[HN Gopher] Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
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Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
Author : vikrum
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-08-18 18:33 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.complexsystemspodcast.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.complexsystemspodcast.com)
| wesleyd wrote:
| Listened to this yesterday. Super enjoyable. Made the point that
| electricity in the future will be consumed much closer
| geographically to where it is generated than today - and so we
| probably don't need huge interconnects - but much less close in
| time (because batteries).
| aesch wrote:
| Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from
| renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of
| the company and talks about its goals:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g.
|
| Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic
| hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard
| about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently
| to create the synthetic hydrocarbons.
| churchill wrote:
| Synthetic hydrocarbons will likely fail, simply because of the
| same reasons vertical farming failed. Once you're spending
| money on infrastructure to capture solar energy, losing 80% to
| inefficiency, before piping into your vertical farm via LEDs
| (losing another 50% to 80%), a farmer who draws free sunshine
| will outcompete you because he's using free energy while you're
| spending millions to power a small factory sized farm; energy
| isn't free.
|
| Likewise, Casey's idea (Terraform Industries) requires solar
| energy to convert air and water to natural gas. It'll cost 10x
| the price of the gas Qatar & Saudi Arabia pump out of the
| ground essentially for free. These technologies won't be viable
| until humanity is pressed harder and prices (for food or fuel)
| climb.
| schiffern wrote:
| Inevitably the solution to the anti-profitability of running
| (essentially) a gas power plant in reverse is government
| subsidies. Amazing how otherwise "efficient market" folks can
| forget market wisdom the moment big change is needed in big
| industries.
|
| The touted advantage is that instead of market-driven
| electrification of multiple sectors you only need one big
| silver bullet technology, however these are futile systems
| that actually _reduce_ the total amount of energy available
| to society (vs electrification which does the opposite). And
| since the pricing signals are messed up by subsidies you can
| 't invest in the economically optimal amount of energy
| efficiency. This is precisely the opposite of the sort of
| activity we might want to subsidize.
|
| Handmer has some great writing on space subjects, but on this
| we're going to disagree.
| d_burfoot wrote:
| The analogy to vertical farming is a tempting one, but
| ultimately misleading. There is a crucial difference between
| TI-produced natural gas and Saudi-produced gas: the former is
| carbon neutral, the latter isn't.
|
| For every molecule of CH4 TI creates, they're pulling a
| molecule of C02 out of the atmosphere to do it. When you burn
| a CH4 molecule from a Saudi well, you're moving carbon from
| the ground into the atmosphere.
| schiffern wrote:
| This "crucial" difference makes no difference, because it
| won't stop Saudi Arabia from pumping out gas.
| churchill wrote:
| Will you pay 10x for synthetic fuel? And if you do, for
| moral reasons, you will be driven out of the market by
| those burning cheaper fuel. Just like the cultured meat
| startups have learned, established players won't let you
| take away their subsidies and drive them out of business.
|
| Big Oil has rivers of money to lobby and make sure carbon-
| neutral fuel startups can't legislate them out of the
| market.
| megaman821 wrote:
| There is probably a market for 2-4x more expensive
| carbon-neutral aviation fuel. Most other fuel-consuming
| vehicles are better off going in a different direction,
| batteries or hydrogen fuel cells.
| Retric wrote:
| The problem with synthetic hydrocarbons isn't energy abstractly
| its capital vs energy costs. The more hours per month of
| electricity you want the more you end up paying on a per kWh
| basis.
|
| So if you're fine turning all the equipment off most the of
| time you can get really cheap power, but having a 1 billion
| dollar facility including its workforce doing nothing 70% of
| the time is expensive. On the flip side if you want 24/7
| operation you end up with much higher per kWh rates.
| amelius wrote:
| > having a 1 billion dollar facility including its workforce
| doing nothing 70% of the time is expensive
|
| We work normally only about 33% of a day.
| immibis wrote:
| Very expensive industrial facilities don't.
| sien wrote:
| There are a few companies doing it.
|
| Prometheus Fuels is another, they have been on HN previously :
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31264388
|
| They have a cool website :
|
| https://prometheusfuels.com/
|
| There are some companies that want to use nuclear power , Valar
| Atomics is one :
|
| https://www.valaratomics.com/
|
| The cost estimates seem to be 4-10 times as expensive as fossil
| fuels.
| mataslauzadis wrote:
| Casey is awesome!!!
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