So you didn't get it right on the first try. So what? — Jake
Assets can be mortgaged - and in this way, fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted. The money raised by mortgaging fossil fuels would first go to applying sustainable energy technology.
— karl stone
If solar generated hydrogen is a practical energy source (and let's say it is) then the logical place from which to obtain capital finance is the market. Since the technology is scalable, you don't have to finance the final stage before the first stage is built. IF you built the final stage of the project today, had 300 square miles of solar panels and a plant cranking out hydrogen, and freighters lined up to take it away you wouldn't be able to sell much of it because the industrial base isn't ready to receive and use H. What you would do is finance a 10 square mile solar panel set up, located near the right shore, and start producing electricity, drinking water, and some H. The electricity and water could be sold to the nearby shore (i.e., India). The H would have to find its market. The profit could be plowed back into the operation, or used to pay dividends. When you were ready to expand, additional shares could be sold to finance enlarging the plant. And so on down the line.
The usual way to pay for capital projects is either a national subsidy or the capital market. — Bitter Crank
The trouble with sharing one's bright ideas is that they aren't always immediately recognized as brilliant. Quite annoying, really. — Bitter Crank
I'm hoping that Karl will see there is a real alternative to mortgaging oil in the ground. — Bitter Crank
They were just doing their physicist thing. Which is of course what your are pointing out: smart people just doing their thing risks our undoing. — Bitter Crank
I disagree. The reason has been that the technology hasn't been there earlier to make renewable energy like wind and solar competitive compared to fossil fuels. Once it's far cheaper to produce renewable energy than produce energy with fossil fuels, then the market mechanism takes over.If renewable energy could displace fossil fuels through market mechanisms alone, it would have happened already. — karl stone
Perhaps the thing is about using oil and coal to produce energy and this is the big issue. Yet there are a variety of other uses for oil like making plastics.If you'll forgive me for going on at such great length - I want to address again, this question of mortgaging an asset that cannot be used, so has no value. — karl stone
It is however, necessary to monetize fossil fuels to keep them in the ground. — karl stone
As I said, technology, production costs. Take for example solar power. Battery technology has been one thing and the obvious reality that the sun doesn't shine always and the intensity is different around the World, hence there has to be some stop-gap power production nowdays. Then there is photovoltaic effieciency: how much the solar panel can transform sunlight into electricity. Let's remember that the whole technology of silicon solar cells was basically invented as late as the 1950's.Why isn't it already far cheaper? What's the obstacle there? — Jake
I'm sure you're aware of the Peter Principle, which suggests that people will rise in their careers until they finally arrive at a job that they can't handle. That's basically what I'm suggesting, that we will continue to develop greater and greater powers until we inevitably create one that we can't manage. It's reasonable to argue that this has already happened with nuclear weapons. — Jake
What's the obstacle there? — Jake
I'd use mirrors to heat sea water, to produce clean water and steam to drive a turbine to produce electricity, and irrigate wasteland for agriculture. — karl stone
I think we're getting hung up on the word mortgage. — karl stone
There is no political will — karl stone
Nuclear weapons have been around for about 75 years and we haven't blown ourselves up yet. Their existence may in effect have prevented war between nuclear powers. — praxis
I disagree. The reason has been that the technology hasn't been there earlier to make renewable energy like wind and solar competitive compared to fossil fuels. Once it's far cheaper to produce renewable energy than produce energy with fossil fuels, then the market mechanism takes over. It's as simple as that. — ssu
Perhaps the thing is about using oil and coal to produce energy and this is the big issue. Yet there are a variety of other uses for oil like making plastics. — ssu
Indeed one could do that. But solar-thermal power hasn't taken off. Mirrors can focus a lot of heat, but not on cloudy days, and not at night. Your solar to H plan is better. — Bitter Crank
Right; I would just drop "mortgage" from your description. It has too many specific connotations connected to purchasing property or getting consumer loans. — Bitter Crank
Where there is no political will, nothing happens. Period. Your plan is going to require plenty of political will too. I don't know exactly when political will is scheduled to arrive. It had better be pretty damn quick or we are totally screwed. — Bitter Crank
First of all, that's not a hidden fact. Secondly, all those factors you mention make fossil fuels cheap and the supply ample. Our transport fleet, ships, aircraft, trucks and personal cars won't immediately be replaced either. One has to count also this to the equation: it's not only that we are adding renewable to the mix, it's that we would be scrapping existing infrastructure that would still work for a long time. It's a huge task to replace and grow the sector when you are reducing energy production simultaneously.I don't believe that's correct. I think there's a massive 'hidden' advantage for fossil fuels in the fact that we've developed and applied the infrastructure - oil rigs, tanker ships, chemical refineries, cars and petrol stations etc, coal mines, railways, power stations - all of which enjoyed vast government support in the early days - that it seems, renewable energy is denied today. — karl stone
Power prices are increasing, and that’s turning into a problem for Germany’s huge Mittelstand sector of small and medium-sized companies, many of whom haven’t hedged themselves with futures contracts.
A megawatt hour is currently trading at just over €40 ($46.70) on the futures market of the Leipzig Energy Exchange EEX, well up from below €20 at its lowest point in February 2016 and following sharp rises in world prices for oil, coal and gas. Big companies had locked in low prices for a number of years with futures contracts but many of those contracts are due to expire next year or in 2020 — and scores of Mittelstand firms are now facing the full brunt of the price hikes.“I’m getting queries from a lot of companies whose contracts expire next year and who are shocked by their future energy bills,” said Wolfgang Hahn, director of Energie Consulting GmbH (ECG), which advises firms on their power purchases.
One metalworking company in the western industrial state of North Rhine-Westphalia secured a price of €20-25 per megawatt hour until 2019 and will have to pay over €40 with its next contract. That will increase its annual power bill by almost €100,000. This is a major burden given that its earnings are already under pressure from a decline in demand for the wind turbines it manufactures. “Electricity prices have doubled over the last two years,” Mr. Hahn said. “It’s very painful for a lot of our customers.” Large companies are best-equipped to cope because they can afford energy procurement departments that know their way around the futures market. But even they aren’t always fully hedged.
Even if a bit off the subject, this is a wonderfull example of how American transport policy (and the lack of it) has made a once fairly good transport system very insignificant and weak. Not the cargo and freight sector of it, but passenger rail.By 1970? Amtrak was created to take over a ghost of passenger travel. The promise of railroad travel began around 1840. It took about a century to finally become really nice, and then it died (all this only applies to the US.) — Bitter Crank
But seriously, this is either an incredibly difficult problem to solve - or it's very simple. Do we value human existence or not? — karl stone
First of all, that's not a hidden fact. Secondly, all those factors you mention make fossil fuels cheap and the supply ample. Our transport fleet, ships, aircraft, trucks and personal cars won't immediately be replaced either. One has to count also this to the equation: it's not only that we are adding renewable to the mix, it's that we would be scrapping existing infrastructure that would still work for a long time. It's a huge task to replace and grow the sector when you are reducing energy production simultaneously. — ssu
Let's not forget that Germany is already paying the highest price for electricity in the EU (alongside Denmark). In my country (Finland) the price per KW/h is half of that in Germany. The cost has risen all the decade and this does start to have an effect for example on industry: — ssu
...well up from below €20 at its lowest point in February 2016, and following sharp rises in world prices for oil, coal and gas.
In face of the existential threat climate change poses - I find it very difficult to understand why a comprehensive renewable energy infrastructure isn't government funded. — karl stone
Instead, they want me to stop eating meat, cycle to work and wear my overcoat indoors - just so they can keep pumping the black gold!
There is of course also the possibility of carbon sequestration. And on that front, and on other fronts, it is worth considering low tech solutions. http://www.greatgreenwall.org China is also reducing its deserts. Techno-energy solutions have their place, wind, tidal, solar, geothermal etc, but bio-solutions are even more important. — unenlightened
Capital finance (embodied in a few hundred people who make major investment decisions) and fossil fuel owners don't care (can't care) about the environment, the various species, and whether you and I freeze or not. They pretty much MUST focus on perpetuating the life of the gold-egg laying goose and generating a steady stream of profits for hundreds of thousands stock holders.
You and I would experience too much cognitive dissonance to be worrying about the future of the species and at the same time doing business as usual.
The situation is reflected in the statements of some business leaders traveling to Saudi Arabia who were asked about their presence, considering the Saudi crowned thug's recent chopping up a journalist in their Turkish embassy. "I'm here to make deals; I'm not concerned about anything else." — Bitter Crank
As a socialist, it's not my job to defend capitalism. "We have not come to praise Capital; we have come to bury it." I do not believe that capitalism is compatible with continued human existence into the next century. Despotic dictatorships are also not compatible with human life, whether they pay heed to Karl Marx or Adam Smith. — Bitter Crank
a command economy must necessarily prohibit. In order to design production, a command economy must tell people what to do, when to do it, and cannot stand dissent of any kind - because the State manages production. — karl stone
The USSR was a command economy sometimes described as "state capitalism". What the hell does that mean, you ask? In state capitalism there is one corporation: the state. The state corporation runs industry, commerce, politics, religion, whatever there is to run. That is not "socialism" or "communism" as Marx defined it. It's just a totalitarian society. Marx described a system where all the institutions of capitalism (including the state) were replaced by a bottom-up system of social management. — Bitter Crank
Now, the UK is not the US. Our political and class systems and history are quite different. Workers in the US have tended to have harsher experiences than workers in the UK have had, at least under the post-war labor governments. The same goes for much of Europe, which has had a longer history of social welfare programs than the US.
The US has done a much better job than you Brits of camouflaging the fault lines of class differences. Both the UK and the US have a ruling class, and an overlapping very wealthy class. Most American workers have been taught to not see class. That 5% of the population owns more wealth than the rest of the population is unbelievable to many Americans. Credit that to pervasive miseducation. Americans have drunk the kool aid that "Anyone can get rich in America." Your are poor because you just didn't try hard enough. ETC. — Bitter Crank
we need to start making huge amounts of fresh water, and only with a renewable energy infrastructure can we do that. Otherwise, those 2 billion people will migrate in ever increasing numbers - and migration is already becoming a contentious political issue. — karl stone
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.