{"id":8240,"date":"2014-03-26T08:30:03","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T12:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=8240"},"modified":"2014-07-14T14:19:03","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T18:19:03","slug":"time-to-call-it-carbon-crash-solar-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/time-to-call-it-carbon-crash-solar-dawn.html","title":{"rendered":"Time to call it: Carbon Crash, Solar Dawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nAnother observer gets it that\r\n\r\ngreen solar power is winning<\/a>.\r\nLetting a fracking deliver company turn us into “stakeholders” in a white \r\nelephant methane pipeline would be an even huger waste after the\r\npipeline stopped being used in a decade or so because\r\n\r\nsun, wind, and water power everything<\/a> by then,\r\nwinning like the Internet did<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nPaul Gilding wrote on his blog 19 March 2013,\r\n\r\nCarbon Crash Solar Dawn<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nI think it’s time to call it. Renewables and associated storage,\r\ntransport and digital technologies are so rapidly disrupting whole\r\nindustries’ business models they are pushing the fossil fuel\r\nindustry towards inevitable collapse.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nSome of you will struggle with that statement. Most people accept\r\nthe idea that fossil fuels are all powerful — that the\r\nindustry controls governments and it will take many decades to force\r\nthem out of our economy. Fortunately, the fossil fuel industry\r\nsuffers the same delusion.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIn fact, probably the main benefit of the US shale gas and oil\r\n“revolution” is that it’s keeping the fossil fuel\r\nindustry and it’s cheer squad distracted while renewables, electric\r\ncars and associated technologies build the momentum needed to make\r\ntheir takeover unstoppable — even by the most powerful\r\nindustry in the world.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Why are the fossil fuel companies still pushing, then?\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nProfit, obviously.\r\nAlso, like horse-drawn buggy manufacturers of the turn of the\r\n19th to the 20th century,\r\n\r\nthey can’t imagine a world without them<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nHow could they miss something so profound? One thing I’ve learnt\r\nfrom decades inside boardrooms, is that, by and large, oil, coal and\r\ngas companies live in an analytical bubble, deluded about their\r\nimmortality and firm in their beliefs that “renewables are\r\ndecades away from competing” and “we are so cheap and\r\ndominant the economy depends on us” and “change will\r\ncome, but not on my watch”. Dream on boys.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHow many times have we heard\r\n\r\nSouthern Company CEO Tom Fanning say<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nI’ve always estimated kind of maybe by 2018 or so maybe 20, by the\r\nend of this decade, we could see distributed generation becoming a\r\nmore widespread manner, economic and beneficial to our customers.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nOr\r\n\r\nGeorgia Power CEO Paul Bowers say<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“Renewable (energy sources are) going to have a sliver,”\r\nBowers said of fuels to create electricity. “Is it going to be\r\n2 or 4 percent? That’s yet to be determined. Economics will drive\r\nthat. But you always remember (that renewable energy is) an\r\nintermittent resource. It’s not one you can depend on 100 percent of\r\nthe time.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nYet they both\r\n\r\nhave all the evidence<\/a> that\r\n\r\n“the importance of the change in the franchise”<\/a>, as Fanning calls it,\r\nit not going to be “sometime in the future”: it’s already here,\r\nno matter what they do.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThey can get out in front and lead, which Southern Company\r\nwith its largest U.S. private R&D operation is uniquely positioned to do,\r\nor they can be left to fall in the\r\n“death spiral”<\/a> of utilities,\r\nas Liam Denning called it in the Wall Street Journal last December,\r\nand as\r\nStephen Lacey elaborated<\/a> in Greentech Media 4 March 2014.\r\n

\r\nBack to Paul Gilder:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nTheir delusion however, is good news for the world. If the industry\r\nreally understood what was happening, it would pull out all stops to\r\nprevent it. While they’d ultimately fail, it would cost us decades\r\nof lost time — decades we can’t afford if we are to stabilise\r\nsociety and reduce the risk of collapse.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nMaybe good news for the world, but that shale gas “revolution”\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nwants to take our lands<\/a> to pipe its fracked gas through our fragile\r\nkarst limestone aquifer drinking water, and we need to stop that.\r\n

\r\nBack to Paul Gilder:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\nAnd all this brings increasing recognition by investors that the\r\n\r\ncarbon bubble<\/a> and\r\n\r\nstranded assets<\/a> are serious financial risks, which\r\nin turn reinforces the growing power of NGO campaigns against coal\r\nand CSG along with their\r\n\r\nfossil fuel divestment campaign<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n Then of\r\ncourse there is the role of climate policy which, given the threat\r\nto civilisation, seems like it might gain traction at some point!\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nSo, as I see it, the game is up for fossil fuels. Their decline is\r\nwell underway and it won’t be a gentle one.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>

\r\nThe sun is rising on the southeast, the country, and the world.\r\nIt’s time to banish the Spectra of fossil fuels past.\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nDivest VSU<\/a>.\r\nAnd\r\n\r\ndivest Alabama, Georgia, and Florida<\/a> of a useless, hazardous,\r\nand property-taking fracked methane pipeline before it even starts.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another observer gets it that green solar power is winning. Letting a fracking deliver company turn us into “stakeholders” in a white elephant methane pipeline would be an even huger waste after the pipeline stopped being used in a decade or so because sun, wind, and water power everything by then, winning like the Internet […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[141,216,14,19,6124,559,6687,23,24,55,36],"tags":[972,7539,8745,8753,7541,1003,8704,308,8701,8709,8702,12,7,562,8782,7538,6076,8713,970,8714,7540,6,8727,8716],"class_list":["post-8240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-co2","category-coal","category-economy","category-history","category-natural-gas-2","category-oil","category-pipeline-2","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-water","category-wind","tag-carbon-bubble","tag-carbon-crash","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-divest-valdosta","tag-divestment","tag-economy","tag-fracking","tag-georgia","tag-history","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-oil","tag-paul-gilder","tag-pipeline","tag-renewable-energy","tag-shale-gas","tag-solar","tag-stranded-assets","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-28U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8240"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9623,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8240\/revisions\/9623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}