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Solar energy solves global warming

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#41

Post by oh_sigh »

kibwen wrote: post #34
msandford wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failing to understand the enormous amount of methane infrastructure (natural gas) and the utility of reusing it is also a mistake IMO. There's got to be tens of trillions of dollars in deployed methane infrastructure. To suggest that's a weak argument is baffling. Economics are real.

There was just as much sunk cost into coal infrastructure, but that's not an argument against phasing out coal.

Exactly - it is an argument for continuing to use coal, because we have valuable infrastructure even though we know how bad it is for the environment. Which explains why it is so hard to stop using coal.

Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#42

Post by kibwen »

oh_sigh wrote: post #41
kibwen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was just as much sunk cost into coal infrastructure, but that's not an argument against phasing out coal.

Exactly - it is an argument for continuing to use coal, because we have valuable infrastructure even though we know how bad it is for the environment. Which explains why it is so hard to stop using coal.

In the US, the share of power being generated by coal has fallen from 50% in 2005 to 20% in 2022. (In absolute terms, which is what really matters in an emissions context, it's fallen from 2T kwh to 0.75.) To phase out existing infrastructure just takes incentives and time (and 18 years isn't even that much time on the scale of infrastructure investments). The same can happen to methane infrastructure, especially since non-fossil alternatives are far more viable than they were when coal began to be phased out.

Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#43

Post by NickM »

kibwen wrote: post #34
msandford wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failing to understand the enormous amount of methane infrastructure (natural gas) and the utility of reusing it is also a mistake IMO. There's got to be tens of trillions of dollars in deployed methane infrastructure. To suggest that's a weak argument is baffling. Economics are real.

There was just as much sunk cost into coal infrastructure, but that's not an argument against phasing out coal.

Sure, but if we could reuse the coal infrastructure as part of a transition away from fossil fuels, why wouldn't we consider that?

Unlike methane, coal is mostly just used for power generation, and there's relatively little infrastructure associated with transporting it. Natural gas is used for furnaces, stoves, dryers, hot water heaters, etc. and there are millions of miles of pipes and associated infrastructure used to transport it directly to peoples' homes.

The complexity and cost for retrofitting hundreds of millions of homes and electrifying all the associated appliances is immense, not to mention all the backlash you get from people who love their gas stoves and grills. If we could just switch to generating renewable methane it would be a huge win in terms of logistical simplicity and would minimize disruption to peoples' day to day lives, which would probably make folks a lot more willing to accept it without putting up a huge fight.

Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#44

Post by pfdietz »

iSnow wrote: post #26
_aleph2c_ wrote: post #16

The nice thing about methane is that it's not too energy dense, so you can sell it to your population like gasoline. You may not want to give the population mini-nukes or vacuum energy generation from EVOs. We don't need to use solar panels though, we already have exceedingly cheap energy generation in the form of nuclear power. We also have inexpensive ways of transmuting the nuclear waste. We don't really have a en…

The problem with nuclear is that there is no cheap form factor of nuclear reactors available right here and now, it's all "in the future...". Current NPP designs have painfully high CAPEX, way more so than solar. And just slashing regulatory requirements to make it cheaper strikes me as unwise.

Especially when the increases in regulatory requirements have been driven by experience, with actual accidents and with near misses that could have been serious accidents.

Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#45

Post by pfdietz »

leach wrote: post #19

Isn’t nuclear more stable and efficient than solar? Why is it not regarded as a solution

What do you mean by "efficient"? Engineering efficiency? They use different inputs, so comparing that is meaningless. Economic efficiency? No, they're much less economically efficient. That's why so much more solar (and wind) are being installed now instead of nuclear.

Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#46

Post by pfdietz »

photochemsyn wrote: post #29

If you're going to try to use solar power to reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, the only endpoints that make much sense are carbon fiber and diamond. Things like limestone require a counterion like calcium or magnesium for each captured carbon atom, which is hard to come by. Routes to carbon fiber and diamond pass through methane, which is also the input for the vast majority of petrochemical processe…

Counterions like magnesium are quite abundant. After all, this is how CO2 will be drawn down if we do nothing (but it will take hundreds of thousands of years.)

There has been much work on exploiting the more reactive silicates, like olivine, to fix CO2. The volumes of rock involved are large, but there's a lot of silicates out there.

Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#47

Post by goethes_kind »

Which is easier:

1. Build solar and wind, anywhere across the globe to 4x overcapacity, and then use power-to-gas technology to store the energy into synthetic hydrocarbons, which can be plugged directly into our current infrastructure.

2. Reinvent the whole of society to run on lithium batteries.

Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#48

Post by hannob »

foxyv wrote: post #35
hannob wrote: post #17

When considering synthetic chemicals made from solar energy, methane is probably one of the last you should consider. Making any type of chemical energy carrier comes with substantial losses, so whenever you can, using electricity directly is better. If you absolutely need a chemical energy carrier, the first one you will look at is hydrogen, because it's the simplest and you avoid all the direct air capture or other…

The problem with hydrogen is the storage. Although electrolysis and other methods of generating hydrogen are fairly efficient, the cost to compress it is obscene. Sabatier production of Methane is comparable, however we already have infrastructure to use Methane and storage is a solved problem. Methanol production requires methane as a synthesis gas so it just adds another step. Plant based methanol has all the same…

> Methanol production requires methane as a synthesis gas so it just adds another step.

That's not true. Methanol can be made directly from CO2 and H2. This has been tried more than a decade ago: https://www.carbonrecycling.is/ They just opened a much larger plant with this technology in China.

There's currently a huge push in the shipping industry towards renewable methanol, and there are a bunch of companies investing in this space.

Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#49

Post by narag »

hannob wrote: post #17

When considering synthetic chemicals made from solar energy, methane is probably one of the last you should consider. Making any type of chemical energy carrier comes with substantial losses, so whenever you can, using electricity directly is better. If you absolutely need a chemical energy carrier, the first one you will look at is hydrogen, because it's the simplest and you avoid all the direct air capture or other…

Making any type of chemical energy carrier comes with substantial losses

The goal presented in the article seems to be cleaning the atmosphere, not generating chemicals. So H2 and ammonia would be irrelevant. And it's not so much about maximazing efficiency as not losing too much.

The alternative should be other carbon-based chemicals, as useful as methane, needed in huge volumes and with a practical process of extraction using solar panels. Is there something like that?

Also, is there another product with the same characteristics with methane as a starting point?

Re: Solar energy solves global warming

#50

Post by NickM »

leach wrote: post #19

Isn’t nuclear more stable and efficient than solar? Why is it not regarded as a solution

Because it's currently much more expensive than solar and wind, even when you factor in the costs of dealing with intermittency.

Even if public perception weren't an obstacle, and even if you didn't have to deal with waste storage, and even if building nuclear plants wasn't a glacially slow process, it just doesn't make economic sense to focus on nuclear anymore.

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