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Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why the only way to deal with climate change is countries with carbon reserves deciding to leave it in the ground. If they don't, there is so much demand for the stuff (burning it is so incredibly useful) that it'll all be burned.
Or for those with wealth to buy those reserves and put mechanisms in place to inhibit the extraction of those petroleum resources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why the only way to deal with climate change is countries with carbon reserves deciding to leave it in the ground. If they don't, there is so much demand for the stuff (burning it is so incredibly useful) that it'll all be burned.
Or for those with wealth to buy those reserves and put mechanisms in place to inhibit the extraction of those petroleum resources.
edit: Because, they are insulated from the bad repercussions of their harmful policies. Eg. Trafigura polluting the shit out of Ivory coast and poisoning people there. The CEO doesnt live there, he drinks bottled water and lives somewhere else in a gated compound.
Making those destructive choices makes things better for them so they keep making them over and over. If a CEO made a conscientious choice then it would most likely be at the expense of short term profit, which would diminish the extent of his power, sort of self-selecting himself out of the decision making pool.
By the way, you can walk right up to them. They are very impressive up close.
The interesting question is what effect clean energy has to the usage of hydrocarbons. Will it bring reduce global demand or just reduce the price of energy. The good news is: CO2 emission intensity is going down globally and emissions per capita in US, China and EU28 are going down. The bad news are: Emissions per capita are still going up globally, and hydrocarbon usage and CO2 emissions are breaking records year a…
This is a really good point, clean energy seems to be a luxury at the moment.
No one can blame poorer countries, they aren't all in a position to invest in renewables, for many of them it would be crippling, the argument that renewables is sometimes cheaper only works long term, and long term takes significan't up front investment, burning coal etc takes significantly less.
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I’ve always been told that transmission of electricity is hard or inefficient. What is HVDC and why is it better?
Nat Geo article that explains it. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/12/1212...
Also killing birds and bats though....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve always been told that transmission of electricity is hard or inefficient. What is HVDC and why is it better?
High voltage DC. High voltage means it’s more efficient (power dissipation depends on current, not voltage, so for the same power, higher voltage means much less dissipation). DC (direct current instead of alternating) makes it easier to connect disparate grids as you don’t have to worry about phasing.
As the production costs with windpower decrease due to the technological progress, the question of grid storage and grid interconnection becomes more pressing. E.g. in Germany, they frequently have days of negative energy prices, where producers need to pay to feed energy into the greed because of overproduction of energy on windy/sunny days [0](in German). Without storage and grid interconnection, there is only so m…
But indeed, as the amount of renewal energy production increases, more storage is needed. Perhaps less so for wind which has a more smooth output over days, but for solar, which has a strong peak over noon and of course shuts down alltogether in the evening. Distributing the solar curve over more time of the day would be very useful.
The interesting question is what effect clean energy has to the usage of hydrocarbons. Will it bring reduce global demand or just reduce the price of energy. The good news is: CO2 emission intensity is going down globally and emissions per capita in US, China and EU28 are going down. The bad news are: Emissions per capita are still going up globally, and hydrocarbon usage and CO2 emissions are breaking records year a…
Are there known fundamental obstructions to developing a leap frog effect in energy tech?
Even if the clean energy becomes cheaper hydrocarbons can have comparative advantages and when their price goes down it's creating new uses and new demand.
Even if EROI (energy return of investment) of hydrocarbons turns negative, it may be cheaper to use clean energy to extract hydrocarbons from existing sources than transfer CO2 to back to hydrocarbons.