Half World's Fossil Fuel Assets Could Become Worthless by 2036 in Net Zero Transition (theguardian.com) 65
About half of the world's fossil fuel assets will be worthless by 2036 under a net zero transition, according to research. From a report: Countries that are slow to decarbonise will suffer but early movers will profit; the study finds that renewables and freed-up investment will more than make up for the losses to the global economy. It highlights the risk of producing far more oil and gas than required for future demand, which is estimated to leave $11tn-$14tn in so-called stranded assets -- infrastructure, property and investments where the value has fallen so steeply they must be written off. The lead author, Jean-Francois Mercure of the University of Exeter, said the shift to clean energy would benefit the world economy overall, but it would need to be handled carefully to prevent regional pockets of misery and possible global instability. "In a worst-case scenario, people will keep investing in fossil fuels until suddenly the demand they expected does not materialise and they realise that what they own is worthless. Then we could see a financial crisis on the scale of 2008," he said, warning oil capitals such as Houston could suffer the same fate as Detroit after the decline of the US car industry unless the transition is carefully managed.
Relax (Score:1, Interesting)
..."green" programs fall short far more often than being on time.
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25 years ago, 25mph was good mileage on a small sized car.
12 years ago, 50mph was good miles on a small sized car.
Today we have cars that use about 100mpg (or eMPG)
25 Years ago Home Solar was just for heating (poorly) hot water, with some minimal solar power.
12 Years ago Solar panels were able to support a majority of your power usage.
Today we can have solar power with batteries backup that can allow us to live our standard life off grid, or decide to sell to the grid our excess power.
While there is change
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Imagine you drive 100 miles per week. If you start out with a vehicle that gets 12.5 mpg, you burn 8 gallons of fuel every week. That's a fairly large amount.
If you upgrade to a vehicle that gets 25 mpg, you cut your fuel consumption to 4 gallons per week. But going to 50 mpg only gets you to 2 gal/week, and 100 MPGe means you still use 1 gallon-equivalent each week.
The returns diminish pretty quickly.
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100 MPGe means you still use 1 gallon-equivalent each week.
"MPGe" is pretty stupid, though. My EV has a 64 kWh battery that gives me about 500km of range in the summer (310 miles in FREEDOM Units).
Virtually all of my electric power that powers my car is hydroelectric, so the notion of talking about miles-per-gallon equivalent is nonsense.
Re: Relax (Score:5, Insightful)
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The pollution still happened, it is still your responsibility, but you refuse to take it.
I don't "refuse to take it," Anonymous Coward. But what I do refuse to take is lies. Yes, mining for my battery emitted some CO2.
...and going forward, most Lithium will come from the ocean or via battery recycling anyway.
But the CO2 emissions of my EV over a decade compared to it's gasoline equivalent over a decade is orders-of-magnitude less, even if you include the CO2 emitted during mining for the battery.
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Most of the lithium mined today comes from brine operations.
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Ah, but think of it as going to the gas station twice a week versus going once a week, and then to going only once a month. This is much more noticeable. It also means you can have smaller gas tanks, and lighter vehicles, leading to even better mileage.
With my old non-plugin hybrid with a long 25mile commute each way, I'd still only fill up once every other week which was less than when I had a shorter commute with a normal fuel efficient vehicle. Now with a plug-in hybrid, and in the pandemic, I really
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That's how we do it in the rest of the world. Well, we use sensible units too. It's L / 100 km.
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Despite all that alleged progress, US oil consumption has not been decreasing [eia.gov] (ignoring pandemic hiccup).
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Please revisit the last three words in my post.
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25mpg was not good mileage on a small car 25 years ago. The 1996 Honda civic did 38 highway/33 city. The Geo Metro of the same year did 40 combined. Motors have gotten more efficient, but cars have also gotten heavier, which has offset a lot of the efficiency gains. My current car gets almost exactly the same fuel economy as its 1996 ancestor of the same model did.
The only thing that has really changed car efficiency is electrification.
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"25 years ago, 25mph was good mileage on a small sized car."
Not really. We routinely got close to 40mpg from our 1976 Honda Accord.
Re: Relax (Score:2)
Criminal Ignorance on a massive scale (Score:2, Insightful)
Even at Net Zero emissions, there still is a massive need for hydrocarbons [twitter.com].
But when do you even reach "Net Zero", when all current predictions and plans are an utter fantasy compared to the reality of energy production [twitter.com] today.
Not to mention that to a lot of governments "Net Zero" seems to mean they can pay for carbon credits to offset emissions, instead of actually reducing them... or just outright pretend some emissions do not exist [twitter.com].
If you want to make a LOT of money in the next several years, invest in oi
Re:Criminal Ignorance on a massive scale (Score:5, Interesting)
Oil has always been very profitable all these years and it is taken for granted it will be needed for ever. So the infrastructure investments in oil sector is way over the top. Pipelines, oil rigs, helicopters, with break even point stretching to decades are considered A-Ok in that sector. The industry has come to rely on extremely expensive infrastructure, very costly maintenance practices. If the market shrinks by just 10% in personal auto market, the oil industry will go into crisis.
Deep sea oil rigs will be the first to go. Projects will be postponed. Maintenance will be cut back. Oil expoloration services companies will go bankrupt. These are probably the early signs one should watch for, to time your exit.
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It's like back in the 70s when you weren't in a major metropolitan area, very fewof the gas stations had diesel pumps, because the number of passenger vehicles using diesel was small, but there were still plenty of commercial diesel pumps for trucks, buses, etc.
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And while you have acknowledged the other uses of crude oil.... The crude oil is split into various products. If the transportation fuels output stop being used... the other products... plastics, fertilizers, medicines, lubricants, pesticides, makeup, etc will also no longer be able to use crude oil. Some of these may be able to find alternative sources.... but I think it is likely to push the price of many things to a much higher level.
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This might be true if "transportation fuels" were a different fraction of the refinery feedstock to chemical industry outputs, LPG, asphalts and condensates. They;re not. All of the outputs have a considerable range on them, and the ranges overlap. Plus, you can crack heavier components down to mixtures of medium-weigh
Re:Criminal Ignorance on a massive scale (Score:5, Interesting)
But when do you even reach "Net Zero", when all current predictions and plans are an utter fantasy compared to the reality of energy production [twitter.com] today.
It's a good graph to look at, but you have to stare quite carefully. What you can see is that the red - renewable curve, is on an exponential growth. Like when the virus has infected 0.5% of the population next week it will be 1% and the week after it will be 2% and then. We're talking about doubling every couple of years, not weeks, but the effect in the end is the same. The switch over has begun and it will only gain pace. Last I heard there was 85% year on year growth.
Just five years ago, fossil fuel made electricity was cheaper than renewable. Now both solar and onshore wind are cheaper than coal, the cheapest fossil fuel. Within the decade, both offshore wind and concentrated solar are going to be cheaper sources of energy than fossil fuels. Remember that the marginal costs of renewable are trivial - almost all of the cost is in capital investment. Once you've built it you might as well run it. That means that in most energy applications renewable produced electricity is going to wipe out all other forms of energy production completely. At that point, all fossil fuel reserves become distressed assets. Although there will still be some need, you are in a buyer's market and getting any decent price for them will be impossible.
Hydrocarbons are really good for aviation. I'm not going to make a prediction against that, however once the market for road-transport use of hydrocarbons collapses there will be a whole load of changes to the economics of the market. Does small scale extraction really make sense. It may actually become cheaper to synthesise the hydrocarbons than to find, extract and ship them. If this did happen, then none of the current hydrocarbon assets will ever find any value.
So let's say it's 10% (Score:2)
It's a fact that in the near future oil and gas are going to become less valuable. We're just quibbling over the numbers. We need to start considering the societal ramifications of that. For one thing oil and gas extraction is a lot more labor intensive than w
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Re: So let's say it's 10% (Score:2)
Terrorism is a lot cheaper than you think. It doesn't require the resources of a petrol state to fund. More like the resources of a single land developer (like Bin Laden). Terrorism stems from having too many poor men without opportunities. Economic collapse will make it worse, not better.
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https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
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Reality check: in the US, the amount of fossil fuels consumed for other purposes than combustion, including fertilizer, is 7%.
Have YOU done the reality check of how much silver alone is required to have every single car be electric? It's some massive multiple of all existing mining output.
Unlike you, I know roughly how many cars even CAN be electric my 2030, full tilt.
Not worthless. Just reurposed (Score:3, Interesting)
We still need Fossil fuel, however we may not need to burn so much of it. Plastics, Lubricants, are based off of Oil, there will still need Fossil Fuel to power some ICE Engines in 2036 which isn't that far away, while it may not be your Car and Trucks that are on the highway, Construction equipment, portable heating, remote power generators, and the fact that we own a slew of existing Gas power equipment, despite what partisan fear mongers will say, will probably be still grandfathered in, like how you can still drive a 1957 Chevy with no seat belts despite having seat belt laws for decades. Heck I had a chuckle a few weeks ago, when I was driving to the store about a dozen cars from the 1910's and 1920's were driving down the other lane, ironically being followed by a Tesla having 100 years difference in age.
However what we consider a necessary commodity will become a specialty item. So we won't need major Oil Companies anymore, but a few small batch companies, and smaller refineries.
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Electrofuels could run the things that use liquid fossil fuels for power-to-weight ratio reasons - various vehicles and portable power systems. It's amazing to me that the industry hasn't taken off faster when the status quo is drilling/mining for fuel in increasingly ridiculous ways, hauling the stuff half way around the world, and then spending massive amounts of energy on refining and transport, and that's without even getting into the ways they're being subsidized by military spending or the spills and
Re:Not worthless. Just reurposed (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't have to drive to town every week to bring home jerry cans of gasoline and diesel ... Farms and ranches can and will switch. Already small electric earth movers are in the market.
The world's largest 120 ton capacity electric truck is the strangest thing in the world. It ain't got no diesel engine on board, nor does it plug into a grid! The 120 ton load its bringing from mountain top to the smelter at the bottom, through regen braking creates enough electricity to charge its 600 kWh battery! When the change comes, you will be surprised how quick it changed. How long it took for cassette tapes to replace vinyl, they never succeeded. But VCR to CD to VCD to DVD to Blue-Ray to thumb drives and streaming .... happened so fast.
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It's interesting to see how the world flipped.
Not too long ago, cordless tools were considered a joke - no serious professional would be caught using a battery powered drill, never mind other power tools. We're only talking about 20 years ago here. These days, it seems all the major tools are battery powered or have battery power options. The ones that don't, typically stay put (like table saws, mitre saws and such). But anything someone might carry around, be it a drill, a reciprocating saw, or other thing
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Air Travel isn't Even Close (Score:2)
Electric Airplanes Won’t Make Much of a Dent in Air Travel for Decades to Come
https://spectrum.ieee.org/elec... [ieee.org]
Large turbofan engines powering these planes are fueled by aviation kerosene that provides nearly 12,000 watt-hours per kilogram. In contrast, today's best commercial Li-ion batteries deliver less than 300 Wh/kg, or 1/40th the energy density of kerosene. Even when taking into account the higher efficiency of electric motors, the effective energy densities go down to about 1/20th. That's more
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International travel will require 2 shots of pfizer and 11 boosters. The survivors will form a tiny pool of potential customers.
Anonymous Coward - It's reasonable to assume we'll get to a situation where we have a yearly covid booster, like we do with the flu shot or other vaccinations. So sure, if we're talking about the year 2033 then maybe we will have 11 boosters.
Of course anyone with enough money to fly private will be exempt.
Not likely. These will be the rules of the destination country tha
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The solution to air travel is biofuels in the short term and hydrogen in the long term.
Biofuels very dirty (Score:1)
The solution to air travel is biofuels in the short term and hydrogen in the long term.
The problem is biofuels are bad for people and the environment [slashdot.org].
Nor are you going to be able to grow them with the coming fertilizer crisis.
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Maybe, but there's currently a race on to generate synthetic jet A as cheaply as possible, from air, seawater and renewable electricity.
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Nothing says that kerosene has to come from a fossil fuel.
We're building a ton of solar and wind power. We're going to end up building an excess of those to help reduce the intermittency problems of those plants. But that means there's going to be times when the electricity is "free" or "near free".
Artificial fuels become a lot more viable when you don't have to pay for the energy to make them.
Natural gas peaking plants are going to be on the grid for an extremely long time. And you can get a nice, gradu
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... planes are fueled by aviation kerosene that provides nearly 12,000 watt-hours per kilogram. In contrast, today's best commercial Li-ion batteries deliver less than 300 Wh/kg, or 1/40th the energy density of kerosene.
The prospect of battery energy densities as high as those of refined petrochemical fuels is terrifying. Once you have kerosene safely confined in a tank, not a lot can happen to make it blow up. On the other hand, it probably wouldn't take much going wrong inside a battery for there to be a really horrific explosion. As it is, current lithium ion batteries are pretty spectacular when they go off. Imagine how bad they'd be if they contained 40 times as much energy in the same volume.
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China to the rescue (Score:4, Funny)
> About half of the world's fossil fuel assets will be worthless by 2036 under a net zero transition, according to research.
China will supplement their income by providing an international fossil fuel disposal program. They'll burn up all the coal so no one is tempted to use as fuel.
Replace hydrocarbons with Nuclear natures battery! (Score:2)
Sure it will (Score:2)
This shows an hilarious level of faith in the decade+ future commitments from governments who - almost universally - have failed to fulfill PREVIOUS environmental commitments with stunning consistency.
But I'm sure they mean it this time.
Guardian clickbait (Score:2)
= Dicedot clickbait
they must be written off? (Score:1)
All these big companies, they write off everything
Alberta as a case study (Score:2)
The best test of green energy is if ... (Score:2)
it can replace diesel and gasoline fuel on farm equipment at equal or lower costs. Otherwise the price of food will too high for most people. That, of course, affects the poorest the most.
Modern farming is nothing more than using land to convert oil into food. Take away the oil and fail to replace it will equal or better fuel (i.e. equal or better fuel density) and you have condemned millions to starvation, both in America and around the world.
https://investorintel.com/mark... [investorintel.com]
"Lithium is not an i
Haha. (Score:2)
Dream on.
Just another opinion (Score:1)