the argument for renewable energy isnt that we should stop using oil, its that we shouldnt burn it. why turn our limited supply of oil into CO2 and water when we can turn it into plastics, medicine, solvents, etc? around 3/4 of crude oil is used as fuel, but if renewable energy was used, the number of oil tankers would decrease by more than 75% bc local supplies would generally be sufficient for industrial, non-fuel uses
Comment on Know thy enemy
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Some of these ships would carry green hydrogen and new lithium batteries and old lithium batteries (to be recycled) and whatnot. Also at least some oil would be still needed for fine chemicals like meds or (idk what’s proper english term for that) large scale organic synthesis like plastics, or even straight distillates like hexane (for edible oil extraction) or lubricants. Some of usual non-energy uses of oil can be easily substituted with enough energy like with nitrogen fertilizers but some can’t
ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net 2 weeks ago
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
ikr, but that tweet implies that all of oil/gas/coal ships would be unnecessary
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
bc local supplies would generally be sufficient for industrial, non-fuel uses
this is assuming that its not just cheaper to import that needed oil? This is always going to be a fundamental problem, though maybe we already happen to produce plastic with native oil idk.
IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 2 weeks ago
That is true, but part of improving our environmental impact will be decreasing that transport of raw materials, localizing chemical industries near the sources of their raw materials.
someguy3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And oil for Styrofoam. And met coal for steel.
jonne@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
There’s alternative processes, and if you avoid burning oil for fuel you can basically do all that with the amount of oil that’s in easy reach instead of using tar sands or drilling into even more difficult to reach places.
someguy3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You have to be careful when talking about steel because coal is both an ingredient (steel is iron + carbon) and used for heating afaik. You can take coal out of the heating step (confusingly called steel making) but not out of the ingredient step, unless you want to find a different carbon source.
jonne@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
There’s (admittedly comparatively expensive) alternative processes, and even if you stick to the old process and just stop using coal for electricity generation you’d cut coal use by 75%.
Not to mention, the carbon that stays in the steel doesn’t actually go into the atmosphere, so there’s less CO2 emissions for that specific use if you can substitute the fuel used for heating.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
you’re probably talking about direct reduced iron and it’s really a problem that can be dealt with easily, just chuck a piece of coke when it’s molten for the second time in electric arc furnace (and maybe electrodes introduce enough carbon)
maybe there’s a way to make electrowinning iron economical, and it’d be pretty green too, but i don’t know if it is workable
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
the problem with tar sands is a fundamental energy conversion issue. It’s really hard to refine because you don’t get nearly as much energy out as you put in, compared to something like fracking.
It may become reasonable in the future with really cheap renewable energy and higher oil prices for example, but as of right now, it’s economically unviable.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
coal can be substituted to some degree with processes like direct reduction. hydrogen works but syngas from biomass or trash also works
barsoap@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Everything that comes out of a petrochemical plant can be made without oil, in fact BASF had recipes in place for decades now and is switching sources as the price shifts. Push come to shove they can produce everything from starch. It’s also why they hardly blinked when Russia turned off the gas.
The carbon that actually ends up in steel is a quite negligible amount (usually under 1%, over 2% you get cast iron), you can get that out of the local forest, and to reduce the iron hydrogen works perfectly, the first furnances are already online.
auzy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m guessing most countries would try to recycle batteries locally
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
That wouldn’t really need to be shipped around though, domestic supply can cover those needs almost everywhere.
UsernameHere@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We aren’t consuming batteries anywhere near the rate we consume oil and coal. Hydrogen even less than batteries.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
not now, but if hydrogen were to be used as an energy source/storage, then it’d be used plenty. same with batteries
InverseParallax@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We can make hydrogen, we can’t ‘make oil’.
grandkaiser@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We absolutely can ‘make oil’. Been doing it since world war II. Synthetic oil is extremely common.
jonne@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Yeah, there’s no reason to be transporting hydrogen long distances. You can make it anywhere that has water and electricity. And if you’ve transitioned to a hydrogen based economy, ships wouldn’t run on oil any more anyway, so there’s no problem there.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
you really think this is going to stop the globalism aspect from happening? If you can ship something, and get better market rates on it, you’re going to do it. Economics follows the cheapest route, not the most efficient.
It also just makes sense if you think about it. Places like alaska are going to struggle to generate green energy compared to another place like, texas for example. If you can ship in green hydrogen much cheaper than you can locally produce energy, why wouldn’t you? It’s a reasonable solution to the problem of supply and demand scaling.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
no we can’t make hydrogen everywhere, there will be regions with large excess of renewable energy compared to population. these places could export hydrogen. you also don’t need a lot of transport if crude is extracted near place where it’s used, like for example heavy crude from alberta
barsoap@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
That implies that we can make electricity everywhere, which is technically true but not really the case because there’s countries with more and with less free space, with more suitable places and less suitable places to put renewables.
Those ammonia tankers will happen. At that point btw we’re not just talking about electricity, but also chemical feedstock.
SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
While true, it’s very unlikely we’ll use hydrogen. It’s very impractical for this use compared to alternatives
DogWater@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you have water you have hydrogen.
there’s no reason to transport hydrogen if they build infrastructure to use it as a fuel they will build a process to make it on site