321–330 of 642 posts
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If geopolitics + trends is interesting to you, I highly recommend "Disunited Nations": https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/
Thanks!
Also, he narrates that book but not the new one. Which is too bad because his narration is truly additive to the book.
Personal anecdote - my house has two sets of solar panels on the roof - the first was installed in 2017, the second was just installed last month. In 2017 my 6kw system cost $24,000 before any incentives (by SolarCity). In 2020 my 7.8kw system cost $15,000 before any incentives (by Tesla). Of that $15k, $4.3k was for the panels themselves, $2k for the inverter, $1k for mounting hardware, and $8k for installation. It'…
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Your link says that at best we could double our current hydro generation capacity, which supports my point: it's simply too little for our storage needs, and if we electrify more of our economy (i.e. use it to replace heat and transport for which we use a lot of fossils now), it will be even less. It might still be worth doing, but is far from solving the storage problem: it just has significant limits on its potenti…
> Your link says that at best we could double our current hydro generation capacity No, it says "that without building a single new dam" [hydro could roughly double its existing capacity in the US]. I'll assume you just misread that, but in any case that's pretty different to building new dams, or utilising tech like mines, or at-sea pumped storage.
No, that's not what it says. It says:
> The report estimates that without building a single new dam, these available hydropower resources, if fully developed, could provide an electrical generating capacity of more than 12 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to roughly 15 percent of current U.S. hydropower capacity.
Without constructing any new dams, you only increase it by 15%, not double it. Also, consider that 12 GW is 105 TWh per year. US consumes 4100 TWh of electricity per year. It would sure be nice to increase non-fossil electricity production by 2.5%, but that's clearly not very much. If the plan is to use hydro to cover the shortfall when the renewables are not producing enough, you need much more generating capacity than 12 GW, and more than 65 GW your link suggests could be potentially built. Finally, 2.5% is on the order of our annual growth in electricity consumption, which will in fact accelerate as we move off fossils. Thus, building out all possible hydro will only buy one year of growth in consumption.
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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.
It’s the opposite of growth. Would you buy a house if you knew it wouldn’t be there in 20 years?
Japanese homes have a lifespan of 30 years.
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…
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> It's inevitable; fossil fuels are on the way out. It's not on the way out. Fossil fuel use is increasing and projected to increase for the next 3 decades at least. solar/wind/etc account for pretty much nothing today. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio... And the 2050 projection shows that petroleum and natural gas use will increase and that even coal will rebound by 2050. https://www.eia.…
I hope they (EIA) are off the mark. If the predictions from the EIA a will materialize, we’re going to have a huge carbon problem. However, I think there also are reasons to believe things will be better: 1) the EIA forecasts linear growth of renewables, while its been behaving exponentially over the last 5-10 years. That gives me hope they’ve underestimated the long term growth rate. (It would be interesting to comp…
The only way EIA will be off the mark is if we get something like fusion. Currently the major geopolitical issue is natural gas pipelines. Major nations wouldn't be fighting over gas pipelines if people believed fossil fuels were over.
> 1) the EIA forecasts linear growth of renewables, while its been behaving exponentially over the last 5-10 years.
And it still amounts to nothing. Solar/winds accounts for 1% of energy. And that's after 10 years of subsidies in the biggest economies around the world.
> 2) nearly all of the energy consumption growth is non-OECD and will require newly built generation. If cost of renewables continues to drop, it might just be economic sense that pushes renewables over coal
That will be all fossil fuels. The developing nations aren't going industrialize on solar/wind. Even developed nations can't do that.
> 3) at least on the EU side, fossil fuels are increasingly getting a negative connotation. On top of the financial comparison, I expect this could dampen new fossil growth as well.
Right... One of the biggest per capita producer of oil is norway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...
The 2nd largest oil company in the world is a anglo-dutch company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell
And of course europe just invaded and took over libya for their oil. The EU is trying to take over venezuela for their oil. Etc.
The EU is one of the biggest direct consumers of fossil fuels ( and the largest consumer directly+indirectly ).
Fossil fuels aren't going anywhere. That's just physical reality. It's physics. Sure renewables may slow the rate of growth, but growing more slowly is still growing.
The only thing that will cause a decline in fossil fuels is economic collapse or a genuine scientific breakthrough like fusion energy.
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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.
It’s the opposite of growth. Would you buy a house if you knew it wouldn’t be there in 20 years?
Hell, I'm currently renting an apartment and I don't own shit now, let alone 20 years down the line.
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…
> But, do we really have a plan for the consequences, not only in Saudi Arabia but also every other nation that's dependent on oil? Hint: we do not. That's kind of sad. A long time ago (just before the GFC) I looked at trends in climate change (Arctic sea ice specifically, but that's just a canary), demography, China's GDP, and things like PV/Wind learning curves, and said to myself: "things will get interesting in 2…
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For reference, list of large power plants and their output: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations The largest solar plant is at about 2000 MW and requires a lot of land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park The largest wind farm is not being used as efficiently as it could: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm
The largest power stations at the moment are always going to be stored hydro - they take up a lot of land. Those large coal burners also take up a lot of land when you consider the mines, transport infra, tailings dams, coal piles not to mention the clean air they "take up"
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…
> It's inevitable; fossil fuels are on the way out. It's not on the way out. Fossil fuel use is increasing and projected to increase for the next 3 decades at least. solar/wind/etc account for pretty much nothing today. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio... And the 2050 projection shows that petroleum and natural gas use will increase and that even coal will rebound by 2050. https://www.eia.…
World coal consumption peaked in 2013, not sure why you believe it is coming back in 2050?!
Most of the new global energy production brought online is renewables, and has been for the last 4 years...The renewable fraction is also increasing. Not sure why you believe fossil fuel use will increase for the next 3 decades?!