121–130 of 278 posts
I wonder what the economics would be without the federal tax incentives for wind and solar. Does anyone know? EDIT: Someone above provided a link that provides the figure I was looking for: "Between 2010 and 2016, subsidies for solar were between 10¢ and 88¢ per kWh and subsidies for wind were between 1.3¢ and 5.7¢ per kWh. Subsidies for coal, natural gas and nuclear are all between 0.05¢ and 0.2¢ per kWh over all ye…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bottleneck is the grid. The Grid has to match the production and demand, and at times that is why CA gives away electricity to AZ and pay for AZ for consuming its electricity. In turn, AZ turns off some of its production. A tanker with LNG is much more flexible and denser form of energy than photons to electrons.. Once electrons out they need to be consumed asap!
>The bottleneck is the grid. The Grid has to match the production and demand, and at times that is why CA gives away electricity to AZ and pay for AZ for consuming its electricity. In turn, AZ turns off some of its production. Europe is handling it well: http://www.powermag.com/europe-rebuilds-grid-to-accommodate-... America will probably lag significantly in this regard because too much of the grid is owned by compa…
I would argue that “immediate” action is unnecessary as the economics gradually improve, so will infrastructure. It isn’t like these changes are needed right now. The data doesn’t support the idea of impending catastrophe, unless your business is profiting from such a catastrophe.
The market will solve this. We are already using more renewables when it makes sense and that percentage will organically grow as renewables become more efficient. Eventually oil and coal will be less profitable than renewables and when that happens, the market and infrastructure will naturally evolve.
Innovation rarely happens because the government wills it. The markets drive innovation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're completely off the mark. Enough energy from the sun hits the Earth in an hour or two to power humanity for a year. It's simply a matter of scaling up. Nuclear is already dead at current wind and solar generation costs.
Photovoltaic capacity is expected to be around 4674 GW in 2050 (currently around 150, I think) [1]. Let's be optimistic and say it'll actually be around 20000 GW, just for the fun of it, and let's ignore all of the variability problems that solar poses. Considering that PV's capacity factor is around 15%, that's around 26 PWh of annual (electric) energy production, around 50% of the electrical energy we use up in a y…
Emissions are pretty obviously not going to peak by 2020, unless there's some sort of civilization-smashing catastrophe in the next few years. Large scale active carbon dioxide removal measures will be needed later, or natural processes will eventually restore the pre-industrial equilibrium over ~100,000 years. We're not going to stay in the "safe" zone below 2 degrees. Reducing future emissions is necessary but not sufficient. I say this as someone who fully wishes that humans had cut emissions quickly enough to render active CDR measures unnecessary, but recognizes that we did not act in time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also Europe is trying to reduce its dependence on the russian natural gas, so they are building LNG terminals all over. LNG tankers are freaking scary though, they are like mini-nukes, approaching 1 megaton equivalent.
For some reason people have this idea that LNG tankers are a big bomb waiting to go up, but that's not really true. Vapor cloud detonation has never been considered particularly likely, and never documented as far as I know. Mostly it seems the vapors that hit the right mix of oxygen and such would burn pretty rapidly, while the warmer gas began to rise. It would certainly be a large fire for a while, but shouldn't h…
So it's nothing to do with vapor cloud detonation, that's pretty much irrelevant compared to the destruction of the rapid phase transition from liquid to gas.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also Europe is trying to reduce its dependence on the russian natural gas, so they are building LNG terminals all over. LNG tankers are freaking scary though, they are like mini-nukes, approaching 1 megaton equivalent.
For some reason people have this idea that LNG tankers are a big bomb waiting to go up, but that's not really true. Vapor cloud detonation has never been considered particularly likely, and never documented as far as I know. Mostly it seems the vapors that hit the right mix of oxygen and such would burn pretty rapidly, while the warmer gas began to rise. It would certainly be a large fire for a while, but shouldn't h…
It happened in Brenham, Texas, in the 90s.
http://www.theeagle.com/blogs/fajitas_for_one/salt-dome-expl...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would also be pretty difficult to use solar in Murmansk, Russia, for about a quarter of the year (it's within the arctic circle, so the sun is below the horizon for most (or all near the solstice) of the day during the winter. And it can actually be less efficient if there's too much sun, solar panel efficiency decreases with temperature. Solar thermal also depends on temperature differential, so if the environmen…
Noboby wants to live in Murmansk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The bottleneck is the grid. Sure the grid is a bottle neck, but it is a bottle neck that can be fixed. Aging infrastructure is the problem, not the grid per-se, it just happens to have older and less well maintained segments. > The Grid has to match the production and demand No, the grid transports power from places where it is generated to places where it is consumed. Whether the consumer is local or remote is not…
Electricity may be more flexible for domestic consumption but it's damn hard to ship electrons to Japan or Europe from the US.
And 'damn hard' is not the same as impossible, there have been studies done on how to ship electricity from Africa to Europe.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-north-africa-...
That's not quite Japan or Europe from the US but it would be intercontinental. The biggest hurdles are political rather than technical. For the really long haul (say, US to EU) I doubt it would be economical, but as a way of leveling the day/night difference it would be an awesome way to make solar power more feasible for base load generation.
Long before that happens though we'll see windfarms in the Atlantic and in the Pacific.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a complex question. In trying to answer it, one should keep in mind that the tax incentives for fossil fuel production dwarf the $15 billion per year or so that supports renewable energy. In addition, fossil fuels impose an estimated $200 billion/yr in social costs (external costs), in the form of pollution, etc. And it would be hard to estimate how much of our defense spending should be attributed to the need t…
Added to which the cheapest solar panels in China are often subjected a tariffs of up to 60%. The "coal/gas/nuclear funded free markets lobby" (ALEC, etc.) who whine incessantly about hairdresser licensing went awfully quiet about that one.
Because they were both substandard and being dumped. And they drove a lot of reliable US manufacturers under.
In addition, a LOT of installers went under because the warranty they offered assumed that they wouldn't have to show up again for 10 years. 3 years on they're getting warranty calls because the solar cells were failing. Of course, the Chinese manufacturer was nowhere to be found.
There is a big difference between disposable electronics being too cheap and a capital expense being too cheap.
Until US businesses can sue Chinese businesses for bad practices and win "the market" won't sort itself out. In the meantime, tariffs are a good working solution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The bottleneck is the grid. Sure the grid is a bottle neck, but it is a bottle neck that can be fixed. Aging infrastructure is the problem, not the grid per-se, it just happens to have older and less well maintained segments. > The Grid has to match the production and demand No, the grid transports power from places where it is generated to places where it is consumed. Whether the consumer is local or remote is not…
Electricity may be more flexible for domestic consumption but it's damn hard to ship electrons to Japan or Europe from the US.
However, we could cheaply ship electrons to Russia, after that it's just a question of displacement. Aka, does energy from powerplant X get sent east or west. Net result you can send elections from US to EU for vastly less than you might think.
Granted, there is no such undersea cable today and US and Russian grids are limited in those areas, but the undersea distance is not actually that far relative to other undersea projects.