RE:Oil vs. Renewables…..& copper It was a poorly written article and the author should have kept to main thesis that critical minerals will be short supply:
Some criticisms of the article:
The opening paragraph is false. Society is moving away from using fossils for transportation and power generation. You have to start somewhere and these two sectors are the easiest to change.
Air will get cleaner with electric cars because they are more efficient to use regardless of the source and electric power generation in North America is moving away from burning coal which has become expensive. The majority of summer smog in cities is caused by ICE cars.
They may use fossil fuels to build cars, but over the complete life cycle, EV cars release less than 50% of the greenhouse gases released by ICE cars. The author suggests otherwise.
Synthetic fertilisers are not that great for soil as he suggests. They can be beneficial and they can be problematic. Contrary to what he says, phosphorus and potassium are mined and not manufactured from natural gas. Reliance on fossil fuels by the farming sector is decreasing as they switch to more sustainable farming methods including crop rotation, drill seeding and cover cropping. Farmers are finding more sustainable farming techniques to be more productive as organic matter is conserved. Fertilisers are quite expensive and farmers will continue to lower inputs if it saves them money.
Trying to suggest that a massive amount of fertilisers are saving the world is pure hype.
Mining, as we all know, is also reducing its dependence on fossil fuel.
As an investor, I would never invest in coal because of the poor long term prospects. Some of my family in Australia have done very well with it recently but it seems like a mistake to stay long term in coal. The author got one of the graphs from the IEA and in the same article they present the run-down in coal revenues over the next 20 years. In China and India, they are using coal to meet immediate demand, but that will change too as they ramp up green energy.
I agree that high temperature industrial processes for the foreseeable future will need fossil fuels. I also agree that copper and other minerals are going to be in short supply but overall, I was left with the impression that the writer was paid by the fossil fuel industry for the article. I definitely agree with the author that the switch to EV is going to be impossible if they continue to cost so much. I am waiting to buy one to replace my Toyota that I have had for over 20 years, but at 70000 dollars, the economics cannot justify the expense. Less money to invest in GENM if I go and buy one of those babies.