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Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

briangitt.com

41–50 of 295 posts

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#41

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

The cost or the price?

The price of renewable energy is often very low, frequently even negative. This does not reflect renewables advantages, but their disadvantages: being available in abundance when the energy is not needed or wanted.

Even the Energy Return on Investment is barely sufficient for solar, for example, so I have a hard time believing that the cost is actually competitive.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#42
Finally a rational and spot-on discussion about energy. Great article! Especially a rational take on the nuclear boogyman - if you care at all about CO2 emissions then nuclear should be your highest priority! Instead of burying "nuclear waste" we should be burning it in modern reactors.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#43
Utopia is a social concept, not a practical energy system concept. Linking the physics and chemistry and biology of energy (and food) production to some social ideology makes very little sense. Thinking that one system is morally superior to another is a bit silly, and there are all kinds of counterexamples (such as, did you know that Old South slave plantations produced 100% organic cotton?).

There are a couple things to take into consideration when you go to design energy and food production systems for human communities from scratch - conservation of energy should probably be at the top of that list. Then you should lay out a list of goals:

(1) Minimal side effects: I've never met a person who wants to breathe dirty air, drink filthy water, or eat food contaminated with toxins, heavy metals, or fecal matter. This is where purely electrical systems really have the advantage over anything involving combustion - although of course combustion, fire, is among the earliest human technologies, along with tool-making (although tool-making is found in other species). Indeed, I'd argue for renaming the human species Homo ignis for this reason.

(2) Reliability: You don't want power to go off at random times when you need it the most. If you're in agriculture, you need to be able to plow and seed fields right when environmental conditions are optimal for planting, and the same goes for harvesting food. Industrial operations can't just be halted randomly either, and of course hospitals and emergency services can't be allowed to go down during natural disasters. This means you have to think about storage of energy - as electrical, physical or chemical potential energy - as well as having the means to utilize that stored energy.

(3) Independence: having something as fundamental as your communities' basic food and energy supply be entirely reliant on long-distance transport from some other part of the world is reckless and irresponsible. Interruptions are inevitable and anyone looking at the world today will realize that supply chain fragility is a major problem. Hence you want to have primary sources of power that aren't subject to such interruptions. When it comes to obtaining equipment that can utilize power, well, trade is not such a bad idea, there are things like Ricardo's notion of competitive advantage that make perfect sense.

Now, let's do a thought experiments: take 1000 communities of 1,000,000 human beings (1B people), and plop them all over the world, in randomly chosen locations that have access to farmland and water and raw materials, and ask what their optimal energy supply strategy would be.

Well, sunlight is clearly something they'll all have access to, and wind is something they'll all have access to. Uranium ore? Relatively few will be anywhere near high-grade uranium ore deposits. Coal? Coal is fairly common, but burning coal for power is a dirty business, see (1). Oil and gas are not as widely distributed as coal, see (1) and (3). Wood? Wood is actually a pretty dirty fuel source when burned at scale. No, we really want a fully electrified system if (1) is a primary goal.

So, the conclusion I come to is that you need to manufacture tons of solar panels, wind turbines, and battery electric storage for each of these communities of 1,000,000 people. The scale needs to be GwH of power, but if we look at sun and wind inputs, then there's an adequate supply for 24-7 power using this approach - with exceptions as you move towards polar regions, where long dark seasonal effects make nuclear power plants more attractive as a niche option.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#44
post #23
post #5

> I used to believe nuclear energy was dangerous and nuclear waste was a big problem. In fact, nuclear is the safestand most reliable way to generate low-emission electricity, and it provides the best chance of reducing CO2 emissions. It releases less radioactivity than coal, just to make things clear.

It usually releases less radioactivity than coal. No one wants a nuclear plant near them, currently, despite how safe and clean it is. That's the problem nuclear has to solve.

I want nuclear plant near me.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#45

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

Solar and wind will always suffer from a storage problem. The key to modern power is not potential but throughput and consistency. Modern infrastructure needs x Watts delivered 24/7, shifting to y Watts during on-peak hours and z Watts during off-peak hours.

Because of inconsistency, solar and wind will remain non-viable as a primary source of power.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#46
> I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. > But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissions during the past 15 years (over 60%) > has come from switching from coal to natural gas.

But once you transition to natural gas, you can't go any lower with fossil fuels, while to stop warming we need to get to zero human-caused CO2 emissions, so clearly natural gas is not a viable solution.

> I used to think that the world was transitioning to solar, wind, and > batteries. This, too, was false. Trillions of dollars were spent on wind and > solar projects over the last 20 years, yet the world’s dependence on fossil > fuels declined only 3 percentage points, from 87% to 84%.

Sorry, that does not make it false. During those 20 years, energy production rose, mostly in emerging markets, while the transition to cleaner sources happened mostly in developed markets.

Yeah I see a big push for nuclear in the last few weeks/months... only the proponents always fail to mention the huge delays and cost overruns associated with those projects. Like the nuclear power plants currently being finished in European Union (Finlad, France, Slovakia) cost between 3-5 times of the original budget while taking about 15-17 years to build. And China is building nuclear power stations too and also seems to always be too optimistic about the costs and the time, while also building loads of renewables.

Actually the nuclear push seems to be too intensive this time to be random, so maybe it is coordinated - or is it just me?

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#47

I am flabbergasted how much governments, media and institutions lie to the public about the feasibly of wind and solar as a replacement for fossil fuels.

What motivation do you think they have to lie?

Hard to say. Hard to say who is even knowingly lying. It started as a hopeful message, that turned into a feedback loop where one group repeats the talking point of another, that is picked up and repeated by another, etc.

At this point, it's part of 'common knowledge' that we are transitioning to solar/wind and big oil/big gas and corrupt politicians are preventing that transition.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#48

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

>The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. So what? Or put another way, if its so cheap, why is Germany building natural gas pipelines to ship Russian gas for decades to come? What do they (and every other country) know that you don't? The reality is you're not comparing apples to apples. Natural gas can serve as base load and power a modern economy. Solar/wind can…

By the time any new nuclear reactor is designed, built and turned on, we'll certainly have many new/more ways to store energy for longer time (e.g new battery chemistry, hydrogen…).

Here in France, half of our nuclear reactors are now off (and we had to turn on some old coal plants because of many unexpected technical issues). https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-p...

The new EPR (Flamanville) continues to be delayed and the one in Finland that just went live has been shut down last week. Also, we may have to reduce the power of many of our plants that are built along rivers because we won't be able to cool them off during droughts.

It's much easier and safer to install renewables now (as we just started with offshore wind) that bet on nuclear. It's also quite difficult to envision relying on Niger and Kazakhstan to supply uranium in the long term…

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#49
post #26

Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true. >I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissionsduring the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas. Upgrading coal to gas is a great intermediate step. However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited…

> Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint.

More people should participate in a debate club. A common assignment is to argue eloquently for a position you don't believe in, allowing you to see how eloquent sophistry can be placed in service of any position.

When it comes to technical questions like energy it should be logic, math, and real data or go home.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#50
post #26

Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true. >I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissionsduring the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas. Upgrading coal to gas is a great intermediate step. However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited…

>natural gas reserves are limited

People have been claiming peak oil since the 1930's. Yawn.

> So green energy has supported economic and social development through electrification without adding new pollution sources.

Except for the manufacture and disposal of these "green" sources.

> Pursuing nuclear is great but solar/wind are much cheaper.

Solar and wind are cheaper? Ha! We already have problems recycling blades from wind turbines and most are still not at the end of their lifespan. Same for solar - what do you do with all this crap a the end of it's 20 year lifespan?

*Total* cost of ownership. And never mind solar and wind still suck for base load management since we still lack cost effective energy storage that can scale at the grid level.

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