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> To implement all of these things at the scale needed is politics In America, where actual implementation of technology is carried out by private companies, t

> To implement all of these things at the scale needed is politics In America, where actual implementation of technology is carried out by private companies, this is simply not true. This is like saying that the engineering work on the internet was "done" in 1996, and the work of driving adoption of the internet at scale was "just politics". You can quibble over the definition of "engineering" but the fact remains that there are millions of person-hours of work to be done by people with the job title "engineer" in order to transition off of fossil fuels.

tinco 5y ago
No one's going to be paying anyone to "engineer" this transition if there's no incentives. You can be as american as you like, but that won't change the fact that oil is basically free. You can't compete with free in a free market.
- mbgerring 5y ago
  Oil is nothing like "basically free," and many renewable energy technologies are successfully competing with coal and even natural gas, in an environment where fossil fuels are more heavily subsidized than renewable energy technologies. You can be as cynical as you want, but that won't change the fact that the transition to renewable energy is already more than a decade in progress and accelerating.
  - tinco 5y ago
    In my perception the price of oil is only constrained by the oil industry carefully matching their output to the demand. Am I wrong in this? Surely the Saudi's are not driving their gold plated lamborghini's because they really wanted them and spent all their savings hard won from razor thin margins. I'm not normally cynical, but we have to be realistic when talking about the climate. The truth is we haven't really started the transition to renewable energy, we're just investing in renewable energy where it's convenient. The only thing we're really making strides in is greening up the electric grid, but the electric grid is just a piece of the pie of our total energy expenditure. At some point everything you use and touch and see as a consumer is going to be green, your light, your heating, your car, maybe even the food you eat. And then we look at the grand scheme of things, and you'll find that you merely went down to 50% maybe 60%. And what's worse, to achieve that prices of almost everything had to be doubled, and the producers of oil simply tuned down their prices to appeal to less privileged nations, and those are both flourishing and buying almost as much oil as they were the US and Europe.
    - deepnotderp 5y ago
      It depends on what oil. Margins in Saudi fields like Ghawar are enormous and costs are as low as $5 a barrel. By contrast American shale oil extracted via fracking can cost up to $30 a barrel.
      - tinco 5y ago
        Thanks, so at $30 that would be about $0.017/kWh right? The most competitive high efficiency windmills right now are producing at $0.030/kWh. So the most expensive form of extracting oil is about twice as cheap as the cheapest form of renewable energy right now. I'm not sure if I'm being downvoted because of my hyperbole, or my negativity or people really disagree with me. I'm really not trying to be negative, I just feel that it's important we're spending our effort where it's most needed, and that's political change. If you put a 50% subsidy on wind energy, you might put the fracking industry out of business, or if you put a 100% carbon tax on oil, same effect. That's a simple thing we could do right now, just a couple words on paper and it would change the world for the better more than any engineering project right now (except maybe fusion).
        Robotbeat 5y ago
        Not really accurate. $30/barrel is $0.017/kWh in terms of THERMAL energy, but that’s high entropy whereas wind energy is low entropy (electricity). To get that oil’s thermal energy into low entropy energy, you need to burn it and run some sort of heat engine, which throws about half to two-thirds of the energy away, so in low-entropy equivalent (ie electrical or mechanical energy), that oil costs $0.034-0.051/kWh. Not only that, but some solar farms have costs as low as $0.016-$0.018/kWh before subsidies: https://www.pv-tech.org/bids-of-us0-0162-kwh-emerge-as-saudi-arabia-shortlists-firms-for-1-47gw-sol/ https://www.pv-tech.org/bids-of-us0-0162-kwh-emerge-as-saudi...
        tinco 5y ago
        Alright, so under some conditions the worst price for oil is competitive with the best price for solar. I know it's important to correct me, and obviously I should've expanded on the fact that it's thermal energy to make it more fair, but nit picking on my argument doesn't change the story. Apparently Saudi Arabia can get oil at $5/barrel, so that's a factor 6 we're still off by. I fully agree, if it can be done in Saudi Arabia, it can probably also be done in Death Valley or some other nice sunny area reasonably close to a large population, and it will help a lot. I just fear that regardless of what we or anyone wants to pay, Saudi Arabia is still going to be wanting to sell it as long as it's over $5/barrel.

tinco 5y ago

No one's going to be paying anyone to "engineer" this transition if there's no incentives. You can be as american as you like, but that won't change the fact that oil is basically free. You can't compete with free in a free market.

mbgerring 5y ago
Oil is nothing like "basically free," and many renewable energy technologies are successfully competing with coal and even natural gas, in an environment where fossil fuels are more heavily subsidized than renewable energy technologies. You can be as cynical as you want, but that won't change the fact that the transition to renewable energy is already more than a decade in progress and accelerating.
- tinco 5y ago
  In my perception the price of oil is only constrained by the oil industry carefully matching their output to the demand. Am I wrong in this? Surely the Saudi's are not driving their gold plated lamborghini's because they really wanted them and spent all their savings hard won from razor thin margins. I'm not normally cynical, but we have to be realistic when talking about the climate. The truth is we haven't really started the transition to renewable energy, we're just investing in renewable energy where it's convenient. The only thing we're really making strides in is greening up the electric grid, but the electric grid is just a piece of the pie of our total energy expenditure. At some point everything you use and touch and see as a consumer is going to be green, your light, your heating, your car, maybe even the food you eat. And then we look at the grand scheme of things, and you'll find that you merely went down to 50% maybe 60%. And what's worse, to achieve that prices of almost everything had to be doubled, and the producers of oil simply tuned down their prices to appeal to less privileged nations, and those are both flourishing and buying almost as much oil as they were the US and Europe.
  - deepnotderp 5y ago
    It depends on what oil. Margins in Saudi fields like Ghawar are enormous and costs are as low as $5 a barrel. By contrast American shale oil extracted via fracking can cost up to $30 a barrel.
    - tinco 5y ago
      Thanks, so at $30 that would be about $0.017/kWh right? The most competitive high efficiency windmills right now are producing at $0.030/kWh. So the most expensive form of extracting oil is about twice as cheap as the cheapest form of renewable energy right now. I'm not sure if I'm being downvoted because of my hyperbole, or my negativity or people really disagree with me. I'm really not trying to be negative, I just feel that it's important we're spending our effort where it's most needed, and that's political change. If you put a 50% subsidy on wind energy, you might put the fracking industry out of business, or if you put a 100% carbon tax on oil, same effect. That's a simple thing we could do right now, just a couple words on paper and it would change the world for the better more than any engineering project right now (except maybe fusion).
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        Not really accurate. $30/barrel is $0.017/kWh in terms of THERMAL energy, but that’s high entropy whereas wind energy is low entropy (electricity). To get that oil’s thermal energy into low entropy energy, you need to burn it and run some sort of heat engine, which throws about half to two-thirds of the energy away, so in low-entropy equivalent (ie electrical or mechanical energy), that oil costs $0.034-0.051/kWh. Not only that, but some solar farms have costs as low as $0.016-$0.018/kWh before subsidies: https://www.pv-tech.org/bids-of-us0-0162-kwh-emerge-as-saudi-arabia-shortlists-firms-for-1-47gw-sol/ https://www.pv-tech.org/bids-of-us0-0162-kwh-emerge-as-saudi...
        tinco 5y ago
        Alright, so under some conditions the worst price for oil is competitive with the best price for solar. I know it's important to correct me, and obviously I should've expanded on the fact that it's thermal energy to make it more fair, but nit picking on my argument doesn't change the story. Apparently Saudi Arabia can get oil at $5/barrel, so that's a factor 6 we're still off by. I fully agree, if it can be done in Saudi Arabia, it can probably also be done in Death Valley or some other nice sunny area reasonably close to a large population, and it will help a lot. I just fear that regardless of what we or anyone wants to pay, Saudi Arabia is still going to be wanting to sell it as long as it's over $5/barrel.