World non-renewable energy discussion

GulfLander said:

Is NG heating better than the heating from nuclear plant or electric heaters?

Click to expand...

The problem with heating from a nuclear power plant, or any similar district heating from a power plant, is that you are piping the heat directly to the houses. There are limits to the length of these kinds of schemes. You will only be able to heat locations relatively close to the power plant.

Electric heating should be more expensive than natural gas heating. At least in the case of electricity generated from thermal energy, you are converting heat into electricity and back into heat again, with lots of losses in the process. Thermal power plants are between 25-50% efficient typically. The rest of the energy in the heat is lost.

I think heat pumps work, but it's going to take some time to deploy that fully. I'm not sure what the adoption of that looks like in China right now. Nuclear heating is just not done at a scale at the moment. If you only build NPP on the coast, that's pretty limited in which homes it can heat up. The best case scenario is to use nuclear to provide steams for industries. Aside from that, NG heating is probably the cleanest and cheapest form of heating you can find.

Heat pumps typically have higher installation costs because they are more complex. Someone would have to bring the costs way down.
And they are only good enough for low grade heat. Think less than boiling water temperature. Not hot enough for a lot of industrial uses.

gelgoog said:

Heat pumps typically have higher installation costs because they are more complex. Someone would have to bring the costs way down.
And they are only good enough for low grade heat. Think less than boiling water temperature. Not hot enough for a lot of industrial uses.

Click to expand...

yes, they are definitely limited. They will be needing the NGs for heating for a long time.

IIRC, at least 1/3 of the NG in China is used for heating purposes. They are not really used that much for electricity yet.

tphuang said:

yes, they are definitely limited. They will be needing the NGs for heating for a long time.

IIRC, at least 1/3 of the NG in China is used for heating purposes. They are not really used that much for electricity yet.

Click to expand...

I doubt the government wants to use natural gas for electricity generation since so much of it are imported.

Heat pumps have high initial costs but then it's low-to-none maintenance. Netherlands specifically has had huge success with heat pumps.

It seems like a big government subsidy program would be a win win for everyone involved

I doubt it would be low maintenance. Heat pumps have lots of moving parts. It is similar to an HVAC or refrigerator.

With the Trump administration's new energy secretary pick, it's clear that they are going full "drill baby drill", combine that with the increasing energy needs of A.I and you can expect a massive increase in shale gas and oil extraction. Does anyone have any concrete info on how much shale gas/oil is left in America? Because I have seen estimates ranging from "at current extraction rates it already peaked and will rapidly decline over the next decade" to "will peak by 2030,2040" and all of them are from so called experts too.

Any massive increase in extraction will just drain this precious resource even faster, for short term gain too, since I have to assume that a lot of the oil/gas will just be burned to cover the massive energy demands of A.I, at a time when LLM are plateauing hard. The flood of cheap gas and oil will likely suppress the growth of EVs, renewables and nuclear in America too, especially under the Trump administration. Natural gas and oil are important feedstocks for many industrial chemicals and processes after all, very wasteful to burn them for energy when renewables/EVs are already an option.

If shale is declining, or at least declining soon, the increase in extraction would be a short term gain for a massive long term loss.

It is a constant fight between better technology making extraction cheaper and resource depletion pushing the cost up. From videos like this:


It is unlikely they will hugely expand output in a short time period.

Saudi aramco project with huajin is getting close. When it goes into production, expects to produce 1.65 million ton ethylene per year and 2 million ton of px. Generates 100b rmb of revenue. Most likely outcome is further reduction of chemical import from Europe and Korea or replace them in export market