How would you define "commercially successful"? The first fusion power plants will only get built with huge government subsides. Some governments like China look at this as a strategic, existential issue and will pay whatever it costs to make it work. They don't like being dependent on foreign fossil fuel supplies that the USA could easily interdict.
I’m in the USA and don’t like being dependent on foreign fuel supplies!
I think there was (maybe still possible?) a real missed opportunity to pitch green energy in a national security or America First way. I don’t think the average republican voter wants us to be as tied to OPEC the way we are.
We could still product as much—or more!—oil in Texas while reducing our care for anything in the Middle East.
Whether it's a net importer or net exporter is a red herring. If something unsavory happens in Iran, the price of gas is going to move.
National security arguments also don't work in cases like this, because "national security" isn't the real reason the government does a thing, it's the excuse given to the public when Republicans want an unconstitutional boondoggle. But fossil fuel companies are a Republican constituency so it would typically be the Democrats advocating for something like that and their excuse calendar uses different phrases.
If you want to get Republicans to support it you either need to bring it within their cultural norms to want it, e.g. American-made Cybertruck can stomp their old truck in a drag race and the Tesla guy is their friend now, or it just needs to be more profitable so they want solar on their roof to save on electricity.
You can also use different methods when appealing to people with different values. Typical plan from the left is to subsidize it with tax dollars, but you can also ask things like, what makes solar installations expensive? Are there ways to make it easier for homeowners to do it themselves to avoid costly professional installation? Is there some kind of regulatory capture causing things like inverters and transfer switches to cost two orders of magnitude more than the price of their raw materials? Try thinking like the people you're trying to convince if you want to get them on your side.
The USA used to prohibit crude oil exports and only lifted the ban in 2015. If there was a major international supply disruption then we could temporarily reimpose an export ban to essentially turn our country into an oil "island" and shield customers from the impact of higher external market prices.
Crude oil is the stuff that comes directly out of the ground. That wasn't an export ban on refined oil. The rule was a protectionist measure at the behest of US refineries. This is the money quote:
> We found that repealing the ban was associated with:
> ...
> Decreasing profit margins for petroleum refiners as they paid more for domestic crude oil relative to international prices
The US is a net exporter of oil. That doesn't mean they're not importing a ton of it and then exporting even more, e.g. because the Northeast is closer to Canada than Texas so New York uses a lot of oil from Canada and then the gulf states export to other countries.
Changing that in the long-term would raise prices (higher transportation costs, less competition) and changing it in the short-term (i.e. in immediate response to a foreign supply shock) would raise prices significantly because of short-term logistical issues. Also, to the extent that it lowered relative prices, the difference would come out of the profits of US oil companies and increase the profits of their foreign competitors as customers in the EU and other places experience even more of a shortage. "Piss off your allies and domestic industry to the benefit of foreign adversaries" is usually not a winning strategy.
Meanwhile those sorts of export bans will leak like a sieve anyway. Even without formally violating them, you'll see things like energy-intensive industries moving production to the place with cheaper energy until the cross-border price stabilizes, which means higher prices outside the US would lead to higher demand (and thus higher prices) within the US.
It's a global commodity market and you don't even want it to be otherwise.
California has chosen to be dependent on foreign oil for political reasons. There's still quite a bit under our feet but we hypocritically block the extraction industry from expanding here while continuing to consume.
It's certainly feasible to build a crude oil pipeline from Texas, but the local refineries don't necessarily want it. They prefer the flexibility that comes from getting supplies by ships and trains, even though pipelines have a much lower risk of major spills or fires.
i think California accidentally did well by not allowing fracking; if they fo eventually allow it the technology will habe rendered it safer and more efficient. could probably drill kern valley and go full independent without huring the environment nearly as much as it would have 10 years ago..
I'm not sure that would be easy. We'd probably need to build a pipeline to get the needed volume in. I think Peter Zeihan talked about this recently in the context of general US self-sufficiency
Green energy has its own fundamental economic advantages over any petroleum energy generation. You know, barring grid and storage adaptation.
I believe the trend in Lazards is that storage+wind or storage+solar will drop under natural gas combined cycle this year or next year on a LCOE basis.
I believe that was actually their point. To say that it is still a long way before a functioning fusion reactor will be build, let alone the first that will be built as commercially viable standalone without subsidies.
I mean I could generate power and sell it by burning antique furniture but that doesn't make it commercially viable. At some point any new power source will have to show a positive return on investment by some reasonable accounting measure.
