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It is telling that 3 out of 4 of the trillion dollar companies are actually oil companies. Just goes to show how dependent we are on the fossil fuel.

uptown 9y ago
Oil is part of the composition of so many products. It's also still an essential component to moving things around the planet. So when you decide to have that burger whose ingredients were was transported using gasoline cooked by a staff who drove to work, and the bottled water whose plastic bottle was made from oil and transported with gasoline, a percentage of the money you paid for those items slides into the revenue stream of oil companies. When you have an industry which is able to shave off a percentage of the vast majority of products moved, sold, and consumed in the world you've got a huge financial advantage.
- mobilefriendly 9y ago
  Plus it is extremely capital intensive to build refineries and offshore oil rigs, there are some economic returns for scale.
- Robotbeat 9y ago
  Most of those things can be electrified. Even plastics could be electrified (i.e. use electrolysis to produce hydrogen from water and electricity, Sabatier reaction to combine that hydrogen and CO2 into methane, make the methane into various products. Or use electrolysis on the CO2 to make CO and combine that with hydrogen to make methanol and then polypropylene, or just use the Fischer Tropsch reaction to produce synthetic oil from hydrogen and CO as a kind of drop-in replacement for fossil fuels), although I'd bet that we'll just use oil due to the large inefficiencies involved. So long term, the use for oil won't be for transport (or ought not to be) but for materials.
  - roenxi 9y ago
    I'm pretty happy to accept that, theoretically, any form of energy could be substituted for any other form. So sure, you can swap electricity in for oil. That doesn't change the present state though, which is that oil is linked to pretty much everything. And it really doesn't say anything about the economics of the situation. Batteries can store energy for use on demand, but nowhere near as well as fossil fuels. In the short term, I think the difference is something more than an order of magnitude (~1Mj/kg batteries vs >40MJ/kg fossil fuels; I don't feel like looking up per volume numbers but I imagine I'd see the same gap thing).
    - Robotbeat 9y ago
      The difference is about an order of magnitude if you include the inefficiency of combustion. But specific power is just one metric. There are many others, which are often (i.e. for commuting and even cross-country shipping) better for battery-electric. By the way, there is still a gap for energy density (i.e. energy/volume), but not nearly as bad. For instance, Gasoline is 34MJ/liter, but after combustion you get about 8MJ/liter. Tesla's lithium ion is about 2.3MJ/liter, so only a factor of ~3 difference. We don't all have 1000 mile gas tanks. In fact, in a sports car, you might only have a 300 mile tank. So clearly energy storage alone isn't the only metric. Wear and tear on brakes is much less. Brakes last for about the life of the vehicle. No oil changes are needed. No fuel filter, engine air filter, etc, etc. Cost for electric is much less. Typically, I pay about the equivalent to $1 per gallon in electricity. There's also a large reduction in local smog and particulates, which can make a big difference in a large city. This is why we're seeing a continued transition to electric transport, overcoming a century of inertia and trillions in stake. The only major thing preventing electric from taking over the majority of transportation is battery costs. That's it! And batteries have already decreased in costs dramatically to the point that cost of ownership is roughly break even right now even without incentives.
petra 9y ago
It's more about how a single company managed to get control over an important resource. One good way is using the power of government. So everybody on that list except standard oil and microsoft , got there that way.
xkjkls 9y ago
Not just oil companies -- state owned oil companies. It's relatively easy to be worth alot of money if you have a monopoly on an entire country's resources.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
Interesting too when you look at how many people are skeptical of Tesla. They might fail, but they are in a posture to try to displace the entire transport chunk of the oil industry.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  62.7% of Americas electricity generation is from fossil fuels. Electric cars might still be a drastic improvement though. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

uptown 9y ago

Oil is part of the composition of so many products. It's also still an essential component to moving things around the planet. So when you decide to have that burger whose ingredients were was transported using gasoline cooked by a staff who drove to work, and the bottled water whose plastic bottle was made from oil and transported with gasoline, a percentage of the money you paid for those items slides into the revenue stream of oil companies. When you have an industry which is able to shave off a percentage of the vast majority of products moved, sold, and consumed in the world you've got a huge financial advantage.

mobilefriendly 9y ago
Plus it is extremely capital intensive to build refineries and offshore oil rigs, there are some economic returns for scale.
Robotbeat 9y ago
Most of those things can be electrified. Even plastics could be electrified (i.e. use electrolysis to produce hydrogen from water and electricity, Sabatier reaction to combine that hydrogen and CO2 into methane, make the methane into various products. Or use electrolysis on the CO2 to make CO and combine that with hydrogen to make methanol and then polypropylene, or just use the Fischer Tropsch reaction to produce synthetic oil from hydrogen and CO as a kind of drop-in replacement for fossil fuels), although I'd bet that we'll just use oil due to the large inefficiencies involved. So long term, the use for oil won't be for transport (or ought not to be) but for materials.
- roenxi 9y ago
  I'm pretty happy to accept that, theoretically, any form of energy could be substituted for any other form. So sure, you can swap electricity in for oil. That doesn't change the present state though, which is that oil is linked to pretty much everything. And it really doesn't say anything about the economics of the situation. Batteries can store energy for use on demand, but nowhere near as well as fossil fuels. In the short term, I think the difference is something more than an order of magnitude (~1Mj/kg batteries vs >40MJ/kg fossil fuels; I don't feel like looking up per volume numbers but I imagine I'd see the same gap thing).
  - Robotbeat 9y ago
    The difference is about an order of magnitude if you include the inefficiency of combustion. But specific power is just one metric. There are many others, which are often (i.e. for commuting and even cross-country shipping) better for battery-electric. By the way, there is still a gap for energy density (i.e. energy/volume), but not nearly as bad. For instance, Gasoline is 34MJ/liter, but after combustion you get about 8MJ/liter. Tesla's lithium ion is about 2.3MJ/liter, so only a factor of ~3 difference. We don't all have 1000 mile gas tanks. In fact, in a sports car, you might only have a 300 mile tank. So clearly energy storage alone isn't the only metric. Wear and tear on brakes is much less. Brakes last for about the life of the vehicle. No oil changes are needed. No fuel filter, engine air filter, etc, etc. Cost for electric is much less. Typically, I pay about the equivalent to $1 per gallon in electricity. There's also a large reduction in local smog and particulates, which can make a big difference in a large city. This is why we're seeing a continued transition to electric transport, overcoming a century of inertia and trillions in stake. The only major thing preventing electric from taking over the majority of transportation is battery costs. That's it! And batteries have already decreased in costs dramatically to the point that cost of ownership is roughly break even right now even without incentives.

petra 9y ago

It's more about how a single company managed to get control over an important resource. One good way is using the power of government. So everybody on that list except standard oil and microsoft , got there that way.

xkjkls 9y ago

Not just oil companies -- state owned oil companies. It's relatively easy to be worth alot of money if you have a monopoly on an entire country's resources.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

Interesting too when you look at how many people are skeptical of Tesla. They might fail, but they are in a posture to try to displace the entire transport chunk of the oil industry.

HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
62.7% of Americas electricity generation is from fossil fuels. Electric cars might still be a drastic improvement though. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3