Mark Chediak is an acknowledged expert on alternative energy and the urgent need to implement it. He wrote a post for Bloomberg titled ‘The Battery Will Kill Fossil Fuels – It’s Only a Matter of Time’. Mark believes that as regulators make space for battery storage, oil companies will be the losers when electric car numbers rack up. The days of the life of fossil fuels have even lower numbers than we thought, it seems.
The Days of the Life of Carbon Face New Threats
Mark’s reasoning zooms in on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s recent ruling. This allows batteries to compete with traditional power plants for wholesale market share from 2020 onwards.
The coal lobby must have squirmed when Joel Eisen, energy law professor at the University of Richmond said, “this is a watershed.” The days of the life of fossil are numbered. “It’s not unlike the time when regulators opened up the telecommunications market in the 1970s. Their rulings ushered in the digital age by giving computers fair access to phone lines.”
Batteries are Preparing To Ramp Up Over Fossil’s Defeat
The Bloomberg scribe was unable to contain his enthusiasm about batteries poised, “to energize the things most central to daily life. From smartphones to cars to entire homes and offices.” Big Oil is listening up.
Batteries were a topic for executives at the CERAWeek conference not once, but twice recently. The delegates to the annual energy convention should have asked each other this question. “Not will, but rather when and by how much will batteries disrupt our business?” Mark closes his article with these three observations:
# There is no killing the electric car. It will make up half of annual global car sales by 2040
# Solar and winds farms will threaten natural gas as utilities move to renewable green power
# The growth of battery storage capacity will shift from linear to exponential in the next 5 years
“‘We’re reaching an inflection point,” said Steve Westly, former controller and chief fiscal officer for the state of California. “In the future, people will talk about energy in terms of kilowatts per hour, instead of oil per barrels.” Has the end of the beginning flipped over to the beginning of the end for coal?
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