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Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

economist.com

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Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#221

Post by ZeroGravitas »

magicalhippo wrote: post #214
stephen_g wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer actually isn’t that you need days of storage. A researcher I follow on Twitter here in Australia called David Osmond has been running a simulation for over a year that scales up the wind and solar we have to the levels we would need to achieve around 100% renewable energy, and using real time data simulates storage requirements. He’s found that for the NEM grid in Australia at least, just six hours of stor…

You need those interconnects though. Here in Norway the electricity prices this summer and fall were up to 100x higher in the south compared to the north, due to lack of interconnect capacity between the north and south. Building hundreds of miles of high-capacity interconnects ain't done in a weekend either.

People misunderstand the impact of interconnects.

It's like saying, this remote town in the hills has cheap housing because it takes so long to drive to it so lets build a high speed express train right to the city. Then we can have cheap housing and access to the city.

Except you can't, because as soon as you have access to the market demand, the price goes up to match the market price.

Interconnects are useful, but people wanting to build interconnects so they can access the cheap power from places that only had cheap power due to a lack of interconnects is upside down thinking.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#222

Post by readthenotes1 »

imtringued wrote: post #186
api wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest risk to this is that efforts to decarbonize will lead to cost of living increases that disproportionately impact the poor and working class, leading to a populist uprising against these measures and an enthusiastic return to burning coal. (Coal remains the cheapest way to generate energy in most places.) We have already seen a little bit of this. It's only been a preview of what a more serious revolt woul…

You do a CO2 dividend and the problem is solved. There is no easier problem than that. It is literally one person one vote. From my perspective people hate democracy and want people to be unequal by birth.

How often do people with power make decisions for the greater good?

Maybe I'm cynical, but the observer who said that the problem with political power is that the worst people will do anything they can to take it (as a result, good people won't have it)

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#223

Post by mpweiher »

kaskakokos wrote: post #34
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #18

Unfortunately, a lot of climate activists’ primary goal is not stopping climate change but rather advocating for degrowth. They are thus vehemently opposed to any solutions that don’t involve massive reductions in consumption. This is not only politically untenable (it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions) but also alienates the majority of people from the cause, who might ot…

Reading the article leaves me with a taste of self-delusion as a society. I mean, we take 3 pollution parameters very limited in time and space, we see how they decrease, and we open the bottle of champagne to celebrate... If we don't look at the big picture, we are fooling ourselves, and in my opinion only degrowth will save us, just keep in mind that previous societies that consumed fewer resources collapsed for ex…

So instead we take no parameters, no data whatsoever, and predict absolutely certain doom.

Hmm.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#224

Post by dirtyid »

Growth drives consumption which will increase emissions. For poorer countries this means more physical goods / energy intensive infra like air conditioning. Maybe less emission services for wealthy countries but they're already consuming at relatively unsustainable rates already.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#225

Post by hedora »

api wrote: post #173
eloff wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Quite easily, the materials are common. They require energy to process and ship, but that does not have to come from fossil fuels. I'm confident we'll get there. There will be lots of mitigating the damage from climate change, because that train wreck is still in motion. But we will mostly decarbonize our economies by the end of this century.

The biggest risk to this is that efforts to decarbonize will lead to cost of living increases that disproportionately impact the poor and working class, leading to a populist uprising against these measures and an enthusiastic return to burning coal. (Coal remains the cheapest way to generate energy in most places.) We have already seen a little bit of this. It's only been a preview of what a more serious revolt woul…

I don’t see how decarbonization will lead to a cost of living increase for the poor and working classes. Do you have any sources for this?

Solar and batteries are still rapidly dropping in price. At the same time, the fossil fuel industry is engaging in rampant hostage taking (Putin) and price gouging (oil is under $100/barrel. Why is gasoline 2x what it was the first time oil was at this price?)

If anything, I’d expect decentralized generation of renewable power to stabilize energy costs, eliminate wars for oil, and create well paying jobs for unskilled labor.

As for EV affordability: All EVs in the US have a 10 year battery warranty (or lose subsidies), which should create gluts in the used car market moving forward.

All of those things help the poor and working class: lower, more stable energy prices, better jobs, fewer wars to fight and cheaper used cars are each individually huge wins.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#226

Post by hedora »

tsimionescu wrote: post #141
geysersam wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to. The alternative is destroying the earth even more. And overall, the lifetime environmental impact of solar panels is much lower than producing the same energy using fossile fuels.

There is also the option of winding down energy consumption - we produce so much useless crap for no particular reason anyway.

Energy efficiency is skyrocketing though. My house uses 25% the energy it would with if we installed 20 year old appliances (even ignoring improvements to insulation).

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#227

Post by hedora »

strken wrote: post #171
pstrateman wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be generating 120% but what happens if everybody installs? Do you have storage installed to smooth out the dead hours? Unfortunately the answer is that you need days of storage for solar and wind to be anywhere near 100% of the energy mix. The cost of that is astronomical.

What do you mean by astronomical? My back-of-the-napkin estimate is that you'd pay about $8k a year in battery costs to supply a household ($20k 18kWh battery system lasting 5 years, then double it). Obviously that's missing commercial power, utility-scale storage, heavy industry, electric vehicle charging, etc., but it seems like factoring those in would give you a big yet feasible cost, especially if storage gets c…

$20K buys closer 30kWh these days, and they last more like 10 years instead of 5, so $8k/year is a wild overestimate.

That strengths your point.

However, 30kWh isn’t quite enough for heating and cooling an all-electric off-grid house, unless you carefully monitor battery capacity, etc.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#228

Post by gruez »

londons_explore wrote: post #206
gruez wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Utilities refuse to let home users take part in the minute by minute pricing - instead the best available is dynamic pricing set half hourly a day in advance. That seems reasonable considering what happened with griddy in texas.

There are better approaches. For example a supplier could sell you 5 kWh per day at a fixed price, and anything extra you use is at instant market price, with some kind of pay-as-you-use system. Then if the prices go sky high, users who chose that plan at least get to use 5kWh each day. 5kWh is plenty to not freeze and to keep your phone charged and fridge going. If you want more, you can pay more. The UK already has…

> For example a supplier could sell you 5 kWh per day at a fixed price, and anything extra you use is at instant market price, with some kind of pay-as-you-use system.

I suspect 5 kWh/day is way to little to keep the house warm and still be able to cook food. The exact number doesn't really matter here. What's more problematic is how the 5 kWh of guaranteed/insured/subsidized power would be allocated.

If it's your first 5 kWh/day, it will be you'll blow past the quota by noon, and if there was a price spike in the evening you would pay the full price of it, or shut off your breaker until prices go down.

Having it as a some sort of pool you can draw from anytime you want doesn't suffer from the above problem, but would make such a service very expensive to run for the counterparty due to adverse selection. Anyone using such a service would opt to use the market price when electricity is plentiful/cheap, and switch to fixed price when electricity is scarce/expensive. The net result is that the 5 kWh ends up always being the most expensive electricity for the day, and a service providing such a guarantee will be priced accordingly. In a competitive market, you would expect the price of a fixed price plan to be the same as the "5 kWh per day at fixed price and anything extra at instant market price" plan that you propose. You might be tempted to argue that utilities/the government can subsidize the latter plan as some sort of green energy initiative, but that would be be bad. The most expensive energy also tends to be the dirtiest, because peaker plants (power plants that can quickly turn on/off) tend to run on fossil fuels. Subsidizing such a scheme would also be subsidizing electricity consumption during peak hours, and therefore subsidizing fossil fuel plants.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#229

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

realusername wrote: post #189
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand for cars is higher than ever, so is the manufacturing of almost all goods, as proven by the supply chain bottleneck in the last 2-3 years. The demand is still there, and is growing thanks to millions of people in places like India, China and Africa getting out of poverty. What exactly have smartphones been replacing lately? Other than PC computers, which ironically also saw a comeback thanks to WFH? You're pro…

We're talking about developed countries here so yeah tons of stuff has been dematerialised, I call my doctor by video instead of driving there, I download movies instead of driving to the cinema, I get deliveries which are batched instead of going to the mall, I no longer need to send letters and buy paper maps, I don't need to drive to the library anymore to get books, the electricity company does not need to drive…

Let me guess, you live in the US/North America? I also live in a developed country in Europe and here you have to go to the doctor in person for almost everything except COVID, people still go to the cinema (at every new blockbuster the cinema is almost full), people still go shopping for groceries as grocery deliveries aren't a thing here or most people can't afford the extra costs, WFH is very rare so everyone still goes to work in person, car sales are up, etc.

Your bubble does not reflect the worldwide situation.

Re: Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

#230

Post by mrguyorama »

wccrawford wrote: post #116
pstrateman wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be generating 120% but what happens if everybody installs? Do you have storage installed to smooth out the dead hours? Unfortunately the answer is that you need days of storage for solar and wind to be anywhere near 100% of the energy mix. The cost of that is astronomical.

That's true, and it's why other sources of energy are useful still, such as wind and nuclear and hydro. But I also think we'll never get to the point that everyone has solar installed. There are plenty of situations where it doesn't make sense, such as properties with lots of taller trees around short buildings. Also, generating 120% generally doesn't make sense because the payout from the electric company for the ot…

Solar is so damn cheap it almost makes sense to set up supplemental systems even if you only get like 10% of the power rated on the panel.

Panels are like $1 per nominal watt

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