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Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

While this is largely caused by production lag due to coronavirus, the trend towards renewables at the expense of oil & gas has the potential to make this a recurring theme.

Pushing hard for renewables makes the gamble that capacity can be grown fast enough to offset decreased oil & gas exploration and development. If that doesn't happen we're going to have continued price spikes. Some people say they're fine with that because they believe the threat of climate change is worth it, but I don't think they're factoring in how high energy prices trickle into every product.

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You're just making things up. People love talking about intermittence of renewables because it's an inherent challenge of renewables while forgetting that the predictability of unpredictability leads to engineering of systems that can inherently handle unpredictability.

No such thing happens with fossil fuels. Every time fossil fuels fail you get a 70s oil crisis. Fossil fuels aren't as reliable as people think. Not even close. Yet nowadays, when fossil fuels fail, they blame the renewables.

I am honestly tired of the hypocrisy. People are against renewable expansion because they are intermittent, then when oil is intermittent, they complain that renewables haven't expanded enough. I can tell you one thing. Without the renewables in Germany this fossil fuel crisis would be much worse.

> You're just making things up. People love talking about intermittence of renewables

My comment has nothing to do with intermittence. It has to do with speed of transition. If you do not invest in oil & gas, supplies decrease. Because oil & gas production requires constant exploration and development in order to be productive. Because of coronavirus O&G companies did not invest in developing existing assets and exploring new ones. This was obviously going to happen last year (I traded on the expectation of it).

> Yet nowadays, when fossil fuels fail, they blame the renewables.

I literally did the exact opposite in my first sentence.

> I am honestly tired of the hypocrisy.

I'm not anti-renewables. I think they have a place in the future energy-mix. It's obvious that eventually oil and gas will run out.

> Without the renewables in Germany this fossil fuel crisis would be much worse.

If we're going to do counterfactuals we have to include the one where because Germany didn't have renewables its politicians invested more in a secure, stable supply of oil & gas.

Um it's related to 2 threats: climate change and limited ressources. Overall oil reserves are diminishing, not because of climate activism, but because of physical laws. The Wikipedia page about oil peak is worth reading it.

One way or the other, we'll have to learn living without oil and gas abundancy in the next decades. The question is more: are we going to be prepared for it?

> Overall oil reserves are diminishing

This is a dubious claim.[0] It depends a lot on technology and how hard we look for oil. Which was my point. If we disincentivize O&G exploration there will be less O&G produced. If we force O&G producers to lessen production and then renewables cannot be scaled fast enough there will be an energy supply shortfall that cannot be overcome quickly.

Obviously at some point we will run out of O&G and need to be switched over to renewables (with or without nuclear), but doing it prematurely is risky because of the downstream effects of high energy prices and the fact that every institution in the modern world is premised on ever increasing access to energy.

[0]: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=R...

No we can't deny that oil reserves are strongly diminishing [0]. It doesn't mean that one day we will completely stop using oil. But the cost of extraction will always be increasing, inducing a reduction of its consumption.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Other than that you might not be aware of the risks we'll face related to the climate change. The topic is surely complex and long to explain. You can dig into Wikipedia, but I think it is worth to read the last IPCC executive summary.

I'm aware of the risks of climate change. What are the risk of an energy shortfall though? In terms of impact on human life they look pretty similar.

Invest in existing projects and make money for yourself. You are being downvoted and none of the response even understand your argument.

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