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193 comments on What is happening with oil prices ?
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193 comments on What is happening with oil prices ?
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"Amen brother. I'm glad most electricity comes from fairies and not something like coal."
just coal?
Yup, just coal and other fossil fuels. You see, solar thermal, wind, and whathaveyou in the renewable sector clearly aren't suitable for electric vehicles because instead of spending a few seconds plugging them in when we get home at night to charge over a 8-12 hour window, we would actually spend an extra ten or fifteen minutes going to a fast charging station, which would have to be built, just so we could whine about how we can't power a car with renewables due to problems with intermittency. ;)
Are you being sarcastic?
Electric motorcycle recharged from Solar PV...
http://www.zevutah.com/page/motorcycle.htm
Sounds "suitable" enough to me.
;-)
Just a bit. Besides, it's unpossible I tell you, unpossible! ^_^
John15, why do you keep harping about irrelancies?
Nobody denies electricity cannot theoretically power cars in spades in the future.
Further, it is theoretically possible that we can generate most of our electricity from non-fossil fuels in the future.
However, we do not live in the future. We live in now.
Now 99% of our car fleet in the world runs on fossil fuels.
Now, more than 60% of our electricity generation worldwide comes from fossils, most of that from coal.
The problem as you very well know is getting from now to the theoretical future in very rapid steps in a time of potentially declining net energy availability and restricted mobility due to decline in available oil.
Have you any idea about energy project finance costs, project completion times, finance deprecation times, car fleet replacement rates, PHEV mass-manufacturing capacities or electricity grid challenges in the real world?
Talking about a theoretical future where everybody is happy when we have 'such and such technology' generating us an abundance of cheap, non-polluting electricity, which we power our PEVs with is not only misleading, it is intellectually dishonest.
You have to face the reality.
Even EIA projects coal to increase annually 1.7% p.a. until 2050.
If you have some magic scenario how we can remove all that coal generative capacity in 20 year or so and replace it with cheap, clean & abundant energy of your choice with minimal risks, low financing, while growing economies and ensuring a win-win for everybody, then I think World Bank, IMF, UN, OECD, EU, US, OPEC, and the Nobel committee are all ready to listen to you.
And don't you think we don't want that to happen? Don't you think people don't want these issues solved?
But harping about theoretical possibilities and not facing the hard realities is not going to get things solved.
Instead of heaping criticism on someone without providing any numbers of your own, why don't you sit down, do the calculations and show it can't be done ?
I've never seen anyone do this using present day cost figures for CSP, solar PV/thin film, wind, biogas, geothermal, hydro and ocean power options and taking into account projected changes over the next decade.
I suspect you haven't either - so instead you indulge in a whole lot of hand waving and tell people to face the (unquantified) "reality"...
<sigh>
Gav, Please read again very carefully what I wrote.
This is not an either-or issue, we both acknowledge that.
However, in any fair argumentation, the proof of burden is on the one making the claim. I did not see a single shred of proof from John15. I did provide latest EIA AEO 2008 assessment for coal use growth up to 2050.
And you are right that the only calculation that I can refer to is the only publicly available high level calculation in the world that I know of, that of Hirsch et al.
I never claim it cannot be done (100% certainty).
I'm claiming the scale issue is very, very large and the time available for completion appears to be very short based on oil depletion forecasts.
My main point is the obvious thing that claiming it is theoretically possible does not make it so.
Theoretical possibilities are not realities until built.
However, having studied energy companies locally, I can attest that the average 5 year permit process, 2-3 year financing process, 7-10 year build time and the 10-25 year depreciation time does not make things easier. Especially when the industry is made ever more so confusing by constantly changing political winds and legislation, the volatility in the CO2 emission trading market and primary fuel markets (gas, coal, oil).
Please do not mistake me for a dichotomic doomer, because I'm not one.
Now, I've provided one very big study reference in this post.
Let's see if John15 can post one that backs his claims. One that is based on physical/financial high level calculations - not just lab-tech breakthroughs about algae and back of the envelope musings about how cheap pv is going to be in 2020.
Just saying 'it can be done' is as silly as if I had said 'it can't be done' (which I didn't write, if you read carefully again what I wrote).
*PS as for real-world solution: I am consulting both energy companies and politicians locally on this. That's what I mean when I say mere assertions get very little done.
there are plenty of BEV in use right now as we speak. hybrids are electric and they are in use right now. it wasn't too long ago that people said hybrids were a joke and now they can't keep them on the lots!
did wind suffer from the huge drop in oil consumption in Denmark? those who offer answers won't suffer from from high energy prices because they are producers of energy.
And in the now there is still lots of fossil fuels available.
In the future is when fossil fuel availability will decline, meaning talking about what can be done in the future is exactly what we're already doing.
Why is it wrong to talk about near-future solutions to near-future problems?