I can not locate the long piece article now but I read a piece from someone that effectively got invited into a Shell (UK) think tank and heard exactly that from some vp/executive at a dinner table.
That they aimed to diversify (think corn/algae based fuels, hydrogen infrastructure, charging networks), but that they ultimately still believed that the public opinion would still make it palatable to continue hydrocarbon fuels extraction for another 2 to 3 decades.
I don't think it's public opinion so much as it is necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades. Renewable energy is still a relatively small fraction of overall energy use, and net global oil consumption has been steadily increasing the past few years (likely to surpass pre-covid levels this year). Our society is still very much addicted to hydrocarbons.
Even when society wants to shift, the ones in charge say no.
We should have had a governmental mandate requiring companies over a certain size to allow WFH and justify why they can’t do it if they really can’t.
On the plus side we have the greatest effect on politics at the local level, if we get involved.
I could not disagree with this more. While China is a "developing" country, they are arguably making herculean efforts to move away from oil for transportation. They will drag the developed world along, as they will have built up all of this EV and electric scooter/bike/moped manufacturing capacity with only so much domestic consumption for it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37307619 (China Reaches Peak Gasoline in Milestone for Electric Vehicles)
From the Bloomberg piece:
> Earlier this month, Chinese oil giant Sinopec made a surprise announcement that mostly flew under the radar. It’s now expecting gasoline demand in China to peak this year, two years earlier than its previous outlooks. The main culprit? The surging number of electric vehicles on the road.
> China has been the largest driver of global growth for refined oil products like gasoline and diesel over the last two decades. But EV adoption rates in China are now soaring, with August figures likely to show plug-in vehicles hitting 38% of new passenger-vehicle sales. That’s up from just 6% in 2020 and is starting to materially dent fuel demand.
> Fuel demand in two and three-wheeled vehicles is already in structural decline, with BNEF estimating that 70% of total kilometers traveled by these vehicles already switched over to electric. Fuel demand for cars will be the next to turn, since well over 5% of the passenger-vehicle fleet is now either battery-electric or plug-in hybrid. The internal combustion vehicle fleet is also becoming more efficient due to rising fuel-economy targets.
In only a few third world countries.
https://insideevs.com/news/675163/norway-plugin-car-sales-ju...
The USA was at 14% last year and could hit 18% this year.
https://insideevs.com/news/675163/norway-plugin-car-sales-ju...
The calculation wasn't straightforward though. And varies widely by locale.
EV mileage is reported in eMPG. Which means, "The miles you get when you charge the battery with the same energy as is in a mile of gasoline." The problem is that to deliver that much to the battery, you have losses at the charger, losses in the grid, and losses during power generation. None of which are counted in that figure. If your electric car is running off of a coal power plant, that 120 eMPG Tesla can easily perform about like a 30 MPG Camry. But as soon as you have a significant fraction of your grid being generated by renewables, now the electric car is running on a fraction of the CO2 emissions of the gas car.
All these needs to be cut down and EV won't help us. People need to be able to reach safely schools, workplaces, shops, restaurants by foot or by bike regardless of their age and fitness level.
What we help us is better infrastructure for non motorized vehicles, better public transport (even if they are not financially profitable), walkable spaces, security (with a density of human presence making sure we are safe, not useless cameras), transforming suburbs, commercial and social areas so there is no physical separation anymore between people and where they need/want to go and spend time, effectively bringing back the village/small town paradigm.
EV goes way way way way down the list and we should focus first on EV for public transport and transportation of good rather than personnal toys and vanity possession.
Though I do admit, electric is less compelling where the electric grid is unreliable.
Are you talking about China? I think they're considered a second-world country, as they were somewhat aligned with the USSR.
And if per capita consumption can go down in the 2010's when we had negligible amounts of wind, solar, EV's and heat pumps, what'll it do in the 2020's when we have non-negligible amounts of wind, solar, EV's and heat pumps?
It's great. I love the idea too. I would rather we stop driving around machines that belch out dangerous toxins but a mass migration to EVs will be disastrous. The manufacturers are going hybrid...which is a sensible transition. It should get people used to the freedom of producing/collecting their own energy. Hopefully they get addicted to that.
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/08/02/38-plugin-vehicle-marke...
You can't always get what you want.
Think generators for an antarctic station that can only use solar in certain months and wind isn't enough (or reliable enough)). Even if efficient electric commercial aviation at scale ever happens, you can bet military jets will still need jet fuel. I'm sure there's many others. Methane for rocket launches?
On top of fuel, there's also the use of some fraction of oil in industrial chemical processes to make lubricants and plastics. There may be other chemical processes that can do it without oil, but they may be too costly (in terms of other extractive processes for ingredients, or in terms of yield, not just energy).
Keep in mind that most countries are trying to electrify most parts of the economy, so we not only need to decarbonize the current electrical supply, but possibly 2-3 times that, if we are to replace NG for heating, steel and chemical industries, fertilizers and so on.
Keep in mind that even if the technology for producing windmills and batteries go down a lot, we still need a lot of new mining capacity to even have enough raw materials to produce those items. That alone could take 10-15 years to build out.
As long as you only consume it while the Sun is shinning, at the place of generation. This set of restrictions is allowing enough for a surprisingly large set of industrial applications (anything where energy costs are larger than capital ones).
In fact, we are not far from that. Solar is already a few times cheaper than the grid energy on those conditions.
That was what I objected to.
And if the average price falls by 90%, there number of industrial application where it would make sense to consume only part of the day, drops by a lot.
That's a lot, but if we only used oil in the US for the military, we'd still be using 95% less oil, and we'd also still be producing enough oil to have an economy of scale.
In any case, realistically speaking, we aren't coming for oil tomorrow. Instead, we need to come for coal immediately. If it takes us decades each time we cut our oil consumption in half, that's one thing... but the coal, that needs to stop sooner.
> China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Zimbabwe were the only countries that both added new coal plants and announced new projects. China accounted for 92% of all new coal project announcements.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/coal-burning-capacity-cli...
Those are pretty much the same thing.
My first thought as well.
Make no mistake, oil will always be needed for many purposes, but some of the big consumption drivers are starting to have price competitive alternatives.
It’s notable that half of all global oil consumption is used on roads.
You can’t turn back the clock on the fact that many of these alternatives now cost less.
And commuter traffic is an obvious easy target for EV automakers, once they move out of more premium segments.
And they are right. There are viable alternatives to gasoline cars now and people still buy gas powered vehicles. Most of Teslas success I think has not been so much due to the hunger for an electric vehicle but because of Tesla's cool factor, performance and design. The rest of the major vehicle manufacturers have essentially failed on the electric vehicle front.
But I don't think it is the majority. Most enjoy the cars for other reasons (lack of vibration, high torque, reduced gas station visits, lower operating cost and burden, cabin overheat protection, dog mode, preconditioning, etc).
Even among the environmental types, that often ends up being more of a fringe benefit.
The earth as well as the value of their own companies.
We are actually running out. What comes next after shale?