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Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

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Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#481

Post by korantu »

Retric wrote: post #426
korantu wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are comparing two energy sources: one where output depends on the weather, and can go to near 0 another where output is strictly predictable but takes time to change. Option 2 have the problem of oversupply and undersupply. This forces either storage or fossil fuels in the picture. Option 1, however, only deals with oversupply, which does not require expensive mitigations. Not obvious why option 2 is preferable he…

First, you can go off grid using 100% solar and a relatively small battery system as long as you get enough solar cells. The reason this works is your daytime input never drops to 0 and it's generally lower when you need less energy for AC systems. In terms of the grid, Wind and solar really can't go to 0 over large areas. The minimum vs maximum output shows high variance, but maximum output is largely irrelevant. Re…

Majority of energy consumption and population happens in cities / industry, so if we are talking significant co2 soonest, we should really focus on these.

For large consumers like these to go solar/wind, you will have to really over-provision solar/wind so that minimum possible power output is still enough. (Calm night, anyone?) This looks highly inefficient and tough to predict.

Whereas nuclear can and are already operating in load following mode routinely: [1]

[1] http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-loa...

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#482

Post by ed_balls »

- cycle to work, work from home, car pool in a plugin hybrid/electric car

- improve the energy efficiency of your house (aircon, heating)

- eat less beef

- invest in solar panel/sun thermal collectors

- pick train instead of a car for a trip

- reduce waste and buying unnecessary stuff

- Lobby for certain regulations like more charging stations for electric cars, more bike lanes, electric cars to use a bus lane, property tax that takes home energy efficiency into account

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#483

Post by ed_balls »

pauldjohnston wrote: post #221

Well, having done some research into this recently, the tech world has something it can do right now. Switch to sustainably powered Cloud and move to renewably powered/offset Data Centres. e.g. Google (100% carbon neutral), Azure (100% offset), AWS (Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, Frankfurt regions are 100% carbon neutral) Cloud/Data Centres emit around 2% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (bet you didn't know that). There is a…

> Cloud/Data Centres emit around 2% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Is it just from electricity or the total operation? What about manufacturing and hardware replacements/maintenance? Is significant?

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#484

Post by ed_balls »

tobr wrote: post #19

Fundamentally it is a political problem, not a technological problem. We need high carbon taxes, we need to end fossil fuel subsidies, and we probably need to change our economic system to something that addresses the tragedy of the commons. But we’ve seen in recent years how technology can influence politics. I’d quote a tweet from Tristan Harris from the other day [1]: > In an hypothetical world, if Facebook were r…

It is a political problem, but technology can change it dramatically. A cheap and safe energy source like Thorium-based nuclear power and self driving electric cars would tilt the table.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#485

Post by ed_balls »

ben_w wrote: post #142
lozenge wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, techno utopianism. It ignores reality in many ways, here are two. First, if we have clean energy, are we going to shut down fossil fuel plants that have already been built? If not, then fossil fuel will just become cheaper as demand drops, making burning fossil fuels attractive again. Countries currently plan to reduce their emissions, but none are planning to reduce their fossil fuel exports. They just hope it w…

> First, if we have clean energy, are we going to shut down fossil fuel plants that have already been built? That depends entirely on how cheap the alternatives are. Fossil fuel mining is not zero cost in itself, so there is a minimum price it can’t go below. Indeed, quite a lot of coal plants are being shut down — they can’t compete as the fuel itself is too expensive. This is not universal as not all coal is the sa…

10$ for Saudis, 25$ for shell, 50$ from the Artic sea.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#486

Post by korantu »

natch wrote: post #413
korantu wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is plenty of hydrogen in the water indeed. If there was any worry that we are going to run out of hydrogen, and willing to pay hundreds of dollars per kg (uranium fuel cost), we would totally get it from sea water. In which case hydrogen supply would be technically infinite. As for your second concern, could you elaborate, why centralisation such a critical barrier to achieving co2-free energy production?…

Big government, big industry, crony capitalism, corruption, political control of an essential resource, politics generally, secrecy, coverups, payoffs, concentration of power, etc. etc. which you would not get or to a much lesser extent (verging on negligible relative to nuclear) with some alternative energy sources like solar.

Solar and wind are fine for residential, which is 13% of global consumption.

Transportation and industry, with their 75% , would need some clean source of energy, for which calm nights are not a problem, crony capitalism or not.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#487

Post by Retric »

korantu wrote: post #481
Retric wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, you can go off grid using 100% solar and a relatively small battery system as long as you get enough solar cells. The reason this works is your daytime input never drops to 0 and it's generally lower when you need less energy for AC systems. In terms of the grid, Wind and solar really can't go to 0 over large areas. The minimum vs maximum output shows high variance, but maximum output is largely irrelevant. Re…

Majority of energy consumption and population happens in cities / industry, so if we are talking significant co2 soonest, we should really focus on these. For large consumers like these to go solar/wind, you will have to really over-provision solar/wind so that minimum possible power output is still enough. (Calm night, anyone?) This looks highly inefficient and tough to predict. Whereas nuclear can and are already o…

First, most city’s have a lot of space for solar and can easily import wind power. ~66w/m2 average over 24 hours is 66 MW per km^2 / the percentage covered in panels and really adds up.

Wind really can't be calm for long periods over large areas because large areas will always have temperatures differences.

It's like saying what if the sun does not rise tomorrow? If that's actually happening you have much bigger problems.

Load following nuclear power plants become even more expensive. Not a huge deal on nuclear subs, but a major issue for civilian infrastructure. Just like energy storage they simply increase the cost of energy above alternatives.

PS: Now if you could get nuclear without any form of subsides down to about 2.5c/kWh then running 24/7 or peaking power with average load's of around 30% down at around 8c/kWh then I would agree it had a major place. But, it's just no where near those numbers.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#488

Post by natch »

korantu wrote: post #486
natch wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big government, big industry, crony capitalism, corruption, political control of an essential resource, politics generally, secrecy, coverups, payoffs, concentration of power, etc. etc. which you would not get or to a much lesser extent (verging on negligible relative to nuclear) with some alternative energy sources like solar.

Solar and wind are fine for residential, which is 13% of global consumption. Transportation and industry, with their 75% , would need some clean source of energy, for which calm nights are not a problem, crony capitalism or not.

Yes, you need some source of clean energy for which calm nights are not a problem.

If only batteries were getting really good... oh, they are. Batteries are not a source, but coupled with a source, your calm night problem is mostly taken care of. And batteries+renewable sources don't need to be 100% of the solution in order for them to effectively wipe out the value proposition of nuclear power in most situations. Yes, you can find exceptions, I'm sure.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#490

Post by alexozer »

tobr wrote: post #19

Fundamentally it is a political problem, not a technological problem. We need high carbon taxes, we need to end fossil fuel subsidies, and we probably need to change our economic system to something that addresses the tragedy of the commons. But we’ve seen in recent years how technology can influence politics. I’d quote a tweet from Tristan Harris from the other day [1]: > In an hypothetical world, if Facebook were r…

It's only a political problem if you make it one. Better politics requires less technological innovation, and better technology requires less political innovation.

The political barrier suddenly becomes much less intimidating if an extremely efficient way to such CO2 out of the atmosphere manually was found tomorrow.

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