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The general idea behind these kinds of bills is to do supply-side management of fossil production: reduce oil production is order to help with pollution/global

by yyyk 4y ago

The general idea behind these kinds of bills is to do supply-side management of fossil production: reduce oil production is order to help with pollution/global warming. This sounds alluring but in reality, the same demand exists - it's just being directly or indirectly satisfied by imports from less scrupulous countries, usually dictatorships or theocracies. Inasmuch as there's an effect on demand, it's a very slow one. The proper way to limit fossils is at the demand side, even if this plays less to the view of oil companies as the ultimate villains.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Price of oil goes up, demand for EVs and other non fossil energy uses goes up. Demand will only go down when you make consuming fossil fuels economically painful. No one is going to voluntarily leave cheap energy in the ground unconsumed/non combusted. You must continue to drive down the cost of clean energy and using that clean energy for work (mobility, battery storage for grid balancing and energy arbitrage, etc).
- yyyk 4y ago
  >Price of oil goes up, demand for EVs and other non fossil energy uses goes up. Also prices of every thing in the economy goes up, including EVs and non-fossil energy. Eventually we just substitute local production with imports from various bad actors. Besides, EV production is no longer limited by demand, but by availability of batteries. >Demand will only go down when you make consuming fossil fuels economically painful. Demand can be lowered by mandating fuel savings and some mild taxation. Sometimes even just asking (like a recent UK campaign did) helps. >No one is going to voluntarily leave cheap energy in the ground unconsumed/non combusted. The lower demand is, the less economic to extract. >You must continue to drive down the cost of clean energy and using that clean energy for work (mobility, battery storage for grid balancing and energy arbitrage, etc). Yes, we must keep plugging away at this. But IMHO supply side manipulation of fossils is not effective anymore, and has significant downsides.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Continual economic forces must be applied to force an energy transition at a rate that is not punitive at scale, while also rapid enough that we don’t backslide away from escape velocity. I want to stress that a carbon tax with a rebate model would solve a lot of this, it’s just politically untenable in the US. People should suffer as little as possible during this transition.

by yyyk 4y ago

toomuchtodo 4y ago

Price of oil goes up, demand for EVs and other non fossil energy uses goes up. Demand will only go down when you make consuming fossil fuels economically painful. No one is going to voluntarily leave cheap energy in the ground unconsumed/non combusted. You must continue to drive down the cost of clean energy and using that clean energy for work (mobility, battery storage for grid balancing and energy arbitrage, etc).

yyyk 4y ago
>Price of oil goes up, demand for EVs and other non fossil energy uses goes up. Also prices of every thing in the economy goes up, including EVs and non-fossil energy. Eventually we just substitute local production with imports from various bad actors. Besides, EV production is no longer limited by demand, but by availability of batteries. >Demand will only go down when you make consuming fossil fuels economically painful. Demand can be lowered by mandating fuel savings and some mild taxation. Sometimes even just asking (like a recent UK campaign did) helps. >No one is going to voluntarily leave cheap energy in the ground unconsumed/non combusted. The lower demand is, the less economic to extract. >You must continue to drive down the cost of clean energy and using that clean energy for work (mobility, battery storage for grid balancing and energy arbitrage, etc). Yes, we must keep plugging away at this. But IMHO supply side manipulation of fossils is not effective anymore, and has significant downsides.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Continual economic forces must be applied to force an energy transition at a rate that is not punitive at scale, while also rapid enough that we don’t backslide away from escape velocity. I want to stress that a carbon tax with a rebate model would solve a lot of this, it’s just politically untenable in the US. People should suffer as little as possible during this transition.