An excellent piece with a lot of not so 'common sense.'
One of the most essential anti-arguments is Energy Return On Energy Invested (a topic I touched on with solar recently https://www.newworldperspective.com/i/132726413/solar-power ). In this realm, renewables are a dismal failure and this is critically more important than the more often, easier-explained intermittency talking point that most people use as a base argument.
Even when the renewables ARE working, their return on energy invested is so much lower than hydrocarbon energy it's crazy. Humanity should be striving to move forward with more dense energy sources, not going back in time to the pre-industrial age returns on energy which saw less human development possible. Hydrocarbon power is what facilitated the industrial age and the progress mankind has made in the last two centuries.
Moving back to poorer energy sources (wind, solar etc) will see humanity regress if allowed. ALl well and good for a 'rich' Europe and North America + satellites, but we expect the emerging world to live by this standard also. Sorry, you're not allowed to have refrigerators, 100% hospital uptime, and airconditioning for everyone, we've decided our narrative is more important than your wellbeing, so deal with it.
That's before we even get into the realm of carbon credits and other financial mechanisms the West will use to try and fleece more money out of the system for boondoggles. Or the fact that all this 'clean energy' requires lots of dirty big machines (running on hydrocarbon energy) to dig dirty great big holes in the earth to bring up all the 'clean metals.'
From an investment view, it's clear to steer well clear of renewable fantasies. Though you mentioned investing in hydropower utilities, I'd lean more toward hydrocarbon sources if we're talking purely ROI not ideological basis which is what my capital is concerned with. The valuations of oil stocks in Brazil and China (non-woke and won't bend to the will of the screechers) as well as coal miners in Asia are through the floor and offer truly excellent yields and future cap growth (even assuming no multiple expansion). Oil is still the most energy dense power source we have (1 barrel = 500,000 human labour hours), and coal is still one of the cheapest and more reliable forms of energy particularly for the developing world due to it's relatively cheaper infrastructure requirements (don't need pipelines, expensive power plants etc).
Rumors of the death of oil and coal have been greatly exaggerated.
Absolutely 100% agree with you, nuclear is desperately needed for the future, the most energy dense power source we have. That has its own ill-advised arguments and boogey men against it but is inevitable.
Changing to more dense energy sources is key. In the interim before nuclear can be built out (get past the bad arguments and build plants which takes a decade +), keeping oil makes more sense and reverting to lower energy sources like wind, solar or biomass (a term used to hide the reality of burning wood like in the stone age!) is just idiotic and detrimental to human progress.
I suspect a improved metric would be Returns on Energy Invested, with a ponderation for the capex. Because of course, ROEI of slavery to grow seed oil could maybe be kinda high but extraordinarily wasteful of human capital.
So nuclear ROEI is awesome at first sight, but requires a lot of expensive and complex systems around it, instead of just a big boiler, a turbine and turning water into a steam. Ultimately, the energy spent in breeding and training nuclear engineers, safety measures, nuclear waste processing, and such necessities should be included in a realistic ROEI.
Capex being an okay ish proxy for this very real cost.
That's all true but where to invest according to your conclusion is not simple if one has in mind geostrategic divide as well and even more future even larger divides and conflicts that could very well happened.
I would say even if in BRICS, brazilian oil stocks are the best bargains out there, even if they got a little of a run after the Lula induced crash.
Colombian and Argentian come to mind as well. I remember recommending pampa energy 1 or 2 years ago, and it did a great 3 fold since DESPITE the turmoil in Argentina.
I suspect Indonesian coal could be a similar play, they are big enough to just sit it out and sell energy to all parties.
To my hesitation, even Africa might be a play here, but I am very wary of anything on the continent
Indonesia definitely looks interesting and rather safe from geopolitical angle, although inside its a tough mixture of different nations/tribes/ethnicities.
The main force behind is the wish to cut Russians, Iranians, Venezuelians etc of their main sources of income to weaken and smash them. Ecologists are just "the useful idiots" that are exploited for much "larger goals" of much stronger and much less naive actors. And partly are already being thrown under the bus, after successful implementation of oil price cap for RU and similar mesaures.
I am somewhat not sure this is not a case of the "believe your own propaganda" syndrome. If just making oil irrelevant was the point, nuclear would have been the solution of choice. After all, is it not why the French ended with 70% of their power from it.
Truly I believe they believe that renewables can do the job. Mostly because the ruling elite is a bunch of career politicians, lawyers and other non technical or humanities educated profiles. Never held a job and could not mention even the most basic physics laws like thermodynamics, even less engineering or energy economics.
Russia has even larger importance, know how etc in nuclear, than in fossil fuels...
If you take a look at matherials "needed for energy transition" they are exactly the few ones Russia does not have an abundance of (lithium, copper, cobalt...). but in the meantime, when they were focused on Russia, an Eastern giant stepped in... in those technologies and minerals...
of course, I am sure that most of the politicians etc really believe this new dogma...
An excellent piece with a lot of not so 'common sense.'
One of the most essential anti-arguments is Energy Return On Energy Invested (a topic I touched on with solar recently https://www.newworldperspective.com/i/132726413/solar-power ). In this realm, renewables are a dismal failure and this is critically more important than the more often, easier-explained intermittency talking point that most people use as a base argument.
Even when the renewables ARE working, their return on energy invested is so much lower than hydrocarbon energy it's crazy. Humanity should be striving to move forward with more dense energy sources, not going back in time to the pre-industrial age returns on energy which saw less human development possible. Hydrocarbon power is what facilitated the industrial age and the progress mankind has made in the last two centuries.
Moving back to poorer energy sources (wind, solar etc) will see humanity regress if allowed. ALl well and good for a 'rich' Europe and North America + satellites, but we expect the emerging world to live by this standard also. Sorry, you're not allowed to have refrigerators, 100% hospital uptime, and airconditioning for everyone, we've decided our narrative is more important than your wellbeing, so deal with it.
That's before we even get into the realm of carbon credits and other financial mechanisms the West will use to try and fleece more money out of the system for boondoggles. Or the fact that all this 'clean energy' requires lots of dirty big machines (running on hydrocarbon energy) to dig dirty great big holes in the earth to bring up all the 'clean metals.'
From an investment view, it's clear to steer well clear of renewable fantasies. Though you mentioned investing in hydropower utilities, I'd lean more toward hydrocarbon sources if we're talking purely ROI not ideological basis which is what my capital is concerned with. The valuations of oil stocks in Brazil and China (non-woke and won't bend to the will of the screechers) as well as coal miners in Asia are through the floor and offer truly excellent yields and future cap growth (even assuming no multiple expansion). Oil is still the most energy dense power source we have (1 barrel = 500,000 human labour hours), and coal is still one of the cheapest and more reliable forms of energy particularly for the developing world due to it's relatively cheaper infrastructure requirements (don't need pipelines, expensive power plants etc).
Rumors of the death of oil and coal have been greatly exaggerated.
One kg of oil produces 12 Kwh, one kg of uranium produces 45,000 Kwh. Seems to me oil is moving backwards too, insofar as power plant production goes.
Absolutely 100% agree with you, nuclear is desperately needed for the future, the most energy dense power source we have. That has its own ill-advised arguments and boogey men against it but is inevitable.
Changing to more dense energy sources is key. In the interim before nuclear can be built out (get past the bad arguments and build plants which takes a decade +), keeping oil makes more sense and reverting to lower energy sources like wind, solar or biomass (a term used to hide the reality of burning wood like in the stone age!) is just idiotic and detrimental to human progress.
I agree ROEI is undervalued indeed.
I suspect a improved metric would be Returns on Energy Invested, with a ponderation for the capex. Because of course, ROEI of slavery to grow seed oil could maybe be kinda high but extraordinarily wasteful of human capital.
So nuclear ROEI is awesome at first sight, but requires a lot of expensive and complex systems around it, instead of just a big boiler, a turbine and turning water into a steam. Ultimately, the energy spent in breeding and training nuclear engineers, safety measures, nuclear waste processing, and such necessities should be included in a realistic ROEI.
Capex being an okay ish proxy for this very real cost.
That's all true but where to invest according to your conclusion is not simple if one has in mind geostrategic divide as well and even more future even larger divides and conflicts that could very well happened.
I would say even if in BRICS, brazilian oil stocks are the best bargains out there, even if they got a little of a run after the Lula induced crash.
Colombian and Argentian come to mind as well. I remember recommending pampa energy 1 or 2 years ago, and it did a great 3 fold since DESPITE the turmoil in Argentina.
I suspect Indonesian coal could be a similar play, they are big enough to just sit it out and sell energy to all parties.
To my hesitation, even Africa might be a play here, but I am very wary of anything on the continent
Indonesia definitely looks interesting and rather safe from geopolitical angle, although inside its a tough mixture of different nations/tribes/ethnicities.
The main force behind is the wish to cut Russians, Iranians, Venezuelians etc of their main sources of income to weaken and smash them. Ecologists are just "the useful idiots" that are exploited for much "larger goals" of much stronger and much less naive actors. And partly are already being thrown under the bus, after successful implementation of oil price cap for RU and similar mesaures.
I am somewhat not sure this is not a case of the "believe your own propaganda" syndrome. If just making oil irrelevant was the point, nuclear would have been the solution of choice. After all, is it not why the French ended with 70% of their power from it.
Truly I believe they believe that renewables can do the job. Mostly because the ruling elite is a bunch of career politicians, lawyers and other non technical or humanities educated profiles. Never held a job and could not mention even the most basic physics laws like thermodynamics, even less engineering or energy economics.
Russia has even larger importance, know how etc in nuclear, than in fossil fuels...
If you take a look at matherials "needed for energy transition" they are exactly the few ones Russia does not have an abundance of (lithium, copper, cobalt...). but in the meantime, when they were focused on Russia, an Eastern giant stepped in... in those technologies and minerals...
of course, I am sure that most of the politicians etc really believe this new dogma...
take a look at what is happening in Niger, comments from Russia, and at Uranium-Niger-France connection...