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Remember when Bank of America promised to stop financing coal mining? They weren't the only ones getting cold feet about this formerly dominant energy source. Now The Guardian is reporting that Deutsche Bank is committing to end financing of new coal mining and new coal-fired power plant construction.
This pledge is being made, says the bank, to back up its commitment to supporting the Paris Climate Deal. But it is also, most likely, a very prudent investment decision. With India phasing out new coal plant construction years earlier than recommended, China reducing its pipeline too, and huge utilities and whole countries alike saying they are pretty much done with coal, it's getting increasingly hard to see where the future for this industry lies.
It seems the age of fossil fuels may be drawing to a close.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday February 04 2017, @09:42PM
Clever to use the word "alternative energy". Because if you'd chosen "sustainable energy" you would have proven that what you said there was bullshit.
We can either switch now to sustainable energy, or switch later to sustainable energy, or die off because the UNSUSTAINABLE energy sources are gone, and the "current fetish for alternate energy" has become a permanent trend similar to the current fetish to live on land and breathe air.
For other reasons (global warming) switching ASAP is politically necessary.
But because the newspapers told us all our lives that "The Economy" is something that exists and is important, I'll give an economic reason:
We are now at a plateau of energy use, just after the 2005 Peak Oil (I don't count fracking, that's going to form its own much narrower Hubbard Peak).
That means processes that use loads of energy may never be as cheap again is now at the end of the Conventional Petroleum Era.
And what could we buy with all that cheap energy?
Smelting wind turbine pylons
Refining silicon for solar cells
Build hydro power and "hydro gravity storage" (=just pump water up-hill)
Build railroads and trains
All those heavy industry things are going to be much more expensive if we wait until there's only renewable electricity and biodiesel left. If our rich societies are not in the process of transition now (like Germany and Denmark and Sweden and the Netherlands), we might get stuck.
If you know you're going to need lots of windturbines in the coming century, are you going to buy them now they're cheap, or when they're 10 times as expensive, because the steel has become 10 times(*) as expensive to produce?
I suspect China knows the answer to this one.
(* "10 times" sucked out of author's thumb. actual price factor unknown)
When you said "But we will still need fossil fuels in the future out as far as we can see because transport doesn't run well on electricity": that's only based on current assumptions of "transport" and because you equate "fuel" with "fossil fuel".
My mom just bought a bicycle with a small electric motor. She's happy with it.
An electric car is too dear for us for the foreseeable future, but maybe one day we'll buy a secondhand one. What I've read about them so far is that they're actually nicer to drive than ICE cars, and have less moving or hot parts, so they should be more durable.
*Some* transport will stay on internal combustion engines. What you said, definitely planes, probably boats. Their fuel will stay the same as now. But it won't be extracted from fossil sources anymore. Organic chemistry is highly fungible, it's just a matter of price if you make high-octane gasoline from dead dinosaurs, waste frying pan oil, or Internet commenter farts. The latter two sources are sustainable and CO2-neutral.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Saturday February 04 2017, @10:24PM
Why spend trillions on useless wind turbines and solar cells when a fusion reactor will instantly convert their economic value to the scrap value of the raw materials? Think BIG!
For other reasons (global warming) switching ASAP is politically necessary.
That really is the heart of the division, isn't it? For your side it is a political necessity, and not for any bullshit reason like global warming either. Allow me to demonstrate.
If global warming were truly the threat you claim we could quickly get a consensus to solve it. You still wouldn't agree with me on all of it, I wouldn't agree with the junk science of AGW dogma, but we would both agree to plan of action we would both agree would solve all of our stated problems. We know how to build nuke plants much safer than any currently in production, there is little dispute on this point. Almost everyone agrees that for a fraction of what we have spent on researching and deploying wind and solar we could bring fusion into production, we know the science now and it is merely sufficient engineering at this point. So why aren't we doing it? However when this is brought into the discussion one or more of the following reactions occur:
1. Mindless yelling about NUKES!
2. An attempt at deflection back to the boondoggles for spurious reasons.
3. An admission that it is about more than just eliminating fossil fuels and carbon emissions; it is about a general reduction in energy use and a reshaping of Western Civilization to be less industrialized in general. Widescale fusion would end any hope of that and is objectionable for that reason.
4. And when all else fails a general scream of primal rage and "because FUCK YOU, FASCIST BASTARD!"
So which one(s) will we see here?