The Origin of our Energy.

Some guys (retired) have had a look at the cost of wind, solar and storage costs for New York.

The official 'scoping plan' say about $310 Billion, One retired guy says $4 Trillion and another retired guy say $30 Trillion

So which is it?

More Focus On The Impossible Costs Of A Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Energy System – Watts Up With That?

It suits even more people to allow the real science to be no-platformed and conveniently buried. A whole global industry has grown up around this, much in the same way that Health & Safety has. The Green lobbies are making billions off the backs of bad science and ignorant Governments who have been sold the woke ideal of something for nothing.

Great so long as the lights stay on during a windless sunless day.

Lots of feel-good virtue-signalling won't keep you warm and fed.

I agree, the climate changes by the second - it's as inevitable as the seasons and their changing weather patterns following each other. Climate change is a perfectly natural phenomena.

Oh it gets worse, the latest missives are complaining about domestic animal faeces and urine contributing to global warming and the death of diverse ecosystems. I kid you not! Some mad scientists in Ghent have come up with this one.

They seem to forget that wild mammals and birds also defecate and urinate too!

Just to follow the money, as suggested, here are the energy companies by market capitalisation in 2021 from https://www.statista.com/statistics/263264/top-companies-in-the-world-by-market-capitalization/ (Statista is the German government statistics agency). Here are those in the top 100 by market capitalisation.

3. Saudi Aramco 1.9tn

36. ExxonMobil 239bn

59. BHP 186bn

now comes the first "renewable/sustainable" energy company:

73. NextEra Energy 159bn

78. Royal Dutch Shell 152bn

now another company which engages in "renewable energy" engineering, although most of their work is in other things:

89. Siemens 140bn

92. Rio Tinto 135bn

So the totals are

* fossil-fuel extractive industries: 2.6tn

* renewable/sustainable energy companies: around 200bn (here, I am assuming 40bn for Siemens renewable-energy efforts, which may be too large. I can check). 

The fossil-fuel extractive industries are thus a factor of 13 above renewable-energy in market capitalisation in 2021. 

Follow the money indeed.

We need much more coal, gas and oil extraction to keep up with demand. A temporary windmill in the North Sea just won't ever be able to suffice, and nor will a solar panel unless you live in the Sahara desert. We are currently sitting upon thousands of tons of coal in the UK. Funding needs to redirected to coal extraction and processing. To placate the green extremists we could invite them to come up with some 'Green coal' initiatives. If the money is there for fanciful windmills which don't produce on a windless day, then it is also available to develop clean coal technology, which was sadly and recklessly abandoned back in the mid 1990s just when it was on the cusp of getting somewhere.

Similarly, why should we put ourselves in thrall to Mr Putin's gas taps (in the same way Germany has - Mr Schroeder has made a few bob at Gazprom hasn't he - follow the money!) when we have our own gas resources in the North Sea to extract?

whjohnson said:

We need much more coal, gas and oil extraction to keep up with demand.

Can you produce an argument, with calculations, to justify this assertion? Let us call it whj Point Number 2.

I followed the money, as you suggested, and it didn't lead where you hinted. It leads, in fact, to the overwhelming financial power of fossil-fuel extraction industries as compared with their sustainable-energy competitors.  So that is whj Point Number 1: following the money leads you to  fossil-fuel extraction industries with a market value 13 times that of sustainable-energy industries in the Top 100. 

Please, let us scrap the vague rhetoric. Let us get down to discussing concrete facts. If this discussion continues, I'll also be asking you basic questions in the science of climate change and the reasoning behind your answers.

Much of the rest of your comments are purely political: "Green extremists"; "Mr. Putin"; Mr. Schoeder" .... I understand why one migrates into politics, but I am not going to follow that line. I am going to stick with the science and the economics. 

It may have escaped your notie but since about 1970 we have burnt most of the gas in under the north sea, leaving only the slow and expensive to extract stuff. And of course 'tight gas' under shale, that we can only get to by fracturing the rock to connect very small pockets together. Oil tells a similar story where now, instead of it squirting up under its own pressure, we have to force in tons of seawater per second to drive the oil upwards. Slowly  production wells are changed to injectors, and fewer wells  remain producers. At some point soon we will push water down and get water out of all the holes coming up. At that point it is time to pack up and go the North Sea was good while it lasted, and it has paid for the prosperity we have had in the last 50 years, but now the party is coming to  an end.

Note the rally in production when it became cost-effective to start injection in a big way.

Mike. (graphs on some websites like to show revenues from oil but they are misleading as oil costs more now than it did in the last centurey, so this masks the roll-off.)

How do you feel about the clearing in Germany of 1000 year old forest to make way for a massive wind farm.

Assuming you've heard?

One may invoke the views of a major former Australian politician (Deputy PM no less) and an advisor to Rio Tinto (see above) in a "grown up conversation". But one should surely keep in mind that Australia is third in the global emissions that result from its extraction (after Russia and Saudi Arabia), and the fifth largest extractor (after China, USA, Russia and Saudi Arabia) https://www.worldenergydata.org/australias-fossil-fuel-exports/  and so expect that there are smart people to hand to explain how this is OK. Importantly, there are other smart people in Australia available to explain how this is not OK. 

I am not in favor of pollling. I am also not in favor of 60-minute videos in answer to straight questions. I am in favor of straight, direct answers to straight questions. You have one: can you justify whj Point Nmber 2?

The sad fact is successive governments neglected the nuclear option. 

The sad fact is successive governments neglected the nuclear option. 

I am not convinced that nuclear is the best option, simply because of the unknown future risks and costs of storing/disposal of waste. Nuclear is not cheap whichever way you cut it, and if our Govt won't fund it I don't want the Chinese involved.

Unfortunately there is little choice if you want green dependable and affordable energy. Burying the waste underground for decades is an uncomfortable byproduct for some, as is chucking spent wind turbines and solar panels in landfill. 

Yep, far too much "let's leave this decision to the next government because it won't be popular".

We should also have been developing fast breeder technology so that 97% of the waste becomes fuel.

In terms of nuclear power I could  not agree more - we should have built some already,  but folk panic about things they cannot see, despite the science of radio activity  being extremely well understood.

Yes we should not be building open top reactors like at Chernobyl, but that fact was known at the time it was built, but the politics of the totalitarian state drove that. And before we get complacent there are parallels with how folk were paid to snip cooling fins off fuel rods at Windscale, to increase the plutonium production , but the politics of the race for a bigger better bomb drove that ,and a whole load of additional shortcuts were taken to push the design hotter than it was really supposed to run. I suppose we should be grateful that someone thought filters on the chimney tops was a good idea, as it was by no means universally thought to be necessary - until afterwards . (link BBC article about to that)

The take-home lesson, to me at least is nuclear power is fine, if you actually listen to your own engineers and scientists, and do not compromise.  it is allowing politicians and bean counters to run the programme that introduces  the main risks.

As I find myself complaining quite often these days, leave the hard stuff  to the engineers, the mere neuro-typical brains cannot handle it.

Mike.

mapj1 said:

The take-home lesson, to me at least is nuclear power is fine, if you actually listen to your own engineers and scientists, and do not compromise. 

As we have discussed before, I differ. I am one of those "scientists and engineers" and don't think it is fine. I do have moderately close contact to the industry - for example, I have PhD students working at Framatome, on  cybersecurity, and meet nuclear engineers regularly in standardisation committees. 

So reading your response, it's the security issue that's putting you off Small modular nuclear reactors. Can you tell us what the cyber risks are as your so we'll informed?