Wake Up Call for Green Energy

[Ianab]

I'm betting that the convenience / gas pump companies already have a plan if they still want to sell junk food, coffee and lots tickets

You got it. They are already big on takeaway food and barista coffee here. Margins on gas sales aren't great, but coffee / soda etc has a pretty good markup. Still going to take 1/2 hour to fast charge your car, so what are you gonna do? Selling them lunch, or at least a coffee and snack, is the business opportunity they have in mind. They have the prime real estate right there by the busy road, so how do you maximise the return? 

Gas cars aren't going away any time soon (if ever), it will be a transition over decades. Some businesses will adapt to it, some wont. 

[SwampDonkey]

Current charging stations in my area of operations, yes even way out there in the east end around Napadogan area. Not a single one, one 'planned' at the new Amsterdam, which is 1 km off the 4-lane, none at filling stations so far. I bet you have to be an overnight guest to, and not help yourself. ;) I was cutting last fall out their in Chapmanville to the NE on the map. There's a power line to about 3 km from where I was working.





I guess I'm a tight whad, I haven't bought a food item or coffee in a gas bar in 20 years or more. I have not eaten at many restaurants either, I'd say 4 in 5 years maybe. And during work travel, my grub for the day comes from home including any beverage. I don't fit their model too good. ;)

[jake pogg]

Jake it's constantly changing boundaries because weather, the thing we observe day by day is always changing and seasonal changes within. Some areas like Asia and Europe are loosing ice, in Canada I see no significant loss. Some, yes.  Furtwängler Glacier in Africa is considered ephemeral, on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and only existed continuously since about 1650. So it comes and goes over the centuries.That's no 1000 years by the way.

I must say i do find it Very tough to reconcile all those maps and stats with any empirical knowledge that i come into contact with on a daily basis.
Today i talked with a friend of a friend who is a seal hunter in the village of Shishmaref. On those maps the area ice appears solid and up against the beach. In reality it's been several years since the shore-ice has formed at all,making seal hunting impossible. The sea-ice is very far offshore if present at all,and all the marime mammal species along those coastlines are in a process of adaptation to a completely alien environment,the walrus in particular are radically changing their diet to that of a carnivore,the ice-shelf they need to haul out on is either too far out over the too-deep water or not there at all,with it goes their diet of mollusks forcing them to prey on seal instead.

Shish is one of the more ancient continuously occupied sites,it's there solely because of the sea-mammal harvest. The oral record there is pretty long and solid,and is often corroborated by archaeology.

I'm at present spending some weeks in Fairbanks helping some friends in working on their house. Both of them teach at the University of AK/Fbks,and are in various ways a part of the system known as the Arctic Studies Program.
This program is a very extensive international cooperative effort of quite a long standing,the participating universities are places like Sorbonne,Oxford,StPetersburg,Tromso,Reyjavik and so on (not sure what Canadian institutions are also a part of this).
I'm friends with this group of scientists purely on a personal basis,and rarely if ever discuss the "climate change" with them.
But what i do pick up (by osmosis,one may say:)) is anything But something like "hum-de-dum,the Arctic is rolling along business as usual".

This is a very large group of people that work Very hard at keeping themselves VERY informed in their respective fields. I'll not even stoop to defending them by saying that they're not a bunch of "marxists" that are flogging some alarmist theories for some nefarious political ends,or any such silliness.

Yet my own take on things (that of an illiterate dolt who really can't see far beyond "it's a colder/warmer winter this year by golly,i jes Feels it in me bones!") seems quite in line what these folks,And their very numerous peers in related fields.

Another large group whose thinking also tends rather along these lines are the indigenous folks and their communities (people not generally known for their inclination to any "liberal" views and speaking generally with very little love for whiteman science and scientists).

Why is all that apprehension about the warming trend "in the air"?
(and yes,i Do know what a "confirmation bias" is )

To chalk all that up to "wokeism" (i've only learned that word recently and it seems both rude and ignorant somehow) would be akin to baselessly suspecting any other professional of deliberate incompetence. For me it'd be like disrespect to some aged miller who's been operating this ancient steam sawmill for a lifetime, ascribing some action of his you happen to not appreciate to some twisted politicized motiff,i.e. blatant disrespect...

[Ianab]

I guess I'm a tight whad, I haven't bought a food item or coffee in a gas bar in 20 years or more. I have not eaten at many restaurants either, I'd say 4 in 5 years maybe. And during work travel, my grub for the day comes from home including any beverage. I don't fit their model too good

But if you don't travel out of your local area, then you charge at home. Sure you can't run a 50kw charger off a house supply. You run a more sensible slow charger that tops up the battery overnight, and does run off a domestic supply.   You need a charger network so people can travel longer distances, and in that case a 30 min stop for lunch is pretty much a given. Heck you don't need to even buy their over priced coffee, you can use your card at the charger, buy $20 of charge, and eat your sandwich in the car if you like.  

Local map shows 5 x 50kw fast chargers within an hour, and we are off the beaten track. In New Plymouth there are probably a dozen public chargers (not "fast") outside various stores and supermarkets. Of course you pay for the power you take, hence the public access. 

Cities with limited parking? Yeah, that's a problem, but it affects a fairly small % of the population. And they are probably the people that can actually use public transport. (Trains, busses and ferries can be electric too)  

[twar]

We have been down this road before (no pun intended). Who will ever buy a self-driving carriage? Where will I buy this poisonous, explosive stuff that powers it, and who will invest in a filling station when everyone still has a horse?


...back in 1899 a bus line was announced to operate between Chicago and St. Louis. All of us believed bus lines would come some day, but we knew the public was not ready to accept such a dream. And, indeed, E.P. Ingersoll, a reporter on automobile topics, wrote the following widely circulated opinion piece: 

"The notion that electric vehicles, or vehicles of any other kind, will be able to compete with railroad trains for long-distance traffic is visionary to the point of lunacy. The fool who hatched out this latest motor canard was conscience-stricken enough to add that the whole matter was still in an exceedingly hazy state. But,if it ever emerges from the nebulous state,it will be in a world where natural laws are all turned topsy-turvy, and time and space are no more. Were it not for the surprising persistence of this delusion, the yarn would not be worthy of notice."

Alexander Winton, Saturday Evening Post, February 8, 1930

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americas-skepticism-toward-first-automobiles/

[SwampDonkey]

It's circular arguments and always comes back to increased consumption of what you want reduced consumption of. As you increase demand on energy, consumption of resources to add infrastructure increases even faster. Your converting a resource into something else before you can get electricity from it, which is not an efficient path. Resources are material things as well as space. Production of plastics is going to skyrocket. Since we recycle very little of it, it's going to eventually go up in smoke to generate electricity. It is a tremendous cost, whether you want to walk blindly or not it doesn't change the facts.

[stavebuyer]

The impending disaster has already set sail. Pipelines cancelled, coal plants shuttered, automakers abandoning IC development etc. Not sure where the natural gas is going to come from to generate the extra electricity during the transition. I posted a picture of my office electric bill that went from $14 to $43 because of line-item up charges related to the utility needing to recoup costs incurred from dumping coal. Come Jan 1 the state is adding sales tax of 6% to all non-residential bills. The higher my energy bill the greater the states take. Parasite heaven.

I am no climate scientist, but I can guarantee that increased demand for electricity(EVs) coupled with decreased means of providing supply(oil/gas/coal) will lead to shortages. Shortages mean a bidding war for available supply and rationing. Most likely both.

This forum tends to lean toward the older and conservative crowd. A politician I hold in low regard famously stated "elections have consequences". They do and those who argued for restraint lost to those who demanded we shutter fossil fuels immediately. It's a crisis! (Never let a good crisis go to waste without implementing social reform don't ya know.) I agree there is a crisis, but it will be the one we inflicted upon ourselves by prematurely abandoning what we rely upon before the alternative has been developed. Back in the computer stone age I used to run the mainframe for a major company. We had two parallel systems. One for operations and the other for testing updates/upgrades. Took years to verify and implement a major system change. It was a sound practice.

Marxists always have a plan for the "greater good". Problem is those plans never work and this will be a failure of epic proportions. Have we already forgotten the chaos at the ports over Covid lockdowns? Surely there will be natural or man-made disaster that disrupts or delays the long list of things that need to converge in the next decade.

Building backyard power generation will become essential to savings one's own existence long before the planets.

We told you so ain't much; but it's all we got left.

[stavebuyer]

And yes I think electric vehicles might well be successful. I have an electric bike. The range without peddling is about 25 miles and takes 5 hours to recharge on a 110 outlet. No doubt batteries and charging will improve but we aren't there yet. I have about a dozen cell phone trail cameras mostly for keeping watch on properties without electric service. They need lithium batteries to have much battery life. I order the batteries bulk on Amazon. Price of the batteries has tripled in less than a year's time. What was economical two years ago will be where when the big three are all fighting over lithium and copper like they are for antique computer chips for heated seats today?

It's not electric versus gas its government mandate versus market driven. Build the electric model T and people will line up to buy one. No need to shoot the horse.

"Ye shall plant beans instead of corn" because the enlightened sayeth. Until the emerald bean borer arrives from Tasmania and we all starve.

[Southside]

Thinking the city folks are a "small percentage of the population" and telling them they can use public transportation instead of owning a vehicle is right up there with "let them eat cake". 

Didn't work out then, and the same approach won't work out this time for the same reason nobody is successfully going to tell us out in the boonies what we "must do". It's human nature. Sensible solutions are one thing, this forced transition isn't. 

[twar]

always comes back to increased consumption

Yes, it does.

Years ago when I had kids in school, they learned Reduce, Re-use and Recycle (ordered by declining environmental benefit). We have been pretty good (at least better) with the last one. Even the poorer countries in Europe have a system for sorting and recycling. And though the environmental benefits can at times be questionable, it does make us feel better.

Re-use has become popular in some areas (e.g. some clothes, building material), but re-use face several challenges and still amounts to a microscopic % of total consumption.

And then there is Reduce. There are very few voices, regardless of political color, that say, "Do not buy that new <insert product>". The <product> dealer needs to make a living and meet payroll (and taxes need to be paid to make society's economic cake bigger).

Instead a new "R" is introduced; Replace the gas car with an EV. Replace your old boat, camper, sofa, TV... with a "green" one, produced in an "environmentally responsible" way. But by all means, continue consuming.

The country of Denmark does "everything right"; high % of renewable energy, bicycles, organically produced food, green certification, etc. etc. Italy does some, but much, much less (per capita) than Denmark. Who has the greater carbon footprint? The Dane by about 25%, because he/she consumes more. And Denmark's windmills and organic tomatoes are not going to change that.

[SwampDonkey]

But the problem is that 'replace' is not offsetting or paring consumption for the same transport capacity, it's adding more CO2 to produce it. Adding more windmills and solar to make more power consumes more, the plastics into them comes from oil. You have to use oil to make them before a single kilowatt is sent down the line.

[nativewolf]

EVs over the long haul will dramatically reduce overall consumption.  They are more efficient, require 40% less labor to assemble, have fewer parts, drive further per unit of energy applied.  We're just going to go through an industrial replacement cycle like we did with coal in 1900 moving to oil. Took 40 years.  

Most people don't really get the implications of charging at home.  95% of charging will occur at home.  You'll have lots of charging stations but most of the power is coming from the house.  The actual charging needs for most are low, the average commute/daily drive is low so the equivalent of a dollar or two in electricity at offpeak is about what it takes to "fuel" up the EV.  The charging stations are for longer distance drives.  How many days a month do you or your spouse drive over 200 miles one way?  

In terms of city residents there are lots of good points raised in this thread; lots of solutions being implemented.  Cities are mostly wealthy and have dense networks and many options.  They'll figure out how to get chargers just as they figured out how to install petro stations.  People in cities will only need to charge infrequently.    I suspect most parking garages will have stations retrofitted.  

2 million people have home chargers already. The long slow rollout has been informative.  Take the new Ford Lightning- you can actually run your house off the truck for a couple of days while the power is out through a special charger.  Ford implemented something others had only talked about so far.  It's  big part of the potential solution, there is the possibility that we jam electrons into EVs everyday during peak solar and use that combined battery pack to power the grid at night.  

The battery capacity is being built to supply over 10 million cars  year just in the USA.  Tesla alone will have 2+ million annual production in the USA by end of next year.  A couple of years ago I posted the same thing, in 2 years we can come back to this thread and post how it actually happened but by 2026 Tesla will no longer be supplying most of the EVs in the USA.  

FYI.  Today Tesla delivers the first semi truck to Pepsi.  They are 4 years late, no spare battery capacity.  The order book is over 100k units with deposits.  They hope to make 50k a year in 2024.  The combined heavy truck market is 250k units a year I think.  I've done the math on the semi truck and it is mind boggling how much money the trucking firms will save.  

[nativewolf]

But the problem is that 'replace' is not offsetting or paring consumption for the same transport capacity, it's adding more CO2 to produce it. Adding more windmills and solar to make more power consumes more, the plastics into them comes from oil. You have to use oil to make them before a single kilowatt is sent down the line.

at this point in the industrial process it is a dramatic net reduction.  

[Southside]

Cities are mostly wealthy and have dense networks and many options.  They'll figure out how to get chargers just as they figured out how to install petro stations.    I suspect most parking garages will have stations retrofitted.  

That does not describe many north east cities, especially parking garages in residential neighborhoods.  Midwest, younger cities where there is room to grow, maybe, but look at the population density in the north east and tell me how you overcome the logistics of no ground left? 

[Hilltop366]

I don't see much difference in producing solar panels or wind turbines as what you or I do to heat our houses, we bought a chain saw and a tractor/ATV made from metal and plastic then for a few dollars for fuel and chain oil we heat our houses all winter. 

If it pencils out as a saving in total cost in the long run and does the job why not.

Anyway I thought I would mention my BIL's experience with his electric truck so far, it was ordered a long time ago he willingly bought it, no one forced him, he pays for his electricity and the company that supplies the electricity does so at a profit to its share holders (it is regulated and the profit is capped) He figures it should save him the cost of the truck in about 4 years so we will see what happens.

[SwampDonkey]

I will stick to my story until proven wrong. I don't mind being wrong, if it comes that, not in the least.

Musk is the same guy that Tweeted, 'if we have to have regime change to get a certain resource, deal with it'. Not an exact quote.

[Hilltop366]

I would add that If I had to buy a new tractor, winch, wood boiler, chain saw..... for about 50k it probably would not pencil out well.  :D

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, if I had to buy a tractor just the cut wood, no deal. I have a SxS and chain saw, I figure 8-years to come ahead, 4 years left. Next year's wood is all staged outside my door to stack in spring. ;D I cut 8-10 cords a year. To buy it, it would be over $3200 a year I'm sure. $1000 chain saw, 2 gallons of gas and chain oil, 10 gallons SxS gas a year. Two gallons of gas for saw right now is $12, 10 gallons of SxS gas is $57 and two gallons of chain oil is $54. ;D Wood furnace with electric side unit $3500. In 4 more years, it's mostly all gravy here. Even beats a heat pump for install and power cost by then, way warmer to. I've got enough chain oil ahead for the next two years. ;)

[nativewolf]

I don't see much difference in producing solar panels or wind turbines as what you or I do to heat our houses, we bought a chain saw and a tractor/ATV made from metal and plastic then for a few dollars for fuel and chain oil we heat our houses all winter.

If it pencils out as a saving in total cost in the long run and does the job why not.

Anyway I thought I would mention my BIL's experience with his electric truck so far, it was ordered a long time ago he willingly bought it, no one forced him, he pays for his electricity and the company that supplies the electricity does so at a profit to its share holders (it is regulated and the profit is capped) He figures it should save him the cost of the truck in about 4 years so we will see what happens.

Consumer demand is huge.  The lightning has a year long waiting list, truck companies have been waiting 4 years for the semi from Tesla and many have already paid.  Just like with power, most of the changes in utility charges are because they had to move from coal to natural gas.  The renewables are barely impacting things yet.  
Leaving out govt intervention renewables will win out on utility side, levelized costs approach 0 and nothing can compete.  It is going to open huge business opportunities and entire new industries.  There will be change on change and things will be very interesting.  Frankly I don't get the huge govt intervention, there were no consumer credits for Tesla the last 2 years it had no impact on consumer demand.  Seems to just be inflationary and not required.  

[doc henderson]

are you saying that all the wind turbines are manufactured, shipped, installed, and operated as well land leased, all by private industry?

[stavebuyer]

Just how many F150s did Ford not build for lack of raw materials the last 2 years from established supply chains? Will the battery plant they announced in E-town KY be finished on time? Pretty extensive list of "going to". No doubt that all the various aspects will fall into place without a hitch. You know all the petty stuff like earthquakes, wars, floods, tornadoes, lawsuits, revolutions that weren't part of the five-year plan certainly won't disrupt the timeline.

They really should go straight to the "Jetson" aerial electric vehicle as not quite sure how we will build tires or roads without oil. When the IC replaced the horse no one on the planet foresaw that it would cause the end of the world by global warming. Surely the mining, manufacturing, and disposal of a few billion batteries and solar panels will have no negative consequences. Anyone care to buy some FTX stock?

Plug in one 1500W electric heater in your cold garage and let it run for a month and see what it does to your electric bill. Once everyone in the country is doing that overnight when there is zero solar happening it's going to be interesting. No doubt the utilities will be incorporating smart meters to double the rate during the new overnight peak when everyone needs to charge. 

I just don't see anyone taking into account the scale of what actually needs occur for this to work. I live on a US highway 5 miles from town and we don't have cable TV or fiber optic internet. 

Honestly, I think the ones pushing it know it won't work and don't care because the areas most damaged will be the fly-over residents they despise to start with. Punishing rednecks in the process is just a welcome side benefit.

[doc henderson]

all the infrastructure has to cost tons, and no one company can afford or borrow enough to do all that.  It will take years and billions and not even happen in my lifetime.  trying to speed things up ahead of the technology and manufacturing curve, drives up the cost.  You know how the government hates to waste money... if it is theirs.

[nativewolf]

are you saying that all the wind turbines are manufactured, shipped, installed, and operated as well land leased, all by private industry?

Manufacturing shipping install yes.  Some utilities are public so ? On operating.  It is big business GE Siemens etc are the players.  The big news in wind is offshore floaters.  These turbines resemble nothing you see on land.  Massive

[stavebuyer]

Its big business because they have no alternative. The alternative is illegal because of EPA dictates. You don't have to be better when your competition is legislated out of viability. How nice for GE.

[Hilltop366]

It won't be over night and it won't work for everyone now and just like the current ICE vehicles it won't be perfect.

Look at the current system and add up the cost of oil exploration, drilling, pumping, storage, pipelines, tanker ships, refineries, distribution, central bulk plants, trucking, local bulk plants, delivery for home heating or to gas stations, storage at home or gas stations, gas pumps. Kind of bulky and inefficient, if we had no system in place and this was proposed it would sound foolish.

Like I was trying to say in my previous post (cutting fire wood) about using the oil to make equipment that can produce way more energy over the years makes more sense than burning it up (gone) and buying more while complaining about OPEC and big oil, government kickbacks, oil company subsidies.  

I say hurry up! In my life time please.