High energy prices mean rampant inflation and social unrest. With crude and natural gas prices skyrocketing, developing nations will again turn to coal as an energy source. Developed nations will return (see Germany) to coal as a heating source.
Green energy will be thrown to the wayside for the sake of social stability give the tumult we've observed to this point.
For the short run, there is unfortunately no viable alternative without enduring 5-10 years of pain. Over the long run, I hope we get more nuclear reactors online.
[1]: https://www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2021/Jun/Majori...
Solar power is not cheaper than combined-cycle natural gas at midnight. The article that you cited does not contain the words "battery" or "storage", and one really needs to compare the all-in levelized cost of energy (and storage) over the life of the project. It does mention hydrogen, but does not go into the efficiency calculations.
BEVs are far from being ready to be a part of the goods distribution market, even by land - power/weight is still far too low. Electrical trains are useful, but building up new rail infrastructure has been neglected and takes a long time. Even if BEVs were viable, battery production is limited, and electrifying the transportation industry would directly compete with increasing renewables on the power grid and the need to expand storage capacity to do so. The price of batteries would sky-rocket and cause inflation this way.
Secondly, oil and other fossil fuels are used for their chemical properties in a large amount of industries - plastics and fertilizer being the most obvious. The cost of oil going up significantly directly impacts all of these industries. Some uses could be replaced with cheap power generation (e.g. H2 production through electrolysis instead of natural gas breakdown), but that requires a massive expansion of the power grid.
So even if we were able to keep power from the grid cheap through renewables, fossil fuel prices exploding would still rapidly increase inflation, probably to unacceptable levels.
Of course, that still doesn't mean we should drill more. The right answer, given the unprecedented threat of global warming, is neither to increase oil supply nor to hope that increasing renewable will be enough. The right answer is to decrease demand - stop producing many unnecessary goods and burying them in plastic then shipping them halfway across the world. Ration the existing oil supply to the highest impact industries, and let other industries replace it.
Don't allow industry to keep using expensive oil while shunting the price off on consumers.
With the solar in particular it's one cluster munition away from massive degradation.
Unfortunately, everything is interlinked. Carbon is certainly an issue, but we've clearly put the cart before the horse.
Even in Germany, coal is more expensive than wind and mostly more expensive than PV: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-o...
In that study you see there is overlap between coal and PV systems and batteries.
The best solution to keep both short and long term in mind is to regulate prices on basic goods to prevent the worse social impacts, while allowing commodities to explode in price. This should greatly encoyrage all industries that can get rid of fossil fuels from their supply chains to do so, but also reduce overall consumption of unnecessary items and thus of fossil fuels. If the plastic toy you were importing from China suddenly costs 50$ instead of 5$, perhaps you simply won't buy it, so it won't get produced and wrapped in even more plastic and shipped halfway across the world.
Power companies aren’t building Wind/PV because it’s green they are building it because it’s cheap. Yes, higher inflation means higher interest rates, but it also means higher payments from customers over time.
They still need a transportation grid for repair and replacement parts, but that need is worlds away from the need of a coal plant supplied with continuous burnable fuel, or a natural gas plant at the end of a pipe. Renewables are a more flexible technology for a world of more change.
I honestly think the US will end up in a civil war if it ends up being necessary to force action on climate change.
As an aside, I own a pickup. I honestly don't give a shit if gas goes to $20. We already drive it as little as possible.
However, there's no reason that would have to happen. It would cost about a dollar per gallon of gasoline-equivalent for existing prototype atmospheric carbon capture technologies to start drawing down CO2.
That's much cheaper than societal collapse. Heck, it is less than Putin's war is costing US consumers.
The excuses need to end, and action needs to start ramping up.
Many people spend their lives estimating embedded emissions and, more importantly, the time it will take for any emission-reducing technology (e.g. electric cars) to amortise away the CO2e emissions required to produce it.
For instance, it's been estimated that a Tesla Model 3 "needs to be driven for 13,500 miles (21,725 km) before it does less harm to the environment than a Toyota Corolla" [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_emissions [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lifeti...
Huh, that’s a factor of 5-10 less miles than I was expecting. Good to know.
It turns out, when you burn a bunch of rocks, You release as gas all the stuff in those rocks.
But this one study is about projected growth, so old wells are really not the point.
The study is linked at around the middle of the article.
It has a few supporting articles at the bottom under "More on this story", for example one headlined "Climate chaos certain if oil and gas mega-projects go ahead, warns IEA chief"
[0] https://www.climate-transparency.org/countries/africa/saudi-...
