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China has used coal since the beggining. And labor costs has only increased there. But PV panels has been reducing their price constantly, with no relevant changes in the mix and increasing labor costs.

That excuse could hear well in people that only thinks that PV has become cheap because they have being outsourced to China, but anyone that could check Chinese numbers knows that it's not right, because that variables has been static or worsening there while costs had plummeted. Not a minor change, but a radical one.

You are getting wrong numbers in some place, because the conclusion doesn't meet the reality. For example, a way where they have optimized in silicon is reducing the weight of the material used for capture. Even if the weight/energy ratio wouldn't change (that I doubt it) if you use less weight because the wafers are a lot thinner, obviously the total energy get reduced by a lot.
Solar panels aren't getting cheaper because labor costs or because they are made from coal as you said. That hasn't changed in China for decades.

In fact, I used your numbers and the result is even more extreme. Look.

            Tons    Mwh per ton	Mwh           Percentage
Glass        70000	9,7       679000          3,79%
Steel        56000	13,9      778400          4,34%
Concrete    47000	6,96	  327120          1,83%
Aluminum    19000	64	 1216000          6,79%
Silicon      7000     2100	14700000         82,05%
Copper       7000       16,2	  113400          0,63%
Plastic      6000	17	  102000          0,57%
		Total=	17915920    *    320   =    5.733.094.400 Mwh

Using your numbers, I obtain 5.733.094 Gwh which is even more extreme than what I said.

Although if you see the numbers with care you will notice that mods energy come from silicon.
That was usually the thing in the past. Everybody that knows a little about the PV industry knows that the PV cells are the most expensive part of the whole infrastructure, and the piece that has become cheaper in these years.

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I have edited to add the percentage.

On other order of things, I must said that I knew personally met Pedro Prieto in my youth.

Remember when I told in the other thread about my past as former peakoiler?

Well... He was one of the most important voices of the peakoiler movement in Spain.

https://www.15-15-15.org/webzine/es/author/ppp/

Besides, the numbers are based on old data.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/S … fbc2dbef9a

His numbers are always like that. He always took the worst possible numbers. And when even with that it wasn't enough to met the value he want, then he changed the methodology.

Instead of a classic EROEI as it was more common in oil, he did a "new concept" (I don't remember if he was the first, but the first time I met that was through his work), something that they named "EXTENDED EROEI".

That concept is non serious. It's based in add a lot of energy to the input under the excuse that "it's needed" with doubtful formulas to convert that concepts into energy.
I read forward "calculations" about this new EROI and it was coming more and more ridiculous. Adding costs like labor costs to energy (that energy is what we use with the output energy, it's never accounted as an input in other energy), stealing (if they steal the panels, the panels are working in another place. That's not an energy concept, but a business one), even roads! (man... the roads are not only used for installing PV, you can't account that energy as it was done exclusively for photovoltaics).

This is not the first time there is a fight among the numbers.

Here you have an example.

This is a response against a similar study that used the methodology that I was referring.

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/67901.pdf

This is a response to another work, here from "Ferroni and Hopkirk" that reached even lower EROEI.

I can't quote the original Prieto & Hall work, because it's paid. But I can say you that the original data it was quoted, 2008, the prices has already dropped by more than one order of magnitude since then.

There were a lot of critics about that 2008 bubble in Spain. But by then it wasn't rare that the government paid up to 300€ per Mwh on subsides. Now they are installing PV without any subsides with an estimated LCOE under 30 €/Mwh.

EROEI numbers become unusable long ago when different sources obtain so different numbers.

I already explained why you are doing wrong reasoning.

You are multiplying the raw materials of CURRENT PV by the power need, obtaining that you will reach a limit.

But you are ignoring that the reason why the current PV are made like this it's because it's the most cost-effective model under our current variables. It's not because it's an intrinsic dependency.

From a different perspective. We can replace most of copper in current PV for aluminum because it's used mostly on wires. It's just it has other problems and under current copper price, copper it's the best solution (from economic perspective). It's the same for silver inside PV. Copper can be used in that place.
In that functionality, it's a minor quantity. You can replace silver by copper, and some copper conductors by aluminum, and you will reduce the total copper per kw and even remove silver dependency entirely.

Of course, it's expected that this technology can be a little worse than the same with better elements if the price is not relevant. But things change when it's become relevant.
Besides it's a same technology evolution comparison. A 2030 lower quality lower material PV vs 2030 premium better materials PV.
If you compare technologies of different generations, things could be different. In any case, it will be the most cost-effective and that's the most important factor to massive adoption.

You are assuming that PV is not the right technology because your material projections said that PV uses too many materials, but the thing is we use that, because it's the most effective TODAY.

You can't still compare low-material PV against other sources of energy because this kind of PV is not available as a mass production unit, but you are already assuming that PV will fail, while I expected that it still be the cheapest more available source of energy on Earth and the cost curve will continue to reduce or worst case maintain a average flat which current cost projected into the future.

As I said, I don't expected a ~30% growth up to the saturation point. In fact, this kind of deployments usually went through an S-curve. Besides, it's not an unique deployment but a lot at the same time, each one with a different S-curve, which makes the total curve a little more complex than expected.

Still... I don't expect any hard stopper to renewables. More from the demand side than the production side. There is no point in produce more and more solar if the demand can't use that energy in a profitable manner. So that depends in a lot of other sides advancements, like storage, better demand adaptation, better electric networks and change industry process from thermal to electricity.

You are just mixing variables to make it apparently difficult, but that all energy has already being accounted in calculations. Or did you expect that current mining is not paid in actual PV?

So the only possible argument is that the mining model uses more energy using electricity instead of fossil fuels. But I don't see any reasonable reason to think that.

In fact, I'm not even sure if they will be more mining if we replace fossil fuels for renewables. Yes, it will be (a lot) more mining of CERTAIN materials, but current coal also require a lot of mining for example. It will change from one elements to others.

But even if the total numbers where greater, if the problem is not exhaustion (that the argument it's the previous one), that mining is already accounted in the current production, so... what's the problem of scale the model?

If we need more materials, we open more mines. And yes... that mines could work on renewables... with extra technologies, of course (batteries, other energy vectors, in situ infrastructure adapted to use electricity, etc.). But it can be used.

I insist, your view on the problem is wrong. Market is not driven by the "less resource" concept but the most "cost effective", and you are judging against PV because under current cost-effective choice of materials it uses more than the others. You are assuming that PV can't work with less materials or than under that circumstances won't be competitive against that options of yours, and that's a wrong assumption.

Upset no. Disappointed maybe.

That's pretty much a declaration that you won't accept any proof besides the transition would completed , which it will occur far beyond the existence of this forum.

Because even reach the peak won't be enough to you to admit that renewables are replacing fossil fuels, because that moment could occur in the next decade timeframe, as I published before. But even then, you are pretty much admitting that you will maintain your position.

Nobody is arguing that the total energy migration could be completed in 20 years. 25 years is 2050, and even in the net zero projections instead of removing all fossil fuels, they expect to combine some fossil fuels with some negative emissions to achieve that.
And that scenario is considered that require a big political push that actually don't exists.

Still, the projection is about shifting from fossil fuels to renewable as the main energy source.

And again, using global data with a lot of years where renewables pretty much didn't exists, you hide the current phenomena.

You need to look the data more closely and in the countries were renewables has being adopted sooner to have a window to future events and possible projections. If you hide the data diluting in global data, when you will see the renewable crushing fossil fuels, that won't be a future trend but a confirmed past.

That was the COVID. This kind of anomalies occurs from time to time. Real data is not a perfect curve.

Man... To my already busy schedule now even more workload has been added to my work tasks queue.

Very fast answer

We clearly show two different things. I didn't omit in my original comment the shift from coal to gas. But I show you now how coal+gas pretty much peaked while renewables is filling the gap of growing demand, and increasing the speed.

If you continue the trend you can show how not only coal will almost disappear but also gas will start to decrease and sooner you can expect.

That's said, after some NG/renewable ratio is reached, to add more renewables, storage will be needed, so once reached that point I expect to grow both again, until storage+renewables would be competitive with gas.

And that depends in new advancements, still in the future.

About the Jevon's paradox, I read most than enough in my former peakoiler times.

It's not written in stone. You must understand the internal dynamic to understand when we can expect to work and when will not.

It's an mixed technological/economic phenomena.

A quick summary.

Efficiency and other improvements reduce the cost.
People could buy more for the same money. So they can choose. Save/redirect money to another purpose or increasing consumption.
When there is an important gain in increasing consumption, this phenomena is the most probable.

That's pretty much the inner workings of Jevon's paradox although peakoilers doesn't explain like that and prefer to said it's like a expected(without really explain) process where efficiency just increase consumption. It's not so direct and that's not an explanation, besides they usually expose like that.

But here is the thing. There are circumstances/limits that make Jevon's paradox don't work.

First. Efficiency is linked to energy. Price is linked to a bunch of things. Energy is just a variable. For example, land has a price, but it has no monetary cost besides the cost we could generate over complicating things(ex. bureaucracy). They are cost not linked to energy but supply/demand.
So, a better efficiency not always turn into a better price or have a minor impact. If the price is similar before the efficiency increasing, Jevon's paradox won't work.

Second. Demand has sometimes limits. Think on food for example. No matter how cheap food can become, you aren't gonna eat more than a certain quantity. Yes, you can increase the quality of food, but there is a natural limit to that.

You have mentioned illumination. I'm pretty sure that depends when and where are you accounting, the energy spent on that has decrease significantly. In western homes has pretty much occurred. The reason of that is that we already have more than enough light for most usages, so no matter how efficient could become, how low the cost could become, there is no need to increase the quantity of light there.
Of course culture also have effects in that limits. Europeans for example are a lot more prone to limit light contamination (environmental issue). In the streets, if you ignore this kind of waste, there is margin to increase far beyond current levels.

You shouldn't mix different markets that are driven by different variables or you will point to a wrong conclusion.
In the past, and in poor countries, there is a significant lack of light, so there is margin for a huge increase on consumption there. In other cultures, there isn't more push than population growing.

Third. Any number multiplied by zero is zero. If we reach zero emissions per energy unit, there has no sense to claim Jevon's to ensure than the emissions will never go down.

In fact, this argument is almost the same than the first. Zero emissions will never mean zero cost, so it's not possible a very high demand (towards infinity) consumption that it's the only factor that can compensate very close to zero emissions. As costs become more and more related to different factors than emissions, you can expect that phenomena to disappear.

That's the reasons because Jevon's paradox are not written on stone, and other things can change the result, including culture changes to push for reduction in consumption specially if it reduce your quality of life (even if you don't know).
In the end, it's understand that increasing efficiency is not the problem, but that nothing can avoid problems if you don't limit your consumption. Unlimited consumption is impossible to provide.
That's said, our consumption per capita at least from the energy aspect has stabilized in the western countries years ago. This doesn't seem like a severe problem compared with other related to the transition.

Different energy roundtrips. The difference between you put on charge and you get on discharge.

Batteries has the highest energy return. The most efficient, so if the cost is low enough, I expect to be the most preferred form of storage, until their scale problems arise.
The big problem of batteries is that because it has a energy/power fixed ratio, if you have too many batteries, you can't do a cycle per day, which means that they get lower cycles per year.
No matters which price you obtain per cycle, you want to amortize that battery in a reasonable time. If that time are 10 years, that's 3650 cycles which are more or less on similar values to the lifespan of the battery. But if that value drops, you will need a greater number of cycles to amortize OR a lower prices to make a sooner amortization.

That doesn't happen with other forms of storage where energy and power are decoupled, like liquid-air.
Liquid-air has lower round-trip than batteries but still better than hydrogen (at least under current values). But that efficiency is tricky as it depends of the cold and heat recovery storage, which has a discharge ratio that depends on the scale of the installation.

Instead, I don't think that the right values for batteries are cover the whole day storage, because that would reduce the hours usage per installation in liquid-air too much.

Still, if the total energy stored grow too much, a cost that raises is the storage itself. In this case, fuel storage has the lower storage cost, while it's the most inefficient in terms of roundtrip of all solutions.

I don't say that EVERY storage method needs to cover ALL the energy needs.

I expect the emergency power to use some tricks to reduce the infrastructure power costs.
For example, generation will probably running most of the time only in one way mode (electricity to fuel) to send the generated fuel to other industries, not the electricity network. That raises the hours of operation regardless the low need as emergency generation.

That's the reasoning behind of that. Depends on the time of operation, cost of storage, cost of generation, cost of production or efficiency gains weight in one way or another.

It also depends on the energy, cost and scale. If we can produce a lot of energy very cheap, roundtrip efficiency are not so important.
The difference should pay the extra cost of extra generation power. The cheaper is the energy compare with the storage cost, the less important is the roundtrip efficiency.

So there is a lot of "ifs" in this calculation.

You are blinding yourself showing so much data.
How do you expect to see the effect clearly in a phenomenon that happens pretty much the last years in a image that have data from 1750?

Let's me show you WITH THE SAME SOURCE AND THE SAME TOOL, two different images.

Window with the data from 1960-1980

Window with the data from 2002-2022 (2022 is the last year the web have data)

I don't know you, but I see there the growth of the emissions are slowing.

And if you go through deep in the data, the emissions in the firsts years of 200x the data are mainly drive by shift from coal to gas. The renewable were too small there to make any impact that days.

But because the renewables are growing exponentially, if you project the data to the future, you will see that emissions will peak soon.

Of course depends on more variables. The global growth is an important one. If suddenly the world started to grow very quickly, renewables would need more time to reach a point where they add more than the growing needs of energy, so emissions would continue to grow until reach that point.

It's so important that if economy regresses, it also drops emissions like it happened with the COVID, where a anomaly bump in the data happened. Not that I want that, of course.

Man. Reread the own text you have quoted

"continuing a 10-year plateau"

Why do you thing the emissions will plateau (and that's a conservative projection), instead of increase, if we continue to increase the global economy?

Because two things. One... we will go, step by step, from thermal to electricity, and some things are just done with less energy than before.
Two. More and more electricity will come to renewables.
Even that text accepts that we will add energy without growing emissions (per year).

And as I said before... that's depends on the global growth. And of course, the speed of renewable deployment. But there is no reason to be pessimistic in this last one condition at least in short term, if no serious economic war USA+Europe vs China arises.

It's also curious you don't show the images your own post

I see a clear down trend on coal usage and emissions.
Yep. USA, not worldwide, as not every country invest the same in renewables. Richer countries with more developed electricity networks have less problems integrating a certain percentage of renewables without further upgradings in network or storage.
Partially also because coal to gas transition. That's also true. A mix of variables.

But if the prices in renewable and upcoming storage continues going down as expected, we will see even easier integration in the future, making a lot easier to spread to other places.

Please, check again the previous images.

While it's still a minor part, I think USA is not bad a bad reference in adopting EV and very recently renewables, even if they are behind Europe.
And as you can check in the data, the emissions already peaked.

We haven't speaking about storage yet. But a full deployment of a 100% renewable network it will use a mix of strategies that reduces the cost a lot.
Intelligent demand (can go down and go up depending on the cost), continental integration, overproduction (cheap renewables allows certain levels of curtailment by less price that insist in enormous storage), mix of storage oriented to efficiency (like batteries, but with a fixed power/energy ration with less efficient more cheaper storage cost like power to fuel solutions, including hydrogen, oriented to create reserves for worst case scenarios), etc.

The integration of all this things at the same time (and some others), allows to develop a model with a reasonable cost.

If you multiply the energy needed under a fixed place just by some storage technology alone you will reach unreasonable values.

Until it doesn't.

You are asking a baby to do the work of an adult. We are living in a world were most of the energy come from fossil fuels, so of course, the energy used to build the renewables comes mostly from fossil fuel.

If the machines used to install the renewables uses gasoil, the transport energy will come from fossil fuels. If it were use batteries (or green hydrogen as you like it more), then it will come from electricity, which it will be a mix.
If the electricity is run mainly on coal and or gas, they it will still come from fossil fuels (although not oil, which could be important for accessibility), but if it comes from renewables, then it doesn't.

It's a chicken-egg problem, that it's solved with a progressive shift towards renewable energy. The more renewable percentage we have, more false is the argument.

I'm not. But Elon Musk is.

And?

Of course a CEO is just the voice of his business.
Tell me where a business put their money and I will say you what we will hear from its CEO.

Well... You post a link with the previous image from USA with emissions going down before, so...

My definition of "working" is, "I can buy it and the price is good for me". The projections I do myself, it's already posted. I don't think the materials used are a fixed thing neither the reserves are also something so fixed, so my position is that the projections you do are wrong.

We clearly are seeing different things, because I see a slow down in emissions, and besides that the impact of renewables are in the projected future, not now. Not when renewable only accounts for a minor percentage.

But you can see all kind of projections, and the conclusion is always the same. More renewables, less emissions.

https://totalenergies.com/sites/g/files … 023_EN.pdf

Note that in this report, coal peak before 2030 in every scenario (like I said), while total emissions depends a lot in each scenario.

While the first, with more emissions is projected as "Current Course and Speed", my opinion is that we are gonna accelerate, and the real scenario will more more similar to something between "Momentum" and "Rupture" scenarios, based on price still going down for renewable and EVs.

The recycling argument is not used against the need per unit, but against the "we are wasting our reserves" and, also push the argument "we need a fixed amount to do the transition".

Still, it has a significant impact in consumption with mixed with the other argument.

Under price pressure, technology and market will push for substitution. Notice that raising price (long term) require bad projections in the extraction market. But let's assume is the case.
So the price rise, and over a pain threshold, manufactures quickly push for changes. (It can come before, but in worse case scenario they will react later).
For example, replace copper wiring with aluminum wiring and solve and mitigate the problems that came with the change.

Let's say that this allow the EV to use half of the amount.

Well... When you scrap the old cars, you can build almost two cars for each old car scraped.

That's depend on the power per resource ratio which you believed constant and I don't.

A mix of both, I guess. Pretty sure we are already in the way, because like I said before, as the resources are valuable, that's a clear business.

The cars takes time to be retired, so while they are more than 2 millions EVs in USA but deployed on a exponential curve, as most are recent, so I guess current number of batteries retired still remains around a hundred thousand at most, although growing quickly.

You are insisting in that argument where we clearly disagree.

CO2 emissions are growing because the world still grows (using still fossil fuels), and renewables are still too small. But because they grow faster than the world growth, the distance is narrowing.

Again "consuming". But no.

If energy density where the most critical factor in every scenario, we would use nuclear cars, not ICE or electric cars.

They reason why use batteries on cars is a good idea, it's because it's very efficient from source to the actual movement. Current hydrogen model has a lot more loses, and e-fuels even greater.
That's the reason because refueling a ICE car is a lot more expensive that recharge a electric car in a garage.

And that's the reason because hydrogen is SO expensive. If you don't change that, then they will never be competitive in this sector.

Oh! The "cannibalization" argument!
Here it is! So soon! X-D

Emissions goes up     -> renewables don't work!
Emissions goes down -> renewables eat our fossil fuels!

Whatever it happens, you will criticize renewables.
But the thing is that fossil fuel will peak still having reserves at prices we could pay. Just... higher than the alternative.

Historical data is based in high growth and slow efficiency gains.

I'm talking about going from thermal to electricity in a possible slow growth scenario. It's not ensured but it's possible.
Although the graphs will depend a lot if they adjust the data to account the difference between both sources or not. With the right weight the reduction won't be shown.
But if you account twh of the thermal energy of the burning fuel vs twh electricity produced by renewable, it can host a significant reduction. After all, you need 2 to 3 thermal units of coal to generate 1 twh electricity that accounts as that in the renewable side (if you account it as that).

Of course that affects on sectors where fossil fuels are used to generate electricity or transportation where EVs has a higher efficiency chain, or when it's low heat, where heat pumps are used. That's where we will start the electrification because it's easier and more efficient. High temperature is just 1:1, so there I don't expect big gains. The only gains could come from side changes (some materials instead another), so when we reach that stage, I don't expect reduce energy, but I expect transition (electricity instead of fuel) because by then, renewable electricity could be cheaper than fossil fuels used as a thermal source. We need lower prices of renewable for that, of course.

I don't know if I could remember a appointment for so long X-D, but... Sure!

My bet is... If the growth is slow (5% or less) and there is no big disruption of renewable installation (USA+Europa vs China) coal will peak. Oil probably too. Gas it will depend of the storage evolution. Probably we will need more time to start a significant deployment of cheap storage. Next years I expect evolution in pilot plant and some installations heavy subsidized in experimental phase. The reduction cost will push the next decade exponential growth into significant reductions of natural gas.

Total emissions will probably peak some years after the coal & oil peak (3-5 years). That's when natural gas growth won't be enough to emit more than coal and oil reductions.

I disagree about being "empirically true". But also depends on the scenario or accounting method, so it's easy to claim victory. I though the worries were about emissions, not about the total energy.
I can bet for emissions. I won't do for total energy.

Pretty negative, but also a tricky bet, as you can blame renewables for a thing that could came from fossil fuels.
Still... I think negative scenarios could came more easily from geopolitical conflicts than lack of resources.

Of course, if a nuclear war arises, all our projections are trash.
But even just economic cold wars can create a huge disruption in the positive projections. Unavoidable, but unpredictable.

I expected different prices that it will push more people to change their habits. I think in USA there is plenty of people with the possibility to adopt home charging or in community garages.
I accept that the other model cost more. I never say anything against that. But because that kind of adoption, in case of happening, it will be later in time, we will have more possibilities.
The "extra" dispatchable battery is pretty much a second battery of almost the same size, when there is no free charge. I expect the network to have more storage than that because the high volumes of renewable energy generation.

I'm thinking in some days of energy storage. Not that you need that from start, when you still have a mix of technologies. With just a few hours of storage the reduction of natural gas consumption will be large. For remove natural gas completely, we will need forms of storage that decouples power and energy (batteries only have a good amortization under the profile of hours of storage).

Others like air to liquid or similar are fine for multiple days, while power to gas including hydrogen to generate a reserve for emergencies.

Ok. I already post my bet.
Cheap batteries for some hours. 30$/Mwh per cycle (not current cost, but future costs over cheap batteries like sodium-ion)
Air-liquid and similar for some days. 50-70$ mwh per cycle
Synthetic fuel/hydrogen. 120$/Mwh (include energy)

Take something like you store cheap energy (future costs, slightly cheaper than today) 20$/Mwh

So direct consumption is 25-40$ depending on solar & wind mix (includes minor curtailment)
Stored energy: Batteries+energy 30+35 -> 60 Mwh
Stored energy: Air+energy 50-70+35 -> 85-105 Mwh
Fuel reserves: 120 Mwh (no need to add)

I expect something like that. Of course, inflation adjusted.

The needs doesn't go further because I consider that intelligent demand also exists, so not all is provided by the supply side. Also integrated storage in the demand. For example, a industry that have their own heat storage to demand some energy when it's more cheap (that it's when the supply is direct).

40% of the time direct consumption+ 30% battery (daily balance) + 25% secondary storage (weather balance) + 5% reserves (peaks demand - little production for too long . Out of average)

Too precise, so I expect a significant margin of error, but that's how I imagined.

If you ask me explain this data, I don't think this is the best thread for that, but I can do it (it's not so long)

--- IT SEEMS THE SITE DOESN'T ALLOW BIGGER POSTS ---

Edit: It seems it's not that. For some reason I get Internal error with that part. I swear there is no offensive words or something like that. I don't know what's the problem, but I get a "Internal error" posting the second part.

Hi!

I have an RSS "Livemarks" add-on for firefox (to replace the old scrapped functionality), to see the last forum posts titles in my browser. But it's just a few one. Like fifteen, and I checked it from time to time, so it's easy I miss interesting posts.

In any case, as you will see, I was in "sleep mode" (mostly only read from time to time) for a long time, with very few posts here and there.

The only reason of my recent high activity is because the thread about energy. I hope it isn't going too far.

It's just... it's a matter where I have debated for years, and because it has so important implications, I think it's very important to say it multiple times for people to get some ideas and spread them.

In fact, if you read my old posts, you will find the ideas about massive IRSU. The idea of the need of more and more resources, or fuel, as the colony is farther from Earth, or more physical things like the rocket equation, its very close to the idea than a energy source that feeds from itself uses more and more energy. The concept of EROEI becoming close to 1.
That's the reason I saw IRSU will be a must to make it a viable and massive space program. Similar reasoning behind.

Speaking about that, we should check soon about the idea of a mainly robotic-only colony on the Moon, if the recent advancements on AI make it cheaper.

Anyway. Thanks for the greeting, although I guess I will return to my "sleep mode" soon.

Now we are moving the argument.
The problem is the tax incentives.

Tax incentives has a limited effect, and more or less all industries had a lot of help. Most of the current income blamed onto renewables is not because tax incentives but the model about pay for CO2 emissions.

You can claim as much as you like that renewables don't reduce CO2 emissions. They do. Everyone inside the industry that does the calculations know that, although of course non-official fossil fuel industry said a different thing. It's called propaganda.

Of course hydrogen economy has EVEN MORE incentives (in relative terms for the production) by the same reasons. The less developed is an alternative, the more incentives they have. It's a starting boost impulse, and it's a good idea to break the chicken-egg problem.

Still, you can find a lot of debate and number wars about who received more incentives and "shadow money", like the huge expend in geopolitical wars to ensure the oil market is not disrupted by local conflicts for example. Wars are not exactly cheap.

I said before and I will repeat now. The reason because CO2 emissions has being growing is because we have too little renewables. Expand the infrastructure to build renewables takes time, you know. And when the renewables added are less than the total growth of energy worldwide.

But renewable have the fastest growth (in percentage) of all energy sources, so it's matter of time that the growth of renewables will be faster than the growth of total energy, so in the end it will make fossil fuels peak.

I said before and you can find plenty of links, that there is a lot of predictions of very soon coal peak worldwide. And that's not because coal has a problem with reserves. It's the opposite. Coal is the fossil fuel with greatest known reserves of all fossil fuels.

So... you propose the government don't intervene the market at all.

Will you say the same for hydrogen and nuclear?

Because nuclear is nothing without government support.

Or even oil without armies behind to ensure most important export countries.

I see here a lot of bias of one kind of solution against another.

Tax incentives are limited in the market effect. If the difference between both models were huge, like in the case of hydrogen, it won't work.
Of course, you could subside ALL hydrogen and make it work... until you run out of money. Not the case with renewables and EVs because THEY ARE WORKING, you liked or not.

All your argument around "renewable not working" is about lacking of materials.
Man... Study about copper recycling. You clearly are insisting in false arguments.

https://copperalliance.org/resource/copper-recycling/

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c08227

I know... Do you?

Because you said things like...

News for you.

We mining our landfills when it's profitable.

Try to search copper wiring of old cars in a landfill. Good luck if you find something.

Copper wiring is one of the things more easy to scrap. So easy that there are cases of cooper wiring theft in non permanent residences breaking walls if it's necessary.
No... for real. Check the news (I can assure you it's a real problem).

Batteries are a little more complex, because they need careful management. Some chemical formulas can burn if bad managed, so regular scrapping is out of consideration.
I have no precise data about how regular landfills treat batteries now when they receive them. I guess in some places they are only storage them until special facilities are build. In others, I guess they are burn, because that way they have a controlled fire instead of left allow and accumulate then with the risk of future greater fires if one start there.

But again... news for you. Facilities are starting to be built now.

https://theicct.org/us-ev-battery-recyc … es-sept23/

An example.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release … 86245.html

I admitted your landfill argument, because now it most the thing that happens. Why?

Because we lacked economy of scale. These facilities are able to process a lot of batteries per day. You don't want to build a facility like that and receive just dozens.
It's what it happens when you start. But the concept of circular economy is turning into reality very soon. We are on it just now.
In my country has started to operate a facility of this kind. The number of batteries was low, but growing fast, so now it has sense.
In other parts of Europe that are ahead of us they already had some facilities running for some years.

When I replied your "opportunity cost" argument, it's precisely because of this.
To mine minerals you have to move a lot of mass. Do you really thing that extract the minerals from a final product, were all is well packed, it takes more energy?
Seriously?

Of course there are some exceptions and that's the reason because the levels are not 99'99% but more like 90-98%. The dopping materials are spread on alloys or something like that, where extraction is complex. But, lithium and copper?
Easy peasy!

Over 95% recycling if they are sent to the right facilities.
The other 5% is not lost, but generally in a downgraded form that it's works worse than current reserves. How knows in the future, but for now it can be disposed.

In the end, I though we will ended like this.

With fixed positions assuming a different reality. I don't expect someone with a bias to change their position, but at least I can ask non-bias readers to check the different positions between me and you.

For example, check if it's real that renewables save energy. We will see soon, when coal will peak. A new argument will be created to dismiss that, of course, although it will be more difficult to believe.

One I expect in the future is "primary energy is shrinking because renewable is cannibalizating our energy mix".
It's the expected evolution from "the renewables doesn't remove fossil fuel consumption". When it will do, it will turn bad for them.

In fact, it will be the opposite. As more and more electricity take place of old fossil fuel, because electricity model is more efficient, of course we will require less to do the same, at least in the easier markets we replace (that it's logically the most profitable and where we are working first), like road transportation, house heating, or just electricity generation.

I was in this debate enough long to even predict their future arguments.

The other critical argument is about the recycling infrastructure. I think it's most to be expected to be big enough to recycle most of our consumption. The reason is simple. It's profitable because it takes less energy to recycle than dump the old product.
At least for metals.

At the end of 199x.

It doesn't matter. I read this kind of debate for a long time (more about oil, but very alike), and I can say almost never anyone change from their position no matter how absurd could be (not the case, but I hear things so absurd like the oil wells always refill and it is all a conspiracy and things like that).

Still, I think it has value as other people hear the different opinions, and sometimes, people reflect over their position even if they don't admit it or needs time to do it.

It takes me a lot of effort to write here so I guess I will "leave" (turn into a simple reader) sooner than later, as you can see, my English level is bad (and I guess it will ever be), and It takes me effort and time to do simple responses.

Anyway, I wanted to just leave some ideas that are less sound in Internet than in formal circles, like circular economy.

I'm completely sure you have know about it, but if you don't think carefully about the concept, you will soon conclude that our civilization is doomed because no matter you do, it will all end as soon as you exhaust the resources. And finite resources can't long with a fixed demand over an "infinite" time period.

But after observe the nature, you will soon see that the concept is flawed. Life has done fine over billions of years without exhaust anything.

So I insist. We need to change the concept of exhaustion for "resource accessibility". And old material is as valid source as the new mine.
When you understand that, a lot more about the renewable and current model has a lot more sense than with the kind of view of other people here.

I think it's the most important piece here. Even if I were in the wrong about the renewables will reduce their usage in raw materials and the model reach a point were material costs raise the price of renewable stopping that path of development, then we can just extract the resources from the renewables and try another idea later.

The second more important error is just dismiss the money numbers. Every cost, it's translated to the price. Subsides are generally just "we extract less money from here than from there" and subsides about renewables and EV are being reduced and removed over time, as it was always considered just a stating boost help, not a way to make it long term viable.

So, if renewable energy are competitive in money and EV are also competitive, it's because they work. And if hydrogen is too expensive, it's that the model is still lacking.
That didn't say anything about the future, of course. Raw materials could raise the prices by a lot and turn them uncompetitive again. Still, it's not the trend we show in the market.

So, instead of losing time searching for arguments against renewable, just spend effort to make it profitable whatever you think it can work. And if you thing NOTHING can work, I suggest you search an alternative way of life or just enjoy the life if you think that problems will come after you died. Otherwise you are just "a pain in the ass", instead of helping or offering alternatives just loosing your time explaining why the things won't work (while later it works).

It's not that it's not useful to find possible problems and bottlenecks to scale model. Of course it does. And that's a known problem for everyone it works inside. And that's the reason people is searching for solutions.
It's just there is no hard reason to think it's a unsolvable problem, as similar things has occurred in the past and the problem was solved or mitigated.