You’re correct about the limitations of conventional electrochemical batteries and about hydroelectric being dependent on geography. But I should make a few points here.
I believe it’s wrong to refer to hydroelectric power as “not very scalable”. The province of Quebec generates almost all of its electricity from hydro power, and it’s not exactly small potatoes – it’s one of the largest electricity markets in North America:
Hydro-Québec’s hydroelectric developments include 62 generating stations and 27 large reservoirs with a combined storage capacity of 176 TWh, as well as 668 dams and 98 control structures. Erreur 404 | Hydro-Québec
Meanwhile Ontario, where conditions are less favorable for hydro power, generates 58% of its electricity from nuclear power and about a quarter of it from hydroelectric. As of last year, there are no coal-fired plants at all any more.
On the subject of batteries, while you’re undoubtedly correct, the generic term “battery” can be taken to mean any means of storing power that can be converted to electricity. Hydrogen fuel cells may be an efficient way to do this if we can solve the cost and infrastructure problems. Hydrogen-powered ICEs may be practical as an interim compromise. There are already hydrogen distribution stations in parts of Europe.
And on a final point, we are in for nothing short of global catastrophe if we wait for market forces to make fossil fuels impractical or too expensive. Let’s remember where fossil fuels come from: they are long-sequestered carbon from hundreds of millions of years ago when the earth’s atmosphere had many times the present CO2 levels, there were no polar ice caps, seas were hundreds of feet higher, and the first hominid was still hundreds of millions of years away in the evolutionary timetable. When we release this carbon into the atmosphere what we’re essentially doing is creating unbalanced climate forcings that are driving the climate back to that era, and are doing it – geologically speaking – in an instantaneous blink of an eye. The climatological and ecological impacts of such unprecedented rapid and extreme change pose an increasingly dire level of risk to every living thing on this planet.
Just want to add that point #3 was a general reply to the OP and to a number of comments elsewhere that suggest that market forces will solve the fossil fuel problems and eventually curtail their use. This is false because the market economics that drive fossil fuel costs are completely unrelated to the environmental damage they cause. This is, indeed, the fundamental problem with fossil fuels – that the atmosphere we all share can be used with complete impunity as a free dumping ground for their emissions, with absolutely no costing for the consequences. It’s the exact equivalent of disposing of your household garbage by throwing it out the window.
Peak Oil takes me back. I think that was really trendy about the time of the “THIS IS SPARTA!” meme. Saudi Arabia and Mexico’s fields were on the precipice of collapse. By 2010 the peak should have happened. We should be in a post apocalyptic hellscape by now and trading ammo and gold for food. I see that the Oil Drum closed down a couple years ago. That was a fun place. Kunstler’s blog of The Long Emergency fame is still going strong, though he seems to mostly talk about politics in general now.
There are hundreds of years of coal and nat gas. So my guess is we’re going to pollute the ever living hell out of this place.
Hydro is great - but between the land it takes, changing weather patterns, downstream problems - it simply cannot scale enough (unless we find a new mass storage medium)
I imagine a new battery technology coupled with nuclear being the way forward.
And yes - for cars, plug in charging will be the answer, not swapping batteries.
But as a side note - oil is used for more than just making petrol…
meh. China and India are investing massively in renewable and nuclear power. Europe is already below its ambitious 2020 co2 emission goals. The price of solar and wind energy have been dropping precipitously with no end in sight, already below coal in some regions. And implementation is in a steep increase. Electric cars seem finally to have become usuable for the average citizens, or will be shortly. Large investments in battery technology and manufacturing. etc.
You really need to learn the difference between a reserve and a resource.
The world has had ~20 years worth of available reserves for over 100 years, it always will have ~20 years worth of available reserves.
You may want to spend some time investigating why this is, and then understanding why we had 20 years worth of reserves in 1960, yet still have 20 years worth of reserves today.
You can not just divide available reserves by current annual use and come up with a figure that tells us how long oil will last. Care to guess why that is?
“Burning grain alcohol, Some alcohols, mainly ethanol and methanol, can be used as an alcohol fuel. Fuel performance can be increased in forced induction internal combustion engines by injecting alcohol into the air intake after the turbocharger or supercharger has pressurized the air. This cools the pressurized air, providing a denser air charge, which allows for more fuel, and therefore more power.”
We can do it just so long as you do not drink it while driving you car
I also believe we can find a way to electrolyze seawater splitting the H20 and storing the gas hydrogen for future as well as getting all the minerals that the seawater contains as a byproduct
I think the game changer will be, whatever they can develop first to operate a jet engine. There are plenty of hybrid and electric cars, but you’re not going to get from North America to Europe using one any time soon. (You’re also not going to see the development of nuclear powered commercial planes, for the simple reason that there will be far too many fears - quite a few of which will be justified - as to what happens when a plane crashes.)