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Fossil Fuels Could Be Phased Out Worldwide In a Decade, Says Study (phys.org)
James Hakner, writing for Phys.org: The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank in the UK. Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, believes that the next great energy revolution could take place in a fraction of the time of major changes in the past. But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns. And that effort must learn from the trials and tribulations from previous energy systems and technology transitions. In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture. Moving from wood to coal in Europe, for example, took between 96 and 160 years, whereas electricity took 47 to 69 years to enter into mainstream use. But this time the future could be different, he says -- the scarcity of resources, the threat of climate change and vastly improved technological learning and innovation could greatly accelerate a global shift to a cleaner energy future.There's no doubt that we will soon reach a point wherein solar and wind will be readily available and feasible to the vast majority but, the decade timeframe feels like a stretch. We must acknowledge the financial and political challenges that we face today. Private and government-backed companies have invested billions of dollars into plants that turn fossil fuels into electricity. Ditching these plants means losing a lot of capital and owing investors with plenty of explanations. There are several forces at play here.
Things are unstable enough as it is in that territory. Matters could get a lot worse if they lose their only major source of income.
Pile on a few more conditions and you realize this is just wishful thinking. Some "think tank". Alternative energy is growing. And this is a good thing. But oil was still viable at $150/bbl. Don't think that at $40/bbl people are going to drop it. I think we're currently at or just past peak oil. Peak oil is not where oil is scarce - peak oil is where there is so much oil available that we are literally drowning in oil. Which is why we're hearing about oil gluts, and seeing plummeting oil prices.
Yes, economic slowdown in the US and China has something to do with that too. But currently we are running flat out pumping up oil from tar sands, from the bottom of the oceans at scary depths, and even shale oil from coal and barely treading water, barely producing oversupply. Once the economic slowdown reverses and demand picks up again, these gluts are going to disappear, but production will not pick up as quickly. It can't. All the "easy" oil has already been drilled. Fossil fuels will be not be phased out, there just won't be anymore. But it's going to take a lot more than a decade.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I haven't even read the study and can tell you the title conclusion is completely ridiculous, bordering on bad click-bait.There exists over 1 Billion cars in the world. Unless the governments of all countries in the world both fully subsidize AND legally mandate people to switch to electric cars AND build global infrastructure to support 1 Billion electrical cars, then it ain't gonna happen. Simple as that, end of story.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
The author of the paper, Professor Benjamin Sovacool, is Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex. Confusingly, the University also describes him as "Professor of Energy Policy (SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit)". A brief search of the University of Sussex, University of Aarhus, and Wikipedia Web sites reveals that he has published a vast number of papers, given many, many talks and seminars, published books, received grants, and has a PhD in 'science and technology studies from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, where he won the “Outstanding Dissertation of the Year” award from the College of Social Sciences and Humanities'.
Nowhere, however, can I find any information about Professor Sovacool's undergraduate degree discipline. From his published biographical details, he seems to have popped into existence at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University where he received his PhD - awarded, be it noted, by "the College of Social Sciences and Humanities".
Until I learn to the contrary, therefore, I am assuming that Professor Sovacool is essentially a social science specialist who has ventured - very boldly indeed - into the topical, not to say fashionable, world of climate change, global warming, and general greenness. TFA tells us that, "In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture".
"Energy Research & Social Science". Hmmmmmmm. Professor Sovacool advances undeniably compelling (if not very scientific) arguments, such as this:
"Moving from wood to coal in Europe, for example, took between 96 and 160 years, whereas electricity took 47 to 69 years to enter into mainstream use... Ontario completed a shift away from coal between 2003 and 2014; a major household energy programme in Indonesia took just three years to move two-thirds of the population from kerosene stoves to LPG stoves; and France's nuclear power programme saw supply rocket from four per cent of the electricity supply market in 1970 to 40 per cent in 1982".
Well, there you have it. Clearly that evidence leaves no possible doubt that "[t]he worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade". To the satisfaction of any social science professor, anyway.
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-f...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
You might argue that it would solve their problems.
If there was no demand for their product, the major world powers wouldn't quit injecting themselves into their affairs. With no income, they couldn't buy weapons. Without weapons, their ability to wage large-scale wars would drop off.
The whole place might not be nice, but it would probably settle back to a patchwork of tribal areas generally stable because there was no means of consolidating power or enforcing minority governance.
If renewables are cheaper, they're going to get built.
Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult - perhaps even impossible - to say what is cheaper. Government regulations and subsidies have so muddied the water that vast fortunes can now be made out of selling power that is generated less cheaply and efficently than it could be by other means.
But that is just one extreme example of how government regulation and subsidy distorts everything. It's very ironic that the governments that boast most loudly about their wonderful free-enterprise, free-market capitalist economies are the same governments that control interest rates - the fundamental price which controls all other prices. Every time a government passes a law, crates a regulation or offers a subsidy, it distorts the economy and prevents the existence of a free market.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
We can't run the whole world on nuclear because we don't trust much of the world to have it. Do you want Iran to build enough reactors to meet its energy needs? And Palestine? North Korea?
Also, how are you going to get every country up to scratch on nuclear safety and security? Even if they don't use it for weapons, can they run it without serious accidents indefinitely?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes, we'll just replace EVERY car, truck, bus, motorcycle, and every other existing conveyance that uses an internal combustion engine. No PROBLEM!
That's what I thought at first too, but the paper is talking about generating electricity, not transportation.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns.
Uhh, that isn't a minor speed bump, that is Olympus Mons on Mars sized speed bump...
To actually do it would require that we actually buy up and destroy most of the gas powered cars on the roads, since more than half of them are used longer than 10 years.
We'd have to shut down and destroy trillions of dollars worth of industry around the world, from oil refineries to coking coal plants that make steel, to natural gas powered appliances, etc. (in my home along, my water is heated, my food is cooked, and my home is heated with natural gas, it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace all that with electric).
We would somehow have to get all the nations of the world on the same page. You know, the same ones that are at war right now, declared and undeclared, the ones that fly jets 30 feet over our warships, the ones wanting to expand ISIS, and the ones building islands in the South China sea.
If you wanted to avoid nuclear, you'd also somehow have to build an international power grid and allow nations to become dependent on other counties for power. That may work for Denmark and Sweden, but do you really think South and North Korea are going to get along? How about the US and Mexico? Israel and everyone else...
---
The "think tank" either just wants money to write more pointless "reports", or they are smoking crack... Both are sad...
All of the fast changes of electrical supply cited in the article were moves from one baseload source to another. But if you want to move from baseload to renewables (other than the lone baseload renewable, hydro) we will need a new grid. The envisioned upgrade, "Smart Grid" would be able to match fluctuating supplies with continually monitored and controlled loads. Yes, you will have to give your utility power to continually monitor your electrical demand and be able to switch your major appliances on and off to match the changing supply of sun and wind. Changing over to this grid will cost a few teradollars.
The very first small step in upgrading to Smart Grid is Smart Meter, the first generation of which continually monitors load for each user, but does not have the control component. In my town the hippie moms have already protested away Smart Meter on grounds that they "emit radiation" by which they mean use cellular data chips to send their readings to the utility. So around here anyway, the flat-earth lobby has already eaten its own proposed solution.
We have have 3 major nuclear incidents in none of them have millions died. There is a lot of hype and fud, coal kills people ever year it puts more radioactive material into the air etc etc etc and has not killed us all of yet. Look at the ecological devastation of making solar panels, sure you can do it clean but dirty is cheaper.
Proliferation is an issue, newer designs deal with it pretty well, hell some designs allow for commercial production with marginally more than uranium ore.
No sir I dont like it.
Things are unstable enough as it is in that territory. Matters could get a lot worse if they lose their only major source of income.
The Middle East is unstable because of the oil wealth. Most terrorism comes from the wealthiest ME countries, not the poorest. If a government gets most of its wealth from oil, it has little need to be concerned about the welfare or aspirations of the people, other than to just keep them under control. So you get a corrupt and repressive elite, and seething resentment from the population. Saudi Arabia is the worst case, and has bred the most terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, and 15/19 of the 911 hijackers.
Man, I wouldn't admit publicly on slashdot that math is hard. Just saying.
No, he is right...
The US Government pays 2.7 cents per KWh to wind producers for each KWh sold.
That is why sometimes Texas Wind Farms give away their power, and have at times, paid people to take it, because of government money.
There are other incentives and tax credits beyond that. Texas makes 9% of its power from Wind. That is largely because of government money, not because Wind is cheap.
The recent price crash of oil was caused by a supply glut of 2 million barrels per day. According the the studies referenced here, if electric vehicle growth continues at the rate we have seen in recent years, electric vehicles will in and of themselves create their own oil demand glut of 2 million barrels by 2023. I wouldn't want to own oil stocks when that happens.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
With no income ...
what little economies they do have will collapse and that huge population of unemployed young people will go somewhere, bringing their Wahhabism with them.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
At a level of global cooperation never before achieved by the human race, on a project vastly more expensive than any project previously undertaken by any nation state (or supranational governing body) humanity could achieve X in Y years for Z dollars—where the precise value of X is pretty much irrelevant, since it surely won't happen in less than Y*3 years and Z*10 dollars, in the unlikely event it happens at all.
What Coke promised: "I'd like to teach the world to sing".
What Coke delivered: global BMI inflation & Texas-sized land yachts.
Enter the carbon tax. Price emissions for their actual costs they incur. You know, the free market solution.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"We have have 3 major nuclear incidents in none of them have millions died."
So why aren't they able to get any insurance company to cover them?
An EV powered by coal emits less pollution than an oil powered car. Plus, as more renewables come online, the EV becomes more efficient.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Rolling Stone, of all places, had an excellent analysis of the rather simple and brutal math behind such a transition. Simply put, there are about thirty trillion (ie, 10^12) US Dollars worth of hydrocarbons in the ground. Those hydrocarbons count as assets on the balance sheets of the richest companies on earth. Avoiding a 2-degree C global average temperature increase requires leaving about $20T of those reserves in the ground, forever. That is, you would have to get the richest companies in the world, all together, to write off a loss five times the size of the one that triggered the subprime mortgage implosion in 2008.
The scary thing is, in the long run, that's the cheaper alternative.
Not actually renewables, they will build 40 nuclear reactors within the next five years.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Unless there was an unused nuke plant just sitting around doing nothing (or a new plant was brought online), where did that replacement capacity come from?
Wow, if only there were a global search engine brimming with information, waiting for you to type in a query. I'll bet you could find the answer to that, if such a thing existed.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This demonstrates a POSSIBLE answer. Right now we don't think the situation is anywhere near bad enough to warrant the major problems caused by the proposed solution.
Far more likely is the complete removal of all coal plants, replaced by green technology. Combine that with a cessation of building fossil fuel burning cars, and you have a major shift.
While not as good as the possible solution from the actual post, this is a far more likely one, and would still surprise most people. The benefits would take a while to appear, but they would be real.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
[coal] is still the dominant energy source in the US
Natural gas surpasses coal for electricity generation, July 2015
Now just for a month, but coal has been declining in it's percentage.
in 2010 coal was 50%. Dropping to 30% in just 5 years? that's not a 'dominant' player, that's a dead albatross on it's way down.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
Coal WILL cause climate change and massive upheaval. Nuclear *might* when something goes wrong.
That doesn't make nuclear a GOOD choice by any measure, but it may be the only one we can deal with for the moment.
What's your solution?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I question that thesis.
These countries have by and large been economic backwaters forever and its required basically a state of war and anarchy in Syria for several years to kick off a major wave of migration. End the fighting and you end most of the migration. The oil economies of most of these countries don't do a lot to help the man in the street anyway, they largely depend on general internal economic activity for subsistence.
Plus you have to figure that the Europeans won't tolerate much more migration as it stands. They already agreed to let Erdogan run a fascist dictatorship in exchange for letting them repatriate people who leave from there. A lot of central European countries have unilaterally closed their borders and fenced them off, any significant increase in migration will result in political changes that endorse not just closed borders, but the use of deadly force to keep people out, forced repatriation and so on.
You clearly don't know anything about subsidies. Look it up; they're not nearly as big and bad as you imagine.
They are a drop in the bucket compared to the economy, and aren't really big enough to affect prices the way you think.
Enter the carbon tax. Price emissions for their actual costs they incur. You know, the free market solution.
A couple things.
First, government-imposed "social engineering" taxes such as a carbon tax are anything *but* "free market" and are nearly polar opposites.
Second, such a tax would impact lower-income people hugely more than wealthier people both directly and through increases in their cost of living. The "1-percenters" won't hardly notice, but lower income people will pay a much larger percentage of their income, drastically affecting their ability to house, clothe, feed, and prevent themselves from freezing to death in winter and dying from heat in summer.
Why do you hate lower-income people struggling to survive?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Millions of elderly people die from city smog every year. Their old lungs can't take the dirty air and they get pneumonia, fluid build up, and die.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The space shuttle was considered pretty safe...until the Columbia disaster happened pointed out it's massive design flaw.
False. The space shuttle was considered quite dangerous, with a 1 in 100 chance of failure originally estimated. When you fly hundreds of missions, a mission failure was likely. It is true that later the chances were revised to even higher a higher chance, but by no means was the shuttle ever considered safe.
China's coal use has declined for the past several years. This is a deliberate policy.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
What? No. Fissionable elements are only produced in appreciable amounts in supernovae, where they store only an infinitesimal fraction of the energy released, and we're pretty much stuck with the amount that was originally incorporated into the Earth's mass at conception(minus decay losses, plus the occasional tiny layer deposited by nearby supernovae). All the easily-fissionable elements in the Earth's crust (thorium, uranium, etc.) combined would provide only a few centuries to, at most, a few millenia of power at current energy consumption levels. (Uranium alone would only provide power for a few decades with current technology) After that there's no more fuel (yes, we could perhaps learn to mine the planet's molten core, as well as the rest of the solar system, but still, once used up, it's gone)
Fusion is no more renewable in principle, but there's many orders of magnitude more fusion fuel available - somewhere north of 99% of the mass of our entire solar system for starters, though somewhat dramatically less on Earth itself. Still at least a few orders of magnitude more total energy worth available planetside though.
And yes, most energy sources do ultimately originate from fusion, tidal, aka gravitational, being the exception (orbiting masses would presumably still exist even if fusion were impossible in our universe) , but the question for renewabilty is whether a power source can be depleted by usage. Biofuels, wind, or other forms of solar power cannot - the energy they harness is being released regardless of our usage rate, the only question is whether or not we choose to harness it. It's unlikely that anything we can do will have an appreciable effect on the rate of energy being consumed by our sun, at least not unless/until we discover some new laws of physics, or manage to harness an substantial fraction of its total output.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You are confusing the rate in a small sample with the probability of an event.
One in 100 chance does not mean there will be exactly one accident in 100 events. There might be zero; there might be ten. Might happen on launch one; might happen on launch 100; might not happen at all; might happen on launches 40 through 60 (though I agree this would be disturbing... ;)
What it actually means is that over a long series of events taken in groups of 100, the average rate of problems is expected to work out to one in 100. A sample of 135 with two events in no way contradicts the expectation.
For instance, I can tell you, and you are probably aware, that a fair coin flip has a 50% probability of heads.
However, it would not be in the least bit (hah!) unusual to see heads, heads, tails, heads in the first four flips. Approaching it the way you do, though, you'd be saying that such a result shows a 75% probability that the operation results in heads. Which is wrong. The observed rate for a sample of four was h-h-t-h. The probability remains at 1:2 and is in no way contradicted by the h-h-t-h result. Or a t-t-h-t result, or an h-t-h-h result. Etc.
1:2 does NOT means that one of two or two of four will be heads. It just means that in a long sequence, it's predicted (correctly, as it happens, if the circumstances are otherwise unbiased) settle out to that.
Which is not to say that those generally ignorant of how probability actually works won't set their expectations incorrectly; of course they will. That's why we have lotteries, McDonald's "Monopoly", and a good deal of the businesses in Las Vegas.
But I assure you, when the probability of a shuttle accident was assessed at 1:100, the people doing so did understand what they were doing, and what that prediction means. It is hardly their fault, or NASA's, when an individual doesn't understand what they've been told. That's more down to a failure to learn on the part of the individual. Also, I absolutely guarantee you that each and every astronaut and passenger that went up in the shuttle knew these facts perfectly well.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No. They don't. To recap:
Tossing a coin 4x and getting heads-heads-tails-heads does NOT show other than 2:1
AND:
Launching the shuttle 135 times and getting two fails does NOT show other than 1:100
Same EXACT issue: Nowhere near enough sample runs to demonstrate empirically that the calculated odds for one sample are wrong.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
But we ARE drowning in oil. When they're talking about renting oil tankers just to store the stuff, there's a lot of unused oil. Therefore production currently far exceeds demand - but not because production has or can increase - because demand has slacked off. Slightly. China by 1%. The US by 2%. Every country in the world that HAS oil is trying to produce that oil. Refineries around the world are working at full capacity. Saudi Arabia has not slacked off production and is almost at full capacity. Never has oil been sucked out of the ground at a higher rate than today. And it's barely enough. Even if oil demand doesn't grow in the next year or so through industrial demand, it will grow through population increase.
China alone adds the population of Australia to the world every single year. All of them will need food, heat, light, transport, etc - even when the economy is in the tank. And when you talk about the Chinese economy being in the tank, it's still growing at 6% per year. That means the Chinese economy doubles in size in 12 years. It is currently tied with the US for the largest. In 12 years it will be twice the size of the US. Imagine every chinaman wanting and more importantly being able to afford a new car. How much oil are they going to want? US currently guzzles 20 million barrels a day. What happens when China ALSO wants 20 million barrels a day? They currently consume 11 and are growing at 4.3% per year. In 16 years, China will want 22 million bbl a day. Do you see world production of oil DOUBLING in 16 years? I don't. Peak oil is right now.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You should try thinking with your brain, not your gut. In end,what comes out of your gut is just crap.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
There is no nice way to say this so I'm going to just come out and say it. You're an idiot.
Have you ever been to Somalia? No? I didn't think so. I have. In fact, I spent almost six weeks there. If there's one thing Somalia has, it's an overabundance of government. Yes, you read that right. No, I'm not wrong. You could even say that they're probably more strictly regulated than most other countries on the planet.
Why idiots keep repeating this, why idiots thing Libertarians are against government, is beyond me - but, they're idiots. There's no way to apply logic and figure out why it is that they do and think the stupid things they do.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
And to weaken the United States shale oil production. Isn't it funny how they waited until so much money was invested before undercutting shale oil to less than the cost of production. Shale oil costs a LOT more to extract than the oil the Iranians are producing. The USA is getting hurt a lot more by this than Iran and Russia.
What makes the oil, gas, and coal industries possible is permitting them to ignore externalities. If you had to put the hill back to being nice after mining coal, and you had to fix all the CO2 emitted, and also somehow put all the radioactive isotopes back in the ground, and actually build refineries such that they don't occasionally^Wregularly emit deadly toxic clouds forcing evacuations (that is, build them to the same standard as chip fabs) and clean up 100% of the oil spilled and so on and so forth, none of those industries would even exist, at least not in their current forms. The oil industry would be focused on plastics, which would cost more. We'd use more composites as a result, with natural fibers perhaps. Coal just would be over. It wouldn't even be a thing. Natgas would exist, but we wouldn't be fracking, and they wouldn't be storing it in leaky underground caverns.
Permitting an industry to ignore externalities is a kind of subsidy being paid in natural capital which, in theory, belongs to all of us.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"