Comments not related to Oil or Natural Gas production in this thread please. Thank you.
177 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, November 2, 2023”
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Comments not related to Oil or Natural Gas production in this thread please. Thank you.
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Copied from the dying previous thread:
It’s been at least 20 years since EROEI researchers generally concluded that wind and solar had more than acceptable EROEI, using a standard methodology across all forms of energy.
Fewer people are doing EROEI research these days because it’s just silly. The cost of wind and solar have dropped dramatically since then, and it’s just obviously no longer an issue.
EROEI isn’t really needed in most cases: cost analysis does the job. EROEI is only needed when some energy input is subsidized in some way, like Russian toilet paper which was free to consumers, and so toilet paper producers started using it as their feedstock, because….it was free…
When you look at cost, wind and solar are far cheaper than coal, NG and oil.
“The lowest LCOEs in the first half of 2021 can be found in Brazil and Texas for onshore wind, and in Chile and India for PV, all at $22/MWh.
In China, the largest market for renewables, BNEF estimates the cost of building and operating a solar farm is now $34/MWh, cheaper than the cost of *operating* a typical coal-fired power plant at $35/MWh. Similarly in India, new solar can achieve a levelized cost of $25/MWh, compared to an average cost of running existing coal-fired power plants at $26/MWh. Combined, China and India account for 62% of all coal-fired power capacity worldwide.”
https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/report-its-now-cheaper-to-build-new-solar-than-to-run-existing-coal-plants-in-china-india-and-most-of-europe/
The comparison still holds even when you include the cost of storage. There’s really no serious debate about that, at least until you get to 80% grid penetration for renewables. There is some debate about the costs of getting rid of that last 20%, though the naysayers are definitely a minority view, in part because the cost trends for wind, solar and storage are very clear (and it will be a few years before we need to tackle that last 20%), in part because a lot of good research says you don’t really need a lot of storage to get to 100%: just good old solid planning by utilities, ISO, etc., using forecasting, overbuilding, geographical dispersion of sources, complementarity of sources, demand side management, etc.
Still, if you want studies, there’s lots of research:
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/07/05/energy-output-is-over-100-times-the-input-needed-to-manufacture-solar-panels/
The Energy Payback Time of PV systems is dependent on the geographical location: PV systems in Northern Europe need around 1.2 years to balance the input energy, while PV systems in the South equal their energy input after 1 year and less, depending on the technology installed and the grid efficiency.
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf
2016 overview article: old data (from roughly 2014) finds E-ROI of about 25. That’s likely to be at least 100% better now.
“The system without batteries had an energy payback period ranging from 0.7 years for polycrystalline panels in Alice Springs to 1.1 years for monocrystalline panels in Melbourne. Since solar panels have an expected lifespan of at least 25 years…”
https://renew.org.au/renew-magazine/solar-batteries/energy-flows-how-green-is-my-solar/
‘Their energy payback times (EPBT)—the time it takes to produce all the energy used in their life cycles—currently are between six months to two years, depending on the location/solar irradiation and the technology. And with expected life times of 30 years, their ERRs are in the range of 60:1 to 15:1’
https://www.bnl.gov/pv/files/pdf/PE_Magazine_Fthenakis_2_10_12.pdf
This one shows renewable has having much higher EROEI than FF:
http://www.roperld.com/science/minerals/EROEIFossilFuels.htm
PVs return far more energy than that embodied in the life cycle of a solar system (see Figure 1).Their energy payback times (EPBT)—the time it takes to produce all the energy used in their life cycles—currently are between six months to two years, depending on the location/solar irradiation and the [specific panel] technology. And with expected life times of 30 years, their ERRs are in the range of 60:1 to 15:1, depending on the location and the technology, thus returning 15 to 60 times more energy than the energy they use. Here is a basic tutorial on the subject…
https://www.bnl.gov/pv/files/pdf/PE_Magazine_Fthenakis_2_10_12.pdf
Or…
“Reaping the environmental benefits of solar energy requires spending energy to make the PV system. But as this graphic shows, the investment is small.Assuming 30-year system life, PV systems will provide a net gain of 26 to 29 years of pollution-free and greenhouse-gas-free electrical generation.”
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf
And…
A complete PV system based on polycrystalline panels, made in 2017, would need 15.8 MJ of primary energy per watt-peak. This corresponds to an EPBT [Energy Pay Back Time] of roughly 1.2 years (for global average yield)
https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2016/12/8/musqo7036dslptm1b8efduj6i3e7ms
Thankyou for re-posting this Nick, now I can completely pull it apart. Mind you, I do wish the ‘reported’ numbers were true, so that the future was bright for the young of today.
So lets start with this one…
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/07/05/energy-output-is-over-100-times-the-input-needed-to-manufacture-solar-panels/
So the claim is a Maxeon 3 can repay it’s energy cost in as little as 47.5 days..
So we take 1Kw of Maxeon 3 panels, say the SPR-Max3-400 for ease of using numbers. We would need 2.5 of them for 1Kw..
https://sunpower.maxeon.com/au/sites/default/files/2022-05/sp_max3_104c_390-400_res_dc_ds_en_a4_544451.pdf
One of these panels weighs 19kg from the spec page, so we would need 47.5kg of solar panel in total…
According to this site…
https://www.lg.com/us/solar/blog/are-solar-panels-bad-for-the-environment#:~:text=A%20panel's%20weight%20is%20generally,efficiency%2C%20which%20is%20quite%20commendable.
“A panel’s weight is generally comprised of glass (76%), plastic (10%), aluminum (8%), silicon (5%), and metals (1%).”
….. we now have some numbers we can use..
Taking our 2.5 Maxeon panels weight of 47.5kg we can assume we have 36.1kg of glass, 4.75kg of plastic, 3.8kg of aluminium, 2.375kg of silicon and .475kg of ‘metals’ (copper, silver etc)….
The amount of energy that goes into ‘making’ each of these comes from the various industries themselves…
Silicon…
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/solr.202200458
“An electricity requirement for purification, ingot pulling, and wafering of ≈360–380 kWh kg−1 for silicon wafers”
2.375kg X 360kwh = 855Kwh..
Aluminium ….
http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2011/07/15/electricity-consumption-in-the-production-of-aluminium/
“According to Alcoa, the world’s largest producer of aluminium, the best smelters use about 13 kilowatt hours (46.8 megajoules) of electrical energy to produce one kilogram of aluminium”
3.8kg X 13Kwh = 49.4Kwh
Glass …
https://www.glassonweb.com/article/technological-energy-efficiency-improvements-glass-production-industries-and-their-future#:~:text=The%20production%20process%20in%20glass,tons%2Fyear%20%5B2%5D.
“The production process in glass manufacturing plants is typically energy-intensive and requires large amounts of resources. It was estimated that the glass manufacturing process consumes around 5÷÷7 GJ per ton of glass produced ” 6Gj = 1,666Kwh/T = 1.66Kwh/kg
36.1kg X 1.66Kwh = 59.9Kwh
Plastic (LOL where is this going to come from in a FF free world) ….
http://www.jeeng.net/Energy-Inputs-on-the-Production-of-Plastic-Products,151815,0,2.html
“It was found shown that the total energy consumption (converted to primary energy) of the PET virgin polymer production process and its processing into packaging reaches the value of 109.2 – 115.2 MJ/kg”
110Mj = 30.5Kwh
4.75 kg X 30.5Kwh = 145Kwh
Total processing energy to make our 2.5 Maxeon 3 panels, coming to 1Kw of capacity
855 + 49.4 + 59.9 + 145 = 1109.3Kwh
How much output from the 1Kw of solar panels, let’s put them somewhere with lots of sun, say 10 hours/day for the full 47.5 days of the claim.. 1Kw X 10 hrs X 47.5d = 475Kwh…
The 47.5 days is proven wrong, more like 110 days of 10hr/d sun, or in ‘world average exposure for solar of 11.4% (2.73hrs/d) = 406 days…
The above is pretty much how every calculation on the Energy Invested is done, which give fabulous claims of anything from 15/1 to the 100/1 claim of Nick’s reference. It is all obviously wrong…..
So why is the above ‘obviously’ wrong???
Taking 1109Kwh of energy, by itself produces nothing!! The above calculations are the processing Kwh in producing solar panels, yet these alone were way above what was claimed in the article..
What’s not counted is the exploration for the needed minerals, all the time, fuel and travel of the geologists looking for the bauxite, quartz etc, nor the planning and building of the mine, the equipment at the mine, the energy consumed by the miners, the building of the trucks, excavators and bulldozers, the roads they travel on, the bridges they cross, the ships they are loaded on, the factories that are built so the processing of bulk aluminium, glass, silicon and plastic can happen before being shipped to the factory that makes the panels. Then the workers in the factory, their education and training from high level engineers to shop floor workers moving pallets of goods. Likewise for all the workers in the factories that made the production machinery in other factories.
Every single one of these has an embedded energy cost, but it is excluded from all the industry cited ‘energy cost’ as it’s too hard to calculate, so we get false numbers of just the processing energy.
We humans account for all the background energy cost by the price we pay for something in dollars. We pay for the raw materials in dollars, we pay for the transport in dollars, we pay for the machinery in dollars, we pay wages in dollars.
It’s the dollar cost that represents the energy embedded in the background to make something that counts. The capital operating and maintenance cost of every form of energy production is the real ‘energy cost’, not the bullshit numbers that proponents of renewables keep claiming that misses out most of the actual energy input..
The same rules should apply to all energy production to compare apples with apples. If we apply the same comparison to a new coal plant with all sorts of carbon scrubbers and full carbon capture and storage, it will probably have a terrible EROEI, because all the rules of making it clean raise the energy invested greatly, plus the ongoing operating and maintenance costs will be double to triple the old polluting coal plants. These will also never return the needed energy for the energy invested, most likely just on the cost of money alone because of the billions of capital spend.
We built our system on cheap, nasty, polluting energy which gave us huge amounts of surplus net energy. For example a Ghawar well sunk 40 years ago at a cost of just a few million in today’s money, connected to the existing pipeline to the existing refinery could return 3,000-5,000bbls per day for decades, likewise for wells drilled in East Texas a couple of decades earlier. At 1.7Mwh of energy/bbl, a single cheap oil well gave 7,000Mwh of energy return per day or 2,555,000 Mwh of energy a year for decades, all for a $10m cap cost and cents/bbl ongoing O&M costs.
To replicate this amount of energy with solar we would need 1Gw of solar with a 7hrs/day capacity factor at a cost of $1B representing all the energy inputs necessary to build it. Even the ongoing O&M costs at 1-2%/yr are greater than the oil well O&M costs, again representing all the energy that goes into it.
Even with the much greater costs, we are not dealing with the massive inconvenience of intermittent energy compared to the dispatchable energy of fossil fuels, nor do we count the cost of ameliorating the intermittency via vast transmission lines and some type of storage, nor are we accounting for the massive opportunity cost of capital by spending vast sums on renewables relative to the much smaller costs of fossil fuels on a like for like energy output.
@Nick G or @Hickory or @OFM or anyone else, please find a research document or paper that includes the full energy cost of renewables (or nuclear) that fully accounts for the background energy cost that is left out. None of the papers referenced by Nick come close, it’s all fairy tale stuff telling a nice story, but none of them are real…
I don’t understand why PV companies didn’t go bankrupt immediately if that was the case.
Chaser,
Well it is clear that we need to account for every eV consumed since the big bang in order to have a viable EROEI. No paper has done that adequately for Hideaway so they cannot be trusted.
\Sarc off
What’s not counted is the exploration for the needed minerals, all the time, fuel and travel of the geologists looking for the bauxite, quartz etc, nor the planning and building of the mine, the equipment at the mine, the energy consumed by the miners, the building of the trucks, excavators and bulldozers, the roads they travel on, the bridges they cross, the ships they are loaded on, the factories that are built so the processing of bulk aluminium, glass, silicon and plastic can happen before being shipped to the factory that makes the panels. Then the workers in the factory, their education and training from high level engineers to shop floor workers moving pallets of goods. Likewise for all the workers in the factories that made the production machinery in other factories.
I assume all these costs are already included in glass (76%), plastic (10%), aluminum (8%), silicon (5%) and metal (1%)? Just like glass cannot be infinitely cheap, otherwise glass companies will go bankrupt. Aluminum cannot be infinitely cheap, otherwise aluminum companies will go bankrupt. Everything has a bottom-line price that already includes the cost of fossil fuels.
If you pay $10 for glass, $5 for plastic, $20 for aluminum, $30 for silicon, and $5 for metal, then the base price of a solar panel is $10+5+20+30+5=$70. Without government subsidies, selling for less than $70 would go bankrupt.
I find it amazing that for the price of a fast food meal, you can buy a microwave oven that will last for 5 years. But it’s true, some things are incredibly cheap. I’m sure the price of the microwave includes the cost of building the factory, transportation, and labor. There are also electronic chips in microwave ovens, and the costs of exploration, mining, and silicon wafers are also included.
I don’t know whether Hideaway thinks too complicated or I think too simple.
@Chaser.. What’s counted is just the process energy in the various factories. It is assumed the raw materials, are there, the factory is built, the workers are all just standing around waiting and don’t need energy to exist….They count the diesel used in the trucks to get from A to B, but no allowance for the building or maintenance of the truck nor the training or normal living expenses of the driver.
Everything we build with energy has a life that needs to be maintained and eventually replaced, it’s the background depreciation of the entire system, it’s not counted in any of the studies…
Hideaway,
In a lifecycle analysis all of the energy is included, not just process energy, do some reading, you will find you are wrong on this point. Are these analyses perfect? No.
Also you can simply look at monetary costs, all internal costs are included rest assured, unfortunately there are external costs and benefits which are not included for a private enterprise, a better analysis accounts for these by looking at total social costs and benefits (both internal and external). These analyses are also far from perfect. Ten economists will come up with 30 different answers at minimum.
@Dennis, you didn’t bother going to the links I posted from the various industries did you?
The calculated numbers were the energy used in the processes only. There was no allowance for the energy imbedded in any of the workers, or the factories or the machinery, or the transport of the raw materials or mining etc, etc.
Those links quite plainly state it’s the process energy!!
Nick G provided the link with so called facts, that were easily disproven by nearly a factor of 10 for the average solar panel capacity factor, a number from the IEA, often quoted by Simon Michaux. 11.4% capacity factor is the world average, that’s the reality of existing solar..
You can wish that solar is in deserts all you like, but it denies reality. BTW if you want to run solar from deserts to cities over thousands of km, then make sure you include the energy cost of building the HVDC lines and converter stations. None of this was needed in how we built our grids. If you exclude this cost you are just deluding yourself..
Finding the full embedded cost is quite easy, it’s the actual capital operating and maintenance cost over the life of the energy producing machine. All the hidden embedded energy costs are displayed for all to see. All the background costs of operating the system are on display, yet you refuse to accept this because it doesn’t suit the narrative of a bright green future.
I keep asking for a link that shows what you keep stating it shows, but there is still nothing. Nick G’s attempt was easily discredited, I’d read most of those links in prior years. I’ve been reading and researching this stuff for decades.
There are no papers that I’ve ever found that account for the full background energy cost, and those that state they do are as easily disproven as Nick’s links…
Turning this around, what’s wrong in your opinion of counting the total capital, operating and maintenance costs of all energy producing machines on a like for like basis over their life expectancy?? Why are you and Nick so afraid of using this method??
We can find out the dollar cost of everything, and we know roughly how much energy things will return over their expected lifespans, so why the pushback on using obvious available numbers, leaving out the guesswork…
Hideaway,
Like this
https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/
@Dennis, All the LCOE reports have an embedded fuel cost cost for coal gas and nuclear, which instantly dismisses them as useless.
All fuel sources are free to humanity, the sun shines for free, the wind blows, the fossil fuels and uranium are in deposits free for humanity to take and use. We humans just have to build machines to gain access to them. These machines have a lot of embedded energy in them from all the fossil fuels use in their mining processing and manufacture.
In the assumptions pg 37 they have a cost of coal at $1.47/MMbtu, what the?? That comes out at $5015/kwh!! Ridiculous number!!
Then the mess they made of the nuclear power capital cost, based on Vogtle projected cost, not the actual cost, which is easy to obtain. They have $2,200/Mw for nuclear based on Vogtle, when actual cost was $14,300/Mw.
How can you direct me to a clearly biased report that assumes fuel is bought and not just mined plus makes plenty of mistakes??
We built the system by placing electricity generators right next to coal pits with the generation companies, often government owned, depending on country, having free access to the coal, then built the transmission lines from there to the cities and beyond. The profits from the generators paid for the transmission lines over time.
Then governments added royalties to the generating companies use of coal to help pay for ‘other’ expenses.
@Dennis, again I ask you to think.. If the Lazard LCOE was even close to true, then why is no-one setting up an Aluminium smelter next to their own solar and wind grid, backed up solely by batteries, and ditching all the coal fired power stations??
If the Lazard report was accurate, it’s the only economically rational thing to do, but it’s simply not happening…
BTW, the Lazard reports have pearlers like the following included, from pg 17..
” This analysis reflects common practice in the market whereby batteries are upsized in year one to 110% of nameplate capacity (e.g., a 100 MWh battery actually begins project life with 110 MWh).”
Anyone who knows anything about batteries, knows that for all lithium batteries you never run to near 100% capacity as you will vastly shorten the battery life.
Around 70-80% of battery capacity per cycle, is the sweet spot for combination of useful energy output and life of battery. Lithium batteries are the major source of grid scale battery storage. Such reports are written by economists that have no knowledge of reality.
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they are not. (Albert E,) and very very accurate.
Dennis I think you have highlighted something to me about pointing to theoretical numbers from different reports, that have no real relation to what’s happening on the ground. You need to get out of theory and look at the real world….
“Dennis I think you have highlighted something to me about pointing to theoretical numbers from different reports, that have no real relation to what’s happening on the ground. You need to get out of theory and look at the real world….”
And that is exactly why I have suggested that price for the produced energy is the final and common sense indicator that matters. That, and reliability, is what utilities go by when they make their longterm purchase decisions.
@Hickory, the price you get for the energy is a terrible metric to go by. We don’t know what the price of energy will be next year, let alone 5 years or 10 years hence..
We do know approximately how much energy each producing producing machine will provide over the course of it’s life, based on known history for each of the different machines, coal power plant, gas power plant, solar farm, wind farm, nuclear reactor etc. We also know approximately how much the O&G costs will be.
The capital cost to build them is also mostly known. Not the expected cost, but the actual cost. (Lazard uses $2,200/kw for nuclear off the example of Vogtle, yet the actual cost for Vogtle is $14,300/kw)
Why would you want to include a variable that is totally unknown into the future??
So why is a can of coke so cheap?
The other thing that’s always neatly ignored is the cleanup costs and dealing with the shit left behind. Nuclear, Oil, Coal, etc., all have cleanup costs beyond what is saved for. An example is how North Sea oil production left behind thousands of miles of pipe in the ocean that has to be cleaned up – and there’s no one willing to foot the bill.
Honestly factoring the cleanup costs hike the costs of each endeavor to a point that the project is no longer savory – so there aren’t any cleanup costs to consider after all! Wind, PV, while not entirely friendly, the resulting inert parts are easily segregated and won’t be a poison for centuries, much less epochs as with nuclear waste, and thusly the cleanup costs won’t be so mind-boggling that they’re shuffled to the rear of the proposal.
I think price is a terrible way to measure true environmental and energy cost in today’s world. In the example of a can of coke, even excluding the can and non-calorie components in the analysis and off the top of my head, high fructose corn syrup is the main “nutrition” in the coke. In the US that comes from corn grown in the middle of the country using water mined unsustainably from fossil aquifers like the Ogallala and fertilized from natural gas (fossil resource not sustainably mined) and using industrial farming practices that poison the environment with pesticides and destroy topsoil in a completely non-sustainable way. Take away all those unsustainable practices and I would imagine the coke in the can would be an order or two of magnitude more expensive…
Hideaway,
Life cycle assessments do exactly what you are asking for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_assessment
Hideaway
You are absolutely correct. Wind and pv are only so “cheap” due to fossil fuels providing the energy for ALL the steps in production. Now make the same equipment using renewable energy and you would be well and truly up Sh*t Creek.
How are you are you going to produce aluminium, or glass, or silicon. What fuel are you going to use to move the mineral ores. How will you produce steel without coking coal. Hydrogen perhaps? By electrolysis. Good luck. No-one has done it yet. All the BS written to date on LOE for pv and wind is just a load of foul wind – ass gas.
I am never so amazed as listen to supposedley informed people spouting such nonsense. Do your homework and study the laws of thermodynamics. If you dismiss EROI then you have really a problem. Try swimming in a tide.
Carnot
I also think it is impossible for renewable energy to be 100% free from fossil fuels, but is it possible to use less? This is also valuable.
The first gasoline engine was produced with zero inputs from other gasoline engines.
Same for solar – the first solar panel was produced with zero solar inputs. As solar becomes more prominent in the energy mix implicitly more and more of the energy that goes into making solar panels comes from solar.
Rgds
Thanks @Carnot, I’m always staggered at such a simple concept of including everything in the energy cost is left out by so many smart people. It’s like it triggers an internal denial because the full energy cost goes against the belief structure of renewables solving everything, so looking at what ‘s left out just doesn’t compute..
The sheer fact that no-one anywhere is trying to build any of renewables or nuclear, from just electricity also says a lot by itself.
Another example I brought up last week was how there were no Aluminium Smelters operating on just wind, solar and batteries, yet these were meant to be so much cheaper than coal.
Immediately the answers came back that there were plants running on Hydro and geothermal in a couple of places.
The concept of solar, wind and batteries being cheaper than coal is a lie or aluminium smelters around the world would abandon coal and go with these renewables. How can people be so blind to see this is NOT happening??
Hideaway,
Everything takes a long time to calculate. lifecycle analysis does what you ask for as far as is practical. How far back in time do we need to go for you to be satisfied, is 14 billion years enough?
Dennis,
The LCOE reports are all biased to get the results they want. Instead of comparing like for like, meaning that all raw energy, solar, wind , geothermal, nuclear, gas, oil and coal are free to humanity, and we need to build machines turn that energy into a useful form.
That is like for like…
Instead the LCOE studies assume there is a cost for coal and gas when comparing them to solar and wind which they assume is free.
Imagine Europe wants to set up giant solar farms in Libya and Morocco and those 2 countries decide to place a sun tax at the rate of 1c/m2/hr of sunshine time on the built solar farms. That would have to be included in the LCOE cost, the way the reports on LCOE are done
If you work out the LCOE on their methods, for a coal plant sitting right next to the coal pit, the way the system was built, with no regard for the environment, then the cheap coal fired electricity is way cheaper than the alternatives. This is how we built the system with vast energy in excess of energy inputs, and provided great growth..
By handicapping coal, by putting a price on it, plus the building of new plants with all sorts of extra handicaps of soot scrubbers, CCS, lower capacity factors etc, then you create the numbers that make solar and wind look viable, providing you don’t include the cost storage, intermittency and variability between summer and winter for solar.
LCOE by itself doesn’t tell us anything about EROEI, it just gives a biased comparison, using whatever biased assumptions the authors choose.
The cost of capital, as needed for the system to operate, is never included in LCOE analysis either, I mean the proper cost including extra transmission lines and storage for solar and wind.
Solar and wind have time and entropy working against them, they take many years to return the embedded energy, especially when the storage and extra transmission lines are included..
Lots of electricity used for oil, more and more of which is coming from solar. So now you can’t produce oil without solar, but you can’t produce solar without oil. I’m confused as fuck
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/permian-energy-centre/
“ ExxonMobil entered into a 12-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Lincoln Clean Energy (now Ørsted Onshore) for supplying 500MW of wind and solar power from the Permian Basin in November 2018. Out of this 500MW, 250MW will come from the Permian Energy Centre.”
We have a mixed source energy system.
A lot less animal muscle (including human) than in the past, at the current time.
Make good use of the energy you’ve got.
Think of how much fire on/in the sun it takes to fuel everything here on earth, excepting the bit from nuclear fission power plants.
Its amazing that we have figured out how to bundle some of the sun energy into a line of intense fire, known as electricity, and just plug into it….just Astounding.
Yes we can be sure that there is real energy from sunlight, otherwise why would oil firms use it to power their equipment? Because it’s the cheapest form of energy in many places, especially a sunny spot like west Texas/New Mexico.
If we consider that sunlight was sufficient to power the dinosaurs for 100 million years, we shouldn’t be surprised that we humans are clever enough to collect it usefully and power our homes and vehicles. The idea that there is no net energy in solar is preposterous. Go back to the dinosaurs and tell them mathematically they can’t exist lol. Photosynthesis is something like 2-3% efficient, one tenth of what we are working with on our collectors. And if you consider solar thermal for hot water and other heating needs, the number is more like 60-70%.
Hideaway,
You seemed to argue that all costs should be included, LCOE does do that and capial cost is included, note that the cost of transmission lines etc also needs to be included for coal and natural gas and in many analyses they are not.
Lifecycle analysis is something very different that looks typically at social and environmental costs and benefits of a project from cradle to grave. The better EROEI analyses such as those with David Murphy as a coauthor in fact do this.
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7098
In occasionally somewhat sunny Germany a GW of PV is being installed per month. These pay themselves off in 2-3 years, because consumers are charged a realistic price for the true cost of electricity.
If PV is “too expensive” where you live, then fossil fuel is being subsidized.
Hideaway,
Several of the sources Nick cites say payback time of up to 2 years depending on location, that is about 730 days, your 406 day estimate would be just over a year and sounds roughly correct on average, but note that it makes sense to put solar panels in sunny places and then move the power over HVDC to where it is needed as the losses are relatively low (about 3.5% loss per 1000 km).
So if you cherry pick the lowest cited payback time, yes it is wrong.
Hideaway
Your analysis shows that solar PV has perfectly acceptable EROEI, well above that of fossil fuels.
406 days to pay back the energy invested gives an EROEI of 36. As Dennis notes, that’s more than enough.
And, your capacity factor is way too low. I don’t know where you got 11.4%, but it’s what you’d expect in the UK, or Germany.
“The average capacity factor of U.S. solar projects operating all 12 months in 2021 was 24.4% nationally, in line with 2020 levels.”
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/research/usual-sun-states-shine-bright-at-top-of-us-solar-capacity-factor-leaderboard
If we use 24.4%, we get an EROEI of around 75:1.
Please note that anything above 10 is enough. Oil is about 7:1, and has been for quite a while.
@Nick G … The 406 days is just the process energy, it does not include the background energy to make everything else in the world operate in a normal fashion, which I clearly explained but you continue to ignore.
You can’t build a solar panel without the workers turning up for work, by driving their cars, or catching the bus or even walking. All those processes use energy, but it is not counted in any of the energy in the 406 days.
The 406 days just counts the electrical energy at the factory that goes through the electricity meter if it’s the aluminium smelter, likewise for every other process only it might be gas or coal..
The only true way to account for all this background energy is the capital, operating and maintenance cost of the solar panels. You can’t buy a Kwh of solar panels for just the cost of the process energy, they cost way more, go and find a price for 1 Kw of Maxeon 3 solar panels (probably easier finding the cost of 500 panels equaling 200Kw then dividing by 200 to get wholesale price per Kw). It’s way more than $70!! Of course just having solar panels lying on the ground by themselves, produces no energy whatsoever!!
In the above calculations there is no allowance for wires, mounting brackets, inverters, connecting to the grid etc, which all add to the capital, operating and maintenance cost over the life of the panels while producing electricity, because they all take lots of energy to mine the components, process the mineral ores, transport concentrates to factories, etc, etc. Just including the energy to
make the solar is of course stupid, it would be like just the cost of drilling an oil well and allowing the oil to spill over the ground. The cost of pipes or whatever mechanism to connect the oil well to the refinery is part of the cost..
The problem isn’t that solar is ‘bad’, I’ve had 3 separate systems over my life so far and intend to get more. The problem is the returns of energy are miscalculated and there needs to be vast improvements in both capital operating and maintenance costs and lifetime of these machines to give the energy return we have had with cheap fossil fuels.
Solar panels need to last around 100 years, cost half what they currently do, including all the extras of the system, like mounting, inverters, cabling, and most importantly, need much lower ongoing operating and maintenance costs, before we even tackle the intermittency problem. All we are doing is deluding ourselves that they are the answer by using false energy input numbers the way it’s currently worked out.
If it’s not possible to get the lifetime operation extended and all the costs way down from current prices, given the energy inputs, then using vast amounts of minerals, digging up huge swarths of the earth to get ever lower grades of ores, sending more and more ‘minor’ species into extinction during the process, using ever more energy in the process, then solar panels are the wrong path to go down.
Even if we could achieve the lower costs and long life of solar, it still has an end point with the life on this planet much worse off overall. We humans will continue to need an increasing amount of energy just to maintain our system, as no minerals are ever 100% recyclable, we always lose some due to entropy and dissipation, and the mines will continue to become lower and lower grade on average, requiring more and more energy to obtain the same quantity of metals. This would apply in the long term even if we recycled 95% of existing metals..
I live in the real world where deluding ourselves seems to be the norm, starting thousands of years ago with make believe gods to keep the people together as a tribe, therefore collapse sometime in the future is baked in, instead of acknowledging we really do have limits and most metals will eventually be too low a grade to mine, plus we will never be able to replace the 6 million barrels per day of hydrocarbons that go into making ammonia fertilizer and plastics with anything, but are vital for insulation of every wire, the computers we use, in millions of ‘parts’, and in the food we eat as calories.
Remember the weight of a solar panel is 10% plastic and polymers…
It’s an entire system, where growing one bit massively is not possible without the rest of the system operating normally.
On delusion, just look at how the data for total world energy use is now solely displayed, by the substitution method for including renewables and nuclear, making their contribution look larger than it really is….
Finding the ‘direct’ energy use is hidden down page for those specifically looking for it.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
Because it’s an entire system we have, the ‘substitution method’ should include the inefficiencies of converting electricity combined with carbon capture from renewables to make the plastics and fertilizers we get directly from hydrocarbons, but no, we want to compartmentalize that as it would show up the horrible inefficiencies, so ignoring it helps keep the delusion going.
The energy we have built our system on over the last 200 years is totally based on cheap, easy to access hydrocarbons. Solar, wind, nuclear and hydro electricity are all just by products of the fossil fuel age. No-one anywhere is even attempting to make any of them from just electrical inputs.
The thought we can design, build and run the entire world from just electricity, fully produced by renewables, nuclear and hydroelectricity, then keep replacing it with only these electrical inputs, all by 2050, or 2060 or whatever date, is beyond stupidity. It’s just another human delusion, keeping us from acknowledging that infinite growth on a finite planet is not possible and the attempt to keep growing at all costs will destroy our own environment while causing the sixth mass extinction in the process..
The only real way out for humanity, is acknowledgement of massive overshoot, becoming one, as in one country, so militaries are not needed, developing thorium reactors that can last 200 years and need minimal ongoing cost and maintenance, and no ‘threats’ of terrorism, rapidly reduce population and control births, re-wild great swarths of deforested land …..to just have a minor chance of a technologically modern future.
The odds of it happening are effectively zero, so collapse is the default choice, chosen by deluding ourselves with false accounting on what constitutes energy inputs…
I believe Nick G has nailed the lid down nice and tight on the coffin of the renewables naysayers who claim renewables are a waste of energy, and cannot eventually be built out to the point we can have an industrial civilization with very little or no fossil fuel.
And here’s ANOTHER POINT that anybody with an open mind should take to heart, in terms of his or her own financial situation. The MORE renewables we have, the CHEAPER fossil fuels will be.
Wholesale coal prices have already collapsed sometimes in some places as coal fired generation has been displaced with gas, wind and solar power.
I’m not saying gas or coal will actually be CHEAPER as we build out renewables, but they will be FAR less expensive than they would be otherwise.
Taking away ten percent of the potential market for a depleting resource can mean depressing the price of it by two or even three times that same ten percent, down the road.
“The MORE renewables we have, the CHEAPER fossil fuels will be.”
“I’m not saying gas or coal will actually be CHEAPER as we build out renewables, but they will be FAR less expensive than they would be otherwise.”
True, and this is probably the biggest reason why there is pushback against solar and wind over the past decades. People who have a vested interest in the fossil fuel industries have mounted prolonged opposition campaigns. Probably a 1000 hours of it on fox news.
I would say more like eight or ten thousand hours. Minimum
There are at least a dozen talking heads at Fox knocking renewable energy, etc, on a daily basis for at least a few minutes here and there times twenty years or so of Fox by now.
@OFM, that highlights one of the main problems, people pick a side, instead of bothering to look at all aspects of something. Once a side is picked, only evidence for that side is considered a good source of information, and the other sides arguments are based on sources that are ‘poor’. Doesn’t matter which side of any topic the argument/discussion is about..
Fossil fuels, especially oil are not the answer as they are continuing to deplete with all the easy to get stuff already mined. The EROEI of fossil fuels are declining rapidly. They are a long term dead end, even if we discount the climate effects, which of course Fox denies is happening.
The mistake we humans make is deciding one side is wrong, for obvious reasons, therefore the alternative must be correct. In this case the alternative are renewables and nuclear (with clear divisions of people choosing one of these sides also!!)
The ridiculous part to me is that stopping all fossil fuels tomorrow would mean no more renewables or nuclear as both totally rely upon fossil fuels for every part of their mining, processing, manufacture and transport, plus diesel for maintenance and/or backup in case of grid failure.
Both sides are wrong!! To build lots more renewables and nuclear, means the use of more fossil fuels to build it, the way we currently do it. No-one is planning anything different at any scale that matters, yet we are close to the point, if not already passing the point, where we have less oil available.
Building vast amounts of renewables and nuclear, lots of transmission lines and vast quantities of batteries, means building more mines, at a faster rate, more new processing plants, more manufacturing plants, all built with fossil fuels, thus destroying the climate and environment faster. It’s clearly also not the answer, but appears to be the path chosen…..
If you (rhetorical) are really paying attention to what I’ve been saying, you will realize that I’m not saying there’s a guaranteed rosy industrial future ahead of us, based on renewable energy.
I am saying that there’s at least a real possibility for a renewables based future , based on a greatly reduced population, drastically reduced per capita consumption, greater efficiency,altered life styles such as eating down the food ladder, doing away with the throw away economy, etc, etc, etc.
I AM saying that given that fossil fuels DO deplete, and ARE depleting, the best possible collectible course is to stay pedal to the metal ( trucker slang for max possible effort) building out renewable infrastructure.
We’re currently pissing away our one time gift of nature fossil fuel supply at a prodigious rate, with at least half of the raw energy involved going to waste even when using the very best ICE engines such as the ones in container ships, almost half in centralized power plants, damned near all of it burnt in aviation, most of what’s used in personal cars, etc.
The mines, the trucks, the skilled trades people and the engineers, the power lines, the roads, factories, etc, ALL THAT SHIT, is ALREADY IN PLACE, and will continue to be in place, and the fossil fuel supply will continue to shrink from one year to the next until we’re fighting hot wars over oil and gas, sooner or later.
So……. the real question, looking at the big picture from your above point of view, is whether we should divert some of all those existing up and running resources to an all hands on deck wartime type economy based on conserving fossil fuels and other one time thru resources, preserving as much as we can of the natural environment, and BUILDING as much renewable infrastructure as possible.
The TOTAL INVESTMENT, as Dennis has pointed out, and Nick has pointed out, IS reflected in the price of a solar panel, in exactly the same way the TOTAL INVESTMENT is reflected in the price of a ton of fertilizer I put in my fields, or the truck load of paper boxes I buy to ship my apples.
EVERY BODY GETS PAID FROM A TO Z. If I buy a load of gravel, the quarry operator gets paid. The machinery the quarry uses gets paid for. The fuel and electricity used there is paid for. The oil company pays for all the steel, wire, pumps, pipe, trucks, etc, used in the oil production business. The truck manufacturer pays the steel mill and the rubber tire manufacturer pays for his raw materials.
Every goddam thing is paid for all up and down the line, ya get it?
When I buy that load of gravel, I pay the share of the price of producing the truck that hauls it, included in the price of the gravel. If the truck costs a hundred thousand bucks, and hauls ten thousand loads before it’s worn out, ten bucks out of that hundred is BILLED TO ME…… as part of the cost of hiring that truck for my one trip. DItto the fuel, the tires, the mechanics training…….. the whole nine yards.
In the REAL world, political, economic, environmental, financial, everything is paid for one way or another.
WE will NOT quit burning oil……. that’s out of the question. We will not quit burning gas to generate electricity. We aren’t really very likely to quit doing ANY of the things we’re doing now, until we’re FORCED to quit, for one reason or another.
But we CAN quit burning some oil and some gas for some purposes, and burn it instead to increase the build out of renewable energy infrastructure.
The total amount of resources, whatever that amount may be, that goes into building a solar farm or wind farm is a very minor fraction of the VALUE of the resource produced over the lifetime of that infrastructure……. electricity.
And electricity can be and IS used at double , triple , and even quad ruple times as efficiently as simply burning oil and gas for heat or to run a car or truck.
How anybody can fail to understand this reality defies any rational thinking process.
So…. worst case…… we build a lot of renewable infrastructure, and the world economy nevertheless collapses due to an energy shortage………..
Do you REALLY think this would matter AT ALL in terms of the BIG PICTURE?
Would it mean the resources put into renewables brought on the INEVITABLE collapse a few months or years SOONER than otherwise? Maybe, even probably….. but that wouldn’t matter very much at all, as I see things.
And remember what Gandalf had to say about the distant future. The distant future is for the people LIVING IT, assuming there are still people. It’s OUR job to deal with today’s existential problems, as best we can, given our resources, our limitations, and our shortcomings.
So we can’t ever recycle any material one hundred percent………… That’s okay, if we can recycle steel at ninety five percent, we have enough already in the form of eventually useless ICE automobiles to last a DAMNED long time, after the population crashes .. and it will crash. Anybody who understands the abc’s of biology, geology, ecology, climate, resource depletion, human nature, etc, cannot possibly conclude otherwise….. barring miracles.A
Let’s remember that LEVIATHAN, the nation state, once it’s attention is SERIOUSLY focused on it’s own survival, can do amazing things. We could be spending up to maybe half of what we’re spending on weapons and soldiers on energy efficiency, conservation, and building out renewables.
WE DON’T know just how good we can get at generating renewable electricity in terms of the cost of doing so, in either manpower or raw materials. But my personal guess is that within another ten years we’ll have cut the cost of doing it , in real terms, by at least half.
Storage will cost half or less what it does today, because there are dozens of ways to build DE FACTO batteries….. say for instance just installing a super sized super insulated water heater in homes.
@OFM .. Yes I’ve been reading your posts for years. I’ve been reading this site since Ron set it up after the demise of The Oil Drum, just didn’t comment for years..
What you are missing in your future world for renewables is the complexity of pretty much everything we do. After the crash and large reduction of population, we will not be able to make the full systems that have the current complexity. Parts will become unobtainable for existing systems, think of parts inside inverters, or transformers, especially anything that involves trace amounts of rare earths that have supply chains, running across the world involving multiple processes.
I do compare like for like…
A 1Gw coal fired costing $1B to set up (like the old style dirty coal plants, not with bells whistles carbon capture etc) set up next to a coal deposit. Only ‘cost’ of coal is the mining and transport, usually by conveyor belt to plant, all run on electricity generated from plant.
Availability 24/7 all year, no variation between summer and winter. 95% capacity factor…
Solar, 1Gw of solar puts out a world average of 11.4% capacity factor (IEA), but still costs around $1B to set up. To equal the coal fired power station it needs multiples of plants. 8.35 plants at the world average rate of solar output, that suddenly $8.35B to build compared to the coal plant’s $1B.
But wait, there’s more.. The coal plant gives power throughout the night, which is necessary for industrial plants like aluminium smelters, so now storage needs to be added, (insulation on the pots used in the aluminium smelter wont cut it either).
So that’s power storage overnight, a minimum of 21.27 hours, but it doesn’t allow for days that are cloudy, which could add another 60 plus hours to storage requirements, with just 3 cloudy days in a row.. Have you never had 3 cloudy days in a row??
There is still more, like the output from solar in summer compared to winter, it varies greatly. My own solar systems (5Kw) (plural) average about 5-6Kwh/d in dead of winter and 25-30Kwh/d in height of summer. For the solar, we need storage from summer to winter as well, again not needed by the coal fired plant. Now add up all that cost of extra storage from summer to winter, by whatever means you choose. Make it for weeks or months?
The answer from economists is to add extra solar to reduce the need for batteries (which is what governments are planning/thinking !!) OK the thinking bit is also ridiculous…
Suddenly for extra solar installation to accommodate winter down time, takes the 8.35Gw to 15-20 Gw of solar installation to equal 1 coal 1Gw plant in the dead of winter, plus storage for cloudy weather and overnight in winter. Probably still need a weeks worth of storage, 168Gwh hours of storage, yet still get occasional blackouts!!
So what’s the cost in capital or energy terms of building 15-20Gw of solar and 168Gwh of storage, plus the ongoing O&M cost, plus the cost of capital (interest), compared to the $1B for the coal plant and it’s ongoing costs???
Of course all arguments are that we will add wind, have a larger grid. That’s fine by me, but cost it out correctly. Include the total cost of long distance transmission lines capable of transmitting nearly all the power used for times when the wind isn’t blowing in winter and solar is at a minimum. In the US that might be 200Gw of transmission lines from the South West of the country to the North East for solar power, or wind from wherever.. You still need lots of storage somewhere, which is another cost..
Add up those costs for real world examples, and you quickly see it isn’t possible. None of the reports showing LCOE show anything like real costs involved, they assume the huge grid just exists, storage is needed for 2-4 hours (The Lazard report that Dennis linked).
In the big picture of the future you paint, building more now might matter. By trashing the environment faster in the attempt of trying to be renewable, there will be less species alive when the inevitable crash comes, and more CO2, methane, NOx etc in the atmosphere. Adding more renewables now just destroys everything faster. It’s the path humanity has chosen, because we don’t like reality..
Crashing earlier probably leaves every other life form on the planet much better off.
Realistically though, 8B+ humans will trash everything when desperate for food, heat etc…
Let’s make some outrageous assumptions to really hike renewable production to what the IPCC etc say we need to do.
Firstly, Governments all around the world agree to do everything and co-operate. (I did say outrageous assumptions!!), in fact we become one world without borders, so don’t need the military any more.
We install a CO2 tax of $200/t rising $20/yr, govts subsidise wind and solar to $500/kw of new installations. They tax companies for fossil fuel use on top of carbon tax. Governments build or subsidise giant intercontinental transmission lines, so we get solar from the Sahara to Europe and Asia.. Add lots more, it doesn’t matter.
There would be a massive increase in fossil fuel use to develop all the new mines, all the new processing plants, all the new factories, prices of all minerals would go through the roof because of sudden demand. Demand for concrete would go through the roof, likewise all the experience workers, likewise for steel, copper, aluminium, road base, basically everything.
It would be BAU (business as usual) on steroids, inflation would take off. All the new factories would be using existing technologies based on gas coal and oil consumption for their industrial processes to make the new renewables, or steel for the transmission towers, the steel in the wind towers and foundations, more asphalt for the new roads, more dams for the fresh water needed in all the new factories, more immigration for all the new workers, more food, just more, more, more of everything.
Basically it would just mean faster growth, the one aspect in the world’s ecosystem we rely upon can’t afford. It would put the new ‘base’ of energy needed for the future at a higher level, while the environment is worse off..
OFM, you’re a farmer. How much of the galvanizing remains on old fence wire when you send it for recycling?? I’d estimate not much to none on my fences.. Galvanizing uses 60% of world production of zinc. It can’t be recycled enough to stop massive new mining in the so called circular economy of the future. At lower and continually lowering grades it needs constantly more energy to maintain production at any level. What are we going to use instead, stainless steel?? (Yes joking)..
Take a 95% recycling rate for any metal, which is way higher than any metal we recycle, after 45 generations we are down to less than 10% of the original. In the long term recycling doesn’t work, we will always need mining, but we have used all the easy to get high grade stuff. What’s left will need more complex operations because of the depth we have to go and the low grades, exactly the complexity we wont have after the crash..
The timing of the crash is even possible because of the feedback loops of everything relying on oil. Once oil production gets to the stage of accelerating decline of availability, the feedback loops will accelerate the decline. Huge problems for mining around the world and food production at that point. The feedback loops from less mining and less food, will be chaotic, apart from accelerating the decline in production of everything.
We have backed ourselves into a corner of denial about a bad end to modern civilization and most of the 8B+ people on this planet suffering an early demise. We’ve been warned for decades, but ignored all the warnings. All the modern renewables will do, is last a couple of years after the crash, if we’re lucky, but will you keep your lights on at night when the world is crashing around you?? I wont…
How long will it take for all the copper wiring of solar farms to be ripped out and sold as scrap by those desperate for food during the crash??
When things get really tough during the accelerating oil decline phase, people are not going to just sit around in a circle singing kumbaya while they starve and freeze…
There are the polarized arguments on both ends of the spectrum. FF vs renewable, and then there is reality. There isn’t much data that actually confirms that the build out of renewables has reduced overall FF use in total. If growing renewable output suppresses FF price increases, even in the face of FF resource decline, then FF will continue to be used, particularly in countries that have not put in place much renewables. Reality suggests we will use as much FF as we can economically justify, even in the face of mounting climate change pressure!! I say this based on observing how reality is informing us. In the end, when FF depletion has had it’s way with us, we will be very pleased to have as much renewable as possible, but we will be forced to use less energy in total, consume less, possess less, eat less. Less will be the future. Depletion is not a FF issue alone. Soil, aquafers, rare earth metals, metals, fisheries, etc, etc. The law of the minimum is ever present. The only real solution is less. Less population using less, and ultimately that is where we will go. That is, after all, how overshoot plays out.
The best forecast that I have ever seen for this is still the base run of Limits to Growth. Amazing to have such a prescient forecast!
When these nitty gritty arguments come up regarding renewables, it is like trying to decide what is exactly right given assumptions and what is wise to do (intelligence vs wisdom).
Much of the arguments against renewables has to do with the price of electricity not being good enough here and now. I remember reading a book named “electricity pricing” more than 20 years ago. I could not get a grasp of it, because it is much too complex. Trying to figure out the price second by second by balancing supply and demand will lead to deeply negative prices when you don’t know what to do with supply and wastly overpricing in the spot market when there is shortage and potential for a black out. These short term calculations can not govern long term decisions about trying to increase renewable electricity. The right question would probably be; how much renewable build out can we get away with down the road?
https://news.yahoo.com/went-hunting-fossil-fuels-found-050016262.html
I posted this link in the last thread. Carnot trashed it.
But he didn’t address the credibility of people who are working in this new area of petroleum geology.
It’s obviously a long shot possibility, but I’m thinking there maybe something to it, considering the qualifications of the people mentioned in the link.
Any other opinions are welcome.
Considering how FAST the overall climate is heating up, how fast the oceans are heating up, I’m thinking we may have passed a tipping point this last year or two, or will pass such a point, within the next year or two, such that even the most pessimistic climate models are probably not accurately predicting how fast the global climate will continue to heat up.
Maybe sea levels predicted for the end of this century will happen within forty or fifty years, rather than seventy five years, etc.
Any opinions from the regulars here will be appreciated, and thanks in advance.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/renewable-massacre-solaredge-melts-down-after-weak-guidance
Just sayin’
Being an old gearhead myself, I’m acquainted with the history of the auto and truck industry. At one time, not long after the turn of the twentieth century, there were HUNDREDS of car and truck companies.
A few decades later, there were only a dozen or so important players left in the entire industry in the USA, and at one point, we got down to the so called Big Three, with three or four minor players hanging on by a thread in the auto and light truck segment.
Shakeouts and slow downs are to be expected after a period of dizzy fast growth in any new industry.
Plus in this case, short to medium fossil fuel prices haven’t risen very much…. contrary to what renewables advocates expected.
But depletion never sleeps…….. except in the case of wind and sun, lol.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/miltonezrati/2023/11/01/chinas-demographic-catastrophe/?sh=88fc3f150df3
More of the usual business oriented msm bullshit that totally avoids any mention of the climate, the biosphere, depletion, etc.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/efficient-motor-maker-infinitum-raises-185-mln-round-led-by-climate-focused-fund-2023-11-01/
There’s still a ton of room for efficiency improvements.
https://newatlas.com/energy/floating-contra-rotating-vawt-offshore/#gallery:1
More bad news!
RESEARCHERS ARGUE THAT REDUCING GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS IS NOT ENOUGH TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE
According to a new paper in Oxford Open Climate Change, the strategies humanity must pursue to reduce climate change will have to include more than reducing greenhouse gases. This comes from an analysis of climate data led by researcher James Hansen. A long-standing issue concerns how much global temperature will rise for a specified CO2 increase. A 1979 study released by the United States National Academy of Sciences concluded that doubling atmospheric CO2 with ice sheets fixed would likely cause global warming between 1.5 and 4.5° Celsius. This was a large range, and there was additional uncertainty about the delay in warming caused by Earth’s massive ocean. This new paper reevaluates climate sensitivity based on improved paleoclimate data, finding that climate is more sensitive than usually assumed. Their best estimate for doubled CO2 is global warming of 4.8°C, significantly larger than the 3°C best estimate of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This new paper predicts that a post-2010 acceleration of global warming will soon be apparent above the level of natural climate variability. The 1970-2010 global warming rate of 0.18°C per decade is predicted to increase to at least 0.27°C per decade during the few decades after 2010. As a result, the 1.5°C global warming level will be passed this decade and the 2°C level will be passed within the following two decades.
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-greenhouse-gas-emissions-combat-climate.html
Meanwhile,
U.S. COAL EXPORTS TO EUROPE SOAR DESPITE ENERGY TRANSITION
In the 12 months since the European Union sanctioned Russian coal in the third-quarter of 2022, U.S. coal exports to Europe have increased 22%, adding 5.7 million short tons (MMst) in a year, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Coal-Exports-To-Europe-Soar-Despite-Energy-Transition.html
“since the European Union sanctioned Russian coal”
Speaking of this topic, its been a while since Russia invaded. They successfully have taken a pretty big (and important) chunk of Ukraine. And the Ukrainians have strongly resisted but it looks like there is pretty much of a stalemate, with the prospect of recapturing their lost territory close to zero.
Time for a negotiated end to armed conflict?
The chart below is from: Why all fossil fuels must decline rapidly to stay below 1.5C.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-all-fossil-fuels-must-decline-rapidly-to-stay-below-1-5c/
The solid blue lines show the paths needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees assuming optimistic carbon removal technology, the dashed lines show the necessary paths with realistic expert assessments of carbon removal, and the solid black lines are the present global plans. None of these paths are even remotely possibly except that for planned coal use. In fact given that there is not enough oil and gas to meet the planned (black) paths the actual coal use might be higher than shown, at least in the short term. Given recent studies showing lower carbon budgets than previously expected and the growth in the earth energy imbalance, both sets of blue curves are probably optimistic. The black lines indicate that renewables are not expected to make a dent in fossil fuel use, i.e. just like previous energy “transitions” they are rather an energy “addition”. This is Tainter’s complexity growth in action and will not mean greater substitutability as resource limits bite but that systems become more fragile and vulnerable and that the law of the minimum will have wider and deeper impact.
See also: https://medium.com/@thehonestsorcerer/this-energy-crisis-is-here-to-stay-639ed05c7ab9
Meeting a 1.5 limit is absolutely impossible, and nobody is really trying. More and more it looks like we might be exceeding 4 degrees this century on our way to a hothouse earth at maybe 10 degrees hotter, just as Hansen et. al. are saying. I don’t believe humans will survive that although it may take a few thousand years to finish us off, nor will a large proportion of all families of animals, plants and fungi, which might be the larger loss.
In the Northern hemisphere they will wake up to the damage when the ice is gone. It takes 334 joules to turn 1 gm of ice at 0 deg C into 1 gm of water at 0 deg C. It only takes 4.18 joules to raise the temperature of 1 gm of water at 0 deg C to 1 deg C.
When, the ice is gone from the Arctic, in early summer, then the temperature increases get real.
How much panic will there be when a year comes along without the Winter ice forming very much, or for only a month or 2. Of course it’s way too late then to stop catastrophic change, but realistically there is no real effort taking place now. Right now building more, means burning more, and every politician wants to build more..
The oil and gas supply forecasts are insane, especially for gas. Indeed, as we know already, the oil production is supposed to decrease more or less quickly. But it is also the case for gas production. The peak of gas production has been set for late 2020s – early 2030s by a recent Shift Project report. Here we see a constant rise of gas production which is impossible given the state of the reserves. What I am seeing also is a pause in the steady rise of gas production since 2019 and furthermore, the combined production of the nine largest gas companies is at best stagnating or decreasing.
About coal, according to an estimation I have seen, China has at most 20-25 years of coal reserves. Which means that in 20-25 years, the production will be at zero. China represents 13% of the coal reserves in the world. Therefore, in 2040, the level of world coal supply should 10% or more lower than the level of 2020 for this reason. Furthermore, I wonder about the future of coal extraction, for economic reasons, in USA (28% of the world reserves) and in Germany for political reasons. As a result, the coal supply in 2040 should be considerably lower than it is shown in the graph.
At the present rate of investment, in twenty years China will have the world’s most powerful military establishment. They’re not building it up to such levels for self defense.
None of the hurricane forecast models saw this strength coming from Otis.
The toolbook has to be rewritten.
Check out this photo gallery to get a glimpse.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2023/10/photos-acapulco-aftermath-hurricane-otis/675835/
That is insane, looks like a warzone.
https://news.yahoo.com/researchers-first-extensive-mature-population-110000629.html
Fire ants are established in Europe now.
The invasive species problem is picking up steam…….. as expected, right along with the climate.
There’s a very real possibility that one or another invasive species, sometime within the easily foreseeable future, be it insect, fungus, virus or whatever, will wipe out a staple food crop someplace where the loss will mean starvation on the grand scale.
Global food prices (red line) continue to drop, but at a slower pace…
George and others have noted Sapolsky’s new book Determined, seeming to argue that trying to fix climate change is a waste of time, battling against human nature as has evolved over millions of years.
A philosopher begs to differ in his recent review of the book for The Atlantic. His concluding paragraph:
Sapolsky has a lot to teach about the science of decision making and about empathy for the unfortunate. But Hume remains a better guide to the philosophy of free will. I suppose that verdict makes this a negative review, and I don’t feel great about that. Books require a lot of work, and authors have feelings. Still, I take comfort in the fact that, although I wrote these words of my own free will, Sapolsky doesn’t think I did—or that it’s fair to blame me for their potential ill effects.
Interesting.
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/11/robert-sapolsky-determined/675885/
(subscription?)
Any honest lay person looking at this massively complex question can only say, “Who the fuck knows?” Who has the will, time, or expertise to investigate all the flossifers and sciencey guys who have weighed in on this?
On the issue of “Free Will,” everyone will choose the “answer” which best suits their disposition. (Does that mean they don’t have free will? hee hee hee.)
My default setting is, “The ugliest, most upsetting answer is probably the true one.”
I don’t think that conclusion follows from that premise. We may be destined – or determined – to ‘solve’ climate change. Determinism is not synonymous with giving up, or not trying. I see it as liberating. You get to live the live that’s predetermined for you!
And for Mike B, below, Sapolsky comes from a place of studying brain function, not necessarily ‘flossifying’, he states that in the neuron to neuron pathways, there simply is no mechanism for free will, one thing just follows another, absent ‘choice’.
The author wrote those words in part because that is how he makes money, that is not free will. If his life had been exactly the same except that he became a neuroscientist instead of a philosopher he would likely have the exact opposite view, that is not free will. If he sat down with exactly the same mind set in exactly the same environment he would write exactly the same article, that is not free will. If he’d been born to a crack mother in the poorest neighbourhood and got whacked over the head as a child he would never have become a philosophy professor or had an opportunity to even think about free will, that is not free will. etc. etc. Hence he did not write that article of his own free will, but as his discipline and therefore wellbeing can only exist by people believing in free will he will never think any different, that is not free will. And yet I think philosophy is pretty important and should be encouraged, so where does that leave me?
But Hume remains a better guide to the philosophy of free will.
Umm no. His compatibilist views has some major flaws. By his definition a drug addict has free will.
At the advice of somebody here I ordered and read “Free Will” by Sam Harris. Thanks for that recommendation. Harris’s reasoning seems sound to me – goodbye illusion of free will!
Rgds
Norris mentioned this argument:
Possibly, but trying to understand climate change is well worth it. I have been arguing for years with a commenter at RealClimate.org who claims that being able to predict a severe El Niño years in advance is a useless exercise. This is a bizarre attitude, and I know it comes from his belief that only AGW matters.
These are the benefits of being able to predict an El Niño:
1. Agriculture: El Niño impacts rainfall patterns and temperatures globally, affecting crop yields. With advanced knowledge, farmers could adjust their crop choices and agricultural practices to mitigate potential losses.
2. Water Management: Regions that experience changes in precipitation due to El Niño can better manage water resources, storing water in anticipation of drought or preparing for increased rainfall.
3. Disaster Preparedness: Advanced warning can lead to better preparation for extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and storms, potentially reducing the human and economic toll.
4. Energy Planning: Knowing the likely temperature patterns can help energy companies plan for demand fluctuations, as El Niño can cause milder winters or hotter summers in various regions.
5. Public Health: Anticipating El Niño can also prepare public health officials for outbreaks of diseases related to climate conditions, such as mosquito-borne illnesses.
6. Economic Stability: Advanced knowledge of El Niño can help governments, insurers, and businesses plan more effectively, reducing the economic shocks that result from unexpected climate variability.
7. Environmental Protection: Ecosystems can be managed more effectively with advanced knowledge of climate patterns, potentially protecting endangered species and preserving biodiversity.
And then there’s the benefit (i.e. money-making opportunities) to the insurance industry and financial markets.
The improved prediction of El Niño events would likely enhance the forecasting of other climate phenomena such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), since these systems are interrelated. Accurate models that predict these patterns would contribute to a better understanding of global climate systems and enable societies to plan more effectively for climate-related impacts.
Ten ring for Paul.
IPCC
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate
research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing
with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the
long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The
most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability
distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate
change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles
will require the dedication of greatly increased computer
resources and the application of new methods of model
diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate
is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is
essential.
14.2.2.3 Extreme events
Extreme events are, almost by definition, of particular
importance to human society. Consequently, the importance of
understanding potential extreme events is first order. The
evidence is mixed, and data continue to be lacking to make
conclusive cases.”
If a human doesn’t soon find the pattern behind El Niño and La Niña cycles, an AI machine will. The IPCC document is policy prescription guidance and has little to do with advanced research.
That’s equivalent to punting on 1st down.
There seems to be a great deal of confusion about free will, and what it means. Determinism simply means that things happen for a reason. Things aren’t random.
That means that if you want to change the world, you have to have a plan. If you want to convince someone to agree with you, you simply have to understand what they want, why they want it, and have an argument that’s customized for their needs. Kind’ve makes sense, I think.
Who would want their decisions to be random??
So, it’s not just China and India
INDONESIA DELAYS COAL CLOSURE PLANS AFTER FINANCE ROW WITH RICH NATIONS
“After its pleas for grants not loans fell mostly on deaf ears, Indonesia has watered down its plans to shut coal power plants early. A draft plan seen by Climate Home in August said Indonesia would retire a sixth of its coal-fired power plant capacity by 2030. But that target was dropped from yesterday’s final version. Instead, Indonesia now plans to start shutting down coal plants before their scheduled closure no earlier than 2035.”
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2023/11/02/indonesia-delays-coal-closure-plans-after-finance-row-with-rich-nations/
Meanwhile, we have this,
EARTH WILL LOCK IN 1.5°C OF WARMING BY 2029 AT CURRENT RATE OF BURNING FOSSIL FUELS
“In a little more than five years – sometime in early 2029 – the world will likely be unable to stay below the internationally agreed temperature limit for global warming if it continues to burn fossil fuels at its current rate, a new study says. The study moves three years closer the date when the world will eventually hit a critical climate threshold, which is an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1800s.”
https://time.com/6329852/earth-will-hit-carbon-budget-warming-threshold-in-2029-study/
On CO2 emissions, China is small compared to Canada
Canadians emit 2.5 times more CO2 than Chinese.
And US twice as much.
Canada emits 9 times more CO2 than Indonesia.
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/
Actually, according to the World Resources Institute (2023) Climate Watch Country Historical Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Canada is ranked 11th in the world for total GHG emissions and Canada has the second-highest GHG emission per capita rate among the top 11 emitting countries and regions.
15,000 years ago Canada was covered by 2 miles of glacial ice. Canada might want to emit faster.
The hosers are always emitting, that’s why they call them hosers.
Coal looking good folks
INDIA’S OCTOBER COAL PRODUCTION JUMPS 19%
India’s coal production jumped by 18.59% to 78.65 million tons in October compared to the same month last year, data from the Indian Ministry of Coal showed on Friday.
Between April and October, the first seven months of the Indian fiscal year 2023/2024, Indian coal production also rose, by 13.05% year-on-year to 507 million tons, according to the data.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Indias-October-Coal-Production-Jumps-19.html
Home solar companies in the US dialed back their outlooks this week amid a
pileup of challenges that are dragging the sector down. Investors took notice.
Sunrun Inc., SunPower Corp. and SolarEdge Technologies Inc. reported
weaker-than-expected sales in the third quarter. The key culprits: higher
interest rates, an oversupply of equipment and sharply reduced state-level
incentives in California — the most important domestic market.
“This has been a volatile time,” Mary Powell, Sunrun’s chief executive officer,
said on an earnings call.
Her comments came shortly after Sunrun revealed that a drop in its stock price
prompted the company to take a $1.2 billion charge to write down the value of
its 2020 purchase of rival Vivint Solar.
It’s a surprising bout of turmoil for a renewable sector that rode a wave of
enthusiasm for sustainable investing since before President Joe Biden’s
election. But economic headwinds and California’s slashed rooftop subsidies
have recently outweighed the generous incentives bestowed in the landmark
climate law that Biden signed just 14 months ago.
The selloff isn’t unique to Sunrun, the biggest US rooftop solar company. The
Invesco Solar ETF, which tracks industry stocks, has fallen 41% this year. The
S&P 500, meanwhile, has risen more than 12%.
In response to the turbulent market, home solar companies say they are cutting
costs, raising prices and selling higher-margin battery systems.
“We assume this recovery takes well into 2024,” Ameet Thakkar, an analyst with
BMO Capital Markets, said in a research note this week.
via Bloomberg
Articles like this clearly show how the curtain is not matching the carpet in terms of what we’re told about renewables..
If they really were cheaper than coal, gas, nuclear etc, then sales would be booming without any subsidies or incentives whatsoever. The mere fact that sales decline as subsidies decline is very telling…
Of course this doesn’t sit with the narrative either… ” home solar companies say they are cutting
costs, RAISING PRICES “.. but, but, but solar is getting cheaper, cheaper…
Hideawy,
Once again you hit the nail on the head. Where is the promised low cost electricty we were promised. Every western government sold us the story of low cost renewbles. All that I have seen is my electricty costs skyrocket, abd that is wth subsidies. All the powergrids need upgrading to handle all the connections fo unreliables. worse still is the pressure to ove to heat pumps, with yet more subsidies to enable the technology to mature, the cost of installation and operation to decline. My delivered gas cost is a quarter of the electricity cost. That makes a heat pump about twice as expensive because the typical COP is about 2 where I live.. The power supply to the average house where I live is about 15 kW and the fuse about 60Amps. Heat pumps on start up can draw 60+ amps. Even worse if you home charge an EV.
Net impact. The entire power grids needs an upgrade to handle in excess of 2x the current capacity.
Then let us look and wind boondoggle. A money sink and as the turbines age we will see increasing maintenence costs. Cheap energy – give me a break.
I still would like to know how wind and solar are going to produce steel ( from iron ore) and petrochemcals because I work in the petrochemical business and we do not have the technology in place to produce a basic chemical like ethylene using only electricity. I am open to persuasion but the potential pathways have never been proven.
>> Heat pumps on start up can draw 60+ amps. <<
Really?
Modern inverter controlled heat pumps have zero startup current surge. In fact, our has a lower startup than a vacuum cleaner, by a long way.
https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/9815-peak-startup-load/?do=findComment&comment=166720
You cherry pick a website that does not necessarily agree with what you say. You choose one comment. Go to your DNO and see what they say. An inverter start up on an ASHP may help but it does not solve the problem of the overall supply to the house, and the surges that accur when an appliance is connected.
You need to look at the wider picture and be realistic. My workshop dims the lights when I start my equipment ( saw, band saw, lathe) – all single phase.
My vaccum cleaner draw 800 watts so you analogy is a little suspect.
If your lights dim at start I would suggest using three phase motors instead, and Y/D-start if more than 4 kW, no need for inverters in that case. And regarding amps, my 6,3 kW heatpump (works great as an AC as well, in fact it was originally designed as one) has a 4,9 SCOP and a 9,1 SEER and works very well with a single phase 10A fuse (230V, 50Hz) at 65N so I guess your examples are some old equipment?
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/02/biggest-global-threat-since-1930s-looms-and-every-ceo-talking-about-it.html
Perhaps this is a integral component of a human world that is in the earliest phase of contraction-
“This new age represents, in the words of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Zeitenwende—an “epochal tectonic shift,” in which fascism, authoritarianism and imperialism are newly ascendant and globalization is receding.”
““The US government is demanding data from US insurers as it probes whether more frequent and extreme hurricanes and wildfires are making insurance unaffordable for American homeowners.
“Insurers will be asked to provide information about their home insurance policies, premiums, claims and losses at a zip-code level for six years between 2017 and 2022.”
The government (you the tax payer) will have to provide insurance subsidy, property bailouts, or displaced persons and company bankruptcy costs of fossil fuel combustion warming… to the tune of a trillion plus dollars as damage mounts over the coming 10-20 years. Luckily there is a huge savings account (sarc).
Global warming is extremely inflationary.
Hickory, in a recent comment you suggested the war in Ukraine has reached a stalemate an we should negotiate with the Russians. And let them keep their ill gotten gains?
I agree, it is a stalemate but one which can be broken. This is not chess, we can add more queens and rooks to Ukraine (hat tip Snyder).
I recommend an article by military historian Phillips P. OBrien:
the most important/interesting story this week is that we have a long document written by [Ukraine’s] General Zaluzhnyi (and is staff) about modern war and how to best aid Ukraine to help it win.
Zaluzhny’s document was published in the Economist, link provided in OBrien’s article:
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-53-zaluzhny-and-the
Good article. I think the questions posed do need an answer. I wonder if the Ukrainian supporters have enough will and resources to give Ukraine the more advanced tools it would need to break the stalemate conditions currently in place. This slow war of attrition does not favor them.
There isn’t much movement on the ground, but that doesn’t make it a stalemate. And if it were a stalemate, why negotiate?
It bears repeating-
The IEA currently forecasts fossil fuel CO2 emissions to peak by around 2030.
However if you look at their projections, there is a huge fat tail of combustion that goes on for decades.
There may still be another 1/3rd of total cumulative combustion left to go.
The half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is around 120 years,
which means there is an accumulation effect in play.
Even if global peak combustion happens within 10 years or so,
the momentum of oceanic and atmospheric heating will continue increasing
for most of the century, even without any positive feedback mechanisms
such as loss of the overall albedo related to ice and snow melt.
There ‘will be hell to pay’ seems an apropos statement.
Seem to be true—-
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-11-01/the-gasoline-powered-leaf-blower-as-a-metaphor-for-industrial-society/
Global PV must grow to 5,400 GW by 2030 to limit global warming
At first blush this looks like a difficult ask but, I have a spreadsheet that I did a couple years ago where I attempt to extrapolate from historical data and examine a couple of scenarios. My calculations are based on global new PV plant capacity which closely follows new PV module production capacity. I have done three projections, one based on increasing new capacity by 10% each year, another based on 17.5 increase in new capacity per year and one based on increasing new capacity by 30% per year.
Estimates for new PV Capacity in 2023 range from 270 GW (Wood-McKenzie) to 360 GW (Rethink Energy), to a range between 341 and 402 GW (Solar Power Europe). My high (30% increase) projection for 2023 was 348 GW so if current trends continue for another two years, it is virtually guaranteed that global cumulative PV capacity will exceed 2 GW by the first half of 2025 giving us a doubling time of roughly three years. Another three years would take us to 4 GW by the end of 2028. My medium growth scenario has the globe getting to 5GW cumulative PV capacity by the end of 2029 and just under 6 GW by the end of 2030.
From the looks of it the only way the world will fail to realize 5,400 GW of solar PV capacity by 2030 is for some sort of collapse in manufacturing and installation before 2030. Not impossible. Likely? Who knows?
And then there is the view of professional climate scientists
IN EARLY 2029, EARTH WILL LIKELY LOCK INTO BREACHING KEY WARMING THRESHOLD
In a little more than five years—sometime in early 2029—the world will likely be unable to stay below the internationally agreed temperature limit for global warming if it continues to burn fossil fuels at its current rate, a new study says. The study moves three years closer the date when the world will eventually hit a critical climate threshold, which is an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1800s. Hitting that threshold will happen sooner than initially calculated because the world has made progress in cleaning up a different type of air pollution—tiny smoky particles called aerosols. Aerosols slightly cool the planet and mask the effects of burning coal, oil and natural gas, the study’s lead author said. Put another way, while cleaning up aerosol pollution is a good thing, that success means slightly faster rises in temperatures.
“We have got to the stage where the 1.5C carbon budget is so small that it’s almost losing meaning,” said climate scientist Glen Peters of the Norwegian CICERO climate institute, who wasn’t part of the research. “If your face is about to slam in the wall at 100 miles per hour, it is sort of irrelevant if your nose is currently 1 millimeter or 2 millimeters from the wall. … We are still heading in the wrong direction at 100 mph.”
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-early-earth-breaching-key-threshold.html
These 2 posts in a row are funny in an ironic sort of way…
According to climate scientists we need to burn less, much less, starting yesterday and we all know they are correct.
Then the renewables mob as the answer, we need to accelerate growth, we need more mining, more metals, more factories, more concrete etc as our solution to reducing fossil fuel use, despite the mere inconvenience of all the extra metals, mining and factories needing extra fossil fuels burnt for their construction….
As soon as anyone puts up the solution being “We need to build more….(include whatever word you want!) ….. it is directly the opposite of burning less!!
This also means the 85% of the human population that exists today can never go close to reaching a ‘western lifestyle’, that governments everywhere say they have as a goal..
The suspension of disbelief is staggering even on this forum of supposedly informed posters…
Now that you are an old guy and have used fossil fuels and petrochemicals your whole life, and knew about Limits to Growth since 1975, you now want all the younger people of the earth to just succumb to depletion (and Global warming) without attempting to adapt. I’ve heard this before (Gone Fishing for example).
I’m glad you care, but your campaign is a failure from the start.
Quandary. Although all efforts and mechanisms to end thermal coal combustion seem straightforward to me. Except replacing coal with tree burning.
Maybe its time to sell all of your coal holdings.
Hideaway,
Right on the money. Unreliables will squander ever more of our fossil fuels and critical raw materials and will fail and accelerate fossil fuel depletion. The easisest way to reduce carbon emissions is to not use it. Do we really need to drive cars with 300 hp. That does mean some changes to lifestyles and I have significantly reduced my carbon footprint – not because I believe in climate change, but because I know that burning fossil fuels for holidays and recreation( last time I travelled for vacation was 2000) is incredibly wasteful. I sold my aeroplane and helicopter shares and reduced my annual gasoline consumption to around 300 litres per year becuse I realised it was unsustainable.
We hear a lot about climate scientists. Just what is a climate scientist? When you look at the science and the models there is a lot of dubious correlations and trying to model the effects and draw conclusions is nigh impossible. Now every weather event is caused by climate change and the word crisis is used to describe every slightly severe weather event. Carbon dioxide in the atmsphere is low compared to historical levels. Much of the carbon in the atmosphere was removed by marine organisms that used carbon dioxide to produce their protective shells and exo skeletons.
Water vapour is a much more potent greenhouse gas and exists in the atmosphere in an order of magnitude greater than carbon dioxide. If there is a crisis it is in the size of the global population.
Hideaway,
The solar and wind that is built reduces the need to mine coal, oil, and natural gas and over the life of the wind and solar built overall environmental damage is reduced compared to simply continuing to use fossil fuel. A lifecycle analysis shows that this is the case.
https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/202109_UNECE_LCA_1.2_clean.pdf
and
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf
Many of these nrel studies are older from 2012 and 2013.
I imagine the lifecycle emissions are likely to have decreased over time due to economies of scale and improved technology.
The tonnage of coal gas and oil we currently burn vastly outweighs the materials we need to build renewables.
This year seems likely to beat 1.5 and the consensus is that next year will be warmer. Is there any reason to think 2025 to 28 are going to go back below 1.5 – if not then we’ve already broken through that threshold and by 2029 will be talking about how small the budget is before reaching 2 degrees. The cause of this year’s jump is not really known, it is out of proportion to what is so far a relatively average El Nino and is not necessarily temporary. For the 98 and 16 El Ninos the following years just tended to stay flat rather than cool significantly. The rate of warming is accelerating and the loss of Antarctic sea ice may make it faster still. The rate at which the EEI is growing when it should be dropping has not been explained. The implications of the slowing of the southern overturning circulation have not been properly explored. Arctic and other wetland methane releases may be spiking as a feedback from the general increase in temperatures and moister atmosphere. I’d say we might think ourselves lucky if we can hold out to 2029.
https://electrek.co/2023/11/03/southern-california-us-largest-clean-energy-transmission-project/
Our resident renewables naysayers are apparently incapable of offering ANY positive ideas that might actually be implemented in the real world, given real world circumstances and the nature of human beings and human society.
Can Hideaway or Carnot POSSIBLY believe that we’re going to just quit burning fossil fuels in order to save the environment? I can’t quite imagine that this is so.
Can they possibly believe that if we DON’T use some portion of our fossil fuels to mine for materials, build factories to build wind, solar, battery, transmission line equipment, etc, manpower to install this stuff, etc………. THAT we WON’T use this same portion to mine for materials to build OTHER factories to make OTHER stuff, and install this other stuff and use it and throw it away, eventually?
The fossil fuels are going to be burnt, and mining is going to be done, STUFF is going to be manufactured and used …………. and only an idiot could possibly argue otherwise.
Their argument against doing some of all this shit, or as I advocate, as MUCH AS POSSIBLE OF IT, to build out the renewables industries and infrastructure holds water about as well as a child’s toy balloon filled to the limit and dropped twenty feet on a sidewalk, lol.
The only REAL question in the real world is WHAT we will mine, what we will build, for what purposes, because any proposal to give up on industrial civilization is about as likely to be implemented as I am to sprout wings and fly.
I maintain that anybody who cannot understand what I’m saying here has, to put it as kindly as possible, a VERY poor grasp of the big picture, in terms of what we naked apes are doing, and will continue to do……….. until we can’t.
So….. Bottom line
If they’re right, and we piss away a lot of fossil fuels and do a lot of damage to the environment building renewables……… well, as I’ve TRIED to make clear, we’re going to piss away our fossil fuels ANYWAY, and we’re going to do ( very likely to dead sure) just as much damage to the environment building something else ANYWAY.
They don’t have a leg to stand on, period. If this were a game of eight ball, they had the break, make nothing, and I run the table, game over.
Now let us consider the possibility that for any or all of the many reasons they have pointed out, we FAIL to make a successful transition to a sustainable renewable economy. I have consistently pointed out that there are possibilities, but NO GUARANTEES of success.
At worst, some of us will live better lives longer as the result of whatever we do manage in the way of going renewable, which is part and parcel of changing our entire way of life to use less energy per capita, taking better care of the environment, etc.
Here’s a simple question for Hideaway and Carnot. Suppose we take a hundred hectares of good corn land in the American Midwest, and put solar panels on it, and let whatever grass will grow without fertilizer or irrigation or pesticides grow under and between the panels, and graze some sheep to keep the grass down, and use the electricity so produced to run electric cars and trucks.
You guys look up the number of kilowatt hours produced IN THIS CASE, on average, using figures from solar farms so located and built within the last two or three years, meaning up to date.
Then look up how many miles you can go in a cars using this many kilowatt hours.
AND after you put up your answers, I’ll put up the number of miles you can drive on ethanol produced in that corn field, and the amount of fossil fuel energy, roughly, used in producing the fertilizer, insecticides, drying the corn, transporting and distilling it, etc, the amounts used in the tractors and combines, the amount used to pump irrigation water, etc…….. YEAR AFTER YEAR, for the twenty years good panels are WARRANTED to last.
Raising corn to make moonshine to run cars and trucks is part and parcel of the naked ape REAL WORLD.
I submit that you are apparently incapable of getting your heads around REALITY.
Signing off for now.
Tomorrow I’ll have a few things to say about your arguments involving supply chains, spare parts, depletion of this and that, running out at potential or postulated ninety five percent recycling rates, etc.
You know who you guys remind me off? There’s a famous cartoon, from the New Yorker as best I can remember, about a kid about ten or twelve trying to get out of doing his homework, arguing with his mother that there’s no point in doing it…….
Because he heard in science class that day that in a billion years or so the sun is going to expand and burn the Earth into a red hot lifeless cinder, and so THERE’S NO POINT in his doing his homework.
@OFM apparently you haven’t been bothering to read my posts too closely. What I expect will happen and what I’d like to happen are 2 different things..
I expect things to continue in a BAU way, until it all crashes sometime during the rapid decline of oil availability. This includes lots more burning of fossil fuels for every normal reason that happens now. It means more burning of fossil fuels to build all the renewables. It’s a catch 22, in that we need to accelerate the burning of fossil fuels to build the renewables, and batteries, and hydrogen and ammonia etc, etc. By doing this, in 5 or 10 years, or whatever, we will have a much higher annual rate of fossil fuel use, so the amount of renewables built will have to be larger, which means more mines, factories, processing plants. This will continue until it can’t due to lack of energy availability really hits…
What I would like to happen is recognition of the problems we have, mainly being massive overshoot, ecosystem destruction, climate damage etc. Then proper attempts to reduce population, become one world so that militaries are no longer necessary and one set of rules world wide, rewild vast areas of agricultural land, while reducing the complexity of modern life before nature does it to us anyway..
I acknowledge the odds of my wish list happening are effectively zero, so crash and collapse it is…
You already acknowledge that a collapse is ahead, so why don’t you think that all the copper wires would be ripped out of the solar farms by scavengers trying to buy their next meal during the collapse?? It would make the panels useless statues.
Pretending that solar, wind and/or nuclear will allow civilization to continue as is, with the climate and environment just a little bit worse off, using fake calculations to convince the public, is delusional thinking, but that is exactly where we are headed!!
A quick look at the Keeling curve shows that we have not made one iota of difference in over 30 years, since climate damage from CO2 was acknowledged. You don’t have to be a genius to recognize that more of the same over the next few years, will see CO2 levels continue to do exactly what they have done in the past, which is grow exponentially….
After the collapse, which will probably take a decade or 2 to complete, assuming we don’t destroy all life on the planet with a nuclear exchange, all the solar panels and wind turbines will be statues, in the way, of simple farming in your corn field. A lot of effort will go into digging out, by hand, the concrete foundations of the solar panel supports, to make the land useful again.
Everyone wants an easy answer, yet over 50 years ago with the early warnings of limits, humanity made the choice to ignore the future. Wasting decades has not left any simple cheap answers, while the population doubled and nearly doubled again.
There are no simple answers, or way out, and the hard choices that need to be made are not going to happen, because they are too large of a shock, to modern western lifestyles, and those aspiring to this lifestyle, plus any politician that promised a guarantee of worse times ahead, to save the ecosystem in the chance of being properly sustainable, would be immediately voted out of office..
Extend and pretend it is until the wheels fall off…
I think we’ll turn back to coal as much as switch to renewables as oil and gas gets short – there may already be evidence of this. Anything to keep BAU, and it’s not really a choice, just an expected reaction.
@George, Botswana is planning a CTL plant with construction expected to start in 2025, while in China they have Shenua CTL plant operating since 2008, with SASOL’s help, with expansion plans. I agree there will be lots of attempts to build CTL and probably GTL.
Luckily the EROEI of such plants is terrible, and the time to build scale, is long and very capital expensive (hence the low EROEI). Much easier to build these while the world is increasing it’s energy usage, much harder in a falling energy availability scenario when there is recession/depression all around.
IMHO if the drop in oil availability is very slow and controlled, there will be a lot more CTL and GTL built, leading to much worse outcomes for all life on the planet as emissions explode higher.
I wasn’t thinking of such sophistication, just burn coal for heat, to generate electricity or go back to direct steam engines if they help you survive. In-situ gasification might be a more likely technologically advanced move than CTL – I think there are already working plants in China.
Hideawey,
Spot on. GTL, CTL is an energy sink. Not a profitable plant to date unless you are in China and then it is dubious. As for a return o investemnt you had better invest in the horses
I have evaluated FT processes for 20 years and they all suck. Not worth a row of beans. That means the EROEI is negative.
Those on this blog are welcome to challenge my views as long as you can show a business case that shows a net energy gain. So unlikely I would bet my house. Better still, “show me the money”
So we are down to climate change. Can someone show me a case that carbon dioxide is increasing global warming that supersedes the pupulation explosion, sorry exponential growth. Who will you call – maybe Ghostbusters..
Listen Up,
Me Andre is a BIG MAN.
All the talk about being economical assumes normal conditions. I agree CTL is not economical in a growing economic environment.
But if the choice is starvation or CTL….It will be developed.
When South Africa got oil embargoed, they immediately went to CTL and it worked.
Hitler who was fighting a war used CTL successfully.
When the shit hits the fan…
Look at the USA and Australia with 40% of the worlds coal reserves.
Australia’s only chance of survival is to become part of the USA or Britain….Probably both.
Until the wheels fall off….. Has to happen, its the only way to get the population down to something reasonable. My very modest hope is that some small pockets of industrial and agricultural capability will survive total destruction and provide a basis for rebuilding a modest economy somewhere above the hunter-gatherer existence.
Getting the population down is going to be really ugly- look at the events in Gaza, 4,000 children killed in the last month, 6.000 live births in the same period.
I love this cartoon. But some people don’t, saying it feeds “a spectre of ecofascism”…
https://davidbent.wordpress.com/2021/07/07/why-ive-come-to-loathe-this-cartoon/
I would say it creates a specter, period.
The bureaucrats who attend climate summits are as far removed from ecofascism as possible. All they peddle is BAU at any cost.
So you got to be a gullible fool to believe the business interests and governments who attend climate summits want to achieve any of those bullet points.
That cartoon essentially states the No Regrets policy.
“What if scientists are wrong (about climate change) ?”
https://youtu.be/l6dKyoHgvFA
To anyone that doesn’t understand that there should be no regrets in pursuing an energy transition, show the cartoon and then have them watch the short video.
The No Regrets policy assumes a certain degree of fairness: that a transition would benefit the entire global population (though perhaps not to the point of general equality).
Republicans are against that sort of thing.
Frank Luntz, featured in that No Regrets video, is a Republican.
No Regrets is a proactive strategy with some similarity to the precautionary principle, and applies redundancy and intersectionality as a logical argument,
https://geoenergymath.com/2023/04/04/intersectionality-and-no-regrets/
Global warming in the pipeline
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false
This is what the climate experts are saying.
GLOBAL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AT ALL-TIME HIGH
In 2020, the IPCC calculated the remaining carbon budget was around 500 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. By the start of 2023, the figure was roughly half that at around 250 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. The reduction in the estimated remaining carbon budget is due to a combination of continued emissions since 2020 and updated estimates of human-induced warming. Professor Forster said: “Even though we are not yet at 1.5°C warming, the carbon budget will likely be exhausted in only a few years as we have a triple whammy of heating from very high CO2 emissions, heating from increases in other GHG emissions and heating from reductions in pollution.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230608121013.htm
The site below alternates climate and economic news links, most of them bad, but this is the worst set of economic indicators I can remember seeing there, in particular those relating to near term oil demand.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2023/11/06/6th-november-2023-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
Get off oil you say, well not in US, at least not for awhile
HOW THE U.S. IS PUMPING MORE OIL WITH FEWER RIGS
• U.S. crude oil production hit a monthly record in August 2023, with an average output of 13.05 million barrels per day, breaking the previous month’s record.
• Production increases were driven by efficiency, particularly in Texas and new drilling methods, offsetting a decrease in active drilling rigs.
• Oil and gas executives expect the number of rigs to stabilize, while the EIA projects continued production growth into the next year.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-The-US-Is-Pumping-More-Oil-With-Fewer-Rigs.html
Meanwhile CO2 maintains its relentless climb
Daily CO2
Nov. 5, 2023 = 419.29 ppm
Nov. 4, 2022 = 416.55 ppm
1 Year Change 2.74 ppm (0.66%)
My goodness, you need to see the wood for the trees.You are looking at that the data in the rear view mirror. 3 months ago, and those production stats relate to wells drilled probably last year, and maybe completed early this year. The oil flow is not instantaneous so there will be a further delay as the well ramps up.
Look who wrote this puff piece. Was it written by someone who has a modicum of experience. I recently said beware of what you read on the internet and especially Oil Price.com.
Is productivity really increasing with 15000 foot laterals? The jury is out . Comparing rates of production is always tricky, and looking at a basin and averaging a basin across the number of wells is not a good idea. Shale resources are not a homogeneous sugar cube. They are heterogeneous and can vary significantly. Looking at the DPR and making conclusions about GOR is another rookie error.
US LTO might increase over the next year but most likely will plateau. 2025 could be very interesting as the Tier 2 and 3 resources disappoint.
If you wish to learn have a look at Geerge E King. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DItAO2S7AQ
You might will learn more than you will ever gert form OilPrice.com
Every “reliable” source I look at gives the same information, more-or-less.
DOUBTERS BEWARE: U.S. OIL PRODUCTION IS SETTING NEW RECORDS
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2023/10/08/doubters-beware-us-oil-production-is-setting-new-records/?
sh=436b35416767
U.S. OIL PRODUCTION HITS ALL-TIME HIGH, CONFLICTING WITH EFFORTS TO CURB CLIMATE CHANGE
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/u-s-oil-production-hits-all-time-high-conflicting-with-efforts-to-curb-climate-change
U.S. CRUDE OIL PRODUCTION SURGES TO RECORD HIGH IN Q3 2023, EIA REPORTS
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2023/10/12/u-s-crude-oil-production-surges-to-record-high-in-q3-2023-eia-reports/
I am not denying the production stats. But making connections with oil production and productivty gains are not in sync. What will the productivity of wells drilled in August 2023 be, because they will not be producing until next year. So measuring well productivity, as per the DPR, is disengenuous.
View the video to George KIng in my eearlier post and you will learn a lot.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12715897/US-sends-submarine-capable-firing-guided-Tomahawk-missiles-Middle-East.html
Does Hole in Head still post here?
I know he is lurking.
He said that US Navy Carrier fleets are impotent and Iran controls things in the Strait of Hormuz.
All jokes…I like HIH
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=250038
for those who like to contemplate demographics.
“Demographics is Destiny”
If you’re not already you may want to read/watch Peter Zeihan on this topic. He’s been on it for a decade or so WITHOUT all the dramatic CAPS and YELLING that Denninger seems to have the constant urge to do.
/s
Rgds
WP
It is maybe time to reflect on how much heat we waste when combusting a large amount of energy. I am not really good at posting links to back up my claims, but when I searched on google I got scores of hits of what I already knew regarding heat pumps. It is kind of overwhelming.
I normal circumstances 4-5 times efficient (air to air) compared to electricity panel owens and less when temperatures are approaching extreme. When it comes to air conditioning some of the same principles apply due to the laws of physics.
You could heat half of your house if you are prosperous with a heat pump with a lot of renewable energy powering that. Or, people could live more congested as historically. Then both heating or cooling could be accommodated more easily. On top of that there are gas owens with 90%+ heat efficiency and wood based owens approaching high numbers in efficiency. We are wasting heat because we live in poorly insulated houses; air condition even works better in well insulated houses I have been told.
On top of that we have a heat intensive industry, that can be done less heat reliant. Ofcourse volume is important, but also heat requirement. Clay does not require much heat, titanium requires a lot. Recycling that are bad moutheded by some on this forum requires less heat than melting primary metals. And yes, I know that it is a question of what recycled metals can be used for what and how much energy that are expended to make it “pure” enough.
My main point is that I still think that it is possible to reduce fossil fuel use to 20-30% of the top level, before a real struggle begins. In theory. In practice, geopolitical power struggles and underminding of basic democratic rights would make that milestone futile. Probably.
So true. And combustion driven transport wastes something like 70% of the energy content of petrol. Put that in your EROEI pipe and smoke it.
I am not sure if you understand EROEI. Might I also suggest that you read up on exergy as well as EROEI.. I cannot disagree with you comments on the useful power from a combustion engine, which is governed by thermodynamic principles – namely entropy as are ALL processes including PV and wind turbines.
Meanwhile what alternatives to combustion engines do we have for transport. How are ships going to be powered? Aeroplanes? Heavy vehicles? Farming? The diesel engine is marginally better than a gasoline engine, but most people consider the fuel consumption difference volumetrically when if fact it the the mass that matters.
Light vehicles may be electrified but the evidence to date is not very favourable. Short range, long charging times, fire risks, electrical hazards, and so on. No country has a power grid capable of providing enough power to electrify the light vehicle fleet, and in my opinion may never have enough.
Oh, if you you at the recent pres releases on wind turbines that does not look so good these days. Cheap wind energy was promised. That is not reflected in my electricity bills.
I do not disagree that fossil fuels are finite and will be short lived and that is why I would always support fuel efficiency measures over the build out of unreliables. Modular nuclear is probably the best option.
My comment was meant to help you and others realize that the energy content of petrol is only about 30% useful if you deploy it in a combustion engine. And that sad fact is indeed a part of the real world energy scenario.
Well to Wheels Analysis- [from Cummins]
“Well to wheel” is a method to evaluate efficiency and emissions of an energy source by considering its entire life cycle. This method provides the most complete and accurate way to measure energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Well to wheel analysis is a comprehensive method for assessing energy efficiency and emissions… throughout the entire life cycle of an energy source.”
https://www.cummins.com/news/2022/05/26/well-wheel-emissions-simplified
If you really are interestedin the well to wheels approach then I would point you in the direction of the works of Charles Hall, David Pimental, and Tad Padzek.
The chesse slicer of Charles Hall is particulalry good.
http://theoildrum.com/node/3412
Carnot,
The step missing on that chart is the thermal loss in the combustion process, which drops the 20 MJ of energy in the gasoline in the tank to about 6 MJ of useful work turning the wheel of the vehicle.
Thank you Dennis. That is exactly what I was pointing out very simple just above.
Hickory,
Yes I got the idea from your comment, just trying to drive the point home.
You missed the point as most people do which is why you need to look deeper. If you go the the Charles Hall cheese slicer model, the 20MJ is that left over after extraction, processing, distribution, and powering the economy, is the energy available for discretionary use.
i.e. what we can burn in our cars and aircraft that is not required to run the economy.
As we go forward there will be less discretionary fuels available and more energy will be consumed in extracting energy; like swimming is a tide.
Unreliables will only consume more energy in running the economy- already are- and reduce the amount of energy available for discretionary use. That means rationing either by price or by government policy.
EV’s are not the answer as the embedded energy in unreliables and EV’s is only possible by massive fossil fuel inputs.
I would go even further. The overall efficiency of a gasoline engine is below 30% conversion to torque at the wheels, especially when stop start driving is taken into account. Same applies for EV’s. Acceleration consumes energy
When the population peaks, and crashes, or at least falls off FAST, in a country such as the USA, and in many other well developed countries, there are some factors not often mentioned today that will come into play in a really major way, in respect to energy, both total and per capita.
We will be abandoning a hell of a lot of our lowest quality housing. There WILL be a hard crash in both rental rates and purchase prices, because there will be a GROWING oversupply of housing…….
And it will be far more practical and profitable ( or at least the owners will lose LESS ) by renting and selling cheaper.
Furthermore a truly substantial number of people working in quite a few businesses and industries will be out of work, and living on savings, if any, or welfare, if available, as the case may be, and they WILL be doubling up.
I used to live in the Fan District in Richmond Va where hundreds of huge old houses built a century or more ago have been converted into apartments….. and even back then, quite a few of those apartments had one or two tenants who signed the lease, and two or more others sharing with them.
Houses way out in the boonies may be occupied by self reliant types willing to be off grid……. the grid isn’t going to be maintained forever when there’s only one customer every half mile or farther apart. The highway departments are going to reduce maintenance on the roads in such places until the locals will eventually really NEED Jeeps to get in and out even during good weather. Net result, people will be moving into towns and cities or close in suburbs, for at least as long as the lights stay on and the toilet works in town.
Houses and apartment buildings last a HELL of a long time, if they were built within the last half to three quarters of a century to a more or less standardized building code. As the price of energy goes up, so also goes the dollars and cents incentive to remodel, adding insulation, better windows and doors, etc.
It should be obvious that these things will come to pass…… but the extent of them will depend on how fast the economy contracts, how fast the population declines, etc.
My personal guess is that there will be a super duper economic crash here in the USA, with tens of millions of people more or less permanently unemployed in their former industries such as convenience stores, tourism, restaurants, etc, and millions more out of work in construction, etc.
If we’re lucky, we can manage this situation here in the USA without too much in the way of large scale violence, etc, but I anticipate today’s kids living under a wartime sort of managed economy.
We’ll be lucky if we can do as well as this.
The downside……. well, for me, if I happen to live long enough, the downside means forting up..
OFM
One of the weak points of the current housing stock is roofing materials. A building with a leaking roof quickly becomes uninhabitable . Good quality asphalt shingles will last maybe 30 to forty years, flat asphalt rooves less than that, and wood rooves, still less.
https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/bill-gates-backed-tracks-and-wings-bid-to-shrink-wind-power-for-ever/2-1-1549556
Here and there, once in while, some new technology really does have enough of an impact to justify the words game changer.
I’m not an engineer, other than back yard rule of thumb engineering, but at first glance this looks as if it might work well enough to be scaled up and widely used.
Any opinions welcome.
I’m not so sure about PVs long term but China is showing the way for EVs:
https://insideevs.com/news/682066/catl-debuts-fast-charging-lfp-battery-adds-248-miles-10-minutes/
Solid state soon or hype?
https://m.arenaev.com/dongfeng_nammi_01__first_ev_with_sodium_solid_state_battery-news-2310.php
How about a small & cheap? Would make sense for a lot of folks.
https://thechinaproject.com/2023/02/17/mini-electric-cars-are-big-in-china-will-the-rest-of-the-world-catch-on/
In the USA it’ll probably take a 70s oil crisis. But it would save alot of petrol (Tesla : from well to wheel).
The bottom line, in terms of who is right, Carnot, Hideaway, and camp, or people who think more the way I do, is that it’s impossible to say…… because the question involves too many random factors involving chance. We may wake up to WWIII tomorrow, the climate might possibly go postal in five or ten years rather than five or ten decades, the “powers that be ( in charge in particular countries ) can be safely predicted to do the wrong thing at the wrong time in quite a few instances, etc.
If the agreed on collapse happens fast, and soon, in relative terms, they may well be right. Maybe looters will take down the power lines and steal the cables from solar farms…… but maybe on the other hand, they won’t , due to a lack of customers for copper at that stage of the game.
And maybe the owners of transmission lines will have the authority to shoot to kill. Maybe the transmission lines will all be nationalized, and governors can call out troops to do the shooting, when ( if ) it comes to that.
In the meantime, let us consider some fast collapse arguments.
“Meanwhile what alternatives to combustion engines do we have for transport. How are ships going to be powered? Aeroplanes? Heavy vehicles? Farming? ”
In a ( relatively ) slow collapse scenario, we won’t be needing all that many ships. Nobody will be buying cars shipped across the Pacific by the thousands per trip per ship. We won’t be buying tens of thousands of truck loads of throw away junk either.
And while it won’t be helping at all with the climate issue, coal to liquid is a very real thing, and we can produce enough synthetic fuel this way, under wartime economic conditions meaning strict rationing, to keep really essential vehicles moving. Unless the oil supply collapses suddenly, due to political issues up to and including wide spread hot war, there will be quite a bit of oil available for another fifty years at least, assuming of course it can be pumped, transported, and processed.
Let us remember that once Leviathan, the nation state, has blood dripping from it’s head, due to my proverbial sharp broken bricks or Pearl Harbor WAKE UP Events, etc, has the power to put tradesmen and engineers in uniform, and tell them in no uncertain terms, where they will go, and what they will be doing for anywhere from a few weeks to a few years. Leviathan will live as long as this power lasts.
Essential imports will continue to flow to powerful countries so long as they remain powerful.
People, both lay people and professional military people, tend to live with the mindset that a country such as the USA can’t win a war in a country such as Vietnam or Afghanistan…….. which is true, but only so long as the SURVIVAL of the USA, or Germany, or Russia, or China, etc, DOES NOT DEPEND on winning such a localized aggressive war.
“Light vehicles may be electrified but the evidence to date is not very favourable. Short range, long charging times, fire risks, electrical hazards, and so on.”
I grew up in a small crowded house, but I never felt cramped at all. The world was mine, to do pretty much as I pleased, for hundreds of acres around.Cramped meant nothing to me, until I moved into a university dormitory with the nearest student parking lot a mile away.
By the time I had an apartment in the Fan District in Richmond, I was used to living by the square foot rather than the acre. I got used to using a bicycle too.
If industrial society survives, we’ll get used to micro mini two seater cars that go only forty miles on a charge.The population is going to be declining fast, assuming you believe as I do that birth rates will stay low and even continue to decline. Longer commutes will cease to exist, unless there’s a reason good enough to justify the expense.
There’s still PLENTY of resources, and PLENTY of skilled manpower, to upgrade the electrical grid, assuming “tptb”, the powers that are running the show, put such work at or very near the top of the ” things we HAVE to do” list.
Assuming wind and solar farms, as well as smaller scale solar power continues to be built out as I expect and advocate, there will be ample juice available to electrify NECESSARY personal transportation.
If the chips really are on the table, and getting something, let us say lithium, out of a small country, even one with a die for Allah and culture, any really powerful country willing to do it can simply wipe out the local people, if that’s what it takes to get that lithium. No powerful industrialized country in modern history has been willing to go this route, with maybe the sole exception of Nazi Germany……. and even in that case, the Nazi’s did their damnedest to wipe out only certain ethnic or religious groups, and keep the genocide secret.
It’s true that Stalin, Mao, and some others have deliberately wiped out people opposed to them, with varying degrees of success….. but there hasn’t yet been any scorched earth with no survivors war waged by major industrial powers. This doesn’t mean this isn’t possible, no siree.
The only real hope a victim country has in this situation is to have a friend as powerful as the aggressor……. and the so called friend, with the chips likewise all on the table……. is as apt to be as bad or worse than the enemy.
It’s a simple fact is that even if most of the people on the planet still living a preindustrial lifestyle were to die tomorrow, this wouldn’t mean the end of industrial society supply chains, etc.
“I do not disagree that fossil fuels are finite and will be short lived and that is why I would always support fuel efficiency measures over the build out of unreliables. Modular nuclear is probably the best option.”
My extended family has been farming while coping with ” unreliable” weather for as far back as our dimmest family legends. None of us, so far as I know, have starved within the last couple of centuries or so.
It’s not going to take all that much steel, or copper, to build five or even then thousand miles of HVDC power lines to get wind and solar juice from places where wind and solar farms produce well to places it’s badly needed.
Depending on who you ask, anywhere from twenty five to fifty billion dollars in today’s constant money, would be enough to install enough HVDC transmission line to enable the USA to take advantage of our ample wind and solar resource to best advantage.
And for what it’s worth, I personally believe that given time and the necessary boot up our backside, we can build new and retrofit our existing housing stock to use from half to as little as ten percent of the energy we use for housing today.
Maybe the world will go to hell in a hand basket abruptly. Nobody knows, and so far as I know, it’s impossible TO know whether this will happen.
My opinion, barring bad luck, is that collapse will be pretty fast in some places, but most likely it will piecemeal and drawn out over at least a couple of decades in modern industrialized countries with economies capable of producing necessities that can be either used domestically or traded for essentials such as food.
And if we’re reasonably lucky, here in the USA, we will have a government that’s likely going to be rather harsh in a lot of ways, but that will MOSTLY manage to keep the wheels on and turning as today’s energy hog, materials hog economy winds down.
But if I were in Egypt or anywhere in the dry Middle East, or most of Africa, my only real priority would be to get the hell out, no matter what.
Dear OFM,
I wish I could believe in CTL. but I cannot. The only country using CTL is China, using what is not far off slave labour to mine coal at rock bottom pricing. All of the plants are built next to the coal mines, so it is mine mouth coal. Methanol is the liquid of choice. Definitely not the best liquid fuel due to its low energy content. Most of the methanol is turned into olefines( ethylene and propylene). No other country uses this process. % tonnes of coal are required for one tonne of olefines and some C4’s.
Coal to liquids ala the Nazi’s was never continued after the war until the South Africa sanctions. Sasol built several plants to produce liquids( and some chemicals). Those plants have subsequently been converted to gas.
The main issue with GTL is the carbon efficiency – aboiut 68% with gas, and the high cost of the build and the high energy. Essentially the process uses a hydrogen and carbon monoxide, known as syn-gas, which is reacted to produce long chain hydrocarbon. The biggest product is water, because for every oxygen molecule there are two molecules of hydrogen required. It works, but the more carbon rich the input source is the more steam reforming required.
Sasol looked at building a GTL unit in The USA to uses cheap shale gas. They soon pulled out of the project when the cost estimates came in.
For the record, I agree with a lot of comments on this blog, and despite working in the oil, gas and petrochemical industry for 45 years I know our days are limited.The snag is I do not see a way of continuation with our present lifestyles with unreliables, especially when you look at all the critical raw materials that are required to build these monsters.
When oil and gas becomes tight- and it will- then the ability ot produce many of the products that we take for granted will be extremely difficult to produce. Our skills and knowledge will deplete very quickly.
Climate change is not the issue. Unchecked population growth is.
OFM,
An interesting read is the book Premodern European Economy. The lowland countries had around 10,000 windmills before fossil fuels. Each only produced about 25-40 hp. But a lot can be done (and was done) with that. Wooden gears. I have been inside some of the restored ones when I was a boy. Amazing. They built a modern version with metal gears, bearings, better sails, around 100 hp if I remember right. Harbors so thick with ships masts it looked like a forest back then. A lot can and will be done. But it will not sustain our current population. A useful mental experiment is to imagine a 1 percent decline in population. 1 person out of 100 more will perish than born each year. Imagine that, we all probably know 100 people. 70 years later and the population is half what it was. Not likely to be smooth like that but that would be considered a collapse in my estimation. Would it be manageable? Folks have survived worse. The future will be tough, Overshoot playing out, but there will be a lot that can and will be done with low tech, I’m glad I live in a rural area where folks still have skills, and some has rubbed off on me.
I ‘m with you on the inefficiencies of coal to liquid. It’s a disaster, no way to describe it otherwise, except when using it to avoid an even WORSE disaster.
If we’re short enough on diesel fuel, we could use synthetic coal to liquid diesel to run farm machinery and the trucks necessary to haul food, police cars and ambulances, etc.
And as today’s large scale industrial farming to raise grain by the hundreds and thousands of acres winds down, we can, given enough time to manage it, raise enough soybeans or other oily crops to manufacture synthetic diesel fuel in large enough quantities to continue to produce enough food to support a much smaller population eating WAY down the food ladder…….. which would incidentally mean making small scale farming a viable way of earning a living again, with at ten million otherwise unemployed people moving back to farm country.
Such farming will continue to be mechanized, but at a far smaller scale than today. A farm with fifty acres or so of various crops requires a hell of a lot more work per unit of production than one producing only one or two crops on a larger scale.
I agree that the ROOT problem is overpopulation.
But I don’t see any real chance of any kind of active or proactive policy or mechanism being put into place to reduce birth rates. That sort of thing is in my opinion absolute poison in political terms.
So ……… as I see it, we’ll be hoping birth rates continue to fall. But falling birth rates probably aren’t going to result in a peaking and declining population soon enough to turn the corner in terms of resource depletion and climate problems.
Mother Nature, in Her entirely dispassionate way, will be taking care of the population problem via her usual methods, and most likely within the next five or six decades.
The Four Horsemen are waiting in the wings with only a few minor parts to play in today’s first act of the Catastrophic Crash play.
In the Middle and last acts, they’ll be the dominant characters.
Hi Tom,
You’ve brought up an important point that’s generally ignored by the doomer faction. We don’t necessarily NEED high tech modern industry to maintain a viable industrial civilization.
We had all the technology we needed back in the sixties and even earlier to manufacture all the machinery needed for agriculture and transportation. The trucks and tractors we had on the family farm back then were built without any rare earth elements, and only a very modest amount of copper.
Iron with some alloying elements to harden steel making it easier to machine or more wear resistant got the job done. A couple of pounds of chromium was used in some parts, but even that small amount wasn’t essential.
It’s nice having affordable steel galvanized fences, but it’s actually quite possible and practical, if you have little or no other choice, to GROW a bull proof fence. The people who will be living on my little place a hundred years from now may have such fences. I may even start one myself just to see how long it takes to grow, and how much work it takes to maintain it.
People who insist we can’t have electric cars because the grid can’t be built up to supply the necessary juice during periods of high demand tend to conveniently forget that vehicle to grid and vehicle to home are very real and potentially very practical and even very profitable technologies.
They seldom if ever acknowledge that if we put our collective backs into the job, we can build out the wind and solar industries to the point of double or triple the necessary name plate capacity so as to run a scaled down economy with fewer people almost entirely on renewable electricity.
We can live, and live better, without most of the stuff we routinely throw away these days.
I won’t be needing new furniture even if I were to live to be two hundred, because nearly all I have was locally made using locally harvested hardwoods, hand made not by a so called artist or artisan but rather a farmer using every day hand tools on winter days when he had nothing else to do. Rustic is the word……. and I’ve been offered enough for some of it to buy an entire house full of new stuff with a good bit of money left over.
And they tend to insist that industrial processes absolutely must run continuously in order to work.
I know this is the case in some industries. But this doesn’t mean that such industries can’t run partly or even mostly on wind, solar, wave, or tidal power, reducing the amount of fossil fuel needed to run them by anywhere from half to ninety percent or more.
It’s hard to find out which industries CAN run on intermittent power without serious technical problems. Maybe the reason a desalinization plant needs to run continuously at full capacity has almost everything to do with capital costs and very little to do with technical issues involving ramping production up and down.
Even if it HAS to run continuously, maybe it could be ramped down to ten or twenty percent, thereby using mostly intermittent wind and solar power, and fossil fuel at this low percentage output.
Desalinated water can be easily stored in towers and reservoirs, no problem at all.
Hi Tom
I was having the same thoughts regarding the longevity of “this renewable economy” – a lot of people bad mouth it. Wind mills can be completely wood based, and that is also the case with hydro power. Solar power is more technology reliant, but the advantage of this technology is more the low level of maintenance needed if done right. If the fiber composite turbine blades does not work in wind mills, replace with aluminium. And then wood if need be. If the super magnets requirering rare earth metals are not there; use technology without it. Hydro powered some of the first textile factories in Manchester in the 1700s as another example. The power potential of renewables will newer go away, it will just fail to reach the highest potential. On the other hand, historically the use of renewables blossomed when the industrial econonomy of the Romans and the Dutch included fossil fuels into the mix. So it is not easy to segregate fossil fuels from renewables. Maybe they are doomed to go hand in hand.
In case you were wondering.
WHY THE WORLD KEEPS SETTING GLOBAL CARBON EMISSION RECORDS
While renewable power expanded at record rates, fossil fuels maintained an 82% share of total primary energy consumption. Natural gas and coal demand stayed nearly flat with oil rebounding close to pre-pandemic levels. As carbon dioxide emissions from energy rose 0.9% in 2022 to a new high of 34.4 billion metric tons, indicating lack of progress in curbing worldwide carbon output. Emissions have moved further away from the reductions called for in the Paris Agreement. With most of the world seemingly committed to reducing carbon emissions, why do they keep increasing? The problem is that a massive emissions gap exists between developed and developing nations. The 38 mainly high-income OECD member countries have seen declining carbon dioxide outputs for 15 years. Their emissions now match levels from 35 years ago. Meanwhile, developing countries continue rapidly increasing fossil fuel use and carbon pollution as economies expand. The Asia Pacific region, in particular, has seen explosive growth in carbon emissions over the past 50+ years. Developing non-OECD nations have seen explosive growth in carbon emissions for two key reasons. First, they are going through a coal-dependent development phase similar to OECD countries’ histories, before more awareness of climate impacts. Second, billions of people in populous developing countries are raising their living standards and energy consumption. Thus, while per capita fossil fuel use lags developed nations, the aggregate emissions impact of billions of people slowly increasing consumption drives the bulk of rising global carbon dioxide output. When people question why global carbon emissions won’t fall despite climate warnings, the data reveals a sobering reality. The emissions explosion in Asia’s developing nations eclipses efforts elsewhere.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2023/08/01/why-the-world-keeps-setting-global-carbon-emission-records/?sh=4feb05ec1231
Meanwhile,
GREENLAND’S ICE SHELVES HAVE LOST MORE THAN A THIRD OF THEIR VOLUME SINCE 1978
The largest floating ice shelves in the polar ice sheet have lost more than a third of their volume since 1978. In a study published on Nov. 7 in Nature Communications, scientists from the CNRS, alongside their Danish and American colleagues, have established that most of this thinning is due to the rise in surrounding ocean temperatures, which causes the glaciers’ floating extensions to melt.
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-greenland-ice-shelves-lost-volume.html
Geothermal energy production looks like it may be on the verge of big growth.
Excellent interview with one of the guys pioneering this new phase…worth the listen
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/columbia-energy-exchange/id1081481629?i=1000634032650
https://fervoenergy.com/
I have personally witnessed both solar and wind work in Texas, the red state home of the oil industry. Now nobody, not a single soul in Texas except for a few posters here, would dare go without them. Greg Abbott himself will personally come to shut you down if you dare mess with these sources being added to the grid.
These oil industry shills and doomers simply won’t let it go. They have a need to take down everything with them. Will renewables power the whole world at present levels? No. But they don’t need to. They need to just ramp up enough to cushion the decline, to provide some power to some people.
You don’t have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the aging dinosaurs of the oil industry who can’t see or smell past the next barrel of oil.
Thanks SGP, it’s kind of ironic about Texas, no? Meanwhile in coal-loving Australia, South Australia sets new record of 86.7 per cent wind and solar averaged over month of October.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-and-solar-meet-stunning-87-pct-of-south-australias-demand-over-month-of-october/
PS Even sun-deprived UK managed 34.2% wind/solar/hydro this last 12 months…
Arizona is really an even more extreme irony. Only 10% of electricity (not to mention total energy) comes from solar. They don’t have any fossil fuel production to sway their common sense, but they are heavily dominated by right wing politics- who for the last 50 years have considered solar to be the tool of democratic voting hippie communist subversives, by and large.
Darwin will take care of this.
Meaning that in first approximation terms, the UK can survive one third longer using the same amount per year of depleting fossil fuels as used there this year.
That’s a big win, any way you look at it.
https://www.ercot.com/
Right now 5.20 EST) renewables are producing 21 gwh, total demand is 55gwh – so that is 38% renewables.
rgds
Not really news to most here I suppose but,
EU CLIMATE RESEARCHERS SAY 2023 WILL BE THE HOTTEST YEAR IN 125,000 YEARS
Researchers from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service have sounded an alarm about this year being “virtually certain” to be the hottest in 125,000 years.
The service’s records go back to only 1940 but the researchers said they had used modelling data from the International Panel on Climate Change to reach the 125,000-year conclusion. “When we combine our data with the IPCC, then we can say that this is the warmest year for the last 125,000 years,” said Deputy Director Samantha Burgess, as quoted by Reuters.
Oops, this doesn’t sound good.
LARGE METHANE GAS LEAK IN BALTIC SEA DISCOVERED
Researchers in Sweden have discovered that large amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is leaking from unusual depths of the Baltic Sea seabed. In a recent expedition, researchers at Stockholm University and Linne University detected methane bubbles rising up 370 metres (1,200 feet) from the seabed, a stark contrast to the expected 150-200 metres. The gas bubbles were found in a 20-square-kilometre (77-square-miles) area off of Sweden’s southeastern coast. “We know that methane gas can bubble up from shallow seabeds near the Baltic Sea coast, but I’ve never seen such intense bubbles before – and definitely not from such a deep area,” said researcher Christian Stranne, member of the research project, in a statement from Stockholm University.
Stranne explained the oxygen-free conditions in the deep waters of the Baltic Sea could be causing the bubbles to remain more intact, making them rise to the surface more efficiently. Similar methane leaks could be present in other parts of the Baltic Sea, he said, and the researchers will be carrying out further analysis to understand the cause of high levels of methane release in the area. “Knowledge about the factors that govern how much methane is produced in these deeper areas and where the methane goes is lacking,” said project leader Marcelo Ketzer, professor of environmental science at Linne University.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/22/large-methane-gas-leak-in-baltic-sea-discovered
Sharp decline in cereal production in 2022
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20231108-2
It looks like almost all the decline is in corn.
Thanks S. The article’s numbers are for EU not global. Good job we have ships!
More recently, global cereal prices (yellow line) are down 17+% from a year ago…
EROMI, Energy returned on Money invested… Yes I made it up
The lifetime costs I get from capital, O&M prices do add up to around the mid point of Lazzards LCOE for a large solar farm. Probably because we all used real life numbers..
The New England Solar farm has a LCOE of about $34/Mwh over it’s lifetime of 25 years, assuming only one round of 400mw batteries. It would obviously be higher with a second lot after the first ones die. For a 720Mw power station, the 400Mw battery is only good for 30 minutes (assuming they don’t run the battery to flat shortening the life of the batteries)..
$A1.3B cap cost and ~2% of cap cost per year for O&M ~$A650m over 25 years…
Total in today’s dollars $A1.95B at today’s exchange rate = ~$US 1.25B
We can even work out how much energy the solar farm will potentially produce over it’s life based on the consortium’s own capacity figure of 5.5 hrs/d = 720Mw X 5.5hrs X 365d X 25 years = 36,135,000Mwh =$US34.60/Mwh
This is utility scale solar and fits right at the lower end of the 2023 LCOE range of $24 – $96 in hte current Lazzards report.. It tells us nothing about EROEI, it does tell us EROMI…
Using the same approach for a coal plant that we built the system with, not the new bells and whistles with CCS, a 1Gw coal plant would cost $A1B and cost $A14/mwh to run (based on actual cost to nearest aluminium smelter contract rate with electricity generator in govt publication). Life 60 years… Power generated over life at 95% capacity = .95 X 1,000 X 24 X 365 X 60 = 499,320,000Mwh
Total cost at $14/Mw = $14 X .95 X 1000 X 24 X 365 X 60 = $6,990,480,000 plus 1B cap = $A7,990,480,000
Turning to $US = $US5,113,907,200 .
LCOE $US10.24
The coal fired power stations we have built the system with cost $10.24/Mwh compared to $US34.60/Mwh for the utility scale solar.
The cost of power was/is only one third with the old style coal power on a per MWH basis.
There is more though. The coal power was consistent 24/7 365 days a year. The solar must have backup and much longer transmission lines. Some other power is needed for both night and winter when the sun doesn’t shine, this adds to the costs.
Every extra dollar spent represents more energy that has to be spent on energy inputs, to be mined, made and built whatever the back up is..
Is utility scale solar and wind without backup cheaper than New coal with CCS, yes absolutely, but it is not what we were able to build the system with, that only provided a modern lifestyle to 15% of the overall population.
On my figures for EROEI, taking the average price of energy in a barrel of oil in 2022 as a base, because it’s an easy base, of $US60/Mwh even old coal doesn’t rate very well. The examples are if we spent the cash on energy itself (oil) instead of building old style coal or solar….Oil isn’t electricity but it also gives us products like plastic and fertilizer that electricity doesn’t provide. We need plastic for insulation among a million other applications.
Old coal …. cost $US$5,113,907,200/$US60 = 85,231,786Mwh of oil…
499,320,000Mwh/electrical energy returned/ 85,231,786 = 5.81/1 return of energy.
In other words old coal was not that good, with only 5.81 EROEI!
Utility solar cost $US1.25B/$US60 = 20,833,333Mwh of oil
36,135,000Mwh of electrical energy returned / 20,833,333 = 1.74/1
..a return on energy invested of 1.74 returned for every 1 spent on obtaining it. We cannot run a system on this low an energy return…
As soon as you have to include storage and long transmission lines the energy return goes negative, meaning we, as in humanity, would have been better off burning the coal over future time to produce electricity, than spending the energy on building solar, plus transmission and storage!!
All the building of solar, extra transmission lines, and storage are doing, is promoting economic growth now at the expense of burning more coal, oil and gas now….
New coal, with bells, whistles and CCS is also a negative energy return, so pointless doing on an energy basis, let alone the damage it would do to the climate. (the damage in this case is the building of everything up front that uses coal oil and gas in mining the materials, processing them, fabricating them and building on site, and all the employees expenses, during construction and ongoing…
The building of solar, (and the same for wind) is just accelerating CO2 emissions unless we can get them mined and made, by using just electricity, plus the cost down to a fraction of present (including storage) and an ongoing lifetime of many more decades than current..
One aspect of my research has shown is that it’s not thermal coal that has the really good EROEI, it’s been oil and gas, with oil pre-eminent. For example an old Ghawar well in SA using the same method as above has an EROEI of over 240/1, same for old East Texas wells.. There is even a new gas well/field that I know of in WA that has an EROEI of ~40/1 and this just started production (only a few tens of billion cuft over lifetime).
The current plan of building out solar plus wind with storage and giant HVDC lines all over the place will not work and cannot work. It will just return some/most the energy burnt with fossil fuels in the mining, processing and making the electric system in the first place, while we vastly increase greenhouse gas output.
No one ever bothers to mention what we are going to replace 6M bbls/d that go into plastics and fertilizer either….. All for just 15% of the world’s population to enjoy a modern lifestyle.
8 billion people is just massive overshoot and ongoing western prosperity is just not possible without burning enough fossil fuels to enable massive climate damage, let alone the damage being done to every other species..
Hideaway,
It took me some reading but in essence I follow you logic and reasoning, and broadly agree with what you say.
The amount of refined products going into petchems is quite a bit higher than your estimate. It is probably closer to 10% by weight when all the processing inputs are included. At the moment the big buzz is crude to chemicals which is basically not such a good idea. The Chinese are pursuing this route and some projects are going up to 45% conversion into petchems, and some are seeking to go even higher. In most cases carbon emissions are ignored, and in order to achieve such conversions more than 10% of the input is combusted.
I will also expand a little on your comment oil is not electricity. To build out an unreliable infrastructure is going to need a constant input of petrochemicals, some of which have multiple steps starting from base petrochemicals such a ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene and xylene. To make these products we can either use a fossil fuel, biomass or captured carbon dioxide. The latter two have never been proven at scale and carbon dioxide recycling ( hydrogen reduction), because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, requires much more energy than is made available by carbon combustion. Currently the only proven large scale process for carbon dioxide reduction is photosynthesis, which achieves about 1% conversion of light energy (photons) into carbohydrate (CH2O). Photosynthesis has provided the Earth with its current stock of fossil fuels.
Were we to contemplate trying the direct air capture route to capture carbon dioxide (0.04% concentration in the atmosphere) the land area required would be truly enormous. We could try carbon capture from either pre or post combustion. Neither is easy and would consume vast amounts of energy. What about aviation, farming, mining and ships? Carbon capture is only possible by direct air capture for these applications.
No matter what technology we consider NONE is viable, and never will be until until we can circumvent the 3 laws of thermodynamics, which I would bet my entire fortune on.
Decades ago I came across Jay Hansen’s website. For a long time I really struggled coming to terms with reality. Now I look at it with a different view.I do not see how the inevitable can be or could be avoided.
A decade ago I met Dennis Meadows at a conference and congratulated him on his foresight. I only wish our political and religious leaders had such foresight. That would be wishful thinking.
Oh, one for Ron Patterson who thinks I play the victim. Well, because of what I do ( petrochemicals) the wokerati now infesting our banking institutions refused me a business banking account. The ESG mob are affecting investment in fossils fuels. I would be concerned if I was betting on unreliables.
The wokerati, lol; wait until you’re an elderly ICU patient and Gen Z elects to pull the plug on opulent tertiary healthcare… for the elderly.
I give it about 10 years for a major intergenerational conflict to emerge secondary to climate catastrophe. It will likely break a few American minds.
Frankly I anmready. i saw my father detiorate with dementia. I am healthy at 67 but when the body starts to fail I would rather take the gas pipe. I do not wish to be a burden. I have had a great life, it will only get worse. I never had a family because I practise what I preach.
Good luck with unreliables. The wokerari will still wonder what happened when the shite hits the fan.
Peak Global Fossil Fuel Combustion Day is now within 10 years.
The coal fired power stations we have built the system with cost $10.24/Mwh compared to $US34.60/Mwh for the utility scale solar.
Lazard has LCOE of coal ranging from $68/MWh at the low end, ie with no CCS, up to $166 at the high end (including CCS). Your numbers are adrift from Lazard’s by a factor of over 6x.
As for coal’s marginal costs, your $9/MWh (14 AUD) number is nowhere near Lazard’s range of $29/MWh to $74/MWh.
If I was a coal supporter, I would go with your numbers 🙂
@John, … Lazzard has a price for purchasing coal. This is the bit that is wrong. Most coal power plants were set up next to the coal pit in the old days and there was no purchase price involved.
Coal, sun, wind and gas are all free to humanity, just a part of natures bounty. Including a purchasing cost on one, stops an apples to apples comparison when trying to find the Energy Return On Energy Invested.
I agree that purchased coal and/or transport across the world will make the LCOE much higher for that coal.
I’m not out to support coal or anything else, coal is a nasty, dirty fuel that is rapidly changing our environment as we burn it, but it is what we built our modern world with along with oil and gas. I’ve been looking for how we keep modern civilization for all. It’s just not possible energetically, in an environmentally safe way.
Deluding ourselves that solar, wind, nuclear or whatever, will bring a bright future for all 8+ billion of us can only be done by fudging the numbers, which every research report in favor of nuclear or renewables does, probably likewise for the FF industry.
Everyone knows governments positions on climate change, all signing up to whatever protocol, yet every new mine for minerals that will be used in the renewable future, relies upon diesel, not electricity. The processing plants use coking coal to smelt with, the new silicon wafer makers use coking coal to melt silicon, so more solar means more fossil fuel use first.
Despite decades of knowing about limits to availability of fossil fuels, and climate damage done by burning them, if FFs were magically turned off tomorrow, we would have civilization collapse very quickly, because we rely upon them for everything we do.
Humanity as a whole, has been on the path towards collapse of the system possibly since we started agriculture, mostly without knowing it. Having 8+ billion humans on a planet that could naturally support only a few million, for hundreds of thousands of years, was always going to end badly, most people just don’t want to acknowledge it, so they make up shit to ‘prove’ the future is bright which is the ‘message’ everyone wants to hear…
.
Lazards
Are they experts in power? ?
I would never trust clowns like this. Better place your money on the horses.
Never trust banks. Clueless
EROMI, I must say it´s BRILLIANT, should have thought of it myself is my only complaint.
Edit: some may remember my harping about the EROEI/EROI definition problem, but now we have a very good solution.
Bad manners to reply to your own post but upon further contemplation there´s still quite a problem in the definition, what is money exactly?
Nevertheless, a BIG step forward!
@Laplander money represents energy today. We can buy energy with dollars. We build things with dollars spent, so there is a correlation there.
We don’t know how much money we will get in the future for the energy generated by anything, but we can roughly work out the energy returned over a generating facilities lifetime. Perhaps instead of Money it should be capital, as in EROCI, to appease finance buffs.
The beauty of the approach is it doesn’t matter what the current energy cost used is. I chose the average price of a barrel of oil in 2022 as per IEA, being $US100.98/bbl. Being about 1.7Mwh worth of energy in a bbl, means around $US60/Mwh of oil.
If the value was $20/Mwh or $150/Mwh of today’s energy cost, the relationship between the different forms of energy generating plants stays the same. I use/convert to US$ as it is the reserve currency.
One of the interesting aspects of using this method, is how it shows nuclear is never a large EROCI, just because of the ongoing O&M costs, before we even consider the outrageous capital cost. The nuclear industry by their own numbers, have ongoing costs of around $32/Mwh, yet in a world of current $60/Mwh average energy cost, it has to be less than a 2/1 energy return over the life of the plant.
A quick reference on any type of energy production can be made from just the O&M costs on average over the life of plant. At $60/Mwh for oil in 2022, anything that has an O&M cost of greater than $6/Mwh is not going to be enough to run a modern world that needs over 10/1 EROEI.
World average EROEI according to IEA, World Bank, IMF etc is around 12/1.
Oil EROEI is falling rapidly, gas that has to be transported as LNG across the ocean, instead of being piped from Russia is falling quickly for Europeans.
The Nuscale small nuclear power plant won’t be built.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/11/first-planned-small-nuclear-reactor-plant-in-the-us-has-been-canceled/
An interesting view of the climate change discussion.
https://youtu.be/BlPb4EWqRz0
More troglodytic denialism.
https://www.energy-storage.news/redwood-materials-to-decommission-recycle-4-6mwh-bess-on-kauai-hawaii/
I’m of the opinion that recycling just about everything needed to build a wind farm, solar farm, or electric car or truck can be and will be efficiently recycled as raw material and energy prices go up, and recycling costs go down.
If the technology comes up short, good environmental regulations can be implemented to force manufacturers to use substitute materials that ARE easily recycled.
Recycling steel, etc, is a mature industry, but up until now, there simply hasn’t been a good case to be made for recycling most of the stuff we’ve been throwing away.
And even in the case of things that can’t be efficiently recycled, due to high collection costs, etc, we can cut WAY the hell back by way of a consumption tax.
Aluminum beverage containers currently sell for forty to fifty cents at a local recycling center. If such cans had a five cent refundable deposit to anybody who takes them to a place refunding the nickel, out of work people would pick every last one of them up from the side ditches.
Aldi’s supermarket chain opened a store near me a while back. They charge for paper bags, but they’re still cheaper on most items than the competition, and every other old lady shopping there is using her own long lasting shopping bags.
A coal fired plant does last up to fifty years…… but it requires one HELL of a lot of expensive maintenance work along the way. I know, being a rolling stone guy who has jumped into and out of industrial maintenance work a few weeks or months at a time.
A solar farm, with the exception of the panels themselves, and maybe the inverters, and a few other parts, will for all practical purposes last just about forever…….. because these parts can be replaced piecemeal as necessary at very low costs…… with new panels producing far more juice per dollar costs than panels ten to twenty years older being taken out of service.
Replacing the turbine blades and generator set on top of a three hundred foot plus tower is always going to be an expensive proposition…. but this job as well can be done piecemeal with only few men on the job. The towers themselves will last a very long time, and everything else should last more or less indefinitely.
Solar panels prices have fallen more than 40% this year.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/10/27/solar-module-prices-dive-to-record-low/
Hideaway and Carnot
It’s a waste of time to present these folks with the facts. They’re emotionally unprepared to face the reality. Because it means our retirement plans, our education, our way of life is coming to an end. The value of money is coming to an end there is no stock without flow. The present system is already losing critical mass as more capital is absorbed by the energy sector and that is only going to increase. The inflation the FED is fighting is actually supply side shortages requiring ever greater energy inputs that are unavailable. When wind and solar projects are being cancelled at our present rate it’s obviously not financially feasible. Basically there is no way out the mountains of debt bought the system some time but that’s behind us now. Globalization bought the system some time but that behind us now. Store fronts are closing people are looting the whole system is unraveling.
JT.
I am with you all the way. But I just cannot roll over and agree with these self appointed experts. That is not my style. Fortunately I am in my twilight years and am debt free. But I have to keep beating the drum on the stupidity of where we are going.
I’ll second that…
New posts are up
https://peakoilbarrel.com/eia-short-term-energy-outlook-and-tight-oil-update-november-2023/
and
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-november-11-2023/