Increased prices will cause more mining and recycling, eventually the price will settle at the cost of production + something for profit. The something for profit is quite small, the coast for low risk capital is ~5% a year.
There might be a 5-10 period when profits are high for miners, but eventually the profits will be competed away by new entrants. (Except if you have a mine that produces very cheaply because it is so rich or easy to operate, these people will stay high profit. The most expensive mines will just make back they're capital costs + return).
You can see this with fracking which is horribly unprofitable. Hedge funds have lost billions over building fracking wells.
Part of the whole hullabaloo about "peak oil" is that people stopped looking for oil reserves in an environment with low oil prices. Once prices started rising you saw fracking come into play that regenerated areas previously thought dead for oil production.
The argument is that in order to extract oil, you need to spend energy, and, logically, the most easier oil to extract is extracted first.
That means that oil extraction is every year more expensive (energetically not financially). Because technology can make extraction more efficient but not indefinitely, at some point, in order to extract oil, it will be necessary to spend the same energy than burning it creates.
I suppose we could say that it's kind of an inversion of what's going on with fusion research.
Some commenters say that we already pass that point and that's the reason oil companies CaPex have fall in the last years.
I don't know if that's the case, but I can't avoid to ask myself about solar.
Is the energy that a solar panel generate in its life enough for its normal use, plus extracting the minerals that it's made of, plus push the panel, through the ocean all the way from China? or are we fooling ourselves using oil for all that?
I would like to see some numbers and expert discussion about that.
... that hasn't been the traditional argument behind peak oil, from its original adherents (checks notes) 70 years ago. The traditional theory is a pretty bare oil demand inevitably increases while fields run dry because we extract all the [usable] oil first--and one of the main points of the theory is to ask what you're going to do when you need oil and there is none left. It may be that newer adherents are arguing peak oil on the basis of energy-invested-on-energy-returned basis, but that's not the traditional argument for the theory.
While it is true that newer oil sources require more energy to extract, but that's not particularly relevant for a few reasons. For one, on current trends, it looks like demand for oil will peak well before economical supply of oil will be exhausted (which is the main point of the theory). But even being net-negative on energy production isn't necessarily a deal breaker, for there can well be cases where there's no realistic alternative to oil as an energy source due to its great energy density (see airplanes, for example).
If my memory of reading one of his books serves, fracking now costs 50% of the energy it produces (in addition to non-energy environmental impact, which is pretty large), up from ~10% for the easy oil we had ~50 years ago. Current-tech solar panels are in the same order of magnitude (again, not counting non-energy environmental impact). Nuclear energy has the highest yield. I seem to remember that coal is the worst, unless it's burnt at the point of extraction.
A rule of thumb is that embodied energy in a finished manufactured product sells for about $1/kWh. By that rule of thumb, the embodied energy in a solar panel is about 0.5% of the energy it will produce over its lifetime.
> A "raw" solar panel in China costs about 25 cents / W, and each watt should produce about 45kWh over its lifetime (5W per day for 25 years).
I imagine that you're making assumptions on having sufficient luminosity all year round, right? So perhaps that depends on where on Earth you are.
According to Jancovici [1], in most of Europe, solar panels produce about 100 kWh/m²/year, assuming that they are oriented correctly (I don't know if e.g. the necessity of cleaning them up is factored in). From the same source, in terms of energy used to build the panel (is shipping included?), it takes 1 to 4 years to reimburse that energy but that's under the assumption that all the energy from the panel can be used. In practice, solar panel installations produce energy at a rhythm that depends on nature, which means that for many uses, the electricity needs to be stored somewhere if we want to actually use it at a different rhythm, e.g. when you're actually at home/in the office/etc.
Unfortunately, storing electricity at scale with current-tech is energy-expensive (both to build the batteries and because of energy loss during storage), e.g. storing it as hydrogen has a yield of ~30%, couldn't find the yield of other technologies of batteries including the energy cost of building/shipping/disposing of the battery. So, in the worst case, these 100 kWh/m2/year turn into ~30 kWh/m2/year, which means 3 to 12 years for recouping energy cost.
So, by this calculation, the worst hypothesis maps to the number I was quoting above and the best one is at least one order of magnitude better. My bad.
Now, there is the problem that current-tech battery often relies on metals (i.e. Lithium) that are only available in limited amounts.
[1] https://jancovici.com/transition-energetique/renouvelables/p...
You're also assuming that you have to store 100% of the energy to get to a green grid. But in a grid with a good mix of different renewable sources, grid ties large enough to cover areas with different weather, substantial amount of nuclear, hydro and a large number of EVs that can charge while energy is cheap means that very little energy needs to be stored. So you also have to multiply your storage numbers by about 5%.
This is such a thoroughly debunked line it's barely worth discussing.
Here's a sufficient proof.
The dirtiest cheapest coal is about $1-2/GJ at the mine front. A good brown coal power plant is about 50% efficient.
Current unsubsidized solar module cost (not whole project) for large scaleprojects is in the $0.2-0.3.
At 25% capacity factor a dollar of solar at $0.3 will produce 500MJ over 20 years and still be 80% productive.
Thus even if the only activity required to build a solar panel were burning brown coal as it comes out of the ground, it could not be profitable to burn more fossil fuels than the energy the panel released.
Consider that makers of solar panels, and of the materials that go into them, get no break on their power bills. Each and every kWh that goes into making the panel is paid for, and necessarily has its cost folded into the price of the panel. Otherwise they would be paying power out of their own pocket, to give it to you for free.
Furthermore, the fraction of the energy used in making the panel that comes from renewables goes up every year, as their share of the total generated increases.
The same argument applies to wind turbines, tidal turbines, wave engines, dams, and (in their way) storage media.
https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-manu...
4 years is now a massive overestimate. Depending on how much you include (frames, inverter, grid tie in etc) 0.5-2 is more realistic.
This considerably increases the time to energy payback. Still probably worth it, though.
If the former, you are clearly right.
If the latter, I'm not so sure (with current tech).
For the most part you are correct. But building the mines, refining, supply chains, etc takes time. So you are perhaps missing one of the main points I was trying, maybe unsuccessfully, to make: we need to deal with the 'right now' and not just worry about how we'll be fine in 50 years.
Lithium is a perfect example. We have plenty in the ground. We don't have plenty of mines. We should be allocating Li carefully until those issues are resolved in 5-10 years.
If we only base our energy policy on how things will be in a decade we will delay the transition while inflicting maximum pain on the population(energy and food shortages, rampant inflation, lower standard of living, etc).
Well intentioned policy like this can have the reverse effect.
If you limit lithium usage you will limit demand, which can reduce the effort expended to build new mines.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...
And let's not forget about all the problems that "innovative" methods of oil extraction such as fracking have created, over and above the fact that it's provided more oil to burn. Lithium mining itself is already an environmental disaster, and it seems highly unlikely that increased demand for the product is going to improve the environmental impact of extracting it. You know, tragedy of the commons and all. The fact that "peak oil" came and went is not a capitalist success story.
A comparable case in point: commercial space launch companies. Arguably, commercial large-scale aviation, too.
It's not only about money-expensive. If it gets more energy-expensive to produce/store/route/... energy than the amount of energy we end up with in the end, the game is over.
So, in practice, there are limits to reserves. There is, of course, the possibility that these limits can change with new technologies, which in turn depends on money-cost as you mention.
It does not exclude easily accessible material. It only excludes material not assessed yet because there has been no need to, as existing reserves will last more than long enough to perform further surveys.
We've just started looking for the thing at the scales we need it now, prospecting and extracting and processing it will improve.
Even if the research is being done, we've got decades before something commercially viable comes out. The need exists now. Anything that isn't essentially ready to go by 2030 probably isn't going to do squat to help us.
What the number shows is that there is no possibility of ever tapping out all available lithium, no matter how many batteries are manufactured. Once the world is saturated, used-up batteries will become the main source for materials to build new batteries from.
The more immediate limitation is rate of manufacture of batteries, because building battery factories takes a long time.
That's not reality but a dream. So far we still have to find a sustainable lithium recycling on scale, there are various startups with various solutions, who actually prove to be just like most startup: PR scam for money or childish dream of someone who sold the cat before capturing it.
It's not better in mining estimation: we have estimations of different kind but they are nothing than dream, we do not really know how much lithium is accessible on earth.
The net result is the green wave will be driven largely by relying on dirty minerals from other countries.
Consider a thing: all industry do not pollute because they are evil but because the tech produce pollution. Something was done, something can be done, to reduce it of course, but that's not always possible, not possible more than a certain extent and not for free.
A simple idea: can you pay a 8-years maximum lasting car 100k€? Even if you can, how many others needs cars and can't? Because that's relatively less heavy than the physical possibility of doing something, but it's not marginal at all. I have built a new home, with all actual tech to consume less and get a better life, but if such homes can only be made let's say by 10% of the western population, witch means roughly by 3% of the total human population what's the outcome? We are a society. Some can be richer than others, nothing wrong in that. BUT when the difference between the poorest and richest and so their numbers on total humans diverge too much the society fall apart anyway.
https://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/solutions/....
https://empoweringpumps.com/5-ways-to-make-mining-more-susta...
are both nice entry points for basic research. Mining tech has changed quite a bit since the early days- waste management is probably the biggest factor in whether a mine is relatively neutral or harmful to the environment.
The other major factor between countries is the extent to which regulations are in place to ensure that old mines are also managed- ensuring water runoff doesn't flow into and through them (picking up excess metal waste), etc.
A final note is many countries do not have the regulatory strength to catch all illegal mining operations, which may have no waste management or treatment in place at all.
Even with all of the regulations in place, it would still be economically feasible to mine here- otherwise, the mining companies wouldn't be spending decades trying to open these mines up in the first place.
In the end yes, mining companies have invested in various tech, accidentally not one really environmentally friendly for real, those green parts tend to be just scam business like CO₂ sequestration tech and nothing really used on scale. That's probably why we almost close all mines in the western world to transfer them far from people's and reporters eyes...
You could say that about literally anything
Some energivore process in various industries have evolved to demand far less energy, cement is a good example using the EMC process [1] same others have not evolved, not because they are evil but because we do not found anything better to evolve; mining is one of them.
[1] see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_modified_cement
There are thousands of different battery chemistries. It's an extremely strong claim that all will fail. And there are approaches beyond batteries that use only very common materials. For example, pumped thermal storage, where a reversible heat engine is used to separate heat and cold, then regenerate the work consumed by running off that temperature difference.
Is that exclusive to green tech, or is it common to both green tech and non-green tech? If both need dirty energy, what matters is not green tech needing dirty energy, but only how much dirty energy it needs compared to non-green tech, both to produce and over its lifetime.
So the only choice is between dirty forever, and dirty decreasing. If the latter, the faster it decreases, the less dirty energy you use on the transition.
We could decrease dirty energy usage to 0% right now. People would starve, quality of life would plummet, and we could direct our available green energy(hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, etc) to building out more green tech. Is that what you're advocating? I don't think so. So let us talk like engineers who need to make trade-offs to best achieve our goals. Cutting off dirty energy too soon hampers our green transition while needlessly killing people and lowering quality of life for those who don't starve or freeze to death.
That appears to be a pattern. You could learn just by paying attention to what people took time out to explain to you. Go ahead, I can wait.
Strangely enough, I feel like saying the same thing here. I don't think our viewpoints are that far off. Unless you had a problem parsing my language in the last post, you might have seen that I wasn't strongly disagreeing with you. It appears to have triggered you emotionally however so I suppose this discussion has reached its endpoint.
Nobody else is worried about this, for reasons. The much bigger problem is continued massive government subsidy of this mining, which thereby suppresses energy prices and sabotages access to capital to build out that equipment, and the factories to produce it, diverts cash flow to those mining and refining the materials, and accelerates climate disaster.
This may be true for certain products, but it's not broadly true. There's nothing intrinsic that requires solar panels, lithium ion batteries, or wind turbines to be manufactured using dirty energy.
The problem is right now these things do indeed depend on dirty energy. You're basically making the same fallacious argument as politicians do now. In the long run, everything will be green. That's not the point. The point is how we get there. You can't ignore the present or the engineering involved to get to the future.
How did we get the first railroads built? By a combination of horses dragging materials so humans could lay the rail lines and then trains dragging materials as the initial lines were built. There was almost certainly an initial increase in horse power consumption, and then a decline as the new system came online. This isn't a new thing, this is how many replacement transitions that depend on the previous system play out.
Right. But right now we're incentivizing the opposite. We're telling fossil fuel companies we don't need them anymore long before we've actually figured out a way to live without them. Do you see the problem yet?
CA is not banning sale of ICE cars. They are banning sale of new ICE cars.
I think the easier way to look at it, though, isn't the upfront cost of the transition, but the outcomes that are 10-20 years down the line. A big "spend" right now should result in less overall carbon emitted (according to most of the lifecycle analyses that I'm familiar with, anyway).
It's a really good point that we need to optimize this, of course. It would be ideal to manufacture solar panels in places with a favorable energy mix versus somewhere that's still 100% coal. But in a lot of cases, it's better just to get the things out the door as fast as possible using the technology we have.
We should be bringing Si mfg back to the US where we have plenty of methane("natural" gas) needed to do so. We should build more fission. We should continue to buy solar panels, rare earths and Li from China, as long as they're willing to sell it to us. But none of this is an either/or decision. We need a realistic path to the green future or we risk screwing up the transition, ruining our economy and setting ourselves up to have regressive political revolutions.
I agree we need more manufacturing outside of Asia/developing countries, but the solution is definitely not to maintain the status quo of dirty energy just because we can’t make green energy under 100% ideal circumstances
The energy payback time for photovoltaics is 1.2 years in north and less than 1 year in the south with such systems typically lasting longer than 20 years. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...
That is in line with energy return on investment of fossil fuels.
The U.S. blends a lot of ethanol into gasoline, but where does that feedstock go as the ongoing EV transition cuts away traditional consumption? Lot of energy potential there that can be used to synthesize carbon neutral fuels including kerosene, natural gas, and gasoline. Corn->carbon neutral natural gas seems like a reasonably agreeable process with the distribution network and consumers already in place.
Meanwhile, solar thermal / concentrated solar is out of the limelight while research continues. Lots of interesting options when you can generate supercritical steam and provide battery-less storage, especially from materials that are essentially domestically sourced. State of that research: https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/generation-3-concentrating...
Baseload from natural gas derived from feedstock + PV + solar thermal with 12h storage + wind + massive transmission investment + corn->gasoline. There are a lot of ways to skin the cat.
While copper water pipes still have a market, I don't think we can claim to be short of copper.
There are quite a lot of analysts claiming we will be short on copper once the green revolution gets under way(remember, you're talking billions of new EVs, generators, increases in electrical distribution, etc). Think about it this way: all the energy currently delivered by fossil fuels(more or less, due to some efficiency gains) will need to be delivered by the electrical network. We're also busy giving improved living standards to the half of the earth that still lives in less-than-modern conditions. We're going to need to use more aluminum(4th most common element in the crust?) or we're going to run out of copper.
> that may be due to previous hoarding in China coupled with economic slowdown and/or disruptions in their metals markets
On a related note, the majority of new home construction does not use copper these days(both for cost reasons and performance reasons).
You mean countries applying tariffs to things? Or are you talking about the Russian aggression? Or is it about that speculation that reduced spending on the US navy will make other countries helpless against naval crime?
Because the first two seem to have had no effect at all on solar panels production, and the third is a huge attention seeking non-sequitur.
In theory, bootstrapping will eventually be complete.
Personally, I'm not doubting that we will achieve a decarbonized and sustainable energy infrastructure. But that's not the point. The point is how will we get there, and are we being realistic about the challenges and requirements to effectively make the transition? Are we being realistic about the energy and materials needed to build our sustainable power generation and delivery network?
There's lots of hard work that goes into making it happen, of course.
So, how exactly to you intent to fit the renewables (that are pre-inflection) production curves into it?
What part again? Are you claiming that their growth is linear?
Supply Chains are primarily fossil based and can NOT be substituted with low density sources like Green Energy or even electricity at all.
For example, you can't efficiently make steel or most other metals with electricity alone. Even primarily electrically refined metals like copper or aluminum REQUIRE inputs that can not be made or refined or extracted with electricity. Often this is about chemical reductions that required carbon or other reductants that can't be effectively or efficiently made with electricity. The most obvious one is silicon - carbon reduction of SiO2 is the only and best efficient refining method (1st stage only - you need further far more energy intensive refining to make semiconductor-grade silicon).
Recently brought up in Congress was questions of how petrochemicals are to be produced if the Green goal of eliminating oil is accomplished. Stuff like plastics. All sorts of things depend upon plastics and plastics require petrochemicals. The most obvious one is plastic sterilization aids and sterile materials like syringes, packaging for needles, etc. ALL 20th century medicine is largely destroyed without petrochemicals. Also all pharmaceuticals deeply depend upon petrochemicals.
The respondent had no answer and she simply tried to resort to high-intensity angry BS. Clearly she'd never thought ANY of this through and didn't care because she was living off the anger of hating oil but knew nothing about how oil is used or how dependent all supply chains are on oil.
You are underestimating the good faith of the political class. In fact, they are borderline psychopathic with high levels Dunning-Kruger delusion about the correctness of their decisions/beliefs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHk7S6prF6M
The additional issue: PVs have finite lifespan. Lithium batteries have extremely finite lifespans. So you have to replace them and have ALL the supply chains to do that forever. Which are fossil fuel dependent at fundamental chemical/physical levels. So most of those supply chains can NEVER be made green.
Green Energy is primarily a Cargo-Cult Religion not based on facts. That is a major problem because if you shutdown fossil fuels, we will end up with nothing - we will not even manage to have the levels of civilization and technology seen in the last 300-500 years. Basically a dark age.
Your comment is well intended but it is the same sort of 'one day it will be perfect' thinking that glosses over the messy transition that actually needs to take place first.
When renewable energy is abundant, we will find it cheaper to synthesize the hydrocarbons we need than to pump them out of the ground, transport, refine, and transport them again.
In the meantime, the overwhelming majority of oil pumped is burned. In the nearer future, only oil that is the absolute cheapest to pump will be, mostly as feedstock for bulk chemistry, because it will not be worth the cost to refine it for fuel.
So where will energy to transition come from? Fossil fuels, which are today produced in the trillions of tons annually. As more renewables are built out, some of their output will go into producing new panels. Eventually, panels will be produced from 100% renewable energy.
You will not notice any change, except lower power bills.
Oil and petrochemicals have many uses and they will be with us for decades but at some point this century we will get the vast majority of our energy needs from fusion (the sun), hydro, wind and nuclear. It will likely take longer than we think and but might as well start now than keep running a dangerous experiment on the planet
global warming is problem not for the planet or nature, but for humans.
if all humans will die, and 99% of species die, planet will still be ok the nature will still live on.
just that our last record of existence for anybody else to find will be "we were stupid".
And your car doesn't? What kind of argument is this?
My panels have 25 year warranty, whats the warranty on a diesel generator?
> questions of how petrochemicals are to be produced if the Green goal of eliminating oil is accomplished.
Petromechicals have no relevance to Climate change and CO2 emissions. You can keep using single-use bags and straws and throwing them into landfill untill you use up all the oil on earth.
They have relevance to our health, i.e. microplastics, but thats a separate problem.
Climate change is our fault, and we have to stop it, there is no other alternative that also includes life continuing on earth as we know it. This change is already happening, it's not hypothetical. Global systems are already being affected, extreme weather and drought more common. Global temperature change has to be kept as low as possible, or we risk crop failure, famine and mass immigration at a scale that has never been seen.
I understand there are huge logistical issues with shifting off fossil fuels, but we as humans have to. We can get to the moon, we can stop burning old dinosaurs & plants to make stuff work. Even without climate change, these resources are finite. Are you just going to accept waiting for all the oil to run out before making plastic tubes from something else? The clue is in the name fossil, they take millions of years to produce and are non-renewable.
You can think of me as a green psychopath all you like, but it doesn't change the cold hard facts. I hope my reply isn't high-intensity BS.
You and I both want the same thing. Our shared goals do not negate the laws of chemistry or physics.
That volcano that went off in the pacific this January appears to have increased the amount of water vapour in the entire atmosphere by 10%. Sit back and contemplate that for a moment, because it is pretty awesome, and also the satellite pictures were quite something, and then take another look at what's happened in Pakistan and Italy. All our fault? We can wish.
There is so much more to this than shifting away from fossil fuels - that's the easy one, get rid of your car, and get a bicycle.
(Added) I have to feel the mindless downvoting on this and similar comments is just proving my point. Link for the volcano, impacts still being assessed...
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1115378385/tonga-volcano-stra...
https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2022/egusphere-20...
That does not mean anything is wrong with the current ice cores. It only means they go back only as far as they go, and there may be gaps where partial melting happened before accumulation resumed.
Tipping over into a new ice age would not be a better outcome than where we seem headed without that.
the issue in particular with the ice core melting is how much we can trust the peak readings for things like methane and co2.... what we consistently see in the cores is that these things increase steadily until they suddenly drop. If we are missing the top part of that information, it could be quite important.
That's the real enormous issue. Beyond the Green New Deal, witch is green in the sense of dollars main color for very few, chemical/radioactive stereotypical waste leaking from abandoned rusty barrels green while being sold as grass green, we have a real issue: oil is consumed FAR faster than natural regeneration and that since many decades so far, witch means that a day perhaps not that far away it will be more and more scarce and finally unavailable. NOT ONLY for fuel, but also for plastic witch happen to be needed for electrical insulation, hydraulic and air insulation, anti-vibration stuff etc etc etc and we do not know how to replace it on scale.
So far no other feasible on scale energy solution exists. Nuclear fission and mountain pumped hydro are the most stable and powerful solution we have, but can't work on scale alone and nothing else is there.
Without energy no matter climate change or something else: any civilization collapse anyway.
Yes, it's difficult to try to get these facts across to folks without them thinking you're a shill for big oil. It's especially sad/frustrating when people who claim to be engineers don't understand the engineering involved in the process of transitioning to green energy.
I'll admit to falling into the trap of thinking I'm smarter than everyone else, including domain experts outside my field of expertise, because I did well in a field very much devoid of actual, uh, engineering.
Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to produce. It also has been benefiting from globalization which is now going in reverse. I would add at least 5 years to any timeline given because of the recalibrating global energy and materials supply chains will be undergoing over time.
We're probably short of copper. Is anyone figuring out a way to use aluminum as a substitute in many applications? We can work around several of the other critical shortages(nickel, cobalt, not-so-rare rare earths, lithium) in time, either with alternatives or increased extraction, but copper seems like a tough one.
There is a lot of wishful thinking or naivete in the political class driving these transitions. I agree that we need to move rapidly to decarbonize but there seems to be a lack of appreciation for the actual work involved in the transition. There is also a parasite-class of folks whispering deceitful tales in the ears of politicians(ahem, hydrogen, ahem) which really only cares about getting their cut.
Politicians need to understand you don't just order solar panels and batteries off Amazon. Someone needs to make them, and that someone better be a country you're not in a proxy war or a hot war with. We need to invest in practical measures not just fairy tales that leave us in the dark for a decade or more while we figure out hard lessons.