Donald Trump has done more to promote clean energy use than any single person in history.
It’s absolutely 5d chess.
Could be a lesson to fossil backers: back an unpredictable clown and you may end up worse than the alternative.
I’ll agree, but only in the sense that he’s losing badly. Trump has been and continues to be all about fossil fuels, he’s just an idiot and incompetent and ruins everything around him.
Hey, if he ruins his own party, that’s great! Keep it coming!
Ultimately, though, his own health problems may end himself during his term…
The three Cs that define Trump: chaos, corruption and cruelty.
The moment you try an EV for more than the 5 minutes test drive, you realize that there’s no going back. Even with its “drawbacks”, it’s far superior to ICE vehicles. I haven’t met anyone yet that said “I’ll go back to gas because I don’t like my EV”.
Privacy.
Once you realize they’re watching you in the cameras and recoding you with the microphones and your GPS locations and selling that data…
This is increasingly the same with ICE vehicles when active, though.
Yes. But I can’t buy an old used EV that’s not a surveillance capsule.
I’ve met one once, but his usecase was pretty wild so I kinda understand him.
I like classic cars. Owning an EV made me realise I never cared what gets them moving, I just hate modern cars. I wish I could retrofit a Citroen CX with absurdly powerful electric motors and a decent battery.
Once you go B…. EV you never go back
Bought an EV well before the Iran war clusterfuck. I’m never going back: driving an EV is more comfortable, better for the climate… and cheaper 💰🤑💶
Japan will. I doubt they learned anything from this crisis.
Fuel prices have pushed a lot of people and businesses to finally buy their first electric car or truck or crane or bulldozer or whatever, and they aren’t going to set it on fire and replace it with diesel gear if fuel prices go back down again. At most, they’ll sell it to someone else who will use it instead. Those electric equipment purchases have permanently removed fuel demand.
That’s a bit dramatic.
The fuel prices have certainly made EVs more desirable, and that change in perception won’t dissipate.
However, manufacturers didn’t magically have more product arriving at market for consumers to buy in the few months this crisis lasted.
probably cut the costs on equipment and maitenance, granted they might need more specialized maitenenace care.
World primary energy use shows an effectively constant fraction of fossil in the overall use. There is no “turning back” from something that doesn’t exist.
Primary is a terrible way to look at things when most of the energy in fossil fuels is wasted as heat, but it isn’t wasted for renewables. You end up seeing almost no shift when large changes are happening
You can’t use heat pumps for high-temperature industrial processes. And heat pumps and EVs need grid upgrade and renewable infra which are energy-intensive.
You can get industrial heat pumps which put out 200°C now. Resistive above that.
And yes, we need a large electrical system build-out. Which is happening anyways for AI. Just with fossil fuels behind it instead of wind and solar.
The alternative to shifting off of fossil fuels is a seriously degraded world
The fossil use in thermal and chemical inputs below is way beyond heat pumps so they count 1:1 in primary energy.
- Iron, Steel, and Metal Processing
These processes require some of the highest temperatures in manufacturing to extract, melt, and purify metals.
Blast Furnace Smelting: 1,500 °C - 2,000 °C — Used to reduce iron ore into liquid pig iron.
Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) Steelmaking: 1,600 °C - 1,700 °C — Melts recycled scrap steel to produce new steel.
Metal Casting and Founding: 1,200 °C - 1,600 °C — Melting metals like aluminum, copper, and iron into molds.
Heat Treating (Annealing, Hardening, Tempering): 400 °C - 1,100 °C — Controlled heating and cooling processes to alter the physical and chemical properties of steel and alloys.
- Ceramics, Glass, and Cement
These involve extreme heating to drive off moisture, chemically alter minerals, and melt raw materials into durable goods.
Cement Clinkering (Rotary Kilns): ~ 1,450 °C — Heats limestone and clay to form cement clinker.
Glass Melting: 1,200 °C - 1,600 °C — Melts silica sand, soda ash, and limestone into molten glass.
Ceramic Firing / Sintering: 1,000 °C - 1,400 °C — Hardens and bonds ceramic materials to produce brick, tiles, and advanced technical ceramics.
Lime Calcination: 850 °C - 950 °C — Decomposes limestone into calcium oxide (quicklime) and carbon dioxide.
- Chemical Processing and Petroleum Refining
High temperatures are utilized in the petrochemical sector for cracking, reforming, and producing core industrial gases.
Steam Cracking: 750 °C - 900 °C — Breaks down heavy hydrocarbons into lighter, valuable alkenes (like ethylene).
Steam Methane Reforming: 700 °C - 1,000 °C — Reacts steam with natural gas to produce synthesis gas and hydrogen.
Ammonia Production (Haber-Bosch process): ~ 400 °C - 500 °C — Requires both high heat and high pressure to synthesize ammonia.
- Refining and Mining
These processes are responsible for extracting precious metals and purifying chemical elements from mined ores.
Copper / Zinc Smelting: 1,100 °C - 1,300 °C — Melts copper and zinc ores to remove impurities.
Calcination of Alumina (Bayer Process): 1,000 °C - 1,200 °C — Removes water from aluminum hydroxide to produce alumina.
