100b invested in wind & solar produces more energy than oil.

[grahamhgreen]

http://www.impactlab.net/2014/09/18/100b-invested-in-wind-or-solar-will-produce-more-energy-than-oil/

Kepler Chevreux, a French investment bank, has produced a fascinating analysis that has dramatic implications for the global oil industry. The investment bank estimates that $100 billion invested in either wind energy or solar energy – and deployed as energy for light and commercial vehicles – will produce significantly more energy than that same $100 billion invested in oil.





The implications, needless to say, are dramatic. It would signal the end of Big Oil, and the demise of an industry that has dominated the global economy and geo-politics, for the last few decades. And the need for it to reshape its business model around renewables, as we discuss here.

“If we are right, the implications would be momentous,” writes Kepler Chevreux analyst Mark Lewis.

“It would mean that the oil industry faces the risk of stranded assets not only under a scenario of falling oil prices brought about by the structurally lower demand entailed by a future tightening of climate policy, but also under a scenario of rising oil prices brought about by increasingly constrained supply. “

[ReRe]

1. K&R

It's only common sense, ghg. It's going to happen, and the sooner the better. Then we won't have to fight all these oil wars and put up with these pipelines bursting all over the land and despoiling our aquifers, no more fracking. Thanks for this report!

[grahamhgreen]

5. When you include the wars & cancers & pollution costs, renewables are even better:)

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. This doesn't come as much surprise

since new oil sources have a dramatically lower rate of energy return on investment (for conventional wells like in Saudi Arabia, 30 years ago, the rate of return on investment was something like 100:1 or 50:1; that's declined in recent decades to 20:1, for deepwater it's more like 10:1, and fracking and tar sands are not much more than 2 or 3 to 1 (which is why tar sands and fracking aren't profitable at below $80-100 a barrel).

[CentralMass]

3. There have been studies showing that if it could be tapped, the potential kinetic energy of offshore

wind on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. would produce more power than all of the conventional nuclear and fossil fuel plants that we have combined. That of course would be a major undertaking.

There has also been some discussion about building a network of offshore wind farms in the in the new England and mid Atlantic area that would be tied together with a smart grid for load balancing, etc ..

After watching one of the Koch brothers fund an opposition group that is trying to block the building of a proposed offshore wind farm for a decade in MA,I've wondered "what if" they put they put their financial resources into funding that proposed network, instead of fighting it.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/will_offshore_wind_finally_take_off_on_us_east_coast/2693/

"A major project, backed by Google, is planned to link offshore wind farms along the U.S. East Coast to power consumers onshore. The Atlantic Wind Connection is a transmission “backbone” designed to let multiple offshore wind projects essentially plug in to undersea cables as they come online. The first phase, a cable that will stretch the length of the New Jersey coast and be capable of carrying 3,000 megawatts of electricity, is scheduled to begin construction in 2016. The rest of the “backbone” would extend down the coast past Delaware and Maryland, stretching to the coast of Virginia. Along with Google, the project is funded by such companies as Bregal Energy, Marubeni Corporation, and a Belgian transmission company, Elia."

“The East Coast is the Saudi Arabia of offshore wind, because there is enough energy there to provide the entire U.S. with electricity if it was fully developed,” says Matt Huelsenbeck, a marine scientist and offshore wind expert with the non-profit group Oceana. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of the Department of Energy, puts the onshore and offshore U.S. wind energy potential at 4,150 gigawatts, around four times more than the entire electricity requirements of the United States. The Northeast and mid-Atlantic coasts in particular are windy spots with water depths that make development feasible."

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. Look at the link before placing any faith in this.

He defines gross energy as the amount of primary energy available before it is converted into useful energy in final consumption. Net energy, however, is the amount of energy available for final consumption after taking into account energy conversion and energy transmission losses. This includes the energy available for powering oil-fired cars and electric vehicles.

For oil, he has assumed investment opportunities in new projects with full breakeven costs (all- in capital costs, operating costs, and any royalties payable) of $US75/bbl and $US100/bbl, as these cover breakeven cost levels in the upper quartile of the industry cost curve and will account for a very significant share of the new investment opportunities. He assumes two different potential lifetimes for new oil projects (ten and 20 years), as some projects (e.g. deep-water) have shorter lifetimes than others (e.g. conventional onshore and oil sands).

For renewables, he assumes capital costs of $US3bn/GW for solar PV (Ed: seems high), $US1.5bn for offshore wind, and $US4.5bn/GW for offshore wind. He assumes annual load factors of 13% for solar, 25% for onshore wind, and 40% for offshore wind. All renewables investments are assumed to have project lifetimes of 20 years. (ED: In Australia, solar has a load factor of 18 per cent, wind is more than 35 per cent).

As table 1 shows, the gross energy of oil is higher than all the renewable sources over a 10 year period. But over 20 years, the relative economics of renewables improve, and onshore wind actually yields slightly more gross energy annually over 20 years than oil at a price of $US75/bbl and nearly 40 per cent more than oil at $US100/bbl (117TWh versus 85TWh).

It looks as though he's made up a load of numbers, and then drawn conclusions based on the numbers he's made up. Just because those conclusions are nice doesn't mean they should carry any weight.

[grahamhgreen]

6. Those numbers seem solid, in fact a little conservative. What numbers do you take issue with?

[librechik]

7. kick for the naysayers

[Rhinodawg]

8. Yes....kick.

[librechik]

9. lol, dawg

you aren't still mad at me for trollin on you, are you?

Really, I'm sorry. I should never wander in to a football discussion.

[grahamhgreen]

10. Thanks

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, grahamhgreen.