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

#91

Post by 01100011 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 8:52 PM UTC

FunnyBadger wrote: post #73

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…

You are absolutely correct. Supply Chains are primarily fossil based and can NOT be substituted with low density sources like Green Energy or even electricity at all. For example, you can't efficiently make steel or most other metals with electricity alone. Even primarily electrically refined metals like copper or aluminum REQUIRE inputs that can not be made or refined or extracted with electricity. Often this is abo…

Jesus it's nice to read an informed comment on here.

Yes, it's difficult to try to get these facts across to folks without them thinking you're a shill for big oil. It's especially sad/frustrating when people who claim to be engineers don't understand the engineering involved in the process of transitioning to green energy.

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

#92

Post by rascul » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 8:56 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #64

rascul wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You misunderstand the meaning of "free" in the phrase "free market". Read The Wealth of Nations and you will see that Adam Smith was a vociferous advocate of regulation. Because "free" was not "unregulated" in the original conception, it was rather "open to any participant, such that they have the opportunity to benefit", which as we have noted over the past 300 years of economic history requires regulation and enfor…

I guess there are varying definitions of "free market". I was going off of Wikipedia:

> In economics, a free market is an idealized cognitive model of an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any other external authority.

Adam Smith is mentioned later on in the article though:

> For classical economists such as Adam Smith, the term free market refers to a market free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities. They say this implies that economic rents, which they describe as profits generated from a lack of perfect competition, must be reduced or eliminated as much as possible through free competition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

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

#93

Post by mrep » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

actually_a_dog wrote: post #87

01100011 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are not short of any of those materials For the most part you are correct. But building the mines, refining, supply chains, etc takes time. So you are perhaps missing one of the main points I was trying, maybe unsuccessfully, to make: we need to deal with the 'right now' and not just worry about how we'll be fine in 50 years. Lithium is a perfect example. We have plenty in the ground. We don't have plenty of min…

In fact, we do not have "plenty" of lithium. There's not enough lithium in the world to put in all the batteries for all the EVs we'll need to replace ICE vehicles. This is entirely orthogonal to the fact that recycling lithium ion batteries is expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous in the case of any type of mishap. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...

That article mentions "reserves" 5 times and cost/price not once. Same type of articles were written about peak oil and then the price of oil went up and magically reserves grew as it be came profitable to find and extract new sources of oil.

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

#94

Post by mabbo » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #55

One thing I've not seen a decent discussion of is what industries benefit from enormous amounts of almost free electricity? Other than the manufacturers of wind, solar, etc systems, how does this effect the economy? Obviously that effect is going to be significant, but what exactly does it look like?

I think it will be important as we transition to EVs to have more energy available.

In Ontario, the typical family home uses something like 750 kWh/month on average. If you estimate 5km/kWh (roughly right?), and presume a car is driving something like 1000 km/month, that's an extra 200 kWh/month needed, about a 25% increase.

But in the less developed parts of the world, a car might just be a much larger component of personal energy use- perhaps most of it.

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

#95

Post by engineer_22 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

If you want your model to output a certain result, just make the right assumptions.

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

#96

Post by oblio » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:01 PM UTC

actually_a_dog wrote: post #87

01100011 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are not short of any of those materials For the most part you are correct. But building the mines, refining, supply chains, etc takes time. So you are perhaps missing one of the main points I was trying, maybe unsuccessfully, to make: we need to deal with the 'right now' and not just worry about how we'll be fine in 50 years. Lithium is a perfect example. We have plenty in the ground. We don't have plenty of min…

In fact, we do not have "plenty" of lithium. There's not enough lithium in the world to put in all the batteries for all the EVs we'll need to replace ICE vehicles. This is entirely orthogonal to the fact that recycling lithium ion batteries is expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous in the case of any type of mishap. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...

If you go to the source of that claim, you'll see that it's basically about proven reserves, using current tech and know how, basically how we did it for oil, when we were supposed to run out of oil in 1872, 1919, 1960, etc.

We've just started looking for the thing at the scales we need it now, prospecting and extracting and processing it will improve.

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

#97

Post by Gare » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:01 PM UTC

actually_a_dog wrote: post #87

01100011 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are not short of any of those materials For the most part you are correct. But building the mines, refining, supply chains, etc takes time. So you are perhaps missing one of the main points I was trying, maybe unsuccessfully, to make: we need to deal with the 'right now' and not just worry about how we'll be fine in 50 years. Lithium is a perfect example. We have plenty in the ground. We don't have plenty of min…

In fact, we do not have "plenty" of lithium. There's not enough lithium in the world to put in all the batteries for all the EVs we'll need to replace ICE vehicles. This is entirely orthogonal to the fact that recycling lithium ion batteries is expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous in the case of any type of mishap. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...

But we do have more than enough sodium, and sodium-ion batteries could be "good enough" for most applications with technology advancement.

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

#98

Post by bryanlarsen » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:03 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.

We have a shortage of refined Lithium and Phosphate. We have no shortage of the unrefined elements in profitable concentrations.

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

#99

Post by telchar » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

FunnyBadger wrote: post #73

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…

You are absolutely correct. Supply Chains are primarily fossil based and can NOT be substituted with low density sources like Green Energy or even electricity at all. For example, you can't efficiently make steel or most other metals with electricity alone. Even primarily electrically refined metals like copper or aluminum REQUIRE inputs that can not be made or refined or extracted with electricity. Often this is abo…

You’re seemingly unaware that petrochemicals can be synthesized with energy and simple organic feedstocks. The chemistry is pretty well established to bootstrap up from water and CO2 to complex hydrocarbons and from there of course the same petrochemical processes can be applied. Green energy is perfectly capable of this.

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

#100

Post by actually_a_dog » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

mrep wrote: post #93

actually_a_dog wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, we do not have "plenty" of lithium. There's not enough lithium in the world to put in all the batteries for all the EVs we'll need to replace ICE vehicles. This is entirely orthogonal to the fact that recycling lithium ion batteries is expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous in the case of any type of mishap. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...

That article mentions "reserves" 5 times and cost/price not once. Same type of articles were written about peak oil and then the price of oil went up and magically reserves grew as it be came profitable to find and extract new sources of oil.

That's because reserves are what matters. I don't care if there's billions of tons of lithium at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, nobody's ever going to go get it because it's too dangerous, difficult, and expensive. The same thing with space mining. Nobody's going to go mine asteroids because it's stupidly expensive. For all intents and purposes, if we can't get to it, it doesn't exist.

And let's not forget about all the problems that "innovative" methods of oil extraction such as fracking have created, over and above the fact that it's provided more oil to burn. Lithium mining itself is already an environmental disaster, and it seems highly unlikely that increased demand for the product is going to improve the environmental impact of extracting it. You know, tragedy of the commons and all. The fact that "peak oil" came and went is not a capitalist success story.