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California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

bloomberg.com

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Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#41

Post by icebraining »

laurentMiguel wrote: post #31
Tuxer wrote: post #6

Once again, making me proud to pay CA taxes. If they do not take large hydro into account when calculating this 100%, I wonder what we'll do with the dams. Destroy them to let the rivers free-flow again? Dams would have been a great store of energy for this project by pumping the water up during the day using solar/wind. Tesla Energy must be salivating at all those batteries that will need to be constructed.

Are metal/chemical batteries “ clean ” though? In the atmospheric climate context, possibly. But if we optimize only for that, is there not a potentially serious trade off in the likelihood of irresponsible disposal?

You can greatly reduce the danger of improper disposal by implementing a https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposit-refund_system

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#42

Post by bobcostas55 »

ebikelaw wrote: post #26
jmcgough wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We probably need to make significant improvements to the grid in order to support this. Solar power doesn't feed into the grid at a consistent rate, so we need to be able to store large amounts of energy for off-hours.

Do we need a quarter century to make that happen? California built Shasta Dam in 8 years with a population 7 times smaller than today's and with early Industrial Age technology. How long could it possibly take to install some pumps at Whiskeytown to pump water back into Shasta during the daytime? The Pacific AC Intertie goes right over both lakes already.

For some reason people's intuitive estimates of pumped storage/dams are completely off the mark. This study concerns Germany, but the same orders of magnitude apply to California: https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/144985

>Based on German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power, this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the volatility of wind and solar energy. It shows that joint buffers for wind and solar energy require less storage capacity than would be necessary to buffer wind or solar energy alone. The storage requirement of over 6,000 pumped storage plants, which is 183 times Germany’s current capacity, would nevertheless be huge.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#43

Post by nickik »

gricardo99 wrote: post #33
urda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is actually in the middle of shutting down the last nuclear source they have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant#Clos...

The sooner it shuts down the better, given the design and risks of the plant[1] 1 - https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-power-accidents...

Absolute bullshit. Its one of the best run and safest nuclear plants in the world.

Union of concerned scientists is nothing but an anti-nuclear lobbying group the same as Greenpeace and others. All they do is spread FUD or outright lies.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#44

Post by Alex3917 »

nickik wrote: post #39
godzillabrennus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, there is a solution for more safely disposing of nuclear waste that is coming out of Berkeley. http://www.deepisolation.com They are a company to pay attention to IMHO.

Nuclear waste is not an actual problem and the only reason there is no 'solution' is because it has turned into a political shit show. Worrying about nuclear waste at the beginning of the nuclear age when most of that waste is actually valuable fuel is downright idiotic.

> Nuclear waste is not an actual problem

If you're comfortable eating food grown in the soil grown around uranium processing plants then by all means go ahead.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#45

Post by [deleted] »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #29
RobLach wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I ride around Berkeley, CA I see a sea of "nuclear-free zone" signs on roads filled with Prius traffic. It's not so easy to understand the real agendas here.

Funny enough, there is a solution for more safely disposing of nuclear waste that is coming out of Berkeley. http://www.deepisolation.com They are a company to pay attention to IMHO.

[deleted]

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#46

Post by sixdimensional »

jzoch wrote: post #16

I understand this is amazing and totally love my state for doing it, but man seeing 2045 is always a little dismaying as I wish we could be even more aggressive. 2035 for example. I realize I am being too ambitious, but we went to space in a decade why not 100% clean energy in 1.5?

I'm with you. It's awesome that we're doing this and I think it will be good for future generations.

Long term infrastructure investments take a long time, and it's weird to me to think that we might not even be around to enjoy the benefit, but needing to be done is needing to be done. I think this is exactly the kind of change in thinking we need, that we should take on such efforts, even if they take a long time, now.

However, I also concur, I wish we could be even more aggressive. It would be interesting to know if there is a staggered approach and if those dates are sooner (didn't RTFA... to be honest, maybe it was in there). Maybe we'll be 65% electric by 2035 or something, that would still be pretty great, right?

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#47

Post by craftyguy »

radicalbyte wrote: post #40
eikenberry wrote: post #18

Is nuclear part of the bill? It is clean but I don't see any mention of it either way in the article other than in the graph of current sources.

Until recently I was extremely pro nuclear, but in the past months I've been researching renewable energy and have changed my mind. I hope not. For a similar cost you can actually turn coal power into massive carbon storage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_captu... This is actually pretty ingenious, if it works at industrial scale then it's better than even wind and solar power.

> and have changed my mind.

> I hope not.

Care to explain why you have changed your mind?

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#50

Post by craftyguy »

nickik wrote: post #39
godzillabrennus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, there is a solution for more safely disposing of nuclear waste that is coming out of Berkeley. http://www.deepisolation.com They are a company to pay attention to IMHO.

Nuclear waste is not an actual problem and the only reason there is no 'solution' is because it has turned into a political shit show. Worrying about nuclear waste at the beginning of the nuclear age when most of that waste is actually valuable fuel is downright idiotic.

No, it actually is a problem. It has to be stored for millennia, and in a way that does not leak/contaminate surroundings (including ground water). Very little technology /materials can meet those requirements[0], and the current situation is a damn mess[1].

0. http://www.nwtrb.gov/docs/default-source/reports/synopsis-of...

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/05/0...

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