> Transitioning to renewable regional and local energy generation and storage will reduce political risk to humanity dramatically by enabling the decoupling of geopolitics from oil.

We had geopolitics before oil. Just ask the Athenians and Spartans or Romans and Carthaginians. The Mongols didn't go running around Eurasia for oil, and neither did Napoleon around Europe.

Oil may be less thing, but there are others. Per Thucydides, three fundamental motives are: fear, honour, interest.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_W...

Fear of getting invaded over your resources yes.

Energy is the most valuable resource today. If it is no longer concentrated regionally then the driving force for war is greatly reduced.

> dramatically by enabling the decoupling of geopolitics from oil.

I can't help thinking that oil and combustion engines are here for a long time. The energy density is unbeatable. As renewables succeed, oil's utility doesn't disappear. So it seems like we would find some new equilibrium.

60% of new generation capacity in the US was renewable last year, not for environmental reasons, but because it's the cheapest option. The reason this will continue is because renewables rely on highly scalable technologies that are nowhere close to optimized.

EVs benefit from cost scaling too. In Norway >80% of new cars sold are EVs 5 years ago it was -10%. Last year 20% of the Chinese market was EVs. As costs scale (Tesla has a 25k$ car in development) the same process will happen faster than you think across most markets.

Equilibrium will be established when renewable costs stop declining, this is likely to be after battery costs decline another -70% and solar declines -75%. At that equilibrium price oil will be relegated to use in plastics, lubricants, and other industrial/durable goods applications. If those cost declines are realized oil will not compete on costs with renewables and you literally will not be able to give away an old ICE car.

If we produce much more green energy than we currently need, we might see synthetic fuels becoming viable, no?

In a vacuum I think that would be the natural conclusion, but IMO there's probably better uses for that energy (eg.: desalination plants).

Although I could totally see this being the case for CO2 + ... -> CH4 + ...

We can just directly convert green energy into hydrogen. For a lot of cases that is already more than good enough. Synthetic fuels may be needed, but possibly only in specific situations.

Yes and: H2, ammonia, methane, direct carbon capture, heat. Probably a few more.

Being a long time climate fatalist, I'm now guardedly optimistic about our eminent surplus energy future. If we can somehow keep warming to 1.5, we just might squeak thru this.

That and natural gas; we're going to burn it until it's too expensive to make a buck on it (same as coal).

The power density of gas turbine engines is way better than internal combustion.

But we haven’t bothered with gas turbine cars and trucks because internal combustion has good enough power density and other relevant advantages (better energy efficiency chief amongst them).

Batteries aren’t good enough for long-haul aircraft, long-haul shipping, small boats and a few other sundry applications, but they’re good enough for road transport.

A gas turbine is a really bad idea for a car. They take a long time to get up to speed and spew a lot of hot exhaust in the meanwhile. There weren't practical cars at all.

I will argue that the finite nature of battery related materials, plus their weight, is a major impediment against all-battery powered cars in road transport. They are not "good enough" except as a stopgap until the next idea comes around. Which ironically could just be synthetic fuels, but more likely something like a hydrogen fuel cell car.

Fuel cells require catalysts like platinum which are far less common than anything in a battery.

They don't actually require platinum. Only types. And even then, it is basically the catalytic converter in terms of platinum needed. It is also 100% recyclable already.

All catalysts are way less common than the Iron, Phosphate and Lithium in a mass market car battery.

No, since sometimes it is also just iron or whatever. Not to mention that a catalyst is a surface, not a volume. You can get away with atom-thick layers of catalysts. Which is why even with platinum you only need a few grams of it. Cost of that is significantly less than a large mass of other materials.

Catalysts are consumables and need to be replaced regularly. Battery materials are recyclable.

Again no. Catalysts are endless recyclable.

Nickel iron oxide is the best catalyst for a type of fuel cell based on Anionic Exchange Membranes.

Cheap as dirt and you only need milligrams per kW. But it's so cheap you can use a tenth of a gram just to be on the safe side.

The latest master plan ironically admits the need for hydrogen for green energy to be viable. A big deal, because it is one of the ideas that can match or exceed fossil fuels for energy density. It is perhaps the only thing in the whole plan that is the result of clear thinking. It unfortunately has not admitted the need for nuclear, but I guess we'll have to wait for master plan 4.

The people I follow are onboard with renewable hydrogen. The food fights are over automobiles and greenwashing.

This plans makes the case that we can get off fossil fuels with batteries, solar, and wind alone. Nuclear, hydro, geothermal, etc, are simply out of scope.

This plan also carefully omits any mention of climate change or time lines. Smart.

FWIW, Saul Griffith and others anticipate future fission and maybe even fusion, but they won't arrive in time to save us. They'll still be needed. To help with the cool down. For capacity as our current solar and wind build out is retired. Etc.

The plan admits the need for hydrogen and synthetic fuels. It has moved on from trying to solve it entirely with batteries and renewables alone.

Moving from fossil fuel to renewables doesn't eliminate geopolitics. It only shifts power. For example, here was some other news of the day[1]. Shifting power from Saudi Arabia to China probably won't be much of an improvement if it even is one.

[1] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Supply-Chain/China-weighs-...