Comment on How Fossil Fuel Disruptions Lead to Booms in Solar and Batteries
JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net 18 hours agoSorry, I suspect my sarcasm may have passed you by. They already make electric mining/construction equipment, solar powered factories and recycling facilities. Steel smelting can be done with grid-connected electric arc furnaces or solar furnaces. The production of solar panels and wind turbines may not be fully detached from oil for some time, but then horses played an important role in heavy industry for decades alongside gasoline and diesel trucks and steel hulled sail ships were still hauling grain well into the 1950s. These transitions are always uneven and the tipping point can be hard to spot even with hindsight, let alone while it’s happening.
eleitl@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
Gigantism in mining trucks like Belaz 75710 www.lectura-specs.com/en/model/…/75710-11738579 with 360 tons and 1.7 MW diesel-electric hybrids – which frequently run 24/7 is due to ore grade depletion. You might want to run the numbers of how a sodium-ion mining truck would look like, and how long it would have to recharge. Notice the tires, they’re made from at least partly synthetic rubber. What you don’t see is lubricants, also synthetic. Polymers, synthetic. Notice the amount of structural steel.
Solar PV with battery buffers (necessary for 24/7 industrial processes) has ERoEI of less than 4 which is insufficient to maintain a complex industrial society. You can try to substitute some of that with small-batch fast (running just during the day or whenever the wind blows) processes, but that will be the minority.
You mention horses a lot – these will be needed again, after the industrial age. And slaves, and ships made of wood. Which will do fine in a world with maybe 100 million people. Maybe a lot less.