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The Unbearable Inefficiency of Fossil Fuels (thinc.blog)

submitted 2 weeks ago by wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net to c/energy@slrpnk.net

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Humanity is graduating from burning fossil commodities to mastering manufactured technologies—from hunting scarce fossils to farming the inexhaustible sun, from consuming Earth’s resources to merely borrowing them.

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[–] 486@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The efficiency of fossil fuel energy sources is in their energy by volume. That’s is and has always been their main benefit.

While it is true, that their energy density is high, often it is actually much less relevant due to the poor efficiency of the devices burning said fuel. With cars, you'll notice that ICE cars have a pretty terrible efficieny themselves, which partly negates the effect of high energy density of fossil fuels. These days electric cars and ICE cars can have very similar driving ranges despite their differences in energy density.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

And to compound on these efficiency losses, while the energy source is dense, it is heavy. You have to move fuel around by spending fuel, lots and lots of it. We use an ungodly amount of fossil fuels moving fossil fuels somewhere to be used. Fuel and coal tankers are a huge percentage of the energy we spend on earth.

Electricity on the other hand can be locally produced nearly anywhere with wind/solar, and with infrastructure upgrades, be moved over wire with very little loss and no fossil fuel expenditure.