The Fifth Age of Oil

Notice Coal is dropping, Oil is flat, and while Natural Gas is growing, it has stunted substantially?

It's only in the last couple years, and what else is happening? EXPLOSIVE growth in solar/wind/storage (well, and COVID).

IIRC, adoption rates of solar/wind are running FAR ahead of prognostications by the Energy Department and UN projections.

Fundamentally, almost every major application of fossil fuels in the economy is at an engineering disadvantage economically. I'm not talking about "what will we decide to put in for the next powerplant". I mean: coal and oil existing plants are cheaper to decommission and replace with solar/wind, and natural gas is very very soon going to be in this situation as well.

For transportation applications that EVs can replace, BEV drivetrains will very soon drop under ICEs in cost. Tesla probably has the price advantage but is taking profits with their cost/technology advancement. But 200 wh/kg LFP will make virtually all consumer cars cheaper than oil. This won't happen for a year or two because of supplier inertia and designer inertia/executive ignorance at major car companies.

So saying the entire decade is a good one for oil/gas? That seems very foolish. It's an industry where the floor will drop out rapidly. IMO it will happen when finance realizes it is pointless to invest in new oil/gas projects. They won't pay out.

While we're transitioning percentage wise to cleaner energy, our sheer growth means we are burning coal,oil and gas at record rates.

It's depressing honestly. The earth is only going to care about the absolute number.

"Primary energy" seems misleading because it over-valuates low-yield sources.

The next stage lies in ways to reduce renewable sources' (mainly wind and solar) variability (intermittency) of production: geographic diversity, storage, smartgrid...

Damnit Lyn, stop inserting bitcoin at every possible opportunity.

This is one of your better pieces, and I just stopped reading half way through.