Posted on 07/25/2015 8:42:31 AM PDT by ckilmer
On the surface, energy seems like a pretty stagnant industry these days. Oil has dominated transportation for most of the last century while natural gas and coal provide a vast majority of the electricity we consume. That's not all that different than the way things were at the turn of the 20th century.
But if you look at the overall energy mix over more than two centuries there's a lot more change in energy than you might expect. The question is: Could another shift be afoot within just the next generation or two?
The energy evolution timescale
You can see in the chart below that the U.S. was once a country that got nearly all of its energy from wood. The energy source was plentiful and cheap as far as fuels went at the time. But since 1850 wood has almost entirely been replaced by coal, petroleum, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric energy.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
What's surprising about this chart is how quickly energy sources can be replaced. Over the course of 50 years wood went from a main source of energy to a has-been compared to coal. In turn, coal's domination of the market has fallen from nearly 80% in 1900 to below 20% today, driven by the rise of petroleum and natural gas.
But keep in mind that market share and unit consumption aren't the same thing. Coal's market share has dropped since 1900 but we're using so much more energy today that its consumption on an annual basis is still up over that time.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
This began the question: What's next for the energy industry? We know that energy sources don't stay dominant forever and disruption can happen relatively quickly. But is that disruption already here?
I'll point you to the first chart and the green sliver showing up at the top right corner and then the second chart and the green line that doesn't even show up until about the year 2000. Doesn't renewable energy's trajectory look a lot like coal in 1850 or petroleum in 1900? Maybe it's time to consider renewable energy's disruptive potential rather than dismiss it as its market share grows.
Renewable
Carbon Neutral
Whale Oil
Replacing fossil fuels with what??? I am going to power my Mack truck with solar...or maybe a little diesel hybrid electric?? Yeah, that sounds like good food for the zero-information liberals to push.
If we can just perfect the flux capacitor, then we will have fusion power a la Mr. Fusion.
Oil is not a fossil fuel. Hydrogen and Carbon trapped under the earth’s crust are squeezed together to form hydrocarbons. By one estimate, we have already burned more oil that could possibly be accounted for by all the biomass ever produced by all living things ever. Further, the Russians have successfully drilled on the basis of the hydrocarbon (non-fossil-fuel) theory for decades. Finally, “Peak Oil” was in part predicated on the idea of fossils, and we know how that turned out. “Fossil Fuel” is a red herring.
The one relevant fact this guy ignores is that every time one source of energy was abandoned, it was replaced by an energy source that provided more energy at less cost.
Renewables or “green” energy does not do that.
Exactly
They forgot whale oil.
Whales were very nearly extinct when oil was discovered ... or I should say when oil became commercially viable as a fuel source and kerosene replaced whale oil for lighting
Except that it is politically incorrect, nuclear is the best alternative to coal and even natural gas which can be diverted to transportation. Eventually it will be necessary. Research into clean coal should continue. There are a lot of people to be provided transportation and electricity.
Without reliable cheap electricity, there is miserable poverty. Green energy sources can never power a modern industrial grid. Given the laws of physics, solar and wind will remain niche providers at best. You can make the capital investment to build nuclear plants but in the absence of experienced trained personnel to operate them, they can’t come on line. The lack of trained personnel is especially acute in the third world where energy is badly needed.Given the choice of unreliable scarce electricity and the political instability and poverty that comes with it or the burning of fossil fuels, despite the propaganda, China and India will burn all the fossil fuel necessary to provide reliable cheap electricity.
One major difference. When coal and then oil ascended they did so because they were a cheaper better source. Alternatives are doing so more for political motives than economics.
Oil is renewable. When you need more, you drill and pump.
What is likely next is new technology for finding and extracting oil and gas.
There is more than enough oil and gas to last well into the time when we become “The Jetsons”.
Renewables is a BS PC term for anything that requires government intervention, mandates and subsidies.
You can’t introduce facts such as you mention, into a discussion about energy with the liberals.
I had a discussion with someone about electric cars recently.
I told him that it’s not all cut and dried that electric cars would cut back pollution and help global warming and all that.
I told him that if we suddenly had millions of electric cars on the road, that we would need to be generating huge additional amounts of electricity to recharge all those car batteries. And that in much of the country, electricity is generated in coal fired power plants.
Well, he got flummoxed about these points. He said that the car itself is pollution free, and that we need to develop new technology to generate electricity, increase battery life, yadda yadda yadda, so that this would no longer be a problem. And then he threw in how Exxon Mobil is the biggest company in the world and has interfered with research into alternative energy.........
To liberals, electricity is created "somewhere else" and delivered at little cost in unlimited quantities to their electric outlets.
You’re saying petroleum products do not derive from dead dino bones?
Thank you for your continued support of the environment and the planet.
If the liberals want a source of electric generation which is pollution free, they should really take another look at nuclear.
I've tried to tell people that percolating petro from deep under ground gets trapped in some formations, like salt domes and shale beds. That sedimentary formations get polluted with old compressed plant life. That oil, were it not dirtied up from these traps is greenish yellow, low sulfur, bunker grade crude. But they ain't having any.
If you had put me in charge of our nation’s energy 25 years ago:
Virtually all electric generation would be nuclear, and spent fuel would be reprocessed, not sitting in pools and caves.
Most building heating would be by natural gas.
Oil would be reserved for transportation, with coal hydrogenation supplementing natural oil production.
And we would be a happy place.
fool.com is appropriately named.
“Doesn’t renewable energy’s trajectory look a lot like coal in 1850 or petroleum in 1900? Maybe it’s time to consider renewable energy’s disruptive potential rather than dismiss it as its market share grows?”
Heavily subsidized renewable energy does not constitute a viable growing replacement for fossil fuel. The density isn’t there and what is more... batteries are not renewable energy... they don’t create energy, they store energy created somewhere else by something else. Yes, you can argue that oil and gas are merely storage media for sunlight...
What are these renewables? Wind, solar and biomass... none of which are capable of replacing hydrocarbons on any scale. None, even at saturation and 100% efficiency. If they were it would already be done.
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