Love his attitude - yes we are smart enough to fix this, we are survivors - we just have to make enough people aware of the issues. The authoritarianism of the ESG movement will implode, in the end the western attitude will just not put up with it once people waken up. (I'm banking on people not being too lazy, but hit them in the wallet and they will respond!) We can have cleaner oil and gas, even develop better solar in the right places, just not yet on that subject! Thank you for all your efforts Irina on getting the word out and giving us a great resource to inform others
Excellent video. Interesting he correctly states that 90.4% of our primary energy supply is combustion fuels, that's IEA data. And it has remained at that level ever since the big push for wind & solar began. So over $4 trillion spent on wind & solar has not changed the % of combustion fuels. This in spite of the improved efficiency of transportation, more efficient power generation i.e. CCGT and supercritical coal. So wind & solar have already proven to be a total loser and what do our world leaders in virtually every country on Earth do? They double down and demand we continue on the same failed path. And please do not use the "N" word. That is unwelcome.
A very interesting fact. British Petroleum runs a big energy information center. And for primary energy supply BP multiplies wind & solar by 2.5X their true value to make them look less bad. At the same time it divides nuclear by 1.2X to make it look less good. So in this fraudulent manner they get combustion fuels @ 84.2% of total World Primary energy for 2020. Curious how an oil & gas company has a desire to promote wind & solar while denigrating nuclear. This has been going on since the early 1970's, when Big Oil had a campaign called "Solar NOT Nuclear". Funny isn't it. They consider wind & solar not a threat but nuclear a serious threat.
So that is one thing Brendan Long got completely wrong. There is a viable replacement for combustion fuels. And that is nuclear energy. Just the energy content of the current World's stock of depleted uranium and spent nuclear fuel has a value of $2500 trillion @ an oil price of $100/bbl. Enough to supply total World energy for over 300yrs. If they removed all the roadblocks that were put in place to blockade nuclear power, we could have factories turning out high temperature, compact molten salt and liquid sodium reactors by the tens of thousands. Like these:
It is quite stunning to be reminded of the fact that despite the trillions poured into renewables we still overwhelmingly depend on oil, gas, and coal. Also sobering, I would have thought.
There is some logic to this. "And for primary energy supply BP multiplies wind & solar by 2.5X their true value to make them look less bad. At the same time it divides nuclear by 1.2X to make it look less good." Useful energy (kinetic energy, electric energy, etc) is more valuable than (primary) heat energy. Roughly, converting petroleum heat energy to useful energy has an efficiency of 1/2.5. Classic nuclear power plants make steam at lower temperatures than do coal plants so are not as efficient, hence the 1.2X factor. New, high temperature fission plants like ThorCon operate at high, 46% conversion efficiencies. See Chapter 1 of my course for details, https://electrifyingourworld.com/?page_id=2106
I'm well aware of everything you said but in the context of primary energy supply it makes no sense. And that's why the IEA does not pull those shenanigans. Primary energy supply has nothing to do with the value of energy. It is the primary energy that is utilized by society, even if some of it is wasted. If you want to place value on different types of energy than solar & wind would be divided by 6 because that is about their comparative value to traditional energy sources due to intermittency, seasonality etc.
Petroleum can be directly converted to heat with an efficiency of near 100% and replace solar electricity which might do the same job with much lower efficiency. And waste heat from thermal generation can and frequently does get used to supply district heating and hot water, greenhouse heating, desalination and other applications, approaching 90% efficiency. More than solar or wind. And nobody can claim that all fossil primary energy is used for power generation, it has many other applications.
If a country manages to replace 1 GWh of coal generation with 1 GWh of solar then that will already show fairly in a drop in their coal & fossil primary energy consumption of ~3 GWh of coal thermal energy. Very nice. Properly their utilized solar primary energy would increase by 1GWh. Instead they double count and pretend the solar primary energy has increased by 2.5 GWh on top of the drop in coal primary energy. That is fraudulent accounting.
So if a country like Norway decided to fully electrify its transportation sector with wind, solar & hydro. They would see a big drop in there fossil primary energy consumption. That would be accompanied by a much smaller increase in their electricity consumption, since EVs are much more efficient. So very nice you would see total primary energy supply to Norway decline, as expected. But BP would show no decline for electrification of transport because they would multiply the additional electric primary energy x2.5. That's bogus accounting.
And nuclear is straightforward. Just like any thermal power plants they have an efficiency or heat rate and the BP numbers should correctly convert Nuclear electricity to primary energy by the posted heat rate of the relevant NPPs. They don't, they divide that known data by 1.2. That's fraudulent.
Love his attitude - yes we are smart enough to fix this, we are survivors - we just have to make enough people aware of the issues. The authoritarianism of the ESG movement will implode, in the end the western attitude will just not put up with it once people waken up. (I'm banking on people not being too lazy, but hit them in the wallet and they will respond!) We can have cleaner oil and gas, even develop better solar in the right places, just not yet on that subject! Thank you for all your efforts Irina on getting the word out and giving us a great resource to inform others
Brendan is a bright light of optimism in the darkness, yes. Thanks, JF!
lol just reading the caption i thought the Brandon Long was like "The Fed Put" or something - going long oil on Brandon's (Biden's) incompetence lol
Excellent video. Interesting he correctly states that 90.4% of our primary energy supply is combustion fuels, that's IEA data. And it has remained at that level ever since the big push for wind & solar began. So over $4 trillion spent on wind & solar has not changed the % of combustion fuels. This in spite of the improved efficiency of transportation, more efficient power generation i.e. CCGT and supercritical coal. So wind & solar have already proven to be a total loser and what do our world leaders in virtually every country on Earth do? They double down and demand we continue on the same failed path. And please do not use the "N" word. That is unwelcome.
A very interesting fact. British Petroleum runs a big energy information center. And for primary energy supply BP multiplies wind & solar by 2.5X their true value to make them look less bad. At the same time it divides nuclear by 1.2X to make it look less good. So in this fraudulent manner they get combustion fuels @ 84.2% of total World Primary energy for 2020. Curious how an oil & gas company has a desire to promote wind & solar while denigrating nuclear. This has been going on since the early 1970's, when Big Oil had a campaign called "Solar NOT Nuclear". Funny isn't it. They consider wind & solar not a threat but nuclear a serious threat.
So that is one thing Brendan Long got completely wrong. There is a viable replacement for combustion fuels. And that is nuclear energy. Just the energy content of the current World's stock of depleted uranium and spent nuclear fuel has a value of $2500 trillion @ an oil price of $100/bbl. Enough to supply total World energy for over 300yrs. If they removed all the roadblocks that were put in place to blockade nuclear power, we could have factories turning out high temperature, compact molten salt and liquid sodium reactors by the tens of thousands. Like these:
https://www.elysiumindustries.com/
https://thorconpower.com/
https://www.moltexenergy.com/
https://www.terrapower.com/our-work/molten-chloride-fast-reactor-technology/
https://natriumpower.com/
https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/technology/advantage/
It is quite stunning to be reminded of the fact that despite the trillions poured into renewables we still overwhelmingly depend on oil, gas, and coal. Also sobering, I would have thought.
There is some logic to this. "And for primary energy supply BP multiplies wind & solar by 2.5X their true value to make them look less bad. At the same time it divides nuclear by 1.2X to make it look less good." Useful energy (kinetic energy, electric energy, etc) is more valuable than (primary) heat energy. Roughly, converting petroleum heat energy to useful energy has an efficiency of 1/2.5. Classic nuclear power plants make steam at lower temperatures than do coal plants so are not as efficient, hence the 1.2X factor. New, high temperature fission plants like ThorCon operate at high, 46% conversion efficiencies. See Chapter 1 of my course for details, https://electrifyingourworld.com/?page_id=2106
I'm well aware of everything you said but in the context of primary energy supply it makes no sense. And that's why the IEA does not pull those shenanigans. Primary energy supply has nothing to do with the value of energy. It is the primary energy that is utilized by society, even if some of it is wasted. If you want to place value on different types of energy than solar & wind would be divided by 6 because that is about their comparative value to traditional energy sources due to intermittency, seasonality etc.
Petroleum can be directly converted to heat with an efficiency of near 100% and replace solar electricity which might do the same job with much lower efficiency. And waste heat from thermal generation can and frequently does get used to supply district heating and hot water, greenhouse heating, desalination and other applications, approaching 90% efficiency. More than solar or wind. And nobody can claim that all fossil primary energy is used for power generation, it has many other applications.
If a country manages to replace 1 GWh of coal generation with 1 GWh of solar then that will already show fairly in a drop in their coal & fossil primary energy consumption of ~3 GWh of coal thermal energy. Very nice. Properly their utilized solar primary energy would increase by 1GWh. Instead they double count and pretend the solar primary energy has increased by 2.5 GWh on top of the drop in coal primary energy. That is fraudulent accounting.
So if a country like Norway decided to fully electrify its transportation sector with wind, solar & hydro. They would see a big drop in there fossil primary energy consumption. That would be accompanied by a much smaller increase in their electricity consumption, since EVs are much more efficient. So very nice you would see total primary energy supply to Norway decline, as expected. But BP would show no decline for electrification of transport because they would multiply the additional electric primary energy x2.5. That's bogus accounting.
And nuclear is straightforward. Just like any thermal power plants they have an efficiency or heat rate and the BP numbers should correctly convert Nuclear electricity to primary energy by the posted heat rate of the relevant NPPs. They don't, they divide that known data by 1.2. That's fraudulent.
Fascinating interview, so many interesting topics and ideas. Thank you both for doing this!