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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

I realise he needs to boost his own business plan but

> Half the world’s population suffers from hydrocarbon scarcity. Oil is the antidote to poverty. Synthetic fuels are the only way to increase oil supply, cut prices, and slash strategic and security supply chain issues. Synthetic fuels are the single biggest lever we have to double global economic growth.

Another way is to massively reduce demand via electrification, which has already started and will only accelerate (as he details in the rest of this article).

It also ruined the experience for me as I was thinking it was nice to have someone talking about "human flourishing" and "cheap energy" that wasn't actually just a shill for fossil fuels trading on outdated ideas of competitive cost of renewables.

Yes he's selling fossil-free fuels which have a place but he's still feeling the need to pitch them as better than direct electrification which they clearly aren't in most cases.

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Methane derived from co2 and h2o with solar energy is not a fossil fuel. Methane from the ground is a fossil fuel. Casey is going after industry that has a lot of inertia behind methane with a non fossil derived methane.

Yes, and many of those markets are not good fits for methane of any kind as electricity becomes cheaper e.g heating.

It is disappointing, but understandable, that he feels the need to make methane in general seem more irreplaceable and vital to human happiness than it really is.

A typical example is cooking fire in Africa. This is a major cause of deforestation. The introduction of cheap e-methane is the best solution in sight. When off-grid, cooking with electricity does not make sense.

Shouldn’t a higher priority still be expanding coverage of the grid? I’m sure there will always be some market for off-grid use cases but those should be a tiny niche.

That's gonna require you to jump through a lot of hoops and it might not even make economical sense at this point in time to build out the grid. It might not ever. You want to cook now, fuel solves that problem.

It's a complicated solution. On top of deployment of renewable energy production, it requires building efuel manufacturing and distribution network. Even if that's doable, it's not something that can be built immediately. And even if built, I don't see how it can compete in impoverished areas with just cutting down whatever is around.

And in the end, it only solves cooking. Electrification solves many more problems at once, and notably refrigeration.

Expanding the grid faces a totally different set of roadblocks than expanding individual household's capacity to generate power.

Much of the extant Third World is in its Third World-ey condition because of abysmal governance. That is usually accompanied by infestation of power and grid companies by grandnephews of top politicians etc.; those companies handle a lot of money, are highly centralized, and are thus a prime target for graft.

The bizarre story of South African ESKOM and poisoning of the director who was asked to reduce corruption comes to mind. [0]

[0] https://yris.yira.org/interviews/by-not-speaking-out-when-so...

A country with a well-functioning grid is probably already on its way from poverty.

Methane doesn't make sense off grid, either. It's a gas and requires pipes to distribute efficiently. If you want to go off grid best to go up the chain a bit to propane or kerosene.

The 3rd world is much better off switching to solar. With an induction hob you can probably get away with 1000 Wh / day. A 200W panel, a 1000Wh battery, a 1500W inverter and a 1500W hob would cost around $500 and last 20 years. It can also keep a cell phone charged or used for refigeration instead or ...

OTOH, a propane burner might cost $20, but then you'll be spending $10/month on propane, and are super vulnerable to being cut off from your source.

> ...someone talking about "human flourishing" and "cheap energy" that wasn't actually just a shill for fossil fuels...

But the vast majority of the solar panels are coming from China, which is a great example of human flourishing and cheap energy, powered by fossil fuels. Anyone who cares about cheap power would have been disingenuous to promote solar. The Chinese strategy of building what is actually cheap has outperformed the rest of us by a substantial margin.

The Western strategy for the last few decades of blocking people from using cheap power just means that the next revolution is more likely to be made in China. I agree with Casey that the investment opportunities here are huge, I just wish they weren't mainly in China by policy. There is a good chance they're about to have a nuclear renaissance too given that most of the plants being built right are Chinese.

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