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On this article, I touch upon the current podcast/video, “What Should Trump Do About Energy Policy?” under. I discovered it attention-grabbing to take heed to, however I did have some points with just a few issues, and perhaps we are able to talk about them and each come away higher knowledgeable.
Vitality Coverage Dialogue
Within the dialogue of Chris Wright for the DOE choose, Adam expresses his pleasure at his fossil gasoline background and help for nuclear. I used to have a major a part of my funding portfolio in oil investments and have at all times preferred nuclear energy.
In 2014, I spent a while researching the doable risk to my oil investments posed by photo voltaic. I concluded that it was uncompetitive in most locations until closely backed. However as a software program engineer, I’ve adopted the expertise area and know that Moore’s Regulation has been essential the event of the entire pc business. Moore’s Regulation is much like Wright’s Regulation, which states, “price of production for a given product will go down a fixed amount (different for different products) every time the cumulative number of units doubles.”
In fact, Wright’s Regulation isn’t an actual regulation just like the regulation of gravity, only a guideline that’s helpful — till it isn’t.
Oil Costs
The value of oil merchandise in my lifetime has been risky (largely depending on world geopolitical components), however mainly flat when adjusted for inflation.
One of many two main components during the last 50 years have been that we’re operating out of a budget oil that’s near the floor on land, forcing us to both drill deeper or in harsh environments like deep seas or the arctic, rising prices considerably. And the opposite main issue has been that expertise innovation (primarily fracking to get better “tight” oil and gasoline) has dramatically elevated provide, reducing prices dramatically, largely within the US. The online impact is not any change in actual costs in 60 years.
Photo voltaic Costs
Photo voltaic PV has a dramatically completely different value curve. There have been many articles on this, however I like this one because of the pretty graphs. The brief model is that prices are greater than 1000-fold over 40 years and proceed to say no at an annual fee of 30% with no sign of ending. In seeing this 10 years in the past, I knew that will influence my investments, so I slowly rotated out of oil. I agree with Bob’s feedback that we received’t run out of oil anytime quickly.
Stone Age did not finish as a result of we ran out of stones
Oil Age will not finish as a result of lack of oil#RenewableEnergy will finish it pic.twitter.com/QL3d2pz7d4— Laudato Si’ Motion (@LaudatoSiMvmt) May 11, 2016
I agree with @AlexEpstein that fossil fuels have tremendously improved human flourishing, however I disagree with him that it’s going to proceed far into the long run in gentle of the dramatic expertise adjustments, primarily in photo voltaic and electrical automobiles, which are taking place now.
Nuclear
On nuclear, I’ve thought it to be an important low value, dependable energy supply for a few years that simply wanted much less regulation and innovation to broaden. However then I regarded the associated fee curve of nuclear and located it has made no progress in 50+ years.
This brief video under satisfied me I used to be incorrect and I shouldn’t help nuclear for enormous growth for a lot of causes.
- New nuclear makes no financial sense at 30 instances the price of photo voltaic and getting worse yearly.
- RethinkX has proven photo voltaic, wind, & batteries can provide dependable energy three hundred and sixty five days a yr.
- Sudden issues are extraordinarily pricey and dramatically influence reliability.
- Nuclear can’t differ its output as market costs change.
- At the moment, nuclear makes use of an excessive amount of water, for instance in France, the place nuclear makes use of 50% of freshwater.
- In excessive temperatures (as is occurring extra typically), nuclear has to close down since its cooling water turns into dangerous to the river’s ecosystem.
- Nuclear requires wealth & political stability to run safely. Right this moment 32 nations have nuclear energy and many of the different 163 nations can’t construct it.
- Dangers of nuclear proliferation
- 10-year construct instances (finest case) is just too lengthy to fulfill our wants.
- Nuclear reactors use a number of unique supplies which are doable however tough to mine (much like photo voltaic & EVs).
- Security of transport and storage of nuclear waste is difficult.
- If we 40X nuclear energy to energy the long run world with present accident charges, we might have 1 critical nuclear accident each month, and it must be 100 instances safer to be acceptable
Having mentioned that, I don’t suppose there’s any nice must shutdown current nuclear, however the query is how a lot are you keen to make use of the power of presidency to subsidize it, since it may’t survive in most locations with out huge subsidies. My reply is a small quantity, perhaps $10 billion a yr, declining over time. Bob is precisely proper that legal responsibility caps are one of many vital subsidies that the federal government offers the nuclear business. Adam is appropriate that new nuclear designs which are passively secure are a lot better as a result of if one thing sudden occurs, they only shut down mechanically with no need many expert engineers with energy and water accessible to securely shut down, like right this moment’s vegetation. Michael Barnard has written many good articles on nuclear powertogether with how it isn’t compatible with Free Market Capitalism.
Federal Land Use
When it comes to the leasing dialogue, federal lands ought to permit leasing of land for photo voltaic along with oil exploration.
Wind, Photo voltaic, & Batteries Have A Vibrant Future, Particularly Photo voltaic & Batteries
I disagree with Adam that wind and photo voltaic are largely catastrophes. Though they’re backed in lots of locations, they’re now aggressive in an increasing number of locations with out subsidies. The RethinkX article offers extra background on each the affordable prices and skill to effectively cope with the intermittency downside through the use of the optimum mixture of over-provisioning technology and putting in batteries in 3 places (California, Texas, and the Northeast). They predict this may occur with out subsides, if not prevented by governments, and I agree. The prevailing oil business shall be asking for bailouts sooner or later, and would you utilize authorities power to bail out oil or coal? I don’t. Clearly, right this moment’s subsidies speed up that pattern.
Tony Seba’s idea of Superpower (surplus electrical energy at far lower than a penny a kWh, accessible more often than not) shall be a boon to many new customers of electrical energy, together with the Bitcoin mining Bob talked about. Bob is appropriate that fossil fuels are extra dense than renewable power or batteries, though that is altering over time. However I don’t know if renewable power will ever catch up.
Libertarian Options To Air pollution
This wasn’t a part of the podcast, however I proceed to be disillusioned that the libertarian neighborhood has largely ignored Murray Rothbard’s wonderful “The Libertarian Manifesto on Pollution.” It states that air pollution is exacerbated by the dearth of personal property rights and the way non-public fits by these harmed is a simply answer as a substitute of huge authorities intervention. As an alternative, most libertarians I do know as a substitute select to disregard the issues.
Walter Block has an attention-grabbing video (under) on this additionally.
Realistically, we’re a good distance from imposing non-public property rights to regulate air pollution and carbon, so I believe working inside our current mannequin to make it as truthful as doable is our greatest method ahead.
I encourage @Rerazer and @BobMurphyEcon to answer this and inform me what they realized and what I received incorrect.
If you wish to make the most of my Tesla referral hyperlink to get Reward Credit, right here’s the hyperlink: https://ts.la/paul92237 — however as I’ve mentioned earlier than, if one other proprietor helped you extra, please use their hyperlink as a substitute of mine. If you wish to study extra about Tesla’s new referral program (August 2024), Chris Boylan has written an excellent article on it.
Disclosure: I’m a shareholder in Tesla (TSLA), BYD (BYDDY), Nio (NIO), XPeng (XPEV), NextEra Vitality (NEP), and a number of other ARK ETFs. However I provide no funding recommendation of any type right here.
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