01-06-2017, 04:14 PM
(01-06-2017, 01:41 PM)Stewy Wrote: Note: I wrote this carefully I think because I did not want you to think I was attacking to belittling you. Below is my attempt to explain, why I do not believe it is as simple as "build it, and they will come".
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There are two main things that drive major change. Someone has to want a service, good, or product made available, and then it has to be profitable for someone to provide it. Supply and demand. I hinted at this in one of the posts above but there are plenty of examples where technologies already exist that are cheaper than current dirtier alternatives, but aren't in huge circulation due to economics.
The best example is Natural Gas powered vehicles. A small percentage of trucks (pickups not diesel engines) used in Oil and Gas fields over the last two decades have been powered by Natural Gas. You may have seen them in Appalachia working the gas fields. These are not more common for two very simple reasons; 1) The tanks on the vehicles have to be pressurized, thus they are dangerous, and can only be of a certain size, thus their range is limited and 2) Due to the small number of vehicles on the road service stations won't install the infrastructure to supply Natural Gas vehicles. It requires a special pump and special pressurized storage. The gas producing company has to do a deal with the service station to get the infrastructure installed, so the producing company can supply their vehicles.
This seems like a simple problem, but it is not. Until the infrastructure is built for a technology making it equal to or better in terms of cost and convenience compared to what we already have, then people won't want it. It isn't as simple as "if you build it they will come". Sure if you mysteriously produced 100 billion dollars and changed out the entire countries infrastructure from gasoline to natural gas over night, then you'd run into a second problem.....the 100 billion dollars to replace every persons vehicle. So.....it comes to this.......in this case until gasoline becomes so expensive that the people DEMAND something cheaper, it will not be economically viable to for companies to make the change.
It follows that this problem would only be worse for an infrastructure change to electric cars because in addition to the need to have electric cars in every house, there is no way the current power grid could supply the 100+ million vehicles on the road, plus there would need to be a technology boost that would allow for efficient QUICK charging at refueling stations so people can go longer distances. However, in this case my guess would be by the time the power grid is changed out (the most onerous and expensive task I see), electric car technologies probably will have advanced as wells, making them more powerful, more efficient, quicker to recharge and with longer battery lives. Again, it isn't as simple as "build it and they will come". It comes down to companies will build it and people will come to buy it when it makes financial sense to do so.
Finally, there are many examples similar to the ones above where the technology already exists to replace some part of fossil fuel (yes I know Natural Gas is a fossil fuel, but changing over to NG over oil is a good and much cleaner step in the right direction) use in our lives. They don't need to be invented They just need to become more economic to use.
Wouldn't economic viability fall under the larger umbrella of viability? Also, wouldn't technological advances to improve the economics of the technology fall under necessity is the mother of invention, but MacGyver is its father?
