When will fossil fuel useage peak a general discussion

pile-o-stone

It won't be long before 'The Former Member known as GreatApe' will be commenting on here, despite....

GreatApe wrote: »

[Posted: 14-08-2019, 8:32 PM]
With this I will bow out too and intend to delete this account (if possible) if not I'll randomly generated a password I can't recover. I hope not to return to this part of the forum for quite some time (hopefully months if not years)

As someone somewhat prone to obsess it's better to obsess on things that are productive and this really isn't

So I bid you all adieu

Adieu old friend, adieu.

EricMears

pile-o-stone wrote: »

It won't be long before 'The Former Member known as GreatApe' will be commenting on here, despite....

Adieu old friend, adieu.

You may not have noticed but he/she created this topic after the 'adieu' message !

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

Producing biogas using energy that would have otherwise been curtailed makes a lot of sense.

Synthetic fuels are unlikely and unnecessary for at least another 20+ years

Just install hybrid boilers.
If there is an excess of electricity then my gas boiler can switch to electricity until the excess is over

If I use 1 unit of electricity I save 1.2 units of natural gas
120% efficiency low cost no additional huge Dirty electricity to hydrogen to methane chemical industry

Cheap easy effective

This is electricity to methane but in a smart way rather than a dumb way

GreatApe

frozen_wastes wrote: »

See here:

In particular I draw your attention to the chart on page 1 which shows that transport is by far the largest consumer of energy in the UK.

The chart on page 9 is also interesting. It shows that road transportation accounts for by far the largest consumption of energy amongst the transport sector in the UK. Not only that, but energy consumption in the transportation sector is now rising again following a fall from 2006-2012.

So the final energy consumption from petroleum products accounts for 40% of the UK's final energy demand. Whilst overall energy demand has been falling, that cannot be said for the transport sector.

Electrifying ground transportation is therefore a key objective towards reducing emissions and therefore it's worth supporting as a national priority. That applies not only to cars, but also freight vehicles.

In terms of how quickly this is happening, the market penetration of plugin vehicles was around 2% of all car sales in the year 2018.
https://www.nextgreencar.com/electric-cars/statistics/
That's small, but the trend over preceeding years has been approximately exponential. If you extrapolate those trends on a sigmoid function (S-Curve) into the next decade then we'll be seeing about 30-40% of all car sales being electric by the year 2025.

So following these trends I reckon by the year 2030, there will still be plenty of existing petrol and diesel cars on the road, but very few new ICE cars will be offered for sale. It will become an increasingly niche market (long range lorries will probably be the last remaining road market for ICEs)

So you think it's wise for the government to allow wealthy people like me to buy ourselves brand new premium cars effectively from pre tax income?

This more or less means I can buy a Tesla for 50% off.

Now Tesla isn't giving me this discount, nor is the tooth fairy, it's coming from the government so is it wise for this country to give me a £50,000 discount on a model X?

This seem extremely silly given that we could use that money instead on healthcare, and also the fact that BEVs will happen irrespective of what we do in the UK

frozen_wastes

GreatApe wrote: »

it's coming from the government so is it wise for this country to give me a £50,000 discount on a model X?

This seem extremely silly given that we could use that money instead on healthcare, and also the fact that BEVs will happen irrespective of what we do in the UK

Healthcare is essentially ongoing maintenance for the country. It isn't an investment into future economic prosperity.

Subsidies, generally speaking are applied with some sort of national interest in mind. In many instances those subsidies are used to give promising startup industries or technologies a boost, and as such they are temporary.

Often a subsidy will be paid for many times over in the future once that technology/ industry grows and is able to support itself. This is one such example.

That repayment down the line is what pays for the countries healthcare in the long term.

Without this subsidy, which also act's as a very strong policy indicator, we might end up seeing our car industry (which is quite big by the way) fall into terminal decline (due to too many management people being hardwired into thinking that petrol/diesel is what customers want). It's then that we get calls for the car industry to be bailed out, and at that point it certainly becomes a waste of good public money.

zeupater

1961Nick wrote: »

Producing biogas using energy that would have otherwise been curtailed makes a lot of sense as long as storage isn't prohibitively expensive?? It could also be the answer to the frequency problem that we've just experienced.

Hi

Even moreso in a highly distributed generation environment where the impact of a network based event is diluted by the number of individual connection nodes & therefore becomes less of an issue ....

HTH
Z

1961Nick

GreatApe wrote: »

So you think it's wise for the government to allow wealthy people like me to buy ourselves brand new premium cars effectively from pre tax income?

This more or less means I can buy a Tesla for 50% off.

Now Tesla isn't giving me this discount, nor is the tooth fairy, it's coming from the government so is it wise for this country to give me a £50,000 discount on a model X?

This seem extremely silly given that we could use that money instead on healthcare, and also the fact that BEVs will happen irrespective of what we do in the UK

The 'introductory' BIK discount won't last very long imo. What it will do is kick start the adoption of BEVs in the UK & that has to be a good thing. Some of the cost could possibly be recovered by increasing the BIK rates on ICE vehicles?

However, I do wonder if the Treasury has thoroughly thought this policy through because it's a massive 'gift' which is quite out of character where motorist are concerned.

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

The 'introductory' BIK discount won't last very long imo. What it will do is kick start the adoption of BEVs in the UK & that has to be a good thing. Some of the cost could possibly be recovered by increasing the BIK rates on ICE vehicles?

However, I do wonder if the Treasury has thoroughly thought this policy through because it's a massive 'gift' which is quite out of character where motorist are concerned.

How does it kick start the adoption of EVs

People aren't against EVs they are just unaffordable for most people

The best selling car in the UK is the ford fiesta which costs £12k brand new

A model 3 costs £40k it's not about kick starting anything it's about EVs getting affordable which they will in due course irrespective of the UK gifting Tesla model X buyers £50k gifts

That £50k could be used on healthcare or used to purchase outright solar for 10 homes


Just to confirm my understanding is

If I have £100k profits I can pay corporate tax then divi tax which is almost exactly £50k tax to the government and £50k for me

Or I can purchase a model X with that £100k write it down straight away
Give it to myself and pay no tax in the first year very very little tax in the second year and very little tax in the third year (about £1k tax in total)

At the end of the third year period I can sell this car to myself for say £30k since it's 3 years old and depreciated. The company now has £30k which I can pay corp tax and divi tax on.

So I end up paying in total about £16k tax using this method rather than £50k tax
£34k tax 'saved'

If this is correct this is ridiculous
A £34k subsidy to the wealthy

If you want to increase EV adoption give away some free perks like ability to drive in bus lanes or free government charging points (that will hardly be used) not £34k tax breaks to the wealthy

JKenH

1961Nick wrote: »

However, I do wonder if the Treasury has thoroughly thought this policy through because it's a massive 'gift' which is quite out of character where motorist are concerned.

I think you are being very hard on the Treasury, Nick. They have been very generous letting my wife drive her car on the road for 8 years without paying a penny road tax and they let me drive my 2016 diesel VW Golf around for free as well. As far as I am aware there are no plans to change that. My Golf of course being a VW is exceptionally clean.

I’m not sure I should mention my Merc on this forum but you may have a point there as HM Treasury does charge me £30 a year for transferring its 500 Nm of torque to the tarmac.

It makes up for the miserable rate of FiT I get.

1961Nick

GreatApe wrote: »

How does it kick start the adoption of EVs

People aren't against EVs they are just unaffordable for most people

The best selling car in the UK is the ford fiesta which costs £12k brand new

A model 3 costs £40k it's not about kick starting anything it's about EVs getting affordable which they will in due course irrespective of the UK gifting Tesla model X buyers £50k gifts

That £50k could be used on healthcare or used to purchase outright solar for 10 homes


Just to confirm my understanding is

If I have £100k profits I can pay corporate tax then divi tax which is almost exactly £50k tax to the government and £50k for me

Or I can purchase a model X with that £100k write it down straight away
Give it to myself and pay no tax in the first year very very little tax in the second year and very little tax in the third year (about £1k tax in total)

At the end of the third year period I can sell this car to myself for say £30k since it's 3 years old and depreciated. The company now has £30k which I can pay corp tax and divi tax on.

So I end up paying in total about £16k tax using this method rather than £50k tax
£34k tax 'saved'

If this is correct this is ridiculous
A £34k subsidy to the wealthy

If you want to increase EV adoption give away some free perks like ability to drive in bus lanes or free government charging points (that will hardly be used) not £34k tax breaks to the wealthy

Your numbers are a fair way off although the gist of the argument is correct. I'll delve a bit deeper into the actual financial benefit when I've got a bit more time.

EVs may be unaffordable for many people & that is exacerbated because there's little secondhand stock. Getting businesses to change to EVs will create a step change in the adoption rate & create used stock in 2/3/4 years time for the private buyer.

It's a good plan, although I question whether it's deliberate or accidental?