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US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

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Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#121

Post by DeRock »

angrycontrarian wrote: post #114
DeRock wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not who you are asking, but here is some recent research using probabilistic cost forecasts: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00410-X

I am not asking for forecasts of what could theoretically happen in the future: I want to see an analysis of existing installations.

It’s literally there in figure 1. Wind and PV are now cheaper than oil, but still more expensive than coal and gas. I’m not sure what you’re getting at though, looking at the price of existing installations is not sufficient to account for future costs. What we do know is that wind and solar are new technologies and costs have been dropping rapidly with increase in production. Carbon fuels meanwhile have remained historically the same inflation adjusted price for the last century.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#122

Post by diordiderot »

epistasis wrote: post #59
melling wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s less than the 20% we get now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_... “ for 20% of the nation's total electric energy generation.[3] In 2018, nuclear comprised nearly 50 percent of US emission-free energy generation.” Didn’t the United States build 100 nuclear power plants in about 25 years?

Yes, and the problem was that way too many of them were over budget and delayed. Even before Three Mile Island, orders for new nuclear had slowed massively because utilities realized that ther massive risk for financial boondoggles. Those nuclear reactors are now reaching their end of life, and will need to be phased out. France is realizing what happens when you don't replace your aging fleet fast enough: massive un…

What if you just kept building them, learning each time, building tacit knowledge and economics of scale?

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#123

Post by throwaway9870 »

gregwebs wrote: post #10

We can have 100% clean energy by 2035 if we assume the US is China and the state can build whatever it wants despite any local objections. And assume we increase battery supply by 40x (even though lithium price is going up dramatically now). And assume that clean power is actually 100% clean. It's good to have a vision for clean energy though that is shared with the country that we start working towards. I can see th…

I have a real problem with statements like "100% clean energy by 2035". What does that even mean? You will have electric aircraft by 2035? Completely electric ag? Electric trains and trucks? No, not a chance.

The article used the term "power" and when you click through to the energy.gov site, it is clear that it is referring to the electric grid. But you said energy and when people make that mistake I often wonder if they even know the difference.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#124

Post by epistasis »

diordiderot wrote: post #122
epistasis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the problem was that way too many of them were over budget and delayed. Even before Three Mile Island, orders for new nuclear had slowed massively because utilities realized that ther massive risk for financial boondoggles. Those nuclear reactors are now reaching their end of life, and will need to be phased out. France is realizing what happens when you don't replace your aging fleet fast enough: massive un…

What if you just kept building them, learning each time, building tacit knowledge and economics of scale?

Building the same model of reactor a second, third, and fourth time has resulted in increasing cost in both the US and France.

There are a few countries that have shown positive learning rather than negative learning, but there's questions about how much of that is from corruption and cheating rather than actual process improvements. (I'm thinking of South Korea here)

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#125

Post by epistasis »

angrycontrarian wrote: post #115
epistasis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big flaw with most current models is that their learning curves for tech are either completely ignored, or are way too small to match empirical reality. Here's a popular news article about research using empirical modeling of the learning curves, which says that the models are overestimating the cost: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/the-decreasing-cost-... And here's a podcast episode about it that goes int…

Again, as with the sibling comment, I would like to see empirical data on the cost viability of existing solar and wind installations. Most of the links posted so far seem to present projections about the future, which seems to imply that wind and solar tend to be higher cost today.

Empirically, building more of these technologies reduces the costs of these technologies. This is often called Wright's Law across a wide range of industries. These links look at real data for this.

If you are unwilling to accept this premise, of changing costs, then there is no neutral or accurate source that you will accept. Which is kind of what I expected when I responded, so I regret taking the time. I hope other readers of these comments can benefit from the knowledge, however.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#126

Post by megaman821 »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #123
gregwebs wrote: post #10

We can have 100% clean energy by 2035 if we assume the US is China and the state can build whatever it wants despite any local objections. And assume we increase battery supply by 40x (even though lithium price is going up dramatically now). And assume that clean power is actually 100% clean. It's good to have a vision for clean energy though that is shared with the country that we start working towards. I can see th…

I have a real problem with statements like "100% clean energy by 2035". What does that even mean? You will have electric aircraft by 2035? Completely electric ag? Electric trains and trucks? No, not a chance. The article used the term "power" and when you click through to the energy.gov site, it is clear that it is referring to the electric grid. But you said energy and when people make that mistake I often wonder if…

We may have electric trains and trucks. I don't think very many people are counting on transatlantic electric planes. The current plan that is being funded is synthetic aviation fuel (SAF).

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#127

Post by kevinak »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #123
gregwebs wrote: post #10

We can have 100% clean energy by 2035 if we assume the US is China and the state can build whatever it wants despite any local objections. And assume we increase battery supply by 40x (even though lithium price is going up dramatically now). And assume that clean power is actually 100% clean. It's good to have a vision for clean energy though that is shared with the country that we start working towards. I can see th…

I have a real problem with statements like "100% clean energy by 2035". What does that even mean? You will have electric aircraft by 2035? Completely electric ag? Electric trains and trucks? No, not a chance. The article used the term "power" and when you click through to the energy.gov site, it is clear that it is referring to the electric grid. But you said energy and when people make that mistake I often wonder if…

They don’t. Common problem when discussing electricity and energy unfortunately :/

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#128

Post by jimmygrapes »

epistasis wrote: post #65
BitwiseFool wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our local library wanted to put in an automated drop-off bin that patrons could drive up to and return books into. It was bitterly contested because the adjacent home owners association was worried about the increased noise and traffic. Keep in mind they were already living next to this library and it already had a parking lot. The city paid to construct a high wall as a compromise. It wasn't terribly expensive, but…

Agreed 100%. You may like this article, that has academic research to back up your thoughts— Not Everyone Should Have a Say; To speed up permitting for energy projects, we’ll need to rethink community input: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/environmen... This sort of "participatory democracy," where the most motivated can dominate those with less time, can be traced back to the New Left, which was cr…

The commoner should have a say, unless they oppose the ideas of Those Who Know Best. The bureaucracy is made of Those Who Know Best. The commoner wants Things to be Better but is worried that changes will make their lot worse.

The commoner has few choices: find other commoners with reasonably similar concerns and use the power of numbers (and perhaps law) to represent their concerns to The Powers That Be (union, HOA, PAC, gang/mafia/mob/activist, some voters); capitulate to Those Who Know Best and hope Things Will Get Better (other voters, slacktivists, Eternally Online people); or, wait for Someone Else to rectify the concern (Enlightened Centrists, anarchists, 9-5ers, mostly everyone else).

Lots of other options and variations are possible, but I can't think of them at this time.

I don't have a point, I just wanted to document a stray thought you inspired.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#129

Post by woodruffw »

lazide wrote: post #116
woodruffw wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bizarre response: even in larger US cities, Americans produce more emissions (and waste) per capita than their European counterparts. Density plays a large role, but consumer behaviors play a larger one. And American consumes prefer diets with more meat, cars that burn fuel less efficiently, and products that are designed to be disposed more frequently. Edit: we also prefer larger houses, built more cheaply…

And why do those consumers prefer that diet? Could it be because of a history of large amounts of open plains with cheap, accessible water and grass, and easy transportation of that meat (rails)? It's quite nutritious too (in a combination with other foods). In Europe, farmland is at an extreme premium in most places given the higher population density and often unfriendly climate and geography. Even more obvious a c…

First, I want to clarify: I haven't made a value judgement like "gluttonous" or "evil." We're operating within the same framework, which is constraints (and incentives).

That being said, I think it's overly reductive to chalk it up to the country's size and density. If you take any mid-sized city in the US and wind the clock back by 80 years, you'll see a very different urban structure: dense radial development built around streetcars, multi-family housing next to retail construction, inter-urban and long-distance rail to the next city, etc.

Much of the US, including the extremely sparse parts, looked a great deal like Europe. But where Europe's cities and exurbs were rebuilt to more or less the same character after each war or disaster, the US intentionally razed its cities in favor of (subsidized) personal car travel, commercial zoning, low-density housing, etc.

Cleveland had an urban population of nearly 1 million in the late 1920s, and was one of the largest cities in the country. It's about a third of that today. That didn't take hundreds of years; just a handful of decades.

In other words: we (the US) have intentionally pursued policies and incentive structures that encourage low-density (and correspondingly high-consumption) living, as a departure from our historical arc of development. We don't get to play that off on physical geography; it was a political pivot we made.

Edit: And we don't get to play it off on colonization either: New Zealand is both less dense and younger than the US (and more remote, to boot), and yet their emissions are well under half of ours.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#130

Post by epistasis »

lazide wrote: post #112
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm confused that they can put a time frame on a problem they have no idea how to solve yet. You are writing on a developer forum, they work in Agile and ruotinely provide estimates or work to deadlines when business does not even know the requirements of their system, let alone how to build most of it.

If a developer tells you they can deliver by x, and they also don't know how to do it, what is the level of confidence you have that will occur?

This paper is saying they can deliver by x, if y is figured out.

It's a perfectly cromulent way to make a projection.

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