Pipelines, energy and natural resources

[lenaitch]

Victoria hates their new electric pumper truck so much that they're going to buy a second one

There are apparently two systems out there; neither are straight EV. What they call a 'parallel' sounds like a hybrid. It runs on electricity until an engine has to kick in to run pumps, etc. A 'series' system is essentially an EV with an on board generator that kicks when the batteries become rundown. Apparently, someone the 'series' type lack sufficient fossil output to keep the pump et Al running at full capacity. I don't know There are any straight EVs out there.

I doubt it is a big issue in a place like Victoria, but even if a piece of apparatus is just on scene and not pumping (a big energy hog), simply keep the crew and on board water tank warm will consume a lot of electrons.

 

[Kirkhill]

https://fordauthority.com/2025/12/ford-blueoval-sk-battery-park-plant-will-close-in-february/

Battery plants being shuttered. Were they even in production?

 

[daftandbarmy]

Explains alot...

@mapsandstuff_ on Instagram: "Percent of adults who think Earth is getting warmer. A majority of Americans believe in climate change across the country, and younger generations don’t view the issue as partisan. Millennials are more concerned about cl

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report sheds light on climate change beliefs in the US, revealing a majority of Americans agree the Earth is warming. Younger generations, particularly millennials, are more concerned about climate change than older generations. Learn more about the...

www.instagram.com

 

[ytz]

I'm just going to throw two datapoints up. This place has a large blindspot on some of this.

 

[ytz]

https://fordauthority.com/2025/12/ford-blueoval-sk-battery-park-plant-will-close-in-february/

Battery plants being shuttered. Were they even in production?

North America =\= the world. The Global South is literally skipping gas cars the way they skipped landlines. North Americans just don't see it.

From Ethiopia To Nepal: The EV Boom You Didn’t See Coming

• EVs hit 76% of Nepal's new car market as it taxes gas cars out of the market.
• EVs start taking over in Ethiopia after it became the world's first country to ban the import of ICE cars.
• China's cheap, plentiful EVs fuel fast EV adoption in many 'developing' nations.

https://share.google/KfnWAOQ5UYTJYWrJ6

I've said this before. Oil exporters (like Canada) will always struggle to understand oil importers. Nepal had one tiff with India and decided to simply electrify instead of relying on another country for energy security. Expect to see more and more of this.

Telling the Chinese that they'd be cut off from oil imports in a war was some of the best motivation for them to develop an EV sector that doesn't just reduce theur importance on imported oil. Does it for everybody else too.

 

[suffolkowner]

I'm just going to throw two datapoints up. This place has a large blindspot on some of this.

sad to see the nuclear fall off IMO, something we seemed to have missed the window on

North America =\= the world. The Global South is literally skipping gas cars the way they skipped landlines. North Americans just don't see it.



I've said this before. Oil exporters (like Canada) will always struggle to understand oil importers. Nepal had one tiff with India and decided to simply electrify instead of relying on another country for energy security. Expect to see more and more of this.

Telling the Chinese that they'd be cut off from oil imports in a war was some of the best motivation for them to develop an EV sector that doesn't just reduce theur importance on imported oil. Does it for everybody else too.

the distances we drive in NA might be a huge mitigating factor

 

[childs56]

North America =\= the world. The Global South is literally skipping gas cars the way they skipped landlines. North Americans just don't see it.



I've said this before. Oil exporters (like Canada) will always struggle to understand oil importers. Nepal had one tiff with India and decided to simply electrify instead of relying on another country for energy security. Expect to see more and more of this.

Telling the Chinese that they'd be cut off from oil imports in a war was some of the best motivation for them to develop an EV sector that doesn't just reduce theur importance on imported oil. Does it for everybody else too.

Except the Oil ( specifically oil sands), Natural gas along with that coal they import from Canada is using not only for fuel in ICE vehicles but also a major ingredient used in making the plastics and exotic metals/polymers they use to manufacture their Electric cars.
Oil, Natural gas and coal are not going anywhere in our life times. If anything the demand will increase for manufacturing. The cost will go up per barrel as a large portion of the product right now is used to fuel ICE, power generating plants and make steel. Take away all that and you have lots of product not being used for its bulk cost. Prices will go up.

 

[ytz]

sad to see the nuclear fall off IMO, something we seemed to have missed the window on

Fukushima really hurt nuclear globally. But also the costs of nuclear are doing serious damage to the sector. Ironically, the one place where nuclear is being built cheaply? China. They are building as many or more reactors than the rest of the world combined.

distances we drive in NA might be a huge mitigating factor

It's not like Ethiopia is a small country. Also the average American or Canadian isn't driving hundreds of kilometers on a daily basis. Our longer distances just mean a bit more charging infrastructure.

What's important here is to understand that developing countries are motivated to get off oil. They'll accept way more inconveniences than us to do that.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Don’t forget how important natural gas is to making fertilizer, too.

I don’t see a windmill or a solar panel doing that any time, soon.

 

[ytz]

Except the Oil ( specifically oil sands), Natural gas along with that coal they import from Canada is using not only for fuel in ICE vehicles but also a major ingredient used in making the plastics and exotic metals/polymers they use to manufacture their Electric cars.

Every single time this point comes up. The same strawman.

1) Nobody is saying oil consumption will go to zero tomorrow.

2) Half of oil consumption globally is combustion for road or rail transport.

3) 40% of global natural gas consumption is for electricity generation.

If China's car market alone (30M annual sales) went to full electric, that alone would reduce global oil demand by millions of barrels per day over time. Similarly, for gas, guess what happens with enough nuclear and renewables.

 

[suffolkowner]

Fukushima really hurt nuclear globally. But also the costs of nuclear are doing serious damage to the sector. Ironically, the one place where nuclear is being built cheaply? China. They are building as many or more reactors than the rest of the world combined.



It's not like Ethiopia is a small country. Also the average American or Canadian isn't driving hundreds of kilometers on a daily basis. Our longer distances just mean a bit more charging infrastructure.

What's important here is to understand that developing countries are motivated to get off oil. They'll accept way more inconveniences than us to do that.

Is China just building the same reactor over and over for economies of scale?

 

[ytz]

My personal interest in renewables and why I went out of my way to learn about cleantech (on top of my prescribed workload) during my sponsored PG at a service academy in the US?

Cause I hate the instability that petrostates export. Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. The sooner oil stops being a strategic resource and just becomes a normal industrial commodity the better off the world will be. I hope to live long enough to see the day where nobody cares about the Persian Gulf at all.

It's been incredible to them see the second order effects. Like EV manufacturing enabling drone production. And watching China starting to use renewables as strategic exports.

 

[ytz]

Is China just building the same reactor over and over for economies of scale?

Mostly yes. They understand economies of scale and standardization in ways that the West is simply incapable of.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

My personal interest in renewables and why I went out of my way to learn about cleantech (on top of my prescribed workload) during my sponsored PG at a service academy in the US?

Cause I hate the instability that petrostates export. Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. The sooner oil stops being a strategic resource and just becomes a normal industrial commodity the better off the world will be. I hope to live long enough to see the day where nobody cares about the Persian Gulf at all.

It's been incredible to them see the second order effects. Like EV manufacturing enabling drone production. And watching China starting to use renewables as strategic exports.

So, what you are saying is that China is using renewables as a strategic resource to export their brand of instability?

Would you at least concede that there is far less cyber risk importing a barrel of Saudi Oil, than importing a Chinese solar panel or electric car?

 

[childs56]

Every single time this point comes up. The same strawman.

Did you read my actual post or did you see the name and write?

1) Nobody is saying oil consumption will go to zero tomorrow.

I did not say that did I?

2) Half of oil consumption globally is combustion for road or rail transport.

Currently yes. But usage may go down or it might increase. As we have seen here in Canada Electric Bus fleets have not fared that well.

3) 40% of global natural gas consumption is for electricity generation.

Break that down even further and it should make one ask how can we replace NG when 40% is used by industry, 28% residential. 8% Transportation 13% the remainder is made up with other sectors.

If China's car market alone (30M annual sales) went to full electric, that alone would reduce global oil demand by millions of barrels per day over time. Similarly, for gas, guess what happens with enough nuclear and renewables.

Would this not increase manufacturing usages of current products.? Add in the electricity production required. Not to mention add in the mining required to produce the power cells. what are the true numbers of increase or reduction of todays product usage.

It is a question that has been asked time and time again, has yet to be answered.
I do not know many people who would mind owning a $10-15000 dollar electric vehicle for scooting around town. Those same people realize we do not have the infrastructure in place to make it realistic for every house to charge a electric vehicle. That includes power generation, power transmission and storage. It really is a Trillion dollar question that needs to be addressed before things can progress forward.

One can say Ethiopia is all electric vehicles. Yet they suffer brownouts through out the country no less then 8 times a months. They have to increase their electricity production 10 plus times its current ( ) capacity in order to meet near future demands. How can they perform this quickly and with an emerging market that is financially depressed?

 

[suffolkowner]

So, what you are saying is that China is using renewables as a strategic resource to export their brand of instability?

Would you at least concede that there is far less cyber risk importing a barrel of Saudi Oil, than importing a Chinese solar panel or electric car?

is there a risk in the panels or more so the controller?

 

[Brad Sallows]

I'm just going to throw two datapoints up. This place has a large blindspot on some of this.

What's the blindspot? That renewables are replacing mostly nuclear's share? That much older techs took longer to hit a particular target (which is as it happens only a very small fraction of total global demand)?

More interesting is world energy demand.



Here

 

[SeaKingTacco]

is there a risk in the panels or more so the controller?

The reading I have done indicates that, if there is Chinese circuitry, there is a non-zero chance of spyware; kill switches and malware…

 

[daftandbarmy]

The reading I have done indicates that, if there is Chinese circuitry, there is a non-zero chance of spyware; kill switches and malware…

But... but... but...

Nvidia says no backdoors, kill switches, or spyware in its chips after China accusations​

"That's not how trustworthy systems are built - and never will be"​

Almost a week after China claimed its data center GPUs contained security and privacy issues, Nvidia has published a post ensuring the public that there are no backdoors, kill switches, or spyware in its products. Some experts say the technology needed for real-time GPU tracking -- which US politicians are calling for -- is already built into the chips.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) last week said that Beijing authorities had summoned Nvidia to discuss national security concerns related to the China-specific H20 chip, including potential tracking and backdoors, which could allow remote access to the GPUs.

This week, Nvidia's Chief Security Officer David Reber wrote that the company's products "do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors."

https://www.techspot.com/news/108955-nvidia-no-backdoors-kill-switches-or-spyware-chips.html

 

[ytz]

The reading I have done indicates that, if there is Chinese circuitry, there is a non-zero chance of spyware; kill switches and malware…

You can airgap and make sure your solar panel is never connected to the Internet. No risk. But also, at this point, it's really not about us. What matters is that the Global South is happy to buy these panels by the literal boatload. That's the geopolitical and (eventually) economic challenge. What you and I put or don't put on our own roofs is largely irrelevant to global geopolitics.