Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings • Hacker News Board

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#41

Post by peyton » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #15

qclibre22 wrote: post #11

Interesting who funded this study: Institute for New Economic Thinking was founded with an initial pledge of $50 million from businessman and philanthropist George Soros . I'm sure researchers try extra hard to not be influenced by the funders and pursue real science. Let's hope they did in this case.

If anyone is curious about the full list of funders: > This work was supported by funding from Partners for a New Economy (R.W. and J.D.F.); Baillie Gifford (J.D.F.); the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 730427 (COP21 RIPPLES) (R.W.); and the Oxford Martin School , through the Institute of New Economic Thinking and the Post-Carbon Transition programme ( LDR0053…

He founded the lead author’s employer. Am I misreading that?

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#42

Post by jasec57322 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

gnramires wrote: post #40

jasec57322 wrote: post #17

Quoted post unavailable.

Please have a look here: https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ The evidence is clear and uncontroversial (and has been for decades).

No post body was provided.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#43

Post by ch4s3 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

stormbrew wrote: post #35

dr_dshiv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define capitalism, I’m curious, in this context? What was it 200 years ago that made it different from 400 years ago?

The industrial revolution and the beginnings of a global liberal trade order pretty substantially changed the shape of the world's economic system, even if sometimes people call predecessor systems like mercantilism a kind of capitalism. But if you want to extend the time horizon to 400 years (ie. to the beginning of the end of feudalism) that's still not that long in the grand scheme of things. That said I don't rea…

Mercantilism definitely is NOT a kind of capitalism. Adam Smith and other thinkers during the Scottish Enlightenment were specifically arguing against mercantilism. The Cron Laws in England were even successfully repealed by on of Smith's students.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#44

Post by lukeschlather » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

brtkdotse wrote: post #38

bryanlarsen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The materials needed for LiFePO4 batteries are very common, and we only need a few dozen large factories and refineries. Compared to the size of the fossil fuel extraction industry, it's tiny. The only question is how quickly we can build up to the scale needed, not if we can.

Phosphorus is essential to growing food and shortages have already begun.

There's no shortage of phosphorus. As prices go up extraction from human waste becomes profitable and all municipalities just do it. We invest in closed loop systems we stop having to think about energy and agricultural inputs as extractive, there is minimal possibility of "shortage" it's just a closed-loop system that occasionally needs to be topped off a bit.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#45

Post by darepublic » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

I have stood here before, inside the pouring rain (of trillions)

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#46

Post by kortex » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #13

Bostonian wrote: post #2

Critiqued at https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-9-16-cost-of-t... . '[H]ere are what I believe to be the main problems with the work: The principal driver of the whole thing is a forecast of rapid and continuous declines in the cost of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. The assumption is that costs of these things will continue to decline exponentially without limit indefinitely into the future. Fr…

storage (and grid stability in general) is always the crucial achilles heel to renewables and it's always handwaved away with fantastical arguments positioned squarely against nuclear (here, springing up a whole global hydrogen economy out of nowhere). it's frustrating to see so much needless internecine fighting when nuclear plus renewables is the most viable answer we have right now to a fossil fuel free future. we…

Not to mention, most of the big problems facing us now can be reduced to an energy problem, given low enough energy costs. From desalination, to carbon sequestration, to cement, to production of hydrogen and carbon-neutral liquid fuels, to ammonia production, to even peak phosphorus, at some kWh price point all of these just become "throw electricity at it". Excess energy can always be used (in theory). Renewables plus storage still means cost per kWh increase at certain times or conditions.

We need every fossil fuel plant around the world offline yesterday, and every coal plant offline 50 years ago. The anti-nuclear sentiment really is a shame.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#47

Post by rascul » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #33

kderbyma wrote: post #5

the cynic in me says that those savings will just become profits for the companies and government through taxes and greed....so savings are relative. Also it seems to be highly dependent on solar mass adoption

> will just become profits for the companies ... greed Of course they will. You can thank this effect for the high standard of living we enjoy from the free market.

Is there a free market though? Seems like it's all taxed and regulated.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#48

Post by joshe » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

01100011 wrote: post #37

Garbage comment from an uninformed SW engineer: How, in the current economic and geopolitical environment, can they project that production costs will continue to decline? Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to produce. It also has been benefiting from globalization which is now going in reverse. I would add at least 5 years to any timeline given because of the recalibrating global energy and material…

The quick answer is that we are not short of any of those materials. We might not be producing enough right now, but there's far more than enough that can be mined or recycled inexpensively.

Increased prices will cause more mining and recycling, eventually the price will settle at the cost of production + something for profit. The something for profit is quite small, the coast for low risk capital is ~5% a year.

There might be a 5-10 period when profits are high for miners, but eventually the profits will be competed away by new entrants. (Except if you have a mine that produces very cheaply because it is so rich or easy to operate, these people will stay high profit. The most expensive mines will just make back they're capital costs + return).

You can see this with fracking which is horribly unprofitable. Hedge funds have lost billions over building fracking wells.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#49

Post by bobthepanda » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

joshe wrote: post #48

01100011 wrote: post #37

Garbage comment from an uninformed SW engineer: How, in the current economic and geopolitical environment, can they project that production costs will continue to decline? Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to produce. It also has been benefiting from globalization which is now going in reverse. I would add at least 5 years to any timeline given because of the recalibrating global energy and material…

The quick answer is that we are not short of any of those materials. We might not be producing enough right now, but there's far more than enough that can be mined or recycled inexpensively. Increased prices will cause more mining and recycling, eventually the price will settle at the cost of production + something for profit. The something for profit is quite small, the coast for low risk capital is ~5% a year. Ther…

Right. Reserves are really just a measure of "things people bothered to look for at the current price." High prices can and do induce more searching.

Part of the whole hullabaloo about "peak oil" is that people stopped looking for oil reserves in an environment with low oil prices. Once prices started rising you saw fracking come into play that regenerated areas previously thought dead for oil production.

Re: Rapid Green Energy Transition Will Likely Result in Trillions of Net Savings

#50

Post by alexose » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

01100011 wrote: post #37

Garbage comment from an uninformed SW engineer: How, in the current economic and geopolitical environment, can they project that production costs will continue to decline? Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to produce. It also has been benefiting from globalization which is now going in reverse. I would add at least 5 years to any timeline given because of the recalibrating global energy and material…

> Green tech requires massive amounts of dirty energy to produce.

This may be true for certain products, but it's not broadly true. There's nothing intrinsic that requires solar panels, lithium ion batteries, or wind turbines to be manufactured using dirty energy.