| ▲ | spwa4 5 days ago |
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| ▲ | adrianN 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Solar is cheaper than oil, and oil is essentially never used for electricity. |
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| ▲ | gnabgib 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Of the world's power 35% is coal (solid oil), 20% Gas/Natural Gas (gaseous oil), 3% oil (Wikipedia def'n).. 58% of our power is oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... Are you being particular about your definition of oil? Light Oil (C4-C12 aka "Gasoline"(NA) "Petrol"(EU)) is used for personal generation and backup power systems. Heavy oil (C9-C25 aka "Diesel") is regularly used for electricity, extensively used for backup power systems. | | |
| ▲ | hn_throwaway_99 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Redefining coal as "solid oil" and natural gas as "gaseous oil" is ludicrous. Coal, natural gas and oil are well-defined concepts that are not easily fungible in our energy infrastructure, so plopping them all together using your made-up language is silly. | | |
| ▲ | gnabgib 5 days ago | parent [-] | | GGP used oil to cover all fossil fuel based sources.. GP decided to focus on the word choice rather than the intent. 58% of the worlds power comes from fossil fuels. |
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| ▲ | adrianN 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I count three percent as negligible. |
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| ▲ | squigz 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't think Jevon's Paradox is applicable here? This is about solar becoming more efficient. In any case, if the argument is that oil is going to be pumped regardless of how much it's actually used, can we not just save it for a rainy day, so to speak? |
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| ▲ | spwa4 5 days ago | parent [-] | | No because we cannot store large amounts of oil. We can store a few weeks of oil, and that's it. That's why, for example, Putin burned it off: if he doesn't cut supply, he can't store it. But that isn't a Russian problem, that's a global problem.
Losses through burnoff are typical in the industry, which is why equipment for large scale burnoff even exists: for various logistical problems. If oil can't be taken out of pumps or refineries, and it's not worth it to take production offline due to restart costs, they just burn it right there. For no useful work. | | |
| ▲ | squigz 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Why can't we store oil? Is it just a matter of we haven't built long-term storage yet due to not needing to, or is there something else? | | |
| ▲ | adrianN 4 days ago | parent [-] | | We can store oil underground for millions of years. | | |
| ▲ | spwa4 4 days ago | parent [-] | | ... in the sense that we can disable some pumps, yes. If one party agrees to make less money and let everyone else have more, then we can store oil underground for millions of years.
In other words: this is absolutely, utterly, completely and totally impossible.
What always happens is oil becomes cheaper and all of it sells. |
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| ▲ | colechristensen 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The reason this is a stupid argument is that solar power is significantly cheaper than fossil fuel power almost everywhere. And not in a "calculating all of the global impacts" way, in the very direct, greedy, "I want the cheapest electricity possible" way. "Whatabout"s with storage and time of day, etc. aren't necessary, battery tech is cheap and solar production is so cheap you can do inefficient things with it (panels at non-ideal angles to get more power at off peak hours) and still come out ahead. I really doubt China is installing solar at insane rates to be nice to the world. |
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| ▲ | putinapologist 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
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