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Opinion | Why Don’t We Just Ban Fossil Fuels?
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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read the article. The writer isn't advocating to ban them now, no one is. The title isn't Why don't we ban fossil fuels now.
The point of the article is that we can try to innovate alongside fossil fuels with renewables, but petro companies are actually finding new efficiencies and reducing the costs of oil extraction. The IMF predicts $15/barrel oil by 2050. Oil will take another century to go away unless it is "banned". No one means they're going to make it illegal, but to effectively put a heavy hand of regulation on industry to cease fossil operations and to switch to renewables.
The article is paywalled.
The non-paywalled link is at the top of the thread.
Notice how that was posted an hour AFTER my comment?
The bottom, now.
Man it's going to blow your mind to know that petro companies are using oil money to buy up lithium and silicon mines as fast as they can.
The largest oil companies in the world are on track to becoming the largest suppliers of raw materials for solar panels and batteries. Oil companies have figured out that they can play both games at the same time. Sell as much oil and solar panel/lithium material and make hand over fist in cash.
I am.
Synthetic fuels are viable (in some countries you are already able to buy them), many countries around the world still subsidize oil production - stop thhose subsidiaries, put them in Synthetic fuels, make splitting a part of the co2 that's being pulled from the air mandatory and we've solved a lot of issues, because now there not only an alternative, there a solution for getting co2 out of the atmosphere. Porsche does it, Neste (not to be confused with Nestlé!) as well, CAC started the pilot production as well...it works, it's viable, it's not that much more expensive and most countries have some form of co2 tax on products made from oil anyway.
Ban fossile fuels after 2030 and fuck all those greedy oil companies sideways.
Are all major custom fuel types (gasoline, natural gas, coal, kerosene/jet fuel, propane) available in synthetic, with little to no modification of the hardware using it, and able to scale to immediately cover our global usage?
...
Why 2030? You just said you are advocating to ban them now.
Yes, because you are simply exchanging the "basic" ingredient "crude oil". All refineries basically need some simple temperature and production process changes, and bobs your uncle.
And there is less modification needed. Back in the GDR when the Trabi with it's two stroke engine came to market, they made some Tests with a Lloyd (basically the same concept but from West Germany). Somewhere along testing they has major issues with the Trabant engine throwing rods everywhere after a few 1000 km - for Testing, they used the West Germany Oil instead of soviet. The production process was similar, the crude oil however not. It had a lot of contamination that made combustion very bad. 70 years later, a lot of this is being treated in the refinery, but there's still lots of unwanted stuff in most fuels, be it Diesel, Gasoline or whatever (one of the reasons, why additives are needed).
A few auto clubs did Tests in Germany and Europe over the last 2 years with those fuels and found, while the co2 emissions do not change (why would they, the co2 neutrality is being delt with in the production of the fuel), other emissions reduce dramatically. AIRBUS did Tests with so called SAF (sustainable air fuel) and they found that NOx and soot emissions where reduced by over 60% at crusing altitude. Mazda tested the new 6-Cylinder Diesel they developed with such fuel and they found, with all the filters and stuff, there's basically only Co2 and some hydrocarbons leaving the tailpipe.
Basically, there's still lots of crap in the fuel from the crude oil, that can't be refined out properly.
As for the scaling, yeah in theory it would be possible...but there would be a huge need for subsidiaries - making production dirt cheap, so those greedy fuckers in the oil companies still get their expected rate of return. In Europe that's influenced heavily with the carbon tax getting more and more expensive and customers not paying 3 Euros per Liter...
I am. But it would need all world governments to unite - so theoretically absolutely possible (remember CFCs?), practically in this political world environment? No.
So you need countries to "go the long way" doing it now up to 2030 (so production capacity can ramp up) and simply forcing the fossile competition out of the market by being cheaper.
Within 25 years it's mostly going away anyhow in the passenger vehicle market. Within 25 years there's no way its going away for ships and planes. Possibly not for commercial trucks, and not completely for ag either. Certainly not the military. Then theres all the smaller uses and other oils needed and propane and whatnot from it, but that's getting into relatively small potatoes.
But anyone thinking the world can manage to just ban oil over the next 25 years and everyone is going to agree to it, you're far too simple minded and naive.
And anyone arguing against banning fossile fuels has no idea what has been achieved with synthetic fuels. Fossile fuels will get extremely expensive in most European countries due to co2 taxes, making synthetic fuels with a negative co2 footprint extremely cheap. And a negative co2 footprint is pretty easy to achieve. Putting 5% more of the co2 needed for 1 liter in the ground, pulls it from the atmosphere, so 1 liter of synthetic fuel can have net negative co2 emissions - which would be a tax incentive, making the fuel cheaper.
Then you'd know it's not possible to make enough synthetic fuel to supply current demand.
It is. But it would need all world governments to unite - so theoretically absolutely possible (remember CFCs?), practically I'm this environment? No.
So you need countries to "go the long way" doing it now up to 2030 (so production capacity can ramp up) and simply forcing the fossile competition out of the market by being cheaper.
Man, I think you need to read up and understand the processes on how synthetic fuel is actually made. Because it takes a massive amount of energy to make the stuff. The only carbon neutral way to do it would take even more energy. It's only going to be scalable to a replacement of gasoline level if you start strapping nuclear power plants to all the hydrolysis and carbon air capture machines you'd need.
You should keep up with developments ;) There are a number of different ways to produce "synthetic" fuels, specifically from special plants, that grow in very difficult environments (like deserts), there's also different algae plants in scale testing (Mexico has some of the largest) and so on.
Apart from that, the argument that it needs huge amounts of power is pretty mute.