[HN Gopher] Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in ...
___________________________________________________________________
Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of
Net Savings
Author : belter
Score : 104 points
Date : 2022-09-17 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| How do you make cement and steel?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Iron ore is reduced with hydrogen. Some carbon needs to be
| added to make steel from direct reduced iron, but that carbon
| doesn't need to come from fossil fuels.
|
| Cement needs heat, but it doesn't need heat from fossil fuels.
| And cement will need CO2 capture in any case -- even today,
| half the CO2 emission from cement is the CO2 released by
| decomposing limestone, not from combustion.
| kderbyma wrote:
| the cynic in me says that those savings will just become profits
| for the companies and government through taxes and greed....so
| savings are relative. Also it seems to be highly dependent on
| solar mass adoption
| burkaman wrote:
| I would say that's a pretty optimistic prediction. The cynical
| prediction is that this rapid energy transition simply doesn't
| happen.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > will just become profits for the companies ... greed
|
| Of course they will. You can thank this effect for the high
| standard of living we enjoy from the free market.
| rascul wrote:
| Is there a free market though? Seems like it's all taxed and
| regulated.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A free market doesn't have to be a perfect free market in
| order to work well.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| You need regulation to make a free market, otherwise they
| trend toward monopoly/duopoly/fixed markets.
| uoaei wrote:
| You misunderstand the meaning of "free" in the phrase "free
| market".
|
| Read _The Wealth of Nations_ and you will see that Adam
| Smith was a vociferous advocate of regulation. Because
| "free" was not "unregulated" in the original conception, it
| was rather "open to any participant, such that they have
| the opportunity to benefit", which as we have noted over
| the past 300 years of economic history requires regulation
| and enforcement mechanisms (funded by taxes).
| rascul wrote:
| I guess there are varying definitions of "free market". I
| was going off of Wikipedia:
|
| > In economics, a free market is an idealized cognitive
| model of an economic system in which the prices of goods
| and services are determined by supply and demand
| expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as
| modeled, operate without the intervention of government
| or any other external authority.
|
| Adam Smith is mentioned later on in the article though:
|
| > For classical economists such as Adam Smith, the term
| free market refers to a market free from all forms of
| economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.
| They say this implies that economic rents, which they
| describe as profits generated from a lack of perfect
| competition, must be reduced or eliminated as much as
| possible through free competition.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I hope many companies get filthy rich transitioning the US to a
| carbon-free economy. I hope we mint a ton of greedy
| billionaires in the process.
|
| That sounds like a great deal for everyone!
| seventytwo wrote:
| You know, collectively, we can do something about that... It's
| a political decision in society to allow that added value to be
| sucked up by those who are already wealthy.
| WalterBright wrote:
| You can buy stock in those companies and get your share of
| the profits.
| kbenson wrote:
| On the one hand, the ability to usefully interact with the
| stock market is very limited for the majority of people, as
| they do not have the extra income to invest. It's very much
| a system in which the lower class do not get to
| meaningfully benefit from most the time.
|
| On the other hand, the companies will be made of people,
| expand by hiring new people, and pay these people with
| those profits, so much of the money will make it to people.
|
| Companies making lots of money is not a problem. Companies
| saving vast amounts of it in war chests is, IMO (depending
| on how they save it), as it's effectively removing it from
| the economy. I really hope Apple and Google's massive
| saving are stored by being reinvested in some way and
| aren't just entirely removed from the economy, because that
| would be a shame. I suppose even if they were just stored
| in a bank that would be used as capital for loans, so maybe
| it's not that bad.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Companies saving vast amounts of it in war chests is,
| IMO (depending on how they save it), as it's effectively
| removing it from the economy.
|
| Nobody saves money in Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. All the
| money is invested, all of it. Even money in a checking
| account is invested. (The banks invest it, that's why
| they offer free checking accounts. They're not a
| charity.)
|
| The majority of people do invest in the stock market.
|
| > the lower class
|
| is not the majority. Even so, brokers like Robinhood have
| made it easy for anyone with a phone to invest.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Nobody saves money in Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. All
| the money is invested, all of it.
|
| Russian oligarchs invested vast amounts of money into
| super yahts and luzury London real estate, which sits
| empty 360 days a year.
|
| Is that productive investment?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yes and no - each day it is game rules plus the ability to
| negotiate; elected officials come in all flavors
| sheepdestroyer wrote:
| Isn't it too late for that now that the power imbalance
| afforded to Capital owners is so disproportionate?
|
| I think that's what transpired from Piketty's "Capital in the
| Twenty-First Century"
| stormbrew wrote:
| History is long, and capitalism as we know it is only a
| couple centuries old (and that's being generous). It's easy
| to forget that there was a before because it's very common
| to frame even old economic systems in modern terms, but
| things changing is the only real constant. There'll be an
| after too.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| How do you define capitalism, I'm curious, in this
| context? What was it 200 years ago that made it different
| from 400 years ago?
| stormbrew wrote:
| The industrial revolution and the beginnings of a global
| liberal trade order pretty substantially changed the
| shape of the world's economic system, even if sometimes
| people call predecessor systems like mercantilism a kind
| of capitalism.
|
| But if you want to extend the time horizon to 400 years
| (ie. to the beginning of the end of feudalism) that's
| still not that long in the grand scheme of things.
|
| That said I don't really know if I buy that we're in that
| system anymore either; I think history books will
| probably eventually recognize a shift starting around the
| collapse of Breton Woods and that we're currently in a
| long and increasingly painful transitionary period that
| we're in denial about to something we can't yet describe.
|
| But I Am Not An Economist (nor do I want to be one), so
| who knows.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Mercantilism definitely is NOT a kind of capitalism. Adam
| Smith and other thinkers during the Scottish
| Enlightenment were specifically arguing against
| mercantilism. The Cron Laws in England were even
| successfully repealed by on of Smith's students.
| stormbrew wrote:
| I mean, I agree with you (I just said sometimes people
| call it that, not that it is that) but I don't think
| anything you said really contradicts it being a kind of
| capitalism. After all Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky
| disagreed literally violently with each other but Soviet
| Communism is still a label that contains all their
| efforts and systems.
| darepublic wrote:
| I have stood here before, inside the pouring rain (of trillions)
| qclibre22 wrote:
| Interesting who funded this study: Institute for New Economic
| Thinking was founded with an initial pledge of $50 million from
| businessman and philanthropist George Soros . I'm sure
| researchers try extra hard to not be influenced by the funders
| and pursue real science. Let's hope they did in this case.
| burkaman wrote:
| If anyone is curious about the full list of funders:
|
| > This work was supported by funding from Partners for a New
| Economy (R.W. and J.D.F.); Baillie Gifford (J.D.F.); the
| European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
| under grant agreement no. 730427 (COP21 RIPPLES) (R.W.); and
| the Oxford Martin School , through the Institute of New
| Economic Thinking and the Post-Carbon Transition programme (
| LDR00530 ) (M.C.I. and P.M.). This research was also funded by
| the Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition
| project ( EEIST ), which is jointly funded through UK Aid by
| the UK Government Department for Business, Energy, and
| Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Children's Investment Fund
| Foundation ( CIFF ) (R.W. and M.C.I.).
|
| It would be truly extraordinary if George Soros was able to use
| his indirect connection to one of eight funders of this study
| to influence its findings, but I suppose we'll never know for
| sure.
| peyton wrote:
| He founded the lead author's employer. Am I misreading that?
| burkaman wrote:
| You are. George Soros co-founded (with two other founders)
| one of the lead author's three employers 13 years ago. He
| does not hold any present position in the organization.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Interesting that you plucked George Soros out in particular. Is
| this /pol/?
| puchatek wrote:
| I'm aware of how Soros is the Boogeyman for some people but I'm
| curious as to what exactly you are insinuating? What's the
| narrative?
| bequanna wrote:
| The idea is that Soros only gives away money with strings
| attached.
|
| He expects you/your group to further his political goals in
| order to continue to receive funding.
| pydry wrote:
| Right, but what strings are attached here?
| engineer_22 wrote:
| If you want your model to output a certain result, just make the
| right assumptions.
| jasec57322 wrote:
| nynx wrote:
| Alright, man
| jasec57322 wrote:
| gnramires wrote:
| Please have a look here: https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
|
| The evidence is clear and uncontroversial (and has been for
| decades).
| jasec57322 wrote:
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| The problem is that the OP, by "just asking questions", is
| engaging in an enormous time imbalance.
|
| It's a standard tactic of skeptics. Ask a simple question.
| Takes only a minute or two. But the answer turns out to not
| be so simple, and requires much time in composing an answer.
| And of course the answer also invokes concepts, terms,
| models, research, etc that themselves are not simple, and so
| the questioner asks another round of "simple questions",
| which take significant time to answer. After a few rounds of
| this the answerers are exhausted and the questioner proclaims
| victory in the sense that he/she still has questions, and the
| answerers "can't" answer them, typically because they have
| jobs, kids, significant others, and in general a life outside
| answering skeptic questions.
|
| There is a tremendous amount of literature on this in both
| the popular press and scientific journals. You can google
| those as easily as we can, and if you were serious about
| finding the honest answers to your questions that's where you
| would start.
| kkfx wrote:
| I'm honestly tired about PR positions written or referring some
| beancounters ideas of the world, regularly completely detached
| from the real world.
|
| Personally, smelling rodent early enough I've built a new home,
| airtight as needed/possible, well insulated, with a (still rare
| these days) heat-pump VMC, other heat-pumps for heating (water-
| water) and hot sanitary water (air-water), a small p.v. plant
| with lithium storage enough to being fully autonomous when
| heating is not needed and partially autonomous in winters months:
| the result is simple autonomy is not achievable, nor real economy
| to pay back the huge investment.
|
| I mean, I do not invest to earn in money but to guarantee comfort
| of life in "bad water" expecting unreliability and high services
| prices, but in monetary terms it's a TOTAL FAIL. Heat pumps can
| potentially last around 10 years, lithium battery being used very
| little (daily 15% authorized DOD + eventual blackouts) perhaps
| the same. Inverters probably can last more, so solar panels, but
| they'll probably be not much interesting to keep after that
| amount of time. Long story short ~60kEUR for just 10 years of
| usage. Even with ARTIFICIALLY skyrocketed prices (which is a
| crime against humanity than in Democracy demand justice, like
| life-long sentences, outside Democracy demand simple brutal
| revenge) economically is a total fail.
|
| If I add a BEV to the mix is even worse: so far NOTHING is really
| designed to work on p.v. so even being a WFH worker, so able to
| recharge a car at home when the Sun shine witch might be most of
| the time, NO DAMN VEHICLE on sale offer a standard data port to
| talk to a p.v. invert and get ONLY available power from the Sun
| like stationary BMS/batteries do (so something we already have at
| commercial level of evolution), equally almost no vehicle can act
| as a battery to the home, very few offer a 240V AC inverter with
| 3kW maximum but NOTHING really integrated nor integrable.
| Similarly the same happen for hot water where only few systems
| offer modbus PARTIAL control of the system from a central energy
| management device witch is normally something home-made since on
| sale there is again essentially ZERO to really try the self-
| consumption route. Why such route? Because is the only meaningful
| choice technically speaking.
|
| Yes, you are reading correctly: keeping a national grid stable
| with big p.v. plants it's simply IMPOSSIBLE until we get
| superconductive global grid (and I'm not sure if it's possible in
| that case either). AC national grids are designed to sustain a
| slowly changing mean load, when the load change fast controlling
| the grid frequency is a nightmare. That's why the big push to BEV
| _dreaming_ an surrealist scenario of soooo many connected
| batteries on wheel that keep regulating the network frequency or
| _offload such tremendous costs to individuals_.
|
| Those who really think we can run NOW/in a decade the world on
| renewable can be classified in two categories: dreamers
| completely outside the real world, not much different than
| children dreaming Star Trek or CRIMINALS who try a hyper-big scam
| fully know the outcome. You do not have to believe but to know,
| so since we are on HN just try to design/outline such renewable
| economy being honest.
| vondur wrote:
| Can we really build batteries at the scale needed for this? I'm a
| bit skeptical.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Why? The materials needed for LiFePO4 batteries are very
| common, and we only need a few dozen large factories and
| refineries.
|
| Compared to the size of the fossil fuel extraction industry,
| it's tiny.
|
| The only question is how quickly we can build up to the scale
| needed, not if we can.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Phosphorus is essential to growing food and shortages have
| already begun.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| There's no shortage of phosphorus. As prices go up
| extraction from human waste becomes profitable and all
| municipalities just do it. We invest in closed loop systems
| we stop having to think about energy and agricultural
| inputs as extractive, there is minimal possibility of
| "shortage" it's just a closed-loop system that occasionally
| needs to be topped off a bit.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You don't "just do" anything on that scale.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We have a shortage of refined Lithium and Phosphate. We
| have no shortage of the unrefined elements in profitable
| concentrations.
| swid wrote:
| Recently I saw on HN that Australia has a path to >98%
| renewable energy (solar, wind, hydro) with only 5 hours of
| battery storage. That's a lot of value for less battery backup
| than I would have thought.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32567994
| 01100011 wrote:
| Do you believe it? Solar+wind has had several notable
| failures so far when overcast skies combined with windless
| conditions. Hydro probably helps to a great degree though.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Rare dark/calm periods can be countered by storage
| technologies other than batteries. These technologies
| typically have lower efficiency than batteries, but that
| doesn't matter when they're only rarely called on. For
| these technologies, low per-energy-stored capital cost is
| much more important than high efficiency. As an example:
| hydrogen can be stored in solution-mined salt caverns for
| as little as $1/kWh of storage capacity.
| burkaman wrote:
| I mean, that's what this study is about. There is extensive
| discussion of the cost, production, and technology trends of
| batteries in the full text.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Garbage comment from an uninformed SW engineer: How, in the
| current economic and geopolitical environment, can they project
| that production costs will continue to decline?
|
| Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to produce.
| It also has been benefiting from globalization which is now going
| in reverse. I would add at least 5 years to any timeline given
| because of the recalibrating global energy and materials supply
| chains will be undergoing over time.
|
| We're probably short of copper. Is anyone figuring out a way to
| use aluminum as a substitute in many applications? We can work
| around several of the other critical shortages(nickel, cobalt,
| not-so-rare rare earths, lithium) in time, either with
| alternatives or increased extraction, but copper seems like a
| tough one.
|
| There is a lot of wishful thinking or naivete in the political
| class driving these transitions. I agree that we need to move
| rapidly to decarbonize but there seems to be a lack of
| appreciation for the actual work involved in the transition.
| There is also a parasite-class of folks whispering deceitful
| tales in the ears of politicians(ahem, hydrogen, ahem) which
| really only cares about getting their cut.
|
| Politicians need to understand you don't just order solar panels
| and batteries off Amazon. Someone needs to make them, and that
| someone better be a country you're not in a proxy war or a hot
| war with. We need to invest in practical measures not just fairy
| tales that leave us in the dark for a decade or more while we
| figure out hard lessons.
| lancewiggs wrote:
| This is the approach that all the other forecasters have fallen
| into and that this article is trying to address. Just as many
| people thought the irrepressible growth of Internet data,
| processing power and memory would slow or cease, so is the case
| that continued investment into renewable power will continue to
| reduce costs. We don't have to be the ones that say what
| technology or materials will be used, just to say that that
| industry, like ours, has it covered.
| dqpb wrote:
| > Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to
| produce
|
| In theory, bootstrapping will eventually be complete.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The stronger statement is true: as green energy becomes
| increasingly cheaper than dirty, industries will transition
| to clean wherever they can. New industry will start out using
| green, and green generation capacity is almost all new.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to
| produce.
|
| Is that exclusive to green tech, or is it common to both green
| tech and non-green tech? If both need dirty energy, what
| matters is not green tech needing dirty energy, but only how
| much dirty energy it needs compared to non-green tech, both to
| produce and over its lifetime.
| 01100011 wrote:
| It matters if you disrupt the dirty energy pipeline well
| before you've secured enough green energy to self-sustain a
| green energy future.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Every way to secure green energy requires some use of dirty
| energy.
|
| So the only choice is between dirty forever, and dirty
| decreasing. If the latter, the faster it decreases, the
| less dirty energy you use on the transition.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Its a circular argument. Any action requires energy, and the
| only energy you have avaliable is dirty energy, so you can
| accuse green tech or requiring dirty energy
| joshe wrote:
| The quick answer is that we are not short of any of those
| materials. We might not be producing enough right now, but
| there's far more than enough that can be mined or recycled
| inexpensively.
|
| Increased prices will cause more mining and recycling,
| eventually the price will settle at the cost of production +
| something for profit. The something for profit is quite small,
| the coast for low risk capital is ~5% a year.
|
| There might be a 5-10 period when profits are high for miners,
| but eventually the profits will be competed away by new
| entrants. (Except if you have a mine that produces very cheaply
| because it is so rich or easy to operate, these people will
| stay high profit. The most expensive mines will just make back
| they're capital costs + return).
|
| You can see this with fracking which is horribly unprofitable.
| Hedge funds have lost billions over building fracking wells.
| 01100011 wrote:
| > we are not short of any of those materials
|
| For the most part you are correct. But building the mines,
| refining, supply chains, etc takes time. So you are perhaps
| missing one of the main points I was trying, maybe
| unsuccessfully, to make: we need to deal with the 'right now'
| and not just worry about how we'll be fine in 50 years.
|
| Lithium is a perfect example. We have plenty in the ground.
| We don't have plenty of mines. We should be allocating Li
| carefully until those issues are resolved in 5-10 years.
|
| If we only base our energy policy on how things will be in a
| decade we will delay the transition while inflicting maximum
| pain on the population(energy and food shortages, rampant
| inflation, lower standard of living, etc).
| admax88qqq wrote:
| > We should be allocating Li carefully until those issues
| are resolved in 5-10 years.
|
| Well intentioned policy like this can have the reverse
| effect.
|
| If you limit lithium usage you will limit demand, which can
| reduce the effort expended to build new mines.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Did I suggest that? I mean we should be realistic about
| Li availability and incentivize its usage appropriately.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| In fact, we do not have "plenty" of lithium. There's not
| enough lithium in the world to put in all the batteries for
| all the EVs we'll need to replace ICE vehicles. This is
| entirely orthogonal to the fact that recycling lithium ion
| batteries is expensive, difficult, and potentially
| dangerous in the case of any type of mishap.
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-
| wor...
| mrep wrote:
| That article mentions "reserves" 5 times and cost/price
| not once. Same type of articles were written about peak
| oil and then the price of oil went up and magically
| reserves grew as it be came profitable to find and
| extract new sources of oil.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| That's because reserves are what matters. I don't care if
| there's billions of tons of lithium at the bottom of the
| Marianas Trench, nobody's ever going to go get it because
| it's too dangerous, difficult, and expensive. The same
| thing with space mining. Nobody's going to go mine
| asteroids because it's stupidly expensive. For all
| intents and purposes, if we can't get to it, it doesn't
| exist.
|
| And let's not forget about all the problems that
| "innovative" methods of oil extraction such as fracking
| have created, over and above the fact that it's provided
| more oil to burn. Lithium mining itself is already an
| environmental disaster, and it seems highly unlikely that
| increased demand for the product is going to improve the
| environmental impact of extracting it. You know, tragedy
| of the commons and all. The fact that "peak oil" came and
| went is not a capitalist success story.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You seem not to understand what "reserves" actually
| means.
|
| It does not exclude easily accessible material. It only
| excludes material not assessed yet because there has been
| _no need_ to, as existing reserves will last more than
| long enough to perform further surveys.
| oblio wrote:
| If you go to the source of that claim, you'll see that
| it's basically about proven reserves, using current tech
| and know how, basically how we did it for oil, when we
| were supposed to run out of oil in 1872, 1919, 1960, etc.
|
| We've just started looking for the thing at the scales we
| need it now, prospecting and extracting and processing it
| will improve.
| Gare wrote:
| But we do have more than enough sodium, and sodium-ion
| batteries could be "good enough" for most applications
| with technology advancement.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Maybe, but I am skeptical. Do you know when lithium ion
| batteries were invented? Okay, truthfully, neither do I,
| because accounts vary, depending on what you mean by
| "invented" and "lithium ion battery," but it was
| definitely in the 1970s. The first prototypes were
| created in the mid 80s, and commercial introduction
| wasn't until 1991. This stuff is all up on Wikipedia, so
| you can just look it up if you doubt it.
|
| Even if the research is being done, we've got decades
| before something commercially viable comes out. The need
| exists now. Anything that isn't essentially ready to go
| by 2030 probably isn't going to do squat to help us.
| Gare wrote:
| CATL (the biggest EV lithium-ion battery manufacturer in
| the world) has announced last year that it will bring
| sodium-ion batteries to market in 2023. We'll see. The
| technology is in many ways similar to lithium-ion, so
| more rapid advances are not surprising, especially
| considering the amount of investment being made compared
| to the 80s and 90s.
| catawbasam wrote:
| Some hedge funds may have lost billions, but frackers are
| printing money at current price levels.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Right. Reserves are really just a measure of "things people
| bothered to look for at the current price." High prices can
| and do induce more searching.
|
| Part of the whole hullabaloo about "peak oil" is that people
| stopped looking for oil reserves in an environment with low
| oil prices. Once prices started rising you saw fracking come
| into play that regenerated areas previously thought dead for
| oil production.
| RobertoG wrote:
| That's not the argument of peak oil. It's not about price
| or quantity of oil available in the planet. It's an
| argument about thermodynamics.
|
| The argument is that in order to extract oil, you need to
| spend energy, and, logically, the most easier oil to
| extract is extracted first.
|
| That means that oil extraction is every year more expensive
| (energetically not financially). Because technology can
| make extraction more efficient but not indefinitely, at
| some point, in order to extract oil, it will be necessary
| to spend the same energy than burning it creates.
|
| I suppose we could say that it's kind of an inversion of
| what's going on with fusion research.
|
| Some commenters say that we already pass that point and
| that's the reason oil companies CaPex have fall in the last
| years.
|
| I don't know if that's the case, but I can't avoid to ask
| myself about solar.
|
| Is the energy that a solar panel generate in its life
| enough for its normal use, plus extracting the minerals
| that it's made of, plus push the panel, through the ocean
| all the way from China? or are we fooling ourselves using
| oil for all that?
|
| I would like to see some numbers and expert discussion
| about that.
| Yoric wrote:
| If you can read French, this guy
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marc_Jancovici has
| published a lot of vulgarization on the topic - with
| numbers.
|
| If my memory of reading one of his books serves, fracking
| now costs 50% of the energy it produces (in addition to
| non-energy environmental impact, which is pretty large),
| up from ~10% for the easy oil we had ~50 years ago.
| Current-tech solar panels are in the same order of
| magnitude (again, not counting non-energy environmental
| impact). Nuclear energy has the highest yield. I seem to
| remember that coal is the worst, unless it's burnt at the
| point of extraction.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That doesn't pass the smell test. A "raw" solar panel in
| China costs about 25 cents / W, and each watt should
| produce about 45kWh over its lifetime (5W per day for 25
| years). If the embodied energy in the panel is half of
| the lifetime energy, that means that there is 22kWh of
| embodied energy in that W of solar panel, and they're
| selling that embodied energy for about 1 cent / kWh. And
| that assumes that there are no costs to the panel other
| than the embodied energy.
|
| A rule of thumb is that embodied energy in a finished
| manufactured product sells for about $1/kWh. By that rule
| of thumb, the embodied energy in a solar panel is about
| 0.5% of the energy it will produce over its lifetime.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The energy delivered by a solar panel is overwhelmingly
| more than needed to make it. The gain is enormous. There
| is simply no contest.
|
| Consider that makers of solar panels, and of the
| materials that go into them, get no break on their power
| bills. Each and every kWh that goes into making the panel
| necessarily gets its cost folded into the price of the
| panel. Otherwise they would be paying that out of their
| own pocket to give it to you for free.
|
| Furthermore, the fraction of the energy used in making
| the panel that comes from renewables goes up every year,
| as their share of the total generated increases.
|
| The same argument applies to wind turbines, tidal
| turbines, wave engines, dams, and (in their way) storage
| media.
| dv_dt wrote:
| One could look for more direct sources, but the summary
| is that energy payback happens in 1-4 years out of
| current 25 year "life". And that 25 years is typically a
| warranty to 80% of original capacity.
|
| https://www.solarmelon.com/faqs/solar-panels-use-energy-
| manu...
| peyton wrote:
| It's pretty silly as we've discovered efficient synthesis
| routes since.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > That's not the argument of peak oil. It's not about
| price or quantity of oil available in the planet. It's an
| argument about thermodynamics.
|
| ... that hasn't been the traditional argument behind peak
| oil, from its original adherents (checks notes) 70 years
| ago. The traditional theory is a pretty bare oil demand
| inevitably increases while fields run dry because we
| extract all the [usable] oil first--and one of the main
| points of the theory is to ask what you're going to do
| when you need oil and there is none left. It may be that
| newer adherents are arguing peak oil on the basis of
| energy-invested-on-energy-returned basis, but that's not
| the traditional argument for the theory.
|
| While it is true that newer oil sources require more
| energy to extract, but that's not particularly relevant
| for a few reasons. For one, on current trends, it looks
| like demand for oil will peak well before economical
| supply of oil will be exhausted (which is the main point
| of the theory). But even being net-negative on energy
| production isn't necessarily a deal breaker, for there
| can well be cases where there's no realistic alternative
| to oil as an energy source due to its great energy
| density (see airplanes, for example).
| kkfx wrote:
| > We might not be producing enough right now, but there's far
| more than enough that can be mined or recycled inexpensively.
|
| That's not reality but a dream. So far we still have to find
| a sustainable lithium recycling on scale, there are various
| startups with various solutions, who actually prove to be
| just like most startup: PR scam for money or childish dream
| of someone who sold the cat before capturing it.
|
| It's not better in mining estimation: we have estimations of
| different kind but they are nothing than dream, we do not
| really know how much lithium is accessible on earth.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Locally, there are several mines that have been trying to
| open for years (copper and nickel, mostly) but the
| environmental crowd has been extremely determined in using
| the courts and bureaucracy to block them from opening.
|
| The net result is the green wave will be driven largely by
| relying on dirty minerals from other countries.
| kkfx wrote:
| Mining tech is essentially the same since ever, we just
| have transferred some physical efforts to machines, how a
| local mine is "green" and some in exotic places is
| different?
|
| Consider a thing: all industry do not pollute because
| they are evil but because the tech produce pollution.
| Something was done, something can be done, to reduce it
| of course, but that's not always possible, not possible
| more than a certain extent and not for free.
|
| A simple idea: can you pay a 8-years maximum lasting car
| 100kEUR? Even if you can, how many others needs cars and
| can't? Because that's relatively less heavy than the
| physical possibility of doing something, but it's not
| marginal at all. I have built a new home, with all actual
| tech to consume less and get a better life, but if such
| homes can only be made let's say by 10% of the western
| population, witch means roughly by 3% of the total human
| population what's the outcome? We are a society. Some can
| be richer than others, nothing wrong in that. BUT when
| the difference between the poorest and richest and so
| their numbers on total humans diverge too much the
| society fall apart anyway.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > how a local mine is "green" and some in exotic places
| is different?
|
| https://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/solutio
| ns/....
|
| https://empoweringpumps.com/5-ways-to-make-mining-more-
| susta...
|
| are both nice entry points for basic research. Mining
| tech has changed quite a bit since the early days- waste
| management is probably the biggest factor in whether a
| mine is relatively neutral or harmful to the environment.
|
| The other major factor between countries is the extent to
| which regulations are in place to ensure that old mines
| are also managed- ensuring water runoff doesn't flow into
| and through them (picking up excess metal waste), etc.
|
| A final note is many countries do not have the regulatory
| strength to catch all illegal mining operations, which
| may have no waste management or treatment in place at
| all.
|
| Even with all of the regulations in place, it would still
| be economically feasible to mine here- otherwise, the
| mining companies wouldn't be spending decades trying to
| open these mines up in the first place.
| benj111 wrote:
| >Mining tech is essentially the same since ever, we just
| have transferred some physical efforts to machines
|
| You could say that about literally anything
| ip26 wrote:
| It's perhaps naive and over-simplistic, but the s-curve is so
| well-established you can probably fit the production cost curve
| over time to the s-curve and get a useful prediction.
|
| There's lots of hard work that goes into making it happen, of
| course.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The s-curve has two important parameters, but looking at any
| amount of history before the first inflection you can only
| ever deduce one of them.
|
| So, how exactly to you intent to fit the renewables (that are
| pre-inflection) production curves into it?
| alexose wrote:
| > Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to
| produce.
|
| This may be true for certain products, but it's not broadly
| true. There's nothing intrinsic that requires solar panels,
| lithium ion batteries, or wind turbines to be manufactured
| using dirty energy.
| 01100011 wrote:
| In most cases no(remember, hydrocarbons and the hydrogen
| produced by them are often industrial/chemical feedstocks for
| Si, lubricants, adhesives and polymers used in green mfg) so
| you're right.
|
| The problem is _right now_ these things do indeed depend on
| dirty energy. You 're basically making the same fallacious
| argument as politicians do now. In the long run, everything
| will be green. That's not the point. The point is how we get
| there. You can't ignore the present or the engineering
| involved to get to the future.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| We get there by a (very likely) short-term increase in
| current energy production and use as we ramp up
| manufacturing and deployment of the systems needed for
| clean energy production, and then see a tapering off of the
| current production methods as the new ones come online.
|
| How did we get the first railroads built? By a combination
| of horses dragging materials so humans could lay the rail
| lines and then trains dragging materials as the initial
| lines were built. There was almost certainly an initial
| increase in horse power consumption, and then a decline as
| the new system came online. This isn't a new thing, this is
| how many replacement transitions that depend on the
| previous system play out.
| 01100011 wrote:
| > We get there by a (very likely) short-term increase in
| current energy production
|
| Right. But right now we're incentivizing the opposite.
| We're telling fossil fuel companies we don't need them
| anymore long before we've actually figured out a way to
| live without them. Do you see the problem yet?
| alexose wrote:
| I see what you're saying-- Bootstrapping a green economy
| does, almost by definition, require the use of fossil
| fuels.
|
| I think the easier way to look at it, though, isn't the
| upfront cost of the transition, but the outcomes that are
| 10-20 years down the line. A big "spend" right now should
| result in less overall carbon emitted (according to most of
| the lifecycle analyses that I'm familiar with, anyway).
|
| It's a really good point that we need to optimize this, of
| course. It would be ideal to manufacture solar panels in
| places with a favorable energy mix versus somewhere that's
| still 100% coal. But in a lot of cases, it's better just to
| get the things out the door as fast as possible using the
| technology we have.
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| You are absolutely correct.
|
| Supply Chains are primarily fossil based and can NOT be
| substituted with low density sources like Green Energy or even
| electricity at all.
|
| For example, you can't efficiently make steel or most other
| metals with electricity alone. Even primarily electrically
| refined metals like copper or aluminum REQUIRE inputs that can
| not be made or refined or extracted with electricity. Often
| this is about chemical reductions that required carbon or other
| reductants that can't be effectively or efficiently made with
| electricity. The most obvious one is silicon - carbon reduction
| of SiO2 is the only and best efficient refining method (1st
| stage only - you need further far more energy intensive
| refining to make semiconductor-grade silicon).
|
| Recently brought up in Congress was questions of how
| petrochemicals are to be produced if the Green goal of
| eliminating oil is accomplished. Stuff like plastics. All sorts
| of things depend upon plastics and plastics require
| petrochemicals. The most obvious one is plastic sterilization
| aids and sterile materials like syringes, packaging for
| needles, etc. ALL 20th century medicine is largely destroyed
| without petrochemicals. Also all pharmaceuticals deeply depend
| upon petrochemicals.
|
| The respondent had no answer and she simply tried to resort to
| high-intensity angry BS. Clearly she'd never thought ANY of
| this through and didn't care because she was living off the
| anger of hating oil but knew nothing about how oil is used or
| how dependent all supply chains are on oil.
|
| You are underestimating the good faith of the political class.
| In fact, they are borderline psychopathic with high levels
| Dunning-Kruger delusion about the correctness of their
| decisions/beliefs.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHk7S6prF6M
|
| The additional issue: PVs have finite lifespan. Lithium
| batteries have extremely finite lifespans. So you have to
| replace them and have ALL the supply chains to do that forever.
| Which are fossil fuel dependent at fundamental
| chemical/physical levels. So most of those supply chains can
| NEVER be made green.
|
| Green Energy is primarily a Cargo-Cult Religion not based on
| facts. That is a major problem because if you shutdown fossil
| fuels, we will end up with nothing - we will not even manage to
| have the levels of civilization and technology seen in the last
| 300-500 years. Basically a dark age.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Jesus it's nice to read an informed comment on here.
|
| Yes, it's difficult to try to get these facts across to folks
| without them thinking you're a shill for big oil. It's
| especially sad/frustrating when people who claim to be
| engineers don't understand the engineering involved in the
| process of transitioning to green energy.
| kkfx wrote:
| > Basically a dark age.
|
| That's the real enormous issue. Beyond the Green New Deal,
| witch is green in the sense of dollars main color for very
| few, chemical/radioactive stereotypical waste leaking from
| abandoned rusty barrels green while being sold as grass
| green, we have a real issue: oil is consumed FAR faster than
| natural regeneration and that since many decades so far,
| witch means that a day perhaps not that far away it will be
| more and more scarce and finally unavailable. NOT ONLY for
| fuel, but also for plastic witch happen to be needed for
| electrical insulation, hydraulic and air insulation, anti-
| vibration stuff etc etc etc and we do not know how to replace
| it on scale.
|
| So far no other feasible on scale energy solution exists.
| Nuclear fission and mountain pumped hydro are the most stable
| and powerful solution we have, but can't work on scale alone
| and nothing else is there.
|
| Without energy no matter climate change or something else:
| any civilization collapse anyway.
| dharma1 wrote:
| You can make steel with just electric heating - Swedish steel
| companies are making a lot of progress here https://www.reute
| rsevents.com/renewables/renewables/sweden-l...
|
| Oil and petrochemicals have many uses and they will be with
| us for decades but at some point this century we will get the
| vast majority of our energy needs from fusion (the sun),
| hydro, wind and nuclear. It will likely take longer than we
| think and but might as well start now than keep running a
| dangerous experiment on the planet
| telchar wrote:
| You're seemingly unaware that petrochemicals can be
| synthesized with energy and simple organic feedstocks. The
| chemistry is pretty well established to bootstrap up from
| water and CO2 to complex hydrocarbons and from there of
| course the same petrochemical processes can be applied. Green
| energy is perfectly capable of this.
| 01100011 wrote:
| They can, but that takes energy. You have to have
| sufficient green energy to produce it and how do you get to
| the place where you have sufficient energy? Currently, that
| means you burn massive amounts of dirty energy to make the
| transition over, what, decades?
|
| Your comment is well intended but it is the same sort of
| 'one day it will be perfect' thinking that glosses over the
| messy transition that actually needs to take place first.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Most uses of fossil fuels these days are for fuel, not
| petrochemicals. The energy needed to get to
| petrochemicals (and the fraction of carbon currently
| coming from fossil fuels to get to petrochemicals) are
| relatively modest.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > PVs have finite lifespan
|
| And your car doesn't? What kind of argument is this?
|
| My panels have 25 year warranty, whats the warranty on a
| diesel generator?
|
| > questions of how petrochemicals are to be produced if the
| Green goal of eliminating oil is accomplished.
|
| Petromechicals have no relevance to Climate change and CO2
| emissions. You can keep using single-use bags and straws and
| throwing them into landfill untill you use up all the oil on
| earth.
|
| They have relevance to our health, i.e. microplastics, but
| thats a separate problem.
| acallaghan wrote:
| The cargo-cult religion is unfortunately back by science and
| years of study and agreement amongst scientists - human
| activity is causing climate change and global warming. You
| sound like you haven't accepted this fact based reality that
| we live in and are a part of.
|
| Climate change is our fault, and we _have_ to stop it, there
| is no other alternative that also includes life continuing on
| earth as we know it. This change is already happening, it 's
| not hypothetical. Global systems are already being affected,
| extreme weather and drought more common. Global temperature
| change _has_ to be kept as low as possible, or we risk crop
| failure, famine and mass immigration at a scale that has
| never been seen.
|
| I understand there are huge logistical issues with shifting
| off fossil fuels, but we as humans _have_ to. We can get to
| the moon, we can stop burning old dinosaurs & plants to make
| stuff work. Even without climate change, these resources are
| finite. Are you just going to accept waiting for all the oil
| to run out before making plastic tubes from something else?
| The clue is in the name _fossil_ , they take millions of
| years to produce and are non-renewable.
|
| You can think of me as a green psychopath all you like, but
| it doesn't change the cold hard facts. I hope my reply isn't
| high-intensity BS.
| neffy wrote:
| It's accurate but not complete. The long term (600k year)
| climatic history of this planet is sobering, and if only
| climate change was just our fault. Believe me, there is
| nothing humanity has so far achieved that comes close to
| matching what nature does to this planet on a pretty
| regular schedule. We don't know nearly enough about this by
| the way, and we especially don't know enough about
| conditions about the end of the last inter-glacial. For the
| last 20 odd years we can't even discuss it rationally,
| because to bring up the non-anthromorphic aspects just gets
| some innocent scientist labelled a denier.
|
| That volcano that went off in the pacific this January
| appears to have increased the amount of water vapour in the
| entire atmosphere by 10%. Sit back and contemplate that for
| a moment, because it is pretty awesome, and also the
| satellite pictures were quite something, and then take
| another look at what's happened in Pakistan and Italy. All
| our fault? We can wish.
|
| There is so much more to this than shifting away from
| fossil fuels - that's the easy one.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I missed the part where OP denied global warming.
|
| You and I both want the same thing. Our shared goals do not
| negate the laws of chemistry or physics.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > It also has been benefiting from globalization which is now
| going in reverse.
|
| You mean countries applying tariffs to things? Or are you
| talking about the Russian aggression? Or is it about that
| speculation that reduced spending on the US navy will make
| other countries helpless against naval crime?
|
| Because the first two seem to have had no effect at all on
| solar panels production, and the third is a huge attention
| seeking non-sequitur.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The argument that this cannot work is making the argument that
| NO storage technologies will be good enough, not that just Li-
| ion batteries won't be good enough.
|
| There are thousands of different battery chemistries. It's an
| extremely strong claim that all will fail. And there are
| approaches beyond batteries that use only very common
| materials. For example, pumped thermal storage, where a
| reversible heat engine is used to separate heat and cold, then
| regenerate the work consumed by running off that temperature
| difference.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > We're probably short of copper.
|
| While copper water pipes still have a market, I don't think we
| can claim to be short of copper.
| opportune wrote:
| Green energy requires massive amounts of energy to produce. The
| more we electrify vehicles and the more green energy in the
| grid, the greener it becomes to produce green energy.
|
| I agree we need more manufacturing outside of Asia/developing
| countries, but the solution is definitely not to maintain the
| status quo of dirty energy just because we can't make green
| energy under 100% ideal circumstances
| cryptonector wrote:
| Access to power / energy is what wealth is all about today, and
| has been for over 100 years.
|
| However rapidly a "green energy transition" could possibly
| happen, if it means reducing access to power / energy, then it
| means a drop in standards of living. In some parts of the world
| that means more than merely tightening the belt -- it can mean
| real hunger, while in many others it might mean a return to
| poverty, though perhaps not hunger. Moreover, people will
| probably not accept a permanent (or permanent- _seeming_ )
| reduction in standards of living.
| [deleted]
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'm not sold that this would happen. It seems to me the plan in
| the US is to add green energy, and then slowly replace the
| dirty energy with more green. I admit I am ignorant of the
| plans of other nations, but from where I am sitting I don't see
| any reason to believe there will ever be a reduction in
| available energy.
| [deleted]
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| One thing I've not seen a decent discussion of is what industries
| benefit from enormous amounts of almost free electricity? Other
| than the manufacturers of wind, solar, etc systems, how does this
| effect the economy?
|
| Obviously that effect is going to be significant, but what
| exactly does it look like?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Ultimately, any industry using process heat will benefit, by
| using resistively heated thermal stores when power is cheap.
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/could-storing-electricity-in-white...
|
| https://rondo.com/
| alexvoda wrote:
| Aluminium production, desalination, and more
| pfdietz wrote:
| Aluminum production is a bit problematic, since aluminum pots
| cannot be turned off too long without failing (either
| freezing up or overheating the walls).
| alexvoda wrote:
| Eventually synthetic fuel will become economically viable.
| mabbo wrote:
| I think it will be important as we transition to EVs to have
| more energy available.
|
| In Ontario, the typical family home uses something like 750
| kWh/month on average. If you estimate 5km/kWh (roughly right?),
| and presume a car is driving something like 1000 km/month,
| that's an extra 200 kWh/month needed, about a 25% increase.
|
| But in the less developed parts of the world, a car might just
| be a much larger component of personal energy use- perhaps most
| of it.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Hydro is very hourly. During peak times, we use about 2x the
| electricity used at night. The grid is built for the peak.
|
| Thus, as long as people don't charge during the absolute peak
| (about 2hrs a day) there's no capacity issue at all.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| it looks like most cities in the world -- excessive, 24-hour,
| advertising and safety with electricity.. the external costs of
| everything fossil-fuel are not at all inline with the reality
| of what is happening with Climate now
| pydry wrote:
| In the UK it already means all the electric car drivers program
| their cars to charge when it gets really windy (or did).
|
| Once grids implement a sane variable pricing system and manage
| transmission capacity properly electricity prices are unlikely
| to go zero or negative.
|
| EVs alone will probably soak up excess demand (& contribute
| back when pumped storage starts running dry).
| cassepipe wrote:
| If you can suffer the french accent, I believe Jean-Marc
| Jancovici is making some good points about this issue :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s254IPHXgVA
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| Complete BS.
|
| Green Energy has radically lower thermodynamic efficiency and
| energy density than ANY other currently used energy source
| (especially fossil and nuclear). These two qualities of an energy
| source have a direct relationship to economic efficiency and
| utility. Economics and Energy are 1:1 causal - economic growth
| ONLY occurs with energy growth. Lowering the quality of energy
| means lowering economic productivity, efficiency and activity.
|
| When they say it will result in "trillions of net savings", this
| is PRECISELY the same as saying that you can increase profits by
| driving all costs to zero. It's either fraud or ignorance to
| claim such a thing.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Ah, the energy density canard. It's becoming a dog whistle for
| identifying people who don't know what they're talking about.
|
| Energy density doesn't matter; cost does. It's possible to have
| a high energy density and a high cost -- for example, nuclear
| fission.
| boxed wrote:
| The thermodynamics and energy density is irrelevant. The
| external costs of fossil fuels in a scenario without a green
| transition is so enormous that it can literally crash the
| current civilization. That means the net savings could also in
| the worst case scenario be the entire world economy plus all
| future growth for thousands or even more years.
| tucosan wrote:
| No. Fossil fuels may be more energy dense But they need to be
| extracted, refined, transported and warehoused. The costs of
| greenhouse gas emissions through their environmental side
| effects are not even part of that calculation.
|
| In the meantime, a wind turbine keeps generating energy as long
| a there is wind. We can't deplete wind or ocean waves as a
| resource.
|
| The more we invest in renewable energy, the more efficient per
| follar speny it becomes.
| samatman wrote:
| I downvoted because the first paragraph is dead wrong and
| needs correcting.
|
| Carbon accounting for fossil fuels absolutely includes
| extraction, refinement, and transportation costs. Saying that
| it doesn't undermines everything else you say, because this
| is easily checked.
| Bostonian wrote:
| Critiqued at
| https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-9-16-cost-of-t... .
|
| '[H]ere are what I believe to be the main problems with the work:
|
| The principal driver of the whole thing is a forecast of rapid
| and continuous declines in the cost of wind turbines, solar
| panels and batteries. The assumption is that costs of these
| things will continue to decline exponentially without limit
| indefinitely into the future. From the "Results" section: "We
| know of no empirical evidence supporting floor costs and do not
| impose them . . . " Of the three technologies at issue (wind,
| solar, and batteries), the one I know the most about is
| batteries. Here is the Way, et al., chart of price history of
| batteries and the projection they use for the future:
|
| ...
|
| As to continuing rapid declines in the prices of wind turbines
| and solar panels, I'll believe it when I see it. Yes there have
| been substantial declines to date. But at this point these strike
| me as mature technologies. The main issues in getting them built
| and operational are mining and processing huge quantities of
| metals and minerals, forming the metals and minerals into the
| devices, transporting the (very large and heavy) devices to their
| sites, and installing them. How are those things going to get
| cheaper by any substantial amount, let alone another order of
| magnitude?
|
| The treatment of the energy storage problem in this paper is
| wholly inadequate, and bordering on the fantastical. The cost
| fantasies as to short-term storage are discussed above. As to
| longer term storage, from the Supplemental Information, pages
| 38-45, it appears that the proposed solution is almost entirely
| hydrogen, supposedly to be produced by electrolysis from water.
| (Here, they mostly.call the proposed storage medium "P2X fuels,"
| somehow implying that it might be something other than hydrogen,
| much like with New York and its "DEFR" fantasy.). There is
| currently essentially no existing prototype or demonstration
| project of this so-called "green hydrogen" anywhere in the world
| from which realistic cost projections can be derived. (From the
| 2022 JP Morgan Asset Management Annual Energy Paper, page 39:
| "Current green hydrogen production is negligible. . . ."). Way,
| et al., do cite some costs of existing electrolyzers, but I can
| find no discussion in the paper of the issue that producing
| hydrogen on a scale sufficient to back up the entire world
| electricity system is going to require electrolyzing the ocean.
| And the millions of tons of toxic chlorine gas thereby produced
| are going to go -- where? The problems of dealing with enormous
| amounts of hydrogen -- like explosiveness, embrittlement of
| pipelines, and the like -- are dealt with with a wave of the
| hand. The creation of a massive green hydrogen infrastructure as
| the backup for wind and sun hasn't even been begun by the most
| fanatical of the green energy crazies like Germany, California or
| New York. They take one look at the real costs and balk.'
| pydry wrote:
| I see his comments section had to explain what pumped hydro was
| to him.
| clairity wrote:
| storage (and grid stability in general) is always the crucial
| achilles heel to renewables and it's always handwaved away with
| fantastical arguments positioned squarely against nuclear
| (here, springing up a whole global hydrogen economy out of
| nowhere). it's frustrating to see so much needless internecine
| fighting when nuclear plus renewables is the most viable answer
| we have right now to a fossil fuel free future. we need to be
| laser-focused on removing coal from our energy present, let
| alone our energy future.
|
| coal is _still_ nearly 30% of the electricity generation in the
| US (and 11% of total energy consumption). if we 'd just kept
| building nuclear like we had between the 70s-90s, we'd be coal-
| free right now (other than that the bit used by industry, which
| is about 10% of the total coal use, and 1% of total energy
| consumption).
| kortex wrote:
| Not to mention, most of the big problems facing us now can be
| reduced to an energy problem, given low enough energy costs.
| From desalination, to carbon sequestration, to cement, to
| production of hydrogen and carbon-neutral liquid fuels, to
| ammonia production, to even peak phosphorus, at some kWh
| price point all of these just become "throw electricity at
| it". Excess energy can always be used (in theory). Renewables
| plus storage still means cost per kWh increase at certain
| times or conditions.
|
| We need every fossil fuel plant around the world offline
| _yesterday_ , and every coal plant offline 50 years ago. The
| anti-nuclear sentiment really is a shame.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The phrase "Achilles Heel" implies it's a fatal, unsolvable
| problem. But the cost of dealing with intermittency of
| renewables is looking like it's not bad, especially if one
| takes into account all the ways it could be dealt with (like
| thermal/cold storage out at the edge of the grid.)
| lanstin wrote:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-california-
| ke... we are already getting gigawatts from batteries.
|
| And what do you make of the argument that nuclear takes too
| long to ramp up construction? I mean Biden's infra
| legislation does include support for nuclear and California
| just decided to keep open its last plant, but the
| solar/batteries combo is so cheap, easy, safe and
| decentralized (which a lot of the California libertarians
| like) that nuclear can't compete really.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| That's a very poor critique, as the URL, the title and the
| first sentence would suggest. Bad even by the low standards of
| these things generally.
|
| edit: Turns out the author runs a climate change denial think
| tank:
|
| https://www.desmog.com/global-warming-policy-foundation/
|
| and has been talking nonsense on this topic for over a decade:
|
| > During a question and answer period following the debate, a
| question from the audience nearly left Menton stammering. What
| plausible alternative explanations, he was asked, account for
| the obvious warming trend shown in actual temperature
| measurements since the nineteenth century? Menton's initial
| response was ridiculous, consisting of but one word: "Clouds."
| After an uncomfortable silence ensued, Menton continued:
| "Cosmic rays. Nobody knows what's causing it."
|
| https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/climate-science-on-t...
|
| further edit: topical bit of info about one of the billionaires
| anonymously funding this "charity":
|
| > Hintze is also chairman of the board of trustees for the
| Prince's Foundation for Building Community , to which he has
| donated PS683,954 in recent years. In 2009, Hintze received The
| Prince of Wales Medal for Arts Philanthropy from Prince
| Charles, who has been a vocal critic of climate sceptics.
|
| > In 2010 during a speech at St James' Palace, the prince said
| climate sceptics were peddling "pseudo science". In a speech at
| the European Parliament a year ago , the prince said climate
| sceptics were having a "corrosive effect" on public opinion and
| were playing a "reckless game of roulette" with the future of
| the planet. Last December, Hintze replaced Hylton as his
| charity adviser with Major William Mackinlay, Prince Charles's
| former equerry.
|
| Worth noting that the Hylton fellow mentioned was ousted as
| part of a political scandal mentioned further up this article:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20150817181047/http://www.thegua...
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| OK. But what about the idea that renewable energy costs have
| no floor?
| addicted wrote:
| That's not the claim in the article.
|
| From the article:
|
| > For example, as shown in Figure 3B, past floor costs used
| in IAMs have already repeatedly been violated. We know of
| no empirical evidence supporting floor costs and do not
| impose them (see Document S1 section "The use of floor
| costs in endogenous technological learning models").
|
| So there is no claim that there will not be a floor. Just
| that the floor costs have been wrong for decades, and
| imposing them has led to extremely wrong predictions. So
| including them in an analysis is likely to again mislead
| rather than help.
|
| Also, there's a whole bunch of discussion about not using
| floor costs. So the "critique" is not much of a critique
| since it does not engage with the actual claims being made
| and the detailed explanations justifying those choices.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I'm not seeing this as a distinction that makes any
| difference in the criticism.
| addicted wrote:
| So you think it's better to include a factor that is
| unknowable and whose inclusion has consistently led to
| wrong analysis when the exclusion of that factor would
| have historically led to better results?
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I think it's better to make an estimate than to assume
| the decrease will continue indefinitely, yes. I do think
| that.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If we assume historical experience curves continue, that
| means there is no floor, except in the sense that costs are
| still nonzero when renewables reach 100% of the world
| energy supply.
|
| In that vein, expanding solar to supply the entire world
| will (on the historical experience curve) reduce module
| prices by another factor of ~4. Costs will continue to
| decline after that as modules are replaced, but that's an
| ever decelerating process that approaches, but never
| reaches, zero.
| [deleted]
| lukeschlather wrote:
| > producing hydrogen on a scale sufficient to back up the
| entire world electricity system is going to require
| electrolyzing the ocean
|
| This statement seems false unless you take it to somewhat
| tautologically mean that electrolysis could use seawater as an
| input. The quantity of water in the ocean is vast, we could
| remove enough hydrogen to store 5 years of world energy usage
| and that would still be a tiny fraction of the water in the
| ocean. Less than 0.0001%, probably less than that.
|
| * Liquid water in the ocean 1.37e21 kg * Roughly 1.37e20kg of
| hydrogen * Roughly 120 MJ of hydrogen/kg * Annual energy usage
| is 5.387e14 MJ * So we require roughly 4.489e12 kg of hydrogen,
| or 0.00000003% of the hydrogen in the ocean.
|
| I feel like most of the "real costs" of green hydrogen are
| overstated. There don't seem to be any actual impediments. It's
| true that current prices are high but hydrogen electrolysis
| presently costs maybe 5-7x what natural gas does for unit
| energy. This is expensive but economies of scale have to at
| least cut that in half if we did it at scale and it's very much
| within reach. (And it seems plausible that economies of scale
| cut it down even further.) Yes, people are balking but that's
| why we need to just subsidize it until costs come down.
| tomohawk wrote:
| I'm willing to let the EU place their bet on this, and be the 2nd
| mover instead of the first one.
|
| Early bird may get the worm, but the 2nd mouse gets the cheese.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Also much more consistent and predictable energy prices which
| will be huge.
| pydry wrote:
| Only for solar/wind/pumped storage/biomass though.
|
| Not for nuclear power:
|
| >We constructed an additional scenario in which nuclear plays a
| dominant role in replacing fossil fuels, but this is _much more
| expensive than the other scenarios_. For example, using a 1.4%
| discount rate, the expected NPC is about $25 trillion more than
| for the No Transition scenario.
| lnsru wrote:
| I am just curious about manufacturing capacity of these green
| energy gadgets in Western World. When I look at the parts for my
| solar installation everything is made in Asia. My system is
| rather simple: 4-6 panels each ~400 Wp and stupid single phase
| inverter. That battery production isn't a thing in the West is
| already well known fact. In my eyes this green energy transition
| totally depends on factories in Asia. And builds strong
| dependence since nothing can be made domestically (at least no
| mainstream solar panels/electronics in Germany).
| Animats wrote:
| > That battery production isn't a thing in the West is already
| well known fact.
|
| Er, no. 13 large new battery factories are expected to come
| online in the US in the next 3 years.[1] General Motors is
| building four. Ford is building three. SK Innovations is
| building two. Stellantis (Fiat, Chrysler, etc.) is building
| two. Volkswagen and Toyota are building one each. This doesn't
| include Tesla, which isn't saying. China's ambassador to the
| United States is now complaining about the US cutting China out
| of the battery supply chain.[2]
|
| [1] https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Ramps-Up-
| Batte... [2]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-15/china-s-e...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| yeah that and pretty much every computer in the world
| Gare wrote:
| But the machines that make "computers" are designed and
| produced in Europe:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding
|
| If you know how to make the tool, you probably know how to
| make the product.
| kbenson wrote:
| Battery production capacity is becoming more decentralized, as
| countries with large production capabilities stay somewhat
| stagnant but other countries build factories. China's
| percentage of world battery production is expected to drop over
| the next few years while most other countries are expected to
| increase production capacity.[1] See Tesla's investment in the
| gigafactory or Panasonic's investment in battery manufacturing
| in Kansas for examples of this happening. Germany specifically,
| since you mention it, is expected to surge quite a bit in the
| global battery market.
|
| 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1249871/share-of-the-
| glo...
|
| P.S. I suggest opening the statista link in a private tab, I
| just noticed the second time you visit it you are paywall
| blocked.
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