Comment by Lerc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lerc | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

In broad strokes I tend to agree. I think there is a fairly good path to moving most things to electricity and in turn moving most electricity generation to renewables.

The more nuanced view is that I would support a residual use of fossil fuels for niche applications that require the properties of the fuel in instances where no known substitute solution would do the job.

By and large, renewables are marching towards a state where they will provide enough of the generation that what remains would be insignificant.

I would be interested to know where the gas is coming from for this particular data centre. There are a few cases that generation by gas is preferable to what is happening right now. One good example is if the gas is from sources that would otherwise be flared off. I have heard in the past that businesses have been reluctant to harness energy from gas rather than flaring it off because any user of the energy gets tagged with the CO2 emissions. If it just gets burnt off it makes no difference to the amount of total emissions, but it avoids the CO2 being attributed to their industry.

While a good point, it also creates lock-in effects. If you look at the top EV adopters, they barely use gas power. This likely isn't a coincidence.

Now you will have the AI lobby pushing against EVs (so that oil drilling can create gas as a byproduct), as if it wasn't already an uphill battle in the US...

I suppose EVs are putting pressure on their precious grid.

Worse, EVs start demand destruction for gasoline, which makes the other fractions from the refining process more expensive because gasoline is now a waste product. Or so the crayon chart on the restaurant placemat seems to indicate.

It’s largely associated methane co-produced from oil production in the Permian. The economics of co-production means that the gas is often the cheapest in the nation and can have negative prices during large oil production swings. I believe it went nearly -$10 MMBtu this year at one point.

That would suggest if no-one purchased it, it would just be flared off. Does the negative price come about because of pathological financial conditions, or is it the case that the producers are financially penalised for flaring?

It acts as a negative feedback signal for producers because there is limited physical pipeline capacity. I think there are some financial incentives to reduce flaring for the LNG export market, but only a small amount of gas was flared in that region (less than 5%).

There is a time and place for fossil fuels. I see too many people scream for electrification in new biuldings yet do not hesitate to operate a backyard grill, or eat out at restaurants (electrifying a commercial kitchen is a massive ask).

> I see too many people scream for electrification in new biuldings yet do not hesitate to operate a backyard grill, or eat out at restaurants

It's not hypocrisy to want things to be better and tolerate that some things are net negative. I have a fireplace and enjoy using it. But it's bad for my kids health and neighborhood air quality. So I use it far less than my parents did theirs. I also don't commute and fly far less than my father did throughout his life.

Life isn't some strict binary, all or nothing affair.

It sounds very hypocris to want your things better and tolerate neighborhood things worse.

Well, for those who want to ban gas stovetops in new biulding, it is a binary world. The reality is that home cooking is a rounding error in terms of energy usage.

Side question, what is your native language or autocorrect/keyboard application?

You've spelt "building' wrong twice, the exact same way 'biulding'.

Lol. GrapheneOS. I like it but it does have the worst autocorrect ever, so bad i have disabled it.

But methane leaks from residential connections are a significant source. Requiring people who want to cook with gas inside or outside to use bottles instead of a piped connection is not unreasonable, IMO.

Ah yes, 20GW of new LNG based power generation is the same as the occasional backyard grill usage, or eating out at restaurants...

Very whataboutism

Reply on news.ycombinator.com