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Exactly. Lithium scarcity is a similar mindset to what peak oil was in the 90s. It seems like an issue given our current understanding, but there's a huge eco

Exactly. Lithium scarcity is a similar mindset to what peak oil was in the 90s. It seems like an issue given our current understanding, but there's a huge economic incentive to discover new deposits and make their extraction economically viable. Some of the the largest oil fields currently known were only discovered in the past decade or two. I wouldn't be surprised if battery materials follow a similar discovery curve.

aidenn0 4y ago
Peak oil was both right and wrong at the same time. Higher prices slowed demand growth, and made tight-oil financially feasible at the same. This combination made the peak much closer to a plateau. I also believe (but could be wrong), that a not insignificant amount of the success of oil alternatives today (which helps to slow demand growth) is due to a flurry of research that started with the price shocks of the 70s that were definitely not due solely to supply-demand issues.
- cameldrv 4y ago
  I'd say peak oil was 99% wrong. The main argument against it was simply that market forces would find a way to deliver more oil if conventional oil started getting expensive. That's exactly what happened. As it turned out, the main solution the market has come up with is fracking, but if fracking had not been invented, it could have been tar sands, coal-to-liquids, gas-to-liquids, more ultra-deepwater drilling, political accommodation with pariah states, etc etc.
  - syntheweave 4y ago
    It all depends on whether we define fracked oil to be actually the same energy resource as conventional. Which, in EROEI terms, it isn't - it gets a compatible result at a higher cost. In that framing, peak oil happened - we just proceeded to reframe reality around a substitute and choked down a decade of stagnation in the energy economy.
    - cameldrv 4y ago
      IMO that was another problem with the peak oil theory -- the obsession with EROEI. They would say that Saudi oil was, say, 30 EROEI and shale was 5. If you flip that upside down though 30 EROEI = 97% efficiency, and 5 EROEI is 80% efficiency. Of course you'd rather have 97% efficiency, but 80% works fine.
      - aidenn0 4y ago
        Yeah, I don't buy the EROEI argument either. I do think that non-demand based price shocks spurred research into more expensive (usually lower EROEI) sources of petroleum much sooner than a purely open market would have. 1975-1985 was about as expensive (inflation adjusted) as the early 21st century, and we didn't have a huge shale boom then.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Light sweet crude definitely peaked. Petroleum reserves are basically tsr sands and fracking which is low EROEI, even with the industry externalizing costs like methane leakage, vast freshwater consumption / pollution. For example it used to be you burned a barrel of oil to get 20 or 30 out back in the easily accessible light sweet crude days. Shit like the tar sands is more like 2:1 EROEI.
- epistasis 4y ago
  EROEI: the metric deployed against solar and wind in the past, that was quickly erased from public discourse once it became apparent that modern fossil fuels did worse on it. All those people complaining about EROEI no longer seem to have the slightest concern, despite it being a significant hurdle for future fossil fuel use.
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    I haven't tracked any of the peak oil stats and petroleum stuff since it became apparent that BEVs / Solar / Wind are the strategic winners. And the EROEIs get even worse if any sane carbon taxation / sequestration costs are applied, if any widespread damage from fracking is charged (as in set-your-tapwater-on-fire stories), or the horrific environmental destruction of tar sands (which use ungodly amounts of freshwater to try to get the oil out of the mined sands). I guess that claimed EROEI on fracking is 5-10x. No idea what it is like in practice, I assume there should be a distribution that could be analyzed. Tar sands peak at 5x, and I bet that is only in the best case. Why tar sands is still a thing, does any Canadian know? Is this because oil/gas has penetrated the Canadian government lobby and made it too big to fail?
    - cykros 4y ago
      >Is this because oil/gas has penetrated the Canadian government lobby and made it too big to fail? You're almost certainly onto something here. Much like why water cooled nuclear reactors are still a thing, despite molten salt reactors having been around for about 60 years (as in, before any of those water cooled reactors melted down with a catastrophic hydrogen explosion, caused by you know, all that water). We don't have an energy shortage. We have political obstructionism.
weatherlite 4y ago
> Some of the the largest oil fields currently known were only discovered in the past decade or two. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088739/global-oil-discovery-volume/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088739/global-oil-disco... Interesting I see an opposite trend but that's a 7 year window. AFAIK discoveries are slowing and the general trend is for newly discovered fields to have lower returns on energy.

aidenn0 4y ago

Peak oil was both right and wrong at the same time. Higher prices slowed demand growth, and made tight-oil financially feasible at the same. This combination made the peak much closer to a plateau. I also believe (but could be wrong), that a not insignificant amount of the success of oil alternatives today (which helps to slow demand growth) is due to a flurry of research that started with the price shocks of the 70s that were definitely not due solely to supply-demand issues.

cameldrv 4y ago
I'd say peak oil was 99% wrong. The main argument against it was simply that market forces would find a way to deliver more oil if conventional oil started getting expensive. That's exactly what happened. As it turned out, the main solution the market has come up with is fracking, but if fracking had not been invented, it could have been tar sands, coal-to-liquids, gas-to-liquids, more ultra-deepwater drilling, political accommodation with pariah states, etc etc.
- syntheweave 4y ago
  It all depends on whether we define fracked oil to be actually the same energy resource as conventional. Which, in EROEI terms, it isn't - it gets a compatible result at a higher cost. In that framing, peak oil happened - we just proceeded to reframe reality around a substitute and choked down a decade of stagnation in the energy economy.
  - cameldrv 4y ago
    IMO that was another problem with the peak oil theory -- the obsession with EROEI. They would say that Saudi oil was, say, 30 EROEI and shale was 5. If you flip that upside down though 30 EROEI = 97% efficiency, and 5 EROEI is 80% efficiency. Of course you'd rather have 97% efficiency, but 80% works fine.
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      Yeah, I don't buy the EROEI argument either. I do think that non-demand based price shocks spurred research into more expensive (usually lower EROEI) sources of petroleum much sooner than a purely open market would have. 1975-1985 was about as expensive (inflation adjusted) as the early 21st century, and we didn't have a huge shale boom then.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Light sweet crude definitely peaked. Petroleum reserves are basically tsr sands and fracking which is low EROEI, even with the industry externalizing costs like methane leakage, vast freshwater consumption / pollution. For example it used to be you burned a barrel of oil to get 20 or 30 out back in the easily accessible light sweet crude days. Shit like the tar sands is more like 2:1 EROEI.

epistasis 4y ago
EROEI: the metric deployed against solar and wind in the past, that was quickly erased from public discourse once it became apparent that modern fossil fuels did worse on it. All those people complaining about EROEI no longer seem to have the slightest concern, despite it being a significant hurdle for future fossil fuel use.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  I haven't tracked any of the peak oil stats and petroleum stuff since it became apparent that BEVs / Solar / Wind are the strategic winners. And the EROEIs get even worse if any sane carbon taxation / sequestration costs are applied, if any widespread damage from fracking is charged (as in set-your-tapwater-on-fire stories), or the horrific environmental destruction of tar sands (which use ungodly amounts of freshwater to try to get the oil out of the mined sands). I guess that claimed EROEI on fracking is 5-10x. No idea what it is like in practice, I assume there should be a distribution that could be analyzed. Tar sands peak at 5x, and I bet that is only in the best case. Why tar sands is still a thing, does any Canadian know? Is this because oil/gas has penetrated the Canadian government lobby and made it too big to fail?
  - cykros 4y ago
    >Is this because oil/gas has penetrated the Canadian government lobby and made it too big to fail? You're almost certainly onto something here. Much like why water cooled nuclear reactors are still a thing, despite molten salt reactors having been around for about 60 years (as in, before any of those water cooled reactors melted down with a catastrophic hydrogen explosion, caused by you know, all that water). We don't have an energy shortage. We have political obstructionism.

weatherlite 4y ago

> Some of the the largest oil fields currently known were only discovered in the past decade or two. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088739/global-oil-discovery-volume/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088739/global-oil-disco... Interesting I see an opposite trend but that's a 7 year window. AFAIK discoveries are slowing and the general trend is for newly discovered fields to have lower returns on energy.