this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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The efficiency of fossil fuel energy sources is in their energy by volume. That's is and has always been their main benefit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
Sort and compare. Battery technologies, even state of the art ones, are an order of magnitude worse than fuels for energy density. This matters immensely in transport, less so in stationary energy.
Sorry, these sensationalistic headlines just irritate me. I'm all for avoiding the externalities of oil based energy.
While it is true, that their energy density is high, often it is actually much less relevant due to the poor efficiency of the devices burning said fuel. With cars, you'll notice that ICE cars have a pretty terrible efficieny themselves, which partly negates the effect of high energy density of fossil fuels. These days electric cars and ICE cars can have very similar driving ranges despite their differences in energy density.
And to compound on these efficiency losses, while the energy source is dense, it is heavy. You have to move fuel around by spending fuel, lots and lots of it. We use an ungodly amount of fossil fuels moving fossil fuels somewhere to be used. Fuel and coal tankers are a huge percentage of the energy we spend on earth.
Electricity on the other hand can be locally produced nearly anywhere with wind/solar, and with infrastructure upgrades, be moved over wire with very little loss and no fossil fuel expenditure.