The cheaper energy becomes, the more of a threat it is to literally all of the world’s heirarchies of power. The people at the top that benefit most from these heirarchies and who have the most control are also the most disincentivized from finding a solution that makes energy cheaper for all.
DrFistington@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The entire concept of fracking is that you pump water full of dangerous chemicals, then drill into a fissure, and blast it full of your chemical slurry so that it eventually forces natural gas out of the fissure. Then when all the natural gas is gone, they pack up and leave with their money. The chemical slurry stays in the ground forever, leaching into water tables, public waterways, potentially contaminating soil used for live stock and agriculture.
We literally have a visible ball of unlimited fusion energy in the fucking sky, and natural tides that can power tidal generators, but no, let’s just poison the shit out of everyone for a slightly better profit margin…
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 1 week ago
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 1 week ago
Solar is already a way cheaper way to make energy. Fossil fuels for electrical energy are only profitable due to large government handouts and steep tarries on Chinese electronics such as solar panels. Economic forces always win so renewables powering most of the grid is inevitable.
The real issue is that vehicles and aircraft need something with equivalent energy density and battery technology just isn’t that good yet and will take a long time to get that good.
The other thing is economically it’s cheaper to run a lot of ff powered devices at a higher rate than to invest in a replacement to run at a lower rate. The roi just isn’t goof enough. Eg Almost all new heating systems are heat pumps but the economic cost of replacing a gas heater with a heat pump just isn’t worth it.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’ve been looking at that decision. My furnace is well beyond its expected life and I’d like to replace it before it dies so it’s not an emergency. I’ve looked at heat pumps and really want to make that choice. The incentives help with the initial cost, at least for a couple more months.
But then it comes down to gas is cheaper than electricity. If electricity is twice the cost per unit of energy, is it really sufficient for the heat pump to be twice as efficient? How can I rationalize the choice that is not only more expensive to install but more expensive to run?
And the answer is not sinking yet more money into also doing solar. My house is mostly shaded, and I’m not killing treees just to make this mess work together
muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com 6 days ago
Well the whole point of a heat pump is that they have a COP (coefficient of performance) of about 2-4. Meaning that for every unit of energy u put in they have an effective heating/cooling capacity of 2-4 units of energy. They have an effective efficient of greater than 100% whereas a gas can only every reach a max of 100%.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’m an educator, and I’m forbidden from taking about fracking at work ( ° ͜ʖ °)
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Right, but that invisible ball isn’t reliable. You have no idea when it’s going to work or not.
If anyone cares, sunset is at 9:04 PM today.
DrFistington@lemmy.world 4 days ago
It works all the fucking time. The sun doesn’t turn off. You attach batteries to the solar panels that way if there are clouds you can just use what’s in the batteries and if it’s a sunny day and you don’t need the extra energy you store it in the batteries until you do. And if it’s really cloudy in your area… Get a windmill.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 4 days ago
That was the joke. We know precisely down to the second when the sun will be shining. We’ve been able to calculate that for over a century at this point.
“Oh, what about storms and clouds!?!”
Let me introduce those naysayers to the national energy grids. My house can get electricty from a producer thousands of miles away, so even if clouds are covering my whole state, we’re still getting power from sunny areas.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
For the record, the current technology we have to capture renewable energy is not capable of supporting the civilization we have built compared to how efficient oil and natural gas are as energy-dense molecules. Only very recently has battery technology come far enough to make it worth it to move a semi-truck any reasonable distance, but cargo ships are still going to be difficult to replace and account for a huge amount of pollution, as well as commerce we depend on. So it’s not a “slightly better profit margin”, as it would range from a literal decimation of society to straight up impossible to cut out all fossil fuels today.
But we should have started a global, methodical transition over 40 years ago, and the free market control over government and media has systematically prevented that. And THAT is unacceptable.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’ll agree with we should have started 40 years ago. We knew we should have and we did have sufficient technology to take other paths.
But I’ll disagree on whether we have the technology now. There was a recent post on Lemmy that in a sunny place like Las Vegas, you could replace 97% of energy generation with renewables and batteries. Cheaper. Not just that you can but that it’s cheaper. We have the technology.
The challenge is always to bring the cost down. We do have technology to create aviation fuel from green sources. We do have several options for fueling shipping that we know how to do. Even if we’re just making ammonia or hydrogel or green diesel, that is a huge step forward that we have the technology for. The problem is we don’t yet have a compelling economic case to (especially since climate change is externalized, not counted as a cost), nor anyone with the fortitude to make it so
0x0@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
cargo ships are still going to be difficult to replace
Nuclear.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
I agree that would be more environmentally friendly, but now you also need to train and employ how many nuclear experts to keep thousands of ships running safely? And this tech has existed for a while. If this was cheaper to do, I expect they would have already done it.
0x0@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
It’s not cheaper because it’s not heavily subsidised lie oil. Had it been and SMRs would be further along the line and well within the realm of feasibility.
DrFistington@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Yeah, to flip the switch now, all at once would be incredibly disruptive. But we knew this was going to happen over 40 years ago. Shit, all elected officials in the US had to do was follow the plan that Jimmy Carter laid out.
I also seriously question the numbers saying that tidal, solar, and wind power can’t provide enough to sustain the status quo. Yeah, powering a ship across the ocean can be hard… But you also have an essentially unlimited supply of wind and tidal power for a ship out on the ocean and quite a bit of solar power although it’s not as reliable.
I mean it may take a little bit longer for the overall journey but you could pause and just bob up and down in the ocean to recharge the batteries in a cargo ship or move the slower speed while you recharge. That’s not even exploring options like hybrid sail / battery powered ships
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Like most of capitalism… The externalities are the free rent that enables the “profit”.
NJSpradlin@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Geothermal, wind, tide, hydro, solar… and then even nuclear. All ways to just create unlimited energy. But, because the elite enslave us to the status quo, through the jobs that keep it going… here we are.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 week ago
we havnt tapped into geothermal like scifi does, we have the other ones though.
NJSpradlin@lemmy.world 1 week ago
One or two of them, or all of them individually, aren’t explicitly as competitive as existing non-renewables, sure. But together.
Geothermal is very good option for some for reducing their electricity demand for heating and cooling their homes.
Home solar doesn’t fully cover everyone’s electricity demand for their homes, sure, but can greatly reduce the demand for it of it doesn’t cover it outright.
rakete@feddit.org 6 days ago
Geothermal very often uses fracking, too. Difference might only be a bit higher depth it’s used in.
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 1 week ago
Except that nuclear is not economically viable.
Tja@programming.dev 1 week ago
Huh? France seems to be doing OK.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 week ago
I didn’t mention nuclear
0x0@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
Give it the same subsidies Big Oil has then… and i’d rather have clean energy that “economically viable” dirty energy.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Then why did it take until 1859 for human population to start trending up and reach 8 billion?
I’ll help you: oil. The ancient Romans had geothermal, wide, tide, solar, and hydro as well.
They had the exact same energy we do now. The difference is we have power, they didn’t.
I’ll help you again. You can’t fertilize crops with electricity, or make plastic.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Let me help you.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
LOL. You can NOT be serious.
How will you FEED all these people?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
" and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers"
You can NOT sustain our present human population with sunshine and puppies. Vaccines or not.
You seriously misunderstand just about everything.
Soup@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The ancient romans also didn’t have solar panels, and actually hydro and wind were totally used in these little things called watermills and windmills. I wouldn’t be surprised if they figured out geothermal heating, too. The difference is that you can simply light oil on fire and that’s easy when you otherwise have a lower level of technology and aren’t ready for better, more advanced ways of generating power.
You’re none too bright, huh?
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Yes, please describe how that solar panel came into being. Try it without the fossil fuel foundation of every single item we use. Everything from the rubber tires of the delivery trucks to the food the workers eat.
You are blind to what’s around you. If you think we’re going to support 8 billion people living a Western lifestyle without fossil fuels, I’m afraid it’s not me who isn’t bright.
How do you support our present industrial civilization with windmills and watermills? We already had these, why did we give them up?
You’re completely oblivious.
“better, more advanced ways of generating power.”
But we don’t. We don’t “generate” power. We harvest energy. And once our little geological energy reserve is drawn down, how do you plan on keeping our present arrangements going?
You haven’t explained how you plan to make fertilizers, concrete, plastics, with electricity? And you don’t simply “light oil on fire”… Where did the iron come from to make engines? Coal, oh yeah.
You also think we’ll just spin copper wire and rare earth magnets from sunshine…
Please go back to AI vibe coding.