I strongly recommend the book "The Price is Wrong" by Brett Christophers for an in depth look at renewable energy markets. Christophers makes the point that under market systems, it is not energy prices or PV panel prices or wind turbine prices that determine the level of investment in renewable energy. It is expected profit, or return on investment.
He makes the further point that everywhere around the world, renewables are subsidised, In the US, for PV there is the Investment Tax Credit, and for wind, the Production Tax Credit. For both, there are various de-risking schemes to blunt the effects of electricity price volatility. So the price of gas may or may not matter: it depends.
The key point of the book, that investment depends on profit, not price, is not widely appreciated.
The hypothetical, "if we could affordably pull carbon from the atmosphere" is true. The search phrase you want is "enhanced weathering of olivine minerals". The required technologies--mining, rock crushing, bulk land and sea transport--already exist at gigaton scales so there are no supply chain constraints. The cost is of the order of hundreds of billions per year, small for a $100 trillion world economy.
(This is one of many little things that led me to my earlier comment that global political elites do not believe in climate change. There is, in fact, an easy, cheap, and fast solution to the problem.)
I won't be sold on any CO2 removal until we have something scaled up beyond small lab experiments. Ideas don't always scale up the way they think they will. But, thanks for the link.
I think global political elites do believe in climate change, although I'm open to your view here. Could they also be using a crisis to their benefit? Sure. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next couple of decades.
I agree that it's a long and winding journey from lab to commercial application, but in this case we already mine rock and crush it at billion-ton scales, for copper and gold. All the production lines are already in place. It might take laying on extra shifts, but there are no technical roadblocks.
My view is cynical. Climate change fear is used by political elites as a rhetorical device to cow the general public and stop us asking awkward questions - a thought terminating tactic.
They don't intend to actually do anything about it: that's what I mean by "they don't believe in it". It's from the adage "to know and not to do is the same as not to know".
The other book I'm reading concurrently with "The Price is Wrong" is "More and More and More" by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. I don't know if you've ever read "The Shock of the Old" by David Edgerton (also recommended, if not: it casts a bright, harsh light on much political/technological discourse)? "More and More and More" is in the tradition of that book: rejecting the official narrative of "energy transition" and looking at the actual numbers.
When one looks at the numbers--as you have done recently with air travel--there is no chance of keeping global average temperature rise by 2100 under 2.8 degrees Celsius. Which means temperate land average temperature rises of about 5.5 degrees abve pre-industrial, and all the flood and drought implied by that.
I strongly recommend the book "The Price is Wrong" by Brett Christophers for an in depth look at renewable energy markets. Christophers makes the point that under market systems, it is not energy prices or PV panel prices or wind turbine prices that determine the level of investment in renewable energy. It is expected profit, or return on investment.
He makes the further point that everywhere around the world, renewables are subsidised, In the US, for PV there is the Investment Tax Credit, and for wind, the Production Tax Credit. For both, there are various de-risking schemes to blunt the effects of electricity price volatility. So the price of gas may or may not matter: it depends.
The key point of the book, that investment depends on profit, not price, is not widely appreciated.
https://www.amazon.com/Price-Wrong-Capitalism-Wont-Planet/dp/1804292303
Book on my reading list. Yes, profit is everything. It is why a lot (all?) of the solar and wind projects don't fly without the government guaranteeing a minimum price for the electricity. I wrote about subsidies here https://briefedbydata.substack.com/p/how-should-we-measure-energy-subsidies
Good point on how subsidies may blunt the impact of the price of gas on the desire to add solar and wind.
The hypothetical, "if we could affordably pull carbon from the atmosphere" is true. The search phrase you want is "enhanced weathering of olivine minerals". The required technologies--mining, rock crushing, bulk land and sea transport--already exist at gigaton scales so there are no supply chain constraints. The cost is of the order of hundreds of billions per year, small for a $100 trillion world economy.
There is a small but growing scientific literature, for example https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703723004349
(This is one of many little things that led me to my earlier comment that global political elites do not believe in climate change. There is, in fact, an easy, cheap, and fast solution to the problem.)
I won't be sold on any CO2 removal until we have something scaled up beyond small lab experiments. Ideas don't always scale up the way they think they will. But, thanks for the link.
I think global political elites do believe in climate change, although I'm open to your view here. Could they also be using a crisis to their benefit? Sure. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next couple of decades.
I agree that it's a long and winding journey from lab to commercial application, but in this case we already mine rock and crush it at billion-ton scales, for copper and gold. All the production lines are already in place. It might take laying on extra shifts, but there are no technical roadblocks.
My view is cynical. Climate change fear is used by political elites as a rhetorical device to cow the general public and stop us asking awkward questions - a thought terminating tactic.
They don't intend to actually do anything about it: that's what I mean by "they don't believe in it". It's from the adage "to know and not to do is the same as not to know".
The other book I'm reading concurrently with "The Price is Wrong" is "More and More and More" by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. I don't know if you've ever read "The Shock of the Old" by David Edgerton (also recommended, if not: it casts a bright, harsh light on much political/technological discourse)? "More and More and More" is in the tradition of that book: rejecting the official narrative of "energy transition" and looking at the actual numbers.
When one looks at the numbers--as you have done recently with air travel--there is no chance of keeping global average temperature rise by 2100 under 2.8 degrees Celsius. Which means temperate land average temperature rises of about 5.5 degrees abve pre-industrial, and all the flood and drought implied by that.