/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3670307

>>entire society built on the concept of cheap to the point of being almost free energy

And in the process of converting to alternatives.

>current population only sustainable with massive amounts of oil powered farm machinery and oil produced fertiliser

Modern farms (dairy farms in particular) are actually largely automated. Genetic engineering can reduce or negate the need for fertiliser and vertical farming can multiply the output per acre.

>Personal transportation impossible for 99% of the world's population without oil

Actually the most common form of transport in Chinese cities is now lowspeed electric bicycle dealies that use cheap lead acid batteries. Bad for the environment, but affordable.

>Oil "substitutes"/replacement technologies cannot replace the enormous amount of practically free energy gained from oil, only viable for extremely small scale use

It isn't practically free. We're not going to ignore the massive expenses involved in getting at oil. It's why the industry is so heavily subsidized. Solar panels aren't a practical alternative, but I'll wager you have no idea what a heliostat is or that it's a practical, low cost utility scale form of solar that runs uninterrupted overnight without batteries, has a higher output per acre than panels and is being pushed aggressively by Google.

>your food is produced because of oil

Are there no electric trains in your world?

>>3621258

We could cut a deal with Google. They recently started building heliostats, a type of uninterrupted solar power plant using mirrors and molten salt heat storage. We'd let them use the land for free, in exchange for a cut of the energy from the tower. Their output is in the hundreds of megawatts, we'd be a drop in the bucket.

>>3485832

>>Neither do photovoltaic, hydroelectric, wind or geothermal.

Good thing I'm not promoting any of those. Heliostats aren't photovoltaic. They're solar thermal. They produce electricity the same way a coal power plant does, but using molten salt heated by focused sunlight to boil the water and drive the turbine. It's cheaper than photovoltaic, competitive with coal already and uses less land.