[HN Gopher] Forty percent of the world's shipping consists of fo...
___________________________________________________________________
Forty percent of the world's shipping consists of fossil fuels to
be burned
Author : onion2k
Score : 308 points
Date : 2022-01-08 11:20 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (billmckibben.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (billmckibben.substack.com)
| newyankee wrote:
| Also of note is the fact that transportation of gas is a major
| part of its final price even when the mode is pipeline. There is
| a sweet spot of distance for which natural gas is competitive
| IIRC.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| rob74 wrote:
| My nitpicking brain immediately stumbled over these two
| consecutive sentences:
|
| > _something very close to forty percent of all the shipping on
| earth is just devoted to getting oil and coal and gas (and now
| some wood pellets) back and forth across the ocean._
|
| Wood pellets are not fossil fuels though...
|
| > _That's a remarkable snapshot: almost half of what we move
| around the seas is not finished products (cars) nor even the raw
| materials to make them (steel), but simply the stuff that we burn
| to power those transformations, and to keep ourselves warmed,
| cooled, and lit._
|
| Oil is also a raw material, e.g. to make plastic. Not sure about
| what percentage is used as raw material vs. how much is used for
| fuel...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Wood pellets are shipped across the ocean in large quantities
| because of a loophole in carbon accounting, allowing coal power
| stations to burn wood pellets across the EU, 'carbon free', as
| long as the wood came from outside the EU.
| zeristor wrote:
| Green washing.
|
| this:
|
| https://archive.fo/VwYJQ
|
| from this:
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/drax-
| green...
| rob74 wrote:
| I would say wood pellets are a grey area, similar to
| nuclear power. On one side, if the pellets are produced
| from wood that can't be used for other purposes and from
| responsibly managed forests, they're better than burning
| fossil fuels. On the other side, if they are produced from
| cutting down virgin rainforests and are then shipped
| halfway around the world, that's definitely not good.
| guerby wrote:
| Interesting!
|
| Do you have a reliable source for this?
| londons_explore wrote:
| https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/axedrax-campaign/
|
| (biased source, but nobody seems to disagree with their
| wood source claims)
| adpcm wrote:
| Wood pellets are counted as renewable. Creating something
| of loophole. Not sure what difference non-EU would make
| other than making tracking of regrowing trees more
| difficult.
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/euro
| p...
| weberer wrote:
| I don't see how that's a loophole. It sounds reasonable
| to me.
| nine_k wrote:
| Less than 10% of oil is spent on making plastics, though.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And much plastic feedstock comes from natural gas, not oil.
| epistasis wrote:
| The point of the wood pellets is that it's a fuel source that
| will have drastically reduced demand in the future.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| You are clearly not familiar with the Bio-mass 'green' lobby
| in the UK and US.
|
| The UK does not have enough woodland for all these tax payer
| subsidized 'green' energy plants so they are physically
| shipping wood pellets from US and Canada to these bio-mass
| plants. Trees are cut, shredded, put on a truck, put on a
| boat, then burned in furnaces, to generate steam, to produce
| 'green' energy.
| mizzao wrote:
| And those boats and burning... you guessed it... oil?
| ersii wrote:
| You make it sound like all of it is from North America.
| There's import from the european continent and scandinavia
| as well.
|
| Sweden exports a lot of wood pellets. Plenty of woodlands
| there. Plenty more to grow, if the Union will let them.
|
| Wood pellets are "green" because the source material is
| replantable, albeit not that much locally for you. Seems
| like nothing is ever "green enough" though, besides a
| complete stop in consumption..
|
| The distance from Sweden/Scandinavia/Continental europe is
| a lot less than from North America.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| The whole argument around Bio-mass is that it becomes
| carbon neutral because it emits carbon that itself has
| been captured.
|
| The concept of burning bunker fuel on ships to keep these
| plants at break even is ludacrious. The fact that the
| pellets come from Finland or Malaysia is irrelevant.
|
| I have nothing against Bio mass energy generation from
| gasing garbage or agriculture waste. But these wood
| furnace burner plants are a borderline racket.
| epistasis wrote:
| I am familiar with that, but given its environmental damage
| it seems quite likely that in the future this energy source
| will be somewhat reduced. Especially as renewable energy
| gains greater penetration in the UK.
| nine_k wrote:
| The scoop: by tonnage, 40% of what is transported by sea is oil,
| coal, and LNG.
|
| By switching to local sources of energy (renewables mostly),
| humanity can seriously lower the impact of ships on the oceans,
| and stop burning as much fuel to move them, too.
|
| I'd like to add that all these fuels are very energy-dense.
| Producing as much energy locally would not be an easy or
| inexpensive enterprise.
| epistasis wrote:
| Already, solar is the cheapest source of energy, and is still
| in the exponentially decreasing phase of the tech curve.
| nine_k wrote:
| Batteries need to shape up, though. Huge battery
| installations should become cheap and ubiquitous; so far they
| are neither.
|
| A number of interesting chemistries exist that would suit
| well the needs of stationary batteries, which can be heavy
| and bulky, but need to be cheap and safe. As usual, more time
| and money are needed :)
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Note that if batteries stayed at their current level of
| development forever, wind and solar would still be the best
| choice to build out at large scales today.
|
| It is unlikely that they wont progress dramatically, but
| even in that extreme case there's no need or reason to
| wait.
| criley2 wrote:
| This is sadly wishful thinking. The unreliability of
| solar and wind plus the state of modern batteries means
| that nuclear and coal are still better choices for large
| scale baseload generation.
|
| One factor people don't consider is reliability of power.
| Since solar and wind are unreliable (example, German wind
| power saw -25% generation last year due to weather, and
| ended up increasing coal by as much as 40 to 50% to make
| up for it plus meet new demand) you end up needing to
| produce significantly more to have a guarantee of
| baseload.
|
| For every bit of ultra-reliable, ultra-safe, tiny-
| footprint nuclear you build out, you need ~4X the amount
| of less reliable and giant foot print solar or wind.
| ctdonath wrote:
| > unreliable
|
| Few appreciate the "brick wall" facing variability in
| green energy: if the battery depletes, power flow
| _stops_.
|
| Batteries cost the same to cover whatever multiple of
| standard deviation prepared for. "Hundred year
| calm/clouds" need be prepared for - there's no discount
| on installing that battery backup, very costly for a rare
| event (still often enough to need coverage).
|
| When the batteries deplete, system halts until nature
| decides to provide enough again. FF reserves can tide
| over, nuclear will glow on; green varies by _hour_ where
| outages can last _weeks_.
|
| I run my office on solar every summer. Battery depletion
| is a very real, common, and costly issue.
| cesarb wrote:
| > "Hundred year calm/clouds" need be prepared for
|
| Once you're preparing for events that rare, you have to
| first prepare for more common events, like failures in
| the power transmission infrastructure (the latest
| widespread one in my country, for instance, was only 11
| years ago). And a lot of the preparation for these more
| common events (for instance, backup generators) would
| also help with these more rare events.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Simple cycle gas turbine + generator is $500/kW.
|
| A nuclear power plant is $10,000/kW.
|
| Back up the entire grid with turbines burning hydrogen or
| other renewable fuel and you're good, and it's still
| cheaper than using nuclear.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Ultra-reliable nuclear power, like in France where a
| couple of reactors had to be shut down due to safety
| issues detected?
|
| Yes, wind and solar are limited in their available
| capacity by the weather. The trick to get reliable power
| generation nonetheless are wide range networks (mitigates
| weather influences), storage solutions and storable
| renewables like bio-gas.
|
| For the gap, gas powered plans are the key. Even in the
| worst case, they are way more environment friendly than
| coal, only emit a fraction of the CO2 at the same output.
| But beyond that, they can be quickly switched in output,
| they are the ideal counterpart to wind and solar. That is
| the weakness of coal and especially nuclear power plants.
|
| Also, one can afford a lot of overproduction capacity for
| the cost of a new nuclear power plant.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > Ultra-reliable nuclear power, like in France where a
| couple of reactors had to be shut down due to safety
| issues detected?
|
| A perfectly fine plant, Fessenheim, was shut down
| recently due to antinuke luddites.
| _ph_ wrote:
| No, an unreliable old plant with severe safety concerns
| was shut down not very recently. Currently 16 French
| nuclear plants are not operating due to maintenance.
| About 4 of those went offline very recently (as in
| November or December) because severe issues were detected
| which needed to be addressed at once.
| cedilla wrote:
| How are the people who want to build modern energy plants
| the luddites? If anything it's the people who insist to
| keep ancient technology on life support that had failed
| all its promises by the late 1970s who are luddites.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Ultra-reliable nuclear power, like in France where a
| couple of reactors had to be shut down due to safety
| issues detected?
|
| Two reactors out of 56 needed an inspection once in a
| while? Do you think a gas plant never stops for repairs?
|
| Why do you resort to anecdata when we have statistics on
| reliability going back decades?
| ryan93 wrote:
| Kye wrote:
| There's always an ideal solution that would be best in an
| ideal world. Unfortunately, this is the world where two
| nuked cities and a handful of nuclear accidents was
| enough to turn people against nuclear power. It doesn't
| matter that this position is based on ignorance. Turning
| people back in favor is a generational project. We don't
| have a generation left to do that. We need solutions that
| can be implemented at scale _now_.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| In the uk I'm currently not allowed to buy a cheap old
| nissan leaf car with a worn old 22kwh battery pack (that's
| basically useless for transport now, something like 30 mile
| range in perfect conditions) and connect it to supply my
| house.
|
| I can buy electricity from the grid at 5p/kwh between 12pm
| and 5am and if i was allowed to charge that car and then
| draw my daily 10kwh of house usage from it instead of
| paying 20p/kwh during the day. I'd be happy to give some
| percentage to the grid but it's just not allowed by most
| DNO's here right now.
|
| Wallbox.com has a PS10k bi durectional wallbox (quantum)
| that can be deployed in a few very select areas in the UK
| currently.
|
| My best option right now is a couple of PS2.5k battery
| packs from givenergy but my supplier won't switch me to the
| ev tarrif without proof i own an EV. Also the givenergy
| route is the same price as the old leaf but for half the
| capacity.
| jeofken wrote:
| To save other readers a lookup, 30 miles = 48.28km
| mattbee wrote:
| What kind of inverter could you use to connect an old
| traction battery to supply your house? (I have a Leaf and
| solar backed by a 4.5kWh battery so... for the future I
| suppose)
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| There's a 7kw inverter in the wallbox
| https://wallbox.com/en_catalog/quasar-dc-charger - turns
| out i got the name wrong, it's quasar not quantum :-)
| mattbee wrote:
| How cool, I didn't know that was possible. So CHAdeMO
| lets EVs discharge as well as charge? I assumed you were
| talking about a hack. So why can't that particular
| inverter be connected to your home? I have _two_ separate
| solar inverters connected to mine already!
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| It's in use in Japan as i understand it but in the UK the
| DNOs currently don't have appropriate controls in place
| for when the power goes out as i understand it. I believe
| people with solar and batteries on their property have no
| power when there's a power cut - their inverter turns off
| for safety of the DNO operatives if mains power goes out.
|
| Im not that clued up on this. Tent with a big pinch of
| salt...!
| sundvor wrote:
| The quickest way to force/ assist adaptation of new tech is
| to stop complaining about it, start buying it when/if
| possible, watch how demand drives innovation for the years
| to come - yet be happy to have gotten in at a certain point
| which helps both yourselves and everyone.
|
| Solar panels for one have come a very long way in the last
| decade. The same will apply to batteries. How retired EV
| packs can be reused for home storage is but one field of
| opportunity I feel is exciting.
| epistasis wrote:
| Batteries _have_ shaped up, actually! Retail costs are
| about $300 /kWh for at least 7000 cycles, which is only
| $4.2/kWh (plus inverter/BMS, plus electrician costs, plus
| sales markup, etc.).
|
| There has been a 10x decline in lithium ion battery costs
| in just 10 years, which is shocking. Check out this slide
| from Ramez Naam, of which batteries are only one component
| of the massive ongoing transition:
|
| https://t.co/2WnIrtuLpN
|
| Lithium ion batteries are getting deployed in large GW and
| GWh sizes all over, and in smaller sizes too. Worldwide
| production capacity is expected to grow by 10x every five
| years.
|
| I think other stationary battery chemistries will catch up
| for "longer-term" storage, where the charge rate is lower
| and the capital cost is lower, and they can't cycle as
| fast. My favorite are the iron air batteries, which are
| rumored to be as low as $20/kWh, but with a power/energy
| ratio of only 1%.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| How do you get from 300$/kWh to 4.2$/kWh?
| epistasis wrote:
| 7000 cycles out of $300/capacity, so $300 kWh capacity /
| 7000 cycles == $0.042 per kWh cycle.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| So the 4.2$ is just a typo and should have been 0.042$.
| Then I follow you, thanks
| epistasis wrote:
| Oops, yes, thanks so much!
| empedocles wrote:
| I would not be so certain that this would reduce the number of
| ships, rather lower costs for shipping further as they try and
| find new cargo.
| Fronzie wrote:
| The production cost of green energy is below that of fossil
| fuels already:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20201019_Levelized_Cost_o...
|
| Taking overcapacity for wind free periods and energy storage
| into account, the numbers are less favorable, but transitioning
| to green energy doesn't really need to affect our wealth or
| lifestyle all that much.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Did you intentionally say "not be an easy or inexpensive"
| enterprise?
|
| That feels carefully crafted to suggest it would be harder or
| more expensive than getting the same energy with fossil fuels
| (which isn't true) while carefully avoiding actually saying
| that untrue thing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The statement is not sufficiently defined to be true or
| untrue in all cases. Energy is not just energy. It has to
| have certain characteristics and parameters in which it can
| be utilized. In some instances, fossil fuels will be able to
| be displaced by local sources easily. In others, it will not.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Energy return on investment EROI = [energy delivered]/[energy to
| deliver that energy]
|
| Hydrocarbons are getting close to Net energy cliff
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Net_energy_cliff.gif
| cft wrote:
| What percentage of fossil fuels consumption is fuel for shipping
| of fossil fuels?
| thesimp wrote:
| Using the below url as a guide the fuel consumption per amount
| of fuel transported is actually very economical. Deadweight:
| 442,470dwt, Lightweight: 67,000t = 375,470t of cargo. Fuel
| usage 141t per day. With a 15 day trip that would mean using
| 2,115t of fuel to get 375,470t of crude to its destination.
|
| https://www.wartsila.com/encyclopedia/term/ultra-large-crude...
| guerby wrote:
| I assume you have to count the empty ship return, or at least
| some empty part of the trip if it's not a direct return to
| the fossil fuel export port.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Given this, what are the ecological oppositions to things like
| keystone XL?
|
| I've also wondered if it is feasible for renewable sources like
| offshore windfarms and very remote nuke powerplants to charge
| continually flowing battery trains to populated areas.
| dundarious wrote:
| Keystone XL is totally irrelevant wrt shipping (as in, ships on
| the water).
|
| Keystone XL goes from Alberta to Kansas, and is just a shorter
| route than an existing pipeline connecting those two points.
| Rail is another common transport for oil between these points.
|
| Regardless, the article comes to a better conclusion, IMO:
|
| > Because it means that if and when we make the transition to
| solar power and windpower, we will not just stop pouring carbon
| into the atmosphere, and not just save money--we will also
| reduce the number of ships sailing back and forth by almost
| half.
| ahthat wrote:
| I feel the author is forgetting that anything made out of plastic
| comes from oil derivatives. Another reason oil is an incredible
| resource. Can anyone comment on this?
| epistasis wrote:
| > Hell, eleven percent of the energy that America currently uses,
| according to Saul Griffith's excellent book Electrify, simply
| goes to finding more energy.
|
| That's a pretty shocking stat too!
|
| The energy transition is about to thrust us into a world where
| for long periods of time, we have _massive_ energy abundance of
| zero-marginal cost energy generation. It won 't be free to
| transmit that energy, and the intermittent nature of the
| abundance will play hell with most capital intensive uses (eg
| crypto mining), but I'm super curious to see what new
| capabilities that people figure out for humanity.
| bendbro wrote:
| From what I have heard from my energy business acquaintances,
| the only alternative source that has a hope of surpassing
| fossil is nuclear. Solar panels and wind have their own issues:
| rare earth minerals, difficult upkeep, and in the case of the
| non-mirror solar- toxic pollution as they breakdown. I hope
| some combination of nuclear, geothermal, hydro, mirror-solar,
| and wind can combine to satisfy energy needs, but I am not
| optimistic.
| newyankee wrote:
| I feel that demand shifting is something that is talked about
| least but will automatically happen at a larger scale than we
| envision when marginal cost of electricity is low. Hopefully
| that leads to cheaper versions of many expensive items with
| high embedded energy costs.
| pmorici wrote:
| The intermittent nature is going to be handled by large battery
| storage farms. Battery storage is already displacing peaker
| plants.
|
| I'm confused by what you mean by zero marginal cost? Solar will
| be cheap but not zero marginal cost.
| epistasis wrote:
| Right now in certain seasons there's huge amounts of
| curtailed renewable power. For example in 2020 California
| threw away 1.5TWh of solar power that was in excess of what
| the grid needed.
|
| As renewables go to higher and higher percentages of
| generation, this amount of curtailment will increase
| dramatically. Battery farms won't solve this entirely,
| because regardless of the mix of batteries, we are going to
| be building a system that serves a seasonal minimum of energy
| production.
|
| During the seasonal maximum of energy production, probably in
| California alone, we will have dozens of TWh per year that
| can not be consumed on the grid, and may not even be able to
| be transmitted on the grid.
|
| There's even a good amount of slack in most current solar
| farm designs. Due to the cost balance between inverters and
| panels, it's quite common to have more DC power from panels
| than the inverters can convert to AC for the grid. As
| batteries get cheaper, batteries are taking some of that DC
| power right now. But there's still the seasonal effects of
| generation.
| nine_k wrote:
| One of my bets is on synthesizing more hydrocarbons from water
| and CO2, because planes and helicopters will still mostly run
| on it.
| empedocles wrote:
| There are some interesting start-ups betting on just that,
| that carbon capture to general hydrocarbons in a neutral way
| will outcompete electrifying certain sectors, e.g.
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/11/01/scaling-
| carbon...
| okl wrote:
| You might find this resource interesting:
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-
| ladder-v40-mic...
|
| (Yeah, linkedin sucks)
| lapinot wrote:
| Surely that's much easier and less ressource intensive than
| using less planes and helicopters.
| thepangolino wrote:
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It doesn't matter how energy intensive it is. If people are
| willing to pay a premium (they are), there will be a
| market.
|
| Right now, the market is artificially big, because you
| don't have to pay for the negative externalities of carbon.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > you don't have to pay for the negative externalities of
| carbon.
|
| We aren't yet seeing much indication that there will be a
| global tax/fee on the externalities of carbon. That means
| even if local policies are implemented for certain cases
| (eg. no gas cars in the city, no coal power in one
| state), there will always be somewhere on earth willing
| to burn dirty coal to make helicopter fuel for export.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| So you tax the carbon at the importing country. This is a
| solved problem.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The WTO most favoured nation rules don't allow that.
| Which is why nobody does it.
| iqanq wrote:
| >The energy transition is about to thrust us into a world where
| for long periods of time, we have massive energy abundance of
| zero-marginal cost energy generation.
|
| Well, by now, it seems like completely the opposite: thanks to
| nuclear plants shutting down and CO taxes, we are starved of
| energy.
| fivea wrote:
| > thanks to nuclear plants shutting down and CO taxes, we are
| starved of energy.
|
| There are countries which already started transitioning to
| renewable energies which not only endured long periods of
| energy independence from renewable sources alone but also
| already reported energy production surpluses which even led
| to null and negative energy prices.
|
| Therefore your baseless assertion regarding shutting down
| nuclear and coal plants seems to be totally made up and
| completely unfounded.
|
| Can you provide any basis for your assertion, and point out
| any rational basis for that so-called "energy starvation"
| scenario?
| coryrc wrote:
| Where are consumers able to get paid for using electricity?
|
| Spot market prices don't matter when the users' bill goes
| up every year.
| fivea wrote:
| > Where are consumers able to get paid for using
| electricity?
|
| You mean the kind of service companies like PG&E are
| already providing their customers?
|
| https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and-
| vehicles/gre...
| endymi0n wrote:
| I still remember the outcry when the EU banned incandescent
| bulbs in 2009.
|
| CFLs were crappy and full of heavy metals, Halogen was half-
| assed, LEDs were expensive, too blue and too weak.
|
| People were defending their radiant heaters in full force,
| but everybody underestimated exponential development in a
| market suddenly put into full force solving this.
|
| By the last stage where 40W bulbs were being phased out,
| nobody was interested in them anymore, because LEDs were
| simply better with cheaper TCO.
|
| Solar and battery are still on exponential track down the
| cost curve (with wind saturating, but still going strong).
|
| Nuclear and fossils are not.
|
| The energy world will look very different 10 years from now.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| I think nuclear _would_ be, if the seventies had not
| happened.
| endymi0n wrote:
| I used to be anti nuclear, then I was pro, but by now I'm
| back to anti. Main reason being that it's too slow to
| move the needle by now. Any new nuclear project by now -
| even if we'd change public sentiment and regulations
| today - is so time, planning and capital intensive that
| by the decade it goes online, it'll be outcompeted by
| overprovisioned solar roofs + battery storage even in the
| worst locations except maybe the arctic circle.
|
| Without proliferation risks and however you get rid of
| the radiated mess.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, Chernobyl was a bit later as far as I am aware.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Yes, 26 of April 86.
|
| And mushrooms and wild boar in Bavarian forests are still
| contaminated.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'll take contaminated mushrooms and wild boar to climate
| change and the large scale disease brought on by fossil
| fuels. Nuclear is much safer, even accounting for these
| absolute outliers.
| fivea wrote:
| > I'll take contaminated mushrooms and wild boar to
| climate change and the large scale disease brought on by
| fossil fuels.
|
| It's a good thing, then, that that's a false dilemma and
| nuclear and/or fossil fuels are clearly not the only
| options on the table.
|
| As a reference, Germany already relies on renewables to
| supply around 60% of their energy needs, and it's
| production is still ramping up.
| deepnotderp wrote:
| Also as a reference, German electricity prices are up
| _and_ their Co2 emissions are up due to unreliable
| renewables.
| _ph_ wrote:
| If you look over the last 10 year, renewables have
| reduced the CO2 emissions considerably in Germany,
| reaching 50% in 2020. However, while 2020 was a record
| year with a huge increase vs. 2019, 2021 was back on the
| 2019 level, as the weather was very average.
| _ph_ wrote:
| The abundance of cheap energy is based on renewable sources.
| They need to be built in the form of wind power and
| photovoltaics and others first. Blocking this of course
| raises the energy costs.
| iqanq wrote:
| Nobody has blocked wind power or photovoltaics. If
| anything, they are pretty well subsidised as it is. They
| don't (currently?) provide enough power.
| _ph_ wrote:
| In Germany, the previous government has done a lot to
| stall further builtup of renewable energies. The builtup
| was only a fraction in recent years compared to the top
| years. If the builtup had continued (or even
| accellerated), Germany would be an even larger exporter
| of electricity than it is.
| fivea wrote:
| > In Germany, the previous government has done a lot to
| stall further builtup of renewable energies.
|
| I find this assertion hard to believe. Merkel has been in
| charge of Germany's federal government for the past two
| decades, and throughout this period Germany's energy
| production from renewable sources has skyrocketed from
| virtually none to the leading energy source, with a share
| of over 60% of the nation's energy production.
|
| In fact, if anything, Germany's production from
| renewables has been accelerating.
|
| https://vizzlo.com/gallery/time-series-
| graph/example/power-g...
|
| Could you provide any source that supports your assertion
| that the previous government has been stalling
| renewables?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, the new distance requirements for wind parks are
| stricter, than for a garbage burning plant, for example.
| And there are still villages being removed, because of
| coal - so it is far from 100% support, but overall I
| would not agree, that the previous government was
| stalling renewables. But there was and is lots of general
| movement into renewables, so maybe there would have been
| a wind and solar boom, despite governments efforts.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Well, for one, I don't understand it either, why Merkel
| didn't see the change through. It was, however, started
| by the red-green government before Merkel. They set up
| the system which guaranteed a price for any renewable
| energy producted (initiall very high, decreasing for
| later installations).
|
| The production did indeed skyrocket, with the peak of
| over 50% renewable power in 2020. But in the last 3 years
| the built-up of new wind generators has stalled. Hitting
| a peak of 5GW/year in 2017, it went down to below 1 in
| 2019. This was due to several changes by the government.
| On the one side they replaced the flat fee which was paid
| for electricity produced to a complex auction schema, on
| the other side there were more and more restrictions
| about where one could build wind generators. Also the
| amound of solar power was even capped. It seems that the
| situation has improved somewhat, the build-up of
| renewables was a bit higher in 2020 than in 2019, but
| hasn't reached the past peaks again yet.
| fivea wrote:
| > On the one side they replaced the flat fee which was
| paid for electricity produced to a complex auction schema
| (...)
|
| Aren't you referring to the initial subsidized program
| where private companies were enticed to invest their own
| cash in renewable energy sources in exchange for assured
| profitability during the initial period?
| Semaphor wrote:
| I think the poster might have meant "blocking" as in
| planning/building? Not quite sure how to parse the
| comment otherwise.
| cesarb wrote:
| > The energy transition is about to thrust us into a world
| where for long periods of time, we have massive energy
| abundance of zero-marginal cost energy generation. It won't be
| free to transmit that energy [...]
|
| It won't be free to transmit that energy, but that transmission
| will also be zero-marginal cost. The cost to operate power
| lines and transformers doesn't depend on how much power it's
| going through them.
| Gatsky wrote:
| I feel your last statement is imprecise and overly optimistic.
| It seems unusually difficult to find proper calculations about
| what a fully implemented low emissions strategy would look like
| for a particular country. The only example I have found is this
| report for the UK [1]. This report makes a number of key
| points:
|
| 1. The UK has to bring in solar power from other countries to
| meet emissions targets or have more Nuclear capacity. 2.
| Reduction in energy consumption is just as important as energy
| sources. This involves use of more efficient technologies,
| primarly through electrification.
|
| These factors highlight that abundant renewable energy is
| actually not abundant enough in reality and is unlikely to be
| for a country like the UK, even with efficiency gains from
| massive electrification. Without nuclear investment, renewable
| energy needs to be imported which has infrastructure and
| geoplitical considerations, as well as being a single point of
| failure.
|
| [1] http://www.withouthotair.com/ (synopsis at
| http://www.withouthotair.com/synopsis10.pdf)
| tw04 wrote:
| I guess I don't find what's so difficult. All you need to do
| is look to Norway. If you want to make an argument that "the
| last bit is the toughest" - I guess? But they're already
| well, well on their way to a low emissions strategy.
|
| As for it being impossible for a country like the UK: you're
| making some ridiculous assumption that the UK would need all
| energy to be produced on-shore. Does the UK get all of its
| coal and oil in-country? No? Then why do they need to get all
| of their energy in-country? If they need to import and store
| batteries or hydrogen or _insert energy holding vessel_ so be
| it.
| hannob wrote:
| Honestly please stop citing more than a decade old data on
| renewable energy. It's a highly dynamic sector, and data from
| the stone age of renewables is completely irrelevant for the
| discussion.
| DennisP wrote:
| The book is obsolete on financial costs, but still useful
| for the physical scale of infrastructure required by
| various technologies. A lot of people have fairly poor
| intuition about that.
| pfdietz wrote:
| As I recall, it assumed lots of biomass. This is an
| obsolete assumption, and makes the land requirements
| obsolete also.
| DennisP wrote:
| Iirc it didn't really assume any arrangement, except
| maybe as an example. It calculated the physical
| requirements of different energy sources independently.
| The reader can start from there to get any particular
| combination.
| epistasis wrote:
| Not a ton of biomass/wood, but some:
|
| http://www.withouthotair.com/c27/page_212.shtml
|
| The bigger foibles are clean coal and nuclear. Clean coal
| has been impossible to build and CCS of fossil fuels has
| been a boondoggle whereever it's been tried. Nuclear has
| also proven to be nearly impossible to build, from France
| to Finland to the US. The UK has only managed to get one
| site going, Hinkley, and other planned sites have not had
| suitable bids, like Wylfa. So more nuclear is not a
| feasible route.
|
| I think that enhanced geothermal systems (using heat from
| dry rock, kilometers down), could be a good resource
| that's just now getting developed in the UK, on the MW
| scale.
|
| Solar will never be _great_ in the UK, but average
| capacity factor is at 10%, and currently provides 4% of
| total UK electricity, which is a remarkable feat given
| historical costs.
|
| I've said this in other comments, but there's a
| remarkable amount of hot air that went into the
| assumptions in this book, and its age is showing
| terribly. I bet that if MacKay were around still, he'd
| have massive updates, but the entire world was wrong when
| it was betting against renewables, and in favor of
| traditional fossil fuel companies' abilities to innovate.
| DennisP wrote:
| Nuclear is difficult due to political issues and the poor
| state of the US industry, but it's not a physical
| impossibility. China is building quite a lot of nuclear
| power, including a GenIV plant that just went on the
| grid.
| epistasis wrote:
| Political issues are not impeding France, Finland, the
| UK, or even the US's two sites. This is a misconception.
|
| The underlying Gen3 (or whatever the AP1000 and EPR would
| be called), is fundamentally incompatible with our
| construction and logistics capabilities. China probably
| can't help us fix our processes, and I'm not sure we
| would trust them. Same goes for Rosatom, who is also
| building.
|
| Even under the best of economic conditions, however,
| nuclear is not very favorable. Even China, with its
| unparalleled construction capability, is only planning a
| tiny tiny slice of its future energy capacity as nuclear,
| with much larger generation in wind and solar. And a lot
| of the planned nuclear will never be built, because
| renewables and storage are changing the economic case for
| nuclear.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Not a ton of biomass/wood, but some:
|
| Biomass is so very inefficient at capturing solar energy
| (maybe 2%, if that) that even at that small fraction of
| energy produced it contributes very substantially to the
| land use of the energy system.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Every right-wing blowhard has heard about Solyndra, but
| they never mention that the amount wasted of coal carbon
| capture, which doesn't work or even exist at scale, has
| spent multiple Solyndras worth of federal money.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/30/22860207/carbon-
| capture-...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The UK just built a high voltage line to Norway. The eventual
| plan is to sell North Sea wind to Norway while the wind is
| blowing (which is almost all of the time, they're called
| trade winds for a reason). Some of that energy will be stored
| as pumped hydro and sold back to the UK when the wind isn't
| blowing.
| Kletiomdm wrote:
| Apparently they are able to build a DC line 4k km between
| Australia and Singapore?
|
| If people/countries would have prioritized this kind of
| stuff, there would be a few more DC cables around the globe.
|
| It is an easy fix to have renewable energy across the globe.
|
| At least in Germany most new build building have solar panels
| on the roof.
| scythe wrote:
| At a glance he assumes the best practically achievable
| efficacy for a photovoltaic panel in a solar farm is 10%:
|
| http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_41.shtml
|
| >If a breakthrough of solar technology occurs and the cost of
| photovoltaics came down enough that we could deploy panels
| all over the countryside, what is the maximum conceivable
| production? Well, if we covered 5% of the UK with
| 10%-efficient panels, we'd have
|
| This paragraph is titled "Fantasy time". So before I start
| the criticism, I would like to thank him for clearly
| debunking fantasies about hydro and geothermal, where aside
| from ground-source heat pumps and sparsely populated
| mountains, they are simply too small. Photovoltaics are the
| largest source of sustainable energy by far, so the results
| of an overall analysis will be heavily dependent on the
| treatment of solar panels.
|
| At the same time, I think it's practical to assume that
| humans will aggressively innovate the properties and
| production of PV panels, because the potential value is so
| large. But I'm going to stick with existing technology. The
| Agua Caliente farm in Arizona:
|
| https://www.solarfeeds.com/mag/solar-farms-in-the-usa/
|
| uses CdTe panels from First Solar which are currently
| manufactured with about 16% efficiency:
|
| https://www.firstsolar.com/-/media/First-
| Solar/Sustainabilit...
|
| As such, describing solar farms as a fantasy, and upper
| bounding the efficiency at 10%, when there are existing
| installations built with solar panels at 16% efficiency,
| seems too pessimistic. Looking ahead to other technologies,
| perovskites, considered a low-cost option, were recently
| pushed to 25%:
|
| https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/06/unist-epfl-
| claim-25-6...
|
| and Alta Devices demonstrated 29% efficiency with a GaAs
| thin-film before a buyout by a Chinese firm led to a class-
| action lawsuit filed by disgruntled employees:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Devices
|
| I also take issue with the assertion on page 115:
|
| http://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_115.shtml
|
| >most countries will be in the same boat as Britain and will
| have no renewable energy to spare
|
| A glance at a map will immediately show the viewer that
| Britain is one of the most poleward and densely populated
| countries in the world -- a worst-case scenario for solar
| electricity. Even Japan has the benefit of sitting
| significantly further south.
| Gatsky wrote:
| Yeah consumer panels are routinely 18 - 20% efficiency now.
| But these are the ideal numbers. To be fair he doesn't
| derate the efficiency of PV as happens in the real world,
| so the degree to which 10% is an underestimate is
| mitigated. I don't think this substantively changes the
| analysis, it just means less reliance on nuclear in the
| various models. Additionally, in a gloomy country like the
| UK the more you rely on solar the more you need advanced
| storage and grid solutions to deal with the
| inconsistencies.
|
| And agree that the comment about other countries is not
| correct. Australia for example will pretty soon be able to
| meet 100% energy demand with renewables on sunny days and
| is looking to export power.
| epistasis wrote:
| Agreed, the 10% seems like a solid estimate, at least for
| today, but it seems quite likely that new tech could
| bring that up to 15% or more, which is a 50% in efficacy.
| Wikipedia says that current panels are getting a 10%
| capacity factor now, which is only 40% - 50% of what can
| be had at sites with good solar. That capacity factor
| seems to be slowly climbing since 2008 as well.
|
| This paragraph has some pretty bad predictions by MacKay
| though:
|
| >The solar power capacity required to deliver this 50 kWh
| per day per person in the UK is more than 100 times all
| the photovoltaics in the whole world.
|
| This is a completely irrelevant and pointless thing to
| state.
|
| > At the start of this book I said I wanted to explore
| what the laws of physics say about the limits of sus-
| tainable energy, assuming money is no object. On those
| grounds, I should certainly go ahead, industrialize the
| countryside, and push the PV farm onto the stack. At the
| same time, I want to help people figure out what we
| should be doing between now and 2050. And today,
| electricity from solar farms would be four times as
| expensive as the market rate.
|
| Overlooking that Solar PV had already fallen
| precipitously in cost in 2008, and assuming that a four-
| fold fall was not a given, was a huge mistake.
|
| > So I feel a bit irresponsible as I include this
| estimate in the sustainable production stack in figure
| 6.9 - paving 5% of the UK with solar panels seems beyond
| the bounds of plausibility in so many ways. If we
| seriously contemplated doing such a thing, it would quite
| probably be better to put the panels in a two-fold
| sunnier country and send some of the energy home by power
| lines.
|
| 5% of the UK is about the same percentage of the UK that
| is occupied by houses and gardens. Putting solar panels
| on all roofs could probably get to 10 kWh/d or more.
| Converting only a very small amount of arable land, which
| has already been taken out of nature, to solar panels,
| could get the UK to 5% easily.
|
| The skepticism of solar and embrace of tech like clean
| coal and nuclear were big misses here.
| epistasis wrote:
| Yikes, those are some really bad assumptions. It's been a
| decade since I've read the book, so skimming now I'm seeing
| an awful lot of hot air in the assumptions that went into
| it.
|
| For example, the mythical, never built, "clean coal" shows
| up in most of the potential scenarios for the UK! That was
| an obvious stinker back when the book was written, but to
| simultaneously give the benefit of the doubt to charlatans,
| and then misestimate solar and wind so much is pretty
| unforgivable.
|
| I think we perhaps give the book too much credit because it
| converted everything into understandable units, which is
| the primary utility of the book. But that utility papers
| over a lot of really bad judgement, so using it as a guide
| for sustainable energy leads to really bad conclusions.
| epistasis wrote:
| While great for its time that book has been thrust hopelessly
| out of date by technology change. I think some of MacKay's
| former students are looking to update it, since he is so
| sadly no longer with us. In particular, wind and solar and
| storage are dropping exponentially in cost, and it is no
| longer realistic to think that we could ever build nuclear
| within 20 years. The nuclear industry is in shambles, a
| collection of fuckups that can't build, can't ship, can't
| plan, can't even be honest, and results in jailtime for
| executives, whether they are from the US (can't build), or
| South Korea (can build, but faked the safety inspections).
|
| The renewable industry is in contrast an incredible engine of
| technological advancement. Even enhanced geothermal systems,
| which have progressed perhaps the least, have advanced since
| MacKay's time. Ramez Naam has a great concise slide deck on
| this ongoing transformation:
|
| https://t.co/2WnIrtuLpN
|
| I would like to refute your assertion that my statement was
| imprecise. It was extremely precise. And it is not overly
| optimistic, either. The amount of energy over-production will
| be determined by how cheap storage in relation to the costs
| of generation. If storage gets really cheap, then we will
| have less over-production, because it will be economical to
| store the production. But if zero-marginal-cost renewable
| energy continues to get cheaper faster than storage gets
| cheaper, it will be less expensive to have massive
| overproduction than to have lots of storage. Napkin math
| leads to predicitons very similar to RethinkX's prediction,
| which "traditional" energy wonks discount, but traditional
| energy wonks also accept ridiculous projections like the
| IEA's uncritically (sees Naam's slides for just how bad those
| are)
|
| https://www.rethinkx.com/energy
|
| The UK and Japan are probably the two most difficult
| geographic locations to power with just solar and wind. But
| the dramatic drop in cost of off-shore wind is changing that
| dynamic. As are longer-term grid batteries, like those coming
| out of Form Energy, that are designed to be profitable from
| day one on the grid but with only occassional discharge.
| Gatsky wrote:
| To be clear, I am not advocating for nuclear energy. I
| don't have a preference for one non-fossil fuel energy
| source over an other. It is good to see that off-shore wind
| is becoming much more viable.
|
| That slide deck repeats over and over that renewable prices
| have come down. That's great, but as I said in my original
| comment, it is hard to find actual calculations about this
| being implemented in a real country rather than breathless
| exhortations about the coming revolution.
|
| That MacKay report is valuable for the energy distribution
| numbers - for example, it talks about the massive amount of
| panels and windfarms that would be required to meet demand
| and that this is unlikely to be feasible (notwithstanding
| the fact that the UK isn't very sunny). Maybe this isn't so
| true any more, but you seem to be saying that the UK should
| install an even more than massive amount of renewable
| capacity, along with various storage solutions to store the
| excess (presumably to deal with the intermittent nature of
| wind and solar). Maybe I don't have that right, but it
| seems to me to be overly optimistic. The recent energy
| crisis in Europe would seem to suggest that is the case in
| the medium term.
| epistasis wrote:
| The "energy" crisis in Europe is a fossil fuel crisis,
| not a general energy crisis, the same as so many energy
| crises in the past, but this time the fossil fuel
| companies excellent PR engines have been able to cast it
| as the fault of energy sources that are not dominant on
| the grid.
|
| The MacKay report was hopelessly and fruitlessly
| pessimistic on renewable energy, while embracing
| fraudulent technology like "clean coal" that has proven
| over and over to be a scam. It's not a fair shake at the
| world, and much less at the UK. I've been revisiting it
| since your comment, and though I thought it useful when I
| first read it, I no longer think it is helpful in
| understanding the scale of what we can do, and what needs
| to be done.
|
| The RethinkX report I linked is one sort of model about a
| future energy grid, using very rough details. Christopher
| Clack's modeling is far more fine-grained, and his latest
| models are using historical weather combined with
| modeling down to the distribution node to run cost
| optimization strategies. I don't think he's fully
| published his latest yet (which shows huge cost savings
| by doing massive storage and solar deployments to homes
| and businesses within the next five years). But other
| reports are here:
|
| https://www.vibrantcleanenergy.com/media/reports/
|
| IMHO, 90%+ renewables by 2040 is a foregone conclusion
| for 90%+ of the globe, unless governmental corruption
| requires that people are bilked by the coal and natural
| gas industries. The key design question for grids is
| going to be about the amount transmission & storage
| versus and amount of excess generating capacity from
| renewables nearby. Transmission is expensive, and not
| falling much in cost, if at all, so I have a feeling that
| future and new grids will have much less of it. Looking
| at those curves from Naam's slide deck should make you
| think about where we will be in another decade, or in two
| decades. Our current energy system has costs are split
| roughly equally fixed capex and fluctuating opex (based
| on fuel costs). The future grid will have nearly zero
| opex, and drastically lower capex. For the extreme
| outliers like the UK, they may lay down a few dozen GW of
| high-voltage DC to higher resource areas.
| lumost wrote:
| My understanding of the nuclear opposition from the renewable
| groups is that nuclear effectively has a massive upfront
| capex cost and delayed capex for decommissioning 3-5 decades
| later along with extremely low marginal costs to operate.
|
| This means that in order to make "cheap" nuclear, you need to
| operate the plant at max capacity as long as you can. While
| this makes great "base load" it can't complement renewables
| like natural gas can, natural gas peaker plants can simply
| burn when renewables aren't available "low capex, high opex".
|
| I'm curious how the UK is approaching the economics here,
| it's quite possible to reduce the capex of nuclear - and it's
| also possible to simply plan for something along the lines of
| a 40/60 split between nuclear and renewables where renewables
| take "peak demand" and high energy use industries.
| barney54 wrote:
| People used to say that nuclear would lead to power to cheap to
| meter. That never happened. I'm not sure it's going to happen
| with renewables because of the large land use requirements.
|
| Also is there anywhere in the world where adding wind and solar
| has led to lower electricity rates for ratepayers? European
| electricity and nat gas prices should go up about 50% this
| year.
|
| Lastly, there was a story yesterday on HN about high fertilizer
| prices. The biggest reason for that is high natural gas prices,
| in part because of a lack of recent investment in new natural
| gas sources. There will be an energy transition, but so far the
| prices for energy and things derived from energy sources are
| really high.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Lastly, there was a story yesterday on HN about high
| fertilizer prices.
|
| Keep in mind that you can't make urea without carbon dioxide.
|
| Currently, you just can not electrify its production. It
| would take many years of research before you can do it in any
| sizeable amount. This is different from ammonia, that is just
| an equipment renovation away (so, a few years of
| investiment), but ammonia isn't useful as fertilizer.
| DennisP wrote:
| Ammonia is in fact used directly as fertilizer.
|
| > Ammonia (NH3) is the foundation for the nitrogen (N)
| fertilizer industry. It can be directly applied to soil as
| a plant nutrient or converted into a variety of common N
| fertilizers
|
| > Ammonia has the highest N content of any commercial
| fertilizer, making it a popular source of N despite the
| potential hazard it poses and the safety practices required
| to use it. For example, when NH3 fertilizer is applied
| directly to soil, it's in a pressurized liquid that will
| immediately become vapor if exposed to air after leaving
| the tank. To prevent such releases into the atmosphere,
| growers use various tractor-drawn knives and shanks to
| place it at least 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 inches) below the
| soil surface. Ammonia will then rapidly react with soil
| water to form ammonium (NH4+), which is retained on the
| soil cation exchange sites.
|
| https://www.cropnutrition.com/resource-library/ammonia
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yeah, ok, ammonia is not completely useless as a
| fertilizer. You can't do that process in any soil, and
| can't repeat it many times on the same place either. But
| it is used a few times in a few places.
|
| (Interestingly, I live in a place that would gain a lot
| from it, yet people overwhelmingly prefer to use
| magnesium and calcium during the PH correction of the
| soil. Now I'm curious about the reason.)
|
| There is also ammonium nitrate, that is a much safer and
| easier to handle carbon-free alternative to ammonium and
| much more widely applicable. It is still more dangerous
| and harder to handle than urea, and also requires
| equipment renovation (so, don't expect people to change
| any fast). But if the carbon becomes a hard constraint,
| people will very likely migrate to it or something
| similar. The problem we are seeing right now is that any
| migration takes time and money.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Ammonium nitrate is made from ammonia. Ammonia is easy to
| make renewably. It's just more expensive than using
| natural gas.
| DennisP wrote:
| You make it sound likes it's barely used. That doesn't
| appear to be the case, from the sources that come up in a
| quick google. For example:
|
| > Anhydrous ammonia is one of the most efficient and
| widely used sources of nitrogen for plant growth.
|
| https://extension.missouri.edu/publications/g1920
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yeah, it's one of the top 5. Notice there are no numbers
| there.
|
| It's hard to find numbers, most places basically ignore
| the usage as a direct fertilizer. It seems to be much
| more popular on the US than anywhere else, for the US I
| was able to find this (it's old, but it's what I have):
|
| > Urea is the most popular source of dry N fertilizer,
| accounting for 79% of the total dry N used. Ammonium
| sulfate has risen in popularity. In 1988 it constituted
| 14% of the dry N market. (https://www.canr.msu.edu/field_
| crops/uploads/archive/E0896.p...)
|
| Most countries just equate nitrogen fertilizer with urea.
| jollybean wrote:
| "because of the large land use requirements."
|
| It's also everything else, especially the monopoly on
| transmission.
|
| Energy is a supply and demand game like everything else.
|
| 'Hydro One' in Ontario has a CEO, workers, and a quasi
| monopoly.
|
| On what planet would they, in all self-interest ever decide
| to lower rates for something?
|
| If energy prices went down a little bit, they could actually
| increase their transmission prices, lower end prices to users
| by a tiny fraction, and that's that. That's how a value chain
| monopoly works.
|
| Getting rid of the transmission problem, at lest for 'last
| mile' would be a giant leap.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > On what planet would they, in all self-interest ever
| decide to lower rates for something?
|
| In Ontario electricity rates are one of the biggest
| political footballs. Every election there's a stupid
| electricity rate promise from every party. That's how rates
| will go down in Ontario.
| Retric wrote:
| Electrical grids change slowly, over half of all electrical
| equipment worldwide is 20+ years old and solar only very
| recently became cheap. Many places are seeing lower rates due
| to recent renewable energy investments, others are seeing
| higher costs due to heavily subsidized early adoption. Some
| like Germany have both effects at the same time.
|
| So remember, the economics going forward on a 20+ year time
| horizons look very different from existing infrastructure. We
| still have extremely overpriced concentrating solar
| installations that are not even vaguely competitive with sub
| 2c/kWh PV solar. However when you sign a 20 year contract for
| all power produced at price X you don't get to drop it when
| something else becomes cheaper.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There actually already instances of things being shut down
| early because the savings from new renewables are so great
| it is in everyone's interest to buy out the existing
| contract early.
|
| Obviously that applies more for things with high ongoing
| fuel costs but I wouldn't be at all surprised if this
| applied to some early concentrating solar plants,
| particularly if they can reuse the land and grid connection
| for new renewables.
| barney54 wrote:
| But where has this led to actual savings for ratepayers?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Everywhere? Even if you only look at energy prices it's
| probably fairly clear trend, once you start accounting
| for pollution, climate change, lower peak loads etc. The
| savings quickly run into Trillions.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| If it's everywhere, can you name _one country_ where
| retail electricity rates went down as share of renewable
| electricity in the grid went up?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| How about the US?
|
| https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-10/mobile/trends-in-
| elec...
|
| Of particular note is the graph showing prices in areas
| heavily reliant on coal, vs those with a high renewable
| usage.
|
| Conclusion:
|
| > Regions with higher use of natural gas and renewable
| fuel for electric power generation, in particular
| hydroelectric power, have seen prices rise more slowly
| than prices in regions that have predominantly used coal.
| Although it is not possible to attribute the differences
| in the retail price development solely to fuel mix, the
| significant role that capacity investment and fuel costs
| play in determining distribution rates suggests that at
| least part of the variation between these regions is
| explained by capacity shifts in the industry.
| deepnotderp wrote:
| That is a massively misleading way to frame it. Hydro is
| well known as one of the cheapest sources of energy
| period. The problem being if you happen to have a river
| of energy. Bundling hydro (and natural gas!) into
| "renewables" to claim that all renewables lower grid
| prices (when most people take it to mean solar and wind
| are impractical) is misleading.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| They have graphs for both renewables with hydro and
| renewables without hydro, the effect is there for both.
| They also have a separate gas graph too.
|
| But, hydro and gas pairing really well with solar and
| wind is an actual thing that helps lower energy costs so
| I don't see why that should be totally ignored.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Texas. Many of them think they're a separate country. :)
| Retric wrote:
| Norway and Iceland come to mind. However, they obviously
| don't use much solar power due to location. In terms of
| recent technology, Iowa is probably the clearest US
| example.
|
| More generally you need to look at wholesale prices and
| more specifically inflation adjusted wholesale prices to
| see large drops from the recent solar price drops.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > I'm not sure it's going to happen with renewables because
| of the large land use requirements.
|
| I want you to compare the cost of PV equipment per acre of
| land vs. the cost of an acre of land.
|
| If PV is ever globally limited because of land cost, it will
| already have driven all other energy sources to extinction.
| joshvm wrote:
| Thinking that nuclear fission stations would lead to super
| cheap power is somewhat naive. Nuclear power stations are
| incredibly expensive to build. There is the cost of fuel,
| decomissioning and ongoing costs for waste disposal - note
| that most of this is _not_ spent fuel rods, but things like
| PPE which can only be used for a certain amount of time.
|
| Wind and solar have at times pushed wholesale prices negative
| in Germany in the past - that doesn't necessarily translate
| to a cost for users (ie homeowners). I'm not super familiar
| withWe really need much better local storage so that people
| can soak up excess power, or fabled smart appliances that
| communicate properly to use electricty at an appropriate
| time.
|
| One issue is if you run a power plant which is difficult to
| shut off quickly, or the time to start up is also
| prohibitive. You might choose to take the hit and pay for the
| grid to take your power, rather than shutdown and lose out
| when demand increases in the future. If I understand
| correctly, this cost is sometimes passed to consumers (e.g.
| if your supplier owns the plant). So consumers actually lose
| when prices go negative - indeed if you have your own
| generators, in theory you should also be paying to supply the
| grid when demand is negative if you don't disconnect your
| feed. What should happen in an ideal world is you'd store/use
| it locally (say charge your car up).
|
| See https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/windy-february-
| drove-re...
|
| https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-
| prices-...
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266679242.
| ..
| coryrc wrote:
| > Wind and solar have at times pushed wholesale prices
| negative in Germany in the past
|
| Germany has extremely high electricity prices for the
| consumer. It doesn't matter if it's occasionally negative
| if the average is extremely costly, because you need
| electricity all the time.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > is there anywhere in the world where adding wind and solar
| has led to lower electricity rates for ratepayers?
|
| We do not have a spare universe without such additions to
| answer that question.
|
| Hornsea Project 1 (1.2GW nameplate electricity generation
| from wind turbines in the North Sea) is running right now and
| is paid PS140 per MWh under CfD terms. So, on a nice fresh
| day that's PS168 000 per hour.
|
| In 2019 you could say that's a ludicrous subsidy, the market
| price for electricity in the UK was about PS50 per MWh so the
| government (and thus rate payers ultimately) are paying about
| 200% extra to subsidise this wind farm.
|
| On the other hand, today (in January 2022) the market price
| is fluctuating closer to PS200 per MWh due to gas prices and
| so PS140 per MWh looks like a bargain.
|
| [ The way Contracts for Difference works is you sell your
| electricity like everybody else, via some mix of long term
| and short term contracts, and the government tops up the
| difference between the market price and your "strike price"
| so that your income is always determined by your strike price
| not subject to changes in the market price. This also means
| if market prices are higher (as they often have been this
| past year) you pay the government back the difference so you
| still only get the income your strike price guaranteed. As a
| result the risk of _not generating electricity_ stays with
| you, as does the risk of _not selling your electricity for
| market prices_ but the government eats your risk that _market
| prices are far lower than you expected_ while also gobbling
| up any _windfall profits if market prices are far higher_ ]
|
| Now, if Hornsea and similar wind farms don't exist, does the
| UK magically pay the same price PS140 per MWh for that
| electricity even though gas is expensive and it has no other
| source of electricity ? Or do the prices go up even further?
| Maybe with no other choice the UK buys electricity for PS300
| per MWh or even PS500 per MWh. The lights must stay on after
| all.
|
| Also there are secondary effects. If you propose a _new_ wind
| farm today, to start construction in 2024 and be online in
| 2030, you 're not going to get a strike price of PS140 per
| MWh because of course prices came down due to investment in
| the sector. But if there was no investment, why wouldn't you
| find wind farms in 2030 just as expensive as they were in
| 2015 ? And not only did prices come down, efficiency went up
| as suppliers gained experience and competed to offer better
| products, when Hornsea was proposed a 8MW turbine was best-
| in-class, Hornsea Project 2 intends up to 15MW turbines. The
| taller structure offers not only more peak power output, it
| also delivers higher capacity factor because high altitude
| winds are more constant.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The problem is that battery costs are so expensive that to
| get that kW of unreliable power, you need to build a kW of
| reliable power to back it up. Then rates swing from the
| very cheap kW when the sun is shining and there are few
| clouds to the expensive rate on cloudy days or night, and
| at the end of the day you have to pay for double the
| capacity. That's why electricity rates go up _on average_
| after the introduction of cheap unreliable power.
|
| The production of cheap, long lasting batteries that can be
| deployed at mass scale and survive large numbers of power
| cycles is the missing link between cheap unreliable power
| and actually realized lower costs. So people are declaring
| victory citing the unreliable rates while electricity
| consumers are faced with much higher costs. We don't have
| that victory yet.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Commercial capacity is free. There are no subsidies for
| building gas turbines. If they want to build more,
| gambling that they'll be used when the winds are calm and
| the skies are dark, they're welcome to try to get
| investment for that.
|
| Looking at the cost of wholesale electricity supply
| (rather than the price households pay for "units" of
| electricity) I do not see your "up on average" for
| introducing "cheap unreliable power".
|
| https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-data-and-research/data-
| porta...
|
| Ofgem says in June 2010 wholesale electricity cost
| PS42.18 per MWh. By June 2015 that was PS41.66 and by
| June 2020 it was... PS28.42
|
| However a year later in June 2021 it was PS79.85. Now,
| what happened between June 2020 and June 2021 ? Did we
| install a lot more solar panels, build a huge wind farm?
| No, Vladimir Putin began squeezing Europe's supply of
| natural gas.
|
| Ofgem even has a gas price chart next to the electricity
| charts so you can see this obvious correlation.
|
| Gas prices went up, and they're going to stay up unless
| you think Putin is suddenly going to decide he's happy
| for Ukraine to join NATO and put American troops on his
| border.
|
| If you need natural gas for its chemical properties this
| just sucks, too bad. But many more of us are using it for
| heating or electricity and _those_ are things we can move
| away from gas, insulating ourselves from this problem
| _and_ helping to fight global warming.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The reason why you need to look at what households pay is
| because the electricity companies are the ones who need
| to deal with the volatility and what they charge to
| customers is the price of reliable energy. Wholesale
| prices are very volatile, but residential prices are much
| more stable, reflecting an average of wholesale prices.
| So it is better to sample them than to sample the random
| noise of wholesale prices.
|
| I also disagree thoroughly with the idea that you can
| take 3 samples from statistical noise and deduce an
| average, as you have done.
|
| I also think it's laughable that natural gas prices are
| controlled by Putin. That's a deep rabbit hole you've
| fallen into, as it's a global market, and natural gas
| prices respond to general supply and demand, not the
| dictates of Putin "squeezing" anyone. In particular, when
| there is less wind or Europe takes a coal plant offline,
| for example, then demand for natural gas goes up. Now
| what do you think happens to the price when demand goes
| up? The idea that high natural gas prices are dictated by
| some shadowy enemy, rather than lack of substitutes such
| as wind, oil, and coal, is not a good analysis of the
| problem. Frankly it sounds a lot like those who says
| inflation is caused by "corporate greed" rather than an
| expansion of the money supply.
|
| In general, please avoid blaming changes to prices on
| political enemies, as that's pure misinformation. It does
| not elucidate or explain any actual cause of price
| changes. It literally makes people less informed, less
| able to understand the world around them. It's the
| opposite of what we should be trying to do.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > The reason why you need to look at what households pay
| is because the electricity companies are the ones who
| need to deal with the volatility and what they charge to
| customers is the price of reliable energy.
|
| Nope. The price households pay is "capped" by government
| policy. Bread and circuses my friend. The result of
| electricity companies being unable to "deal with the
| volatility" is that they go bankrupt, if you'd followed
| that Ogem link it probably highlighted that it has
| information for UK consumers worried what happens when
| their supplier goes bankrupt, as huge numbers have (the
| answer is, in very short term future, nothing important
| since of course the retail electricity companies don't
| actually supply any electricity to anybody, they're just
| an artificial construct).
|
| > I also disagree thoroughly with the idea that you can
| take 3 samples from statistical noise and deduce an
| average, as you have done.
|
| I linked Ofgem's site which shows you all this data over
| an extended period, I just gave you three examples to
| save on reading, and you... averaged them and then
| complained this is statistical noise.
|
| > I also think it's laughable that natural gas prices are
| controlled by Putin.
|
| Laughable or not, Putin in practice controls the Russian
| company Gazprom which supplies most of Europe's natural
| gas. That company chose to supply only the bare minimum
| of what was contracted, even though its buyers would like
| to buy closer to the upper end of their contract range.
| Because _politically_ this is in Putin 's interest.
|
| Now of course Britain, far from Russia and with its own
| oil fields and other sources, is not directly depending
| on Russia for gas, unlike several other important
| European countries, however, you correctly notice that
| _supply and demand_ influences pricing. For Britain 's
| neighbour's who can't get Russian gas the British gas is
| suddenly very attractive, raising its prices, and thus
| we're back to where we began, _Putin_ is ultimately why
| you can see that big spike in the Ofgem charts that you
| are pretending is "just noise"...
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I can't speak for other countries but I don't think you
| understand just how much land America has. Drive across it
| sometime. The wind farms are on land that goes on forever.
|
| > The global weighted-average cost of electricity of new
| onshore wind farms in 2019 was USD 0.053/kWh with
| country/region values of between USD 0.051 and USD 0.099/kWh
| depending on the region. Costs for the most competitive
| projects are now as low USD 0.030/kWh, without financial
| support.
| deepnotderp wrote:
| So still more expensive than gas, with unreliability to
| boot?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Where do you get gas power for less than 3 cents per
| kilowatt, fully loaded?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > land use requirements
|
| Supplying the US with enough solar power for 100% of
| requirements would require 16,000 square miles, plus one more
| for batteries.
|
| That's a lot, but in a country with 3.6 million of them, not
| a big deal. That's about how much we use for cemetaries. We
| use a lot more for parking lots.
|
| Land use is a problem for some countries, Singapore can't go
| 100% solar. But most countries are fine.
| 41b696ef1113 wrote:
| Taking those numbers as writ, that works out to 0.4% of US
| landmass. Wow -effectively nothing.
| Retric wrote:
| Singapore us extremely unusual at 51.7 TWh/year on 724 km2
| of land. However, they are far from energy independent
| right now. They currently import the fuel to generate
| electricity, so they could also just import electricity
| directly.
|
| Presumably while keeping back up generators for strategic
| reasons.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I'm not sure it's going to happen with renewables because of
| the large land use requirements"
|
| I am pretty sure, we would have some desert land to spare.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File%3AFulln.
| ..
|
| Also most of roofs yet uncovered by panels. And you can do
| dual use: solarpanels that provide shade for agriculture use,
| etc.
|
| Land or technology is not the problem - competing with cheap
| fossil energy in the ground is, as well as the massive
| investment required to make the complete transition to
| renewables.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Providing a set amount of electricity 24/7 of course has a
| cost as well as setting up renewable sources. But especially
| solar cells have only fixed/maintenance costs, but no "fuel"
| cost per amount of electrictiy produced. This leads to a
| price for the electricity, which mostly has to be reconed up
| to the point where the grid demands are satisfied. Any excess
| electricity is literally free and can be repurposed, as long
| as that purpose can utilize intermittant supply. If you look
| at the German electricity prices at the power exchange, high
| renewable output correlates with very low prices. The
| amortized costs of renewables by now are distinctly lower
| than for fossil fuel and of course nuclear power. While large
| investments have to be taken, a further expansion of
| renewables should lower the electricity price in Germany (and
| the rest of Europe via trade)
|
| Current prices are very high, because of gas shortage. I
| don't have a clear idea how it all started, but it seems
| there was a too large dependency on the spot markets vs. long
| term contracts, and now the spot markets have skyrocketed.
| There are political aspecst too - Russia for sure could
| extend their deliveries, but barely deliver what was
| contractually agreed upon.
|
| It didn't help, that several French nuclear plants have been
| shut down without warning as safety problems were detected
| and have now to be fixed. Finally, the weather has been not
| so friendly for renewables in the last year, for the first
| time in many years, Germany had a small decrease in
| production year over year.
| ncphil wrote:
| "People" who were "Greatest generation" and "Silent
| generation" adults who lied to us, lied to my face, when they
| knew it wasn't the truth. Civilian nuclear power (at least
| terrestrial nuclear power) is, and always was a grift.
| Initially as a way to keep military nuclear programs going,
| but later as a grift unto itself by elements of the MIC like
| GE and Westinghouse who couldn't contain their greed any
| better than they could radioactive waste.
| fivea wrote:
| > That's a pretty shocking stat too!
|
| Is it, though? It sounds like plain old production costs.
|
| I mean, unless you build a coal plant right into a coal mine, a
| natural gas generator at each gas well, you don't store any
| surplus wind power... Energy is needed in parts of the energy
| production chain to keep it working.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I agree!
|
| I 1:9 ratio of energy-in to energy-out is pretty good!
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There was a whole subspecies of climate change denialists
| who claimed modern society would collapse if we dropped
| below 13:1 ratio on this.
|
| Fortunately for the future of civilization:
|
| a) EROI is a BS metric which is basically meaningless.
|
| b) modern renewables score much, much higher on this score
| than fossil basically ever did.
| bjourne wrote:
| Why is EROI BS?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| https://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2016/06/eroei-is-
| unimpo...
|
| > For example, suppose we had single 1KW solar panel, and
| the panel had a very low ERoEI of 4 (which is certainly
| an underestimate [1]). Even if you increased the ERoEI
| from the very low value of 4, all the way up to to
| infinity, so that no energy was required to replace that
| solar panel, it would make little difference--it would
| increase the amount of NET energy obtained by only 25%.
| On the other hand, if you could build 3 such solar
| panels, instead of 1, then you would triple the net
| energy obtained. In this case, building two more solar
| panels had 12x greater effect than increasing the ERoEI
| to infinity.
| epistasis wrote:
| That puts it at an energy return on energy invested of around
| 9, which is pretty damn bad.
|
| Wind is at 18 right now, solar at something like 15. These
| will only go up as they become cheaper and cheaper. Given how
| frequently renewables are critiqued for low energy return on
| energy investment, 11% is a pretty pathetic stat. I think
| it's pretty clear that these industries are the walking dead.
| I should have switched my total market index funds to exclude
| the fossil fuel companies a few years ago, before they lost
| so much of their value recently.
| fivea wrote:
| > That puts it at an energy return on energy invested of
| around 9, which is pretty damn bad.
|
| Is it, though? That sounds pretty awesome, specially as
| renewables lower/eliminate energy imports thus improve a
| country's balance of trade.
|
| Also, one aspect of renewables that results in energy
| dissipation/loss is energy storage. Wind and solar farms
| generate energy that don't coincide with peaks in demand,
| thus that production is stored and reintroduced in the grid
| resulting in a drop of efficiency. However, it would be
| stupid to argue that losses from, say, restocking the
| reservoir of a pumped storage hydroelectric plant,
| specially one which has been retrofitted as an energy
| reservoir, makes the technology worse than only generating
| power during periods where demand surpasses supply.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| Won't the intermittent nature hurt crypto less than other
| industries? We currently have a crypto mining company setting
| up in Texas where energy is cheap with the understanding that
| they might have to shut down and start up at a moments notice
| due to demand from the rest of the grid.
|
| As long as these sources are available at all times in
| aggregate across the globe, crypto mining should be one of the
| most resilient industries.
| ema wrote:
| I don't know how the situation is now but when I looked into
| it a few years ago the rapidly increasing hash rate of the
| mining hardware meant that running them only half the time
| didn't meant that it just takes twice the time to recoup your
| investment but that you might not make back at all.
| jollybean wrote:
| "is about to thrust us into a world where for long periods of
| time, we have massive energy abundance of zero-marginal cost
| energy generation. "
|
| We're nowhere near that. I don't believe that energy will be
| truly available in abundance until fusion or later.
|
| The 'new capabilities' we need are in storage, smarter
| regulation about transmission because the monopolies are ugly
| etc..
|
| Any new technical game changers are in the works. Disruptive
| technologies don't come out of nowhere. There's someone in a
| lab, working away on something, already publishing papers for
| what will one day be fairly transformative.
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't think that fusion will ever provide terrestrial
| energy abundance. The current fusion schemes under
| consideration all resort back to being a heat source to boil
| water and drive a turbine. Renewable energy + storage is
| within striking distance of undercutting the just the steam
| turbine side of fusion. Since the _only_ benefit of fusion I
| 've ever heard is a huge amount of energy from a small amount
| of space, which presumably allows lower costs for that heat
| energy, let's assume best case of zero cost for fusion. In
| that scenario, fusion-driven electricity is more expensive
| than renewables, so it will be renewables providing
| abundance, not fusion.
|
| If somebody figures out direct conversion of fusion to
| electricity, that would change my projections. Also it's
| possible that for non-terrestrial applications, fusion might
| be the best applications. But I think it's far too early in
| the development of space travel to predict what sort of
| energy mechanisms we may use.
| jollybean wrote:
| Renewables are nowhere near what you indicate, that's the
| problem.
|
| There is no future in which a Canadian throws up a panel
| and gets vast amounts of cheap energy.
|
| Fission would by far and away be the cheapest form of
| energy: it's literally hot rocks that boil water. What
| makes it expensive is dealing with the radiation ans
| safety.
|
| Fusion, without those artifacts might yield vast amounts of
| free energy. But we don't really know.
|
| Wind and Sun are never going to provide vast surpluses of
| electricity, they're just going to help us come down a bit
| off of fossil fuels.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > if and when we make the transition to solar power and windpower
|
| I love people who write about transitioning to full renewables as
| if it's something that's inevitably going to happen. Meanwhile,
| we still don't have the tech to make it even close to
| economically viable. Maybe we'll get there at some point, maybe
| we won't - but there's a whole subgenre of pundits who are
| already speculating about second-order consequences of such full-
| renewable world (in the same manner as in around 2017 or so
| everyone was speculating about the world in which self-driving
| cars are a reality, how many jobs it will cost etc.).
|
| Also, the author is evidently counting wood towards fossil fuels,
| which shows that his understanding of what a fossil is is
| lacking.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > we still don't have the tech to make it even close to
| economically viable.
|
| ...What? Solar and wind are the cheapest source of energy, and
| still rapidly getting cheaper.
|
| Here is a nicely done deck talking about the cost of all things
| renewabl:
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/l6qr9x1zhvc4yq7/Naam%20Clean%20Ene...
| burntoutfire wrote:
| They might be viable on cost per kWh basis, but you also need
| storage if you want to rely on renewable during off-peaks.
| Right now, there's no economically viable solution for it.
| ck2 wrote:
| Not only is it making some very bad actors very wealthy for
| centuries to come, think of all the political power in play to
| ensure it continues forever.
|
| I mean they still allow/use LEADED fuel in aircraft everywhere in
| 2022 despite everything horrifying we know about that now. It's
| not just a lack of care for health of a population, there has to
| be some serious profit/politics in that decision.
|
| Electrons can have so many flexible sources and all can be
| relatively local.
|
| Stop subsidizing burning things, make it cost what it really
| costs.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| Making things first what they really cost would solve a lot of
| problems, but no one actually wants that. Certainly not enough
| people to matter.
|
| Civilization is built on loans from future citizens. I think
| the only reason most people who clamor about "balancing the
| budget" don't push for environmental improvements is that they
| know they will be dead before it really matters.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...they still allow /use LEADED fuel in aircraft everywhere in
| 2022 despite everything horrifying we know about that now. It's
| not just a lack of care for health of a population, there has
| to be some serious profit/politics in that decision._
|
| This specific complaint is kind of silly, since there is no
| "population" at risk in the aviation context. The use of
| tetraethyl lead for a single day by automobiles in urban areas
| where children live was worse for human health than its use for
| decades at aviation elevations over wilderness where most
| aircraft spend most of their operating time.
|
| There could be concentrations around airports I guess, but
| those would be better dealt with by local regulations than by a
| blanket ban. It is good for humanity that aircraft built in the
| 1940s are still in use today. Obsoleting all those engines
| would be harmful.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > These kinds of changes are not cost-free: people who drove oil
| trucks will need to find other jobs, and we should help them make
| the transition.
|
| Who is "we"?
|
| If it isn't the people who own the oil trucks, how is it going to
| happen?
|
| So far, the "we" hasn't been them, and that's one reason it's
| taking so long to happen.
| gotamas wrote:
| Shipping is primiarily about volume, not tonnage. The density of
| a container full of tennis rackets is much smaller than brent. If
| we were comparing volume percentage, the fossil fuel might not be
| so high.
| aronpye wrote:
| > " Yes, you'll need transmission lines to move electrons around,
| but they are far less dangerous and intrusive."
|
| Yeah ...
|
| California Says PG&E Power Lines Caused Camp Fire That Killed 85
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/business/pge-fire.html
| mint2 wrote:
| It's a valid point and yet given it's pge we'd have to mention
| they blew up people in San Bruno due to their shoddy natural
| gas pipeline so we might need examples from outside pge to
| check that it's not just an awful safety culture and poor
| maintenance makes anything unsafe.
|
| But yes in principe lines can start fires or electrocute
| people, squirrels, and Mylar balloons
| aronpye wrote:
| > it's not just an awful safety culture and poor maintenance
| makes anything unsafe.
|
| I agree, I just felt that the original article was being
| disingenuous by stating that power lines are somehow safer
| than fossil fuel infrastructure just because it's not fossil
| fuel. Whereas it is more about your point on safety culture,
| where both can be equally as safe or dangerous if managed
| incorrectly.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Forty percent by what? Mass, volume, or dollar value? Most likely
| (gosh, the article is so long form, I can't find out) it's dollar
| value, other types of comparison are nonsensical.
|
| But then this is dependent on the oil price. Right now it's about
| $80/barrel, but the median price for the last 5 years was about
| $50/barrel. For liquefied natural gas (LNG) the current price is
| about $10/thousand cubic feet, but the median over the last 5
| years was about $5.
| howdydoo wrote:
| If you really want to know, the answer is right at the top of
| the article. I won't do your homework for you. Maybe someone
| else will.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Want to go bananas? Cargo shipping is as mouch as oil shipping
| and the most shipped goods are bananas...
|
| https://www.eurosender.com/blog/en/most-shipped-items/
| NavinF wrote:
| That site is pretty sketchy. No sources and no numbers.
|
| I also have a hard time believing that "Artwork and Sculptures"
| is #3. Maybe I live in a bubble, but do people really buy
| physical art more than once a year? Like I've commissioned
| digital art on several occasions, but I can't imagine art being
| a significant chunk of anyone's spending.
| Too wrote:
| I bet by count of items jewelery and other Etsy artwork list
| pretty high, but no way in total volume since they are all
| very small.
|
| Sounds more like a cover category people use to avoid duty
| taxes. Or the site is completely making up statistic on the
| spot, looks quite sketchy indeed.
|
| There is also concerts and trade fairs shipping a lot of what
| could be considered artwork around the world.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Hehe yes this site aint trustworthy at all... just wanted
| to make a joke :). But bananas are rly in the top 3 cargo
| shipped goods on most lists
|
| Art is used to lounder money ... I dont know how much of
| that makes it via cargo but it has to be something. And
| sometimes cars and other big things are art. One artwork
| could easy fit one container ... oh and 3d printed stuff.
| Company have to ship that too .... But arts ranking seems
| way to high....but searched for us imports and found this
| ... https://www.titlemax.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/01/the-most...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I will never understand the banana market.
|
| How the hell are bananas so damn cheap? It is bananas to me!
| Kye wrote:
| Monocropping! They keep coming up with new bananas to deal
| with overproduction making them extinct.
|
| edit: The two people who downvoted probably think this is a
| joke. It is not.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The history of it is very interesting. They were unknown to
| the world until the United Fruit company marketed them
| globally. Of course they also ruled very harshly in central
| america, hence term banana republic.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| They are paid for in blood. For example, when workers in
| Collumbia went on a strike, US government got involved,
| decladed the strike 'communist' and 2000 people were
| massacred.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre
| bserge wrote:
| They're really good at ripening on the go? I have no idea,
| they cost about the same in Europe from Ireland to Romania,
| which is rather insane.
|
| On that note, walnuts are so expensive, meanwhile they grow
| literally everywhere around here with no special care or
| anything.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I don't understand why nuts are so expensive. They sell for
| almost 10x their wholesale price.
|
| They wholesale for ~$1.70 per pound. Peanuts wholesale for
| ~$0.25 per pound.
|
| Yet walnuts sell for like ~$12 per pound and peanuts sell
| for ~$3 per pound.
|
| Most foods that have sell for 10x wholesale price are
| delicate AND perishable, so a ton of that food goes to
| waste. Also, grocers reject a lot because of looks.
|
| None of this is true with nuts.
|
| So why do they retail for 10x wholesale price? I know
| technically, it's closer to 5x - since they usually retail
| blanched and the shell is half the weight. Still...
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah, they're way too expensive. So is honey, by the way.
| I get great fresh honey from local beekeepers for like 5
| times less than local store price.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Walnuts can have very big differences in quality. Yielding
| a consistent high quality is not cheap.
| bserge wrote:
| I've got around 10kg of them from a couple of trees in my
| garden. I've done zero maintenance, they're just there to
| keep other shit from growing (walnut trees poison the
| soil, most weeds stop growing, also because of the
| shade). All "high quality", the same stuff you get in
| stores.
|
| Walnut trees are used on roadsides, they're perfect for
| it, zero maintenance, keeps the soil from moving/sliding
| and kills weeds. Random people just harvest them if they
| want to.
|
| The store prices on them make no sense. Just like bananas
| :D
| [deleted]
| grouphugs wrote:
| mxschumacher wrote:
| the more intermittent energy generation is in a grid, the more
| balancing mechanisms, either storage or flexible generation, will
| be required. As both generation and consumption have to be
| balanced in real-time (at close to 100% reliability no less!), we
| have quite a challenge on our hands. There are hard limits in
| physics, geology and in regards to cost for grid-scale lithium-
| ion batteries (for detailed reasoning and the role hydrogen might
| play, please refer to this excellent talk from UC Davis: [3]),
| especially as the global roll-out of EVs is simultaneously under
| way. Long story short: more solar & wind is bad news for coal but
| great news for natural gas (especially in regions like the
| coastal US and Germany where a phase out of nuclear is ongoing).
|
| In the western world, we can eventually shift away from burning
| fossil fuels (low population growth and off shoring of energy
| intense manufacturing helps), but globally the demand for fossil
| fuels is still growing quickly. It's hard to overstate just how
| much of a revolution LNG (liquefied natural gas) has been and is
| - for the longest time you could only use natural gas directly if
| you were connected to a source via pipeline. Western Europe was
| almost entirely dependent on Russia for example. Now, a global
| market has evolved. Nigerian gas can be shipped to Brazil when a
| drought limits Hydropower capacity, gas from Trinidad-Tobago is
| burned in Massachusetts to compensate for limitations imposed by
| the Jones Act and lacking pipeline connections to the nearby
| Marcellus shale [0], Australian gas powers industry in South
| Korea and Japan - countries that don't have substantial energy
| resources. It has gotten harder to strong-arm consumers, as they
| now have many suppliers to choose from and countries like India
| are making gigantic bets on natural gas for the coming decades
| [1] longer term, we should expect a changing power balance and
| better energy availability around the world. Replacing coal-fired
| capacity with cleaner burning natural gas is the biggest, fastest
| gain we can aim for when trying to combat local pollution and
| global co2 emissions (though methane leaks have to be brought
| under control!). Nuclear is a tough sell politically (even though
| that seems to be changing in some areas and the solar/wind
| capacity roll-out is already moving quickly.
|
| Given that the global population is expected to be north of 10
| billion in 2060 - 38 years from now - and that the average
| disposable income should get a very substantial boost, the energy
| demand of humanity is still on an aggressive upward trajectory.
|
| I would not count Exxon out just yet, if you read their 10K
| (annual report) [2], you get the sense that they have a deep
| awareness of renewable energy deployments around the world. Given
| the cost advantages of oil (think of it as liquid batteries) and
| the centrality of natural gas in our economic system, I don't
| think ships, pipelines and trucks moving fossil fuels will
| disappear anytime soon.
|
| [0] https://doomberg.substack.com/p/new-england-is-an-energy-
| cri...
|
| [1] https://www.investindia.gov.in/sector/oil-gas/natural-gas
|
| [2] https://ir.exxonmobil.com/static-
| files/29f8cfbf-6158-49b2-b2...
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ykv_0N-bRc&t=922s
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's lots of viable technologies that are currently
| displaced by the cost-performance of lithium ion batteries.
|
| For instance, sodium-ion appears to be viable for grid storage
| and much less material limited than lithium-ion. Maybe it's
| addressed in the hour long video you link, I don't know.
| rhacker wrote:
| So, in a sense, the world is going to run out of everything
| because too many people are trying to fit a bunch of 0's on the
| end of a short string.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Question:
|
| How much fossil fuel is used to _ship_ those fossil fuels?
|
| Boats burn it, don't they?
| lmm wrote:
| Very little. Modern transport ships are astonishingly
| efficient.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Right on, that's good news
| guerby wrote:
| I wonder what will happen when shipping switch to e-fuels (or any
| other non fossil), will it be produced on ports directly or
| shipped again?
|
| Some links:
|
| * Maersk Makes $1.4B Bet on Methanol Ships
| https://gcaptain.com/maersk-new-methanol-ships/
|
| * financing https://gcaptain.com/maersk-issues-first-green-bond-
| to-help-...
|
| * engine https://www.man-es.com/company/press-releases/press-
| details/... "This is a massive milestone as these engines will be
| the largest methanol-burning engines ever constructed. They will
| be based on their well-proven 50-bore counterpart, which has
| already been in our engine portfolio for some time gathering more
| than 100,000 running hours on methanol alone."
|
| * https://www.iea-amf.org/app/webroot/files/file/Annex%20Repor...
|
| * https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2021/08/24/maersk-accel...
| "" In the first quarter of 2024, A.P. Moller - Maersk will
| introduce the first in a groundbreaking series of 8 large ocean-
| going container vessels capable of being operated on carbon
| neutral methanol. The vessels will be built by Hyundai Heavy
| Industries (HHI) and have a nominal capacity of approx. 16,000
| containers TEU""
|
| * https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2021/08/18/maersk-secur...
| ""The methanol facility will use renewable energy and biogenic
| CO2 to produce the e-methanol. The fuel production is expected to
| start in 2023. The energy needed for the power-to-methanol
| production will be provided by a solar farm in Kasso, Southern
| Denmark. "
|
| * process https://info.topsoe.com/emethanol "The required
| electrical input will depend on how the hydrogen is sourced, and
| whether the methanol process is integrated into an existing plant
| or a stand-alone plant. If the hydrogen is sourced from an
| electrolysis unit, the power consumption (for hydrogen generation
| only) will be approximately 10.5 MWh per ton methanol."
|
| * process
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/methanol-sy...
| "Transport Fuel, Arno de Klerk, in Future Energy (Third Edition),
| 2020 "Methanol synthesis, Eq. (10.9), is a very exothermic
| reaction" "With water-cooled reactor designs, higher once-through
| conversion is possible,"
| culebron21 wrote:
| If methanol is generated from electrolysis, then ok.
|
| If it's from "biofuel", then more deforestation in tropical
| countries to use land to make methanol from crops. I recall
| news like this back 5-10 years ago.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I can easily imagine huge floating batteries being very
| valuable in one place or another.
|
| But we will probably move in the direction of more local
| production. When the energy is already there, transporting it
| there, as cheap as it may be is pure cost, for no gain.
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