How much energy will the world need?

[Highmark]

 

[Skidooski]

Oh man, that's going to be upsetting for some to watch

[Highmark]

36 minutes ago, Skidooski said:

Oh man, that's going to be upsetting for some to watch

Never in our history have some govt's pushed so hard, so fast for something so unrealistic.

[racer254]

I think this is common knowledge for anyone that understands the whole green energy scam.

[ArcticCrusher]

Just now, racer254 said:

I think this is common knowledge for anyone that understands the whole green energy scam.

Just look who is pushing that nonsense.  It's all a grift and they your governments.

[spin_dry]

Regardless of what the government tries to push, future energy with include solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, coal, gas, and oil. The main change with be more solar and wind as we move into the future. 

[Skidooski]

1 hour ago, Highmark said:

Never in our history have some govt's pushed so hard, so fast for something so unrealistic.

Does seem like a huge rush towards something unrealistic right now.

[Highmark]

Just now, Skidooski said:

Does seem like a huge rush towards something unrealistic right now.

Goes beyond that....completely ignores the environmental as well as impacts on making China even more powerful.   Our refusal or difficulty to allow mining here will only send jobs and money away from the US.   Its fucking stupid the way we are going about it.  

[Skidooski]

2 minutes ago, Highmark said:

Goes beyond that....completely ignores the environmental as well as impacts on making China even more powerful.   Our refusal or difficulty to allow mining here will only send jobs and money away from the US.   Its fucking stupid the way we are going about it.  

And that short video shines a light on exactly that. Everyone needs to watch it!    

[Steve753]

1 hour ago, Highmark said:

Never in our history have some govt's pushed so hard, so fast for something so unrealistic.

All the more reason to fight it and slow it down.

[spin_dry]

Wind and solar has overtaken coal in the US. It now sits at 14% overall. States like California and Texas is higher. Cost of wind declined 70% over the last 10 years with the majority decline happening because of emerging technology in the last 5. Solar and wind are expected to increase to 17% over the next year. Lots of good news coming in the renewable energy sectors. As hard as they try, the oil companies won’t stop progress with twisted facts. 

Edited April 21, 2023 by spin_dry

[spin_dry]

10 minutes ago, Steve753 said:

All the more reason to fight it and slow it down.

Why would energy companies stop or slow down doing something that’s more profitable? That makes no sense. 

[jonlafon1]

3 minutes ago, spin_dry said:

Lots of good news coming in the renewable energy sectors. As hard as they try, the oil companies won’t stop progress with twisted facts. 

[Steve753]

15 minutes ago, spin_dry said:

Why would energy companies stop or slow down doing something that’s more profitable? That makes no sense. 

Did I say energy companies? If no one buys EVs, they will stop making them until they're more suitable for everyone.

[spin_dry]

11 minutes ago, Steve753 said:

Did I say energy companies? If no one buys EVs, they will stop making them until they're more suitable for everyone.

The video was filled with so much bullshit that I shut it off. Australia has an abundance of lithium. No need to use China. As for rare earth minerals. North America has that covered. I predicted that EV’s will top out at 30% of new sales until battery tech evolves. That may not be true. Two things will drive EV sales. The super cheap cost of mfg them over ICE vehicles and convenience. Currently China is the largest car market in the world. It’s almost impossible to sell a ICE vehicle over there. Ford is virtually out of business and the Japanese and euro makers aren’t far behind. It’s BYD and Tesla that’s driving sales over there. When battery tech evolves and solid state batteries come on line in the coming decade, you can kiss ICE vehicles goodbye. That’ll be a tough place for GM and Ford. 

Edited April 21, 2023 by spin_dry

[Steve753]

12 minutes ago, spin_dry said:

The video was filled with so much bullshit that I shut it off. Australia has an abundance of lithium. No need to use China. As for rare earth minerals. North America has that covered. I predicted that EV’s will top out at 30% of new sales until battery tech evolves. That may not be true. Two things will drive EV sales. The super cheap cost of mfg them over ICE vehicles and convenience. Currently China is the largest car market in the world. It’s almost impossible to sell a ICE vehicle over there. Ford is virtually out of business and the Japanese and euro makers aren’t far behind. It’s BYD and Tesla that’s driving sales over there. When battery tech evolves and solid state batteries come on line in the coming decade, you can kiss ICE vehicles goodbye. That’ll be a tough place for GM and Ford. 

I'm ok with that. Until then fuck EVs.

[Art Vandelay]

Once everyone who wants one can buy an EV, gas should be cheap for the rest of us who aren't interested in living in the zero emission utopia.

[racer254]

This is what authoritative governments do, start new agencies under executive order.

Biden Introduces New Federal Agency With Massive Climate Authority

President Joe Biden will sign an executive order establishing the Office of Environmental Justice, which will dramatically increase the scope of the administration’s initiatives in that space, the White House announced Friday morning.

The new executive order directs federal agencies to consider the “disproportionate and adverse” impacts of climate change on minority and low-income communities, as opposed to “disproportionately high and adverse” impacts mentioned in a previous executive order, according to a White House fact sheet. This Biden administration hopes that this will prevent any “misunderstanding” that agencies should focus on only “large disproportionate effects,” expanding the scope of federal agency’s climate obligations to include any disparate climate impacts on minority and low-income communities.

“With this action, the President is working to ensure that all people – regardless of race, background, income, ability, Tribal affiliation, or zip code – can benefit from the vital safeguards enshrined in our nation’s foundational environmental and civil rights laws,” the White House said in a statement. “That means cleaner air and water, reduced risk for asthma, cancer, and other health burdens, and better access to green space, safe and affordable housing, and clean transportation.”

The executive order will also expand the programs covered by the president’s Justice40 Initiative — which directs 40% of all funds from certain federal projects to communities that are “marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution” — and make environmental justice a “duty” that all executive agencies must consider.

 

 

The White House also announced that the Office of Management and Budget will begin publishing an Environmental Justice Scorecard, to track federal agency’s efforts on environmental justice initiatives. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts on Thursday reintroduced their Green New Deal, alongside an affiliated health-focused package, partly in a bid to pressure the Biden administration and other Democrats to focus on inequality as part of its climate change agenda.

The executive order comes just one day after the president pledged $1 billion in support for the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund, which invests in green technology, particularly in developing nations. Biden is expected to use the signing ceremony in the Rose Garden, scheduled for Friday afternoon, to attack Republicans for taking an extremist stance on fossil fuels that jeopardizes public health, according to The New York Times, citing a senior administration official.

[spin_dry]

1 hour ago, Steve753 said:

I'm ok with that. Until then fuck EVs.

I’m not a buyer of EV’s either. They don’t fit my lifestyle.

[racer254]

Office of Environmental Justice.  Create an agency to continue to push a scam without congressional approval or vote.

Yes sir, the democrats are doing their best to push an agenda that at least half of the taxpayers of this country do not want.

Edited April 21, 2023 by racer254

[XCR1250]

Hydrogen will kill EV vehicles in the near future.

[XCR1250]

The Hidden Costs Of The Renewables Boom

By Irina Slav - April 2023

• Investments in low-carbon energy hit $1.1 trillion in 2022.
• Shortages in crucial industrial metals and rare earth metals could lead to rising prices for renewables.
• Hydrocarbons remain very crucial for our energy security.

Join Our Community

Last year, investments in low-carbon energy hit $1.1 trillion—a record high and a major increase on the previous year.

However, this record investment did nothing for the world’s energy security, it seems, because besides the record investments in renewables, 2022 was also a year that saw a major increase in oil, gas, and coal demand.

Not only that, but warnings multiplied about more fossil fuels investments that will be needed. Even the head of the International Energy Agency warned earlier this month that the oil market is facing a shortage later this year because of a growing gap between supply and demand.

In such a context, when the most developed economies in the world are striving to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, one cannot help but wonder why they are also encouraging more fossil fuel production.

 

Germany, for instance, just closed its last three nuclear power plants—a low-carbon source of electricity—but expanded a coal mine. The United States’ federal government is spending billions on alternative energy but is insisting that oil producers boost their output. Britain wants to become the Saudi Arabia of wind energy, as former PM Boris Johnson said, but gas demand hit a record last year.

Something doesn’t seem to be adding up. This something is the hidden cost of renewable energy. It is not something widely talked about because it has the potential to derail transition efforts by casting doubts over the viability of the transition.

Yet the issue is very much clear and present. Why else would China be building as many coal power plants as the rest of the world despite boasting the world’s most wind and solar capacity?

Many critics of the transition to wind and solar argue that the biggest problem is that these are being touted as cheaper than fossil fuels. And the calculations to do that are made on the basis of something called levelized cost of energy.

The levelized cost of energy is a simple measure. Per the U.S. Department of Energy, LCOE measures lifetime costs for an energy installation divided by energy production. It sounds straightforward and simple enough. The problem is, it isn’t.

LCOE is not a comprehensive measure of costs because it only factors in upfront costs and the cost of operating a wind or solar farm. What it markedly does not factor in is the cost of energy that is not produced by these farms when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.

These are some substantial costs because when wind and solar are down, fossil fuel plants need to step in and fill the gap, and the electricity they produce has become expensive because of those cheap renewables.

But besides LCOE, which proponents of wind and solar have used for years to argue for their affordability, there are also other costs that are making themselves known now. Raw material prices are going through the roof, and there is little anyone can do about it.

Daniel Yergin earlier this month wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that the transition would kickstart a mining boom. The reason is that wind, solar, and EVs require massive amounts of metals and minerals, and these are not being produced at anywhere near the necessary scale. And this means some shortages may well be looming over the horizon.

Copper is a case in point. Trafigura warned last year that there was only five days’ worth of copper supply in the world in inventory. Not only this, but that inventory was likely to shrink further to just 2.9 days’ worth. Just how dangerous this is becomes clear from the fact that ordinarily, the world’s copper inventories are measured in weeks.

As a result, copper prices are about to hit a record this year—again—according to Trafigura. This is not going to do anything about the affordability of wind and solar, especially given that it’s not the only commodity in short supply.

“Everything is getting much more expensive in an already stretched wind industry supply chain,” a senior Siemens Gamesa executive told the FT late last year. In the U.S., the Biden administration last suspended exorbitant tariffs on Asian import solar panels after these caused a slew of new project delays and cancellations because of higher costs.

 

No wonder, then, that the wind and solar industries are finding life hard at the moment, despite upbeat reports that continue to insist that wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy.

This is why oil—and coal, too—continue to be essential for the world’s energy security. Their LCOE may be higher than wind and solar’s, but so is their reliability because, unlike those two, fossil fuel power is dispatchable: it can deliver whenever it’s needed.

And let’s face it – oil and gas production and processing requires a lot less metals and minerals than manufacturing solar panels, inverters, cables, and wind turbines for that low-cost, low-carbon energy that is, essentially, neither of these.

[Anler]

How does this affect climate change? 

[Steve753]

7 minutes ago, Anler said:

How does this affect climate change? 

It doesn't.

[Plissken]

5 hours ago, XCR1250 said:

Hydrogen will kill EV vehicles in the near future.

Hydrogen fuel cells?  Aren’t those also considered EV’s???