The Energy Transition and technologies

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

We will find a way to do it or we will face suffering, death, and calamity on a scale unprecedented in the history of humanity.

Look, I get that you're angry and scared about the what-ifs, but just because you want something really bad, and stomp your feet and scream really loud about it, doesn’t make it so. That is how children think.

Technology and human progress are capable of amazing things, especially in times of distress. But I just don't think you understand how fundamentally ingrained fossil fuels are in our life, and the scale of effort and cost this endeavour will take. To think fossil fuels can be completely eliminated, with new technologies fully baked in and functional at scale, in the next few decades, is completely out to lunch. We can't even permit a damn mine in a decade in this country.

Progress marches on, but frankly, I think it will be easier for humanity to mitigate any environmental issues through technology, than it will be to completely overhaul our entire civilization. I just don't see it happening in our lifetime...or maybe, at all. Whether it's through oil, or solar, or batteries, or some magic future technology we haven't even talked about...at the end of the day literally everything we make is grown or mined out of the ground. There will always be an environmental trade-off. And when you're talking things on a global scale, that trade-off is always massive.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

"Better lives"... sure, temporarily, by rampantly running up the ecocide credit card.

Go ask the kids mining cobalt if they are up for a little temporary relief. I'm sure they are really interested in your ecocide credit cards.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

But I will challenge your assumptions about the developing world's energy use. The past isn't always the future. Developing countries don't have legacy grids, are situated in quite different climates than developed countries, and largely don't have the natural resources to use fossil fuels like the developed world. Energy demand per capita excluding industry is falling in the developed world due to efficiency, so there's no reason to think that quality of life standards require the same kind of energy they do today. It's fair to point out the "sun doesn't always shine and wind doesn't always blow" problem in Alberta, but that is much less of a problem in India and Africa. Micro grids will make a lot of sense in some places and the natural growth of these grids will not necessarily mirror the past with large generation feeding outside communities. There's no reason, for example that with electricity prices shaping demand in developing countries that a peak must be between 5-7pm when there's no historic data there for it. Especially when peak demand will likely be for air conditioning which will match solar production. And with almost certainty, EVs will become cheaper than gas powered vehicles especially in places that don't have their own oil supplies. There's no doubt though that developed countries will have to help fund the energy transition or it's dead in the water. This must improve.

You're right, the past doesn't always dictate the future, and I imagine we'll continue get more efficient as time and tech marches forward. But even if we get more efficient, we have a massive demand battle coming up, as the vast majority of population growth is going to come from the countries that are still developing.

As I mentioned in my previous post, a place like India with 7,000kWh per capita energy use doesn't have to match what we use (100,000kWh) in terms of energy demand to have a massive impact. Even if they just match where China is today (31,000kHw, a third of Canada's) that's 4x growth, and will amount to a huge amount of energy considering their population is bigger than Europe/N.America combined. And that's just India. Add in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan etc.

And then there's Africa, where according to the UN, more than half of the global population growth between now and 2050 will be. The most populous, and richest country by GDP, country in Africa is Nigeria, and they have only 2,500kWh of energy use per capita (1/3 of India, 1/40 of Canada!). Even with the most efficient of efficient energy sources, and moderate growth, just imagine the energy growth potential on that continent.

Not sure if this will work, but here's Canada/China/India/Nigeria in comparison:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/p...HN~CAN~IND~NGA

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by Table 5

Look, I get that you're angry and scared about the what-ifs, but just because you want something really bad, and stomp your feet and scream really loud about it, doesn’t make it so. That is how children think.

Just because you believe the world's ecosystems have an infinite capacity to endure the pollution we keep throwing at them, and stomp your feet and scream really loud about it, doesn’t make it so. That is how children think.

I'm not talking about what-ifs. It is well established that (for most of us anyway) our ability to live on this planet is what is at stake. Burying your head in the sand and pretending that climate change is not that big a deal and we can simply adapt to it, is a childish attempt to avoid accepting reality for what it actually is.

I don't know how anyone can look at global temperatures continuing to reach record highs, the record breaking fire seasons we've been having, polar ice caps melting at record pace, historic droughts, and other observations, and come to the conclusion that climate change is some "what-if scenario".

It's not something that "might happen in the future". It's something that's already beginning to unfold before our eyes.

Technology and human progress are capable of amazing things, especially in times of distress. But I just don't think you understand how fundamentally ingrained fossil fuels are in our life, and the scale of effort and cost this endeavour will take. To think fossil fuels can be completely eliminated, with new technologies fully baked in and functional at scale, in the next few decades, is completely out to lunch.

Why is that, exactly? Is it because we've spent the past hundred years getting our minds poisoned by oil industry lies and propaganda, to the point that we can't even tolerate a modest carbon tax to fund green energy research? Are we so preoccupied with living as luxuriously as possible that we've basically ignored all other considerations? I think the answer to both of those questions is yes.

We should have been doing much more to tackle this problem over the past 50+ years than what we've done. As a result, we're now we're in an extremely precarious predicament. The stakes are as high as they could possibly be.

With great luxury and convenience comes great responsibility. While we've enjoyed the advancement of technology and the introduction of modern conveniences into our lives over the past 140 years, we've horrifically failed to meet the responsibility that came with it. As such, we have no choice now but to take extraordinary action to combat this problem. Failure to do so is to commit the most egregious negligence in the history of humanity. Are we really ready to send billions of people to their graves in the name of raising their living standards temporarily?

at the end of the day literally everything we make is grown or mined out of the ground. There will always be an environmental trade-off. And when you're talking things on a global scale, that trade-off is always massive.

I always find it funny that no one bats an eye when coal, oil, or literally anything else is dug out of mines... but then when it's a mineral that's used in EVs or other green technology, suddenly it's a big issue.

Go ask the kids mining cobalt if they are up for a little temporary relief. I'm sure they are really interested in your ecocide credit cards.

What are you trying to imply here, that if those children weren't forced into the mines to dig up cobalt, that they wouldn't instead be forced into the mines to dig up something else?

Let me guess, child labour, therefore green tech bad. My question for you is, are you ready for Canada to completely stop doing business with any country that utilizes child labour? I sincerely doubt you are.

Let's be clear, the problem of child labour can only be solved by getting laws passed that ban child labour. It won't be solved by halting the development of green technology.

For the record, there's already a big push toward making EV batteries colbalt-free.

Progress marches on, but frankly, I think it will be easier for humanity to mitigate any environmental issues through technology, than it will be to completely overhaul our entire civilization.

That's not what I'm calling for. I'm calling for more aggressive carbon pricing in all wealthy nations to fund a much more aggressive green energy R&D effort. Yes, it will mean some economic pain, but this pain will absolutely pail in comparison to the pain that climate change will bring to humanity if the worst case scenarios are allowed to happen.

I'm rather depressed by the fact that we can't even seem to keep our current carbon pricing structure in place, let alone increase it.

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

That's not what I'm calling for. I'm calling for more aggressive carbon pricing in all wealthy nations to fund a much more aggressive green energy R&D effort.

What the what?

That hasn't been your argument at all.

A little push back and you fold like the Oilers defense?!

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

What the what?

That hasn't been your argument at all.

A little push back and you fold like the Oilers defense?!

No idea what you're talking about.

If you misinterpreted what I said and made assumptions about what I advocate for, that's on you.

If you can point out any actual contradictions, go ahead.

Originally Posted by DoubleK

It means that affordability is paramount and in my opinion more important than combating climate change. I thought that was abundantly clear in the conversation that was occurring.

If you don't have access to affordable and reliable electricity in Canada, you die.

Well I'm pretty sure soaring housing prices are a much bigger threat to those living paycheque to paycheque than electricity prices or the carbon tax. But hey, let's fixate on the latter and make up some hysteria about it killing Canadians or something...

[DoubleK]

Nah, you aren't worth the time or effort.

Some of us work in the industry and know what's what.

You just spew nonsense in shocking quantities and then complain when you flip flop.

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Nah, you aren't worth the time or effort.

Some of us work in the industry and know what's what.

You just spew nonsense in shocking quantities and then complain when you flip flop.

I most certainly did not flip flop, that's just you trying to spin my words.

You work in the fossil fuel industry well now I don't suppose there's a conflict of interest there or anything. And judging by your response you're probably a climate change denier too so not operating in reality anyway.

[DoubleK]

Wrong on both counts. Flipper

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

??? What does this even mean? Sustainability isn't some consumer product that's bought, it's an attribute of a sane socioeconomic system.

Your statement is kind of ironic too, in the sense that if we allow a worst case climate scenario to happen, it will likely be an ultra-wealthy tiny sliver of the world's population that will be able to avoid the worst effects and survive, while the rest of us perish.

Environmental sustainability, standard of living, affordability. Pick 2, because you can't violate the laws of thermodynamics. Thinking otherwise is merely hoping for a unicorn. Technology can narrow the magnitude of the tradeoffs though (e.g. lower cost nuclear could make available an incredibly dense, but green, energy source).

The concept is rooted in two principles:
1) Standard of living is directly correlated to the amount of energy consumed
2) Return on energy...the amount of energy you get out of something relative to the amount energy you put into getting it

The most efficient way to increase standard of living is with high return on energy sources. Unfortunately our highest return on energy sources are also those that have the most pollution (because of the incredible amount of energy in the C-H bond that turns into CO2 when you release that energy). You can see this through the types of energy used over history.

Biomass: You just need a few swings of an axe and lighter and, boom, you've got tremendous amount of thermal energy

Coal: You just need a few more swings of a shovel and a lighter and, boom, you've got even more energy.

Oil: Now you need to spend quite a bit more energy (exploration, drilling, piping, refining, distribution, build cars, etc.) to finally put it into our tanks to generate kinetic energy. But gasoline is an incredibly dense energy source so you still have a very high ROE.

Wind and solar: You need to expend quite a bit of energy to get the infrastructure built, and what you get out is relatively low density. They have much lower ROEs.


There's a reason pretty much every nation has lifted itself into the first world on the back of coal. Environmental sustainability, no matter how necessary it obviously is (I completely agree with you), is unfortunately a relatively first world problem. If you're living in a mud hut burning wood and walking a mile with a bucket to get water, you don't care about future environmental death and destruction consequences nearly as much as you do improving your own standard of living.

• Want affordability and high standard of living...well you're going to pollute
• Want affordability and environmental sustainability...well you better consume way less energy (i.e. grow your own veggies, walk everywhere, live in a mud hut, etc)
• Want a high standard of living and environmental sustainability...well then be prepared to pay for it because you have to build way more clean but low ROE infrastructure to deliver the same amount of energy.

This triad of choices is an incredibly difficult thing to resolve. Heck, I don't mean to sound crass, but the simplest path for society to address global warming might be a significant reduction in global population...because the world and its individuals are increasingly showing that they put sustainability behind affordability and standard of living.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

IMO this is a really biased misconception based on our relatively unique lifestyle (North American suburbanism). Many components of our lifestyle are completely irrational and counterproductive to our own happiness (the amount of time/resources we spend transporting ourselves and maintaining our large homes). We are the minority among the prosperous people in the world - of the ~billion richest people in the world, maybe 20% live our detached household-car dependent lifestyle.

I completely agree. Our standard of living, and the excess energy and therefore pollution it requires, is absurdly overboard. And this is exactly in line with my above point of the sustainability/affordability/standard-of-living tradeoff. One way to improve sustainability while keeping affordability static is to reduce standard-of-living choices, and absurd ones are probably a good place to start.

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

8+ billion people living like Albertans is impossible. 8+ billion people living like Hamburgers or Frankfurters is probably doable.

I don't think this is true. The difference in the amount of energy between the 3rd world and a "hamburgers or frankfurters" kinda world is enormous, plus all the energy required to construct all the infrastructure to deliver those "hamburgers and frankfurters".

This is obviously a gut feel take based just on looking at energy consumption charts over time for various nations, but I think you're really underestimating it.

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

Environmental sustainability, standard of living, affordability. Pick 2, because you can't violate the laws of thermodynamics. Thinking otherwise is merely hoping for a unicorn. Technology can narrow the magnitude of the tradeoffs though (e.g. lower cost nuclear could make available an incredibly dense, but green, energy source).

The concept is rooted in two principles:
1) Standard of living is directly correlated to the amount of energy consumed
2) Return on energy...the amount of energy you get out of something relative to the amount energy you put into getting it

The most efficient way to increase standard of living is with high return on energy sources. Unfortunately our highest return on energy sources are also those that have the most pollution (because of the incredible amount of energy in the C-H bond that turns into CO2 when you release that energy). You can see this through the types of energy used over history.

Biomass: You just need a few swings of an axe and lighter and, boom, you've got tremendous amount of thermal energy

Coal: You just need a few more swings of a shovel and a lighter and, boom, you've got even more energy.

Oil: Now you need to spend quite a bit more energy (exploration, drilling, piping, refining, distribution, build cars, etc.) to finally put it into our tanks to generate kinetic energy. But gasoline is an incredibly dense energy source so you still have a very high ROE.

Wind and solar: You need to expend quite a bit of energy to get the infrastructure built, and what you get out is relatively low density. They have much lower ROEs.


There's a reason pretty much every nation has lifted itself into the first world on the back of coal. Environmental sustainability, no matter how necessary it obviously is (I completely agree with you), is unfortunately a relatively first world problem. If you're living in a mud hut burning wood and walking a mile with a bucket to get water, you don't care about future environmental death and destruction consequences nearly as much as you do improving your own standard of living.

• Want affordability and high standard of living...well you're going to pollute
• Want affordability and environmental sustainability...well you better consume way less energy (i.e. grow your own veggies, walk everywhere, live in a mud hut, etc)
• Want a high standard of living and environmental sustainability...well then be prepared to pay for it because you have to build way more clean but low ROE infrastructure to deliver the same amount of energy.

This triad of choices is an incredibly difficult thing to resolve. Heck, I don't mean to sound crass, but the simplest path for society to address global warming might be a significant reduction in global population...because the world and its individuals are increasingly showing that they put sustainability behind affordability and standard of living.

Thank you for the reasonable response.

I understand the overall point you're making here, but would dispute your claim that renewable energy is much more expensive to produce than fossil fuel energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_o...city_by_source

While the upfront cost of building the infrastructure is obviously higher, the power itself is inexpensive to produce once you have the infrastructure built.

But if up-front costs are a total impediment, that would take nuclear off the table as well.

In my opinion, wealthy nations have to shoulder the burden of helping developing countries build up their green energy infrastructure. It's going to be expensive, which is why we need carbon taxes to pay for it. It gets even more expensive if countries like China and Russia don't work cooperatively with western nations to help make this happen.

Population control measures is something we probably need to look at as well. As far as I can tell, population reduction is going to happen regardless... it's just a question of do we do it in a controlled, thought-out way, or do we simply watch as the impacts of climate change lead to unimaginable catastrophe and chaos leading to billions of deaths and incalcuable suffering?

One other thing, climate change is very much not a first-world exclusive problem. Rising sea levels, megadroughts, megafires, and uninhabitably-high temperatures will force hundreds of millions to leave their homes and migrate to other parts of the world. The social upheaval and political backlash from that scale of mass migration will far surpass anything we've seen so far.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

Environmental sustainability, standard of living, affordability. Pick 2, because you can't violate the laws of thermodynamics. Thinking otherwise is merely hoping for a unicorn. Technology can narrow the magnitude of the tradeoffs though (e.g. lower cost nuclear could make available an incredibly dense, but green, energy source).



The concept is rooted in two principles:

1) Standard of living is directly correlated to the amount of energy consumed

2) Return on energy...the amount of energy you get out of something relative to the amount energy you put into getting it

Number 1 isn't really true in any sense. In Canada we use over 100,000 kWh or equivalent and Denmark uses about 30. Their standard of living is higher. So is Switzerland at 30. Would you say Qatar or Trinidad and Tobago have twice the standard of living as Canada?

Your number 2 also isn't correct. Return on energy invested (EROI) is not a useful metric for really anything, and the current way it's calculated ignores a lot of inputs and outputs that would make it useful. To compare a finite resource that requires much more investment as time goes on (ie fossil fuels) vs investment on infinite resources is a metric without any useful units. Besides, I'm not sure how it's relevant to any conversation about the future. The technology exists now, at the price it exists, and will continue to get significantly cheaper.

The most efficient way to increase standard of living is with high return on energy sources. Unfortunately our highest return on energy sources are also those that have the most pollution (because of the incredible amount of energy in the C-H bond that turns into CO2 when you release that energy). You can see this through the types of energy used over history.

Gonna need a citation here. The way standard of living increases is by increasing services delivered to citizens. And while, yes, that requires energy, there's no reason that has to start at biomass and work it's way through. I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

There's a reason pretty much every nation has lifted itself into the first world on the back of coal.

Yes! The reason was there were no other better options! It's 2023 this year. The industrial revolution was quite a while ago.

Environmental sustainability, no matter how necessary it obviously is (I completely agree with you), is unfortunately a relatively first world problem. If you're living in a mud hut burning wood and walking a mile with a bucket to get water, you don't care about future environmental death and destruction consequences nearly as much as you do improving your own standard of living.




This triad of choices is an incredibly difficult thing to resolve. Heck, I don't mean to sound crass, but the simplest path for society to address global warming might be a significant reduction in global population...because the world and its individuals are increasingly showing that they put sustainability behind affordability and standard of living.

I guess I just don't see it that way. The technology exists (at least to the extent to get 80-90% there), the money exists to get it done, and will is getting there. We need more people pushing the will than having more people say "well wadda ya do. It's hard".

When looking at transition costs, no one said "it'll be expensive to build all these gas stations, oil tankers, oil wells, refineries, pipelines, etc. No. The market was there, government policy made it attractive to do it, and here we are. The wealthier world can absolutely afford to help grow energy wealth in the right way in emerging countries.

[Leondros]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Number 1 isn't really true in any sense. In Canada we use over 100,000 kWh or equivalent and Denmark uses about 30. Their standard of living is higher. So is Switzerland at 30. Would you say Qatar or Trinidad and Tobago have twice the standard of living as Canada?

Your number 2 also isn't correct. Return on energy invested (EROI) is not a useful metric for really anything, and the current way it's calculated ignores a lot of inputs and outputs that would make it useful. To compare a finite resource that requires much more investment as time goes on (ie fossil fuels) vs investment on infinite resources is a metric without any useful units. Besides, I'm not sure how it's relevant to any conversation about the future. The technology exists now, at the price it exists, and will continue to get significantly cheaper.



Gonna need a citation here. The way standard of living increases is by increasing services delivered to citizens. And while, yes, that requires energy, there's no reason that has to start at biomass and work it's way through. I'm not sure what you're getting at here.






Yes! The reason was there were no other better options! It's 2023 this year. The industrial revolution was quite a while ago.



I guess I just don't see it that way. The technology exists (at least to the extent to get 80-90% there), the money exists to get it done, and will is getting there. We need more people pushing the will than having more people say "well wadda ya do. It's hard".

When looking at transition costs, no one said "it'll be expensive to build all these gas stations, oil tankers, oil wells, refineries, pipelines, etc. No. The market was there, government policy made it attractive to do it, and here we are. The wealthier world can absolutely afford to help grow energy wealth in the right way in emerging countries.

If the money was there, and it made economic sense to do so, we would be getting it done. O&G companies are divesting of all of their green projects right now because they don't make economic sense, green energy companies are tanking on the stock market because they are not as profitable as most hoped and wealthy countries have no desire to give hand outs to power countries.

Its not "its hard", its that the system as it stands does not incentivize anyone to do anything and certainly not sacrifice money and quality of life to do so. I still have yet to see any tangible, concrete, and sound economic analysis on full cycle green energy making sense at this point to push out fossil fuels. If you can provide to me costs associated with building green facilities, maintaining them cause they won't last forever and solar and wind are notorious for useful life issues, upgrading grids to accept them (which is a whole other can of worms and is never in any of these assessments in terms of full cycle economics) and supporting base load requirements to quality of life I would be happy to look through them - they do not exist as far as I can tell.

Yesterday I read an article on utility poles alone are going to cause issues for the lumber industry. There is simply not enough trees that size to support connecting power lines. That is just 1 issue and one I never would have thought of as an unintended consequence of needing more power.

https://www.wsj.com/business/the-ele...trees-e2b7ee92

Electric cars. The solar build-out. Washington’s rural-broadband initiative. Utilities bracing the grid for stronger storms. They all depend on the same thing: big trees. The utility-pole business is booming, thanks to a flood of public and private infrastructure spending. So the hunt is on for the tallest, straightest, knot-free conifers, which are peeled, dried and pressure-treated at facilities such as Koppers Holdings’ pole plant in southeastern Georgia’s pinelands. Employees cruise surrounding pine plantations, marking pole-worthy loblolly and longleaf and making offers. The bigger, the better these days, given how much more equipment and cable poles must hold in the era of fiber optics and electric cars, said Jim Healey, Koppers’ vice president of utility and industrial products.

“Based on production data and current harvest schedules, there are not enough larger trees available to sustainably produce the quantity of 40-foot poles made today if the poles had to be two to four classes larger,” the North American Wood Pole Council warned in a 2020 paper. The trade group suggested utilities consider more, not larger, poles.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Leondros

If the money was there, and it made economic sense to do so, we would be getting it done.

You just finished telling me you were meeting with Nigerian government to develop oil and gas projects, so this seems disingenuous. If you need policy help to get things done, so do other projects.

O&G companies are divesting of all of their green projects right now because they don't make economic sense, green energy companies are tanking on the stock market because they are not as profitable as most hoped and wealthy countries have no desire to give hand outs to power countries.

I'm not sure your analysis is correct. It's mostly due to higher interest rates for newer companies that have a shortage of cash in hand.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/...arkets-2023-11

Its not "its hard", its that the system as it stands does not incentivize anyone to do anything and certainly not sacrifice money and quality of life to do so.

It's not that "it's hard", it's that it's.... difficult?

I still have yet to see any tangible, concrete, and sound economic analysis on full cycle green energy making sense at this point to push out fossil fuels. If you can provide to me costs associated with building green facilities, maintaining them cause they won't last forever and solar and wind are notorious for useful life issues, upgrading grids to accept them (which is a whole other can of worms and is never in any of these assessments in terms of full cycle economics) and supporting base load requirements to quality of life I would be happy to look through them - they do not exist as far as I can tell.

Renewable energy investments are delivering massively better returns than fossil fuels in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe, but despite this the total volume of investment is still nowhere near that required to mitigate climate change.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrv...y-reveals-all/

Over the past decade, the costs of new wind and solar photovoltaic installations have declined much faster than the corresponding revenues. This dynamic has led to an increase in the profitability of renewables and has even made wind and solar plants in good locations the most profitable technologies for generating electricity.

https://www.uni-mannheim.de/en/news/...ble-than-ever/

Yesterday I read an article on utility poles alone are going to cause issues for the lumber industry. There is simply not enough trees that size to support connecting power lines. That is just 1 issue and one I never would have thought of as an unintended consequence of needing more power.

https://www.wsj.com/business/the-ele...trees-e2b7ee92

Here's one from 2012 about the same shortage. This isn't new. Supply chain issues abound in every industry.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...rtage/1696385/

[Leondros]

Thanks, I will look at those.

Your interest rate comment is silly - oil and gas companies were and still are some of the most leveraged companies. It’s NOT an interest rate issue.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Leondros

Thanks, I will look at those.



Your interest rate comment is silly - oil and gas companies were and still are some of the most leveraged companies. It’s NOT an interest rate issue.

Maybe you think it's silly, but it's true. It's not just about leverage, it's the business model. Renewable projects bid on long term contracts for fixed prices, and interest rates absolutely tank existing contract viability

[Leondros]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Maybe you think it's silly, but it's true. It's not just about leverage, it's the business model. Renewable projects bid on long term contracts for fixed prices, and interest rates absolutely tank existing contract viability

Every business operates in the same environment, high interest rates are where we live right now. It’s like saying my business can’t survive because I can’t pay the mortgage on my capital spend but it’s okay, it’s just high interest rates. That’s a silly statement man

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Leondros

Every business operates in the same environment, high interest rates are where we live right now. It’s like saying my business can’t survive because I can’t pay the mortgage on my capital spend but it’s okay, it’s just high interest rates. That’s a silly statement man

You were saying that Green stocks tanked because they weren't as profitable as hoped. I pointed out they're more vulnerable to high interest rates due to the nature of how their electricity business goes. No one said they couldn't survive. I was simply pointing out why the stocks have tanked. It's not silly. At least these publications don't think so:

-https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/renewables-funds-see-record-outflows-rising-rates-costs-hit-shares-2023-10-09/

https://www.barrons.com/articles/int...tocks-196936f1

https://www.ft.com/content/07443afb-...1-8c47e4353c59

https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6340910222112


Etc, etc, etc


The consensus is that the interest rates hit these stocks harder

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Leondros

If the money was there, and it made economic sense to do so, we would be getting it done. O&G companies are divesting of all of their green projects right now because they don't make economic sense, green energy companies are tanking on the stock market because they are not as profitable as most hoped and wealthy countries have no desire to give hand outs to power countries.

I just had another thought about this, as you hear it often. The energy transition is happening so fast that I don't think people realize where we're at.

This is from the IEA (notoriously slow at seeing where the transition is at):

-Five years ago, for every dollar spent on oil and gas one dollar was spent on clean energy. It's now 1.7 to 1 and widening fast

-by next year or 2025, more will be spent on solar development alone than oil production.



The point I'm making here, is that the money is there and they are getting it done. The issue is speed. We don't have 4-5 decades like the last transition, so we need to speed things up.