[Graeme]

Could Global Tide Be Starting To Turn Against Fossil Fuels?

Boom may be turning to bust for fossil fuels. Market forces are combining with the prospect of new limits on carbon emissions from major economies such as China and the United States to prick the carbon bubble. Many analysts are now suggesting that — with prices falling and production costs rising — the coming year could be the moment when investors realize the game is up for the coal and oil industries.

Nations found it hard to make progress at UN climate negotiations in Lima last year, making many observers skeptical of the prospects of a legally-binding deal to cut emissions of carbon dioxide as planned in Paris at the end of this year. But, with or without a deal, the tide is turning against investing in fossil fuels, says Jeremy Leggett, one of the most durable climate campaigners of the past quarter-century, who is now chair of Carbon Tracker, a think tank on finance, energy, and climate.

“Watching the wave of investor pressure wash across carbon-fuel capital expenditure in the closing months of 2014, I now think this is how the carbon war can be won,” Leggett, who formerly was science director for Greenpeace and founder of a successful British solar energy company, says. “The way things are shaping up, negotiations in Paris might be playing catch-up to the markets.”

Perhaps the most totemic sign of the times came in September when the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a philanthropic body set up by the heirs to the Standard Oil fortune, announced that it would pull its money out of fossil fuels, beginning with coal and tar sands.
But the alarm bells are ringing for the masters of the financial universe, too. The governor of the Bank of England, Canadian banker Mark Carney, warned repeatedly during 2014 that what he termed “stranded assets” are a growing risk for fossil-fuel companies. “The majority of proven coal, oil, and gas reserves may be considered ‘unburnable’ if global temperature increases are to be limited to two degrees Celsius,” he said in a letter to the British parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee in October, referring to the widely accepted temperature threshold for avoiding the worst effects of climate change.

resilience

[Subjectivist]

Sounds like a lot of wishful thinking to me.

[Graeme]

No its real.

Renewable Energy Growth To Outstrip Fossil Fuels

Renewable energy consumption is set to grow over the next few years, and according to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, said growth will outstrip growth in the fossil fuel industry.

Despite this growth, non-fossil fuels are faced with political challenges that may hamper their ability to flourish.

Renewables are a growing commodity that, to the surprise of nobody, is taking up a lot of the attention of utilities and energy companies the world over. Add to that the declining reliance upon fossil fuels such as coal and oil — be it for environmental reasons, or for fear of investing in an energy strategy which may very well end up stranded — and renewable energy is a sure fire win.

However, as the report’s authors write, “non-fossil fuels lack the overarching policy support they need to make faster progress globally.”


The report, which investigated six industries and their prospects for 2015, highlighted the massive part China is having on the global energy scene.

According to the report, “China consumes almost one-half of all the coal burnt each year,” but as we have already seen, the country is also trying to make steps towards minimising their use of coal, the pollution that stems from coal use, and are even addressing the type of coal they use, ensuring that they use ‘cleaner’ coal.

China is also one of the major renewable energy giants, and the Economist believes that it will reach its 100 GW target for wind power generating capacity sometime this year. “Solar installations, too, will spread apace in the world’s biggest market for photovoltaic equipment,” the authors write.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

It's no joke. Fossil fuels are history.

[Graeme]

Nonsense. Energy has already decoupled from global economic growth. That's FF propaganda.

Jim Chanos: Days of drilling for cheap oil over

Jim Chanos, head of the world's largest short-selling hedge fund, told CNBC on Friday he's been short major oil companies for a couple years because the North American shale explosion has been "uneconomic for drillers."
"The fracking and shale revolution was propelling us to be the largest oil producer in a way that I thought was uneconomic and still is uneconomic for the drillers. But it was going to be enough supply to really disrupt the markets," he said.

Big oil companies like Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell are finding their business models challenged, he added, "because the days of finding cheap oil is over."

cnbc

[Graeme]

Looks like you and Raify are FF stooges.

[ralfy]

It's no joke. Fossil fuels are history.

Again, you need fossil fuels to mine, manufacture, and transport components needed not just for RE but even for the infrastructure needed to store, distribute, and use energy.

You argue that fewer materials may be used, but that refers to the manufacture of components themselves. The number of components needed will have to rise significantly to meet the needs of a growing global population. Even more will be needed to meet a growing global middle class.

You argue that countries have decoupled growth from FF, but the examples that you give refer to rich ones, and it turns out that decoupling involves credit creation. Ironically, this even derails your argument as increasing credit is reinvested to the production of even more goods and services.

[Graeme]

FF are not going to vanish overnight but their use will continue to decline and be replaced gradually by substitutes. I'm beginning the like the concept of zero waste and re-use rather than recycling in a circular economy. As the service economy becomes more prominent, natural resource extraction will also decline. I've given you references on decoupling of energy from global economy in the renewable energy and economic growth thread. Where are yours? There will be some credit initially but this can be repaid as the global economy grows this century.

[Pops]

[quote="Graeme"As the service economy becomes more prominent, natural resource extraction will also decline.[/quote]
So we're all going to cut each other's hair for a living, LOL

[clif]

FF are not going to vanish overnight but their use will continue to decline and be replaced gradually by substitutes.

No where near fast enough, to stop the damage the fossil fuels have done and will do. Given the recent elections in the US we will lose another two+ years to do anything MEANINGFUL to change course. Both market forces and the petro/coal-political alliance will continue to push the current BAU on the eco-system of the planet. The damage will continue to accumulate and add to all the previous damage we all have experienced.

Population growth will not allow mitigation efforts to be constructed at any where the levels to change to the arc that the fossil fuel collective and their political allies set us all on. China is not going to tear down all the modern coal plants they build in the last decade for quite a while so the coal those plants need will be dug up and burned.

With the drought in Brazil affecting the hydro-power they need, alternate energy sources will be needed like the diesel units being used to pump water to the needed heights to fill the inlets at the dam site. All the "temporary" uses of fossil fuels to mitigate the effects of drought in Sought America, California etc are also going to add up. When these "temporary" emergencies arise, fossil fuels are turned to because the infrastructure to quickly emplace the needed alternates are based almost entirely on fossil fuel uses.

We only have 10-15 years to make massive changes at the base of both the economic system and the underlying energy resources we use to power it. Nothing large enough is under honest consideration let alone construction to make those changes exist. Lots of words (more hot air) very little real world actions that will work.

[Graeme]

Let's stick to the topic of the thread. This article supports the case:

Sell Canada! Investors bet against loonie, bank stocks as oil collapses

The sell orders are piling up on Canada. From Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Fidelity Investments to exchange-traded funds, investors are betting against the country’s currency, equities and even its once-vaunted bank stocks as oil collapses.

Traders yanked US$874 million from all U.S.-based exchange-traded funds with a Canada focus from Oct. 1 through Tuesday. That’s a 22% drop amid the plunge in oil, the country’s biggest export, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The retreat from Canada puts it second in dollar terms to the U.K. for country-focused funds.

Bank of America is telling investors to take bearish bets against Canadian bank stocks in favour of U.S. regional lenders and the Canadian dollar’s 2.7% slump this month to about 84 U.S. cents has already blasted past the average year-end target of a Bloomberg analysts’ survey. The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index, Canada’s benchmark equity gauge, has dropped 8.2% in the past six months, compared with a 1.1% gain for the U.S.’s S&P 500.

“I expect continued fiscal weakness and slower growth,” Jonathan Lemco, senior sovereign debt analyst at Vanguard Group Inc., the world’s biggest mutual-fund company, said by telephone Jan. 13 from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. “Canada is a big commodity producer, oil is a big part of that, China and other countries are buying a little less. It will take a bit of a hit.”

financialpost

[Graeme]

Clif wrote about the affect that oil has on the environment. Not relevant. Canada is now perceived as an increasing risk and funds are being invested elsewhere if you actually read the article. That is part of the theme - the tide is turning.

“We see that the risks are building up in Canada,” he said. “Canada has been perceived as a less risky area to invest, with the energy sector underperforming, the material sector underperforming, if you get the real estate market underperforming too, that’s a significant portion of the economy.”

[KaiserJeep]

I just want to know why you would want to ask such a question.

It's not like we could save ourselves, or even slow down the rate of species extinctions, by stopping the burning of FF. It's not like we could possibly feed 7.3+ billion people without using FF. It's not as if even if you convinced a majority of the 200+ nations in the world to stop burning FF, that the others would stop.

In fact, I cannot for the life of me imagine any scenario where every drop of oil, every lump of coal, every cubic foot of gas, all the methane trapped on the sea floor, all the recoverable tar sands, all the recoverable oil shale, and any form of FF I forgot to mention gets burned eventually by someone - unless we all die before then.

One pictures a miserable remnant of humanity a century from now, suffering mightily in a world denuded of resources, chipping brown coal out of the ground because peak wood and peak dried manure and peak <insert favorite biomass here> have passed, and they got lucky and discovered a seam of accessible coal, which gives at least twice the heat as an equal amount of dry hardwood when burned, and is much cleaner than wood to boot. So they shiver, huddled around an old 55 gallon steel drum with burning lumps of coal inside, coughing and cursing the weather.

Win or lose the argument about burning FF, we are all still dying because simply having 7.3+ Billion humans on a planet which can support a maximum population (if one is optimistic) of 1 Billion, is an extinction event. Mankind multiplied until we were into population overshoot over two centuries ago, and the population is now in the really steep part of the exponential growth curve. It's not hard to understand, just LOOK AT THE WORLD around you. 600% population overshoot is not survivable because it will wreck the ecology, which is not a permanent problem - in a few million years, the Earth will once again teem with life and millions of diversified species, and there will be no traces of humans visible.

So why even ask: "Could Global Tide Be Starting To Turn Against Fossil Fuels?"?

[Graeme]

Yes we've got lots of problems. Burning FF is one of them. Until we stop doing this, we cannot address effectively the other issues that are equally as important. As long as we are alive, we can still make the changes that are necessary. So in that sense, the situation is not hopeless but time is running out as many have repeatedly warned.

[KaiserJeep]

Burning FF caused the overpopulation. The survival of the overshoot population requires that we continue to burn FF.

The one path that could save the planet is to first reduce the human population down below the one billion mark in a very short time. Then you would have to manage the population below one billion on an ongoing basis while you carefully restored species diversity around the world, and allowed the areas devastated by mankind to recover.

But I always choke on step #1, the genocide of 6.3+ billion humans. That is a crime so great that merely saving the world is not worth it. Let this ecology die and the humans with it. Then let the Earth regenerate in a geological age.

I absolutely refuse to advocate genocide for the sake of the Earth. This is a binary choice, you either save the humans and kill the Earth, or kill the humans and save the Earth. Humans can live off the planet, but the planet cannot live with technological man plundering every resource.