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The Great German Energy Experiment

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Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#201

Post by skore »

ars wrote: post #176
skore wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, fear isn't really the issue here, I would say that I have a rather calculated understanding of why I find radioactive waste so problematic (and since you asked, you'll have to endulge the full explanation). For me, it comes down to what kind of pollution we are talking about and radioactive pollution is particularly nasty to me as it represents a chaotic pollution that is just exceptionally hard to deal with. Le…

> and since you asked, you'll have to endulge the full explanation That's fine. And I read your explanation, and while it is coherent, I don't agree with it, and I find it to be fear based, not science based. Of all pollutions radiation is by far the easiest to detect and track (which is why people hate it so much - it's very easy to find). Other types of pollution are much harder to track, so less is made known abou…

> Other types of pollution are much harder to track

I was trying to explain to you why I find radioactive pollution unacceptable, replying by telling me that there are worse types of pollution does not really add to the discussion.

You seem hell-bent on making this discussion into one about choosing the lesser evil. But the article is about the exact opposite - it's about getting out of that cycle and investing in a true alternative.

> Pollution from other energy sources also causes cancer, and causes more of it than nuclear power. Nuclear power gets the headlines, sure, but the day to day poison is everything else.

I find wind turbines to cause very little cancer.

> When I said "people like" I meant "people opposed to nuclear power", which you are (seem to be), and therefor you are like them.

No, I understand that, but why do you want them off your lawn? By their opposition to nuclear they automatically made the air worse and cause pollution action days? Strikes me as a tad simplistic.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#202

Post by ralfd »

Xylakant wrote: post #190
tokenadult wrote: post #138

I guess the problem with a long article, even an interesting long article like the one submitted here, is that it is hard to read to the end. Near the end of the submitted article is this paragraph: "A second problem is that even when it comes to alternative energy sources, Germany doesn't reward carbon dioxide reduction. Rather, its policy establishes well-defined subsidies for specific technologies: a kilowatt-hour…

We do have quite a couple of taxes and regulations aimed at improving energy efficiency, so the subsidies for renewable energies are a more of a complement for those. We have tax breaks for cars that use less fuel, we do have extra tax for fuel consumption, we do have support for energy efficient housing, ... All in all we're doing pretty fine on that side. Primary energy usage in Germany has been dropping since the…

Crazy. The United States have only four times the population of Germany, how can they spend 7.5 time as much energy?

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#203

Post by Xylakant »

ralfd wrote: post #202
Xylakant wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have quite a couple of taxes and regulations aimed at improving energy efficiency, so the subsidies for renewable energies are a more of a complement for those. We have tax breaks for cars that use less fuel, we do have extra tax for fuel consumption, we do have support for energy efficient housing, ... All in all we're doing pretty fine on that side. Primary energy usage in Germany has been dropping since the…

Crazy. The United States have only four times the population of Germany, how can they spend 7.5 time as much energy?

There certainly a couple of contributing factor to that:

Geographical factors:

* larger distances. In Germany you can barely travel 1000km in one direction without leaving the country. This implies higher population density which keeps energy consumption for travels and transports at a lower level.

* milder climate: We don't need as much heating as the people in Alaska do and less air conditioning than California or Florida

Man-made/political factors:

* higher energy costs. We pay roughly 2USD per liter fuel. That implies that people are actually trying to buy fuel efficient cars. We don't drive pickups - in fact, I couldn't really afford the fuel cost if I would. Same is true for all sorts of energy.

* better insulation on houses. The standard american house seems to be the wood-frame-kind that's cheaper and quicker to build but is not expected to last for centuries. Here, houses are expected to last for ages. The one I currently live in dates back to somewhere around 1900, the one I'll move to was built in the late 1850s. This is quite common for Berlin actually. That implies thick, well insulated stone or brick walls.

There's certainly more things that affect energy usage, but the important point is that there are some factors that can be influenced while others can't. The Canadians for example will always have a higher need for primary energy since it's pretty cold there on average. The more interesting point is whether the consumption rises or falls and how we produce that energy.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#204

Post by Xylakant »

andreasvc wrote: post #191
lukeschlather wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a decision grounded in economics, obviously. This is about minimizing side-effects from energy production. The sun blasts roughly 10,000 times our electricity needs at us each year. (And that's just what directly impacts the surface.) I'd say we have some wiggle room in which it makes sense to focus on being cleaner rather than more efficient. We should worry about efficiency if we have serious scarcity is…

This 10,000 times figure is meaningless because it is theoretical; in reality that energy comes in diffuse rays which make it very difficult to capture anywhere near the amount of electricity that is actually needed. Hence the need to turn on coal power plants, which are harmful to the environment (very unwise to have turned off those nuclear plants IMO). Therefore, we SHOULD worry about efficiency, to avoid such thi…

We haven't turned off nuclear plants (yet). Those which are currently off have either reached EOL (1 or 2 IIRC) or are down for scheduled maintenance or because of unexpected failure of critical components.(pretty much all the rest)

But yes, we actually had some days where we were running without nuclear power. And I don't think it's unwise to turn them off. Few people are actually aware but in 1977 we had a catastrophic failure with a similar characteristic as the Fukushima accident: Block A of the Grundremmingen [1] nuclear plant suffered a power failure followed by a catastrophic loss of main coolant. The block had to be given up since it was not economic to repair and refit it. So while it may be true that a safe reactor can be built, I'm absolutely certain that humans can never safely operate it. We just make too many errors.

[1] Close to Ulm and Augsburg, smack in the middle of Stuttgart and Munich. No more Octoberfest if that blows up.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#205

Post by toemetoch »

onli wrote: post #69
toemetoch wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read again. Energy demand was lower because it was a holiday, nothing to do with air conditioners.

Thanks. I didnt get that fully, because i saw that reply as phrased as a critic to my statement, whereas it supports my point (which was, that high demand/low availabality because of the summer is unlikely in that scenario). Or not, but it is not a real critic on my statement. Of course such scenarios happen, especially the situation you described.

It was an addendum, not a rebuttal ;)

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#206

Post by eru »

anamax wrote: post #61
eru wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could just not tax us, and then we could pursue our own projects. Or, if you agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing: Tax carbon usage, and, since you don't like the government spending money, just distribute the proceeds equally among the population. This works out to a net impact, modulo transactions costs, on the average carbon-emitting person of zero, but rewards and punishes the outliers.

What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing? What if I think that the tax is too high? What if I have higher priorities?

> What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing?

Then my comment doesn't apply.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

The level of the tax should be chosen so, that you get the societal optimal output of CO_2. Where the measure of optimality is choosen by some mechanism, e.g. some form of democracy or so, outside of the scope of my suggestion.

If you actually want to have a high carbon-future, you might even opt for a negative tax, i.e. subsidy. The `proceeds' that get divided equally would turn into costs. If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them. But with a tax that's too high you would get less CO_2 emissions than your society would agree on as optimal. With a tax that's too low, you'd get more total emissions than people would agree on. At the moment our situation is essentially equivalent to a tax/redistribution of zero.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#207

Post by eru »

hollerith wrote: post #148
gaius wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that's nonsense, you cannot underestimate the impact of military technologies like jet engines, radar, communications satellites, GPS, the internet, superglue... The whole of the modern world is based on military tech. Plus you gainfully employ lots of people (e.g. teaching trades to people who haven't done well in mainstream education) and as a free bonus you get the defence of the realm.

>jet engines, radar, communications satellites, GPS, the internet, superglue Don't forget computers: Turing's work relies heavily on his experiences working at Bletchley Park, ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, and the calculational needs of the Manhattan Project drove a lot of early computer development.

Yes, but Konrad Zuse was driven to do his early computers by the tedium of doing arithmetic by hand in his engineering bureau. So we would have gotten computers anyway.

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#208

Post by hollerith »

eru wrote: post #207
hollerith wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>jet engines, radar, communications satellites, GPS, the internet, superglue Don't forget computers: Turing's work relies heavily on his experiences working at Bletchley Park, ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, and the calculational needs of the Manhattan Project drove a lot of early computer development.

Yes, but Konrad Zuse was driven to do his early computers by the tedium of doing arithmetic by hand in his engineering bureau. So we would have gotten computers anyway.

Yes and no. It is true that Zuse's early work, starting in 1936, was done on his own and (I will grant) motivated by non-military calculations. But that early work was on a purely mechanical computer, like the analytical engine and the difference engine of Charles Babbage -- and no mechanical designs were ever realized (except much later as part of the "retrocomputing" movement when their computing capabilities were no longer needed). By the time Zuse started incorporating electrical relays into his designs, in 1939, he was a member of the German military. It looks like he might have left the German military before the end of the Nazi era, but that matters little because the whole of German society was organized around military needs and military goals.

More importantly, the argument that "we would have gotten X anyways" can be applied to almost any technological development. Speed of development is important, however, even if all you care about is whether humans reach a certain level of development eventually (because the longer it takes to reach that level, the greater the chance that one of many potential catastrophes causes humans to die out or to lose the ability to invent the radically new technologies).

Re: The Great German Energy Experiment

#209

Post by anamax »

eru wrote: post #206
anamax wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing? What if I think that the tax is too high? What if I have higher priorities?

> What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing? Then my comment doesn't apply. > What if I think that the tax is too high? The level of the tax should be chosen so, that you get the societal optimal output of CO_2. Where the measure of optimality is choosen by some mechanism, e.g. some form of democracy or so, outside of the scope of my suggestion. If you actually want to have a high carbon-fu…

> Then my comment doesn't apply.

You're still going to tax me....

> The level of the tax should be chosen so

In other words, "lump it".

> If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

You're not going to let me.

> For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them.

That can't be true if the result is lower CO2 emissions.

Also, I'm pretty sure that you're not going to compensate small scale CO2 sequestration. (It would be too costly to do so, but the result is the same - your scheme can't treat all CO2 the same even though your reason for taxing CO2 says that it is.)

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