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All poverty is energy poverty

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Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#161

Post by [deleted] »

golemotron wrote: post #69
PeterisP wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 That's self-inflected and the result of poor choices. In a just world, Merkel would get more blame for cozying up to Russia, and the rest of Europe would as well for choosing austerity. As world events have shown, austerity is not robust i…

[deleted]

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#162

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

pxmpxm wrote: post #107
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 ~…

There is about no way what you wrote can possibly be true; with 5x efficiency gain we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them. If there was a net energy gain going to EV, the adoption rates would be through the roof rather than ~1% we are seeing currently.

https://energi.media/news/battery-evs-more-fuel-efficient-th....

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#163

Post by bluetomcat »

ciconia wrote: post #83
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…

> 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?) Hear hear. The point is, for those of us living in developed countries, is that all wealth is energy wealth. The western way of life is totally dependent on an abundance of cheap energy. When energy runs out, or becomes significantly more expensive, it's game…

> When energy runs out, or becomes significantly more expensive, it's game over for developed countries.

Western society is inefficient at a macro level, even though it may seem efficient from the financial perspective of a single company or an individual. People cover huge distances to work. Companies are moving goods, components and people from all over the world. People change jobs (losing focus) and their residence often, companies go bankrupt because of competitive market forces. This means a lot of wasted resources and duplication.

You can decrease the energy consumption significantly without affecting the quality of life in case of adopting a new political philosophy which considers these realities.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#164

Post by space_fountain »

bequanna wrote: post #139
weberer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we have enough uranium reserves to increase the world's energy output by several orders of magnitude and still last hundreds of years.

Right. And we could actually create a reliable grid vs. a shitty patchwork of unreliable power sources that require us to massively overbuild generation capacity. I guess we don't do this because too few bureaucrats can grift if we build nuke plants?

No grid is 100% reliable, but in the present situation where renewables are cheaper than nuclear it's not hard to see why they're being preferred. You'd need a story where that price difference is artificial or temporary (both possible)

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#166

Post by golemotron »

trasz wrote: post #106
golemotron wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 That's self-inflected and the result of poor choices. In a just world, Merkel would get more blame for cozying up to Russia, and the rest of Europe would as well for choosing austerity. As world events have shown, austerity is not robust i…

Another way to fix the problem would be to help Ukraine a bit more and forcibly take the gas from Russia as reparations. At this point it’s obvious their military was all bluff. This doesn’t even change the final outcome, it just speeds it up - USA won’t allow Russia to become China’s asset, and there aren’t that many options to guarantee that.

> Another way to fix the problem would be to help Ukraine a bit more and forcibly take the gas from Russia as reparations.

Nuclear weapons foreclose many options.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#167

Post by JumpCrisscross »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #162
pxmpxm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is about no way what you wrote can possibly be true; with 5x efficiency gain we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them. If there was a net energy gain going to EV, the adoption rates would be through the roof rather than ~1% we are seeing currently.

https://energi.media/news/battery-evs-more-fuel-efficient-th... .

This compares gas -> motion with battery -> motions. To close the loop, we’d have to incorporate the generation efficiency. That will still yield an impressive number, but not 5x.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#168

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pxmpxm wrote: post #107
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 ~…

There is about no way what you wrote can possibly be true; with 5x efficiency gain we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them. If there was a net energy gain going to EV, the adoption rates would be through the roof rather than ~1% we are seeing currently.

> we wouldn't need a mountain of EV subsidies to get companies to manufacture them and people to buy them

The consumer captures these purported gains, not the manufacturer.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#169

Post by ZeroGravitas »

PeterisP wrote: post #129
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, we have enough energy. If every home was insulated and had a heat pump, we'd all be richer. Why havent we done that? Why, when the initial Ukraine invasion in 2014 caused a gas price spike, did Bjorn Lomborg and other climate change deniers write an article very much like this one, in which he advocated against more renewables, and instead said we needed to invest in research to find the real solution. So…

Can you elaborate why you're saying that right now we have enough energy ? Because to me it's obvious that the third world has far from enough energy (like, they'd need multiple times more to reach a first world stanard of living), and even in first world there's not really enough at the moment, as indicated by the EU energy crisis. Perhaps the currently available energy is sufficient to meet all the needs in a ficti…

See my other comment for details.

People are trying to confuse matters by talking about Primary energy as if your quality of life has a 1:1 relationship with fossil CO2 released.

So, if we are actually talking about "primary energy" then we would have enough if we used it efficiently. But we dont. Because our politicians prefer burning gas to heating homes. Gas burnt gets them a kickback, warm homes don't.

Hence why all the solutions to this gas price crisis that don't involve burning even more gas get drowned out.

You can say "well we don't have well insulated homes now", yes I know. But maybe you should be asking "Why don't we have well insulated homes?" because that answer will explain more about how the energy crisis plays out than thermodynamics does.

Re: All poverty is energy poverty

#170

Post by rootbear »

I just sat through a talk at Worldcon by Henry Spencer that addressed some of these issues. He presented the case that to provide the energy we need to address future needs, including raising the standard of living in Third World countries, we’ll need space based solar power.
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