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

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

#201

Post by ncmncm »

01100011 wrote: post #194
tuatoru wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're probably short of copper. While copper water pipes still have a market, I don't think we can claim to be short of copper.

Copper prices are actually down quite a bit right now, but that may be due to previous hoarding in China coupled with economic slowdown and/or disruptions in their metals markets(see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-18/tycoon-ru... ). There are quite a lot of analysts claiming we will be short on copper once the green revolution gets under way(remember, you're talking billions of new EVs, generators, i…

If copper price is down, that means we have too much copper, not too little.

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

#202

Post by ncmncm »

01100011 wrote: post #183
pfdietz wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most uses of fossil fuels these days are for fuel, not petrochemicals. The energy needed to get to petrochemicals (and the fraction of carbon currently coming from fossil fuels to get to petrochemicals) are relatively modest.

Citation needed. Sorry but it takes, more or less, as much energy as that which is stored within the chemical bonds of a petrochemical to make that chemical from raw materials. Also, what? Your comment doesn't seem to fit into the context of our discussion. Where is the energy and raw materials to produce the green energy materials going to come from?

Maybe read more carefully.

When renewable energy is abundant, we will find it cheaper to synthesize the hydrocarbons we need than to pump them out of the ground, transport, refine, and transport them again.

In the meantime, the overwhelming majority of oil pumped is burned. In the nearer future, only oil that is the absolute cheapest to pump will be, mostly as feedstock for bulk chemistry, because it will not be worth the cost to refine it for fuel.

So where will energy to transition come from? Fossil fuels, which are today produced in the trillions of tons annually. As more renewables are built out, some of their output will go into producing new panels. Eventually, panels will be produced from 100% renewable energy.

You will not notice any change, except lower power bills.

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

#203

Post by legulere »

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.

The energy payback time for photovoltaics is 1.2 years in north and less than 1 year in the south with such systems typically lasting longer than 20 years. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...

That is in line with energy return on investment of fossil fuels.

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

#204

Post by ncmncm »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #191
cryptonector wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to the various IPCC reports from the 00s and teens. They have wildly wrong models.

Hmm. I’d love to see which IPCC reports have been found to be wildly wrong if you’ve got any links. Otherwise this just kinda sounds like hearsay to me.

It is hearsay. The IPCC reports predicted a range of possible outcomes, depending on what we did. We did the things that implied the results they predicted and we got.

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

#205

Post by ncmncm »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #119
lukeschlather wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But you do them.

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

#206

Post by ncmncm »

01100011 wrote: post #180
pfdietz wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rare dark/calm periods can be countered by storage technologies other than batteries. These technologies typically have lower efficiency than batteries, but that doesn't matter when they're only rarely called on. For these technologies, low per-energy-stored capital cost is much more important than high efficiency. As an example: hydrogen can be stored in solution-mined salt caverns for as little as $1/kWh of storage…

Context my friend. Read what OP and I are talking about and note how your post has nothing to do with it. We're certainly not discussing things which are currently in the realm of unrealized dreams.

Please do not post shallow, dismissive, uninformed remarks. When you have nothing to offer, as here, you need not post at all.

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

#207

Post by ncmncm »

kortex wrote: post #46
clairity wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

Building nukes would bring climate catastrophe nearer.

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

#208

Post by ncmncm »

clairity wrote: post #178
pfdietz wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase "Achilles Heel" implies it's a fatal, unsolvable problem. But the cost of dealing with intermittency of renewables is looking like it's not bad, especially if one takes into account all the ways it could be dealt with (like thermal/cold storage out at the edge of the grid.)

“could” being the operative word. so much could happen, but what’s currently realistic is more sobering. currently, we have no way of realistically storing the magnitude of grid-stabilizing power required by intermittent renewables. even all the car batteries in the world are not anywhere close to enough, and that’s after 2+ decades of mining and manufacturing. pumped hydro is similarly limited. molten salt storage?…

Factories to make storage media are under construction today, as we speak.

Do you imagine they will not be operated? Or, that what they build has not already been shown to work before they got investment to build?

We don't have much storage because we have not built storage yet. After we build it, we will have it. Is this hard to understand?

At the moment, spending on storage would be foolish, because there is nothing to charge it from. But we will need those factories ready to operate when we do begin to need storage.

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

#209

Post by neffy »

ncmncm wrote: post #165
neffy wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's accurate but not complete. The long term (600k year) climatic history of this planet is sobering, and if only climate change was just our fault. Believe me, there is nothing humanity has so far achieved that comes close to matching what nature does to this planet on a pretty regular schedule. We don't know nearly enough about this by the way, and we especially don't know enough about conditions about the end of…

Correct insofar as we are not completely sure that the ongoing precipitous rise won't tip us over an edge into an ice age.

Yes, that's the joker in the pack. Did you see the papers about the evidence for the ice pack on Greenland having completely melted before? It left me wondering about how much we can trust the ice core readings from there.

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

#210

Post by leetnewb »

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…

I'd argue there are multiple concurrent paths to decarbonization, and the combination of continuing research plus market dynamics could lead us to different energy mix than this study attempts to estimate. Besides, I think the world is waking up to the importance of domestic supply chains.

The U.S. blends a lot of ethanol into gasoline, but where does that feedstock go as the ongoing EV transition cuts away traditional consumption? Lot of energy potential there that can be used to synthesize carbon neutral fuels including kerosene, natural gas, and gasoline. Corn->carbon neutral natural gas seems like a reasonably agreeable process with the distribution network and consumers already in place.

Meanwhile, solar thermal / concentrated solar is out of the limelight while research continues. Lots of interesting options when you can generate supercritical steam and provide battery-less storage, especially from materials that are essentially domestically sourced. State of that research: https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/generation-3-concentrating...

Baseload from natural gas derived from feedstock + PV + solar thermal with 12h storage + wind + massive transmission investment + corn->gasoline. There are a lot of ways to skin the cat.

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