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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it's crazy that people think oil is going away. We're 7 billion people on our way to 9 billion, with another billion in the next 15 years. That fossil free future that we dream about isn't getting any closer. Those big solar plants, etc that we read about are a rounding error.

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Added population will be mostly in poor areas where power consumption is very low. Energy demand will likely be driven by US, China and India in the next decade(s), the process there is important and very positive.

Have a look at Gansu Wind Farm in China. [1] They build so many wind turbines there that they had to restrict production until they've finished the corresponding amount of high-voltage cables connecting it to major cities on the coast . Many of these connections have a higher capacity than any other existing in Europe/America. [2]

The potential for wind farms in this regions are huge. It's basically a large, windy desert. With enough cables, you can easily power major cities with it. You can even use it for baseload by combining them with batteries or pump storage.

The reason that China still adds coal is largely one of politics, similar to Trump's promises in the US. Coal adds jobs close to the cities. They've already built too many plants for demand, many will probably only run for a few years (hard to find sources on that, there are no numbers so everyone is just speculating how many there are).

But there are enough resources and potential to power the world's largest energy consumer mostly by renewables. And the picture is not that different for the US, where wind power in some regions is competitive without subsidies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#Asia

India and China have 1/3 of the world population. The US is less than 5% so it doesn't matter, except we use 20% of the oil. China is already the largest car market and India is rising. China gets over 70% of its electricity from coal.

That's great that China is developing solar and wind. Hopefully, it breaks into the double digits in 10 years. We have a long way to go, and we're on a clock.

>The US is less than 5% so it doesn't matter

The US is the 2nd largest Greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. It matters.

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

This could change faster than you think, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot more solar in 50 years. Solar is now getting to the point it can compete w/ fossil fuels on price, w/o subsidies.

12-16 years till solar is the dominant form of power generation at its current growth rate.

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

There isn't anything to indicate that growth curve will slow; the manufacturing capacity is already in place, and more continues to be added. There are power purchase agreements at 2 cents/kWh, and I would not be surprised if you see prices below 1 cent/kwh in the next five years.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/43695

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-03/solar-dev...

Can't make fertilizer or plastic out of solar energy.

> Can't make fertilizer or plastic out of solar energy.

No, but if you're willing to spend a lot of energy you can pull CO2 out of the air and use it as a feedstock to make various fuels or plastics. Right now I think you'd have to burn 10 gallons of oil to make a single gallon so that's not efficient at all.

But if you literally had more solar than you knew what to do with (like Germany does on occasion) you could use that energy to make liquid fuels or plastics.

It's at least a decade and probably several decades off. But this is an economic problem, not a technical one.

In California and other deserts, excess solar can be directed to desalination plants. Our water and energy shortages are essentially the same issue; solving one goes a long way to solving the other.

All resource problems are energy problems. With enough clean energy, you can make fuel, water, fertilizer, anything.

We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years.

The weird part about sequestering is that if it's really going to work, people will need incentive to simply put all that energy in to the ground with no immediate benefit for them. You either need heavy government regulation or for everyone involved to be thinking about the larger picture.

I wonder if anti aging technology would push people to start seeing climate problems in its larger context.

Carbon tax funds sequestering operations.

Something like this: https://www.terrapass.com/climate-change/carbon-offsets-expl...

Carbon sequestration doesn't necessarily mean driving combustion in reverse to get oxygen and hydrocarbons again. Accelerated silicate weathering could remove a lot more atmospheric CO2 per unit of energy invested and it generates carbonate minerals rather than fuel that people would be tempted to burn again. Like this, "Enhanced weathering strategies for stabilizing climate and averting ocean acidification": http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/cont...

That's pretty cool! Non fuel forms of sequestered carbon hadn't occurred to me, though you would still need to fund the process. Using a carbon tax to fund it as a government function seem likes the obvious solution if it were to be implemented at scale.

> We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years.

There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense. Until the day that we burn zero CO2 whatsoever, you're better off using the electricity as electricity and thereby burning less carbon than burning it and then trying to get it back.

And even at that point, we already have a thing that converts sunlight and CO2 into solid form. Plants.

In theory what you could probably do is cultivate algae in the ocean and then scoop it up in a net, bury it in the ground and repeat. But the scale needed to make a dent is harrowing.

> There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense.

> Until the day that we burn zero CO2 whatsoever

That day will come. And we'll then be at the point where its time to use cheap renewables to pull CO2 back out of the air and store it in a stable state where it can't be burned again.

oh yeah. probably.... not

problem with computer types is we think that high tech will rule and fix all. and that mind boggling high tech is around the corner always.

Then we are surprised when a Neanderthal wins the Presidency who says he WILL burn more coal. doesn't even matter if it's not economic.

Maybe instead we should become more aggressive. Turn off Trump's twitter. Turn off gmail & facebook in red states.

My bet is some sort of synthetic bio-augmented photosynthesis process (if you think about it - that's exactly what plants do - sequester carbon dioxide in carbohydrates). If we are super lucky that process will also generate edible byproducts.

> There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense.

Of course there will be. Even burning a small fraction of the Thorium lying in spill heaps today will achieve that. In February 2019, when Tsinghua Uni demos the worlds first commercially viable fusion reactor, everything will change.

We will:

  - convert cubic kilometres of seawater into potable water per day and irrigate the Sahara and the Outback.
  - convert atmospheric C02 to carbohydrate fuels (while there are still need for them)
  - extract cubic killometers of C out of the atmosphere and oceans for construction material.
  - Drop the excess blocks of diamond into the mariana trench, those that we don't use for road base.
  - etc

People really do not appreciate what superabundance of energy would mean for man and our current planet. It will literally be the demarcation point between the age of want, and the ages of plenty.

> ...In February 2019, when Tsinghua Uni demos the worlds first commercially viable fusion reactor...

Is this your own prediction, or something that the university has announced publicly? I haven't heard anything about it.

https://www.newlight.com/company claims to produce plastic from CO2 for less cost than from oil https://youtu.be/GlPyDLGKYSQ?t=1m15s

"After 10 years of research and development, Newlight has commercialized a carbon capture technology that combines air with methane-based greenhouse gas emissions to produce a plastic material"

Rather than using natural gas as a plastics feedstock, they are using methane from organic sources (livestock bioproducts, landfills, other agricultural waste). They are using "greenhouse gases" but not CO2.

There's a process for fixing nitrogen using electricity as the primary input:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland%E2%80%93Eyde_process

You can also plant nitrogen fixing plants and till them into the soil at the end of the season.

Even better, electrolyze water and run the hydrogen through a standard Haber-Bosch ammonia plant. It's a little more complicated but much more energy efficient. It's been done on an industrial scale in the past with electricity from hydropower.

Yeah that's the thing, hydrogen is the key feed-stock for the Haber-Bosch process. I think currently it's mostly made from natural gas. Though earlier it was made by reacting H2O with coke (coal).

Makes me think about the flurry of ill directed excitement about a catalyst that with energy supplied electricity could convert water and CO2 to alcohol. One wonders if it wouldn't be possible use a similar catalyst to convert nitrogen and water to nitrate/ammonia.

See http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_use

  Total petroleum products: 19.531 (million barrels/day)

Of which, deleting fuels,

  Asphalt and road oil              0.343
  Petrochemical feedstocks          0.331
  Lubricant                         0.138
  Miscellaneous products and others 0.089
  Waxes                             0.006

which sum to 0.907

If the oil industry existed solely for non-fuel uses, it would be extremely tiny, and probably entirely domestic. It would not be large enough to fund any new deep or complex drilling, and nor would it be large enough to fund even the fixed costs of existing wells.

That chart seems odd. From what I'm aware of, not all parts of "oil" are used for the same thing. E.g. before the internal combustion engine, gasoline was an unwanted byproduct of creating kerosene, and was usually dumped into the environment by refiners.

Modern refineries work a lot harder to shift their output towards the most valuable markets.

Look at all the steps with some output to gasoline on the right:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refinery#Flow_diagram_of_t...

"Petrochemical feedstocks" means plastic and Haber process nitrogenous fertilizers. Lubricants is probably substantially motor oils, but even Teslas have gearboxes and sealed parts (stearing, suspension, etc) that require lubricant. Same for general industry (regardless of input energy source).

You deleted far more than just fuels. "Hydrocarbon gas liquids", "Still gas", "Special napthas", and "Kerosene" include significant non-fuel uses. Those bring the total as high as 3.390, though it is impossible to determine from that chart how much is fuel use.

Also, keep in mind that some fuel uses, such as welding/soldering gasses, don't have an effective replacement at this time. Cutting fuel use to 0 at this juncture is effectively impossible.

One way or the other the conclusion is the same, though. The oil industry would have to radically shrink, even if it would probably not go away.

You're right. The price going down has, I think, more to do with the effect of fracking in the US. It's getting to the point that the US could be an exporter if it changed its laws.

The effect of petro-states will be much the same, though.

We are an oil exporter. We did change the laws. http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/06/investing/us-oil-exports-inc...

I missed that. Thanks for the correction.

The US, like everyone else in the world, will always be an oil exporter and an oil importer. The grades of oil differ throughout the world, and are used in different industries.

More to do with the Saudis pumping more.

It lacks 2015 and 2016, but the huge ramp up in US production (which fracking has contributed to) has clearly been a big factor:

http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/index.cfm?view=product...

China installed 20GW of solar in the first half of 2016. They are moving fast.

What does 20GW means? If they install 40GW for the next 10 years, is that enough? That's about 1 nuclear power plant:

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=104&t=3

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