For the First Time In 3 Years, Investments In Renewable Energy Increased 134
Lucas123 writes: Driven largely by oil price weakness, 2015 could be the best year to date for investments in renewable energy technology, according to several new reports. According to Bloomberg Energy Finance, new funding for wind, solar, biofuels and other low-carbon energy technologies grew 16% to $310 billion last year. It was the first growth since 2011 (PDF), erasing the impact of lower solar-panel prices and falling subsides in the U.S. and Europe that hurt the industry in previous years. Demand for solar power grew 16% year-over-year in 2014, representing 44 gigawatts of capacity purchased during the year. Worldwide solar demand in 2015 is projected to be 51.4GW, compared with 39GW in 2014. Government policies will continue to improve for renewables — solar, in particular — given that anti-dumping duties imposed on Chinese modules by the U.S. last year are expected to be removed this year, Deutsche Bank said.
Huh? (Score:3)
I don't get it, wouldn't lower oil prices reduce demand for renewable energy, thus reducing investment?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
“Healthy investment in clean energy may surprise some commentators, who have been predicting trouble for renewables as a result of the oil price collapse,” said Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board of the London-based researcher. “Our answer is that 2014 was too early to see any noticeable effect on investment. The impact of cheaper crude will be felt much more in road transport than in electricity generation.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... [bloomberg.com]
Rgds
Damon
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Also this that I just saw:
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blo... [carbonbrief.org]
"There's little consensus. Some analysts argue that the falling oil price could end the world's slow march towards zero carbon energy. Others say renewables are established enough to see out the storm.
There are good reasons for such uncertainty. The renewable energy industry's fate rests on a number of factors that are very hard to predict."
Generally we know that we don't really know.
Rgds
Damon
Re: Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yet I have read how cheap oil is threatening the future of the fracking boom.
Fracking is used for both oil and natural gas. It was used first for NG, driving down the price. But it is now used for oil, with a lot of NG coming up with the oil. The NG is more difficult to move to market, and with prices so low, that it is often more cost effective to flare it off. Expect flaring is illegal in America. So the drillers have no choice but to sell the NG at below cost, and make their profit on the oil.
The main cost of fracking in in the drilling, not the pumping. Unlike conventional
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It'll stabilize the fall at the very least, to be sure. But the rest of the oil industry is trying their hardest not to give ground - they don't want to undercut their future on projects that can take years to develop and stay in operation for long periods of time. Most wells (or non-well projects such as surface-mined bitumen) have much longer lifespans. Fracked oil and oil shale will be what gives way most, but the exact nature of where the market will head is yet to be seen.
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It won't be that simple, since those who do shut down will be out of business more or less permanently, having given up their market share. Also the investment profit cycle of shale oils are quite different from those of fracking and they must continue to produce regardless just to pay back billions in loans already spent on infrastructure. This is a particular problem for the Canadians, who the Saudis see as their first target. The battle is over market share and who will be the top dog, the current pri
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
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... having given up their market share.
The oil market doesn't work like that. There are some long term contracts, but most oil is sold on the spot market. It is a commodity. If you got oil, and can deliver it to a hub, you can find a buyer in minutes.
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
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the oil price "collapse" is temporary, soon as opec drives alternative drilling methods like fracking bankrupt, prices will rebound back to all time highs.
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"Soon as" could be a long time. If it is long enough to drive a fracking company out of business, then it's long enough to drive an AE company out of business.
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it's long enough to drive an AE company out of business.
Most AE companies don't compete against oil. They are in the electricity business, which is a completely different market from transportation fuels.
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Well, then, that would also negate the AC's point.
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I think that the current low price is all about the Saudis making life hard for Russia and Iran. Everything else is insignificant.
Rgds
Damon
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Probably some truth to this. Russia has been a thorn in OPEC's side for a long time. And they got the perfect opportunity here to hit them when they were weak. Now they've got Russia losing income *and* not able to get foreign investment. The net result, if Russia's isolation and weakness continues, is that future projects will be delayed or cancelled, existing production dries up, Russian hardware wears out, etc - and overall Russia becomes a smaller player in the global oil market.
It's clearly not the onl
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the oil price "collapse" is temporary, soon as opec drives alternative drilling methods like fracking bankrupt, prices will rebound back to all time highs.
They can't really make fracking bankrupt. Fracking will resume once the price increases. This sort of large fluctuation in price is common in the industry.
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They can't really make fracking bankrupt. Fracking will resume once the price increases.
Indeed. Many frackers are multi-billion dollar companies with deep pockets. They also have easy access to capital markets. They will be able to ramp up drilling in a few months, as soon as prices start to recover.
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a) I'm quoting from one of the sources from the summary.
b) The quote is saying that it's "too early to tell" and is thus neither (1) nor (2).
Rgds
Damon
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No. Alternative energies are gaining because they serve primarily to generate electricity and because technology is decreasing their costs faster than their profits are falling. That is not to say, however, that such technology doesn't play a role in the transportation markets where they will more directly compete in the future. For example, Tesla just recently increased the miles their cars can go on a single charge from about 250 miles to about 450 miles. Likewise, electric charging stations are rapid
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
perhaps some managers took engineering classes and started to re-project peak oil and realized:
That peak oil will still be there, just a bit later. And that when you have cheap oil at hand and you make yourself highly depended on such a resource, where we have seen everything from extreme low to painfully high within a very short time.
That not looking on efficiency and substitution you wouldn't be prepared for the future, when such choices would be made by many companies+people that would increase the demand on renewables to a stretch where markets simply cannot deliver any more. When markets cannot deliver anymore prices go skyrocketing making that late choice for renewables really painfull.
(we saw this in 2007/2008 when market demand for renewables was so high, that the demand could not be satisfied any more)
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Just looking at the trends in oil and gas prices over the last century there is a steady upward trend in prices.
Looking at the demand curves for China, India and other countries that are catching up to the Western World, their demand for oil and gas is going up - along with their demand for autos.
See, this relatively cheap gas and oil prices will not last because it never has in the past. This is just a small dip in a long term trend. Why some oil speculators are renting out oil tankers and just parking th [vox.com]
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Yes, your conclusion is basically what my argumentation is based uppon.
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USA hit their peak oil in the 1970ies in fact. Russia reached peak oil about a year ago. When the ISIS situation is over, then the cheap oil from Iraq will also be gone. Oil price will go up long term, even when they are political driven fluctuations right now.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
That's a statement born out of looking at existing reserves and then drawing a trend line. There is no such thing as peak oil. What we do have is a supply and demand function where the supply is actually dependent on the price point caused by demand.
As supply decreases the price of goods increase. These increased prices make it economic to extract other goods which were previously unavailable. When the price got high enough we started drilling deeper and started sucking it out of tar sands. If the price gets high enough again you're starting to look at drilling into the Arctic. Heck if the price every gets truly ridiculous then you start looking off-world.
While this all may sound sci-fi about 50 years ago if you would have told someone that the future of oil is drilling 10km into the ground they would have laughed at you. That is the nature of peak oil. We've hit "peak oil" in the 1800s and again pretty much every day since as we started drilling for it.
Need more than hope and numerology (Score:2)
Apart from the physical constraints of course of being able to find an easy supply, and that is getting harder and more expensive all of the time. Do you deny that? Without a shift to other sources (which is already happening with shale and coal gas etc), and as such a diminishing demand, there will be a point where new oil sources do not become available as quickly as they are demanded. We can't just hope that there is deep oil, we have to find it and that
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Heck if the price every gets truly ridiculous then you start looking off-world.
Unlikely to happen, the abiotic theory in the creation of oil by Gold is mostly viewed as disproven, because it lead to deep drilling efforts, these got not much oil out of it but showed that even there bacteria (extremophiles) were present so deep inside the earth.
If you would now jump off your seat and say again that this is proof that we just must dig deeper. This can be disproven to be sustainable by logic, meaning yes there is little oil, but again "little" not the amounts needed.
The steps to disprove
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You are of course right that there is eventually a point where the peak is hit, but it's not now. It wasn't in the 90s, 80s, or 70s either. It won't be in the 2030s, 40s, or 50s. I don't think we're going to hit the point where production limits are reached in our lifetime.
Not only because of future reserves but also because of past efforts to extract oil. Estimates for left over oil in "empty" well reserves range from 10-40% depending on the type of well. We rely on pressure to bring the stuff to the surfa
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In traditional reserves this trapping mechanism has been a a limestone dome or some such but it doesn't have to be. Technology is now allowing us to exploit other trapping mechanisms (such as shale and sand). This means that we can exploit previously untouchable deposits.
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
As much as we want?
If you compare world food procdution to world oil production, and keep in mind that many already do not have enough food, and also keep in mind that modern agriculture is a large fuel consumer, you would have to eat those words. There would nothing else for dinner.
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The most efficient biofuels come from culturing algae, not producing corn and other human consumables. Consequently, the only thing causing a clash between biofuels and food production going forward is the inertia created by locking in the political kickbacks associated with ethanol subsidies in corn producing states. This won't change anytime soon as the GOP ideology is all about granting special favors to insiders, who then provide the kickbacks necessary to sustain the process going forward.
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Algae are a good point, they can be cultivated on a much smaller space, and also test appliances are beyond the stadium of just being an experiment.
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The argumentation wasn't about biofuels or their feasebility. It was just about why it is safe to assume that oil reserves are limited.
The thought you indirectly implied with hinting at biofuels, so to substitute part of the oil consumption - with biofuel - so that oil reserves will last longer.
Biofuels will be a part of the energy mix for propulsion of the future yes, but only a part.
a.) yes, at some point in time biofuels may/will become economical enough to compete with petrol. Some still are,
depending o
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Actually, there are some "theorists" (like Gold) that pronounced & defended the abiotic theory of oil creation. Which directly goes into that direction, that only some of the oil is created from biological "residue".
Thus stating that due to this process oil reserves would be able to renew theirselves, as complex hydrocarbons are chemically produced without the help of bacteria with the earths crust, and therefore denying the existence of a "real" peak oil and that oil reserves are infinite according to
I need to correct myself (Score:2)
The basic reaction that such hydrocarbons can be created exists.
But it cannot lead to the conclusion that because of this oil would be renewable.
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Bio fuels is maybe good in very limited quantity such as for running farm equipment but I would favor it banned elsewhere. We might as well to back to clearing all forests to burn the wood (trucks and cars can be run on wood) till there's nothing much left.
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And this is a statement born out of ignorance of what peak oil actually is. It is maximal sustainable production.
Tar sands won't ever get you over a peak because the oil from tar sands is difficult to extract, so it won't be possible to extract as much oil from tar sands, as there was extracted from easy to claim oil wells at their peak. You won't be possibly able to extract as much oil from the difficult sources as you had extracted it from the easy ones.
Even if you get your oil off world, you certainly wo
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And this is a statement born out of ignorance of what peak oil actually is. It is maximal sustainable production.
Congratulations on compounding ignorance with ignorance. We have no idea what the sustainable level is, but we're surely well past it. Look into sustainability and figure out what that word means before using it again.
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It is maximal sustainable production.
Which is a function of cost and profit.
Disclosure: I work in the industry. There is a heck of a lot more oil out there that we aren't extracting because the price isn't right yet.
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Sorry to devide the answer into more than one part,
but the scifi-solution you mentioned (off world) I'd like to argument against it.
Where: Titan
Why: Titans atmosphere and sea are liquid methane CH4 not because of life
Problem:
Adding matter to earth
- yes, we have an addition of matter to the earth (comets, meteorites)
- yes, we have a loss of mass (atmosphere)
At the moment the increase or decrease rate I think is at an equilibrium.
The solution to space mine(minerals) or prospect(hydrocarbons) would actually ad
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Not to mention adding even more greenhouse gases to our atmosphere.
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Peak oil is the moment when the maximum production rate is reached. If you say there is no such thing as peak oil, that means you're predicting the production rate will forever increase. Even if that would be possible on the supply side (which I sincerely doubt), the demand for oil will decrease when the price increases, leading to lower production.
We're not running out of oil, we're running out of cheap oil. As oil gets more expensive, people will find ways to use less oil: other fuels, renewable energy, b
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The demand for oil will definitely start to wane when soil temperatures become so hot that tires will melt and it will be impossible to grow crops in many parts of the world.
I suppose the good news is that humanity soon won't have that much longer to wait. Within less than 100 years the amount of carbon released from thawing permafrost will begin to equal that generated by humans. Just a 1.5 deg C increase in warming in the arctic will release more than a trillion metric tons of the greenhouse gases CO2 a
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True but contrary to the person I was replying to we're not going to hit peak oil due to production restraints. We are going to hit "peak oil" due to declines in demand these will either be price driven or pollution driven (the rise of electric cars).
Oil will always be available, for a price. Just like platinum or rare earth metals. We are not going to run out of oil, we're going to run out of the will to get it out of the ground when alternatives become available. I predict in 50-100 years we'll be drillin
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There is no such thing as peak oil. :D
Of course there is. There is a "Peak X" for any X that is limited and gets "destroyed"/consumed in its usage. Actually a no brainer. I wonder how much merit the rest of your post has if it started so badly
Heck if the price every gets truly ridiculous then you start looking off-world.
Sure, as we are knowing already how to get there and which places have oil ... rofl. It will never be cost effective to get oil from off world, even if Mars e.g. had oil. There is simply no
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Solar is already on par with electricity prices (which are mainly driven by the pool-table flat price of coal) and solar is expected to be half the price of electricity in 15 years. And that's in the first year. That means you get back 100% return on your investment in the first year. The next 25 years are just gravy (assuming no hail storms and your batteries never wear out). If you live in a hot state nearly free electricity during the hottest part of the day means you'll have a very predictable and very low electric cost for 10 months out of the year (12 if you have gas heat).
What I'm saying is, solar is already cost-effective, but in 10 years even with dirt-cheap oil, solar will still be cheaper, and there's no global fluctuation in locally produced and consumed solar energy.
Energy independence = less need for global intervention in war-torn oil producing states.
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Are you basing your cost analysis on the price adjusted by subsidies and the cost of others adjusted by tax (anti subsidies)?
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If that was true, then in places like Canada, we wouldn't be paying $0.60kWh for solar energy, when nuclear is $0.05kWh, and natural gas is $0.07-0.09kWh. Don't even get me started on wind with it being as high $0.83kWh. Then again, you guys in the states seem to throw a hissy fit every time we want to sell you oil, or even build pipelines to ship it to you. Energy independence? Only if it fits an environmentalist agenda for some people.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
... or even build pipelines to ship it to you. Energy independence? Only if it fits an environmentalist agenda for some people.
Canada does not need Keystone XL to ship oil to the USA. Already enough pipelines exist to ship crude to US refineries. It needs Keystone XL to access the ports in Gulf of Mexico to export it to other countries. Keystone XL will create about 2000 temporary jobs to build and about 100 permanent jobs to maintain it. But if we force Canada to ship crude to USA, and we do the refining and then export value added products to rest of the world, there would be 10000 permanent jobs in the USA. What Canada really wants is a cheap way to gets its crude to places where there is no pollution control, no labor safety and low wages to do the refining.
10000 jobs works out to about 1 billion in wages. Cost of pollution abatement and labor safety would add another four of five billion a year. To save that money and funnel it to the top executives as bonuses and pay rises, they are engaging in scorched earth politics and divisive rhetoric.
Why export crude? Build the damned refineries in the tar sands. Capture the pollutants and bury it back where you dug the crude out. You have permanent jobs and all the profits that could be made in refining the oil too.
Oh, I get it. Your crude is too expensive to be refined safely paying decent wages to the workers and without causing too much of pollution. All that talk about USA's energy independence and enviro - nazis, all that rhetoric is to basically mask these facts: Canadian tar sands crude is extremely dirty. It has no market value unless you cut pollution abatements, labor safety and wages.
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So you are saying that the oil companies reason for not building more refineries in Alberta in because Alberta doesn't want the pollution from refining? Have you seen the tar sands? The environmental damage (And energy burning) is done when digging the stuff out and "processing it". At that point the damage is done and they load it on a train or pipeline. My local refinery processes tar sands and/or North Dakota oil. Last I looked there are no giant new holding pits around it? Are they just burning it off?
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Many of us Canadians wish that the bitumen sands were being used to add value to the economy through refineries but our right wing government is in the pockets of American, Chinese and Indonesian oil companies as well as having the business attitude of maximum profits now rather then sustainable profits for the future. And yes they're deregulating as fast as they can with the odd bump when a town gets blown up (or too many people are dieing of salmonella). Shit, the last refinery here on the southwest coast
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And then use pipelines to move the refined product to markets? Sure you have thought this through?
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Plenty of Canadian oil is refined and used in North America. The rest of our domestic oil supply comes on tankers from overseas. I guess they can't refine it where they are either.
Actually makes no difference to me, so long as my tank is full. Just seems sensible to do it all in the most efficient way.
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You too ca
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It would be a lot safer to move at least semi-refined product. Bitumen is a bitch to clean up and the stuff they add to thin it down enough for it to flow can be nasty.
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Really? We don't need to ship oil to the US? I guess that's why we have such a glut of refining capacity right. Well I guess we don't, because every time someone wants to go and build a refinery here some group of environmentalists throw a hissy fit. They even throw a hissy fit at expanding and updating existing refineries. So that's why it would be shipped to refineries in the US right? But, I guess the US has no pollution controls, no labor safety and lower wages then Canada? Well I guess the last
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People, including the environmentalists want to build refineries in BC but the governments don't want to. Even better to build them in Alberta so that at least semi-refined product is flowing through the pipeline as it would be much easier to clean up then the raw bitumen and dilutates that need to be added to make it flow. The problem is right wing governments who want to run the place like a business, profits right now to drive up the stock price mentality rather then long term profits to keep Canadians w
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Work is starting on twinning the pipeline to Vancouver and the pipeline to Prince Rupert has been OKed but no-one is happy about the idea of tankers full of bitumen plying the rugged coastline shipping Canadian jobs to China so the oil companies (mostly Texan but our government doesn't have a problem with selling us out to China and Indonesia as well) can make a quicker buck. BC will get very little benefit from Albertan oil getting shipped to China and Indonesia.
They just want to ship as much product as ch
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You misunderstand. The idea is to move the bitumen to China as the Americans aren't willing to pay the world price for Canadian bitumen. The pipeline to Vancouver, the Northern Gateway and Keystone all are different plans to get the oil to China and planning started before Obama when we got the right wing Albertan centered federal government in 2006 and now that the Keystone has been delayed new plans are to reverse the flow of the pipeline to Atlantic Canada and to build a pipeline to the Arctic as well as
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A major problem of estimating the costs of energy is failing to add the costs of transmission to the costs of production. It makes no sense to leave out relative transmission costs since without being able to get it to where it is used, the cost of production is meaningless. Solar and wind have in general lower transmission costs, because they can be sited closer to where they are used than can nuclear and fossil fuels and hence the relative cost of transmission is much lower. No need to transport fuels
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There is no current safe, small scale, cheap, energy dense solution
It's called buried evacuated flywheels. HTH, HAND!
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wrong (Score:3)
Re: Huh? (Score:1)
Thats what the grid is for.
If the grid is powerful enough, you will export your excess to the grid when your storage is full and import from the grid when your reservoir is gone.
If there are some hydroplants on the grid, excess solar power could be used to pump water back to the reservoi during daytime when the turbines are running at a tricke, and crank the turbines up to full load at night when all the solars are down.
Excess energy could be used to produce hydrogen or methanol for fuell cells. Maybe a ge
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Actually modern batteries last quite long and are quite cheap.
Also we have new kinds of batteries, so called "flow batteries", which should be unaffected by the typical wear.
But I agree, if you want to be autarkic, the investment (especially time to figure the right path) is still quite high.
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There are multiple solutions to that problem already in deployment. The two most common methods now in use is to use solar to heat sodium to about 400 deg and then use it to power steam generators at night and the other to simply pump water uphill by day and then generate power hydrodynamically at night. Both approaches are extremely simple, extremely cost effective, and already becoming increasingly common at many solar installations.
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That was my first thought too, but then I assumed that maybe these statistics lagged the change in oil prices by decent amounts or perhaps there's some counterintuitive investment or accounting logic to it, like some investors putting more money in as valuations fall (seeing a bargain or long-term plan) or perhaps companies shifting money on paper into "investments" as a tax hedge or a way to claim a higher paper loss.
I'm just making this up, I don't know, but sometimes these things have complex explanation
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I'm just making this up, I don't know, ...
If you cut these kind of statements out, you could become a "Energy Investment Consultant" and charge oodles of money. I don't think the talking heads and columnists in Bloomberg "know" stuff more than you do. They are doing exactly what you are doing, except they don't admit making stuff up and not knowing.
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It's an inherently complex measure (investment) given a simplistic outcome (increase).
I'm not even sure what numbers you would use to measure "investment" and there are probably many complex motivations involving actual long term investment, tax strategies, trailing indicators, etc etc.
Maybe the breadth of deployment and usage of solar and wind has reached the point where enough people are convinced that it represents the future and aren't just doing a price comparison to oil/gas today.
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I don't get it, wouldn't lower oil prices reduce demand for renewable energy, thus reducing investment?
Very little power is generated using oil. The exceptions are places like the Bahamas, where coal isn't really accessible and it's easier to get oil on the island...but in those cases, there's really no effect from lower oil prices anyways because oil/diesel are incredibly expensive when compared to pretty much every other kind of generation. Also, oil only just recently dropped in price; planned projects related to the study here would have been planned out two years earlier (at the earliest) and capitali
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Well belief in the impending doom about to be wrought because of our use of oil generally resides side-by-side with a general disbelief in market forces, so you shouldn't be confused at all.
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Lower oil prices mean that the value of subsidies for renewable energy are even more valuable - use a bunch of oil to build solar and wind farms that have a guaranteed price to producers, and profit.
Now, if we were talking about a free market, you'd be right - energy being more expensive would mean we consume *less* of it.
In the US (Score:3)
Please add 'in the US' to the title. Here in Europe investments in clean energy increase yearly in some countries.
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Actually this is a world-wide issue, not just US, though note that /. disclaims in advance that many of its stories are US-centric as /. is.
So, no, the title is fine.
Rgds
Damon
Re: In the US (Score:2)
us should stop subsidizing solar (Score:4, Insightful)
so the smart thing is drop the subsidies, but require that all new buildings below 6 stories to have enough on-site AE to at least equal the buildings HVAC energy usage.
With this approach, builders can choose where to focus at: better insulation, better HVAC, or loads of AE to make up the difference. This will not just bring down the price of AE, but also bring better down price of better insulation as well as geothermal HVAC.
In addition, we should require that all utilities must buy back excess electricity . they need to buy it back at whatever rate they currently pay other wholesalers at that time.
Re:us should stop subsidizing solar (Score:4, Insightful)
The right time would have been early on before we let the Chinese take the US developed technology and make a killing with it. Now it's got the critical mass to sell on it's own and the money is going to China for the panels and Germany for the electronics. A series of successive Governments demonising solar as part of getting into bed with the Saudis backfired.
Re: us should stop subsidizing solar (Score:2)
However, do not sweat it. Solar city will force a mass change. They are building not 1 gw factory, but multiple. This will force a number of issues.
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There's a nice little demonstration of that in Scotland but they have the advantage of a lot of flooded mine tunnels at 12C all year under that city.
Commercial solar thermal airconditioning also exists for those areas that get a bit of sunlight but it's for large buildings and doesn't really scale down to house sizes.
Insulation should be obvious in nearly every situation (I want my house to lose a lot of heat at night so it's c
Re: us should stop subsidizing solar (Score:2)
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Most can be replaced with aerogel insulated windows, except that they are too expensive and, they have a smokey tint to them
Even just moving to nitrogen-filled triple-pane glass will produce a massive improvement, combining that with passive solar design is a huge couple of wins. And you don't need any special glass coatings with passive solar; in fact, you need to get the windows without a low-E coating, so that your passive solar heat works. Of course, if you never want any of that, you still want coating.
not really. (Score:2)
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With single panes it's very noticable even on your skin. You can feel yourself radiating heat to warm the things up when the inner surface of the window is cold enough.
Re: not really. (Score:2)
Re: not really. (Score:2)
Re: not really. (Score:2)
I would not do scenic views or even living rooms ( unless facing west ), but so many others beg for it.
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A bit tricky in some areas without going for pumice walls multiple feet thick painted white such as in the Greek islands. The solution where I live is high ceilings and houses on stilts to provide shade plus airflow underneath, plus thin walls and lots of windows so heat doesn't get retained overnight. A shaded verandah prevents the sun hitting much in the way of walls and heating up the house. The floor is cool and the heat is way up near the ceiling somewh
2015 Will Definitely Not... (Score:2)
Be the best year for investments in renewable energy. The decline in fossil fuels across the board will kill the incentive to find renewable energy. The U.S. manipulation of the oil market in order to cripple Russia will have profound effects, but the reality is that oil and combustion technology will continue to lead the way for the next decade. And remember, even with manipulation, The Market is not Random. [themarketisnotrandom.com]
Status Quo (Score:2)
One of the most intriguing things I find about oil is that it is such a useful compound and the best we can do with it is burn it!
Oil prices can only go up in the long term and the pretending that goes on with our politicians in relation to these industries really reveal the cracks and flaws in our democratic processes that stop structural issues like renewable energy deployment being addressed.
Hopefully, as it becomes obvious that the science on these matters is actually correct, the problem solvers will
wrong. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
But climate change targets are mostly ignored this far. I guess a few country will respect climate change targets like Iceland, North Korea and the Maldives, respectively from free geological energy, starvation and disappearance.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Not that I expect that will sway you from your religion of hate. I really pity the ordinary Muslim. Not only are they far more likely to be killed by Jihadi terrorists than any other group o