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Brazil Hits 92% Renewable Energy Milestone

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Re: Brazil Hits 92% Renewable Energy Milestone

#31

Post by Qem »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #16

The power went out every now and then while I was in Brazil last year. Costa Rica was quite a bit while I was living there. I’m not sure I can agree to be excited about an arbitrary milestone without equivalence to expectations.

> The power went out every now and then while I was in Brazil last year.

Brazil went into a privatization craze from late 90s onwards, and most formerly state owned utilities became private concessions. The new owners cut maintenance and upgrade budgets to the bone, and over the years many sections of the grid became seriously degraded.

Re: Brazil Hits 92% Renewable Energy Milestone

#32

Post by soperj »

cogman10 wrote: post #18
soperj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balbina_Dam "As a result of the methane released from its vast reservoir, proportional to its output, the Balbina Dam emits ten times more greenhouse gases than a coal plant."

This is going to depend very heavily on where the dam is placed. Balbina is particularly bad because it sunk a ton of organic material with a bunch of acreage taken up. Almost a worst case for a dam really.

I don't know that the dams in Canada are any better in terms of sunk organic material Williston reservoir in BC and the Manicouagan Reservoir are nearly as big and they didn't clear either of them. The Smallwood Reservoir is 3 times the size of Balbina's.

Re: Brazil Hits 92% Renewable Energy Milestone

#33

Post by Qem »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #14
gchamonlive wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is untrue. 27% of gas is ethanol, and virtually all cars run on both gas and ethanol. Trucks use diesel, sure, but the amount of cars running on ethanol is not negligible. So while you would still need to renew the automotive fleet to electric vehicles to tap into that, Brazil is already using renewable fuel sources for cars. Not to mention that converting all cars to electricity will put more pressure on the el…

ethanol produces more emissions than regular gas. the only thing ethanol is good for is as a farming subsidy.

Corn ethanol, sure. But in Brazil most ethanol comes from sugarcane, the has much larger yields than corn. There's some biodiesel too, but IIRC it is problematic, like corn ethanol.

Re: Brazil Hits 92% Renewable Energy Milestone

#35

Post by Retric »

Qem wrote: post #27
Retric wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s extremely misleading to the point of being false. The dam is creating zero carbon and Methane breaks down to CO2 which is then counted as part of its global warming impact on some timescale. When you remove the dam the total global warming impact from all the methane produced over a ~100 year lifespan quickly goes to 0. That doesn’t happen from a coal power plant.

~100 years still too late. In 2050 we already risk catastrophic impacts if we keep business as usual.

It began operating in February 1989 making it 35 years old and thus it’s currently adding in effect 1/8th the net methane as year one and that keeps dropping every year. As only ~13% of the methane it released 35 years ago is still around.

We can reduce atmospheric methane by a trivial amount if we removed it early, but it would currently be replaced by fossil fuels a net loss for the environment.

Re: Brazil Hits 92% Renewable Energy Milestone

#36

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

kurthr wrote: post #22
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ethanol produces more emissions than regular gas. the only thing ethanol is good for is as a farming subsidy.

Generally, that is true BUT... In Brazil there is a huge manufacture of sugar with excess baggasse that is used to power sugar extraction/drying and provide heat for alcohol distillation. There is a related industry of extracting leftover sugars, fermenting them, and making alcohol in rural agricultural regions, where the infrastructure for gasoline and diesel didn't exist 20-30 years ago. As a result, there is a lot…

Oh cool! I didn't know that. Thank you

Re: Brazil Hits 92% Renewable Energy Milestone

#37

Post by vitorgrs »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #16

The power went out every now and then while I was in Brazil last year. Costa Rica was quite a bit while I was living there. I’m not sure I can agree to be excited about an arbitrary milestone without equivalence to expectations.

Which have 0 relations with power generation. There's no lack of energy in Brazil.

More likely you went to a state with bad infrastructure (or it was during a storm, pretty possible).

Re: Brazil Hits 92% Renewable Energy Milestone

#38

Post by sp332 »

cogman10 wrote: post #28
TSiege wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true! Methane is not only 84x more warming than CO2, it is at a record high at <1900ppb and rising, the current level is higher than the RCP 4.5 warming scenario by the IPCC (which is in the middle level of a warming scenario), and there is evidence that the atmospheric lifespan might be increasing

This is what my quick google turned up [1]. > A molecule of methane traps more heat than a molecule of CO2, but methane has a relatively short lifespan of 7 to 12 years in the atmosphere, while CO2 can persist for hundreds of years or more. Doesn't mean it's correct though so I'd be happy to see different thinking on this. That being said, IIRC, isn't one of the models for the increasing methane the melting permafros…

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-do-we-compare-methane-ca... "Over 20 years, the methane would trap about 80 times as much heat as the CO2. Over 100 years, that original ton of methane would trap about 28 times as much heat as the ton of CO2."

So converting a bunch of atmospheric CO2 to methane evey year is not good.

Re: Brazil Hits 92% Renewable Energy Milestone

#39

Post by dheera »

kurthr wrote: post #22
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ethanol produces more emissions than regular gas. the only thing ethanol is good for is as a farming subsidy.

Generally, that is true BUT... In Brazil there is a huge manufacture of sugar with excess baggasse that is used to power sugar extraction/drying and provide heat for alcohol distillation. There is a related industry of extracting leftover sugars, fermenting them, and making alcohol in rural agricultural regions, where the infrastructure for gasoline and diesel didn't exist 20-30 years ago. As a result, there is a lot…

The world also eats way way too much sugar and all that sugar production isn't necessary.
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