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Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

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Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that most Saudis don’t work. Most of the work done in that country is done by “lower classes” of non Saudis. So when the tap dries up and they all have to work. What do they do?

> What do they do? Realistically - they'll get deported to their home countries. There's no government on earth that will tolerate a non-citizen, non-refugee as a public charge with no prospect of being productive in the future. Foreigners are politically convenient scape-goats for all that is wrong with {ECONOMY|JOBS|CRIME|SERVICE DELIVERY}, and politicians will politic.

By "they all have to work" gp is referring to Saudi citizens, not the migrant workers. They (citizens) won't get deported anywhere.

The migrants will try to migrate somewhere else that has work.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that most Saudis don’t work. Most of the work done in that country is done by “lower classes” of non Saudis. So when the tap dries up and they all have to work. What do they do?

> What do they do? Realistically - they'll get deported to their home countries. There's no government on earth that will tolerate a non-citizen, non-refugee as a public charge with no prospect of being productive in the future. Foreigners are politically convenient scape-goats for all that is wrong with {ECONOMY|JOBS|CRIME|SERVICE DELIVERY}, and politicians will politic.

The "they" in "what do they do" refers to unproductive Saudi citizens, not productive Saudi immigrants.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#263
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It means that countries which rely on fossil fuels for their economy, are going to see the same kind of crushing economic decline that, say, the UK coal industry has. > What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? First, I think you have to segregate between different kinds of fossil fuels. Coal is the worst. From what I under…

I hope coal burning goes away; but that will have a pretty outsized impact on my country (Australia), and the fact that we don’t tax the mining companies enough means our government could end up lacking the means to invest in things to help us transition away from being a mining focused country. It worries me.

Australia will probably end 2020 as the largest natural gas exporter in the world. It's also a country that is very well positioned to take advantage of renewables and export energy via lithium, ammonia, aluminium, hydrogen, electricity (See the sun cable project to Singapore)

This _more_ than makes up for the coal industry

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is going to buy a trillion dollar stake in a shrinking market?

Index funds

Index funds will buy at the market value, no? Is the market still overvaluing oil given knowledge of renewables?

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#266
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The House of Saud has a plan. It isn't going quite as well as they had hoped, but it's going. Aramco was IPO'd. They wanted a trillion dollar valuation, and didn't get it. The next step is to sell that stock before the oil market collapses, preferably leaving themselves with a lot of cash and a minority stake in a much smaller company. Cash is going into technology stocks, venture funds, and international real estate…

Who is going to buy a trillion dollar stake in a shrinking market?

Growth isn't necessary to make something a good investment. Imagine you are investing in a single mortgage: you get a little income each month, and after 30 years it stops completely. Essentially the value goes to zero! But the stream of income is what you care about. Aramco is similar; it will kick off income every year in dividends and eventually be worth zero.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#267
post #233

I hate the argument that we’re just waiting for batteries now. I think if we had variable pricing that matched the availability of renewables, consumers would shift quickly. Say something like power costs .02/kWh while the sun is shining and .30 when it’s not. I’d charge my car at work. I’d put a timer on my dryer to turn on at 10am. They probably come out with a hot water heater that goes really hot during the day a…

That water heater idea is interesting. You could put a thermostatic valve on the output that mixes in cold water so the output was always the same temp no matter what the inside is. Usually people turn the temp down to save money, but if you can heat it way up when energy is cheap, that might change completely.

At least in Germany that's already the standard plumbing practice: a mixing valve on the tank outlet ensures the tap temperatures are safe. This is important because the tank is required to periodically heat to 65C to kill legionella bacteria, and with solar input can heat to as much as 85C, so without such a valve the tap temperature would be unpredictable and sometimes dangerous.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It means that countries which rely on fossil fuels for their economy, are going to see the same kind of crushing economic decline that, say, the UK coal industry has. > What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? First, I think you have to segregate between different kinds of fossil fuels. Coal is the worst. From what I under…

> In theory, naval propulsion is more amenable to electrification than aviation, but that'll be tricky to do economically; that is another area that petroleum could have a long useful life in. Over the last couple years / decades, ships went slower and slower on average as to save fuel (fuel became more expensive as well as environmental regulation on how much a ship may emit, which correlates to fuel intake). So som…

Here's a real engineering youtube video about this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWiX2edcBoA

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think the goals are technically feasible. I would even go so far as to say easily so. But ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons I put my money on the world failing horribly and plan accordingly.

What’s that plan look like?

Anecdotally, where I currently live in an apartment in Australia. We have occasional brownouts/blackouts in summer when everyone is running their aircon. Not often, but likely to happen more with higher temperatures. I am keeping an eye on things like Tesla's Powerwall as a luxury item for that concern. Especially for when I am over 60 years old... (20 years away but still a thought.)

I plan to visit the Great Barrier Reef now, while it is living.

Operating temperatures for outdoor mechanicals. For me, small aircon, cars. But big building infrastructure, factories, farmers etc buying and building for the future will have to expand their operational parameters, if only slowly and only a comparatively small amount.

Highly underrated though is more energy in the system will mean more extreme weather events more often.

Floods, heat waves, hail storms, but also with large shifting air cycles it often surprises people to realise that blizzards or cold snaps will happen differently too. They may be "warmer" but with faster moving air they will travel more to areas that didn't experience them. Or they may be colder as the air travels faster carrying air from the poles. Weather is not an easy thing to predict. But I think it will be even less predictable.

In the US it may mean that hurricanes or tornados are a thing more often. Here in Australia Queensland will get hit more often. Insurance premiums will adjust accordingly.

I suspect international migration will also be a thing. People moving away from the equator and to the poles more.

TL;DR: Plan for slightly more hot, windy and extreme weather events. :-P

NB: rereading this almost casts a picture of drastic disasters every day. But I want to clarify that it will be incrementally more than now over time and only a bit more by the end of my lifetime. But who wants "a bit more" hurricanes in their life? And where does it stop for the future?

PS: maybe this question should be asked of an insurance company quant?

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#270

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel" - Saeed Al Maktoum

Middle-income Americans - their innumeracy, their illiteracy, their armchair-quarterbacking, their habit of seeing the Other one-dimensionally, their racism, their dollars - have always been a greater threat to Saudi Arabia and other people of the world than the price of fucking oil.
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