks S. Had to look it up!

    1. It’s by Nordhaus who thinks that as most industry is done inside climate change can have no effect on it and as agriculture is only a few percent of GDP loss of all of it would just be a bit of a bump. Find an interview with Steve Keen where he unloads his full contempt of Nordhaus’s incompetence and self serving ignorance.

      1. It seems kind of circular, though, if we are bumping up against peak oil and other resource and environmental constraints. So we are going to be doing something about it anyway, whether we like it or not. Thinking we could before that at this point in the game seems also a little hubristic and circular. Like, we didn’t, so we won’t.

        —

        “We are all entangled, in one way or another, in the vast industrial system of the West, whose fossil energy needs are beyond comprehension. World population grows by close to a quarter of a million people a day, swamping any pretense we may have of ‘offsetting’ carbon with our personal choices…

        So, like the last tailings of Pennsylvania’s anthracite mines vanishing into our kitchen range, we can pretty much count on the world’s vast stores of oil and natural gas all going up in smoke.” ~ Mike Bendzela, 3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/03/ode-to-anthracite.html

        —

        Yup, looks like it, and well-written, Mike.
        (You have to suggest a good bulk tea or two to order.)
        We can disentangle somewhat of course, but to what effect if someone somewhere else increases their entanglement from your decrease in a kind of global zero sum game.

  11. I appreciate the open thread to post stuff like this. It’s my most recent column at 3QD, and it’s rather “peak-ish,” so I thought you would all appreciate it. I’m still working up the gumption to write directly about the P and the O.

    Ode To Anthracite.

  12. Not good.

    WORLD TEMPERATURES GO ABOVE 1.5 C WARMING LIMIT FOR A FULL YEAR

    For the first time, the global temperature pushed past the internationally agreed upon warming threshold for an entire 12-month period, with February 2023 to January 2024, running 1.52 C, according to C3S. Last month surpassed the previous warmest January, which occurred in 2020, in C3S’s records going back to 1950.

    Despite exceeding 1.5 C in a 12-month period, the world has not yet breached the Paris Agreement target, which refers to an average global temperature over decades.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/copernicus-climate-report-january-1.7108644#:~:text=For%20the%20first%20time%2C%20the%20global%20temperature%20pushed%20past%20the,records%20going%20back%20to%201950.

    1. It has been expected that there will be a cool down as El Nino switches to La Nina later this year but the ocean surface temperatures have warmed up considerably this year, not just in the Pacific, so that there is lots of new energy available to transfer into the atmosphere as storms form, and it is not being taken down to depths very quickly. There may be a system shift going on rather than just periodic changes.

      1. George, further to your comment.

        GLOBAL WARMING PUSHES OCEAN TEMPERATURES OFF THE CHARTS

        “In 2023, sea surface temperature and the energy stored in the upper 2000 meters of the ocean both reached record highs, according to the study published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. The amount of energy stored in the oceans is a key indicator of global warming because it is less affected by natural climate variability than sea surface temperature…

        Scientists are concerned about the long-term capacity of the oceans to continue absorbing 90 percent of the excess heat from human activity.”

        https://phys.org/news/2024-01-global-ocean-temperatures.html

        1. The next time you have nothing to do, stand at the stove and heat a pot of water with a hair dryer. Let me know when the pasta is ready to eat.

          1. It’s not ocean breezes wafting across the surface that warms the ocean. It’s the 1000 watt/sq. meter – 5,700 deg. K radiant energy beaming directly on the ocean surface – most of it absorbed and not reflected- penetrating 100 meters deep, it’s radiant energy converted to thermal heat and stored in the ocean’s thermal mass.

            Check it yourself. Put a black open cast iron pot of water out in direct summer sunshine a few hours and check the temperature rise. If you put a clear glass lid on it – kinda what greenhouse gases do to our atmosphere – your pasta will likely be al dente in minutes.

      2. We are a force of nature, George. We all know that. So? So if radical climate change, general environmental degradation, and species extinctions are our force of nature, are in the cards, then that’s what will be. Que sera. I don’t think talking about it at length on any corner of the internet is going to make much of any difference, do you?, except for maybe feeling good about doing so and being part of a decentralized chorus of tears, token, crocodile or otherwise.

        In any case, we both should know that environmental pressures can produce new adaptations, evolution and species explosions, once the pressures are overcome or transcended. Maybe that’s what’s also in the cards and what nature needs sometimes. A true/truly Great Reset, and one that doesn’t involve Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates or George Soros or any other similar/related corporate/government/think-tank shmuck.

        I am quite sure the bugs will bounce back. Us? Maybe less so.

  13. SATELLITE MEASUREMENTS SHOW THAT GLOBAL CARBON EMISSIONS ARE STILL RISING

    “Unfortunately, the data for the past year is not encouraging. According to the 2023 Global Carbon Budget (GCB), an annual assessment of Earth’s carbon cycle, emissions in 2023 continued to rise by 1.1% compared to the previous year. This placed the total fossil fuel emissions from anthropogenic sources at 36.8 billion metric tons (more than 40 U.S. tons) of carbon dioxide, with an additional 4.1 billion metric tons (4.5 U.S. tons) added by deforestation, extreme wildfires, and other sources. This trend indicates we are moving away from our goals and that things will get worse before they get better.”

    https://phys.org/news/2024-03-satellite-global-carbon-emissions.html

  14. Hideaway,

    As ever you are on the money but the polymer business is not quite what the OECD proclaims; no surprise. It is very hard to classify all of the polymers are such as some identify as other materials. Think of surface coating, thermoset resins, insulation,roofing, flooring and fibres for clothing. Quite a mixture of end uses and few of these products are actually recyclable.

    Food packaging makes up a huge % of the total plastic waste but recycling is challenging, mainly because as yet the products are noit designed with recycling. then what do you choose. Upcycling, downcycling, re-use. The real issue is the sorting and logistics.

    Were we to floow JSO then we would all starve; no question about. we are probably going to starve anyway but we might be able to delay the inevitable by prudent use of the oil resources remaining. I wish that so called experts would not use volume units when discussing petrochemicals. The main pet chem feedstocks are

    ethane – 17.66 bbls/ mt
    propane 12.4 bbls/ my
    butane 12.8 bbls/ mt
    naphtha 9 bbls/ mt

    The feedstocks are used to produce the base chemicals

    ethylene
    propylene
    benzene
    toluene
    xylene.
    Methanol and Ammonia are primarily produced form natural gas, as is hydrogen. The actual use of crude oil derivatives is probably closer to 600 million tonnes, mainly as light distillate. Ethane is primarily used for ethylene production. Up to 14% ethylene can be left in the natural gas stream.

    On this blog I have repeatedly asked the Cornies how the so called renewable economy is going to facilitate the production of essential polymers to build out the renewable paradise that they envisage.

    Not one of the experts on this blog has so far come up with anything remotely viable. We are repeatedly subjected to unverified claims that renewable energy is cheap and cost competitive. One corny compared a solar panel to a steam turbine. So is panel pricing continually dropping. Yes it has until last year. then it bottomed out. The cost of a watt of PV might be $0.5 but how much lower can it go. What is more the cost of the installation and infrastructure is on a totally different upward trajectory. It is not the cost of the panel, it is the installed cost to provide a dispatchable power source that can run 24/7 and not imbalance the grid. A steam turbine has immense inertia, unlike unreliables who are grid following rather than grid forming. One steam turbine can produce reliaible power at a fraction of the full installed cost of unreliables – for years.

    The usual corny solutions for fuels and feedstocks are:

    Carbon dioxide recycling
    Biomass conversion
    Algae
    Green hydrogen
    Gold hydrogen (the latest wishful thinking)

    Somehow we are supposed feed these materials into a Fischer Tropsch process and all will be hunky dory. Not one of the above options is viable. Boifuels are merely another form of fossil fuels. 15 years ago I was asked to evaluate a process to make butanol from wood chips. Butanol has a higher value than fuels. My employer had just shut down a 500 kta plant. The proposal was to build a 50 kta biobutanol plant. The first question I asked was how much biomass was required. 600 kta was the answer. I knew that would be the case based on the thermodynamics, and this was the sugar coated candy version. This was not a process, it was a logistic exercise. This is typical of the academic establishment- clueless about real world processes, and that extends to the unreliables optimism.

    WE can dream and hope but realistically there is no way out that we can support 8 billion mouths to feed and not wreck the environment. We can kid ourselves that we can build out unrelaibels but there simply is not enough raw materials that we can extract even with the remaining fossil fuels.

    2. Thanks for this. For us in Europe the most poignant section concerns what might happen if we lose natural gas mains supply pressure even for a moment: “Even losing service to 130,000 customers could have taken five to seven weeks to restore.” Check out how fast Norwegian NG reserves are declining and how tight LNG might become as Asia bids against declining European economies.

  16. Earth energy imbalance not just still going up but going up faster than ever before.

    1. What does the earlier data look like, because recorded history started before 2003?

      1. Wobbling up and down around zero with as much high as low before shooting up in the last few decades.

  17. An awkward touch of reality in today’s New York Times. Paywall possible.

    BRAZIL’S CLASHING GOALS: PROTECT THE AMAZON AND PUMP LOTS MORE OIL

    Since being elected in 2022, Mr. Lula has drastically reduced deforestation in the Amazon and overseen a sizable build-out of renewable energy. But he will also preside over Petrobras’ oil boom and a period of growing gas imports, both of which will facilitate Brazil growing hunger for cheap flights, meatier diets and air-conditioned homes.

    Mr. Prates said he spoke with Mr. Lula every two weeks and was pushing him to understand that a transition away from fossil fuels needs to be “wisely slow.”

    “That means not slow because we don’t want to do transition, but slow because we need to correspond to expectations of the market for oil, gas and its derivatives,” he said. “Petrobras will go up to the end of the last drop of oil, just as Saudi Arabia or the Emirates will do the same.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/climate/brazil-oil-production.html

    1. On the other hand Brazil may well join Norway in exporting most of it’s oil to the petroleum junkies around the world. They appear to be heading towards a 100% renewable powered electricity grid and their EV adoption is on a tear.

      Brazil hits 40 GW milestone

      Brazil has surpassed 40 GW of operational installed PV capacity, according to new figures from the ABSolar association.

      The trade body said that around 27.5 GW of the installed capacity comes from distributed-generation PV systems, which include all installations up to 5 MW in size in Brazil.

      Small microgeneration plants, up to 75 kW in size, represent 22.7 GW of the total, distributed across 2.4 million systems.

      Brazil set to widen lead as cleanest major power sector

      LITTLETON, Colorado, Oct 11 (Reuters) – Brazil generated nearly 93% of its electricity from clean sources during the first nine months of 2023, up more than 2 percentage points from the same period in 2022 and the largest clean-power share among major economies.
      France has historically boasted the cleanest power sector among top economies, but has lost ground to Brazil over the past year or so due to reduced nuclear power output in France and sharp increases in solar and wind generation in Brazil, data from the Ember think tank shows.
      Green energy capacity growth in 2023 will extend Brazil’s lead, revealing that it is possible to boost both clean and total power generation despite economic headwinds in the form of rising interest rates, patchy consumer demand and strained supply chains.

      SOLAR OUTSHINES HYDRO
      Brazil’s massive hydro power facilities have formed the backbone of its energy system for decades, and hydro accounts for about 68% of its total electricity generation in 2023. But the chief source of renewable power growth has been the solar sector, which boosted electricity output by more than 75% over the first 9 months of 2023 from the same period in 2022.

      Brazil’s Electric Vehicle Revolution Continues as Sales Set to Surge by 60% in 2024

      A Paradigm Shift in the Making

      In a country known for its love affair with internal combustion engines and abundant supplies of sugarcane-derived ethanol, Brazil is on the cusp of a green automotive revolution. The wheels of change are turning rapidly as sales of fully electric and hybrid vehicles are poised to soar by a staggering 60% this year, a forecast by the Brazilian Association of Electric Vehicles (ABVE) reveals.

      ABVE, representing prominent electric automakers such as Chinese giants BYD and Great Wall Motor Co, has predicted that Brazil’s total sales of electric vehicles (EVs) will surpass 150,000 units in 2024. This ambitious projection comes hot on the heels of a remarkable 91% surge in sales, totaling 93,927 EVs, recorded in 2023. Brazil seems determined to embrace the electric future as the world grapples with climate change and the urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

      1. Meanwhile,

        AN AREA THE SIZE OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE BURNED IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON IN 2023

        “On average close to one million trees are still being chopped down or burned every day in the Amazon. Countless more died because of the drought, and this will worsen the degradation of the forest. Overall, the Amazon was worse off in 2023 than the year prior.”

        https://rainforestfoundation.org/engage/brazil-amazon-fires/#:~:text=On%20average%20close%20to%201,2023%20than%20the%20year%20prior.

      2. Also look at the Uruguay and Argentina energy situation and potential. They are one of the few areas of the world with both food and energy relative abundance/potential. Climate change with desertification/deforestation is an immense threat to these three countries however.

      3. If Brazilians really do go whole hog for electric cars and solar power, they will have a huge advantage in terms of cutting way back on hydro during the day, and saving the water for night time and cloudy weather days.

        They won’t need to build very many battery farms at all, compared to countries with smaller hydro resources.

      4. And therein lies the problem. As some countries decarbonize portions of their infrastructure, they expand exports of their domestic carbon fuel resources for others to burn, which keeps fossil fuel prices at an affordable level and extends the world’s fossil fuel addiction. The smartest dope dealers eschew consuming their products so they can sell more to the other addicts. But they are still dealers and still a main contributor to the problems that addiction brings to their society.

  18. Latest methane news.

    US ENERGY INDUSTRY METHANE EMISSIONS ARE TRIPLE WHAT GOVERNMENT THINKS

    Large methane emissions events around the world detected by satellites grew 50% in 2023 compared to 2022 with more than 5 million metric tons spotted in major fossil fuel leaks, the International Energy Agency reported Wednesday in their Global Methane Tracker 2024. World methane emissions rose slightly in 2023 to 120 million metric tons, the report said.

    About 30% of the world’s warming since pre-industrial times comes from methane emissions, said IEA energy supply unit head Christophe McGlade. The United States is the No. 1 oil and gas production methane emitter, with China polluting even more methane from coal.

    https://phys.org/news/2024-03-energy-industry-methane-emissions-triple.html

  19. The shortsightedness of the fossil fuel and electricity utility lobbies cost the US it’s potential lead in solar PV manufacturing. The petroleum lobby has cost the US any advantage it had in battery manufacturing. The idea that the private sector must go it alone has ignored the fact that the Chinese government has fostered the growth of key future industries. The Biden administration’s IRA and other initiatives appears to be an effort to regain lost ground but, is it too late?

    How China Became A Battery Manufacturing Juggernaut

    2. Thank you for the links!

      It is difficult to comment on anything if the input source of information is not that good; and you also have to trust it somehow.

      I could refer to a prior statement of mine that there is a window of opportunity especially in this decade to invest into renewables to “the max”; and it seems more likely every day. You have the decision, the lag into execution, and suddenly you are already in 2030. The switch from expansion mode to maintenance mode should not be unexpected the way things are unfolding. The weak points, like rare earth minerals, are much easier to circumvent in a maintenance centered economy.

      It is kind of interesting that “kicking the can down the road”, not only could serve the financial system. But also the downslope of economic activity. I was very surprised that Europe could tackle the situation with less natural gas and oil from a substantial source in 2022. But Europe was not so substantial in the global economic system to not have options to cope with it in the end. It shows to me, that to cut global trade is going to be very difficult in any scenario.

      As to the electrification of the economy; there is absolutely a big potential to do more with less. “Soften the blow” was a phrase I did hear on this forum, but I do think there is a potential to rely on renewables with a low fossil fuel base in the big cities. To a lesser degree rural. The hybrid car makes much more sense in more rural areas as an example.

    1. Peak ICE for China, with ICE manufacturing plants becoming stranded assets.

    2. Also from that piece linked by Alimbiquared is this excerpt:

      The world’s largest battery manufacturer CATL recently announced that it was on track to cut battery costs in half to just $50/kWh by the middle of 2024, surprising even bullish futurist Tony Seba, who 10 years ago predicted it would take until 2027 to reach that price.

      Usually people think Seba’s claims are outrageous, but in this case it seems he was too conservative by 3 years.

      I will note that the cheaper batteries help both BEVs and PHEVs (for those who are fans), but probably is more important for BEVs.

  21. Most of the doomerish comments fail to give any consideration at all to the perfectly obvious facts concerning falling birth rates in all the places that really matter.

    ( It’s cruel or hardhearted to say so, but hundreds of millions of very poor people are going to die poor over the next couple of generations, rather than achieve modern life styles. They aren’t all that important in terms of climate and resources, since they use very little energy per capita. )

    I personally believe birth rates are far more likely to continue to fall, than to increase.

    If Old Man Business As Usual manages to stagger along for another thirty or forty years, the population is IMO going to peak a lot sooner and a lot lower than expected by the demographic community, at least in the industrial economies.

    So there’s good reason to hope that our grandchildren can pull thru in terms of such resources as rare earths, fresh water, ‘ cause it’s still going to rain, lol, aluminum, steel, timber, and such.

    And as resources such as phosphorus get to be ever scarcer and ever more expensive, there are ways to recover huge amounts from current waste streams…. such as by processing sewage into fertilizer. Sure it’s going to cost an arm and a leg to do it……. but given the choice of paying that bill, or doing without food, we’ll pay it, and spend less on cosmetics, booze, and cigarettes, or any other luxury items.

    It blows me away how little REAL coverage of the environmental crisis gets. My own personal WAG, based on reading news and commentary on the internet, is that there’s well over fifty times as much coverage of the population crisis in terms of lack of workers and consumers as there is in terms of existential crisis level coverage of resources such as water, soil, and minerals.

    Sure there’s plenty of yakking about the climate as such, but only a little of the coverage goes into any real detail…… it’s nearly all just generalities that don’t make much if any impression on Joe and Suzie Sixpack.

    https://www.newsweek.com/economist-forecast-china-birth-rate-crisis-1879522

    1. True. Much of the public discourse around these issues is a mob struggle to engage in denial of the realities.
      It is simply not sexy, not politically viable, not economically profitable, not fun
      to talk or think about constraints or diminishing prospects.
      By and large, we prefer to distract ourselves. Sleepwalk.

      One of the great achievements of the past two centuries is the rise in prosperity of the average person…the enslaved, the peasant worker in the field or in the factory, the sharecropping farmer. Most of us.
      I fear we are in for a phase of big backsliding on this scale, with escalating separation between the haves and have nots. If so, it will accelerate the peak population trend you point out.

    2. OFM —

      “I personally believe birth rates are far more likely to continue to fall, than to increase.”

      Well, according to the U.N., since 1950, global average lifespans have increased by almost 28 years (from 45.51 to 73.16 in 2023), accompanied by a decline in global fertility from an average of 5 births per woman in 1950 to 2.3 births per woman in 2021. And, their global fertility is projected to continue falling, reaching zero by end of century. That seems like a plummeting fertility rate to me.

      1. Europe is moving from a dependency ratio (over 65s to 15 to 64 year olds) of under 0.3 to 0.5 (maybe 0.6 if anti immigration policies get stronger) by 2050 if trends continue (which they won’t given resource depletion and climate change of course). Caring-sharing social democracies will not survive this (especially as energy shortages bite as well) so social programs will be cut, inequality will rocket, politics will turn to populist right wing demagogues, any remaining efforts at GHG reduction will cease, environmental destruction will accelerate and life expectancy will sharply contract. There is no easy way out of overshoot as high as we are in.

        1. Unfortunately I have to essentially agree with everything you write in this comment. I live in the UK and in my early sixties, and I see all these trends already appearing. I do not expect to live as long as my parents did as a result. I have tried over the last 30 years to do what I could to mitigate the inevitable, choosing to adopt children rather than procreate being the most significant. Unfortunately the children I adopted came so emotionally damaged that I have failed to raise them to have the resilience they will need to survive the coming decades, I just hope they last longer than me. I know that the decades I spent in active environmental management, energy efficiency and carbon reduction modifications to my lifestyle, and financial planning to survive the coming economic contractions have made very little difference in the long run. I no longer plan further ahead than my life expectancy and just hope I can help my children find the stability and love that they deserve whilst there are still enough social resources to keep them alive.

  22. As Dennis pointed out earlier, electric car batteries are getting cheaper much faster than expected, faster than even the pink eye glasses optimists have hoped.

    https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/electric-vehicle-battery-prices-falling.html

    And while the electric car market place is somewhat glutted and still overpriced, compared to conventional cars, it’s my opinion that the charging problem and the reliability problems will be mostly history in most places in modern industrial countries.

    With battery prices coming down substantially, electric car prices will come down so that the buyer won’t have to pay a big upfront premium,so that it will be possible to own and drive an electric car for the same monthly outlay as a conventional car, from the first month of ownership.

    And it’s a no brainer bet, in my opinion, that gasoline prices are going to go up faster than electricity prices…… unless maybe electric vehicles sell so well that reduced demand for oil keeps the price of oil down.

    As Matt Simmons used to say, depletion and rust never sleep.

    1. It’s funny how little attention people seem to pay to operating costs.

      The average ICE costs about 15 cents per mile to fuel, while the average EV costs about 3 cents. So, after 150k miles one would save about $18k.

      EVs are already cheaper than ICEs to own and operate.

      1. But they’re still far more expensive to own and operate in the SHORT term, for the large majority of potential new car buyers.

        They still cost a hell of a lot more, up front, when you sign on the paperwork, for a comparable vehicle.

        Bigger down payment, more interest, more insurance coverage, more property tax, etc.

        Big opportunity cost.

        And you can just about forget about getting a good deal on a cheap used electric car. Not one used car dealer out of twenty five or more has one on the sales lot.

        I’ve never bought a new vehicle in my life,mostly because of the opportunity cost. I’ve deliberately owned older ones, and mostly put the up front savings into more land, etc.

        Given my personal world class jackass of all trades background, this has worked extremely well for me, because I have done nearly all of my own maintenance and repair work. I’ve saved five hundred EARNED dollars tons of time in half a day doing my own, and we had to have the shop and tools anyway, being farmers.

        Subsidies as such, given the hoops you must jump thru to get them, are generally damned near worthless to most of the people who need them the most.

        But suppose I had spent an extra ten to twenty grand buying an electric car, such as a Tesla Three, compared to a get the job done Toyota or Ford…….. and put that extra money into Tesla stock ?

        Stocks go up and down of course, but had I done this say four or five years back, and picked a winner, my earnings would have been many times what I saved owning an electric car.

        I am a big electric vehicle fan boy.

  23. Humans getting off oil.

    OIL MAJORS SET TO SANCTION $125 BILLION UPSTREAM PROJECTS IN 2024

    “International oil and gas majors and the Middle East’s national oil companies are expected to give the green light this year to up to 30 projects, worth a total investment of $125 billion and holding an estimated 14 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of resources. That’s the estimate in Wood Mackenzie’s latest analysis of upstream oil and gas projects expected to reach final investment decisions (FIDs) in 2024.”

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Majors-Set-To-Sanction-125-Billion-Upstream-Projects-in-2024.html

    1. Meanwhile,

      Daily CO2

      Mar. 16, 2024 = 426.36 ppm
      Mar. 15, 2023 = 420.24 ppm
      1 Year Change = 6.12 ppm (1.46%)

      1. Doug, why do you keep presenting daily CO2?
        Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2
        March 17: 423.96 ppm
        March 16: 426.36 ppm
        March 15: 427.93 ppm
        March 14: 425.56 ppm
        March 13: 424.52 ppm
        Cheers, Phil

        1. PHIL —

          Good question. To show it is always increasing, I guess.

          BROKEN RECORD: ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS JUMP AGAIN

          “Measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) obtained by NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory averaged 424.0 parts per million (ppm) in May 2023, the month when CO2 peaks in the Northern Hemisphere. That is an increase of 3.0 ppm over May 2022, and represents the fourth-largest annual increases in the peak of the Keeling Curve in NOAA’s record. Scientists at Scripps, which maintains an independent record, calculated a May monthly average of 423.78 ppm , also a 3.0 ppm increase over their May 2022 average.”

          https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/broken-record-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-levels-jump-again

        2. Was the Jump on 15th when 25% of the refining capacity of the RF was blown up?
          Oil is Macro

  24. The people here, and in most other forums, who just don’t get it when it comes to going electric generally base their arguments on lack of range, lack of charging infrastructure, ill considered arguments concerning the mining of rare earth metals,while ignoring the environmental costs of mining coal and drilling for oil, etc. etc, etc.

    I personally believe that within five to ten years, tens of millions of people in the USA alone will be ready and willing to buy a relatively plain jane compact electric car with a range of one hundred miles or less, for the same reason they get their groceries and clothing at Walmart, and live in cramped apartments…… because that’s the best they can afford.

    Such a car will get them to work and to the supermarket and doctor’s office and the kids ball games.

    And charging infrastructure isn’t all that expensive, if you compute the cost on a monthly basis over a period of say five years.

    Nearly every free standing house built in this country within the last forty years or so has been built to an electric code adequate to provide an extra thirty amp or even fifty amp two hundred forty volt outlet.

    An electrician can do all the actual electrical work involved in installing such an outlet, weather proof of course, outside the house, in half a day or less.

    But somebody has to go for the permit, and buy the materials, and make and repair some holes in the walls in a place or two, and dig a few feet of ditch for the wires, etc.

    In my area, this typically costs from a thousand bucks and on up to three or four thousand. It would probably cost double or triple this in a place where wages are double or more…… but then homeowners in such places typically make double or more as well.

    So.. a drive way charging station, open air, or under a carport, shouldn’t cost any more than maybe fifty to a hundred bucks a month, max, for five or six years.

    The homeowner who buys an electric car has a very good shot at saving more on gasoline and oil changes, etc, than he spends on the charger payment and electricity for the car, on a monthly basis.

    In four or five years, the charging station is paid off.

    Once there’s a couple of electric cars in the showrooms of most car dealers, home builders are going to be adding this feature to their demo homes and most of their new builds. The majority of supermarkets and big box stores will have free or paid charging for their customers within ten years or sooner.

    People who own professional offices, or rent such offices, are going to want a charging station for their own car, as a matter of course. Landlords will be happy to install them for a little more rent.

    And unless I’m badly mistaken, every wind turbine blade in the world could be buried in one of the little valleys within a few miles of my home that’s been filled to the brim with overburden from strip mining coal.

    1. I’ll add that if you’re driving less than 50 miles per day, you don’t even need 240V. For a while at my house we were charging three electric cars, one of them a Tesla, with one shared 15A 120V circuit. Our random schedules and total combined mileage of ~60mpd made this possible.

      So, zero electrical infrastructure cost is a possibility for a lot of households.

      1. Save $$ at 240V, less voltage drop. Find two 120V plugs on different legs
        and make a 12 or 10 AWG combiner cord. Keep under 10 Amps if you cords are long.

        1. We have 240V available. We use 120V to avoid paying demand load charges. Our power cost is $0.065 kWh. Our demand load charge is $14 kW.

          The main point is that it’s perfectly feasible to charge an EV with just a normal US outlet, which are everywhere. Yeah, it’s slow, but cars are mostly parked.

          1. cars are mostly parked.

            Parked 95% of the time! US average miles per vehicle: about 13,000. At 30 miles per hour that’s 430 hours per year. 430 hours divided by 8760 hours per year= 5% utilization.

            40% lower in Europe.

    2. Hey, OFM.
      I’m ready to buy that “relatively plain jane compact electric car with a range of one hundred miles or less” right now! Kinda wish it was a mainstream option.

      1. You are in luck!
        Just go on Craigslist and search for Nissan Leaf. You can get a used 2011 or so Leaf, probably with a range around 40 miles, for $4k. (I even saw one for $2K.) That gets you to the grocery, errands, likely to work and back. If you drive it much at all, it’s a free car because you will save enough on gasoline to pay for it.

    3. OFM,

      Five years ago, I hired and electrician to put in a 40 amp 240 volt outlet in my garage to charge my 2018 M3, cost was about $400 total, might be 600 these days, it is not thousands of dollars, though I am not in the big city I live in a small fairly rural community, possibly $1000 for similar work in metro NYC.

  25. My .02 on EVs is that they provide a symbolic recognition of the limits to oil consumption but are a misguided attempt to continue the behavior enabled by the last centuries oil production.

      1. That’s my speed. 15 mph is the perfect speed for getting around and if you really have to go fast 35 mph in a 1930’s touring car.

  26. Hydrogen from offshore wind farms not viable?

    Vattenfall has decided to cancel the Hydrogen Turbine 1 (HT1) project offshore Aberdeen, Scotland, almost two years after the firm began developing it.
    …
    Having tested the development phase for decentralized offshore hydrogen production, and in light of other industry advances, Vattenfall has now taken the decision to conclude the project, the company said.
    …
    The findings are planned to be presented later in 2024.

    https://www.offshore-energy.biz/vattenfall-scraps-hydrogen-turbine-pilot-project/

    Hydrogen may have its uses but not in fuel cells or pipelines…

    1. Probably one step too far.

      Hydrogen is a must have for the industry in any case. Rather than relying on cheap (?) natural gas, all other alternatives are best to be explored. Hydrogen from renewables are most viable when you can produce it at scale in a hub and it is not a need to store it or transport it too much. If only there was a cheap pipeline connection for natural gas with ample supplies that lasts indefinitely, along with utilising state of the art carbon capture technology. An alternative is using specialised ships to transport hydrogen, but it is hardly a competitive advantage. We still have a capitalist system, and that dictate company actions – even state dominated ones like Vattenfall.

    1. Clearly the two gentlemen in the video know SFA about gasoline production. There are no current processes for the production of a synthetic gasoline from NGL’s ( by that I mean C3’s and C4’s) Natural gasoline (C5/C6) has a very poor octane. The two main components in gasoline are FCC gasoline and reformate. The former is produced from waxy distillate and the latter from heavy naphtha catalytic reforming. Isobutane (an NGL) is converted into alkylate in an alkylation unit but this requires reactive butenes which are normally obtained from an FCC.

      Natural gas (methane and small amounts of ethane) can be converted to gasoline via the Exxon MTG process- methanol to gasoline. No plant has so far been built due to economic constraints. The process is similar to MTO, methanol to olefines, and again no plant of this type has been built in the west due to the economics, and ethylene and propylene are much more expensive than gasoline.

      Another process is the Fischer Tropsch process, but this process is eye watering expensive and the gasoline has poor octane due to stream being mainly paraffins. FT technology produces high quality diesel and jet fuels. the FT process can utilise just about any feed stock to produces hydrogen and carbon monoxide (known as syn gas). The syngas reacts to product hydrocarbons and a lot of water

      Spark ignition engines can, with modification run on LPG (propane butane mix) but there is no infrastructure and no real demand.

Comments are closed.