I don't understand how we're still using fossil fuels. I thought the only thing that would save us from the scourge is if renewables were cheaper, but even with solar being cheaper than everything else, we're still deploying fossil fuels.<p>Is it because of the interests of fossil fuel companies and their lobbying, or am I missing some economic factor?
We're not really adding much more fossil fuel capacity. 88% of new capacity under construction in the US is renewable. Of the fossil fuel capacity that is being added, it's overwhelmingly coal-to-gas conversions and peaker plants that help to deal with the variability in renewable generation.<p>It will take a long time before the fossil fuel capacity we've already built gets phased out, and of course certain developing nations are still adding dirtier fuel sources, but renewables getting cheap is working.
Ahh, interesting, I didn't realize the current mix is because of legacy plants, but I guess it makes sense that it wouldn't all be phased out immediately.
Ultimately, the answer is fuel density. So, for long distance untethered travel, like planes. Beyond that, it's plastics production and chemical manufacturing.<p>We can switch to hydrogen for lots of stuff that requires carrying your fuel on your back, but some things get tougher because the density is just not the same as a hydrocarbon.<p>These are all surmountable (biodiesel, carbon capture->fuel cycles, bioreactors, etc), but they take time and money.<p>In the end, what will push us to get there are economic shocks. We're getting there, it's just painful.
No, that's fine, I get it that fossil fuels have incomparable density, but we're using them massively for stuff where density isn't that important. Anything inside a city, from transportation to homes to factories are already powered by electricity (or can be, e.g. cars), we're just inexplicably still using fossil fuels to create that electricity.<p>The US grid is still 57% coal and gas.
Slightly tangential, we bought a 2014 Nissan Leaf about 18 months ago, against howls of protest from parents-in-laws and brother- and sister-in-laws with all the regular electric car FUD you hear (can't drive interstate on a single tank, can't tow a trailer, will explode and burn your house down).<p>For our use-case, 95% of our trips are to the shops, to various kids sports, to school, to the bus/train station, visiting (local) family, and all are very short trips easily within the relatively short range of the Leaf: ~100km. We still have our existing cars, they just get used less in favour of the cheapest option for the job at hand.<p>Even with our son being newly able to drive independently (so essentially needing to have three cars, rather than two, on the go at any one time), over the 18 months of owning the Leaf we've saved about 25% of the purchase price of the Leaf in spending less on petrol (including the electricity cost to charge the Leaf - which gets charged using the solar panels during the day, but more commonly using cheaper grid electricity non-peak overnight - yes, likely primarily off fossil fuels but from what I've read is more energy efficient than using petrol to power the car).<p>My point being, analogous to the "right answer" being to only using energy-dense fuels when necessary, we use the cheaper electric vehicle option when applicable, and only burn the expensive stuff when the better option is unavailable.<p>P.S. Looking at buying a newer EV with longer range, so there are additional and more flexible "better options", plus coming up to having a daughter who is also able to drive unaccompanied (four cars? :grimacing face:)
I really don't understand how people offer "but that ten-hour trip I take once a year will be 40 minutes longer!" as criticism and completely ignore "my EV TCO will be half of an ICE".<p>Humans really do not like change, the problems you have now are swept under the rug but tiny new problems are made into massive, insurmountable ones.
> Humans really do not like change<p>This is definitely part of it. My personal opinion is that 'mechanical intelligence' is so intertwined with, cough, <i>masculinity</i> that EVs are a threat to these kinds of <i>men</i> at the very core of their being. There's so much 'identity' that people associate with the car they drive, the noise it makes, that they can take it apart and put it back together again despite its complexity.<p>The simplicity of the electric motor and the minimal servicing required of an electric car is potentially anathema to (toxic) masculinity. As is enforcing 'stopping driving for a rest and (literal) recharge'.<p>It's a super old school way of thinking, but aren't we in the midst of seeing exactly that bubbling up to the surface as far more entrenched in society than we thought it could be?<p>(May be overthinking this a bit, but the illogic from otherwise logical family members around EVs really twisted my mind into knots that I had to spend the time undoing)<p>> tiny new problems are made into massive, insurmountable ones<p>This is just cope. Clutching at the thinnest branches because that's the only thing on offer. It's the rationalisation of all of what I've mentioned above.
I will offer you a realistic answer - the uncertainty and need for planning are the killers.<p>An EV dropped my transportation fuel bills by 90% but even i will admit that an EV is a hassle. On any trip that exceeds the range of the car, we must identify EV chargers, then determine whether they are working and only then can we start counting the additional minutes.<p>In the winter, seeing the range of you car drop by 26% and not knowing where the next working charger is, is the #1 reason why we still have two cars. If i could eliminate one with access to better transit, it would be the EV, not the combustion car.
Legit question (and one that I need to answer for myself as well):<p>Would it be cheaper to keep the EV and rent a car for when you need to do longer trips? (also taking into account the additional hassle of renting a petrol/diesel car)<p>Only speaking for myself, I'd seriously consider renting a (combustion) car for an interstate driving holiday if it's a rare occurrence, like once a year or once every two years. It will become an exercise in accounting[0].<p>My silly-ish analogy is: I don't own a plane because I fly rarely enough that it's not worth buying a plane to allow me to fly wherever, whenever I want.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQPIdZvoV4g&t=137" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQPIdZvoV4g&t=137</a>
Sure, but this is just a temporary infrastructure issue that will be solved thoroughly as EVs become more popular. If you take long trips often, maybe it's not for you, but I personally only take trips longer than 200km or so once a year, if that, so I absolutely adore my EV and would never go back to ICE.
In Australia the answer is political lobbying, without a doubt.<p>We had an emissions trading scheme[0] in 2012 meant to help in a transition to clean energy sources that was aggressively lobbied against by Australia's largest polluters and lasted only 2 years before being repealed by the incoming government by labeling it a "tax" that citizens would pay for. This led to a decade of policy stagnation[1] where we could've been transitioning away from fossil fuels.<p>So while energy density is definitely a factor, political lobbying is absolutely a factor.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Pollution_Reduction_Scheme" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Pollution_Reduction_Sch...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0a453f5c-e859-4300-9355-46822c45172b?syn-25a6b1a6=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.ft.com/content/0a453f5c-e859-4300-9355-46822c451...</a>
Fuel density wouldn't be such an impactful attribute if the US military and geopolitical situation and strategy were different.<p>Fuel density is logistically important and the US geographical position means that density is more important to the US than other nations. In other words, if we forecast that we'll be fighting foreign wars, fuel transport is an logistical problem that optimises for density.
Aviation is a few percent of global emissions. All aviation.<p>It’s probably the hardest thing to replace but if we can’t we will be okay.<p>Long haul trucking and shipping and remote site power are probably the next hardest things, and maybe coal for metallurgy, but these are also small compared to emissions from electricity generation and routine car transit. The big sources can be completely converted.
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> I don't understand how we're still using fossil fuels.<p>These fit an energy niche that can't be replaced with any one thing. China is just now investing in an electric military, for instance. Shipping will remain difficult to electrify entirely (which is surmountable, but certainly not in production). Coal and natural gas plants provide on-demand power that is not straightforward to guarantee with renewable sources. And there are many (likely almost all) grids that are simply not up to the task of transmitting energy that used to be transmitted by physically moving fossil fuels. Air flight has no renewable alternative as of today—though, I suppose we technically do have renewable forms of jet fuel, it's extremely expensive.<p>& of course we will need byproducts for the forseeable future for fertilizer, materials, chip production, etc etc.<p>It'll take a couple generations. Of course we should be paying poor countries to not use fossil fuels, but instead we're trying to force switching back to fossil fuels ourselves for no explicable reason (as an american obv).
Time, production capacity, and materials. I’ve seen 1yr lead times on electric equipment to install charging stations. Copper supply issues with a huge rollout.<p>$150/barrel, much higher prices everywhere, less fertilizer, and less oil available could spur a faster turnover.
> am I missing some economic factor?<p>That's the big mystery. We're told wind+solar are super cheap. Cheaper than everything. Cheap, cheap, cheap. You'd think, renewables being so cheap, it would rapidly displace all the expensive stuff.<p>But it does not. All sources of energy grow simultaneously, despite the plentiful anecdotes about limited regional shifts in specific markets.<p>So that creates doubt about the "cheap" claims. Such doubts, however, aren't generally welcome, and it's best to keep these thoughts to yourself, should they emerge. Carefully asking questions, as you've done, is the least damaging approach to coping with this apparent contradiction. I don't recommend ascribing it to nefarious conspiracies: that creates poor mental habits that don't end well.<p>In the meantime, there are concepts such as LCOE+ that deal with the real economics of energy supply and demand that can inform you on the matter. You'll want to be careful here, however. You'll encounter ideas that don't align well with preferred narratives and, if you're not careful with such knowledge, you might inadvertently peg yourself as being aligned with counter-narrative forces. And that's never good for kudos.
Renewables require power storage. Batteries are large, heavy, expensive, and the power dense ones have absolutely horrendous failure modes.<p>There are other storage options, but they require even more space than batteries.<p>Oil and gasoline require very little space, have easy to handle failure modes, and aren’t that expensive to operate. Not expensive enough to justify changing nationwide logistics and support.<p>It’s also far cheaper to keep using fossil fuels for a year than build out entirely new infrastructure.
I'm not sure the failure modes are too significantly different. I think it's likely you may consider them 'easy to handle' is because there's been years to learn how to handle these failure modes (which is a positive, but for reasons not inherent to the power source itself).<p>It's always far cheaper to keep status quo X than move to new thing Y. Until it isn't. Especially if you don't take into account externalities. Increased instances of flooding, cyclones, and wildfires gets pretty expensive pretty quickly. Losing ground to competitors can be fatally expensive in the long term.<p>Such things require the ability and will to think and prepare long-term, and it feels as if humanity has been migrating in the opposite direction since the 70's.
Because the upside (with barely single digit margins if it exists) is mostly China and no one else being able to compete at that scale.<p>Something like skin in the game. US (low), EU(moderate), China (high), Global South (high with caveats to leapfrog but financing crunch always there)<p>Renewables need front loaded funding compared to Oil & Gas which are the incumbents that make them sticky.<p>Otherwise is a lot of US consumers were rational and only price minded they would've run TCO calculators on EV vs ICE for day to day use even without subsidies
In the UK, wind is super volatile and isn't viable without LNG. You can have two weeks without wind several times a year. So more wind means more LNG.
My hope is that it’s bureaucratic inertia. There really is little excuse. Especially with super high voltage power lines becoming more affordable.
I mean, the US was deploying significantly more renewable energy projects during the last administration than ever before, but the corrupt trump administration stopped many of them immediately after reentering office.<p>The bureaucracy was moving the right direction - towards renewables - until the conservatives in this country deliberately changed strategy to emphasize fossil fuels again.<p>You can draw your own conclusions about motive, but this isn’t an accident.
Renewables are <i>heavily</i> subsidized. Fossil fuels are <i>heavily</i> lobbied for. The result is inertia.
They are growing all over the world at a phenomenal rate, but I think it just takes some amount of time. They have only been the cheapest option for a few years now.<p>And in the U.S., Republicans have done everything they can to hamstring the transition and destroy the billions of dollars invested by automakers into EVs prior to 2025. But even that can only postpone the transition.
Also they’re only the cheapest at the point of generation, you then need to transfer that energy where it’s needed, and when it’s needed (storage). Also manufacturing capacity for renewables infrastructure, vehicles, batteries, etc, etc, is constrained. And then there are products that can’t be substituted by renewables such as plastics, fertiliser, etc. So many factors. It can’t happen too soon, but it will take many decades.
Demand from data centers isn’t helping anything.
> I don't understand how we're still using fossil fuels.<p>Global politics.<p>Switching to renewables is seen as capitulation to China because of their lead in tech in this area, especially when you consider that renewables generally introduce battery dependence.<p>They don't even try to hide this anymore. Watch US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick at the WEF:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY0t0h1gXzk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY0t0h1gXzk</a><p>Explicitly stated: Don't be subservient to China.<p>Not vocalized, but the obvious alternative: Instead be subservient to the USA and various allied Persian Gulf (and hijacked Latin American) countries who will keep pushing the petrol alternative until it literally runs dry, even if they have to do it at gunpoint.
The real issue was calling them fossil fuels.
So the problem is that we have a bunch of people making pronouncements about things they don't understand.<p>I would encourage anyone to look into what fossil fuels are actually used for because energy is only part of it. Some energy is for fuel (eg ships, planes) for which we currently have no substitute. A big chunk is electricity generation but there are so many other non-energy uses of fossil fuels eg fertilizers, construction, roads, plastics and other industrial uses.<p>China has undergone a decades long project to get to the point where they are the world leader (and almost sole supplier) of renewable energy tech. The plunging cost of solar happened because of China. This is a national project for them and no other country that I can think of has the willpower, organization and commitment for the deacdes-long quest to wean oneself off of fossil fuels.<p>Just between the rollout of EVs and power generation, you need a massive amount of infrastructure associated with it. Upgraded power lines, chargers, etc. Plus all the vehicles. Plus all the materials for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, etc. Those supply chains are completely dominated by China.<p>Just look at the LA to SF HSR project. This will likely take 20+ years and cost $100-200B, if it ever even happens. 20 years ago, China had a single HSR line in Shanghai to the airport. Now it has a 30,000+ mile network that carries 4M+ passengers a day and I've seen estimates that the entire network cost less than $1T. California HSR is 10-20% of that budget. <i>For one line</i>.<p>They reformed every level of government for this project. There is no expensive and corrupt procurement process for every city, every region, every line. They use the same rolling stock <i>everywhere</i>. Permitting for building the tracks and stations is streamlined. They make their own trains.<p>My point with this example is twofold:<p>1. EVs and electricity are only a fraction of the fossil fuel picture; and<p>2. Weaning ourselves off of that is a decades-long project in countries that have no track record or political will to pull that off.
Non-energy uses of fossil fuels are not problematic from the point of greenhouse emissions.<p>If we stop burning fossil fuels and get energy from renewable sources, the remaining hydrocarbons will probably be used for plastics, chemicals and so on. If they aren't burnt this is fine.<p>It also probably makes more sense to use fossil fuels for applications where density is critical such as aviation, offset with carbon capture, rather than to leave oil in the ground and synthesize jet fuel using renewable energy.
Cars and electriciy are the overwhelming majority of all fossil fuel use. Let’s just focusing on tranistioning them first, and we’ll be in so much of a better place. The rest can wait
I'm pretty sure that natural gas is a significant component of plastic manufacture.<p>Plastic ain't going anywhere, anytime soon (although many people wish it would).
It's 100% economic corruption and populist/fascists forcing it down everyone's throat through extreme manipulation. yes...<p>We might always need some for various materials and industrial process, but wasting it on ground transportation is beyond absurd at this point.