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Renewables Will Be World's Main Power Source By 2040, Says BP (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: In a not-too-distant future, renewable energy becomes the world's biggest source of power generation. A quarter of the distances that humans travel by vehicle will be in electric cars. U.S. dominance in the oil market begins to wane, and OPEC's influence is resurgent, as crude demand finally peaks. That is the vision laid out by British oil and gas giant BP on Thursday in its latest Annual Energy Outlook. The closely followed report lays out a vision through 2040 for Earth's energy future, provided government policy, technology and consumer preferences evolve in line with recent trends. BP forecasts that the world's energy demand will grow by a third through 2040, driven by rising consumption in China, India and other parts of Asia. About 75 percent of that increase will come from the need to power industry and buildings. At the same time, energy demand will continue to grow in the transportation sector, but that growth will slow sharply as vehicles become more efficient and more consumers opt for electric cars. But despite the increase in supply, BP thinks two-thirds of the world's population will still live in places with relatively low energy consumption per head. The takeaway: The world will need to generate more energy. The report says natural gas consumption will grow by 50 percent over the next 20 years, increasing in virtually every corner of the globe. "Throughout most of that time, the world will continue to consume more oil year after year, until demand ultimately peaks around 108 million barrels per day in the 2030s," reports CNBC. "This year, OPEC expects global oil demand to reach 100 million bpd."
Meanwhile, coal consumption is forecasted to flatline, as China and developed countries quit the fossil fuel in favor of cleaner-burning and renewable energy sources. "However, BP sees India and other Asian nations burning more coal to meet surging power demand as the nations become more prosperous," reports CNBC.
Meanwhile, coal consumption is forecasted to flatline, as China and developed countries quit the fossil fuel in favor of cleaner-burning and renewable energy sources. "However, BP sees India and other Asian nations burning more coal to meet surging power demand as the nations become more prosperous," reports CNBC.
Clearly these folks and their ideas are funded by the oil industry.
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What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly - Richard Bach
They have a chance from building third and fourth generation nuclear rather than letting their fear of nuclear power compel them to run second generation power plants well beyond their designed lifespan. The Fukushima nuclear power plant was built before Chernobyl. Even though they did upgrades to improve safety they still had to deal with 1960s technology and all the hazards that came with it. Build something new by learning from 60 years of mistakes and you will get something exceedingly safe.
Japan learned from their mistakes. Or so it seems. They are finally starting to build new nuclear after this, they tried doing without nuclear and that was not sustainable. They were losing big on their economy and their air quality. They also won't be building nuclear power plants based on 60 year old designs.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Solar IS fusion. We're directly harvesting the results of a fusion reaction happening 1AU away.
Oil IS fusion. Ancient plants were directly harvesting the results of a fusion reaction happening 1AU away. :P
"The basics of chemical storage of energy means that no battery can ever be as energy dense as gasoline"
Molten-air batteries of iron, carbon and vanadium boride have impressive numbers
https://phys.org/news/2013-09-...
watt-hrs per kg are 1400, 8900 and 5300 while the per liter numbers are 10k, 19k and 27k
Gasoline is 12,200 watt-hrs per kg and 9700 per liter. Gasoline's significant per-kg advantage is diminished by it being consumed during use. Of course there are many hurdles to overcome for molten-air batteries so they won't be commercially available any time soon.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Thank goodness you pointed out the importance of solving range, charging station availability and time-to-charge as issues. It's definitely the first time those issues have been flagged in relation to EVs, which is why range, charging station availability and time-to-charge have all remained static for the past decade.
Actually once renewables exceed about 20% of the mix the requirement for backup starts to fall. Geographic distribution and high levels of predictability, combined with a distributed nature that means a single failure only takes out tens of megawatts instead of a gigawatt or two all make renewables more reliable, not less.
Battery tech is going to make peaking plants unprofitable in the next decade or two max. Gas and other types of peak coverage can't react fast enough to compete with batteries. Environmental considerations don't even come into it. Best of all it allows individual energy users to buy their own batteries and avoid those high peak rates completely. Industrial users will level out their consumption, domestic users will charge up when it's cheapest and their solar isn't providing enough during the day.
Any plan based on the old economics of base load and peak demand is going to fail. The nature of the grid and energy consumption is changing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And when you burn gasoline in a real-world engine only about 1/5th of the energy makes it to the wheels. Bulk energy storage is only part of the story; what matters in the end is how much useful work you can do with the energy you're able to store. If you can use the energy more efficiently, you can do the same work with less.
The "hydrocarbon advantage" isn't as large as you might think, because the relative efficiencies of gasoline vs chemical battery goes a LONG way to close the gap.
=Smidge=
Actually, most of the "heavy" infrastructure for delivery of charging stations pretty much exists already. Tends to be that you can access electricity anywhere you can access petroleum. Might need to beef it up a bit, but we don't have to do this overnight.
The fact that there are now literally millions electric cars out there in the US shows that the infrastructure is there. People don't buy cars they can't move around in.
There are now more electric vehicles in the US that there were iPhones in the world in 2007!