Notes From All Over -- Like NYC, London Is A Ghost Town -- September 4, 2020

BP will sell London HQ -- Bloomberg -- still early; in flux.

BP Plc plans to sell its headquarters in central London as it cuts jobs and adopts flexible working, The [London] Times reported on Sunday.

The oil major, which employs 6,500 office staff in the U.K., plans to rent back the building on St. James’s Square from the new owner for as long as two years before leaving for good ....

.... the company will move to a mixture of home and office working.

But look at this:

Only 13% of people were back to their offices this month in London. Across the nation’s 63 biggest urban centers the number was 17%, the newspaper said, citing analysis of mobile phone data.

Much more at the linked article. 

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Post-Covid "Great Reset" Won't Be Fueled By Renewables

 
Link to Gail Tverberg.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this long essay, but I posted it for the archives. I was reading it relatively closely, having trouble following some of her thoughts, but when the first country she mentioned as an example of why intermittent energy does not work was Lebanon, I pretty much bailed on the article. 

Her analogy of the big cats in charge in the lower layers of "a cave in South Africa" vs humans being in charge in the upper layers of that same cave seemed ludicrous. 

She does have it correct when she talks about intermittent electricity.

I may be confused but I never thought Hubbert's theory of "peak oil" was due to peak demand but apparently that's how this analyst sees it. I've seen that disconnect many times over the past few years, suggesting that peak oil would be due to peak demand, whereas I always thought Hubbert was talking about something else.

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EV Sales Double In The UK in August, 2020

This article is behind a paywall, but I was able to access it quite easily. 

Google: electric car sales double in UK in August

• Data points from the article:
• sales of new electric powered cars in the UK doubled in August
• overall car market declined by 5 percent
• purely electric vehicles: rose to 5,589 from 3,147 a year earlier;
• hybrids climbed to 2,922 from 910 the previous August
• combined, the vehicles accounted for one in 10 new cars sold in the UK
• overall, new car sales dropped almost 6% to 87,226
• August is typically the quietest month of a normal year

So, it is what it is, but I've maintained -- as a constant and recurring theme in the blog -- that the infrastructure is not ready for the EV revolution some folks are predicting. 

Note what this article had to say:

Despite the rise in electric sales, the industry on Friday warned that government plans to phase out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035 require a steep increase in spending on charging infrastructure.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders calculated that £16.7 billion needs to be spent to have enough charging stations for all new UK cars to become electric.

I can't get  my hands around $20 billion for infrastructure but this I understand ... let me re-post the entire sentence:

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders calculated that £16.7 billion needs to be spent to have enough charging stations for all new UK cars to become electric -- the equivalent of 507 chargers installed per day between now and 2035.

Quick, how many chargers did you see installed in your neighborhood last year? That's what I thought. 

Who should pay (again, remember this is from the UK):

Charging bays are a particular issue for buyers without off-street parking, who are reliant on local councils to agree roadside installations and often have to park far from home to find a free charging place. 

Mr Hawes argued that the industry globally has spent £54bn developing electric vehicles to meet emissions standards, but investment in charging infrastructure was needed from other businesses or government. 

Many carmakers across the world have echoed that sentiment that governments — which impose emissions rules or possible fuel bans — should be responsible for ensuring there are enough charging stations.

And buried at the end of the article:

While new electric car sales have been rising, there are also signs that the pandemic has hurt consumers’ ability to pay the upfront costs of the cars, which tend to be significantly more expensive than fossil-fuel powered vehicles. 

Auto Trader found that the percentage of customers considering buying a battery electric car fell from 16 per cent in January to 4 per cent last month, with half saying their finances had deteriorated because of the economic impact of coronavirus.

Wouldn't it have been interesting had the writer of this story "inverted" the article, starting with this lede:

The percentage of customers considering buying a battery electric car fell from 16 per cent in January to 4 per cent last month, with half saying their finances had deteriorated because of the economic impact of coronavirus.