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War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

economist.com

91–100 of 231 posts

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#92

War and subsidies have turbocharged the LNG transition. There, I fixed the title.

Natural gas compliments renewables until battery storage and renewables overproduction pushes out natural gas. It also produces smaller amounts of CO2 per unit of electricity produced versus coal. Recently, there was an HN thread about large amounts of UK wind curtailment. The largest battery storage system in Europe just went live to provide grid services that’ll negate the need for natural gas to provide those serv…

That looks .. disappointingly small? 100MW for one hour, made up of what looks like 24 containers in a yard? I guess there's a very long way to go.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> War and subsidies have turbocharged the LNG transition The IEA projects "renewables are set to account for 90% of the increase in global generation capacity" between 2022 and 2027, "almost 30% higher than the agency’s forecast in 2021."

That's nameplate capacity; what about production?

> nameplate capacity; what about production

You want actual production figures for 2027?

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#94
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But also understandable, once you start giving in, you're giving Russia an incentive to do it all over again and capture now territory. Not just Russia. If Russia succeeds, China is invading Taiwan next, and the whole global economy is grinding to a halt because like 80 % of world semiconductor industry is there. Saving Ukraine means saving the world.

I don't think these issues are linked to be honest. China has a very different strategy. More plotting and long-term scheming, less brute force like Russia. They'll sneak their way in just like they're rapidly expanding their influence in Africa, buying European ports and airports etc. Their tactics are completely different and our response must be as well. Of course long-term planning is the biggest weakness of demo…

> plotting and long-term scheming, less brute force like Russia

The way Xi screwed the pooch on Hong Kong, something Beijing was without controversy entitled to, looks more like an impatient dictator than the China of decades prior.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#95
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes actually, a Ukrainian victory will in fact stop the war. Furthermore, an ending to the invasion that results in Ukrainians being ethnically cleansed and Russia in a position to pursue more invasions is not a better outcome than war (specifically the one that Russia chose and continues to choose to pursue) for quite a few very obvious reasons.

Ukraine will not win. No amount of dumping money into a country is going to help with this size difference, unless many more countries mobilise their actual military. That won't happen because then it goes from a regional conflict to a large-scale war and more countries might feel like meddling. Then there might be a world war.

They're already, slowly, winning? And I think people have forgotten that the massive size difference didn't help America win in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam - in the long term.

It's going to be a long war, though. It's effectively been running for a decade already.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nameplate capacity; what about production?

> nameplate capacity; what about production You want actual production figures for 2027?

Forecasts would be nice I guess. It was more to point out that renewable generation equipment generally has quite a low utilization factor compared to the existing infrastructure, so a given increase in "capacity" does not reflect the same increase in actual production.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#97
post #95
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine will not win. No amount of dumping money into a country is going to help with this size difference, unless many more countries mobilise their actual military. That won't happen because then it goes from a regional conflict to a large-scale war and more countries might feel like meddling. Then there might be a world war.

They're already, slowly, winning? And I think people have forgotten that the massive size difference didn't help America win in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam - in the long term. It's going to be a long war, though. It's effectively been running for a decade already.

The problem is that there is no reason to believe the war would stop even if Ukraine managed to push all Russian troops from their territory (with or without Crimea), which is quite unlikely in the first place. In fact, I've yet to hear a single concrete scenario for how that war could end other than with either government collapsing. I don't believe the Russian government will collapse any time soon.

Assuming China will attack Taiwan in the meantime, which I think is a lot more likely than not, it seems the world is looking at a lot of war indeed, perhaps even global. Even more senseless killing while issues like the climate and global poverty will lose the little relevance they have now. The future seems really sad.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#98
post #89
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming one believes your argument, a more charitable conclusion is that some people may be misguided, and a reexamination of their stance may be warranted. Calling people idiots isn’t going to change people’s minds, and people hold bad opinions about things all the time for reasons that aren’t as simplistic as “they’re an idiot”.

There's an entire subsection of politics that's appeared, made entirely from the worst possible misreadings of sensible boring policy wonkery. The most recent example is people going bananas about "15-minute cities", as if being able to walk to the shops is some sort of communist plot.

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Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#99
In almost the entire EU and especially here in the UK, governments have stepped in to spend huge amounts subsidising energy (including gas), SPECIFICALLY AND EXPRESSLY to that people don't use any less. As someone with decent insulation and solar panels etc, this was exactly the time those investments should have paid off and for other people to be left behind because they refused to take basic measures. Instead they've been bailed out and progress has been put off for another decade. And this sums up the whole of our green policy for the last 40years: we absolutely must do something, unless people don't want to, which they don't.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#100
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine has been such an amazing tool for distinguishing actual anti-war people from anti-west ghouls. It's a completely indefensible war of aggression by an imperialistic power against it's former subject but since the imperialistic power is Russia suddenly all these "anti-war" activists think it's fine.

I think there's basically two explanations: 1) Most startup people are just evil 2) HN is heavily controlled by Russia The latter is pretty obvious (we're talking English discussion platform where you can create account in ten seconds with no verification and I'm not sure if there's any anti-bot measures). The former ... most programmers are rich and they are convinced they are rich because they are awesome instead o…

Russia has been infamous for sowing division in the West using information warfare, and its no surprise that anti-West/anti-American's end up picking up pro-Russian propaganda which has become incredibly apparent throughout this war. Propaganda is designed to build lies from a truth or misinterpreted fact so it seems believeable; its not so much that a website/forum needs to be _controlled_ or _backed_, or that bots need to be leveraged most of the time. Plus, most people think they are too smart to believe propaganda which honestly means they are more likely to fall for it.
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