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Solar Now Produces a Better Energy Return on Investment Than Oil

447 points by edgarvm 10y ago

known 10y ago
Not without Lithium-ion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...
- patall 10y ago
  Well, hydrogen comes to mind. And power-to-gas. And running hydropower and biomass plants only at high demand.
  - codecamper 10y ago
    If you think hydrogen fuel cells are a good way to go then please bid up PLUG or FCEL, I'd love to see them higher so I can short one of them. Power to gas is just more of the same "hydrogen" economy. correct? I read a book about the hydrogen economy back in 2000. Thought it was a great idea. Then lithium ion batteries kicked hydrogen's butt.
anonymousiam 10y ago
Is that before or after the government subsidy?
sandworm101 10y ago
The per-watt numbers may sound great, but these are still apples and oranges energy sources. While there are some area where one can certainly replace the other (electrical grids etc) there are others (shipping) where the gap remains monumental. In terms of energy density (35ish MJ/L) and storage (a box) diesel fuels look to remain king for a while. One downside of cheap solar might be a drop in crude prices, resulting in its more frivolous use. I'd hate to see improvements in shipping meant to conserve fuel, and thereby lower carbon emissions, be set aside once fuel becomes cheap again. We need to watch for this and, perhaps, get regs in place to ensure it is burnt as sparingly as possible.
- ryao 10y ago
  They are not apples and oranges from the perspective of investors. Those people want to invest their money for the highest return. If solar gives a higher return than oil, then their money will go there.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Solar doesn't compete with oil. It competes with natural gas, nuclear, and coal (any fuel with a marginal cost really, except oil, unless you're somewhere remote). And it is winning. [1] [2] As more light vehicles move over to electric vehicles, we're going to need more clean energy. We should build every kWh of solar and wind generation we can. > One downside of cheap solar might be a drop in crude prices, resulting in its more frivolous use. I'd hate to see improvements in shipping meant to conserve fuel, and thereby lower carbon emissions, be set aside once fuel become cheap again. We need to watch for this and, perhaps, get regs in place to ensure it is burnt as sparingly as possible. Well, I mean, that's kinda the whole point of Tesla Motors, you see? Its an electric car, for sure. But its not a Leaf, its not a Bolt, its not an EV1. Its the best damn car you can get. Someone called Katy Perry's stage "The Tesla of tour stages" [3]. That's how you win against oil. We didn't run out of rocks when we left the stone age behind. We found something better. [1] http://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screenshot-2014-03-25-14.36.08.png http://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screenshot-2014-0... [2] https://solarpowerrocks.com/infographics/solar-infographic-state-solar-investment-returns/ https://solarpowerrocks.com/infographics/solar-infographic-s... [3] https://twitter.com/katyperry/status/444228348319784960 https://twitter.com/katyperry/status/444228348319784960 "Omg someone just called my stage the TESLA of tour stages... It was like, the coolest modern compliment ever."
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    Oil competes with solar wherever a diesel generator powers something that might be powered by solar, and there are a lot of diesel generators out there. Oil also competes with oil for home heating in many areas (electricity v. oil). In my world, my parent's new retirement castle is powered by an off-grid solar/diesel system. Solar isn't putting up much of a fight (Canada+winter+mountains = maybe 2hours of direct sunlight on panels).
ryao 10y ago
"efforts made to slow this transition by Trump and others in his administration should be seen as a protectionist, nonsensical, and amoral top-down defense of the harmful fossil fuel industry." As a solar panel owner, I want to know, is this a response to the tax credit going away or is there something else of which I am not aware? If solar is able to stand on its own, the tax credit would seem to have served its purpose. The discontinuity in the level of feasibility when it goes away will not be fun, but I thought that people expected that to happen when it eventually does go away.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- vertex-four 10y ago
  A reasonable different position to take would be to drop the subsidy in line with increases in effectiveness of solar panels, rather than dropping the subsidy all at once.
  - aoeuasdf1 10y ago
    How about dropping the subsidy on the condition that coal and oil subsidies are dropped?
    - marvy 10y ago
      that sounds politically difficult, though I know next to nothing about politics so I could be wrong
    - m_mueller 10y ago
      As long as politicians bought by Oil/Gas/Coal get majorities in House and Senate there's no gatekeeper to impose such compromises. For this election cycle this seems a non starter to me.
- ghouse 10y ago
  Oil, gas, and coal enjoy their own subsidies. Both direct and indirect. Increasing these subsidies for fossil fuels will slow the transition.
abalone 10y ago
I'm all for solar but to be fair the source study for this was looking at the economics of modules not deployments. Solar does have an inverse economies of scale problem where the cheapest, most amenable sites are the first to get solar farms. To scale it to be competitive with coal, nuclear, etc. you're going to run into higher site acquisition costs and suboptimal conditions. Worth the challenge to save our planet, obviously, but let's be honest about it.
- ryao 10y ago
  While solar is great, I think this discussion is a distraction from the possibility of replacing diesel, gasoline and kerosene with natural gas. Gasoline engines can be converted to run off natural gas and jet engines can be made that run off natural gas. Natural gas is also cheaper, more plentiful and cleaner than gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Plus, switching to it would disentangle global politics from the Middle East because natural gas is produced elsewhere. Those things are on my mind as I contemplate a switch from heating oil to natural gas at my home. It does not seem to make financial sense, but it makes more sense when I consider those things. That said, until technology that allows solar to be economically used for everything is available (e.g. amazingly cheap, high density, long lasting batteries), we are going to need natural gas to replace other fossil fuels in places where solar cannot be used.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    Natural gas does nothing for global warming, and the push for gas-generators has been driven by the fact that you can crack petroleum into gas products fairly easily. Scaling in this way doesn't help us at all.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      >>Natural gas does nothing for global warming Burning natural gas produces only half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal.
      - 10y ago
quotemstr 10y ago
EROEI never made any sense to me. It seems to conflate two fundamentally different notions: fuels as energy sources and fuels as energy storage mediums. Who cares that petroleum EROEI might fall to less than one? Petroleum in that scenario would still useful for vehicles. Even if you need two joules to extract one joule of fossil fuel, this process might be economically viable if your two joules are immovable (e.g., drawn from a nuclear-powered grid) and your one joule is movable (e.g., in an airliner). There's no special significance to EROEI.
- kodfodrasz 10y ago
  What you say is true for refined fuels (think of batteries as such also). But for prime energy sources EROEI must be greater than one to be viable on the long run. If coal mining had an EROEI under 1 no industrial revolution would have happened, because the manual labour for extracting the energy source would have been better spent at other tasks. Now that we have some energy sources with very high EROEI in the energy mix we use we can think about some sources as you say, for some very specific tasks.
- nshepperd 10y ago
  Who's conflating energy sources with storage mediums? EROEI is about the viability of fuels as energy sources. I've never heard otherwise. Obviously, charged battery storage has an EROEI < 1, and that's fine because it's a portable storage medium, not an energy source.
- js8 10y ago
  > EROEI never made any sense to me Did monetary ROI ever made sense to you? EROEI is the same thing, except in units used by nature.
  - beefield 10y ago
    I admit also belonging to the group not understanding the point of EROEI (beyond whether it is grater or smaller than one). Let's take two hypothetical means to produce electricity, A and B. A is, from EROEI point of view, almost a perpetual machine, with EROEI of 1,000,000. Unfortunately it is really expensive, investment costs are one million dollars per watt generated. B then, has really bad EROEI, 1.0001. However, getting that electricity costs only 0.0001 USD/MWh. I do not understand in which circumstances it would be relevant or interesting to use EROEI as a metric to compare these power sources. Note also that in absence of subsidies, ROI contains all the information EROEI gives.
thewhitetulip 10y ago
Nothing will force companies to use Solar than high ROI. Google and Apple now use Solar in a major way, with Tesla's cars and SolarCity's roofs, we are living in exciting times. The drop in Oil demand would mean the end of the OPEC bloc.
- kodfodrasz 10y ago
  EROEI is not everything. This is a major step forwards a sustainable energy mix, but the major shortcomings of solar and wind are still storage and location dependence. What I am afraid is that the nuclear renaissance may be further delayed in the west, which is what we badly need now to reduce carbon footprints, provide stable energy production and to fill te gap until fusion gets there. (Which despite the recent great news is still 30 years far, as ever since the 1970s) As a European as much as I hope that the OPEC shall fall, I am also afraid of the turmoil it may cause as its core states are rumored to be closely linked with the funding of terrorism in the middle east for their political purposes, which recently has reached Europe as well.
  - static_noise 10y ago
    We would have needed nuclear yesterday. Right now renewables are the most promising path. New nuclear probably wouldn't make a dent until it's already too late. Of course we need storage and backup generators for renewables. It will be mostly pumped water with gas and oil. Nuclear does not fit as a backup. In the future, the pricing must include renewables PLUS their backup plan (e.g. a gas generator on standby) to achieve level pricing and availability. Having a large grid and moving to more flexible consumers in order to distribute and smoothen out supply and demand will also be a huge factor. In the end I'm positive that it can be done.
    - mjevans 10y ago
      I think that it still does have a solid viable place. It makes the most sense for base load, as well as night time load (which is mostly the same as base load).
Animats 10y ago
Don't worry about the political issues. Wall Street will follow the ROI numbers, and money will be available for power sources with good ROI. Oil is on the way out. Coal isn't coming back, either. Peabody Coal, the biggest coal company in the world, went bust earlier this year. Nobody wants to build new coal plants. They're huge headaches to operate compared to natural gas plants.
- hyperbovine 10y ago
  > They're huge headaches to operate compared to natural gas plants. Ahem: that's because of "political issues". You should remain very worried (and vigilant) about the direction of energy policy under the incoming administration.
  - rhino369 10y ago
    Trump could definitely slow the rate of closure of existing plants, but the industry sees the writing on the wall regarding coal. Each plant requires an investment that will be repaid over decades. So unless they think coal policy will be favorable in the long run, they won't invest. That plus natural gas is still just cheaper right now.
    - madaxe_again 10y ago
      If they're handing out multi billion dollar incentives to build coal plants, they are economically viable. You don't need paying customers to be profitable, just a friendly government. Here in the uk we subsidise fossil fuels far more heavily than renewables and there are no plans to change that picture - actually, oil and gas subsidies are increasing, to "help maintain profitability for an important British values industry". Never underestimate the power of wealth transfer. Volkswagen, thyssen krupps, Hugo boss, ford - none would exist today without vast piles of state gifts - and that's the tiny readily visible tip of the iceberg. No, oil is here to stay for as long as is convenient. Renewables will continue to be kicked into the long grass because policymakers will be rich and dead by the time it gets truly awful. Oil makes them rich today.
cm2187 10y ago
What I would like to see is the comparison pre-subsidies for the RoI. I am not convinced the author of the article reversed those.
dboreham 10y ago
Except at night..
codecamper 10y ago
Guys. It's embarrassing that this is a top article on Hacker News. There is really no association between the price of oil & the price of solar. Oil is an expensive form of energy because it is portable & used for transportation. It competes with the price of lithium ion batteries. Solar is for generating electricity. It competes with coal, gas, geo, hydro, wind. And don't come back at this with some pathetic reasoning that on some islands or remote places idiots use generators. I say idiots because generators are loud, smell, need maintenance and these days are probably quite a bit more expensive than a solar + battery system.
- the8472 10y ago
  This is about EROEI, not $
  - codecamper 10y ago
    that's all great & fine, but think of it like this: Where is oil used? Cars. Trucks. Planes. Will a solar panel on the top of a car ever power a car? No. You need batteries. It's the price of batteries vs. price of oil that we should be discussing.
    - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
      The EROI for moving a car via PV solar is greater than moving a car via oil. Oil loses that comparison even worse, since 80%+ of the energy is thrown away as waste heat.
      - codecamper 10y ago
        Yes, the totally awesome end game is to have solar panels that charge your car. But it isn't the price of solar that is standing in the way of electric cars everywhere... it's the price of batteries. I hear this thing about return of energy, etc. But this is nothing new, right? Check out the oil sands project in Canada. Do you think the market cares about how much energy is used to create something? No.. just the $. In any case solar & oil are not related.
newswriter99 10y ago
Not one mention of petrochemicals in this thread. The main thing environmentalists (among others) seem to forget is that you can't make plastic out of sunlight. Or air. Or by pedaling a bicycle. Oil (and natural gas, especially in the US where petrochemical refineries use it for ethane) will continue to be in demand if for no other reason than to be used as a feedstock for plastics and a litany of other chems that make modern life possible.
- ph0rque 10y ago
  But you can make plastics from plants.
  - newswriter99 10y ago
    Not sustainable or cost-effectively. Not yet anyway. Look at most of the bio-converters in the US. They're expensive, usually down for one reason or another, and half the time they end up killing their microorganisms via failing to filter out byproduct like cyanide gas: http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/09/05/on-the-mend-why-ineos-bio-isnt-reporting-much-ethanol-production/ http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/09/05/on-the-mend...
    - Retric 10y ago
      That's an odd view of Sustainable with Oil being a finite supply. Further, cost-effective assumes cheap oil with massive economies of scale and 10's of billions in R&D vs small scale trials of new tech.
- anarazel 10y ago
  Sure, but the amount of oil needed for that is completely dwarfed by other uses of oil. See e.g. http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use
- ninkendo 10y ago
  Petrochemicals are only 4% of the oil market: http://www.bpf.co.uk/Press/Oil_Consumption.aspx http://www.bpf.co.uk/Press/Oil_Consumption.aspx If switching to solar from oil would eliminate 96% of our use of fossil fuels, I'm pretty sure those "environmentalists" you refer to would still be happy. But honestly whenever somebody brings up plastics in a discussion about sustainable energy or climate change I always assume they just like being contrarian.
newswriter99 10y ago
In an attempt to clarify my previous point, everyone please feel free to examine Exxon's 2040 outlook, which puts Nuclear, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources at only 25% of all energy production by that time: http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/energy/energy-outlook/highlights/ http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/energy/energy-outlook/hig...
- hinkley 10y ago
  By 2040 natural gas will meet 25 percent of energy demand. By 2040 nuclear and renewables will grow 50 percent approaching 25 percent of energy demand. Oil will remain the world’s primary energy source, fulfilling 1/3 of all demand.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- namlem 10y ago
  Yeah, I'm sure Exxon's projections are unbiased and reliable.
  - newswriter99 10y ago
    Considering they have their fingers in more than just crude, it would behoove them to keep track of which sources of energy are in what amount of demand. Likewise, they have no reason to fudge the numbers on how much energy is being consumed year on year. You should really step out of your "all corporations are inherently evil" box. It's juvenile.
VikingCoder 10y ago
Hahahaha, oh Kenaka. GET WITH THE TIMES, Kaneka! Oh, I'd almost forgotten about that. Thanks for the laugh! (Honestly, I have no idea what I'm talking about, I just thought it was funny the one green diamond was lower than the other thingies.)
module0000 10y ago
Do any HN readers actually "invest" in oil? I think plenty of us trade oil, but who actually goes long in something that is so volatile in response to things you have no control over(war, accidents, the list goes on)? Oil's greatest investment potential is how volatile it actually is. Look at the charts for brent crude day-to-day, or jump back a step and look at the crude ETFs(sco/uco/and-friends). There is a lot of money to be made with that much volatility. Back to the original question, does anyone here actually invest(as in hold long positions) in oil OR solar? If so, I am curious why you chose those particular investment vehicles, since they are technically(as in looking at the company's technical breakdown) bad long investments.
- machiaweliczny 10y ago
  Could you explain why you think solar is bad long investment?
  - module0000 10y ago
    > Could you explain why you think solar is bad long investment? Other emerging energy sources all ding the price of solar stocks. Eg...if tomorrow a press release for "huge natural gas power plant opens in California!" breaks, you get a (sometimes large) dip in all your solar positions, despite no value being lost at all. I would sum it up as "solar equity prices are affected by too many things other than their performance".
- acchow 10y ago
  You can go long and de-risk the volatility via derivatives.

447 points by edgarvm 10y ago

known 10y ago

Not without Lithium-ion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...

patall 10y ago
Well, hydrogen comes to mind. And power-to-gas. And running hydropower and biomass plants only at high demand.
- codecamper 10y ago
  If you think hydrogen fuel cells are a good way to go then please bid up PLUG or FCEL, I'd love to see them higher so I can short one of them. Power to gas is just more of the same "hydrogen" economy. correct? I read a book about the hydrogen economy back in 2000. Thought it was a great idea. Then lithium ion batteries kicked hydrogen's butt.

anonymousiam 10y ago

Is that before or after the government subsidy?

sandworm101 10y ago

The per-watt numbers may sound great, but these are still apples and oranges energy sources. While there are some area where one can certainly replace the other (electrical grids etc) there are others (shipping) where the gap remains monumental. In terms of energy density (35ish MJ/L) and storage (a box) diesel fuels look to remain king for a while. One downside of cheap solar might be a drop in crude prices, resulting in its more frivolous use. I'd hate to see improvements in shipping meant to conserve fuel, and thereby lower carbon emissions, be set aside once fuel becomes cheap again. We need to watch for this and, perhaps, get regs in place to ensure it is burnt as sparingly as possible.

ryao 10y ago
They are not apples and oranges from the perspective of investors. Those people want to invest their money for the highest return. If solar gives a higher return than oil, then their money will go there.
toomuchtodo 10y ago
Solar doesn't compete with oil. It competes with natural gas, nuclear, and coal (any fuel with a marginal cost really, except oil, unless you're somewhere remote). And it is winning. [1] [2] As more light vehicles move over to electric vehicles, we're going to need more clean energy. We should build every kWh of solar and wind generation we can. > One downside of cheap solar might be a drop in crude prices, resulting in its more frivolous use. I'd hate to see improvements in shipping meant to conserve fuel, and thereby lower carbon emissions, be set aside once fuel become cheap again. We need to watch for this and, perhaps, get regs in place to ensure it is burnt as sparingly as possible. Well, I mean, that's kinda the whole point of Tesla Motors, you see? Its an electric car, for sure. But its not a Leaf, its not a Bolt, its not an EV1. Its the best damn car you can get. Someone called Katy Perry's stage "The Tesla of tour stages" [3]. That's how you win against oil. We didn't run out of rocks when we left the stone age behind. We found something better. [1] http://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screenshot-2014-03-25-14.36.08.png http://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Screenshot-2014-0... [2] https://solarpowerrocks.com/infographics/solar-infographic-state-solar-investment-returns/ https://solarpowerrocks.com/infographics/solar-infographic-s... [3] https://twitter.com/katyperry/status/444228348319784960 https://twitter.com/katyperry/status/444228348319784960 "Omg someone just called my stage the TESLA of tour stages... It was like, the coolest modern compliment ever."
- sandworm101 10y ago
  Oil competes with solar wherever a diesel generator powers something that might be powered by solar, and there are a lot of diesel generators out there. Oil also competes with oil for home heating in many areas (electricity v. oil). In my world, my parent's new retirement castle is powered by an off-grid solar/diesel system. Solar isn't putting up much of a fight (Canada+winter+mountains = maybe 2hours of direct sunlight on panels).

ryao 10y ago

"efforts made to slow this transition by Trump and others in his administration should be seen as a protectionist, nonsensical, and amoral top-down defense of the harmful fossil fuel industry." As a solar panel owner, I want to know, is this a response to the tax credit going away or is there something else of which I am not aware? If solar is able to stand on its own, the tax credit would seem to have served its purpose. The discontinuity in the level of feasibility when it goes away will not be fun, but I thought that people expected that to happen when it eventually does go away.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
vertex-four 10y ago
A reasonable different position to take would be to drop the subsidy in line with increases in effectiveness of solar panels, rather than dropping the subsidy all at once.
- aoeuasdf1 10y ago
  How about dropping the subsidy on the condition that coal and oil subsidies are dropped?
  - marvy 10y ago
    that sounds politically difficult, though I know next to nothing about politics so I could be wrong
  - m_mueller 10y ago
    As long as politicians bought by Oil/Gas/Coal get majorities in House and Senate there's no gatekeeper to impose such compromises. For this election cycle this seems a non starter to me.
ghouse 10y ago
Oil, gas, and coal enjoy their own subsidies. Both direct and indirect. Increasing these subsidies for fossil fuels will slow the transition.

abalone 10y ago

I'm all for solar but to be fair the source study for this was looking at the economics of modules not deployments. Solar does have an inverse economies of scale problem where the cheapest, most amenable sites are the first to get solar farms. To scale it to be competitive with coal, nuclear, etc. you're going to run into higher site acquisition costs and suboptimal conditions. Worth the challenge to save our planet, obviously, but let's be honest about it.

ryao 10y ago
While solar is great, I think this discussion is a distraction from the possibility of replacing diesel, gasoline and kerosene with natural gas. Gasoline engines can be converted to run off natural gas and jet engines can be made that run off natural gas. Natural gas is also cheaper, more plentiful and cleaner than gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Plus, switching to it would disentangle global politics from the Middle East because natural gas is produced elsewhere. Those things are on my mind as I contemplate a switch from heating oil to natural gas at my home. It does not seem to make financial sense, but it makes more sense when I consider those things. That said, until technology that allows solar to be economically used for everything is available (e.g. amazingly cheap, high density, long lasting batteries), we are going to need natural gas to replace other fossil fuels in places where solar cannot be used.
- XorNot 10y ago
  Natural gas does nothing for global warming, and the push for gas-generators has been driven by the fact that you can crack petroleum into gas products fairly easily. Scaling in this way doesn't help us at all.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>Natural gas does nothing for global warming Burning natural gas produces only half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal.
    - 10y ago

quotemstr 10y ago

EROEI never made any sense to me. It seems to conflate two fundamentally different notions: fuels as energy sources and fuels as energy storage mediums. Who cares that petroleum EROEI might fall to less than one? Petroleum in that scenario would still useful for vehicles. Even if you need two joules to extract one joule of fossil fuel, this process might be economically viable if your two joules are immovable (e.g., drawn from a nuclear-powered grid) and your one joule is movable (e.g., in an airliner). There's no special significance to EROEI.

kodfodrasz 10y ago
What you say is true for refined fuels (think of batteries as such also). But for prime energy sources EROEI must be greater than one to be viable on the long run. If coal mining had an EROEI under 1 no industrial revolution would have happened, because the manual labour for extracting the energy source would have been better spent at other tasks. Now that we have some energy sources with very high EROEI in the energy mix we use we can think about some sources as you say, for some very specific tasks.
nshepperd 10y ago
Who's conflating energy sources with storage mediums? EROEI is about the viability of fuels as energy sources. I've never heard otherwise. Obviously, charged battery storage has an EROEI < 1, and that's fine because it's a portable storage medium, not an energy source.
js8 10y ago
> EROEI never made any sense to me Did monetary ROI ever made sense to you? EROEI is the same thing, except in units used by nature.
- beefield 10y ago
  I admit also belonging to the group not understanding the point of EROEI (beyond whether it is grater or smaller than one). Let's take two hypothetical means to produce electricity, A and B. A is, from EROEI point of view, almost a perpetual machine, with EROEI of 1,000,000. Unfortunately it is really expensive, investment costs are one million dollars per watt generated. B then, has really bad EROEI, 1.0001. However, getting that electricity costs only 0.0001 USD/MWh. I do not understand in which circumstances it would be relevant or interesting to use EROEI as a metric to compare these power sources. Note also that in absence of subsidies, ROI contains all the information EROEI gives.

thewhitetulip 10y ago

Nothing will force companies to use Solar than high ROI. Google and Apple now use Solar in a major way, with Tesla's cars and SolarCity's roofs, we are living in exciting times. The drop in Oil demand would mean the end of the OPEC bloc.

kodfodrasz 10y ago
EROEI is not everything. This is a major step forwards a sustainable energy mix, but the major shortcomings of solar and wind are still storage and location dependence. What I am afraid is that the nuclear renaissance may be further delayed in the west, which is what we badly need now to reduce carbon footprints, provide stable energy production and to fill te gap until fusion gets there. (Which despite the recent great news is still 30 years far, as ever since the 1970s) As a European as much as I hope that the OPEC shall fall, I am also afraid of the turmoil it may cause as its core states are rumored to be closely linked with the funding of terrorism in the middle east for their political purposes, which recently has reached Europe as well.
- static_noise 10y ago
  We would have needed nuclear yesterday. Right now renewables are the most promising path. New nuclear probably wouldn't make a dent until it's already too late. Of course we need storage and backup generators for renewables. It will be mostly pumped water with gas and oil. Nuclear does not fit as a backup. In the future, the pricing must include renewables PLUS their backup plan (e.g. a gas generator on standby) to achieve level pricing and availability. Having a large grid and moving to more flexible consumers in order to distribute and smoothen out supply and demand will also be a huge factor. In the end I'm positive that it can be done.
  - mjevans 10y ago
    I think that it still does have a solid viable place. It makes the most sense for base load, as well as night time load (which is mostly the same as base load).

Animats 10y ago

Don't worry about the political issues. Wall Street will follow the ROI numbers, and money will be available for power sources with good ROI. Oil is on the way out. Coal isn't coming back, either. Peabody Coal, the biggest coal company in the world, went bust earlier this year. Nobody wants to build new coal plants. They're huge headaches to operate compared to natural gas plants.

hyperbovine 10y ago
> They're huge headaches to operate compared to natural gas plants. Ahem: that's because of "political issues". You should remain very worried (and vigilant) about the direction of energy policy under the incoming administration.
- rhino369 10y ago
  Trump could definitely slow the rate of closure of existing plants, but the industry sees the writing on the wall regarding coal. Each plant requires an investment that will be repaid over decades. So unless they think coal policy will be favorable in the long run, they won't invest. That plus natural gas is still just cheaper right now.
  - madaxe_again 10y ago
    If they're handing out multi billion dollar incentives to build coal plants, they are economically viable. You don't need paying customers to be profitable, just a friendly government. Here in the uk we subsidise fossil fuels far more heavily than renewables and there are no plans to change that picture - actually, oil and gas subsidies are increasing, to "help maintain profitability for an important British values industry". Never underestimate the power of wealth transfer. Volkswagen, thyssen krupps, Hugo boss, ford - none would exist today without vast piles of state gifts - and that's the tiny readily visible tip of the iceberg. No, oil is here to stay for as long as is convenient. Renewables will continue to be kicked into the long grass because policymakers will be rich and dead by the time it gets truly awful. Oil makes them rich today.

cm2187 10y ago

What I would like to see is the comparison pre-subsidies for the RoI. I am not convinced the author of the article reversed those.

dboreham 10y ago

Except at night..

codecamper 10y ago

Guys. It's embarrassing that this is a top article on Hacker News. There is really no association between the price of oil & the price of solar. Oil is an expensive form of energy because it is portable & used for transportation. It competes with the price of lithium ion batteries. Solar is for generating electricity. It competes with coal, gas, geo, hydro, wind. And don't come back at this with some pathetic reasoning that on some islands or remote places idiots use generators. I say idiots because generators are loud, smell, need maintenance and these days are probably quite a bit more expensive than a solar + battery system.

the8472 10y ago
This is about EROEI, not $
- codecamper 10y ago
  that's all great & fine, but think of it like this: Where is oil used? Cars. Trucks. Planes. Will a solar panel on the top of a car ever power a car? No. You need batteries. It's the price of batteries vs. price of oil that we should be discussing.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    The EROI for moving a car via PV solar is greater than moving a car via oil. Oil loses that comparison even worse, since 80%+ of the energy is thrown away as waste heat.
    - codecamper 10y ago
      Yes, the totally awesome end game is to have solar panels that charge your car. But it isn't the price of solar that is standing in the way of electric cars everywhere... it's the price of batteries. I hear this thing about return of energy, etc. But this is nothing new, right? Check out the oil sands project in Canada. Do you think the market cares about how much energy is used to create something? No.. just the $. In any case solar & oil are not related.

newswriter99 10y ago

Not one mention of petrochemicals in this thread. The main thing environmentalists (among others) seem to forget is that you can't make plastic out of sunlight. Or air. Or by pedaling a bicycle. Oil (and natural gas, especially in the US where petrochemical refineries use it for ethane) will continue to be in demand if for no other reason than to be used as a feedstock for plastics and a litany of other chems that make modern life possible.

ph0rque 10y ago
But you can make plastics from plants.
- newswriter99 10y ago
  Not sustainable or cost-effectively. Not yet anyway. Look at most of the bio-converters in the US. They're expensive, usually down for one reason or another, and half the time they end up killing their microorganisms via failing to filter out byproduct like cyanide gas: http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/09/05/on-the-mend-why-ineos-bio-isnt-reporting-much-ethanol-production/ http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/09/05/on-the-mend...
  - Retric 10y ago
    That's an odd view of Sustainable with Oil being a finite supply. Further, cost-effective assumes cheap oil with massive economies of scale and 10's of billions in R&D vs small scale trials of new tech.
anarazel 10y ago
Sure, but the amount of oil needed for that is completely dwarfed by other uses of oil. See e.g. http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use
ninkendo 10y ago
Petrochemicals are only 4% of the oil market: http://www.bpf.co.uk/Press/Oil_Consumption.aspx http://www.bpf.co.uk/Press/Oil_Consumption.aspx If switching to solar from oil would eliminate 96% of our use of fossil fuels, I'm pretty sure those "environmentalists" you refer to would still be happy. But honestly whenever somebody brings up plastics in a discussion about sustainable energy or climate change I always assume they just like being contrarian.

newswriter99 10y ago

In an attempt to clarify my previous point, everyone please feel free to examine Exxon's 2040 outlook, which puts Nuclear, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources at only 25% of all energy production by that time: http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/energy/energy-outlook/highlights/ http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/energy/energy-outlook/hig...

hinkley 10y ago
By 2040 natural gas will meet 25 percent of energy demand. By 2040 nuclear and renewables will grow 50 percent approaching 25 percent of energy demand. Oil will remain the world’s primary energy source, fulfilling 1/3 of all demand.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
namlem 10y ago
Yeah, I'm sure Exxon's projections are unbiased and reliable.
- newswriter99 10y ago
  Considering they have their fingers in more than just crude, it would behoove them to keep track of which sources of energy are in what amount of demand. Likewise, they have no reason to fudge the numbers on how much energy is being consumed year on year. You should really step out of your "all corporations are inherently evil" box. It's juvenile.

VikingCoder 10y ago

Hahahaha, oh Kenaka. GET WITH THE TIMES, Kaneka! Oh, I'd almost forgotten about that. Thanks for the laugh! (Honestly, I have no idea what I'm talking about, I just thought it was funny the one green diamond was lower than the other thingies.)

module0000 10y ago

Do any HN readers actually "invest" in oil? I think plenty of us trade oil, but who actually goes long in something that is so volatile in response to things you have no control over(war, accidents, the list goes on)? Oil's greatest investment potential is how volatile it actually is. Look at the charts for brent crude day-to-day, or jump back a step and look at the crude ETFs(sco/uco/and-friends). There is a lot of money to be made with that much volatility. Back to the original question, does anyone here actually invest(as in hold long positions) in oil OR solar? If so, I am curious why you chose those particular investment vehicles, since they are technically(as in looking at the company's technical breakdown) bad long investments.

machiaweliczny 10y ago
Could you explain why you think solar is bad long investment?
- module0000 10y ago
  > Could you explain why you think solar is bad long investment? Other emerging energy sources all ding the price of solar stocks. Eg...if tomorrow a press release for "huge natural gas power plant opens in California!" breaks, you get a (sometimes large) dip in all your solar positions, despite no value being lost at all. I would sum it up as "solar equity prices are affected by too many things other than their performance".
acchow 10y ago
You can go long and de-risk the volatility via derivatives.