
Saudi Arabia to Cut Oil Prices as Demand Fears Grow - maydemir
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Saudi-Arabia-To-Cut-Oil-Prices-As-Demand-Fears-Grow.html
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rcMgD2BwE72F
Fears? One can see hope.

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paledot
I mean, not if one is oilprice.com, but yes. Hopefully demand never rebounds.

Unfortunately, cheap oil does have repercussions on the value proposition for
electrification of transportation. However, electric cars are now mature
enough that they have other selling points: quieter, not dependent on gas
stations, better performance, better resale price (at least in the case of
Tesla). Buying a new gas car in 2020 seems downright foolish.

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toomuchtodo
These are all great points, but we can do more to accelerate the
electrification of everything and the deprecation of petroleum for all but the
most niche use cases.

We’re almost to the point that non essential combustion should be banned after
a reasonable amount of time.

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danans
> we can do more to accelerate the electrification of everything

Definitely. The first thing is suggest is replacing old gas furnaces with heat
pumps. No exotic tech needed, just bigger scale to reduce upfront prices.

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toomuchtodo
Agree! And these are good paying trades jobs that can’t be outsourced. Heat
pumps, insulation, houses that’ll pass a blower door test ~4 or lower aren’t
sexy but they’re the biggest bang for each buck spent.

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danans
The big challenge is cost effectively retrofitting existing homes for greater
efficiency in the general direction of net zero or passive house. I'm trying
to do it now and ouch it's pricey.

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seibelj
I hope people who are diehard renewable promoters realize that hydrocarbons
have many advantages, such as energy density and their ability to be stored
and used at any time. It’s not hard to draw a line from rolling blackouts in
California to their removal of coal and natural gas. Simply buying power from
Nevada doesn’t cut carbon emissions if Nevada uses hydrocarbons.

Until we get nuclear back in a major way then we need hydrocarbons. Wind and
solar don’t cut it.

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mxschumacher
in my estimation, political opposition against nuclear is so strong in the
west that it will be next to impossible to build new reactors. I'd be really
surprised if there a net gain in fission reactors in Europe or the US.

The ongoing shift away from coal is powerful - environmentalists push hard and
some cities close to coal plants became too dirty to be livable. "Coal-to-gas"
is a central piece of China's energy policy.

Energy storage, transportation and space for on-shore wind puts some limit on
the renewable-build up; Germany's number of active wind turbines might
actually decrease in the coming years.

Take the above three aspects together and combine it with an ever richer and
energy-hungry humanity and I believe gas and oil demand will be higher than
most want to believe.

Even if passenger cars are shifted to electric: air planes, ships, freight
trains and most importantly, trucks still run on oil. Consider how most
passenger cars spend most of their lives being parked, in contrast, commercial
trucks move as much as possible,

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seibelj
There is a large amount of religion to anti-carbon people. They want to wish
away carbon based fuels but the tech honestly isn’t there yet, and refuse to
listen to rational people who actually understand the technology. 100%
renewable isn’t even remotely close. We maybe can make up a portion but if you
want the power a modern society needs then the only clean energy that exists
is nuclear, which is also something they can’t stand. It is extremely
frustrating.

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paledot
There are achievable numbers between 1-5% and 100%.

