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from the instead-of-batteries-just-use-a-very-long-extension-cord dept.
The future is not looking bright for oil, according to a new report that claims the commodity would have to be priced at $10-$20 a barrel to remain competitive as a transport fuel.
The new research, from BNP Paribas, says that the economics of renewable energy make it impossible for oil to compete at current prices. The author of the report, global head of sustainability Mark Lewis, says that "renewable electricity has a short-run marginal cost of zero, is cleaner environmentally, much easier to transport and could readily replace up to 40% of global oil demand".
[...] The report, Wells, Wires, And Wheels... Eroci And The Tough Road Ahead For Oil, introduces the concept of the Energy Return on Capital Invested (EROCI), focusing on the energy return on a $100bn outlay on oil and renewables where the energy is being used to power cars and other light-duty vehicles (LDVs).
"For a given capital outlay on oil and renewables, how much useful energy at the wheel do we get? Our analysis indicates that for the same capital outlay today, new wind and solar-energy projects in tandem with battery electric vehicles will produce six to seven times more useful energy at the wheels than will oil at $60 per barrel for gasoline powered light-duty vehicles, and three to four times more than will oil at $60 per barrel for light-duty vehicles running on diesel," says Lewis.
As fossil fuels phase out, will battery technology improve quickly enough to support the transition to renewables?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JNCF on Wednesday September 04 2019, @07:24PM (18 children)
I know jack shit about Quebec's ecosystem, but I do know that dams have done a damn good job of damning salmon and river dolphins. I'm not saying they aren't a win over fossil fuels, but I wouldn't call them the most environmentally friendly thing you can ever, ever find.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday September 04 2019, @07:31PM (13 children)
In addition, dams have limited life span - they silt. The US system is close to the limit.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 04 2019, @07:58PM (8 children)
This is the US! We only have to BUILD infrastructure. Nobody needs to MAINTAIN it. It's all shiny and new!
It sounds like a dystopian sci fi where the millennials are unable to maintain the great machines built by their ancestors and are blissfully unaware of how to use a rotary dial phone.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04 2019, @08:15PM (1 child)
Is that what he was doing here? http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/files/stampa/luglio_2010/Metropolis_05.jpg [cinetecadibologna.it]
Rotary phones were scary!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 04 2019, @09:31PM
Clearly the movie was trying to portray a worker doing some pointless, tedious, and unnecessary job. Something any Brainfook programmer would understand, even with an IDE.
I kept wondering, if the lights come on at certain positions, why can't the machine move its own hands to those lighted positions?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by Akemi Homura on Thursday September 05 2019, @02:00AM (1 child)
That movie was called Idiocracy, though it was somewhat metaphorical.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 05 2019, @02:24PM
Metaphorical? It was a guide to the future I tell you!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday September 05 2019, @02:23AM (3 children)
While again, I agree with you in general, in this particular case - dams - are mostly not maintainable at all. One has to realize that hydro electricity is not renewable. In fact it is probably the least renewable source of energy.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 05 2019, @03:10AM (2 children)
So how long do dams last compared to say, commercial windmills?
Remembering we have working dams closing on 100 years old, and the average age, per this site, is 64 years.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=30312 [eia.gov]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday September 06 2019, @01:47AM (1 child)
Windmills are worse than dams, no question here. As per the useful age of dams and the state of affairs, here is the "bible" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert [wikipedia.org]
A science fiction version of how it will look like within a generation - very good one - is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife [wikipedia.org]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday September 06 2019, @03:53AM
Consider: various dystopias have been predicted for about 70 years now, yet none of the predicted disasters has come to pass; quite the contrary. (As to the fictionalized versions, I expect I've read far more dystopia lit than most younger folks, given SF from the 1950s was loaded with it. Y'all ain't discovering anything new here. For a good scare, try some Philip Wylie.)
As to the "disappearing" Western water -- blame California politics for creating an illusion of drought; Sierra Nevada annual snowpack typically is about 150% of CA's total water needs (and the past few years there's been so much excess snow that new glaciers are forming). Yet most is allowed to drain into the ocean in the name of preserving an invasive species (this despite the funding for new reservoirs was set aside decades ago, and that in every case, a reservoir becomes a haven for all manner of wildlife, and insurance against totally dry rivers in dry years). Meanwhile L.A. has essentially confiscated, er, I mean purchased the Owens Valley's water -- before that, it was lush, not a desert (and a few untouched pockets still exist).
Nevada's aquifer is gallon-for-gallon stable (tho there's an ongoing effort to drain it for the benefit of Las Vegas, which would indeed damage all the surface ponds and springs). Oregon and Washington have more surface water than they can use, if not well-distributed. Montana is stable water-wise, both surface and subsurface. Wyoming is partly arid, but lacks the population and arable land to draw much from aquifers. The Dakotas sit atop an aquifer that is presently being a nuisance by flooding the area around Devils Lake. All across the upper plains, floods are more of a problem than drought. How do you control floods? By storing water in reservoirs and sending the surplus out for irrigation and generators.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @01:50AM
> dams have limited life span
Try the Niagara Falls hydropower configuration -- water is taken by huge aqueducts from above the Falls, under parts of the city, to a small-ish storage lake above the turbines. Water flow is controlled daily, to leave enough water in daylight and early evening hours for the tourists. The storage lake is filled up overnight.
No dam to silt up.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 05 2019, @03:06AM (2 children)
Not if they're maintained.
http://www.imsdredge.com/reservoir-dredging/ [imsdredge.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday September 06 2019, @02:00AM (1 child)
The book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert [wikipedia.org] covers it as well - too expensive. Californians will all leave well before they collect enough taxes for the task. As per the federal government paying for this, well... fly over people might not appreciate it this time aground. They may say that the water is better spent upstream and fuck them liberals from California.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday September 06 2019, @04:07AM
When I backtrack this guy's connections, I conclude he was part of the circular lobbying that 'environmental' groups are so good at, with the real goal being to suck money from the public teat. Basically they get themselves hired to produce a study that shows how their activities are necessary, so they can get funding for their activities. At best it's dishonest; at worst it's downright fraudulent.
And as one of those folks from flyover country (but who did 28 years in SoCal) I'm all for making California solve their own damn problems, which are entirely of their own making. If we that's upstream wouldn't sell 'em the water, maybe they'd figure out how to effectively use their own, which they are not actually short of, if politics got out of the way. Which won't happen so long as the current cabal runs the state.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04 2019, @08:12PM (3 children)
Really?
There are many ways to get salmon up the river. These are documented, and work.
Regardless, compare it to other things? Fossil fuels? Nope. What about nuclear? You like all that radioactive waste, and the threat of it potentially ending up everywhere?
Wind power? What about the dead birds, which likely dwarf the dead salmon in numbers. Or, what about the fact that they are quite literally changing out weather patterns...
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11470261 [bbc.com]
Or solar, with its immense production overhead... which pollutes, and some say may not even "break even" over fossil fuels!
Or the fact that both of the above are mercurial in nature, requiring some form of backup energy.. and can never be used as primary energy. Even if you dump to battery, well.. battery production (and disposal) is an immense environmental impact!
Of course, my point here isn't that wind and solar are useless, but that they have their own environmental impacts. So, name what is better than a dam?
I've heard people prattle on about all the displaced species. So? *Different* species replace them! And this is Canada's North, where these projects are a tiny dot, compared to the overall space available.
It's just the best we've got right now, and compared to anything else, doesn't hurt the environment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04 2019, @11:49PM (2 children)
The dead birds are not a serious problem, it's something trumped up by the oil industry. The windmills do kill some birds, but not enough to make an impact (they kill many fewer birds than pet cats, for example) and the birds are not generally from threatened species. Similarly the effect on temperature is only at ground level, where the windmills are. It isn't likely to affect the weather (although I have wondered if enough energy is tapped from the wind, whether there could be some kind of climate impact, and what that would be).
Batteries for grid applications don't have to be high tech, expensive lithium-ion batteries. Cheap but heavy lithium iron phosphate or even nickel-based chemistry are fine.
Hydroelectric power doesn't produce CO2 (although you do need to produce a bunch to build the dam). But solar and wind are much better options today. Especially because you need a river for hydroelectric power, but everywhere has sun and wind.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @06:01AM (1 child)
If dead birds aren't a serious problem, then maybe salmon isn't either? Maybe both are trumped up by the oil industry? Because salmon can easily get past dams, and have been doing so for 50+, 100+ years, with ladders, walkways, and other man-provided methods. In terms of weather, it DOES affect local weather, see referenced article (and search for the variety of others about the same).
Doesn't matter though. Solar is more polluting in terms of creating the panels, compared to what you get out of them, and their lifespan. Wind isn't so bad, but you do need a large structure, generators, and so on too.
Yet both solar and wind are very mercurial, compared to hydro power. You don't get 24x7 from solar and wind. You don't get power every day from solar and wind. So you either need massive batteries, or a storage method, OR you need to rely on something else as a 'main power system'.
If you rely on batteries, you're mad to think that 'normal batteries' haven't any environmental cost. So much metal refined, dug up, smelted, chemicals (acid, etc) produced for one tiny battery -- which, barely holds any power realistically. And li-on batteries are far worse. Batteries, along with (especially solar) install costs and replacement costs, makes solar/wind "not that great".
And if you instead of batteries rely upon some other form of power, but exclude hydro? Welp. Now your solar and wind depend upon massive pollution to "be stable". And in many places, the BIGGEST draw for power is in the winter, when it's -40C outside. During the winter, when the sun is only up 6 hours a day, dim when it shows, and yes that's a lot of the world.
Hydro beats it all. All of it. One plant, as others have commented on this thread -- the last a VERY long time, can be refurbished, compared to anything else hydro is a god send.
In terms of 'getting power when you need it", that's where the true power of pipes come in.
Currently, we ship oil and natural gas all over the place with pipes. Imagine instead, generating H2 locally, at the power plant, and then sending it via gas / pipes. FYI, 768V power transfers lose very little traveling thousands and thousands of kilometers, so you don't need dams everywhere, for example Hydro Quebec powers almost down to Washington DC, with moderate power loss, from dams 4000km away.
But people could move to H2 for their cars, and even H2 for power generation in each home! Those natural gas pipes could be entirely re-purposed.
All you need is clean power. And a dam is the cleanest we have.
(Score: 2) by Gault.Drakkor on Friday September 06 2019, @12:56AM
Hydrogen as energy storage?
Hydrogen tanks: Are you going to put your it in high pressure tank with a mass of 30+Kg? or are you going to store it in cryogenic tank? With all the fun that that has? Staged refrigerators needed to keep things stable aren't cheap or light.
H2 for energetic, safety, transport, handling reasons is a practically a non starter. It can be done, but not cheaper then known alternatives.
Excess energy from renewable will be more likely be used to from hydrocarbons in the kerosene range. Much better storage and handling characteristics then batteries or hydrogen.
Hydrocarbons use as energy storage is far from over.