6 ms·

World Trying to Quit Fossil Fuels Gets Flood of Gas Instead

42 points by laurex 3y ago

apsec112 3y ago
This title is silly. It suggests that gas is somehow displacing renewable projects, when in fact they have been growing ridiculously quickly; it just takes a long time to scale up a new tech to replacing all the existing energy infrastructure. Replacing coal and oil power with gas is good, and renewables won't meet the full demand for at least another decade. Edit: also, voters really really don't want expensive energy. In the US, the Biden administration blocking fossil fuel development would spike gas prices and power bills, which would almost guarantee a Trump win in 2024 and even more fossil fuel growth (plus tons of other bad stuff). Democracies can't sustainably enact policies that their voters strongly oppose.
- browningstreet 3y ago
  Since you don't list any statistics, I'll point out that a lot of countries are exceeding 40% renewables, with at least one country at 90%. The issue is situations like the UK granting leases for gas they won't use, but simply export. There may be an equilibrium needed to keep balance while renewables keep moving towards dominance, but a lot of the gas projects right now are initiated for short-term takings more than stability and current demand.
  - apsec112 3y ago
    Renewables supplied 7% of global energy demand in 2022. If that doubles every five years - which is very fast! - they won't meet full demand until 2040. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2023/08/06/global-energy-trends-insights-from-the-2023-statistical-review-of-world-energy/?sh=2b5eeae73502 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2023/08/06/global-energ...
    - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
      Get hype, though. It’s gonna get bad in the next few decades but renewables being the cheapest energy source means we will climb out of this hole eventually.
    - AJ007 3y ago
      You have to be careful with "renewables" because in many cases this includes things like ethanol and wood pellets. I've been following things fairly closely both from a broad range of sources (fossil fuels, green energy, nuclear power, climate science), and it isn't at all clear to me that solar and wind are sustainably manufactured -- a lot of coal being used to manufacture solar panels with a finite lifespan. At worst these panels will end up in a landfill in 30 years. The amount of mining to get the batteries is a real problem too. Right now, there is about a 20 year lead time to get a new mine approved, built, and online right now. Instead of expanding production, we have things like First Quantum's Cobre mine in Panama being shut down (which could be as much as 2% of global copper production.) In a short term it's a win for reducing fossil fuel use - the only "clean" method of powering these massive mining projects requires nuclear reactors on site, which no one is doing. Forget what that does to increasing the cost of a clean energy project, we can't do any more than the resources exist to do. For software developers used to thinking in infinitely scaling AWS clusters and copy and paste code, this is a very different paradigm. The really wealthy countries, especially the smaller European ones, or city states like Singapore, could probably go 100% "clean" in terms of electricity and transportation, excluding air travel and ocean transport. The amount of resources it will take somewhere like India, and maintain their standard of living, doesn't seem possible. I don't think the debates people are having right now are productive or realistic. No matter what, we will eventually run out of non-renewable resources and certainly the climate will change substantially. There are good arguments to be made that we are already past the turn back point. Yet, the lack of realistic discussion about how existing supply chains work and how they are going to scale past the wealthiest countries makes me think the odds of any real solution in the next few decades is nearly non-existent.
      - zamfi 3y ago
        Hmm. I'm having a hard time being sad about bootstrapping renewable energy production capacity using nonrenewable energy. Sure, panels have a finite lifespan -- and then in 2040, if we succeed, all new panels will be built using renewable energy. (In other words, it's a one-time cost, rather than an ongoing cost.) Ethanol and wood pellets can absolutely be produced sustainably and with positive EROEI, so I'm not sure what the connection is here. Yes, they're not amazing from a pollution perspective, but they can be net-zero from an eCO2 perspective. One take here is that capitalism has a lot of flaws, but price action stimulating investment isn't one of them. There are quite a few executives with $$$ in their eyes figuring out how to get the raw materials needed for this transition. Moore's law has lasted us nearly 60 years, a result of a mix of process improvements--old ideas done better--as well as new techniques. Pointing out how our current resource extraction isn't enough to satisfy the world's energy needs in 20 years is a little bit like pointing out that current tech isn't enough to keep Moore's law going. It's not wrong! But it also rests on the assumptions about what's possible that may not be true.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- cbsmith 3y ago
  It's also that LNG is also a relatively "new tech" that is replacing older tech. As the article mentions, it's only 3% of the world's supply. There's a lot of other reasons not to want natural gas to be expensive. Expensive gas makes coal & oil more attractive. It also feeds Putin's empire. It also encourages more investment in fracking. This is all good news.
INTPenis 3y ago
Fossil fuels are so weird to me. Like any strategy game you play you always get two types of resources, one that is finite and one later that is relatively infinite. And the goal is always to reach the second type of resource ASAP. I guess we're still churning away at that tech tree. ;)
- abirch 3y ago
  I wish we would do more nuclear fusion until we get fission
  - exe34 3y ago
    Yes, more solar is great! But we already have working fission!
    - abirch 3y ago
      We have experimental fusion, but I'm not aware of anything that is in production.
      - delecti 3y ago
        I believe the were glibly referring to the fact that solar is really just remote natural fusion.
        dieortin 3y ago
        Every energy source except maybe geothermal is remote natural fusion
- arccy 3y ago
  many strategy games just give you a magic generic pool of resources you can draw from, which isn't the case irl where you have to store, distribute, load shift, etc. to match supply
- Inscryption 3y ago
theandrewbailey 3y ago
https://archive.is/Hgm26 https://archive.is/Hgm26
- linusg789 3y ago
  https://ghostarchive.org/archive/hBkLn https://ghostarchive.org/archive/hBkLn
legitster 3y ago
Wasn't this the plan all along? Even after making an Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore personally advocated for natural gas as a transitional source of energy. Places like Germany built their entire grid off of it. Even though Solar and Wind are exploding at unprecedented levels and they were never, ever going to be able handle all of the global energy needs within the half-century. But we're shutting down coal and no one wants nuclear so gas it is.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  Correction, I want nuclear. Put it in my back yard, even.
- llsf 3y ago
  "no one wants nuclear" is not exactly the conclusion of the last COP. Several countries agreed to triple the electricity produced by nuclear. But you are correct, that some EU countries lost their source or natural gas (Nord stream 1 & 2 blowed up in 2022) and cannot transition on a whim and so needs gas (liquefied since all previous pipes are not working).
- atombender 3y ago
  The appetite for nuclear seems to be underestimated. The UK is spending £30B on two new nuclear power stations currently under construction, and just announced they're hoping to add one more. France is currently building six next-gen reactors. China and India are building an enormous number of new ones.
  - cbsmith 3y ago
    Yeah, it's not clear that the appetite has been underestimated. It seems like a lot of the current nuclear projects are developing a source taste.
- cptaj 3y ago
  Germany is irrationally closing down their completely green nuclear plants and installing gas and coal. I don't think that was the plan. Blackballing nuclear has been the worst environmental decision our society has ever made. We would've solved this problem by now if we had just gone all in on nuclear energy
deviantbit 3y ago
I invested in several wind projects. They've yet to show any returns. I've invested in 27 oil wells. Four of them hit big, and I recovered all of my loses from 23 other wells. I continue to get checks from those 4 wells after years. I will continue to invest in oil and gas. I am not saying I'm not going to invest in solar and wind again, but until I see returns on my investments I've made, I'm not putting a dime more into it. I am not the only one with this position. You don't invest to lose money. They sold investors over the past 15 years their idea that they would make money off this alternative energy, and we're not. The big guys are taking the little guys money, divesting, and leaving us holding the bag of crap. The costs for solar and wind are exorbitant compared to oil and gas. A turbine costs twice what well does, and it takes almost 20 years to recover the investment. People need to understand what is happening, and the reality of alternative investments.
- fao_ 3y ago
  Right, which is why the UN released a study saying that a shift in economic systems is required if we actually want to put in the work to not murder entire ecosystems.
  - mista2nith 3y ago
    My opinion of capitalism is infinitely higher than my opinion of the UN though What they did to Haiti was horrible
  - cptaj 3y ago
    Yeah, we require a shift in the system that kneecapped nuclear energy through pointless regulation.
- axblount 3y ago
  > I've invested in 27 oil wells. > The big guys are taking the little guys money, divesting, and leaving us holding the bag of crap. You're not one of the little guys. You're not the one who's going to be left holding the bag. The real "bag" isn't underperforming investments. It's ecosystem collapse.
canadiantim 3y ago
I don’t think the world is trying to quit fossil fuels so much as it’s trying to reduce carbon emissions and quitting fossil fuels is a means to that end. In that respect, using gas instead of coal is a commendable goal that should be encouraged as big picture it will help reduce carbon emissions.
tommiegannert 3y ago
And my local newspaper today showed off the Dicota "eco-backpack" produced from recycled PET, processed in China before sent to Switzerland. Not sure why the newspaper let them get away with it. Hoping it's ignorance, but that shouldn't be a defence... https://www.hoefner.ch/2024/01/09/oeko-rucksaecke-aus-pfaeffikon-mit-leuchtkraft-in-die-welt/ https://www.hoefner.ch/2024/01/09/oeko-rucksaecke-aus-pfaeff... (German)
AuvreyDillon 3y ago
[dead]

42 points by laurex 3y ago

This title is silly. It suggests that gas is somehow displacing renewable projects, when in fact they have been growing ridiculously quickly; it just takes a long time to scale up a new tech to replacing all the existing energy infrastructure. Replacing coal and oil power with gas is good, and renewables won't meet the full demand for at least another decade. Edit: also, voters really really don't want expensive energy. In the US, the Biden administration blocking fossil fuel development would spike gas prices and power bills, which would almost guarantee a Trump win in 2024 and even more fossil fuel growth (plus tons of other bad stuff). Democracies can't sustainably enact policies that their voters strongly oppose.

browningstreet 3y ago
Since you don't list any statistics, I'll point out that a lot of countries are exceeding 40% renewables, with at least one country at 90%. The issue is situations like the UK granting leases for gas they won't use, but simply export. There may be an equilibrium needed to keep balance while renewables keep moving towards dominance, but a lot of the gas projects right now are initiated for short-term takings more than stability and current demand.
- apsec112 3y ago
  Renewables supplied 7% of global energy demand in 2022. If that doubles every five years - which is very fast! - they won't meet full demand until 2040. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2023/08/06/global-energy-trends-insights-from-the-2023-statistical-review-of-world-energy/?sh=2b5eeae73502 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2023/08/06/global-energ...
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    Get hype, though. It’s gonna get bad in the next few decades but renewables being the cheapest energy source means we will climb out of this hole eventually.
  - AJ007 3y ago
    You have to be careful with "renewables" because in many cases this includes things like ethanol and wood pellets. I've been following things fairly closely both from a broad range of sources (fossil fuels, green energy, nuclear power, climate science), and it isn't at all clear to me that solar and wind are sustainably manufactured -- a lot of coal being used to manufacture solar panels with a finite lifespan. At worst these panels will end up in a landfill in 30 years. The amount of mining to get the batteries is a real problem too. Right now, there is about a 20 year lead time to get a new mine approved, built, and online right now. Instead of expanding production, we have things like First Quantum's Cobre mine in Panama being shut down (which could be as much as 2% of global copper production.) In a short term it's a win for reducing fossil fuel use - the only "clean" method of powering these massive mining projects requires nuclear reactors on site, which no one is doing. Forget what that does to increasing the cost of a clean energy project, we can't do any more than the resources exist to do. For software developers used to thinking in infinitely scaling AWS clusters and copy and paste code, this is a very different paradigm. The really wealthy countries, especially the smaller European ones, or city states like Singapore, could probably go 100% "clean" in terms of electricity and transportation, excluding air travel and ocean transport. The amount of resources it will take somewhere like India, and maintain their standard of living, doesn't seem possible. I don't think the debates people are having right now are productive or realistic. No matter what, we will eventually run out of non-renewable resources and certainly the climate will change substantially. There are good arguments to be made that we are already past the turn back point. Yet, the lack of realistic discussion about how existing supply chains work and how they are going to scale past the wealthiest countries makes me think the odds of any real solution in the next few decades is nearly non-existent.
    - zamfi 3y ago
      Hmm. I'm having a hard time being sad about bootstrapping renewable energy production capacity using nonrenewable energy. Sure, panels have a finite lifespan -- and then in 2040, if we succeed, all new panels will be built using renewable energy. (In other words, it's a one-time cost, rather than an ongoing cost.) Ethanol and wood pellets can absolutely be produced sustainably and with positive EROEI, so I'm not sure what the connection is here. Yes, they're not amazing from a pollution perspective, but they can be net-zero from an eCO2 perspective. One take here is that capitalism has a lot of flaws, but price action stimulating investment isn't one of them. There are quite a few executives with $$$ in their eyes figuring out how to get the raw materials needed for this transition. Moore's law has lasted us nearly 60 years, a result of a mix of process improvements--old ideas done better--as well as new techniques. Pointing out how our current resource extraction isn't enough to satisfy the world's energy needs in 20 years is a little bit like pointing out that current tech isn't enough to keep Moore's law going. It's not wrong! But it also rests on the assumptions about what's possible that may not be true.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cbsmith 3y ago
It's also that LNG is also a relatively "new tech" that is replacing older tech. As the article mentions, it's only 3% of the world's supply. There's a lot of other reasons not to want natural gas to be expensive. Expensive gas makes coal & oil more attractive. It also feeds Putin's empire. It also encourages more investment in fracking. This is all good news.

INTPenis 3y ago

Fossil fuels are so weird to me. Like any strategy game you play you always get two types of resources, one that is finite and one later that is relatively infinite. And the goal is always to reach the second type of resource ASAP. I guess we're still churning away at that tech tree. ;)

abirch 3y ago
I wish we would do more nuclear fusion until we get fission
- exe34 3y ago
  Yes, more solar is great! But we already have working fission!
  - abirch 3y ago
    We have experimental fusion, but I'm not aware of anything that is in production.
    - delecti 3y ago
      I believe the were glibly referring to the fact that solar is really just remote natural fusion.
      - dieortin 3y ago
        Every energy source except maybe geothermal is remote natural fusion
arccy 3y ago
many strategy games just give you a magic generic pool of resources you can draw from, which isn't the case irl where you have to store, distribute, load shift, etc. to match supply
Inscryption 3y ago

theandrewbailey 3y ago

https://archive.is/Hgm26 https://archive.is/Hgm26

linusg789 3y ago
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/hBkLn https://ghostarchive.org/archive/hBkLn

legitster 3y ago

Wasn't this the plan all along? Even after making an Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore personally advocated for natural gas as a transitional source of energy. Places like Germany built their entire grid off of it. Even though Solar and Wind are exploding at unprecedented levels and they were never, ever going to be able handle all of the global energy needs within the half-century. But we're shutting down coal and no one wants nuclear so gas it is.

teaearlgraycold 3y ago
Correction, I want nuclear. Put it in my back yard, even.
llsf 3y ago
"no one wants nuclear" is not exactly the conclusion of the last COP. Several countries agreed to triple the electricity produced by nuclear. But you are correct, that some EU countries lost their source or natural gas (Nord stream 1 & 2 blowed up in 2022) and cannot transition on a whim and so needs gas (liquefied since all previous pipes are not working).
atombender 3y ago
The appetite for nuclear seems to be underestimated. The UK is spending £30B on two new nuclear power stations currently under construction, and just announced they're hoping to add one more. France is currently building six next-gen reactors. China and India are building an enormous number of new ones.
- cbsmith 3y ago
  Yeah, it's not clear that the appetite has been underestimated. It seems like a lot of the current nuclear projects are developing a source taste.
cptaj 3y ago
Germany is irrationally closing down their completely green nuclear plants and installing gas and coal. I don't think that was the plan. Blackballing nuclear has been the worst environmental decision our society has ever made. We would've solved this problem by now if we had just gone all in on nuclear energy

deviantbit 3y ago

I invested in several wind projects. They've yet to show any returns. I've invested in 27 oil wells. Four of them hit big, and I recovered all of my loses from 23 other wells. I continue to get checks from those 4 wells after years. I will continue to invest in oil and gas. I am not saying I'm not going to invest in solar and wind again, but until I see returns on my investments I've made, I'm not putting a dime more into it. I am not the only one with this position. You don't invest to lose money. They sold investors over the past 15 years their idea that they would make money off this alternative energy, and we're not. The big guys are taking the little guys money, divesting, and leaving us holding the bag of crap. The costs for solar and wind are exorbitant compared to oil and gas. A turbine costs twice what well does, and it takes almost 20 years to recover the investment. People need to understand what is happening, and the reality of alternative investments.

fao_ 3y ago
Right, which is why the UN released a study saying that a shift in economic systems is required if we actually want to put in the work to not murder entire ecosystems.
- mista2nith 3y ago
  My opinion of capitalism is infinitely higher than my opinion of the UN though What they did to Haiti was horrible
- cptaj 3y ago
  Yeah, we require a shift in the system that kneecapped nuclear energy through pointless regulation.
axblount 3y ago
> I've invested in 27 oil wells. > The big guys are taking the little guys money, divesting, and leaving us holding the bag of crap. You're not one of the little guys. You're not the one who's going to be left holding the bag. The real "bag" isn't underperforming investments. It's ecosystem collapse.

canadiantim 3y ago

I don’t think the world is trying to quit fossil fuels so much as it’s trying to reduce carbon emissions and quitting fossil fuels is a means to that end. In that respect, using gas instead of coal is a commendable goal that should be encouraged as big picture it will help reduce carbon emissions.

tommiegannert 3y ago

And my local newspaper today showed off the Dicota "eco-backpack" produced from recycled PET, processed in China before sent to Switzerland. Not sure why the newspaper let them get away with it. Hoping it's ignorance, but that shouldn't be a defence... https://www.hoefner.ch/2024/01/09/oeko-rucksaecke-aus-pfaeffikon-mit-leuchtkraft-in-die-welt/ https://www.hoefner.ch/2024/01/09/oeko-rucksaecke-aus-pfaeff... (German)

AuvreyDillon 3y ago

[dead]