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cyberentomology t1_jb9s3fm wrote

Reply to comment by Oerthling in New data shows 1 in 7 cars sold globally is an EV, and combustion engine car sales have decreased by 25% since 2017 by FarmhouseFan

>solar panels steal sunshine

I mean, technically, yeah they do. That’s kind of the entire point, innit? Law of energy conservation and all that. Surface temperatures under a solar farm are significantly cooler (as one would expect, because, you know, shade and the whole turning solar energy into electrical energy thing.

And until we start launching our trash into the sun, solar isn’t actually renewable… there’s just more of it than we will ever use. And at the end of the day, all energy used on planet earth is just solar energy that has been stored somehow, at some point along the way.

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Oerthling t1_jb9tl1y wrote

Ok. Sure. But is there a point to what you said?

We agree on the physics, which of course change nothing with regard to "solar panels steal sunshine" would be stupid propaganda by the fossil fuel industry.

Also, again, technically correct that the solar fusion by the sun is not renewable on cosmic multi-billion to trillion year time scales, but that has NOTHING to do with the definition of renewable within human discussion time scales.

Oil is going to run out in decades or a century or whatever, if we kept using it like the recent past it's gone in n generations and n is likely a single digit.

Solar OTOH is not going to run out before we

A) go extinct anyway

B) figured out practical fusion

C) spread out over half the galaxy.

It's renewable within any relevant time scales.

More than we'll ever use is what renewable means.

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cyberentomology t1_jb9xpx4 wrote

We also thought that about oil at one point, woefully underestimating the human appetite for cheap energy, for which we’re just now paying the price.

Burning them is a monumental waste of perfectly good and useful organic compounds.

Juggling the changing demand for gasoline over the next decade or more is going to be an interesting challenge, because when you refine crude oil, you’re separating it out into several different fuel and feedstock compounds, and the amount of crude you need to refine depends on the demand for that particular fraction. So if you reduce gasoline output, you’re also reducing output of things like diesel, propane, kerosene, fuel oil, asphalt, etc. if the demand for any of those doesn’t drop along with that of gasoline (or demand for gasoline stays steady while it drops for other fractions), you end up with oversupply or undersupply (which is a major component of why diesel costs have soared relative to gasoline). If demand for diesel, jet fuel, and ship fuel oil stays steady while gasoline drops, the cost of gasoline is going to crater, changing the economics of BEVs. Now add in biofuels, which change the demand for petroleum fractions, and it’s gonna be a wild ride for a few decades.

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Oerthling t1_jba4mz9 wrote

It's going to be a wild ride for sure. But outside of planes I don't think that fossil fuels in general have much future.

Ships can be moved by some combination of wind power (turbines, not sails for large container ships), batteries or "green" hydrogen (which makes such hydrogen effectively a kind of fluid battery).

Large, long range planes are the one exception where a solution isn't available or easily foreseeable for the near (decade or 2) future, because of particular volume and weight restrictions.

The price of gasoline won't matter much when gas stations close. And gas stations will close when a sizable percentage of the customer base switched to BEVs.

Also, depending on regional market a more or less relevant percentage of the gas price is not just the cost of gas production and distribution but also taxes. And those taxes can easily get raised further to discourage gasoline. Which is likely to happen.

Diesel will quickly die alongside gasoline, except for a niche of construction vehicles, etc..

Diesel/gas won't make a difference when it comes to getting replaced by BEVs for regular cars. In a decade it might well be easier to find a charger than a gas station.

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cyberentomology t1_jba57v7 wrote

Absolutely, but the change in demand for the various fuels and fractions is not going to be simultaneous or linear, which is going to lead to some pretty wild fluctuations in supply (and consequently, prices). It will eventually find the right equilibrium, but that’s gonna take a while.

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