Will New Battery Technologies Smash The Old Order? (telegraph.co.uk) 254
"The world's next energy revolution is probably no more than five or ten years away," reports The Telegraph. "Cutting-edge research into cheap and clean forms of electricity storage is moving so fast that we may never again need to build 20th Century power plants in this country..." Slashdot reader mdsolar quotes their article:
The US Energy Department is funding 75 projects developing electricity storage, mobilizing teams of scientists at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and the elite Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge labs in a bid for what it calls the "Holy Grail" of energy policy. You can track what they are doing at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). There are plans for hydrogen bromide, or zinc-air batteries, or storage in molten glass, or next-generation flywheels, many claiming "drastic improvements" that can slash storage costs by 80pc to 90pc and reach the magical figure of $100 per kilowatt hour in relatively short order.
"Storage is a huge deal," says Ernest Moniz, the U,S. Energy Secretary and himself a nuclear physicist. He is now confident that the U.S. grid and power system will be completely "decarbonized" by the middle of the century.
One energy consultant predicts the energy storage market will be worth $90 billion in 2025 -- 100 times larger than it is today.
"Storage is a huge deal," says Ernest Moniz, the U,S. Energy Secretary and himself a nuclear physicist. He is now confident that the U.S. grid and power system will be completely "decarbonized" by the middle of the century.
One energy consultant predicts the energy storage market will be worth $90 billion in 2025 -- 100 times larger than it is today.
Its a continuation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its a continuation (Score:5, Insightful)
*The world's next energy revolution is always more than five or ten years away.*
How far "Beyond 2000" was all that stuff supposed to be?
Tomorrow
Tomorrow
I love you, tomorrow
You're always a day awaaaaaay...
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Powerful, efficient, fast charging, long lasting batteries. ...the NEW Fusion!
Re:Its a continuation (Score:5, Interesting)
I admit to having little knowledge about them, but I think flow batteries [wikipedia.org] have great potential.
The numbers are probably exaggerated, but these guys [wikipedia.org] claim a range of 1000km in a car with a total of 350 liters of fluid storage. That would mean an energy density of roughly 1/7th of gasoline. That isn't stellar, but it's also far from 'useless crap'-territory. It would be fine for at least industrial energy storage (from renewable sources), it seems.
Let me reiterate this, though: I'm far from an expert on these things.
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Re:Its a continuation (Score:4, Interesting)
For transport, they are impractical. They may have a role in grid scale energy, storing up excess from renewables to be used on demand.
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But carrying about 350 litres of liquid doesn't make sense unless we are talking about some sort of large truck for transport.
Why? I think the Tesla S batteries have a comparable volume and weight and those certainly seem to make sense.
Also, given that we're talking about liquid 'refueling', range becomes much less of a problem (for cars, at least).
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Re:Its a continuation (Score:4, Funny)
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Tell that to a fuel truck driver
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Such changes can make other unworkable solutions into workable solutions.
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Regarding changes making unworkable solutions into workable solutions, well, there are some big changes still required to make flow batteries practical and economical for cars. Like I said, there are good reasons
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Give it some air space
Why would you do that?
If I'm not mistaken flow batteries are a closed system when in operation: the liquids are not used up (like gasoline).
Just no need to have that much in a car.
Unless you want to use a flow battery as a local energy source. Which is kind of the thing we're discussing here.
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I admit to having little knowledge about them, but I think flow batteries [wikipedia.org] have great potential.
It would be fine for at least industrial energy storage (from renewable sources), it seems.
I agree, it's a shame that for now the membranes used in flow batteries are rather difficult and expensive to manufacture, which is the main thing limiting their use in industry today, once that is sorted the tech should scale very nicely. Need more capacity? No problem add more tanks, need more throughput? add more pipes and membranes, simple.
As someone who works on Oil Depot [wikipedia.org] systems, I think that aside from their locations (usually near docks) they would be perfect to convert into flow battery grid stora
Re:Its a continuation (Score:5, Insightful)
Something can look incremental but actually be pretty dramatic. We're kind of spoiled by Moore's Law having a doubling time of just a few years.
Increases in battery life have been "incremental" but also exponential - the increase has been something like 7% per year on the average, a ten-year doubling. And of course, we ate most of it with higher power consumption in most battery-powered devices: the phones, tablets and laptops. But look at how long something simpler like an iPod lasts now compared to 2001 and it's dramatic.
Electric cars are going get much more serious after one more doubling, and while the car companies would pay billions to have it happen overnight, it's still going to happen in 10 years even with the "incremental" progress.
Re:Its a continuation (Score:5, Informative)
Something can look incremental but actually be pretty dramatic. We're kind of spoiled by Moore's Law having a doubling time of just a few years.
Increases in battery life have been "incremental" but also exponential - the increase has been something like 7% per year on the average, a ten-year doubling. And of course, we ate most of it with higher power consumption in most battery-powered devices: the phones, tablets and laptops. But look at how long something simpler like an iPod lasts now compared to 2001 and it's dramatic.
Electric cars are going get much more serious after one more doubling, and while the car companies would pay billions to have it happen overnight, it's still going to happen in 10 years even with the "incremental" progress.
The majority of improvement of battery life in electronic devices have been due to energy efficient circuit designs, power management (being able to put components to sleep), and shrinking of electronics (i.e. more room for a bigger battery in the same case).
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https://www.quora.com/Is-it-tr... [quora.com]
Leigh Christie's post on this is great.
After tons of useful graphs and information...
"Note: I have not actually done a curve fit, so I can not comment on the exact percentage. But given that it's doubling roughly every 9-14 years, I'd say 5-8% sounds about right!"
Batteries are continuing to improve in dramatic ways. Dropping in price by about 5-8% per year, increasing in capacity about 5-8% per year.
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Battery-powered devices are not the most important application. The current batteries are good enough to make them usable. It's not the real goal of this research. Just look at the list - can you imagine a flywheel-powered phone?
The real goal is large-scale energy storage. Cheap per kW solutions with a long life (no, a few thousand charge cycles is not good). That's when "decarbonization" becomes possible. The goal is storage which scales to MWh locally and GWh globally, making unreliable power sources actu
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...improvements are more likely to be incremental than breakthrough.
Practical lithium-air [wikipedia.org] would be breakthrough.
Re: Its a continuation (Score:2)
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Still... (Score:5, Funny)
...and yet all the gains we get from battery improvements will continue to be squandered on yet more and more layers of JavaScript.
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Yeah, those 250-mile range estimates for Tesla are only when you have Javascript turned off.
Re:Still... (Score:4, Funny)
...or JIT compilation for yet another hare brained programming language based on the JVM***
The JVM motto: slowing down well written code since 1994.
*** The Android Run Time (ART) compiles java to native code at download time.
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...and yet all the gains we get from battery improvements will continue to be squandered on yet more and more layers of JavaScript.
But if your laptop could use a pumped storage lake for backup power, it could finally run Javascript efficiently.
"the magical figure of $100 per kilowatt hour" (Score:2)
dream on (Score:2, Insightful)
If I had a penny for every slashdot article about batteries since the late 90s, I'd...
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Have a 1600 megawatt tater battery?
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If I had a penny for every slashdot article about batteries since the late 90s, I'd...
Have enough to buy a 4000 mAh mobile battery?
Waste (Score:2)
Re:Waste (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of the advanced battery technologies will have toxic chemicals. With huge production volumes, there's going to be a lot of poisonous waste materials. I suspect the environmental damage of new batteries is going to make the claimed damage of carbon seem like happy-fun-day.
No, the current buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere is a slow-motion apocalypse because it leverages the sun's vast energy output to push the entire planet away from the conditions that humans evolved to live within. No amount of run-of-the-mill poisonous chemicals could touch it. (Not that these chemicals would be released into the environment anyway. Utility storage batteries are very easy to track and regulate.)
That has to be the stupidest statement ever (Score:3, Insightful)
to push the entire planet away from the conditions that humans evolved to live within
Wow, in fell fell swoop you not only show that you know zero abut the history of the Earth's climate, but also that you actually believe evolution works exactly the opposite of the way it really does!
Humans evolved over time to work within whatever climate they were given which changed dramatically over time - historically it's already been way warmer than it will be from the latest round of climate change, and vastly colde
Re:That has to be the stupidest statement ever (Score:4, Insightful)
It's about as hot as it's been since humans arrived right now, and it's going to get much hotter. Not in evolutionary timescales, but within a couple of generations.
Evolution would probably work in the long run, but don't forget that sometimes evolution works by wiping out almost every member of a given species leaving only a tiny handful of "fit" survivors. That hardly seems like a better choice than just switching our primary energy sources ASAP.
Re:That has to be the stupidest statement ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, quite a few civilizations have simply collapsed when faced with changing climate. What makes you think one that already has trouble keeping infrastructure running isn't going to join them?
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Was that before or after California's plastic bag ban caused a whopping 46% increase in deaths from foodborne illness [huffingtonpost.com]? Why in the world would anyone sane use a reusable canvas bag for carrying food? Ridiculous.
Haves / Have nots? (Score:5, Interesting)
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In general, fear of inequality is not a reason to oppose improved technology.
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Again though, my apartment complex has a better water heater system than most private houses, so it's really only an issue if you own a house. Apartments are already required by law to have electricity in most states.
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That only works if you can afford it though (Score:3)
Zinc-Air batteries? (Score:3)
Good luck with that until you solve Zinc's whiskering problem. Powergenix thought they had it solved with Nickel-Zinc batteries. Nope. 1.6V 2300 mAh is nice but not when you get less than 150 charge cycles due to whiskering.
Hello "EditorDavid"; please stop quoting "mdsolar" (Score:5, Insightful)
As many have posted here, his lack of objectivity is annoying and unhelpful.
Thanks.
One of many reasons to stop worrying... (Score:2)
...and wait for technology to catch up. At some point cost efficient storage has the capability, as TFA notes, to dramatically alter the utility and (especially) the cost-efficiency of intermittent renewable sources. The other critical point is energy transportation -- moving e.g. PV solar energy from Arizona or Texas to Maine without dropping half of it along the way. In the meantime, can we stop panicking and wasting huge amounts of money IMPLEMENTING immature technologies while they are -- immature?
rg
EOL considerations? (Score:3)
.
I remember when nuclear power was touted as being "too cheap to meter." No one ever talked about its by-products.
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As it is, companies like EOS Energy have a flow battery that will last 30+ Years.
Then we have Tesla which will provide Li-ion batteries for homes/small businesses that will last ~10 years.
The question becomes, how economical are they? Both appear to have their place used in the right area. EOS Energy is great for large businesses, and utility scale. Tesla for small situations.
We are 5-10 years out from a breakthrough.... (Score:2)
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If it sticks it to the utiities I am in. (Score:5, Interesting)
I will even inconvenience myself to do so. I would happily rewire my house so that the LED lighting isn't converting from 110 but from something the batteries were happier providing. I would coat the roof in solar cells, and I would buy a little generator to fill in any gaps. The same with things like my fridge or other power grabbers, they could be 24v or even 12v if needed.
Here is my dream day. The utility goes to the government and demands that regardless of my being hooked up or not that I still have to pay them for the lines that run past my house, and the regulator says, "NOPE".
To me it boils down to the utilities should be a public good like roads, and schools. Not for profit should be the rule. Yet I see board members at these utilities making huge multiples of the average person's salary, let alone the heads of the companies, or the investors.
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One the of the things that we did right in North America was build multiple federated grids between America and Canada.
THe problem is that we stopped improving it long ago. We need to move towards SMALL grids with batteries right at the doorway between the smaller grid and the bigger grids.
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You will hate utilities until you actually sit down and figure out the costs, construction and maintenance of running your own power source, whatever it may be. I live in one of the sunniest places in the world, and I know three people, all of them well-off and having taken full advantage of the state, federal and utility company subsidies for solar. In each case they were able to zero out their average residential utility bill for two people (though one of them is single) for about $40,000 US in capital co
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I should have added that for all 3 households in my sample, zeroing out net residential power cost was NOT the same as going off grid. These families sold net usage to the grid during sunny middays while drawing from the grid at night. To go off grid, they would have had to install ore collectors and run Powerwalls (or other equivalent) to save their daytime excess.
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too bad that ppl are fools (Score:2)
As such, we NEED clean base-load power. Geo-thermal i
No - and no and no (Score:3)
As someone that has worked in the battery industry my whole life -- no - it is just the usual corporate welfare. The improvements are very small 1% and expensive.
Lithium was a big deal - moving from 2 electrons to 3 - the other stuff is not really important - mostly noise - venture vulture stuff to get investors money.
What is always missing is the real cost of battery power. A battery has a cycle life - take that number times the capacity of the battery and you get the total amount of power the batter will deliver. With that you can get a cost per kWh .. assuming the electricity to charge is free (it is not) - it is still very very expensive power.
Now - in a electric hand drill - I am quite willing to pay the high price for that power - but not for running air-conditioners or powering a car.
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Incorrect. The units of capacity are ENERGY, not power. Energy times a constant is still energy. The cycle life of a battery is analogous to how many times you can fill a fuel tank. If you could only fill a car's fuel tank a few hundred times before you had to replace it, and if your fuel tank cost $8000-16,000 instead of $100, THEN you would have a situation analogou
Currently battery Tech is feasible enough ... (Score:3)
... for the time being. It's cost that's currently the main hindrance. And that is being squished big time as we speak, or so a notable amount of credible experts say.
An modern IC engine has north of 200 moving Parts, required gearbox not counted. A modern electric Car engine has 18 moving Parts and needs no gearbox.
Once battery prices have dropped beyond a certain threshhold the entire global Auto industry will Flip so fast it will make our heads spin. This is bound to happen in the next 5 years, probably in the next 3, once battery prices are low enough.
Gasoline in Personal Transport is on the way out, that's pretty much a given. And the advancements in cars will feel like the transition from steam to oil back in the day.
Or even more significant.
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Almost all electric cars have a gearbox. ALL those of which I am aware and which are serious transportation do. The difference is that usually, one or two gear ratios are enough for electric. The norm for internal combustion cars is 4 to 6, occasionally more (plus reverse).
Now, I readily admit that it is POSSIBLE to make a practical electric car which has no gearbox. It can be done using low speed individual wheel motors.
Imagine The Issues (Score:2)
Re:My own prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
... Government subsidizing the development of new technologies has the universal effect of distorting competition and making any such projects fail. ...
Like the railroads, airplanes, nuclear power, computers, the Internet, GPS, biotech, all of which had heavy US government subsidy in the beginning.
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I was talking about subsidizing the development of new technologies, not subsidizing the implementation of existing and proven technologies. Rail transport, for example, was an existing technology and not invented in the US.
But your comment made me dig up a bit about the history of airplanes and it was rather funny in this particular context (from Wikipedia):
The Flyer cost less than a thousand dollars, in contrast to more than $50,000 in government funds given to Samuel Langley for his man-carrying Great Aerodrome.
The Flyer was the first airplane made independently by the Wright brothers, and it cost them approximately $1000 to build. The Great Aerodome (name say
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So you are basically dismissing the Manhattan Project here. Even the investment on The Aerodrome was not totally useless. It ended up producing an engine design way better than anything the Wright Brothers had. A water cooled radial engine with 5x the horsepower and less weight. You are also comparing apples with oranges. The $1000 was cost in parts only while the $50000 was parts and labor.
Re: My own prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
Randroids always forget about those and pretend that something like nuclear power, which is incredibly expensive and difficult, would have ever existed without the taxpayer bankrolling it.
Re:how much is needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on who you are rooting for; transmission works great for the entrenched utilities, but batteries work better for off-grid and micro-grid. Long term, batteries are likely to prove better for distributed generation as well.
From an engineering, policy, and economic perspective I prefer distributed generation and emphasis on micro-grids; it works very well for everything but city cores, but those cores should be focusing on district heating and cooling, which might make them take longer to leave carbon and nuclear fuels.
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Depends on who you are rooting for; transmission works great for the entrenched utilities
It also works great for governments trying to collect taxes.
It is much harder to tax electricity flowing between someone's roof and their kitchen.
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You say that micro-grids are the way to go, yet, what is of concern is how to get costs cheap, AND to serve our national SECURITY needs.
For example, we are about to move to EVs for our transportation. Great. Clean. Cheap. And was a Tesla owner, FAST with great driving.
BUT, what happens when volcano blows or another nation controls the weather better? Clouds. LOTS OF CLOUDS. ANd a loss of sun, which also drops the wind. So, right when you need the energy, it goes away i
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Oh boy, where do I get that? Oh ... I can't ...
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Only if the EVs are all being charged rather than during the day.
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THe smart society plans for LONG TERM ISSUES. It is because we used to do that, that we had the electrical grids, telephones, railroads, tugs, airports, and even highways put in all around America. It is also why America at one time developed the vast majority of this AE. Nearly ALL OF THIS happened in America. The issue has become that over the last 30 years, we hav
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If the Yellowstone supervolcano blows, it's pretty much game over for most of the human population of the planet. The global cooling and ash deposition would result in worldwide famine for a decade or more. Power production is somewhere near the bottom of the world's concerns in that situation unless and until we build a huge underground cave underneath the entire American south with fertile soil and giant light fixtures.
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The last time that Yellowstone went it was at the high end of a VE7, and is expected this time to be at low-end of VE7 or highend of VE6.
And here you go: But a Yellowstone megablast would not wipe out life on Earth. There were no extinctions after its last three enormous eruptions, nor have other supereruptions triggered extinctions in the last few million years. [Wipeout: History's 7 Most Mysterious [livescience.com]
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I never said extinction. I said dramatic population reduction. The previous eruptions didn't occur in a society where 7 billion people were consuming approximately as much food as we are capable of producing technologically.
The ash cloud from a Yellowstone eruption would be expected to blanket most of the U.S. In affected areas, crop yield could fall to near zero overnight, and farmers would end up starting over. Given that the U.S. pro
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no. Not even CLOSE. The reason is that if a volcano blows, then we are blocked for weeks or months. And if it is yellowstone, it is for YEARS. THe smart society plans for LONG TERM ISSUES. It is because we used to do that, that we had the electrical grids, telephones, railroads, tugs, airports, and even highways put in all around America. It is also why America at one time developed the vast majority of this AE. Nearly ALL OF THIS happened in America. The issue has become that over the last 30 years, we have gone backwards due to the GOP/neo-cons/tea*. BUT that is a different issue. Regardless, the smart society PLANS for seucrity issues.
I don't see a lot of volcano planning in your examples.
Re:how much is needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Transmission seems to solve almost all the problem with getting renewable energy to match demand."
So why do Greens protest against transmission lines by reflex action, including those built purely to bring renewable sources to market? Examples are Sunrise Powerlink and the German Stromautobahn.
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No it isn't. Wind and solar costs considerably more than coal and gas. The "fuel" may be free, but the amortization is anything but free.
Re:Unfair to bash nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
There are enough reasons to be in doubt about Hinkley Point C.
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The original estimation for the price of an EPR at this size was 3 billion pound, now we are talking about 24,5 billion pound for the construction. The whole cost of Hinkley Point during its operation is estimated at 37 billion pound.
Hinkley Point is the "F-35 of power plants". At least with Theresa May, Britain finally has someone with enough sense to pull the plug.
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It's mdsolar; they won't submit an article that doesn't bash nuclear power. It could be an article about Python, but it better have something about how nuclear power is bad and dangerous or mdsolar won't submit it.
Still waiting to see if mdsolar will ever respond to the fact that - per kwh generated - nuclear power is safer (causes less human deaths) than solar.
Re:Unfair to bash nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. Give me a CANDU 6 plant that's actually reprocessing its "waste" any day of the week and twice on Sunday. It's safe, reliable, and oodles of power coming from a small footprint. But no, instead we'll elect to dump all our R&D into new tech that uses tons of rare Earth elements, uses huge amounts of space, isn't dependable (due to weather), can't handle base load, requires lots of toxic chemicals to produce, has to be replaced every other decade, destroys ecosystems housing endangered species, and basically just fucking sucks.
We have a solution to power requirements that doesn't cause any major issues. Replace all coal, oil, solar, and wind power with CANDU 6 power plants and reprocess the "waste" until it's so low energy that it can't hurt anyone. You'll end up with a relatively tiny amount of low-energy waste and a whole lot of fairly cheap, reliable, safe electrical power. If we made it a national priority, we could go 90% nuclear in 10 years in the US, but we'd have to wipe out a whole bunch of local government NIMBY regulations that do absolutely nothing to make anyone or any thing any safer.
"Rapidly" - not (Score:3, Insightful)
We're rapidly nearing the point where the energy to extract more fossil fuel will exceed that from the additional fossil fuel.
People have been saying that for something like 50 years... and it's less true than ever before. New technologies like Fracking always come along to keep cost of extraction cheap. The whole reason the price of oil has tanked is exactly because it's so cheap to use fracking to fossil fuels...
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Fracking is relatively expensive, and only grew when prices of imported product went up enough to support its costs.
Fracking is nothing new (Score:2)
New technologies like Fracking always come along to keep cost of extraction cheap.
Fracking has been done commercially since the 1950s [wikipedia.org] so calling it a new technology is not really accurate. There have been some advancements in fracking but what really has made it viable is the worldwide price of oil going north of about $40/barrel. It's more expensive than drilling into big reservoirs of oil like in Saudi Arabia but the technique is nothing new. It's just become economical in the last 20 years as the price of oil has intersected with the cost of fracking.
The whole reason the price of oil has tanked is exactly because it's so cheap to use fracking to fossil fuels...
The reason the price has gone d
Mr Fusion. Drop in some stale beer and a banana (Score:2)
and you've got enough energy to time travel.
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Off by 100 times? That makes quite a difference.