The idea that “old” hydrocarbon
technologies are about to be
displaced by clean-tech energy
is a fantasy, like the Trump
Russian Collusion Delusion !
As Bill Gates has put it,
the challenge calls for
scientific “miracles.”
As usual, leftists think the
"answer" is more government
regulations, and subsidies.
Based on their
convoluted "logic",
and lack of knowledge
about history:
-- Subsidizing railroads
would have resulted
in automobiles.
-- Subsidizing vacuum tubes,
would have resulted
in transistors.
-- Subsidizing dial-up phones,
would have resulted
in the internet.
There has already been
an "energy revolution"
in the US:
Over the past decade,
U.S. production of oil
and natural gas increased
by 2,000% more than the
combined growth of
( subsidized ) wind and solar.
Shale technology and horizontal
drilling have transformed
the US energy industry.
LEFTISTS CONFUSE
THE VIRTUAL WORLD
WITH THE REAL WORLD
Today’s smart phones
are cheaper and more powerful
than a room-size IBM
mainframe computer from 1980.
Engineers collapsed
the energy appetite
of transistors and
their size
-- computing power
per energy unit
doubled five times
per decade.
A single iPhone
at 1980 energy efficiency,
would require as much power
as a Manhattan office building.
A single data center
at 1980 energy efficiency,
would require as much power
as the entire U.S. electric grid.
Thanks to efficiency gains,
the world today has billions
of smart phones, and thousands
of data centers.
A similar transformation
in how energy is produced
is impossible.
Computers are logic engines
that don’t produce physical action
or energy; they manipulate
the numbers one and zero:
-- a binary switch—on or off.
But the energy needed
to move people, heat steel,
or grow food is determined
by laws of gravity, inertia,
friction, and thermodynamics.
Differences between
the physical world and
the virtual world are huge.
In the virtual world, information
can be “compressed” to reduce
the energy needed to transport
that information.
Humans and other
objects with mass
can't be “compressed”.
WISHFUL THINKING
ABOUT RENEWABLES
Throughout history,
between 50% to 90%
of every nation’s economy
has been consumed
by food and fuel costs.
Coal, oil, and natural gas
drove down the share of GDP
devoted to food and fuel,
to around 10%.
Climate activists claim
“clean energy”
from wind turbines,
solar arrays, and batteries,
is about to become
incredibly cheap, creating
“new energy economy.”
Over three out of four
Americans believe the US
is “capable of creating
a new electricity system.”
The International
Monetary Fund
recently said,
“Smartphone substitution
seemed no more imminent
in the early 2000s
than large-scale
energy substitution
seems today.”
Meanwhile, wind and solar
supply just 2% of
global energy, despite
hundreds of billions
of dollars in subsidies.
REAL PHYSICS VERSUS
THE LEFTIST FANTASY
OF RENEWABLE ENERGY:
Spending $1 million
on wind or solar
hardware will yield about
50 million kilowatt-hours
of electricity over
a 30-year period.
The same money spent
on a shale well yields enough
natural gas over 30 years
to produce 300 million
kilowatt-hours
-- six times as much !
Subsidies can’t change
the huge difference
in the energy densities
of hydrocarbons ( high )
vs. solar and wind ( low ).
Batteries are promoted,
as the way to convert
wind or solar into useable
on-demand power.
Rather than thinking about
the impossible goal of
battery backup
for a whole nation.
let's think about storing energy
for a cargo ship or airplane.
The maximum potential
energy contained in
hydrocarbon molecules
is about 1,500% greater,
pound for pound, than the
maximum theoretical
lithium chemistries.
That’s why the cost
to store a unit of energy
in a battery, is 200 times more
expensive than storing
the same amount of energy,
in the form of natural gas.
Today it would take
$60 million of Tesla batteries—
weighing five times as much
as the entire airplane
—to hold the same energy
normally held in a transatlantic
plane’s onboard fuel tanks.
Florida Power & Light
recently announced
a plan to replace
an old gas-fired
power station
with the world’s
biggest battery
project.
It's promised to be
four times bigger
than the current largest
battery system Tesla installed
last year in South Australia.
The monster battery “farm”
will be able to store just
two minutes of Florida’s
electricity needs.
What a waste of money !
It also takes a huge amount
of energy to manufacture
batteries !
It takes the energy equivalent
of about 100 barrels of oil
to manufacture a battery
that can store the energy
in one barrel of oil.
Batteries manufactured in China
( most are) are being made with
electricity from a predominantly
coal-powered grid, resulting in more
carbon-dioxide emissions
than those batteries, coupled
with wind/solar, can eliminate.
Wind turbines, solar cells,
and batteries will get better.
So will drilling rigs and
combustion engines.