[ExI] Whatever happened to peak oil by 2020?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 01:33:55PM -0700, spike wrote:

> Question please, for Europe hipsters.  Do you guys have some big open areas
> where there just isn't much of anything, analogous to the US desert

In Germany you've got the hot spots on the coast (North Sea)
and the mountains (mostly Alps). 

The current capacity in wind and solar for 2012 has 
been summarized in
http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/downloads-englisch/pdf-files-englisch/news/electricity-production-from-solar-and-wind-in-germany-in-2012.pdf

There is enough on-shore wind potential to produce
100+% of electricity from wind, but already the
current capacity peaks tends to overwhelm the grid,
so there need to be considerable investments into
the grid (north-south axis, especially HVDC) and
dumping peak into wind gas (hydrogen and methane).

> southwest, somewhere in Europe?  If not, how about buying up some land in
> the Sahara and using that abundant solar and wind power down there?  That

There is the Desertec product which is idiotic. The advantage
of decentral power is that it is produced close to where it
is consumed, and does not make you extortable.

> land would hafta be cheaper than sand down there, a few Euros per hectare,
> ja?  I know Asia has big stretches of nothing in some places. 

China will be building a lot of PV in the west deserts.