Pops wrote:by your estimate, new RE costs 2-3% of the value of the $6T total energy market
And, RE (excluding hydro) is producing 7% of total primary energy already,
Since 7% is greater than 3%, isn't RE effectively producing all new RE, and more?
News Break jan 2023
Coal has been making headlines for the past few weeks with a 38 percent gain in prices last month. Over the last six months, the commodity’s price has seen a 160 percent gain and more than 200 percent in the current year itself. The price has gone up to an all-time high of $270 a tonne
https://www.cnbctv18.com/market/commodi ... l%20prices. Today's price $50 . Price volatility
isn't RE effectively producing all new RE, and more?
No, because those are $$$ values for energy, which are underwritten by the current low cost of fossil fuels used to produce the RE units in the first place. It's like when they conduct studies on the energy payback time of a solar panels. They take the electricity generated by the panel at today's electricity price in $$$ and compare that to the $$$ cost of the panel from the retailer.
Now remove all oil and coal and start mining Bauxite with electricity alone. Transporting the ore across land and ocean by electricity alone. Make the glass without it, run an arc furnace on the solar panel output. Things like arc furnaces for steel etc run at 3,000 °F and consume vast amounts of electricity, Producing aluminium (frames for solar PV) use mega amounts too.
Typically, 13 to 15 megawatt hours (DC) is required to produce one metric tonne of molten aluminium. Aluminium smelters therefore tend to be located close to sources of economical, reliable and plentiful long term power.
https://primary.world-aluminium.org/pro ... eneration/Now try doing all that with solar panels and the equation changes dramatically. Solar powered D9s? Solar powered long haul trucks? Hydro is great, but if you do a little research your discover that all of the hydro dams have been built in the last 80 odd years. And that the average lifespan of a Dam is about 100 years, then it becomes unusable because of the silt buildup behind the dam wall. You can't remove this silt in any practical way either and you can't build another Dam on the same site.
There are only certain geographical sites suitable for Dams and many of these have already been utilized. So while Hydro is fine now, it's unsustainable in the future. Hoover Dam's Lake Mead lifespan was greatly extended by the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. it's lake, Lake Powell, will of course silt up at a rate as fast as Mead was before, and when it's full, all the silt will pass again into Mead. The politically correct report for Mead gives a new figure of a 1000 year lifespan, based on current inflows. But that will have to change when Powell is full of silt. In any event hydro power is not always near mines or other big industrial users so it's of limited value.
In the end the production of RE power systems cannot, from my studies on the subject, be feasibly powered by the energy they produce alone. Certainly not on a scale that can light our cities, power our industry and charge a billion EVs, most of which is the unproductive us of electricity. Look at my microcosm. I'm sitting here at home with a few lights on, the A/C unit running, the H/W system heating, the fridges cooling, computer powered up. And outside street lights glare all over town, refrigerators keep the supermarkets food cold, the pumps at the sewage transfer system are pushing the poo along, other pumps push water up into the reservoirs. All that is unproductive, it isn't making solar panels, all it does is make my personal life comfortable. Now multiply that for a few Billion people. If it wasn't for coal I'd be sitting in the dark!
We've had a 100 years of opulence powered by fossil fuels and everyone wants that to continue for ever. Is it any wonder so many people are claiming we can? All those claimants are living in luxury today and most can afford that luxury because they are being paid to find ways for it to continue. They have a vested interest in selling rebuildable technology but I assume many of them are like those highly paid Silicon valley programmers working on creating addictive kids games. They do the work, they get their salaries, but they in no way allow their children to play the games. They pointedly restrict their children's screen time.
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs raised their kids with limited tech — and it should have been a red flag about our own smartphone use. ...Even elite Silicon Valley schools are noticeably low-tech.
https://www.businessinsider.com/screen- ... ching-tv-4You don't get smart kids from putting them in front of a computer, studies have proved that old fashioned reading and writing stimulates the creative centers of the brain. Especially writing in cursive believe it or not.
The benefit of cursive writing has been examined in numerous studies and has been shown to improve brain development, significantly for critical thinking...
https://www.smithbrooktuition.co.uk/how ... the-brain/When I discovered that I switched from writing printed txt to cursive. No easy task, it took me weeks just to remaster it in an untidy manner.
We are not citizens Pops, we are a commodity, we are Human Capital, we are consumers in the eyes of these people. I tried to live a decent life, I did a productive job that didn't exploit people, I offered value for money and treated my clients as I would myself. I did not exploit for commissions or grants or extra profit over and above a decent income. But who is promoting rebuildable technologies. Fat-cats, corrupt politicians, entrepreneurs out to make big money. It doesn't matter. All the truth is coming out now.
US Clean Energy Stocks Have Lost $30 Billion In Value In The Last 6 Months https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-cl ... t-6-months