Another aspect is the power it costs to make the power. Oil is a huge industry with enormous transport fuel usage. Nowadays about a 6th of the energy goes into collection. The more we electrify the more that will be saved too coming off the total power we need. Solar, Wind, Hydro and Nuclear are all vastly better in this aspect on production costs and little ongoing transport.
Good point. Oil tankers by themselves put out a measurable percentage of CO2. Also oil refining is an energy intensive industry. Ironically, a lot of that has been cleaned up. It's literally cheaper for oil refineries to be using wind and solar than it is for them to burn their own product. That's why Texas has so much renewable power.
> It's literally cheaper for oil refineries to be using wind and solar than it is for them to burn their own product.
Until it's winter, the ground is frozen, and they have no reserves to burn. Then there's a panic to get the same nonrenewables they would normally flare off when the weather is sunny and breezy.
> That's why Texas has so much renewable power.
It has tons of underdeveloped land in a region with good wind and favorable sunlight. That's it.
Texas, like Germany's lignite (shit coal) renaissance, is a terrible example of good energy policy. Keep in mind Texas is also on its own grid and struggles to pay people to burn the excess energy they can't use since they also can't easily send it outside their grid and have almost no means to store the excess.
Wasn't the issue with Texas that renewables were behaving as expected (unfortunately not producing a lot of electricity), but fossil fuel power sources were failing unexpectedly due to the freezes? Thus the issue not being renwables.
I'm also surprised at the mention of a coal renaissance in germany. While coal isn't reduced as much as it should, all the data I found pointed to a continual downwards trend over the last years.
