[TinyRick]

> public opinion would still make it palatable to continue hydrocarbon fuels extraction for another 2 to 3 decades

I don't think it's public opinion so much as it is necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades. Renewable energy is still a relatively small fraction of overall energy use, and net global oil consumption has been steadily increasing the past few years (likely to surpass pre-covid levels this year). Our society is still very much addicted to hydrocarbons.

[ff317]

I think we'll never stop extracting oil in the foreseeable future, we'll just be doing a lot less of it. There will always be corner cases where diesel or other oil derivatives (or NG) are the /only/ reasonable option for fuel.

Think generators for an antarctic station that can only use solar in certain months and wind isn't enough (or reliable enough)). Even if efficient electric commercial aviation at scale ever happens, you can bet military jets will still need jet fuel. I'm sure there's many others. Methane for rocket launches?

On top of fuel, there's also the use of some fraction of oil in industrial chemical processes to make lubricants and plastics. There may be other chemical processes that can do it without oil, but they may be too costly (in terms of other extractive processes for ingredients, or in terms of yield, not just energy).

[saalweachter]

The US military uses about 5% of the oil used in the US.

That's a lot, but if we only used oil in the US for the military, we'd still be using 95% less oil, and we'd also still be producing enough oil to have an economy of scale.

In any case, realistically speaking, we aren't coming for oil tomorrow. Instead, we need to come for coal immediately. If it takes us decades each time we cut our oil consumption in half, that's one thing... but the coal, that needs to stop sooner.

[wholien]

someone needs to tell China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Zimbabwe

> China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Zimbabwe were the only countries that both added new coal plants and announced new projects. China accounted for 92% of all new coal project announcements.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/coal-burning-capacity-cli...

[lukeschlather]

Electricity is probably going to be an order of magnitude (or more) cheaper in 20 years, at least for bulk purchase in most fixed locations (not Antarctic winter.) The assumption that oil extraction is worthwhile is based on it being the cheapest way to get a unit of power. But if power is 1/10th what it costs now it is economical to do some process that has absurdly bad efficiency (10:1, even 100:1) to translate power into fuel that works in jets. That might just be making conventional jet fuel. But I doubt we will be extracting it from the ground.

[trashtester]

I don't see any way electricity could fall anywhere near that much in 20 years. For that to happen, we either need a revolutionary decrease in the price of nuclear power, a radical improvement in the price of dependable renewable energy (probably involving a lot of batteries) or some hard AI takeoff that makes EVERYTHING cheaper.

Keep in mind that most countries are trying to electrify most parts of the economy, so we not only need to decarbonize the current electrical supply, but possibly 2-3 times that, if we are to replace NG for heating, steel and chemical industries, fertilizers and so on.

Keep in mind that even if the technology for producing windmills and batteries go down a lot, we still need a lot of new mining capacity to even have enough raw materials to produce those items. That alone could take 10-15 years to build out.

[marcosdumay]

It's actually very likely.

As long as you only consume it while the Sun is shinning, at the place of generation. This set of restrictions is allowing enough for a surprisingly large set of industrial applications (anything where energy costs are larger than capital ones).

In fact, we are not far from that. Solar is already a few times cheaper than the grid energy on those conditions.

[trashtester]

My post was that electricity prices would come back by a factor of 10 or more. While that was qualified by "not Antarctic winter", it did not say that it would be only while the sun was shining, either.

That was what I objected to.

And if the average price falls by 90%, there number of industrial application where it would make sense to consume only part of the day, drops by a lot.

[vel0city]

How do you see electricity getting 10x cheaper in 20 years? It sounds like people saying fission electricity would be too cheap to meter, and yet its some of the most expensive electricity we have in the US.

[dietr1ch]

tbf, I think that most new technology has been the most expensive and impractical thing ever around its inception.

[datavirtue]

Yeah, just seeing the axle grease requirements and inventory on an aircraft carrier is a wakeup call. Our military is 110% reliant on oil to even function at all. The economic scale of consumer oil consumption and the petro-dollar are a key military concern to enable warfighting ability. When that sinks in, Iraq and Afghanistan make a lot more sense.

[kjkjadksj]

The US has plenty of oil and didnt need to go to those places to get more of it. We destroyed Iraqs oil pipelines and infrastructure in that war and a lot of it still is in need of investment in reconstruction today. Likewise Afghan oil production is a recent thing like in the last 10 years, and today the taliban government sells those mineral and oil extraction rights to chinese companies. If the goal was to get at those resources for American companies, we clearly failed. It seems China’s belt and road imperialism works better than our bomb the civilians and overthrow the government for a puppet method.

[bryanlarsen]

Global hydrocarbon consumption is down on a per capita basis. And that's despite the fact that renewable energy and electric vehicles had a negligible share. It's only the last year or two that renewable energy's share has become non-negligible. The EV transition is lagging the renewable energy transition, but it's happening too. EV's now have a non-negligible share of new vehicle sales, but since it takes ~20 years to turn over the global vehicle fleet, they still have a negligible share of the entire fleet. But that's changing, very slowly.

[toomuchtodo]

> And that's despite the fact that renewable energy and electric vehicles had a negligible share.

I could not disagree with this more. While China is a "developing" country, they are arguably making herculean efforts to move away from oil for transportation. They will drag the developed world along, as they will have built up all of this EV and electric scooter/bike/moped manufacturing capacity with only so much domestic consumption for it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37307619 (China Reaches Peak Gasoline in Milestone for Electric Vehicles)

From the Bloomberg piece:

> Earlier this month, Chinese oil giant Sinopec made a surprise announcement that mostly flew under the radar. It’s now expecting gasoline demand in China to peak this year, two years earlier than its previous outlooks. The main culprit? The surging number of electric vehicles on the road.

> China has been the largest driver of global growth for refined oil products like gasoline and diesel over the last two decades. But EV adoption rates in China are now soaring, with August figures likely to show plug-in vehicles hitting 38% of new passenger-vehicle sales. That’s up from just 6% in 2020 and is starting to materially dent fuel demand.

> Fuel demand in two and three-wheeled vehicles is already in structural decline, with BNEF estimating that 70% of total kilometers traveled by these vehicles already switched over to electric. Fuel demand for cars will be the next to turn, since well over 5% of the passenger-vehicle fleet is now either battery-electric or plug-in hybrid. The internal combustion vehicle fleet is also becoming more efficient due to rising fuel-economy targets.

[bryanlarsen]

I said "had", past tense. Most numbers still end in 2021, and EV's were a negligible fraction of the 1.5 billion vehicles on the road in 2021. Still are, but it's changing fast. 6 million EV's per year is a huge fraction of one year's vehicle sales but a tiny fraction of the entire 1.5 billion fleet.

[toomuchtodo]

Fair, retracted. Words are hard. Leaving the comment for the datapoints.

[TinyRick]

Per capita metrics are useless when it comes to climate stats. The ice caps don't care about how much hydrocarbons are burned per person, they are only affected by the net amount of hydrocarbons burned on a global scale.

[bryanlarsen]

True, but it disproves the narrative that oil consumption must inevitably go up.

And if per capita consumption can go down in the 2010's when we had negligible amounts of wind, solar, EV's and heat pumps, what'll it do in the 2020's when we have non-negligible amounts of wind, solar, EV's and heat pumps?

[sokoloff]

There were a lot of heat pumps in the 2010s (and before). There’s been a lot of attention and press about heat pumps recently, including some push for heat pumps as sole-source space conditioning, but they’re nowhere as new-tech as mass-market EVs or even the adoption of solar/wind/battery farms.

[prmoustache]

> EV's now have a non-negligible share of new vehicle sales,

In only a few third world countries.

[btilly]

In Norway, about 90% of new sales are EVs. They aren't a third world country.

https://insideevs.com/news/675163/norway-plugin-car-sales-ju...

The USA was at 14% last year and could hit 18% this year.

https://insideevs.com/news/675163/norway-plugin-car-sales-ju...

[prmoustache]

that was a typo, I meant first world countries.

[btilly]

So China is first world?

Though I do admit, electric is less compelling where the electric grid is unreliable.

[prmoustache]

Well this whole first/second/third world nomenclature is not really pertinent in most cases but yes, I rank the parts of China that do buy cars as developped even though other parts of the same country is in a completely different state.

[kwhitefoot]

Still not negligible.

[prmoustache]

but not enough to make a impactful dent in carbon emissions, especially if the electricity used charge them is produced by fossil.

[albumen]

Incorrect. Ireland: "In the opening four months of the year, electric cars took a 17% share of new car sales, up from 13% the previous year "

[p1mrx]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country

Are you talking about China? I think they're considered a second-world country, as they were somewhat aligned with the USSR.

[datavirtue]

The EV crutch is getting really old. With current tech it is not a solution. Not even remotely.

It's great. I love the idea too. I would rather we stop driving around machines that belch out dangerous toxins but a mass migration to EVs will be disastrous. The manufacturers are going hybrid...which is a sensible transition. It should get people used to the freedom of producing/collecting their own energy. Hopefully they get addicted to that.

[bryanlarsen]

Disastrous? It's already happened. 38% of new cars in the largest car market in the world are EV's.

[wcoenen]

Parent is talking about China. Note that the number is not pure battery electric vehicles, it includes hybrids.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/08/02/38-plugin-vehicle-marke...

[kwhitefoot]

In Norway (I know it's a small market) it's over 80%. Over 20% of cars on the road are pure electric EVs.

https://elbil.no/om-elbil/elbilstatistikk/elbilbestand/

[redserk]

How are hybrids a sensible solution?

[datavirtue]

Condition people to view generating your own energy as "freedom." This will shift mindset about solar panels as "freedom." People will flock to hybrids, drastically cut C02 emmissions without spending more or needing decent charging infra. I'm sure others can go one and one with more advantages.

[_ea1k]

A lot of us are thoroughly enjoying our disasters.

[BurningFrog]

> I don't think it's public opinion so much as it is necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades.

Those are pretty much the same thing.

[aaomidi]

Meanwhile companies with “climate pledges” forcing RTO.

Even when society wants to shift, the ones in charge say no.

We should have had a governmental mandate requiring companies over a certain size to allow WFH and justify why they can’t do it if they really can’t.

[huthuthike]

I fully agree with you but governments aren't exactly the ally on this one. Local and state governments in particular are losing out on tax revenue due to WFH. Lower attendance in offices (often in city centers) means less spending in those areas, so lower sales tax revenue. (I think New York City is projecting around $4500 less spending per worker annually.) Depreciating corporate property values means lower property tax revenue.

On the plus side we have the greatest effect on politics at the local level, if we get involved.

[aaomidi]

Oh definitely I know they’re not the allies. I’m just hoping and dreaming.

[ImHereToVote]

I think the bottom up approach to combat climate change is doomed to fail. We need to start top down. The most powerful institutions and people need to lower their living standards and resource extraction. Start with eliminating private jets for instance.

[jacquesm]

> necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades

You can't always get what you want.