What you say is true…but I think only in some of the possible imperfect worlds.
I’ve traveled a bit and visited some of the less rich countries and areas. Places that in a lot of areas have no electrical distribution, so they can’t consume a lot of fossil fuels, so at least in a small way their increase in fossil fuels is limited. Instead I see a solar panel charging a cell phone. They also have no wired telephone service. They will never install wires and I suspect the cell towers are solar+battery frequently.
Another interesting one is transportation. They have poor or no roads, in many places, just trails. Perfect for motorcycles. But then I started to see solar charging E-bikes.
So I can’t begin to figure out which trend has the bigger effect, but in places so poor they skip one or two generations of products and renewables may be cheaper when you add in the overall infrastructure required to just enable high fossil use,
I would argue the contrary. If you’re serious about climate change, arguments that fossil fuels are cheaper are important and significant.
The reason climate change is a difficult problem to address is because renewable energy sources are, in many contexts, more expensive than fossil fuel alternatives. So fighting climate change has costs. It involves trade-offs. There are winners and losers - and the losers aren’t always just easily demonized first-world energy corporations.
A big reason why climate change advocates have been so ineffective is because they have refused to engage with this seriously. If you pretend that the Green Transition can be done costlessly (or costless to any constituencies that you care about), then you can’t actually get policies adopted. You end up either limiting yourself to policies that have very easily hidden costs but aren’t nearly enough to solve the problem, or you end up with political leaders that can’t implement policies that are strong enough to solve the problem because no one’s done the work of convincing the public that sacrifice is necessary and worthwhile.
If you don’t seriously reckon with the fact that fossil fuels are cheaper than renewables, you’ll end up with little more than ineffective greenwashing - spending lots of resources on low-impact measures that
In addition to the points Albaby made, besides price there is the question of availability. SAFs currently could supply about half a percent of the necessary aviation fuel. How much used vegetable oil do you have sitting around? How much food production land are you going to convert to aviation fuel? Could you do the change over so that Air New Zealand could maintain its (unrealistic) climate targets?
The exception is wind, wave, solar and geothermal at least. Where you have no fuel to purchase, ultimately they have potential to be cheaper than fossil fuels.
Of course, its the investment cost that works against them. They are competing with fully depreciated fossil fuel sources. But I think they will get there in time. Especially if environmental costs are considered.
Yes, that is a concern. We know that rapeseed is the best source of vegetable oil. We should grow more of it.
There are lots of oils our there. Tall oil from paper mills is a good example. Very smelly but usually the lowest cost vegetable oil–usually found at tall oil fatty acid.
Fermentation ethanol is the most abundant green energy source. It probably is a suitable fuel for many purposes. And derivatives can be near perfect replacements for petro products if you are willing to pay for processing.
You can make ethanol from almost anything. Corn stover, waste paper, sawdust, etc, etc. So far has not been cost effective. It is known technology. They have tried enzyme processes. Acid digestion is traditional but make more waste streams to deal with.
Only in some places. In other places (like China and India), total energy use is growing, so they are competing with NEW fossil fuel generation plants (natural gas, coal, etc). Even in the USA, total energy use is growing in many places, so they are competing with new fossil fuel generation plants (usually natural gas in the USA) as well.
Classic economics is a Connect-the-dots system while modern economics is a Complex system, quite unpredictable, with each producer and each consumer a node in a complex web. According to the science of complexity the more nodes and connections the more chaotic, the more unpredictable it becomes.
Not that it’s relevant, but who could have predicted that Venezuelan money would be used to create origami? Worthless money used to make money? Crazy!
Catalytic converters adds to the cost of a car, but people accept that economic burden because clean air is considered to be more important. It helps that the positive impact occurs in a timely fashion. The smog problem in major cities improved pretty quickly.
I think the reason climate change is a difficult problem is because the positive benefits of mitigating it doesn’t make one’s current life better. Rather it keeps future life from getting worse. That’s a tougher sell.
Same reason why many Americans have inadequate retirement savings. Sacrificing today to keep your life from becoming more difficult 25 years from now is a tough sell.
I think it is the other way around. The problem IMO is that skeptics like you and drbob as well as all those with entrenched financial interests in keeping the energy status quo refuse to take the climate risk assessments seriously.
But I also think ineffective is not correct. Non-electric ICEs are rapidly on their way out. EVs will soon dominate the world’s biggest car market. Renewable energy production continues to grow and in combination with an exponentially growing battery storage market is beginning to supplant coal plants. Change is happening despite all you climate skeptics. Whether it happens fast enough to avoid hitting one or more tipping points is another issue. I have my doubts, but one can hope.
Two points. One, there are externalities to the use of fossil fuels that are quite real and expensive but never factored into the cost of fossil fuels. That cannot be ignored. You cannot say “solar/battery is expensive”, for example, and ignore the cost of the US Navy. Two, if you think the cost of green fuels is expensive consider the cost of fixing the planet.
Thank you for stating briefest clear summary of my view of modern political economy! I’ve been saying we need to think less mechanically and more ecologically, but your statement is much more useful in guiding attention and possible actions.
I take them seriously. I also take the costs of converting the energy system to try to avoid those risks seriously. Right now, there’s a very good argument that overall, a modest amount of effort to reduce carbon (in line with a 2.2-2.5 degree increase) and absorbing the effect of that increase will be just fine for the average person. That doesn’t mean that’s just - it will be better than the alternative for the typical person living in a western developed country and worse for people living in poor tropical or island places - but it will be better average outcome.
I think ineffective is spot on. We’re not doing anywhere close to enough fast enough to actually stop climate change at a 1.5 degree increase. You can’t get there just with having lots of NEV’s in China, or anything on par with that (the Chinese car market is huge now, but it was much smaller a decade ago, so even with half the cars being electrified this year you’re probably going to see more pure ICE’s on the road in China after this year than last).
You need massively larger efforts. You need to get all of eastern Asia to stop using coal for energy generation - certainly no new power plants, and to start ripping out even relatively recent ones. You need massive, dislocative changes to the existing transportation fleets in the U.S. and Europe - much more than the trickling of 15% BEV’s in the new car fleet we see in Europe. Etc.
We’re not going to do that, because citizens of the countries that would have to pay for those changes don’t want to increase the cost of their direct outlays for energy or transportation by more than a trivial amount. Because the direct costs of energy and transportation are lower using fossil fuels than renewables in most cases. And in part because Greens have not seriously engaged with that fact (preferring to portray decarbonization as a net positive for Western voters or that opposition is only from deniers and/or energy companies), there isn’t any effective decarbonizing policy being implement or even proposed.
Perhaps, but the only reason that it is currently plausible for warming to be kept below a 3C increase is because of the effectiveness of climate activism beginning with the 1994 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The international recognition that global warming is a problem laid the groundwork for investments and policies promoting renewables and EVs by more far-sighted countries and companies. The resulting technological advances are the only things that might prevent the worst of anthropogenic climate change.
Wouldn’t have happened without the effective lobbying of climate activists and scientists.
You’re right, but it is different pots of money. For example, the second Iraq cost (which was about oil and no other reason) something around $2 trillion (I don’t think anyone really knows for sure), then if you include veterans benefits and the cost of financing the war it starts looking more like $4 trillion.
If we had taken that $4 trillion and invested it in green energy we’d probably be getting pretty close to done right now. Oh, and by the way, that was the second Iraq war. We’re willing to spend oceans of money (not to mention plenty of freshly killed American soldiers) to provide freedom–freedom of oil to flow. But there is no appetite to spend an equal amount of money to prevent freshly killed American soldiers.
So green energy needs to be pretty close to cost effective on its own. Unless and until that’s the case, fossil fuels will win out. And to be clear green energy is cost effective in some cases, just not nearly enough.
Or we could all admit that oil IS subsidized and give equal treatment to the alternatives. Or, simply realize that some things are important enough to pay for.
Agreed completely about Iraq, its costs (especially in human terms), and what we could accomplish by using those funds differently.
In this way, oil is subsidized, to preserve the status quo and vastly enrich the few, in both the oil and armaments industries.
People are afraid to change, especially if they are comfortable and profiting. That makes people less interested in hearing arguments for alternate industries.
Also, alternative energies are a pig in a poke; we’re not sure what we’re getting. But if the argument is made admitting oil is subsidized, at least we can get a better view on the cost comparison. Pollution and healthcare costs are part of that formula. In an honest discussion.
What exactly does “done” mean in this context? Would China be building zero new fossil fuel plants? Would they be demolishing all their coal fired plants? Would India be doing the same?