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Re:Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? by relaxing on Thursday December 03, 2020 @08:01AM (#25288397)
You’re massively underestimating the infrastructure needed to take oil and put it in the consumers’ hands.

Biomass puts CO2 back in the atmosphere, but at least it’s not increasing the total CO2 in the biosphere.

Re:Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? by pmiller2 on Thursday December 03, 2020 @10:38AM (#25289859)
Most of that infrastructure is in the extraction and transport to the destination country. Once the oil is there, all you really need is a storage system, and a way for consumers to buy it.

There's no need to pump it around, at all. You can transport it by truck. Growing up, my family had a fuel oil heater. We'd have the tank filled periodically, and that was all there was. Likewise, gas pumps are just storage tanks hooked up to pumps. There's practically nothing to it; it's all basically 19th century technology that's easy to build, and doesn't require any sophisticated engineering.

Re:Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? by ashtonkem on Thursday December 03, 2020 @10:42PM (#25298624)
That only works for relatively small amounts of fossil fuels for a relatively short distance. Once you start to consume a lot of oil, you really need to start piping it around and only depending on trucks for last mile work. America[0] and Europe[1] are covered in pipelines to move both oil and natural gas. Trucks are only used to cover the distance between where the pipe stops and the gas station is.

0 - https://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/n...

1 - https://theodora.com/pipelines/europe_oil_and_gas_pipelines_...