Corporate/shareholder value, energy market and global warming
Updated: Renewable Germany bailing out Nuclear France
I just read the following in an article by a Mr. Bill McKibben and thought it to be an interesting perspective on why climate change/global warming is being so vigorously denied.
If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we’ll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons — five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground.Put another way, in ecological terms it would be extremely prudent to write off $20 trillion worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that’s far scarier than drought and flood. It’s why you’ll do anything — including fund an endless campaigns of lies — to avoid coming to terms with its reality.
Never thought of the resistance to moving away from carbon fuels as an issue of having to write off company value in order to save the planet. As shown with the housing bubble, writing off inflated value (inflated for what ever reason) is a rather difficult thing to do. I mean, when you have so much down stream of that artificial value dependent on it (think currency based on oil), the engineering challenge is like playing Jenga only no one will be laughing if you fail and the tower falls. Also, you have a timer running in this version of Jenga.
I believe Mr. McKibben refers to the issue as a bubble in that the current price of raw carbon fuel is based on the idea that fuel in general is becoming less available. But fuel or energy is not less available. It is only one source of fuel that is becoming less in quantity. The only means to keep this conflation of less carbon based energy means less energy fuel in total is to deny the application of science in the energy market place as it relates to a competitor product. It is artificial price manipulation via psych-ops.
In other words, the only way to keep the carbon energy market alive is to not have a free energy market. Part of assuring not having a free energy market is to deny the need for a free energy market, thus, deny climate change do to human extraction of carbon from the ground and it’s ever increasing rate of conversion to a gas of CO2. It is artificial price manipulation via psych-ops.
Let’s take the write off issue one step further. How does the value of a company such as Exxon/Mobil which is based on ever rising price do to ever declining product with ever increasing demand keep this model for valuing the company if the product becomes essentially limitless? Now we’re up against our entire paradigm as to how we understand free market value and thus construct value.
Carbon based energy is currently view as land. No new land is being made and demand is rising thus ever increasing value. The proper model for carbon fuel is that of a market where over time the product becomes obsolete. This I think is the fault in thinking that has created the aberrant paradigm which lead to the bubble Mr. McKibben sees. Our entire energy market, viewed in this way is a complete illusion as seen from the owners side of the energy equation and a complete delusion as seen from the market economist side of the energy equation, though I would say the economist delusion has lead the owners to create their illusion.
Just one more problem with running an economy based on the efficiency of money as oppose to the efficiency of people.
Update:
From Real Economics I read an article from Der Spiegel regarding France struggling with electricity shortages do to the cold spell. Seem France, not normally experiencing cold winters uses electricity for heating homes. This year they needed 7000 megawatts per hour more power. 100 gigawatts one evening was need, the equivalent of 80 nuclear power plants. Germany was sending them a net 3000 megawatts/hour because:
It is interesting, said the federal environment minister, that Germany, especially in these days with a very high demand, can even export power—thanks to photovoltaic and wind energy. “We had in the last days a capacity of up to 10,000 megawatts of solar power, which corresponds to the output of ten nuclear power plants, and up to 11,000 megawatts of wind power,” said Röttgen.
Read another take here at Lenz Blog.
This is significant, because back in May of 2011 all the rage was how France was bailing out Germany after Germany announced its nuclear generation shut down. As with Jonathan Larson at Real Economics, no one is saying this means we can scrap all other power generation tomorrow as this Spiegel article notes the lack of solar generated power in Germany during a spell this winter and the need to import electricity.
The January article (not pro solar at all) notes:
Until now, Merkel had consistently touted the environmental sector’s “opportunities for exports, development, technology and jobs.” But now even members of her own staff are calling it a massive money pit.
How quickly fortunes can change. All the more reason to view carbon based energy in the energy market as a product that can be made obsolescent. You know, a true free market with competition which purpose is to serves the efficiency of people and not money. Maybe then even Germany would not be so reactionary when their plan stumbles. Heck, it took the Wright Brothers over a 1000 flights, just to learn how to fly! Over 200 wings and airfoils! They did not concern themselves with the issue of scaling it up for use by a planet of 6 billion people.
Stick to your plan Germany because you have the correct intention.
I guess that what the oil companies may not understand is that by leaving “enough” of that oil in the ground it will become very valuable in future… for those uses for which there is no cheap substitute.
gradual weaning now will be much better for all of us than burning the last drop to maximize quarterly profits or some dumb “present value” equation. there is no need to “write off” the reserves.