I disagree , electricity transportation is superior to fossil fuel transportation. 40% of all oceanic shipping traffic is for fossil fuels, which consumes more energy. Plus all of the land based fossil fuel shipping. Investing in grid infrastructure makes the grid more resilient to disasters and distributes energy more directly and efficiently than by vehicle or pipeline. Plus the benefits of less congested shipping, rail, and road routes, less air pollution, and less noise pollution for sea life.
I think people forget that if we build enough solar, we’ll have such an energy surplus that it’ll be essentially free to electrify stuff and use that energy.
Losses from transformation and transmission go away as soon as the resource is unlimited.
A small nitpick about the 40% figure: different type of oceanic shipping are “counted” different ways. Crude/products (and bulks) are counted by deadweight (DWT) while container shipping is counted by twenty foot equivalent units (TEU). Passenger ships by people, RoRo/PCTCs by lane miles, etc. There are other more esoteric examples as well.
I think the important metric here is fuel burned: how much fuel do we burn just to ship fuel to where it can be refined, and then to where it’s needed?
Indeed, this would be a key metric, and probably someone has already done this work. If my hedging guy (who also covers our EUA/ETS biz) in London has this data, I’ll post it.
I disagree , electricity transportation is superior to fossil fuel transportation. 40% of all oceanic shipping traffic is for fossil fuels, which consumes more energy. Plus all of the land based fossil fuel shipping. Investing in grid infrastructure makes the grid more resilient to disasters and distributes energy more directly and efficiently than by vehicle or pipeline. Plus the benefits of less congested shipping, rail, and road routes, less air pollution, and less noise pollution for sea life.
I think people forget that if we build enough solar, we’ll have such an energy surplus that it’ll be essentially free to electrify stuff and use that energy.
Losses from transformation and transmission go away as soon as the resource is unlimited.
A small nitpick about the 40% figure: different type of oceanic shipping are “counted” different ways. Crude/products (and bulks) are counted by deadweight (DWT) while container shipping is counted by twenty foot equivalent units (TEU). Passenger ships by people, RoRo/PCTCs by lane miles, etc. There are other more esoteric examples as well.
I think the important metric here is fuel burned: how much fuel do we burn just to ship fuel to where it can be refined, and then to where it’s needed?
Indeed, this would be a key metric, and probably someone has already done this work. If my hedging guy (who also covers our EUA/ETS biz) in London has this data, I’ll post it.