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- ⏳Exxon likes it hot, VW feels the heat, Amazon burns
⏳Exxon likes it hot, VW feels the heat, Amazon burns
Essential energy & climate intelligence
Max Aitken
September 15, 2024
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What you need to know
Climate change kicks people out of their homes, doesn’t care if they’re wealthy Californians
Why this matters? As the climate changes, liveable places become... unliveable.
Already? In Palos Verdes, landslides have been a problem for decades. After increased annual rains the ground is moving 33cm a week (Ground Engineering). Roads, power and gas shut off, permanently.
Result? 130 multi-million dollar homes overlooking the Pacific, worthless.
Watch more: NBC
Amazon: 346,000 fires so far this year, no-one cares
Why this matters? 7.4m acres burned in first half of 2024. Double last year. Size of Albania plus a bit. Drought from climate change a big factor.
Our challenge? Does anyone think about this anymore? Lungs of the earth, and all that.
Read more: Rainforest Foundation; Reuters
Active fires, Sat 14th September (NASA)
Volkswagen’s foot meets bullet, fired from own hand, Chinese clean up
What’s the problem? VW sales down 0.5m cars.
Who do they blame? Goverment. VW’s Chair: “EU must do more to help ailing car industry” especially for EV chargers etc
But VW forward thinking on EVs? No. Years lobbying against. (LobbyMap).
Who’s eating their lunch? China’s BYD: sales up 1m to 4m. Almost as big as Ford.
Read more: Bloomberg on VW; Teslarati on BYD
VW board meetings. No lunch, Chinese eaten it
One thing to worry about
What would happen if we live the future oil companies want? Michael Mann interpreted ExxonMobil’s 2050 predictions for the FT:
Oil & gas remain over half global energy
Carbon down only 25%
Warming at 2.4°C (= catastrophic)
There’s huge money in delaying the energy transition. As the ad says: “You’re letting us get away with it, you dumb b*tches”:
Exxon is not simply projecting a future in which millions of people are put at risk, but is actively working — as it has for decades — to deliver that outcome.
The company… lies, lobbies and obstructs to ensure that government policies do not erode oil and gas demand.
The “big lie” by Exxon was its denial of the reality of human-caused warming when its own scientists had secretly established this.
One thing to be optimistic about
Renewable growth is relentless. In the last 12 months, the EU as a whole has generated more power from wind and solar than from fossil fuels (EuroNews). Portugal is averaging 90% renewables year-to-date (Ember) 🥳.
If you’ve got quite a lot more time, read this…
Renewable energy is fundamentally more useful than fossil energy.
To get energy from a fossil, you burn it to produce heat. For tasks like driving a car, the car engine converts this heat into motion. But this process wastes two third of the energy. Crazy inefficiency:
We waste most energy
In contrast, renewable power is electricity. No heat first. No efficiency loss.
Kingsmill Bond and Co wrote this lengthy primer. A good one, for those interested in physics.
Fire has been our primary source of energy for over a million years, providing the essential heat needed to survive.
Unlike in past millennia, we now require more work than heat: we desire mobility, motors, electrical appliances, and data processing in greater quantities than we do warmth.
Fortunately, thanks to the rapid growth and cost decline of solar, wind, and electrification, “firepower” faces inexorable decline.
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