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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 lo

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.

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.