[freebeard]

Did someone say technological process? Slashdot.org today.

news.slashdot.org/story/21/11/05/The US Has Big, New Plans To Pull CO2 Out of the Air (theverge.com)

No comments moderated above 2.

news.slashdot.org/story/21/11/05/Half World's Fossil Fuel Assets Could Become Worthless by 2036 in Net Zero Transition (theguardian.com)

Six comments moderated 3 or higher::

Re:Criminal Ignorance on a massive scale (Score:5, Interesting)
by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Friday November 05, 2021 @03:39PM (#61960919)
But when do you even reach "Net Zero", when all current predictions and plans are an utter fantasy compared to the reality of energy production [twitter.com] today.

It's a good graph to look at, but you have to stare quite carefully. What you can see is that the red - renewable curve, is on an exponential growth. Like when the virus has infected 0.5% of the population next week it will be 1% and the week after it will be 2% and then. We're talking about doubling every couple of years, not weeks, but the effect in the end is the same. The switch over has begun and it will only gain pace. Last I heard there was 85% year on year growth.

Just five years ago, fossil fuel made electricity was cheaper than renewable. Now both solar and onshore wind are cheaper than coal, the cheapest fossil fuel. Within the decade, both offshore wind and concentrated solar are going to be cheaper sources of energy than fossil fuels. Remember that the marginal costs of renewable are trivial - almost all of the cost is in capital investment. Once you've built it you might as well run it. That means that in most energy applications renewable produced electricity is going to wipe out all other forms of energy production completely. At that point, all fossil fuel reserves become distressed assets. Although there will still be some need, you are in a buyer's market and getting any decent price for them will be impossible.

Hydrocarbons are really good for aviation. I'm not going to make a prediction against that, however once the market for road-transport use of hydrocarbons collapses there will be a whole load of changes to the economics of the market. Does small scale extraction really make sense. It may actually become cheaper to synthesise the hydrocarbons than to find, extract and ship them. If this did happen, then none of the current hydrocarbon assets will ever find any value.