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Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

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Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#141

Post by sfn42 »

myrmidon wrote: post #71
alex_duf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget I'm not sure I understand. There's no carbon budget, any carbon that we emit is carbon we'll have to re-capture somehow and the longer it stays in the atmosphere the longer it will have a heating effect. I think renewable have accelerated to the point of matching the electricity growth worldwide: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electrici…

I highly doubt that we will have global negative emissions (CO2 capturing) within the next decades-- maybe by the end of the century. Even very rich nations have a handful of prototype plants for CO2 capture right now at best, and the budget for things like this is the first thing that gets slashed by Doge et al. If we were on track for lots of CO2 capture by 2050, we would see the beginnings already (massive investm…

The problem with carbon capture is volume. There is about 0.04% CO2 in air. So in order to remove a ton of CO2, you would need to process thousands of tons of air, depending on the efficiency of the extraction process.

It's just kind of infeasible to pull the entire atmosphere through these plants. The largest one we have is called mammoth, claimed to remove 36000 tons of CO2 per year, meanwhile our emissions are measured in billions of tons per year. Like over 30 billion.

We would need about 30 mammoths to get to a million tons per year, and 30,000 mammoths to get to a billion. Then multiply by another 30 and in total we would need almost a million mommoth plants just to undo what we are doing right now at the same rate. Carbon capture is like trying to empty the ocean with a bucket.

How are you so confident that extinction is off the table? I've stopped following this stuff because it's depressing but last time I checked we were in dire straits and I haven't heard any good news on this front. I'm just seeing ice caps disappearing, ocean currents changing, weather changing, pretty much everything that's been predicted is now happening and it's not going to slow down any time soon.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#142

Post by phtrivier »

alex_duf wrote: post #61
Biologist123 wrote: post #53

This was a great positive start to the day. Thanks whoever posted that. One point curious in its omission is whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget. Presumably that’s the critical metric in all of this. [Edit: I ran this question through ChatGPT and the initial (unvalidated) response wasn’t so exciting. This obviously put a dampener on my mood. And I wondered why people like McKi…

>whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget I'm not sure I understand. There's no carbon budget, any carbon that we emit is carbon we'll have to re-capture somehow and the longer it stays in the atmosphere the longer it will have a heating effect. I think renewable have accelerated to the point of matching the electricity growth worldwide: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electrici…

Whenever I hear "carbon budget", I usually understand it as "how much CO2 we can still emit (net of sinks) before the warming passes a certain threshold (for example, some level of the Paris agreement.)

Is that a misunderstanding on my side ?

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#143

Post by DesertVarnish »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #123
fpoling wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If electricity is sufficiently cheap it can be cheaper to capture carbon from the atmosphere for chemical industry than to use oil or coal there.

Do you have any source for this extraordinary claim? It's practically a claim of perpetual motion. Carbon dioxide a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, even in concentrations which are immediately harmful to human life. At the moment it's 400 parts per million. So in order to extract 1kg of Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere you have to pump 2500kg of air through the system. This alone makes it unlikely we can do this p…

Difficult engineering problem but working from first principles suggests that the energy requirememts are not insurmountable. The roundtrip efficiency is worse than batteries but much better than photosynthesis.

Terraform Industries (and others, like Synhelion) has a plausible if slightly optimistic target to be price competitive with fossil fuels for methane in the early 2030s.

Some places with very cheap to extract hydrocarbons like Saudi Arabia may be able to compete for a very long time, but there are many futures where most of humanity's hydrocarbon consumption (including the ones used for the chemical industry, plastics, etc) derives from atmospheric carbon.

And this can happen fast, the world (mostly China) has developed a truly massive manufacturing capacity for PV.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#144

Post by energy123 »

danaris wrote: post #77

A remarkably positive and hopeful article. It's really staggering seeing the figures of not just how much solar has grown in recent years, but how massively its growth has outstripped everyone's predictions from essentially any time in the past. I also really liked this passage about the direct on-the-ground effects of being able to install solar panels: > If you have travelled through rural Asia, you know the sound…

Batteries will soon follow the same trajectory, just lagged. The same economic forces will produce the same outcome. We now have cost-effective stationary storage solution with non-scarce inputs, manufacturers are just waiting for the demand.

It's hard to see this truth right now, because the demand isn't there for it to happen just yet. At the margin, energy developers will install solar instead of batteries, up until the point that the grid is saturated with solar, at which point they will switch to batteries. But very few energy grids have reached that point of saturation, so demand hasn't sent manufacturers the market signal to begin high-volume production of grid storage. That will change as more grids mature like California/Texas.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#145

Post by ben_w »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #123
fpoling wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If electricity is sufficiently cheap it can be cheaper to capture carbon from the atmosphere for chemical industry than to use oil or coal there.

Do you have any source for this extraordinary claim? It's practically a claim of perpetual motion. Carbon dioxide a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, even in concentrations which are immediately harmful to human life. At the moment it's 400 parts per million. So in order to extract 1kg of Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere you have to pump 2500kg of air through the system. This alone makes it unlikely we can do this p…

They said "If electricity is sufficiently cheap", which is less a claim and more a tautology.

Will it be that cheap? I think so, given that trees and grass etc. exist and get their carbon from the air.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#146

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Biologist123 wrote: post #53

This was a great positive start to the day. Thanks whoever posted that. One point curious in its omission is whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget. Presumably that’s the critical metric in all of this. [Edit: I ran this question through ChatGPT and the initial (unvalidated) response wasn’t so exciting. This obviously put a dampener on my mood. And I wondered why people like McKi…

The rollout of renewables is the main factor in climate predictions for 2100 reducing over time.

They're still bad, but better than they would have been with business as usual or if solar, wind and batteries hadn't plummeted in price:

https://climateactiontracker.org/global/emissions-pathways/

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#147

Post by phtrivier »

maxglute wrote: post #92
drob518 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d also point out that China is teetering on the edge of a financial meltdown, having also built complete ghost cities, so some of these investments may not look very smart in just a few years. Don’t confuse investment with malinvestment, in other words. Throwing money at everything, much in direct opposition to market forces, has never really been shown to be a winning strategy.

Most of those "ghost cities" got populated in "just a few years", so much so that wiki had to change Chinese Ghost City entry into "Underoccupied Developements". And what is the scale of PRC "malinvestment", quantify or approximate it. Here's a hint, PRC RE+construction as % of GDP = ~15%, about OECD average. PRC just very good at building and gets much more from it, even if some sits idle first or ultimately gets wa…

It's not "wasted by scribes" in the US - it very much goes into the pockets of the "pharaohs" (aka "corporate boards"), and, through campaigns donations, to the "high and low priests" (aka "politicians").

The fact that it was supposed to be used to cure peasants from malaria or ensure next year's yield of grain is just a detail.

Don't bother questioning the pharaohs ! Instead, attend the ceremony for when we turn them into gods (aka "IPOs").

And, also, venerate your cats (aka "cats").

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#148

Post by richardw »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #133
Biologist123 wrote: post #53

This was a great positive start to the day. Thanks whoever posted that. One point curious in its omission is whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget. Presumably that’s the critical metric in all of this. [Edit: I ran this question through ChatGPT and the initial (unvalidated) response wasn’t so exciting. This obviously put a dampener on my mood. And I wondered why people like McKi…

Solar and wind are booming, but fossil fuels aren't shrinking nearly as fast in absolute terms

Countries are placing their bets. Fossil fuels will be a massive waste of investment in a decade. Anyone who can extrapolate a graph sees where this is headed.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#149

Post by belorn »

jopsen wrote: post #119
jdlshore wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar panels are so cheap that it makes sense to overbuild, such that even an overcast winter day meets your electricity needs.

I think that depends on where you are. I've heard of 20kW installations producing 500W in December. Granted 500W isn't nothing, but what if it's snows?

That is about the numbers that we get in Sweden. Those months were solar production is lowest is also the months that consumption is highest for the average household, around 400% compared to the warmest summer months. As a result, energy prices are also significant higher during winter compared to summer.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#150

Post by ZeroGravitas »

pzo wrote: post #139

good article I just don't know why author prefer to spell all numbers using words rather than digits. It's very mentally taxing for me to read, e.g: >> of twenty-one thousand respondents in twenty-one countries, found that sixty-eight per cent favored solar energy, “five times more [...] could be just: >> of 21,000 responders in 21 countries, found that 68% favored solar energy, "5x more [...]

I believe this is a New Yorker magazine house style thing. I'd assume the author uses numerals in the book this article is based on.
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