Plug In Hybrid Cars

stickyfiddle

ICBM said:

stickyfiddle said:

What is interesting is that the Middle Eastern countries everyone loves to hate may still end up as major suppliers for the world's energy needs, but in the form of electricity itself rather than oil and gas used for electricity generation. There are vast amounts of unused desert with shitloads of sunshine which are perfect for solar farms. Get these (and battery and/or transmission tech) to a high enough efficiency and it may be beneficial to export the power on a huge scale

Yes, and unless they're very stupid and shortsighted, their governments know it and are probably already planning their approach to it. It is actually looking like technology is evolving fast enough that the long-term limit on oil production will be demand, not supply - something that would have been unthinkable probably only ten years ago - and sitting on the world's largest reserves won't keep them rich if no-one is buying it.

It's not climate change or environmentalism that will turn us away from oil, it's economics. Once competing technologies become cheaper and more efficient - which will obviously happen sooner in some areas than others - then oil will be yesterday's news in the same way that steam railways and horse-drawn carriages are. We may need a few incentives to push progress along, but once started it will become unstoppable.

I completely agree. There are plenty in the ME who understand this. Dubai further along the road than the rest, largely because it has very little oil compared to Abu Dhabi, KSA and Kuwait, so it saw the need to diversify years ago. Sharjah is in a similar position oil-wise, but hasn't diversified at all, and is a pretty awful place, only a few miles up the road.

It also has the potential to completely transform africa, because solar generation becomes a question of who has the best sunshine and the most available land. 

Haych

stickyfiddle said:

ICBM said:

stickyfiddle said:

What is interesting is that the Middle Eastern countries everyone loves to hate may still end up as major suppliers for the world's energy needs, but in the form of electricity itself rather than oil and gas used for electricity generation. There are vast amounts of unused desert with shitloads of sunshine which are perfect for solar farms. Get these (and battery and/or transmission tech) to a high enough efficiency and it may be beneficial to export the power on a huge scale

Yes, and unless they're very stupid and shortsighted, their governments know it and are probably already planning their approach to it. It is actually looking like technology is evolving fast enough that the long-term limit on oil production will be demand, not supply - something that would have been unthinkable probably only ten years ago - and sitting on the world's largest reserves won't keep them rich if no-one is buying it.

It's not climate change or environmentalism that will turn us away from oil, it's economics. Once competing technologies become cheaper and more efficient - which will obviously happen sooner in some areas than others - then oil will be yesterday's news in the same way that steam railways and horse-drawn carriages are. We may need a few incentives to push progress along, but once started it will become unstoppable.

....... solar generation becomes a question of who has the best sunshine and the most available land. 

So the USA's foreign policy will soon be changing - they'll be invading countries and toppling despot dictators based on how much sun baked desert they have.