151–160 of 183 posts
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If only we could remind them somehow that inevitable migration, famine, and mass death is not as profitable as alternatives.
The Vatican has survived all that including the fall of countless nations and empires. Guess how they did it?
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If only we could remind them somehow that inevitable migration, famine, and mass death is not as profitable as alternatives.
for people continually chasing power that eventuality is actually an upside
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1% from a Dyson Sphere would be a better energy return than 100% efficiency from any conventional energy sorce. Similarly, 20% from solar is competitive with 60% from nuclear, 50% from coal, and is easily better than 100% from my neighbor Dan riding a bicycle powered electricity generator. You can't cite efficiency percentages in a vacuum to imply they are a better or worse than alternatives, because those aren't per…
The solar panels would overheat (and lose efficiency), since ~80% of the solar energy hitting it is absorbed as (mostly) heat. Generating solar energy in deserts is often done with a mirror based heating system for this reason.
PV are designed to account for heat and "less efficiency" means they risk performing at 17-18% instead of 20%. And it's actually generating more total energy at 18% because more total sunlight is hitting it, an advantage in desserts.
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carbon-free energy on every grid where they operate also sounds like a significantly more ambitious goal than net-zero across the company, because it means actual reduction in emissions, rather than relying on offsets. if it's a serious committment to being carbon-free, i think this sounds like a positive change. if it's a moonshot that they have no real intention of actually meeting, then it's a lot less impressive.…
It's going to happen anyway for at least a large portion of every day simply because it's cheaper. Electricity is a sizable chunk of the cost to operate a datacenter and at least while the sun is up, solar is significantly cheaper than any other energy source. Grid scale battery overnights is cheaper but less so obviously. You don't need climate pledges when the thing you're pledging to do saves you substantial amoun…
That's precisely why a 24/7 goal matters. Energy is already cheap and clean for a large portion of the day, but covering the rest of the day will require significant investment.
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> If nobody else has to make efforts for sustainability, its a "pointless" investment No. That is not true * Unless you are evil using school yard excuses is off brand. You do the right thing * Carbon free energy is cheaper to produce these days, so the premis is wrong This politics. Burn the planet, it is what Trump would do
> * Carbon free energy is cheaper to produce these days, so the premis is wrong If it's cheaper to produce, then there's no point in doing anything special, because it'll just take over via market forces. The "problem" with renewables is that the economics are fantastic in the marginal case, but if you need it to take over baseload when the sun is down, wind isn't blowing, etc., it's much more expensive because you n…
It is taking over via market forces. New utility-scale solar+battery capacity is already cheaper than building a new coal plant.
The only reason it's not doing it more quickly is because of government intervention in the markets in the US to nerf it.
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Buying carbon-free power from the grid was a big thing in Finland (and maybe in wider Europe) around 2010. But companies eventually stopped talking about it, as it's mostly greenwashing with limited real-world impact.
Were they buying time-independent blocks of carbon-free power, or 24/7 carbon-free power? The latter is significantly more difficult.
It was a byproduct of the EU habit to create markets and competition where they don't naturally exist. You can buy electricity from any power company, and that company can then generate it itself or buy it from the market. Once you have a market like that, it's easy to add requirements such as carbon-free power. As long as the fraction of the market buying indulgences is lower than the share of the power generation meeting the requirements, fulfilling them is essentially free.
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Were they buying time-independent blocks of carbon-free power, or 24/7 carbon-free power? The latter is significantly more difficult.
24/7. There was enough hydro and nuclear in the grid, and even more in the connected grids in Norway and Sweden. Most of the time, carbon-free power was no more expensive than generic power, which emphasized how meaningless the entire idea was. It was a byproduct of the EU habit to create markets and competition where they don't naturally exist. You can buy electricity from any power company, and that company can the…
Okay, let's ignore "most of the time" and focus on times when carbon-free power was more expensive. Were these companies actually footing the bill in that case? Because increasing the marginal funding toward clean sources when the grid is dirtiest is the whole point.
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> Electrical signal attenuation increases with the square of the distance not true. in standard HV-AC lines, power losses are ~10% per megameter. HVDC gets to 3-5%. So Nevada to Seattle would be at most 20% loss, and in practice 15%, and with HVDC closer to 7%. https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/1...
I have no dog in this fight, but this is so impressive it sounds wrong. I don’t think it is wrong, I’m just really blown away
My point of view with Tesla vs Edison is that they were both right and wrong under select circumstances.
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24/7. There was enough hydro and nuclear in the grid, and even more in the connected grids in Norway and Sweden. Most of the time, carbon-free power was no more expensive than generic power, which emphasized how meaningless the entire idea was. It was a byproduct of the EU habit to create markets and competition where they don't naturally exist. You can buy electricity from any power company, and that company can the…
> Most of the time, carbon-free power was no more expensive than generic power Okay, let's ignore "most of the time" and focus on times when carbon-free power was more expensive. Were these companies actually footing the bill in that case? Because increasing the marginal funding toward clean sources when the grid is dirtiest is the whole point.
In any case, carbon-free power from the grid is mostly a legal/financial construct with limited real-world impact. When the grid is dirtiest, market prices are set by fossil fuels with high marginal costs, and clean sources get the same price without any tricks.
I think there's less to this than meets the eye. Previously, on https://sustainability.google/operating-sustainably/ : "We've set a goal to achieve net-zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain by 2030." and, in a table later, "Reduce 50% of our combined Scope 1, 2 (market-based), and 3 absolute emissions by 2030. Invest in nature-based and technology-based carbon removal solutions to neutralize our…