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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

#131

Post by zamalek »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14
mionhe wrote: post #2

At the beginning of the article is says: "But it does not explain how adequate land to reach a 90% clean electricity penetration can be acquired or how reliability will be protected beyond that 90% penetration, stakeholders acknowledged." I'm confused that they can put a time frame on a problem they have no idea how to solve yet.

> confused that they can put a time frame on a problem they have no idea how to solve yet The purpose of the study [1] was to explore what a realistic solution would look like. Then you can work backwards and identify roadblocks. For example, if land acquisition is really the sole bottleneck, there are a myriad of legislative solutions that could address it. [1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/nrel-study-identif…

Or just put stuff on water.

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

#132

Post by epistasis »

roenxi wrote: post #89
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reconstituting all of society's energy consumption is a large project with a lot of technical uncertainties that will be discovered along the way. These sort of forecasts routinely turns out to be very wrong I frequently see this type of comment, and I like to imagine what if people with this attitude won the debate that was happening 300 yeara ago. 300 years ago, thousands of people in London were dying of cholera…

Do you have an example more current than 3 centuries past? Because Germany launched an impressive project to reconstitute their grid quite recently and are now at risk of freezing because it turns out their plan didn't work, they shut down a bunch of perfectly serviceable nuclear plants and went heavily in on Russian gas rather than developing local options. The 20th century was full of big ambitious projects that le…

> Because Germany launched an impressive project to reconstitute their grid quite recently and are now at risk of freezing because it turns out their plan didn't work

Germany did not follow the plan and did not deploy enough renewables to cover their energy needs. They barely did anything to shift their energy generation profile.

However, it was still enough to have a big effect on the solar industry, even if it didn't affect Germany that much. They drove down solar costs for everybody else, which we can all now enjoy. And now there's 100s of GW of solar produced annually, and in nearly every area it's the cheapest power you can get.

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

#133

Post by epistasis »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #75
kornhole wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if Americans simplify their lives and stop using so much energy.

Indeed, noone talk about this. An average french person emits 3 or 4 times less CO2. Does an average american live 4 times better than an average frenchman? French people live longer on average, have less obsesity and other health issues. Insulated homes or apartments, smaller cars and less meat in diet could cut CO2 footprint 2x. But also we must not fool ourselves, majority of energy emissions are industrial - as a…

Cars, it's all transportation and land use really.

Food choices are a rounding error compared to the terrible transportation options available for Americans. If you want to live in a walkable neighborhood in the US, good luck. Want to live in a desert where you have to drive 15 minutes to accomplish the most basic errand or buy a pound of usage? Here you, go have your choice of place to live cheaply.

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

#134

Post by zamalek »

carabiner wrote: post #11
rllearneratwork wrote: post #3

"Nuclear is likely to be 9% to 12% of generation in 2035" - this is absurd. We should have much more aggressive targets for nuclear. Because it is the cleanest, safest and most reliable source of 0-emission power. France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear now.

China started building 6 new nuclear plants this year: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-greenlights-6-... I guess just like high speed rail, China will leave the US in the dust.

With enough energy almost anything can be done. The most extreme example I go to is solving adverse effects of climate change on crops: simply build giant greenhouses - you have the energy to power artificial sunlight, desalinate water, etc.

With that in mind, this isn't the sort of lead you could easily (or even reasonably) catch up to. The manner in which an energy superpower would operate would be completely alien to compared to what we know today. China will come to economically dominate the planet unless America (or some another country) catches a wake-up call.

High speed rail is a convenience by comparison.

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

#135

Post by enraged_camel »

cypress66 wrote: post #93
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, noone talk about this. An average french person emits 3 or 4 times less CO2. Does an average american live 4 times better than an average frenchman? French people live longer on average, have less obsesity and other health issues. Insulated homes or apartments, smaller cars and less meat in diet could cut CO2 footprint 2x. But also we must not fool ourselves, majority of energy emissions are industrial - as a…

> Does an average american live 4 times better than an average frenchman? I don't know about that "4 times better" (how do you measure that, diminishing returns, etc). But your average house in the US is for sure more comfortable than your average house in France.

>> But your average house in the US is for sure more comfortable than your average house in France.

"For sure more comfortable"? Like you said though, by what measure? I'm visiting my sister in London right now. She lives in a 750 sqft two bedroom apartment. Sure, it's smaller than my 1700 ft house back in the US, but she seems fairly comfortable.

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

#136

Post by epistasis »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #118
megaman821 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read the same article? The land usage for wind and solar is about that of golf courses and coal. Getting permits to use the land is the main obstacle. As for resource constraints, the limiting factor is the speed on which a lithium mines can come online. The bulk of the that being environment reviews and lawsuits. Americans are just going to have to come to terms with building or mining stuff causes localized…

Honestly as a golfer, a windmill in the middle of the fairway would make for an interesting hole

Mini-golf, but life size?

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

#137

Post by lazide »

epistasis wrote: post #130
lazide wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where we have no idea of how expensive or not y will be, or how long it will take to do it.

Like saying ‘The UI will be ready in 6 months if the backend is figured out’.

Also not a realistic projection.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s something. But the error bars are larger than the graph.

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

#138

Post by ilyt »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #51
davidw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> local objections That's a big component of all this. NIMBYism in this country is becoming a big problem in a lot of ways. Want to build a dense, mixed use development that is less carbon-intensive than single family suburbia? NIMBYs oppose it. Build a transmission line from your green energy source? NIMBYs, again! Build a solar farm? NIMBYs will try and block it.

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…

HOI is some damn dystopia on its own.

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

#139

Post by theduder99 »

lazide wrote: post #96
Schroedingersat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by NIMBYs you mean paid actors attending council meetings and incredibly loud reactionaries from other places, then yeah. There aren't that many actual NIMBYs for this shit.

Clearly you haven't dealt with the over 60's crowd-who-has-nothing-better-to-do.

you'll get there one day

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

#140

Post by ecshafer »

woodruffw wrote: post #109
lazide wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying that the geography and socioeconomics of an established (over 10's of thousands of years) country in an already well developed and urbanized continent with high population density is different than one that is sparsely populated and only recently started to be developed by any modern definition? Weird. Maybe in another thousand years, it'll seem more similar.

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…

When you say larger US cities are you actually comparing apples to oranges? Comparing Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, or Chicago to Paris, Marseille or Lyon makes sense. But Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, etc are large "cities" but are basically not cities, they are a collection of sprawling suburbs that never end.
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