UK Day 3 - Drive into Wales

Spent the day driving into Wales with an assortment of stops.  Good dinner conversation in Carmarthen.

Travel

Here are some highlights from the drive...

Rhaglan Castle.  Really impressive, really large castle along the way.

Dan-yr-ogof caves. A very large cave system dubbed the National Showcaves for Wales.

Many dinosaur exhibits at the Showcaves Center.  Some animated.  Not quite Jurassic Park, but heading that way.  They were fun.

A drive across a pass near Brecon Beacons National Park.

The traffic was intense.

Usk reservoir. A good stop for coffee and a snack.

Random acorns.

Garn Goch Iron Age hill fort.  A very old and very large archeological structure that was active until the Romans came through around CE (AD) 70.

One of the views from the hill fort.

Talley Abbey.  Construction was begun on this abbey in the 1180s but was never completed due to conflict with other religious powers.

A wind farm in the middle of Wales.

Thinking

We had a good conversation over dinner in the Rose and Crown, in Carmarthen, regarding how to encourage oil companies to shift their investments toward renewable energy.  I took away three principles that might be applied:

1. Identify and exploit pain points.  There are many situations where oil companies have painted themselves into corners. Situations that they want to get out of (mostly because they aren't profitable), but find it difficult to do so.  These can be recast into profitable ventures that are green as well.  An example might be recasting gas stations into charging stations for EVs.
2. Supply chain disruptions.  The oil industry has many increasingly expensive dependencies. It may cost as much as $150 to find another barrel of oil.  With the price well below that, the search for new oil isn't economical.
3. Demand disruption. Demand can be disrupted by new technologies that solve old problems as a side effect while providing desirable value in another domain.  Smartphones address a desire for communication and computation.  Voice communication is just a niche application on a smartphone, yet it pretty much destroyed landlines.  Teslas are increasingly electrical power sources that happen to behave like cars when you need them to.  Not as crisp of a disruption yet, but heading in that direction.