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All poverty is energy poverty

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Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#141

Post by jschveibinz »

Theodores wrote: post #62
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #9

I assumed they were just going to ignore renewables, since the kind of person who writes these things generally does. But instead they weirdly skipped over it and started fantasizing about some new technology that doesn't exist yet. What happened to energy poverty being important? "The current cheapest, cleanest, safest sources of energy in history aren't green enough for me" was not an ending I expected. Is this int…

The article has a fair dose of paternalistic exceptionalism regarding countries in Africa. Rwanda is not what people think it is, there is much to learn from how things are being done in Rwanda, however, they don't think they need their colonial masters to rule them any more. Hence, unless you seek out first hand accounts or visit the place, you would never know how wonderful the place is. Nigeria still has the colon…

> the only people serious about alleviating poverty…

Please provide some data to back up this assertion?

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#142

Post by rglover »

olivermarks wrote: post #92

I can't help thinking of the 'Milton Friedman' quote 'If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand' expanded out to the giant unelected global bureaucracies some people would appear to want to give permission to run energy supplies.

This is the ultimate truth that, for whatever reason (emotional/egoic as far as I can tell), gets conveniently ignored.

Truly sad to see humanity limit/destroy itself over and over when there are perfectly viable options available.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#143

Post by Frost1x »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #88
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #15

Interesting to see the comment thread digging into all sorts of criticism of the article (is it 2 kWh / fridge? Or 1.1? Should the author discuss renewable earlier or more seriously?) The main point I got from the article was a helpful reminder that a large part of the world doesn't have basic things that I take for granted (not just refrigeration, but you might also include air conditioning, transportation, etc). An…

We do have the energy. The US spends enough energy on transportation that the entire world could have refrigeration. The US spends 28% of total energy consumption on transportation. 93.33 Quadrillion BTUs x .28 / 3142 (BTUs per kWh) / 365 (days per year) = 22.8B kWh per day. BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles. We could have the same standard of living and just not use gas-powered vehicles and save ~…

The problem is storing and moving the energy. We could theoretically capture lightning strikes (electrostatic discharge) and store those to power things.

There's plenty of renewable energy out there, we just can't capture it efficiently, store it very efficiently, or move it around very efficiently. As such as rely on power sources that provide output rates were good at capturing energy from: fossil fuels stored as energy, nuclear fission, solar (fusion, sort of, we're not that efficient at it), hydroelectric (kinetic/gravity, solar/nuclear from the sun), and geothermal (which is just partly just fission again).

A lot of stuff just dissipates into the environment and we only capture a small bit of it. With all that said I think humanity will always grow beyond its means in terms everyone having a desirable amount of energy and materials to meet a certain standard of living.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#145

Post by nine_k »

One of the most insightful quotes I ever found of HN:

«The limiting factor for [civilizations] is collective intelligence, not energy.

We already have access to far more energy than we could possibly use on earth for any technology that's actually buildable. But we're not using it because we don't have the species IQ to make the right choices.»

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232083

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#147

Post by CraigJPerry »

WalterBright wrote: post #95
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have the energy. The US spends enough energy on transportation that the entire world could have refrigeration. The US spends 28% of total energy consumption on transportation. 93.33 Quadrillion BTUs x .28 / 3142 (BTUs per kWh) / 365 (days per year) = 22.8B kWh per day. BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles. We could have the same standard of living and just not use gas-powered vehicles and save ~…

> BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles. I've seen this figure before. It ignores the efficiency of the generation of electric power to charge the EV. A much more realistic figure is 2x.

>> A much more realistic figure is 2x

That sounds well off.

How much energy is required to refine fuel suitable for use in an ICE vehicle? Gas and oil fired power plants use a far less refined fuel.

How much energy is required to get the fuel to the vehicle? Gas and oil plants are usually connected via high efficiency transport mechanisms like pipelines rather than ships or road transport.

Vehicle engines are only in the region of 20-35% thermal efficiency but the average across all gas fired plants in the uk is 50% and drops to 42% for oil fired.

I don’t know for sure but only 2x smells to me.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#149

Post by ZeroGravitas »

PeterisP wrote: post #34
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have the energy right now, though. And we'd have more, cheaper energy if we deployed new renewables. But the author seems to lose his interest in helping the poor if it didn't involve fossil fuels being used inefficiently.

We're on track on a big part of Europe being energy-restricted this winter, so at least right now there's not an abundance of energy even for the current needs of the first world, much less for those who cannot pay much and would need not the same amount but growth. In the long term many things are possible, but right now we don't have enough energy, and "if we deployed new renewables" is not an argument - we already…

> especially if look at the market share of renewables in total energy which includes not only electricity but also heating and transportation.

You missed my point. If that existing non-renewable energy was used efficiently, like a Germany and UK that used heat pumps for domestic heating powered by the exact same gas they squander now in poorly insulated homes with a COP 1/5th what they otherwise could have, the energy would be enough.

My second sentence was that on top of that we could have had even more cheap energy if they'd not basically outlawed wind farms, the cheapest form of energy for the last decade in Europe.

"All poverty is energy poverty" remember? So why did the government's not insulate and use efficient heating systems? Why did they "cut the green crap".

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#150

Post by nine_k »

nkmnz wrote: post #128

I'm sure there's a lot of intellectual and emotional poverty out there that cannot be alleviated by any source of energy.

More energy and other life's amenities that are enabled by it can go a long way alleviating the intellectual and emotional poverty.

It's pretty hard to be intellectual and kind when you toil for subsistence every day and barely have enough food.

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