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Elon Musk: 'We Need a Revolt Against the Fossil Fuel Industry' (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla's chief executive Elon Musk has accused politicians of bowing to the "unrelenting and enormous" lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry, warning that a global "revolt" may be needed to accelerate the transition to more sustainable energy and transport systems. Speaking at the World Energy Innovation Forum at the Tesla Factory in California, Musk claimed that traditional vehicles and energy sources will continue to hold a competitive edge against greener alternatives due to the vast amounts of subsidies they receive. The solution to this energy dilemma, Musk says, is to introduce a price on carbon by defining a tax rate on greenhouse gas emissions or the carbon content of fossil fuels. "The fundamental issue with fossil fuels is that every use comes with a subsidy," Musk said. "Every gasoline car on the road has a subsidy, and the right way to address that is with a carbon tax. Politicians take the easy path of providing subsidies to electric vehicles, which aren't equal to the applied subsidies of gasoline vehicles. It weakens the economic forcing function to transition to sustainable transport and energy."
The "massive" subsidies for solar/wind turn out to be small compared to the subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry subsidies are simply invisible because they've been in place so long.
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-foss...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
-1 Stupid.
Wind energy doesn't use rare-earth minerals, it's just a big fan with a motor.
And at least with solar, you only have to dig it up once and make the panel once, and then it produces power for decades. And you can then recycle it afterwards.
With fossil fuel, once you burn it, it's gone, into the atmosphere, and you have to keep digging more out of the ground and burning it.
-1000 Extra stupid for calling someone out when you are actualy wrong. http://www.frontierrareearths....
Carbon tax hurts _you_, the consumer, not companies who are passing their costs to you. It also tends to harm the poorer areas who have less income. People in the Ozarks who rely on coal plants don't have the extra income to tax and pay for replacement power plants.
Shaping society with a hammer does not work, it has never worked. Carbon tax is a huge hammer. The working alternative is public funding through merit based incremental updates. That method is how we achieved national coverage for railroads, automobiles, etc..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
-1 Stupid.
Wind energy doesn't use rare-earth minerals, it's just a big fan with a motor.
And at least with solar, you only have to dig it up once and make the panel once, and then it produces power for decades. And you can then recycle it afterwards.
With fossil fuel, once you burn it, it's gone, into the atmosphere, and you have to keep digging more out of the ground and burning it.
The common applications for rare earth magnets seems to list wind turbines.
This suggests otherwise: http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/s...
Do you have a source?
The other problem if you look at the subsidies that oil companies get they are the same that any other company get. Tax deductions for research, forgien tax credits and standard costs of business that any mom and pop business also gets as a subsidy.
Everyone knows the reason for Gulfwar I and Gulfwar II was oil. We ignore every other tiny nation on earth that's doing horrific things to their citizens but we got involved in Iraq because oil.
And that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.
And that doesn't even begin to cover the ongoing trillions of dollars for ships and bases in places we wouldn't care about if not for oil.
Oil's subsidies are so deeply embedded into the u.s. military that we think of them as national security interests instead of as the subsidies they are.
We wouldn't even need them if we invested in solar, batteries, wind and a fleet of electric vehicles.
If 10% of the U.S. fleet were electric vehicles, the value and price of oil would collapse to under $30 and stay there. And as a "commodity" it would lose it's geopolitical value. And the u.s. would be able to greatly reduce the urge to be involved with large parts of the globe.
It would also cripple a factory for terrorists who want to kill us and put a severe crimp in Putin's military aspirations.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I agree with Musk that we need to move away from fossil fuels, but gasoline vehicles have a net tax, not a subsidy. Going through the first page of Google hits, the biggest figure for oil industry subsidies in the U.S. I can find is $37.5 billion/yr. (Note that the dollar amount of a tax exemption or a deduction is not equal to the subsidy dollar amount.)
The U.S. uses about 140 billion gallons of gasoline each year. So even if you assumed the entirety of that subsidy were on gasoline (less than half of a barrel of oil becomes gasoline), that works out to a subsidy of just 26.8 cents per gallon.
The average fuel tax on gasoline in the U.S. is 48.7 cents/gallon. So gasoline has a net tax on it - it is taxed more than the subsidy it receives.
The difference is even starker in other OECD countries, where gasoline is taxed to the tune of several dollars a gallon. We are addicted to gasoline and fossil fuels because the easy access to energy acts as a multiplier for our productivity, allowing us to increase our standard of living relatively cheaply (in terms of financial cost). Even with the net tax, we are still addicted to it. So even if all the complaining about oil subsidies works and they're completely rescinded, it won't make a dent in our oil consumption. The price of gasoline has fluctuated more this year due to market forces, than the above calculated subsidy amount.
Problem with cost per megawatt is that it ignores all the externalised costs. Healthcare to deal with the effects of pollution is expensive and very long term. How do you value all the energy saved having to vacuum homes or replace filters less often?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You make an assertion with no proof whatsoever
There are many studies of bird deaths from windmills, including this meta-study. Windmills kill a few hundred thousand birds a year. Very few of those are from endangered species. By comparison, several BILLION are killed by domestic cats, and many millions die from collisions with buildings.
Objecting to windmills because they "kill birds" is idiotic, and even the people that raise that issue don't really believe it is valid. They just aren't bright enough to think of a more rational objection.
These are all subsidies that have been around for a long, long time. I don't think anyone is saying they were a bad idea at the time - there is a public good aspect here - but if the same service (personal transportation) can be delivered differently, do we really need to keep subsidizing oil and gas?
It should at least be discussed. I know having an adult conversation is hard for someone who uses phrases like "looney left" but try. Or , just be quiet and let the grown ups handle this one.
By "subsidies", you apparently mean normal business expense deductions that ALL businesses get.
No. Do a quick internet search for "oil tax credit" and learn something new. If you're too lazy for that, try this article: http://www.investopedia.com/ar... If you're too lazy for that, understand that you're incorrect, and there are specific tax benefits that are given to oil investments.
you can make generators which do not have permanent magnets.
The reason rare earth permanent magnets are popular in wind generators, especially small ones, is that electromagnets continuously burn power to make the field, and this comes out of the power you generate.
Further: The slower the machine turns, the less energy you get from it (by a CUBE function!) and the more field you need (by a linear function in strength and a SQUARE function in consumed energy) to get it to generate a given output voltage. Small machines generally have to generate a higher voltage than an associated battery pack to achieve "cut in" - or use a voltage converter (which is more to fail, has losses, and has losses that are a higher percentage when the input voltage is lower). So when wind is slow, and you're already hard up for power, electromagnets are at their worst. This raises the cut in wind speed and greatly reduces the utility of small machines.
With permanent magnets you pay the magnetizing power once, for nanoseconds, as you manufacture them. No ongoing power cost, so you can use every bit of your generated power for your load.
Rare earth magnets are preferred to other types because they're stronger - strong enough to easily saturate flux-guide silicon-steel winding cores, strong enough to keep the machine small, which means the coils are small and have less resistive losses than a larger arrangement. Again, more power at low speed - which translates to a smaller, lighter, less expensive machine.
A big industrial machine is big enough to have a gearbox and spin fast enough that it can get away with using electromagnets. Nevertheless, permanent magnets, or a mix, also gives energy efficiency advantages to the big mills.
The REAL measure of efficiency for a wind machine, though, is power generated / cost of equipment, maintenance, and site. When your fuel is free the economics doesn't work the way most people are used to thinking.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way