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Comment by akamaka | Hacker News Reader

> The rising BRICS dominate hydrocarbons and they aren't giving them up, selling or using.

Surely you’re looking at the wrong statistics. Brazil is a leader in renewable energy, with fossil fuel use already on the decline for the last decade.

China is the world’s largest producer of solar and wind power products, and their renewable energy ramp up has only been slowed down by the rest of the world buying up half their output.

The risk to western economies is that they are too slow to transition away from fossil fuels and suffer from their dependence on ever more expensive oil and gas.

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Brazil is making ethanol from its vast sugar plantations. They are a special case, and ethanol isn't great on a full lifecycle basis. It doesn't make sense without agricultural surpluses or subsidies, as there are in the USA.

China is the world's mass manufacturer. They will happily make whatever they can sell. If the West is demanding solar panels and windmills due to top down energy policy directives China will happily make and sell them.

There is plenty of fossil fuel available and a huge installed base of ICE's around to use them, especially in the developing world and BRICS. If the West stops buying fossil fuels it only makes them cheaper for those who will happily consume them.

The West needs to use its technological edge to develop market winning sustainable technologies and cheap, safe, electricity production. Crippling itself with unrealistic sustainable energy policies is going to be counter productive to climate change solutions.

There isn’t plenty of cheap fossil fuel available, it’s becoming more expensive to extract what’s left with each decade that goes by.

The high price of oil is a huge drag on economy, with every spike causing inflation and reducing economic growth.

The USA has already developed technology needed, and renewables are now the cheapest energy source. The countries that scale them up quickly will enjoy smooth economic growth and cheaper energy than ever in history, and the countries that keep using oil will stagnate.

Tell that to Putin. There's plenty of oil. They've been saying its going to run out for 50 years. Dead fields have replenished themselves.

I’m not talking about some peak oil collapse theory, but the actually reality that the return on investment of extracting oil is steadily eroding. Have a look at the data yourself:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2013.012...

Yes. EROEI. Very familiar with that. This is an anonymous forum so you won't believe my credentials ( as is wise!), so I'll put it this way: do you think that the idea that oil is a precious and rare resource is good or bad for the major producers (i.e. state producers)?

The oil supply chain is logistically demanding. Once oil is pumped out of the ground it's got to go somewhere, and once it's there it has to move or be burned, because storing oil gets expensive. What oil producers care about is predictability of demand, price is important but it's secondary to that. If the whole world knows that there's plenty of oil it's much harder to set the price where you want it. If the world thinks oil is a rare and precious commodity the price is natural.

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