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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

They are also very fast at electrifying everything. Especially for transportation, they built large high speed train network(runs on electricity) and are far ahead in electrifying the public transport like busses which also resulted in Chinese electric cars dominance. Future is electric, USA can't give up its fossils and EU not happy about ICE cars being phased out(or more precisely someone else winning the phase out) but that's really inevitable. US, EU should just drop everything and go electric or in a few years will look like backward civilizations because China is exporting that all over the world.

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>Future is electric, USA can't give up its fossils and EU not happy about ICE cars being phased out(or more precisely someone else winning the phase out) but that's really inevitable

Claims like this would need to be quantified further in order to make any real predictions, but I think these sorts of predictions about future electrification may turn out to be shockingly wrong.

For example, many predict we have or will soon hit peak oil. Whereas I would wager it will continue to grow. You didn't mention global oil production, but I want to get specific. 50 years from now I think global oil production will be higher than it is today.

There is a strong desire by many for oil production to decrease and to electrify, but the incentive structure just isnt there. It's too cheap and useful and the energy demand is effectively unlimited. Im not even saying we shouldnt move away from it. Just that we wont.

Oil isn't a binary for energy though. There's a growing need for it in other industries, from plastics to pharma to fertilizers. Moreover, oil production is currently staying high because the OPEC cartel can't simply afford to shut down well production - only scale it down very gradually and pray that no one finds out (which is impossible given that oil is sold on the spot market). On the other hand, American Big Oil is dependent on global prices - too low and drilling deep or fracking becomes infeasible for them, while high prices mean economic slowdown (due to domino effects on other industries) until OPEC bandies together to stabilize prices to reasonable levels (which is $65-75 per barrel).

Currently we're in a situation where OPEC, remembering 2014 and hell bent on diversification, is offloading record quantities of crude into the market, to ensure that American production stays infeasible.

Yes, hence more demand for oil

less d3mand for oil, more demand for energy, much more to the point is the endless potential of abundent solar energy and the comming crisis caused by the end of scarcity your grandkids will dealing meems of archiologists finding fossil fossil fuel cars

Anything that needs oil can be produced from coal. There are estimates that liquid fuel produced from coal can compete with oil when oil cost is 80-100 USD/barrel.

The catch is that making coal liquid requires a lot of energy. If that energy comes from coal itself it is a very dirty process. But if energy comes from renewables or nuclear, it is not an issue.

In fact with renewables and storage leading to cheaper electricity, the price competitiveness of coal-based liquid fuels will only get better.

Why would you extract those things from coal, when right now there's plenty of oil?

Coal is enormously more abundant.

Yet more costly and injurious to extract.

That's highly variable - a significantly large volume of coal mined globally is via bucket-wheel excavators / mobile strip mining machines.

That's overburden removal followed by near surface bed extraction with machines - no underground mining, underground being the mining domain that sees high injury and death rates.

Regardless, fuel from oil or fuel from coal is still fuel from dead and buried organics, from resurfaced long buried carbon products, and still introducing more CO2 into the atmosphere which is counter productive toward any goal of reducing the insulation factor of the atmosphere.

Long term if people would really like to do something with CO2 emissions then CO2 captured from atmosphere can be used for chemical processes instead of coal/oil.

Got a link to a Technical Economical Feasibility Report on this?

As in, what can practically be achieved in the real world at large within the next 25 years that can be immediately funded with a forward capital loan to break ground on a plant within 12 to 18 months and start operating within five years?

How does actual atmospheric carbon capture scale out within a useful time frame?

We've taken 150 years to emit all this carbon. Why do you think that a solution that takes more than 5 years isn't practical? I don't think the real world is actually where you're living.

> Why do you think that a solution that takes more than 5 years isn't practical?

A better question would be why do you think that is what I said or implied?

I'm well aware that in the future we will all be flying jet-ski's and teleporting to Mars, today I'm more interested in near and mid term policy, for one of many examples the recent CSIRO cost and benefits report on nuclear vs renewable strategies in Australia (what did that conclude, and will it swap policy decisions).

Given you've apparently taken the mantle of one who lives in the real world rather than the dull fantasy world I inhabit perhaps you could expand on the existing abilities and plans for carbon storage and fuel from air and contrast the achievable volumes within time frames that matter against the current and projected volumes of carbon emissions.

We're mostly all looking for a path forward in my neighborhood, a little less interested in wishful thinking about distant futures, so any pragmatic detail you can provide about next steps would be constructive.

> I don't think the real world is actually where you're living.

Cheap swipe kragen, I've previously thought you could do better.

Hmm, you're right about the tone. I'm sorry about that.

CO2 is an incredible stable molecule. Carbon capture is a hoax under our current economics.

But then you'd have now a gigantic capital outlay to convert your supply chain of chemical from using oil and gas to start using coal as a feedstock. Again, why?

Because solar energy is free, while oil and gas are scarce and expensive. This will make your oil-fueled products economically uncompetitive against Chinese products made with solar energy. Not this year, but two to five years from now.

I was under the impression that we were discussing crude as feedstock for chemicals versus coal. I was not discussing what we would be using as the energy source.

Oil-based petrochemical chains are shorter, cleaner, and more energy-efficient. Coal-based chains substitute chemical routes via synthetic gas and methanol, with higher cost and more energy usage.

It makes sense for a country like China that is not rich in oil and has vast coal reserves, but not in the environmental sense, only in the strategical, geopolitical sense.

So many wrong points here. The coal to liquid (CTL) process looks good on paper up until it isn't. Like you mentioned, it requires a lot of energy, energy which most countries cannot afford to divert. There's no point in using nuclear or renewables for CTL when SABIC can simply undercut you on price by 10x or more.

> There are estimates that liquid fuel produced from coal can compete with oil when oil cost is 80-100 USD/barrel.

Oil is currently at 61-65 USD per barrel, with OPEC ensuring it stays that way because even they know it's only going to fall from there. Even the 61-65 USD price point leaves a bad taste in their mouths.

> In fact with renewables and storage leading to cheaper electricity, the price competitiveness of coal-based liquid fuels will only get better.

No, with renewables and storage offering cheap electricity, oil also gets cheaper!

In fact, I'd argue that CTL is something only countries with extremely abundant domestic reserves of coal can do - China, South Africa and Australia. In fact, nearly every planned CTL plant has been delayed or scrapped in the US as infeasible.

Europe hit its peak oil some time ago and the peak wasn't that high. Anyway, electricity is inherently more efficient and less problematic than the chemical alternatives. I guess you can bet on chemical energy if you have plenty of it. Its just that electricity is superior in every way.

Also fossil reserves have other uses too, I also don't expect oil production going to 0 anytime soon.

Yeah that's why you have to use GLOBAL oil numbers. They increased imports of oil when the production went down.

Global oil numbers went horribly wrong when Russia invaded Ukraine. Prices multiplied and EU was left paying for an invasive force because it was still not %100 renewable. Considering the damage done by the oil supplier war machine, fossils are just outrageously expensive. Biggest mistake ever was to rely on fossils.

I dont understand what you are saying with this comment. They were importing before the war now they are still importing. That just shows how durable the demand is for oil.

Its not durable demand for oil, its a demand for energy and shows how bad idea is to rely on suppliers you don't control. Build enough renewable energy infrastructure and the demand for oil goes away.

Yeah that's great. But solar/wind wont meet unbounded energy demands. It doesnt meet current energy demands.

> But solar/wind wont meet unbounded energy demands.

Solar: 23,000 TW-years/year, every year until cosmological time passes and the sun's luminosity noticably changes

Fossil: 900 coal + 240 petroleum + 215 natural gas = 1,355 TW-years total, and then it's gone forever

https://www.iea-shc.org/data/sites/1/publications/2015-11-A-...

The only source that could ever beat a genuinely unbounded demand, is if we somehow figure out how to tap the dark energy which is causing the universe to expand.

In the meantime however, photovoltaics would get us all of the way to a Kardashev type three civilisation; humanity is currently 0.73 on that scale, it's an exponential scale with a factor of 1e10 between each integer.

> It doesnt meet current energy demands.

Tomorrow is not today.

I wouldn't bet against your 50 year prediction but that's because there will always be more infrastructure to extract oil, even as the oil left to extract dwindles. My own prediction is that rates of oil extraction will continue to increase with minor fluctuations until about 2160 and then fail off a cliff.

Conventional oil peaked around 2008. Shale oil (and others that need fracking)'s peak should be somewhere between 2019 and now IIRC

It's not that there's is less and less oil, it's just that harder and harder to get it

Energy demand is unlimited, but oil isn't cheap anymore. Synfuel will eventually replace petroleum as PV gets cheaper, but also an engine to convert oil into electricity (or, almost equivalently, mechanical work) is too expensive to compete with PV when you have grid access.

Trumpism is clearly spreading… The reason China solar is booming is because of structural incentives. Solar is “dirt cheap” compared to oil/gas. That’s why Africa is importing records of it and breaking that record every next year. It’s not because it’s eco-friendly (people in Africa or Pakistan don’t know what that means), it’s because it’s more affordable.

In Tunisia, the pay-off time for a solar installation is around 4-5 years (granted we still have net-metering, so free storage). You are either ignorant or too poor to not install solar.

Exactly! Few people may care about climate or whether energy is clean, but I'd argue that for most people, the cost is more important. My friend in Shanghai owns a BYD EV. The electricity cost is equivalent to around 2 Liters of gasoline per 100 km. That’s more than 100 MPG. If he charges during the night hours when electricity costs only half, he gets 200 MPG!

"people in Africa or Pakistan don’t know what [eco-friendly] means".

My word. I can't speak for Pakistan, but the good folk in Africa know damned well the value of their environment.

For example the objections to Shell's planned seismic oil exploration of the coast of South Africa is vehemently opposed - on largely environmental reasons - by local residents. They have obtained an injunction and are now opposing it in their constitutional court.

No only do they understand ecology, they seem to have a firm grasp of law as well.

Why you would imagine that a billion people don't know that they depend on the environment is something for the mirror.

> but the good folk in Africa know damned well the value of their environment.

I guess I was just exaggerating for effect.

> For example the objections to Shell's planned seismic oil exploration of the coast of South Africa is vehemently opposed - on largely environmental reasons - by local residents. They have obtained an injunction and are now opposing it in their constitutional court.

Same thing in central Tunisia, though without courts; people just scared off the multi-nationals into leaving. Shale gas is very dangerous in populated areas and Tunisia has a quite a bit of it. But it's not really worth to extract expect for the people doing the extracting.

It must be considerably easy for China to do all this since a lot of this stuff is made in China.

How much of total transportation is trains?

Not great. 7.0% of person-kilometers travelled.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

That's in the EU, though. China?

China is probably doing it for geo-political purposes (ie: if there is no oil, I can still move people with trains). They are ready to take a financial hit for that safety net. Europe is in a similar predicament but even the Russian war didn’t seem to teach them a lesson?

There already more people in EVs than in trains

Trains also enjoy great economies of scale, so once you have high ridership and an extensive network, you aren't taking a financial hit anymore. For medium distances, like 300–3000km, trains also provide speeds that passengers can't get any other way, because they avoid the huge overhead of going through an airport. It's an investment, not an expense.

But China has also electrified a lot of its cars and trucks, and continues to do so rapidly.

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