Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

briangitt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 295 posts

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#21

Post by boringg »

I would agree he has some valid points but on the whole he misses a fair bit and sounds very jaded. Like lets just do Natural Gas and Nuclear Power - which isn't a great solution in the long run.

1. Wind + Solar are insured for 20 years but last much longer. They are still in their early phase of adoption and costs are still falling.

2. Of course energy isn't a one size fits all - so you need to be aware of all the different product attributes and comparative offerings. Just like you wouldn't deploy facebook on heroku.

3. Regulatory and political willpower take long periods of time to build/change.

4. Capital deployments in climate tech are very different than VC and returns are lower

5. Manufacturing infrastructure and business models take long periods of time to build out and get traction

6. EVs are going to change a lot of the emissions space

7. There are a lot of very entrenched companies who have been actively working to stop progress on this problem since the 90s and they remain in power. Tough inertia to break through.

8. I could go on forever.

I hear that he is no longer just deploying solar, wind and ESS and is feeling disappointed that he has devoted so much time. All of that work helps move the needle and build the infrastructure, talent and capital to start deploying and cleaning up the grid. When he deployed EE capital in 2008 there wasn't the political will power (ACES regulations collapsed) and technology (most utilities didn't have smart meters). While he may not have made money he certainly helped the industry along and that is an important part of trying to solve this multifaceted complex problem.

Agree with the sentiment let's not let "Perfect is the enemy of good". However let's not let these hard fought gains be for naught.

edit: The OP's argument is disingenuous he's a natural gas booster, annoyed I responded in depth here.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#22

Post by breytex »

Retric wrote: post #9

Reading that is a sad reminder of why people make such poor decisions. He’s still arguing about things in the abstract without a basis in the underlying mechanics of these systems. And the sad thing is he’s effective at convincing people.

Can you elaborate on where the author is wrong?

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#23

Post by beej71 »

77pt77 wrote: post #5

> I used to believe nuclear energy was dangerous and nuclear waste was a big problem. In fact, nuclear is the safestand most reliable way to generate low-emission electricity, and it provides the best chance of reducing CO2 emissions. It releases less radioactivity than coal, just to make things clear.

It usually releases less radioactivity than coal.

No one wants a nuclear plant near them, currently, despite how safe and clean it is. That's the problem nuclear has to solve.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#24

Post by fghorow »

323 wrote: post #14

During the current situation I learned an interesting thing about nuclear power plants: if you bomb them, the amount of radioactivity that will be released into atmosphere because of waste products storage on site is vastly larger than the one that would be released by a nuclear explosion in a random place. Because unfortunately most nuclear waste is stored on site because of the NIMBY problem. So every nuclear power…

Long term nuclear storage is one problem. Who pays for the decommissioning is another one. In many cases it turns out to be the taxpayer.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#25

Post by svnt »

This reads more to me as: “I thought I was going to be a hero, turns out I was early in the technology cycle, haven’t yet had the impact that I wanted and now I’ve finally realized I made a ton of assumptions.” Instead of increasing his scope of understanding though, He decided to retreat into the thing that won during the time period that he was trying to win. That strategy rarely works.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#26

Post by elil17 »

Clever writing can let you argue for any viewpoint. That doesn’t make it true.

>I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But the biggest reduction in CO2 emissionsduring the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas.

Upgrading coal to gas is a great intermediate step. However, it’s not a long term solution because natural gas reserves are limited. Plus, many countries have already done it.

>I used to think that the world was transitioning to solar, wind, and batteries. This, too, was false. Trillionsof dollars were spent on wind and solar projects over the last 20 years, yet the world’s dependence on fossil fuels declined only 3 percentage points, from 87% to 84%.

We increased global generating capacity from 15,000 to 26,000 TWh. So green energy has supported economic and social development through electrification without adding new pollution sources.

>I used to believe nuclear energy was dangerous and nuclear waste was a big problem. In fact, nuclear is the safestand most reliable way to generate low-emission electricity, and it provides the best chance of reducing CO2 emissions.

Nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity, but that safety comes at a financial cost. Pursuing nuclear is great but solar/wind are much cheaper.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#27

Post by modeless »

macspoofing wrote: post #15
modeless wrote: post #6

I recently heard (on HN, maybe you did too) about a form of energy that sounds pretty utopian to me. Ultra deep bore geothermal. Geothermal has been around for a long time and has problems like causing earthquakes and needing very specific geological formations that only exist in certain places. But these limitations are mostly due to the fact that we can't bore that deep. Geothermal energy exists under every point o…

Ultra deep bore geothermal is a science project right now.

So is fusion.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#28

Post by XorNot »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #17
cybrox wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main social issue is that green energy is better used as marketing than to really do something about the ever rising levels of emissions. After all, most people don't care to read the actual facts on supposedly new, superior technology, they just endorse it because it's supposed to be green.

Cynical me says it's a big money maker / captialism; green energy projects receive billions in subsidies. At one point you could get "green energy" from your electricity provider at a few cents / kWh extra which they would (supposedly) invest in green energy projects. Then green energy became a marketing term at no extra cost.

Cynical you is completely ignorant to the trillions of dollars oil, coal and gas receive[1].

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trill...

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#29

Post by jrumbut »

I clicked the "next" button and found a similarly structured story about how ESG guidelines are also not the answer and how oil and gas companies can improve their image.

I am concerned that this article isn't expressing genuinely held beliefs and is instead part of a marketing effort (and not just for the author).

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#30

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

cybrox wrote: post #4
afpx wrote: post #2

When you realize it's usually not a physics or even economic problem, but a social problem.

The main social issue is that green energy is better used as marketing than to really do something about the ever rising levels of emissions. After all, most people don't care to read the actual facts on supposedly new, superior technology, they just endorse it because it's supposed to be green.

> better used as marketing than to really do something about the ever rising levels of emissions.

We've known for centuries if not millenia that social and political and habitual change - the only things that would amount to "really doing something about the ever rising levels of emissions" - are hard, really hard, much harder than technological development. Getting people to substantively change their behavior and lifestyle is almost certainly not going to happen, at least not on a timescale that is relevant for climate change.

Post reply on HN