Oslo's Plan to Decarbonize Its Port | Hacker News Reader

Oslo's Plan to Decarbonize Its Port

citylab.com

52 pointspseudolus30 comments

All this decarbonization would pale in comparison to all the emissions from the oil that Norway refused to stop or slow down extracting. Norwegian government continues to issue new drilling licenses.

World needs oil. Poor people in India and Namibia need Oil to carry out their basic needs like getting electricity and receiving medical supplies. If Norway stops producing Oil it will take away bread from mouth of these poor people. Of course unless rest of the developed world is ready to pay a 20% tax penalty to subsidize renewable energy in poorer parts of the world.

I am not saying they should stop. There is also no sign of slowing or stopping new exploration.

Those poor people are going to be the ones most affected by climate change. Accelerating oil extraction will literally take bread away from the mouths of the Global South.

May be 50 years later. Why condemn them to life of misery today ?

I do not understand how you cannot see that this logic is suicidal. We can show solidarity with developing countries in other ways but we can't irreparably damage the planet's life support system.

If Norway stops extracting oil then oil price goes up which just means producers in other countries start producing more which brings the price back down. We don't have an oil supply problem, we have an oil demand problem.

Both are a problem.

Go on...

Yes, and almost certainly Norway is extracting it more environmentally responsibly than in other, less regulated countries.

This crisis will not be solved unless oil prices go up. Demand will decrease only when cheaper alternatives are available.

But I agree that Norway not extracting oil doesn't solve anything. The only way to solve this IMO is to tax carbon emissions and do so in a way as to make the burning of fossil fuels very expensive. And also restrict imports from countries that don't have similar policies.

And I don't see that happening any time soon.

A carbon tax putting up oil prices will help, oil prices rising themselves won't help as there's far more oil than we can afford to burn and the higher the price goes the more motivated we are to extract it.

Lots of other things that help e.g. electric cars, more public transport and (ironically) a carbon tax will lead to demand for oil lessening and so drop the price till it balances with demand.

> This crisis will not be solved unless oil prices go up

Then we're well and truly screwed without a carbon tax or equivalent. Cheap oil is here to stay.

The price of a commodity is the cost of the marginal unit. IOW, if the world production is about 100 million barrels per day, with the cheapest barrel being $10 Saudi Oil and the most expensive barrel being $60 Canadian Tar Sands oil, and there's demand for 100 million barrels per day at a price of at least $60, then the price is $60. Canadians make no profit, Saudi's rake it in.

And looking at the production curve for oil indicates that Canada and Venezuela have massive reserves of tar sands, so there's a very effective price cap on oil at around $60. It fluctuates because demand can shift faster than production can be ramped up, but the long term cap is $60.

Given the above supply curve, there are two very likely sources of drops:

1. technology could make oil sands production cheaper. This has happened regularly before so is likely to continue.

2. substitutes could suppress demand. Wind power is at 3c/kWh and dropping, and batteries are steadily getting cheaper too. Obviously electricity won't and can't replace all uses for oil, but it can and is replacing marginal uses.

>1. technology could make oil sands production cheaper. This has happened regularly before so is likely to continue.

Already happened. Oil sands is profitable at $40 or under, depending on the development.

True. And that's the price of Alberta heavy oil in Alberta. The difference between that and the benchmark West Texas Intermediate price is mostly shipping.

Vikings gotta live too, those Teslas don't grow on trees.

Norway taxes petroleum extraction at 78% effective rate as well which primarily goes into the sovereign wealth fund, but also helps subsidize renewables. Norway has also invested heavily in trying to keep the rainforests from being torn down. They're at least trying something, and trying to encourage their own population to become greener, through things like little to no taxes on electric vehicle use, public transit, and so forth.

Just moved to Oslo. The number of Teslas here is borderline comedy. And it's all because of that succulent zero-tax on electric vehicles.

And they're trying to get oil elsewhere in the world, like off the coast of Australia.

An interesting conversation around decarbonization in ports is going on at https://collective.energy/topic/29/green-hydrogen-from-sea-w...!

Off topic; does anyone know if collective.energy uses a ready-made forum software, or if it's custom made? I really liked it.

Snooping into the resonse headers I found my answer, NodeBB. Will leave it here if anyone wondered the same. The price was pretty hefty, tho.

Discourse looks similar and is less expensive. Both are open source and thus free if you want to self-host.

https://www.discourse.org/pricing

Hey nso, thanks! I'm the maker of collective.energy - as you identified, it was originally based on NodeBB but has been highly customized to the needs of our community. Over time, we're moving more and more to our own tools & stack. What specifically are you enjoying about it?

I really liked how snappy it felt, and how minimalistic the thread view is. It's hard to put in words but it feels like a combination of many other software I've seen, but that it hits a sweet spot.

I'm currently building a BB software \in c# .net core for my own use and with plans to OS it, and your site gave me some ideas and made me question some of the choices I've made. I've been adament agains AJAXifying the navigation between pages, but seeing how well it works on NodeBB I am having second thoughts.

Thanks for the feedback, best of luck with your project. Feel free to come join us also if you're into saving the earth!

NodeBB is one of the better engineered forums. The code is a pleasure to read. It's very modular -- makes uses of Node emitters frequently to implement plugin modules via PubSub.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=psychobunny did a great job.

> Is nuclear propulsion for ships a viable option?

Yes. There are half a dozen countries with mature viable nuclear naval propulsion technology, another half dozen in development. Hundreds of vessels already built.

The fuel cell technology is several decades away from being available to power ships, and we don't have decades to decarbonize the economy. The Arctic ocean is gonna be totally melted for the first time in human history in about a decade or so, and from there on the feedback loops are gonna make the race against global warming even more hopeless than it already is.

Go nuclear.

Please post this on the site itself so others can hear your opinion

Reply on news.ycombinator.com