> I would think that the higher oil goes, the more incentive there is for clean energy.
Sure? Yet that misses my point entirely.
We all want clean energy. We all want electric cars. Even those who say they don't eventually will.
How do we get there?
We need to double our power generation capacity and seriously upgrade the grid, our ability to deliver power, in order to support this desirable future.
Just for a sense of scale: That means building a full duplicate of our entire power generation and delivery system. It's like having to provide power for two nations, both the size of the US.
That means we need to go from 1200 GW to about 2400 GW.
To state the obvious: We cannot transition to electric transportation with the power we produce today. No way. It isn't enough. It's about half of what we need.
How do we make it happen?
Well, without getting into specific technologies we know one thing that cannot be disputed:
The solution will require massive construction projects across every state, city and town in this nation for probably somewhere in the range of 25 years. This is an endeavor of an almost unimaginable scale from our current context. We lack the leadership, regulatory freedom, culture and maybe even resources to do it.
The cost of construction at this scale is dominated by one variable: The cost of oil. Every piece of machinery used to grade, dig and reshape terrain runs on oil. Every truck, crane, hoist, van, pickup, big rig and car used in these projects runs on oil. The materials required are made with the use of oil and derivatives, from lubricants to fuels. Everything depends on oil. Even the very cables used to transport energy at scale depend on oil for their manufacture.
If oil is expensive, we will will never be able to afford the cost of transforming our infrastructure to fully embrace "clean" energy. In quotes because it isn't really as clean as people imagine it as being.
If you want solar power plants the size of states, you need cheap oil to build them or you are not going to get there.
That's why I say we need $20/barrel oil if we want to realize a clean energy future. The two are very much connected at the hip. In the long term, at scale, you cannot have one without another. No utility grade solar farm has been built without using a massive number of barrels of oils, from manufacturing every single component in China and elsewhere to moving all the materials by cargo ship, train, big rigs and local delivery trucks...and then all the construction equipment you need to run after you receive the materials.
So. Want a clean energy future? You need to lobby your representatives to push down the cost of oil as low as it will go. Or you will not get what you want. We don't have enough money to approach such a transition at a national scale.
China, on the other hand, does and likely will. What is bound to happen is that China will leapfrog everyone in transitioning to nuclear and solar --all paid by us-- and the US and Europe will simply not be able to afford transitioning at the same rate, if ever. The cost of oil will continue to increase. With every increase our ability to afford it will deteriorate more and more. We can't approach massive projects with gasoline at $7 per gallon. I don't even want to imagine what happens if it goes much higher.