101–110 of 140 posts
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Should it be ‘solar leading energy subsidy growth’.
Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Reached $7 Trillion in 2022, an All-Time High: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022 Plus, add the entire defense budget of US + western countries, which only exists to protect oil interests.
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> A simple ICE vs EV comparison ignores electric grid generation efficiency and transmission losses as well as the massive energy cost of manufacturing the battery Does it take into account the "massive energy cost" of manufacturing the ICE vehicle then?
Or the gasoline generation efficiency and transmission losses? Or the economic impacts of oil pollution? Getting oil from the ground to the pump isn't free either.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_Rare_Earth_Mine#...
Because of ecology, refining of U.S. mined rare earths was outsourced for a very long time to China. Outsourcing of ecological damage...
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/mp-materials-sto...
These reports are inferring a lot from 1 year trends that are often changing only around 1%. Certainly it is great if new energy is coming mostly from cleaner sources, but the idea that we are actually getting rid of the non clean sources is something we should be skeptical of. This graph shows all energy usage over time: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy New energy sources have always been add…
These reports are inferring a lot from 1 year trends that are often changing only around 1%. Certainly it is great if new energy is coming mostly from cleaner sources, but the idea that we are actually getting rid of the non clean sources is something we should be skeptical of. This graph shows all energy usage over time: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy New energy sources have always been add…
Comparing primary energy is VERY misleading. From Marc Jacobson: The use of primary energy on the vertical axis is an old trick by the fossil fuel industry to mislead people into thinking that one unit of fossils = one unit of renewables. In fact, one unit of primary energy for wind or solar electricity is the equivalent of three units of fossil fuel electricity. Another trick is to pretend we need all those fossils…
"The energy devoted to heating and cooling buildings accounts for around 35% of all energy consumption, the largest share attributable to any end use. "
https://www.energy.gov/cmei/buildings/heating-ventilation-ai...
There are electric replacements of fossil fuels for many applications where heat pumps can't by used, but usually they don't use 75% less energy than combustion heating. Usually they use more energy...
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Or the gasoline generation efficiency and transmission losses? Or the economic impacts of oil pollution? Getting oil from the ground to the pump isn't free either.
The ecological impact of mining and refining of rare earths, used for permanent magnets in EV motors or in electric generators - wind turbines, is quite large. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_Rare_Earth_Mine#... Because of ecology, refining of U.S. mined rare earths was outsourced for a very long time to China. Outsourcing of ecological damag…
There's obviously no ecological impact of mining and refining fossil fuel. The Deepwater Horizon actually reduced the amount of oil in the ocean.
And unlike batteries, which are non-recyclable and always have been. It's common to throw the lead-acid battery from ICE vehicles into the nearest body of water, for example. It's definitely not the case that 99% of them are recycled today. Whereas recycling coal and oil is trivial and done all the time. /s
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A recent Danish research[1] found that the cheapest energy mix (that includes system costs like energy storage) right now for them is offshore wind power (66%), natural gas CCGT (26%), and solar PV (8%). Solar panels are cheap, but their system cost is the highest. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...
I presume that this paper assumes some form of stable costs for natural gas... what happens when that stability is soundly invalidated?
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Yes, from the source report, for total generation capacity, solar is in a distant sixth: Coal: 10858 TWh Natural Gas: 6822 TWh Hydro: 4470 TWh Nuclear: 2859 TWh Wind: 2723 TWh Solar: 2653 TWh Decent growth, but still a long way to go.
The energy system has investment cycles counted in decades. Looking at TWh of renewables added each year we will have grids entirely dominated by them in 10-15 years. That is lightning speed for the energy system, and we’re still speeding up.
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The ecological impact of mining and refining of rare earths, used for permanent magnets in EV motors or in electric generators - wind turbines, is quite large. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_Rare_Earth_Mine#... Because of ecology, refining of U.S. mined rare earths was outsourced for a very long time to China. Outsourcing of ecological damag…
> The ecological impact of mining and refining of rare earths... is quite large There's obviously no ecological impact of mining and refining fossil fuel. The Deepwater Horizon actually reduced the amount of oil in the ocean. And unlike batteries, which are non-recyclable and always have been. It's common to throw the lead-acid battery from ICE vehicles into the nearest body of water, for example. It's definitely not…
Most in US don't know that recycling of lead-acid batteries from ICE vehicles is outsourced to Africa.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/...
https://www.sustainable-recycling.org/reports/urgent-strateg...
"Although efforts to enforce regulations in the United States have ramped up and cleanup is underway at some sites, many lead-acid batteries from the United States are exported to the Global South, where companies continue to cause harmful public health disasters, and US automotive companies subsequently purchase the recycled lead."
https://blog.ucs.org/jessica-dunn/how-recycling-is-done-matt...
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No chance, fossil fuels are subsidized more. A large share of solar growth is from countries like Pakistan who have had some subsidies but total dollar amount of them is trivial.
Got source? China only ended solar panel export subsidy this month.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...
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While your statement is true your graph is misleading for two reasons. 1) comparison of spent energy for fossil fuels vs electricity is not a good way to do it because electric motors use less for the same output. Compare kWh per 100km for an ICE car and EV. Electrification will lead to a drop simply because of this 2) the graph is global, we have seen energy consumption go down in the developed world. E.g. the EU no…
I think 2) is a lot more complicated to the point statements like that are misleading. Take a look Graph of energy consumption of China which is about double the US: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china The energy consumption of the United States has flat lined: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states One can argue that the US and Europe have maintained a low energy consumption by de-indusr…
Overall there is no 100% clean source, there is something dirty in the chain everywhere. The main question for me is, is one thing an improvement over the other, is the improvement massive or modest? I think the improvement is massive and am hopeful for the future. This doesn't mean you can never improve, but I think this is already happening. For instance I saw an estimate from the Rocky Mountain Institute that they expect no further mining of lithium for batteries because it will be recycled. I obviously don't know if this is true, but even if lithium mining is environmentally unfriendly, if it's an improvement over what we have now, and if we can down the road get rid of that too, it's a positive development.