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

#111

Post by kkfx » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:25 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…

> Basically a dark age.

That's the real enormous issue. Beyond the Green New Deal, witch is green in the sense of dollars main color for very few, chemical/radioactive stereotypical waste leaking from abandoned rusty barrels green while being sold as grass green, we have a real issue: oil is consumed FAR faster than natural regeneration and that since many decades so far, witch means that a day perhaps not that far away it will be more and more scarce and finally unavailable. NOT ONLY for fuel, but also for plastic witch happen to be needed for electrical insulation, hydraulic and air insulation, anti-vibration stuff etc etc etc and we do not know how to replace it on scale.

So far no other feasible on scale energy solution exists. Nuclear fission and mountain pumped hydro are the most stable and powerful solution we have, but can't work on scale alone and nothing else is there.

Without energy no matter climate change or something else: any civilization collapse anyway.

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

#112

Post by Gare » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:28 PM UTC

actually_a_dog wrote: post #108

Gare wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe, but I am skeptical. Do you know when lithium ion batteries were invented? Okay, truthfully, neither do I, because accounts vary, depending on what you mean by "invented" and "lithium ion battery," but it was definitely in the 1970s. The first prototypes were created in the mid 80s, and commercial introduction wasn't until 1991. This stuff is all up on Wikipedia, so you can just look it up if you doubt it. Even…

CATL (the biggest EV lithium-ion battery manufacturer in the world) has announced last year that it will bring sodium-ion batteries to market in 2023. We'll see. The technology is in many ways similar to lithium-ion, so more rapid advances are not surprising, especially considering the amount of investment being made compared to the 80s and 90s.

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

#113

Post by kkfx » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #103

kkfx wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We might not be producing enough right now, but there's far more than enough that can be mined or recycled inexpensively. That's not reality but a dream. So far we still have to find a sustainable lithium recycling on scale, there are various startups with various solutions, who actually prove to be just like most startup: PR scam for money or childish dream of someone who sold the cat before capturing it. It's not…

Locally, there are several mines that have been trying to open for years (copper and nickel, mostly) but the environmental crowd has been extremely determined in using the courts and bureaucracy to block them from opening. The net result is the green wave will be driven largely by relying on dirty minerals from other countries.

Mining tech is essentially the same since ever, we just have transferred some physical efforts to machines, how a local mine is "green" and some in exotic places is different?

Consider a thing: all industry do not pollute because they are evil but because the tech produce pollution. Something was done, something can be done, to reduce it of course, but that's not always possible, not possible more than a certain extent and not for free.

A simple idea: can you pay a 8-years maximum lasting car 100k€? Even if you can, how many others needs cars and can't? Because that's relatively less heavy than the physical possibility of doing something, but it's not marginal at all. I have built a new home, with all actual tech to consume less and get a better life, but if such homes can only be made let's say by 10% of the western population, witch means roughly by 3% of the total human population what's the outcome? We are a society. Some can be richer than others, nothing wrong in that. BUT when the difference between the poorest and richest and so their numbers on total humans diverge too much the society fall apart anyway.

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

#114

Post by 01100011 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

swid wrote: post #106

vondur wrote: post #20

Can we really build batteries at the scale needed for this? I’m a bit skeptical.

Recently I saw on HN that Australia has a path to >98% renewable energy (solar, wind, hydro) with only 5 hours of battery storage. That’s a lot of value for less battery backup than I would have thought. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32567994

Do you believe it? Solar+wind has had several notable failures so far when overcast skies combined with windless conditions. Hydro probably helps to a great degree though.

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

#115

Post by lancewiggs » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:52 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…

This is the approach that all the other forecasters have fallen into and that this article is trying to address. Just as many people thought the irrepressible growth of Internet data, processing power and memory would slow or cease, so is the case that continued investment into renewable power will continue to reduce costs. We don’t have to be the ones that say what technology or materials will be used, just to say that that industry, like ours, has it covered.

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

#116

Post by TaylorAlexander » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #101

Access to power / energy is what wealth is all about today, and has been for over 100 years. However rapidly a "green energy transition" could possibly happen, if it means reducing access to power / energy, then it means a drop in standards of living. In some parts of the world that means more than merely tightening the belt -- it can mean real hunger, while in many others it might mean a return to poverty, though pe…

I'm not sold that this would happen. It seems to me the plan in the US is to add green energy, and then slowly replace the dirty energy with more green. I admit I am ignorant of the plans of other nations, but from where I am sitting I don't see any reason to believe there will ever be a reduction in available energy.

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

#117

Post by bequanna » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

puchatek wrote: post #22

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.

I'm aware of how Soros is the Boogeyman for some people but I'm curious as to what exactly you are insinuating? What's the narrative?

The idea is that Soros only gives away money with strings attached.

He expects you/your group to further his political goals in order to continue to receive funding.

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

#118

Post by catawbasam » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 9:59 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…

Some hedge funds may have lost billions, but frackers are printing money at current price levels.

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

#119

Post by stjohnswarts » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 10:09 PM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #44

brtkdotse wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't "just do" anything on that scale.

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

#120

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 10:13 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 argument that this cannot work is making the argument that NO storage technologies will be good enough, not that just Li-ion batteries won't be good enough.

There are thousands of different battery chemistries. It's an extremely strong claim that all will fail. And there are approaches beyond batteries that use only very common materials. For example, pumped thermal storage, where a reversible heat engine is used to separate heat and cold, then regenerate the work consumed by running off that temperature difference.