201–210 of 466 posts
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> Energy-efficient refrigerators are available at ~1.1 kwH/day. This reduces the needed energy estimate by about half. There's a number of people experimenting with converting chest freezers to chest fridges using an external thermostat. Apparently, these can be extremely efficient - people are reporting 10-20% of your 1.1kwH/day number. Of course, the typical downsides of a chest freezer apply to a chest fridge - th…
What explains the big difference?
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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.
For example UK is one of the richest countries in europe, it has the most expensive housing in europe and it has the worst insulation in europe.
Landlord has no reason to imprive insulation, the tenant pays for utilities
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> 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 residen…
That's exactly its fatal flaw though: it's so rigid (and what you call inefficiency is called autonomy by others). People change jobs for many reasons, often because they want something better. Companies go bankrupt often because they are less effective. On a macro level, when the terrain is unknown (as it is for our reality), more autonomy means more flexibility and finding efficient solutions faster.
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> 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 residen…
Europe has the resources to produce cheap energy they just decided to not exploit it and import their energy from Russia and others.
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> 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 residen…
Europe has the resources to produce cheap energy they just decided to not exploit it and import their energy from Russia and others.
Peak oil might be a reality, but it's not the cause of current problems in the EU.
Also, per capita energy consumption in the EU is 1/2 compared to the US due to more efficient commuting and buildings (still far from optimal though).
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> 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 residen…
The national highway system and 1950s’ surburbanisation are top-down policy choices, not emergent behaviour.
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Europe has the resources to produce cheap energy they just decided to not exploit it and import their energy from Russia and others.
The conflict between Russia and the west is deeply rooted on the hegemony of rampant worldwide liberalism which creates the problems I described. It's a meat grinder which consumes not only excessive energy but people's livelihoods, too. It is certainly not a world I would want my son to live in.
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 ~…
I wonder if you can have a community fridge with different sized compartments so you can pay for access to the amount of space you need; to me those is like using a launderette rather than paying for a washing machine.
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My google doctorate says that energy efficiency of refining is 90%. And you ignored the energy efficiency of mining coal. > You can play this game all day long And you should, to be serious about CO2 emissions reduction. Otherwise, we're all just fooling ourselves.
But only around 30% of the refined fuel’s energy transfers into useful work done with the ICE vehicle. If the BEV is running with their 2kw heating turned up full blast in addition to running down the road, and there was a heat loss of around 2-5% while charging the car then We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE. Then there’s the electricity supply which ranges from 0 refinement loss and 50% t…
Right. Now factor in the losses in thermodynamic electric power generation to fuel the EV.
> We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE.
Don't neglect the losses from generating that electricity, which is about 70%.