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How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

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Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#81

Post by jacobush »

ThomPete wrote: post #64

I am glad to see Bill Gates being more vocal about this. There has been an unrealistic optimism when it comes to how easy it is to find alternatives to what we are currently using. What people forget is that things like plastic ever-present not because of some evil conspiracy by oil companies to push an inferior material on the market but because it's superior to all other materials we know of. The problem isn't prod…

Superior except that it would not be superior in all these cases if the unaccounted for externalities were considered.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#82

Post by imtringued »

dev_dull wrote: post #19
bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear for power no longer makes sense; wind, solar and batteries are just too cheap. Nuclear for heat makes more sense.

Can you explain more about why they don't make sense? My understanding is that they're extremely desirable. They're a drop-in replacement for millions of hydrocarbon plants. They can scale up/down with demand. They produce enormous amounts of energy and emit no C02. Think of the materials and industrial waste to produce 1 nuclear power plant versus all of the battery, solar cells, and turbines to equal the same in po…

>They can scale up/down with demand.

For something as capital intensive as a nuclear power plant, throttling their output makes them uneconomical. They have almost zero opex so you barely save a penny.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#83

Post by imtringued »

ddxxdd wrote: post #73
dev_dull wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain more about why they don't make sense? My understanding is that they're extremely desirable. They're a drop-in replacement for millions of hydrocarbon plants. They can scale up/down with demand. They produce enormous amounts of energy and emit no C02. Think of the materials and industrial waste to produce 1 nuclear power plant versus all of the battery, solar cells, and turbines to equal the same in po…

>Think of the materials and industrial waste to produce 1 nuclear power plant versus all of the battery, solar cells, and turbines to equal the same in power and scalability. Please, also think of the carbon footprint of those materials. Every ton of cement produces 1 ton of CO2. Every ton of steel produces 1.8 tons of CO2. The mere process of building a hydroelectric dam and wind turbine involves emitting CO2 into t…

Carbon capture with trees might work but it definitively will require a lot of manual work. The trees have to be cut down, stored in old mines and replanted periodically.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#84

Post by imtringued »

godelski wrote: post #67
travisoneill1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You conveniently forgot to list the costs of storage from the source you linked. The costs range from $108-$471 for utility scale storage. So nuclear is the clear winner in cost because it doesn't require this.

I just want to break in here because that's a large range in prices. To explain those, they are because the different amounts of storage capacity. These very drastically in location. So somewhere like SoCal needs less than in the Bay area because SoCal is almost always sunny and windy. The Bay has plenty of shady days (go talk to the people at LLNL, there's plenty of people there working on this problem). Alternative…

>This is a "well this works and we can start building it right now."

I have never heard this argument. The problem with nuclear power plants is that you always need the next generation plant design that solves the flaws of the previous generation. Almost every pro nuclear strategy involves new types of reactors that by definition haven't been proven. Of course we can always just build more current or old generation nuclear power plants which then strengthens anti-nuclear fears again.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#85

Post by mrob »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #50
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems likely. But (yet another unpopular opinion): "Zero emissions now" is also genocide, or at least large-scale death.

I don't know why this is being downvoted. If we went zero carbon tomorrow we'd have no replacement for the Haber process which produces the massive amounts of fertilizer needed to feed the human population.

"Zero carbon" is short for "net zero carbon". Sequestration can compensate for the few cases were emissions are truly unavoidable.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#87

Post by imtringued »

Ygg2 wrote: post #38
toomuchtodo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was the best, the entire US commercial generator fleet wouldn't be on death's door due to the economics. If you want to subsidize the last 59 US nuclear plants based on their low CO2 emissions, extending their operating license (if it can be done safely) until cleaner base load arrives, that's a sound decision. Building more nuclear is not. I question if we even have the fortitude to fund safe cleanup of existi…

> Batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear ever will That's a bold claim. Batteries could also suffer from law of diminishing returns. It might not be physically possible to store energy much more densely, without catastrophic failures.

Why is energy density necessary for cheap batteries? Economies of scale can result in far greater cost reductions than are possible simply by reducing the amount of needed materials for a given capacity.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#88

Post by imtringued »

news_to_me wrote: post #46
bryanlarsen wrote: post #43

My climate change plan is simple: a ratcheting carbon fee with dividend[1], together with a carbon tariff as part of a climate club[2] The industries where it's easy will take the easy way to avoid the carbon fee. The industries where it's hard will pay the fee but will see the ratchet coming and will be furiously researching alternatives. Worse come to worse, at some point the fee will be more than sequestration cos…

Cool, now the price of steel skyrockets and brings up the cost of everything that uses steel. Maybe we can find a way to do this in a less economically violent way?

This is the less economically violent way. The earlier we take action the cheaper it is going to be in the long term.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#89

Post by imtringued »

pbreit wrote: post #3

Unpopular opinion: adaptation is best (only?) solution.

I am not serious at all.

I live in an area that will still be habitable even with 4°C warming. The problem is that the vast majority do not live in this area. They aren't going to die in their hometown. They will have to move and I don't have a lot of space. So the person living here will either be me or them. A lot of people are willing to risk their lives in overloaded smuggling boats and it's not uncommon for them to sink by accident. If necessary, a single shot from a destroyer is enough to prevent them from crossing the sea at all.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#90

Post by imtringued »

pbreit wrote: post #75
GuiA wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+8c means the end of life on Earth as we know it. Maybe rich San Francisco VCs can live in underground bunkers with labor slaves fed on soylent tending to their hydroponically grown crops, but 99.9% of Earth’s population will be (quite literally) toast. “Only” +4 is already going to be a very, very rough situation rife with positive feedback loops that may well make +5, then +6, etc inevitable. http://globalwarming.b…

Wouldn't civilization move further towards colder climates before the end? Is the feedback loop to get hotter or colder?

We can try to live in the now very hot Antarctica but modern society will be a shadow of its former self.
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