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War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

economist.com

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Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#161

Post by TeMPOraL »

ianai wrote: post #109
jacquesm wrote: post #55

Just one datapoint: this war has motivated me to make at least this house as independent of external energy sources as possible within the limits of physics and my budget. Gas prices have gone up so far and so fast that freestanding houses are listed for sale all over the place here. I've installed a relatively large amount of solar (nominally a bit over 10 KW) and I'm using that to offset the gas bill as long as we…

I wish I could do the same but I live in an apartment. Very thankfully, my complex put solar panels on absolutely all of their roofs at least. I’ve taken to re-terming oil as “conflict fuel” myself. It literally empowers the Wests enemies against the West. Don’t burn fuel, don’t fuel conflict. There’s also the resource curse of being an oil baron nation. And to anybody shaming the West-it has a good history of live a…

> I’ve taken to re-terming oil as “conflict fuel” myself. It literally empowers the Wests enemies against the West. Don’t burn fuel, don’t fuel conflict.

FWIW, this has nothing to do with the fuel itself - the highest density energy sources are natural source of conflicts, and conflicts themselves are naturally fueled by whichever energy source has the optimum balance of energy density, operational safety and logistics load.

The whole phrasing reminds me of an excellent old videogame, Original War[0]. The premise here being the US trying to take ownership of some magic nuclear fuel found on USSR-controlled land, by sending a force back in time to prehistorical era, in order to dig all the magic fuel up and move it to what will, two million years later, become USA territory. Without spoiling too much, the game starts with the main protagonist and his team landing in the tropical Siberia, only instead of meeting a mammoth, they find themselves being shot at by the Soviets.

Those first few minutes of the game introduced a minor but memorable plot point: the angry Soviets from alternate timeline landed earlier than the US, and were smart enough to immediately take over whatever fossil fuel deposits they could find, forcing the Americans to use their technological edge and retool their war machine to run on renewables. For a good chunk of the US campaign, you order solar-charged, battery-powered combat vehicles into battle against Soviet gas guzzlers, fighting to secure ownership of a rare nuclear fusion catalyst.

Point being, the "conflict fuel" will always be 1) the fuel that's powering societies around the globe, and 2) whatever is most practical for the military to use. In 20-30 years, 1) could easily change from oil to renewables (read: rare earth elements, or land near the equator, or whatever else is the bottleneck in scaling up energy production) or nuclear fuel.

--

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_War

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#162

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

HPsquared wrote: post #86
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> War and subsidies have turbocharged the LNG transition The IEA projects "renewables are set to account for 90% of the increase in global generation capacity" between 2022 and 2027, "almost 30% higher than the agency’s forecast in 2021."

That's nameplate capacity; what about production?

for a rough estimate, divide wind and solar by 3, nat gas by 2 and leave nuclear untouched. this suggests that the actual figure will be closer to 80%.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#163

Post by lm28469 »

cpursley wrote: post #144
lm28469 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean that? : https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/09/13/fact... Looks like the type of comment you'd find on a boomer conspiracy theorists facebook group

“Cargill, which owns a majority stake in a deep-sea port near Odessa” https://www.world-grain.com/articles/16539-ports-grain-facil... https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7480 https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/... https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-agriculture-farmland-economy...

You could have posted that directly instead of making very vague insinuations that no one can source by themselves unless they already know what you're talking about

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#164

Post by hackandthink »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #51
some_random wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine has been such an amazing tool for distinguishing actual anti-war people from anti-west ghouls. It's a completely indefensible war of aggression by an imperialistic power against it's former subject but since the imperialistic power is Russia suddenly all these "anti-war" activists think it's fine.

Suddenly so many people are actually pacifists, yeah I don't buy it either. And in their anti Western hatred they are willing to sacrifice a sovereign state to a Russian invasion. A question I pose to these people- after Ukraine what other land is Putin allowed to grab?

I do not support any party in this war, though I'm not really pacifist.

It's not worth dying for NATO membership or an ukrainian Crimea. And nobody should be forced to fight in any war.

It is about cost/benefit.

If Ukraine would tell: We are looking for a compromise (no NATO membership, Crimea belongs to Russia, ...), I could change my mind and support them.

If Russia would invade another country there's a new cost/benefit ratio.

And I think Russia will not invade any western country. I live in Germany and I'm not scared of Russia. They (Soviet Union actually) left East Germany peacefully.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#165

Post by _kbh_ »

hackandthink wrote: post #164
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suddenly so many people are actually pacifists, yeah I don't buy it either. And in their anti Western hatred they are willing to sacrifice a sovereign state to a Russian invasion. A question I pose to these people- after Ukraine what other land is Putin allowed to grab?

I do not support any party in this war, though I'm not really pacifist. It's not worth dying for NATO membership or an ukrainian Crimea. And nobody should be forced to fight in any war. It is about cost/benefit. If Ukraine would tell: We are looking for a compromise (no NATO membership, Crimea belongs to Russia, ...), I could change my mind and support them. If Russia would invade another country there's a new cost/b…

> It is about cost/benefit.

This is truer then you know, the world must make the cost of Russia trying to take over another country so expensive both financially and militarily that they do not try this again.

Don't forget Ukraine is not the first, Russia has invaded and sometimes even entirely annexed countries in the past.

> If Ukraine would tell: We are looking for a compromise (no NATO membership, Crimea belongs to Russia, ...), I could change my mind and support them.

Ukraines mere existence is what upsets Russia, it's the reason for this war. It has nothing to do with Crimea and nothing to do with NATO.

Russia wants all of Ukraine, they want to subjugate them completely.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#166

Post by cpursley »

lm28469 wrote: post #163
cpursley wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Cargill, which owns a majority stake in a deep-sea port near Odessa” https://www.world-grain.com/articles/16539-ports-grain-facil... https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7480 https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/... https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-agriculture-farmland-economy...

You could have posted that directly instead of making very vague insinuations that no one can source by themselves unless they already know what you're talking about

That’s why I suggested folks start looking into it. I was actually interested in investing into Ukrainian farm land over a decade ago but decided against it after a little due diligence (the land ownership and consolidation was too complex and too much corruption despite basement bargain land prices).

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#167

Post by throwaway4aday »

rippercushions wrote: post #18
CalRobert wrote: post #7

Can anyone taking issue with this article please address the substance of it?

To me the article is just economics 101. 1) Supply is constrained (by the war and sanctions), demand is fixed to rising, so price goes up. 2) Price goes up, so there is more demand for alternatives, including dirty ones (coal) but also green ones (solar, wind, etc). 3) Increased investment in green energy sources will make them more competitive faster than expected and thus spur the transition.

1) Supply is constrained (by the war and sanctions), demand is fixed to rising, so price goes up.

2) Price goes up

2 a) Demand remains the same or increases (we're talking about energy so demand will always be increasing)

2 b) there is more demand for alternatives, including dirty ones (coal) but also green ones (solar, wind, etc).

3) Businesses see an opportunity for higher returns

3 a) Increased investment in fossil fuel energy sources to take advantage of the higher prices. Wells with dirtier oil that were idle are brought back online because they are profitable, higher cost extraction gears up like tar sands.

3 b) Increased investment in green energy sources to take advantage of higher energy prices.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#168

Post by some_random »

glogla wrote: post #84
some_random wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine has been such an amazing tool for distinguishing actual anti-war people from anti-west ghouls. It's a completely indefensible war of aggression by an imperialistic power against it's former subject but since the imperialistic power is Russia suddenly all these "anti-war" activists think it's fine.

I think there's basically two explanations: 1) Most startup people are just evil 2) HN is heavily controlled by Russia The latter is pretty obvious (we're talking English discussion platform where you can create account in ten seconds with no verification and I'm not sure if there's any anti-bot measures). The former ... most programmers are rich and they are convinced they are rich because they are awesome instead o…

Nah from what I can tell 2003 broke a lot of people's brains in the same way 2001 did. The people who were against it the whole time got platformed in a way that they hadn't at all before, and surprise surprise some of them weren't actually against it on _moral_ grounds. Noam Chomsky is a great example.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#169

Post by diordiderot »

cpursley wrote: post #155
diordiderot wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine has strict agricultural laws prohibiting foreign companies from owning land.

Had: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-agriculture-farmland-economy...

Thats depressing. Goodbye family farms

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#170

Post by throwaway4aday »

stef25 wrote: post #122
ben_w wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vime's boots. I'm not sure about here in the EU, but the UK has a cost of living crisis such that millions[0][1][2] are regularly skipping meals. People in that situation don't have the spare money be able to install PV or upgrade their insulation. [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/one-four-britons-skip-meals... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/26/uk-student... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/soc…

It's unfathomable to me that people in the UK are skipping meals. If you buy rice & beans in bulk you can fill your belly for less than £1 I'm sure. Quick look on the Tesco website - bread: £0.39 £0.05/100g - chicken soup: £0.60 £0.15/100g - 1KG rice: £0.48 £0.48/kg - Baked beans: £0.50 £1.19/kg - Kidney beans: £0.59 £2.46/kg DR.WT - Tinned mackerel: £0.85 £0.97/100g DR.WT (sardines are half the price) - Eggs: £0.20…

It's possible to have 0 dollars after paying other bills before your next grocery shopping trip so no matter how cost effective these things are they won't help. Once you're behind on rent or mortgage and gas bills and electricity bills and loan payments and credit card debt is racking up 20% interest and you're using every cent you have to stop those creditors from coming after you your only option is to cut down on other costs, even if they are relatively important, like food.
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