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“Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

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Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#51

Post by byroot »

actinium226 wrote: post #24

Well hello Mr. Malthus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus Back to seriousness - the author claims there are limits to nuclear, wind, and solar, but does not state what those limits are. The limit on nuclear is not clear to me - France gets something like 75% of its energy from nuclear. It seems the main limit on nuclear has been public sentiment, which must be weighed with public sentiment on climat…

> France gets something like 75% of its energy from nuclear.

That's not quite correct. We do get 75% of our electricity from nuclear, but electricity is only ~25% of the energy consumed in France.

So in practice about 18% of our energy comes from nuclear, and way over 75% of it from fossil fuels.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#52

Post by Gibbon1 »

toast0 wrote: post #36
actinium226 wrote: post #24

Well hello Mr. Malthus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus Back to seriousness - the author claims there are limits to nuclear, wind, and solar, but does not state what those limits are. The limit on nuclear is not clear to me - France gets something like 75% of its energy from nuclear. It seems the main limit on nuclear has been public sentiment, which must be weighed with public sentiment on climat…

Finding appropriate sites for generators would probably be the engineering limit for nuclear. I don't know if nuclear is easy or hard to get started in a black start condition; if they're hard to start, there's probably a max % of the grid you'd want to be nuclear. But the will of the people and regulatory hurdles mean permitting and construction is slow and economics are not great. Also, there's probably a manufactu…

There are also technical skills and geopolitical issues with nuclear don't exist with solar. You can deliver solar panels to the Southern Congo on truck.

Also you have a choice, build a nuke plant that will produce power for 50 years. Or buid a plant to produce solar panels for 50 years. That's an accounting problem that would be interesting to see the results of.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#53

Post by dredmorbius »

XorNot wrote: post #39
dredmorbius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The limits to various forms of energy are well-known. It's a bit more than I can describe in an HN comment, though Tom "Do the Math" Murphy has a good guide, index to his posts here: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/post-index/ Heinberg himself has written of them in earlier books and articles. Essentially humans have access to the fluxes of solar, geothermal, and tidal energy, and the stores of fossil fuels, nuclear fissi…

> economic growth (and its concommittant and requisite resource and energy growth) simply cannot continue indefinitely. Economic growth occurs in any situation where you increase productivity. But this means you can increase productivity in anyway, including by efficiency improvements. Economic growth can't be sustained at the same rate it has been, but it can be sustained because while 100% efficiency is an asymptot…

The assertion that economic growth can occur without an increase in resource consumption is one that's been made repeatedly, but that flies in the face of all evidence.

The story is somewhat complicated by the fact that primary consumption of energy and materials can be outsourced, giving the appearance of decoupling of growth from resource use. Once net imports and resource consumption at point-of-origin are accounted for, the connection is resumed.

Global GDP growth to date has occurred in lockstep with increased material and energy resource use.

I've looked at the relations myself simply using national GDP and energy use through about 2010, see: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vlksg/economi...

And more robustly:

"The material footprint of nations ", Thomas O. Wiedmanna, Heinz Schandl, Manfred Lenzenc, Daniel Moranc, Sangwon Suhf, James Westb, and Keiichiro Kanemotoc. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1220362110. PubMed ID24003158. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1220362110

"The true raw material footprint of nations ", September 3, 2013. "The study, involving researchers from UNSW, CSIRO, the University of Sydney, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, was published today in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It reveals that the decoupling of natural resources from economic growth has been exaggerated." https://web.archive.org/web/20130906063246/https://newsroom....

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#54

Post by dredmorbius »

ThomPete wrote: post #7
cosmic_shame wrote: post #4

Given how long these problems have been staring us in the face, it's truly hard not to be totally pessimistic about the future. If we haven't changed yet, do we even have the capacity to do so?

Problems are solved by optimists. Dont be pessimistic, we will solve problems as they arise. If you are truly worries about your future the best way is to get into the trenches.

Problems are solved by realists, not optimists.

Unbridled optimists sell woo.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#55

Post by lm28469 »

aeternum wrote: post #47
1970-01-01 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 50s, nuclear was being treated as the magic that would solve all energy problems. There were ideas for making fission cars, trains, planes, etc. But since then, civilization has only benefited from nuclear reactors via power plants, naval ships, RTGs, and depending on how you see it, bombs. The magic of nuclear fission never provided the complete revolution it was setup to do. Just as we weren't responsib…

The problem with nuclear is the slow iteration speed and extreme cost of failure. Those are not good properties if you want to push technology forward quickly. The great thing about solar and wind is that we can iterate very quickly and catastrophic failure costs are nearly non-existent. Nuclear still has great potential but the costs are just too high (and maybe they should be).

Anyone who argue against nuclear while failing to acknowledge the issues of solar and wind, which are 10 times more problematic, can't be truthful.

Unless we enter a _major_ era of degrowth there is no way we'll get out of fossil fuels without nuclear.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#56

Post by alexgmcm »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #33
actinium226 wrote: post #24

Well hello Mr. Malthus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus Back to seriousness - the author claims there are limits to nuclear, wind, and solar, but does not state what those limits are. The limit on nuclear is not clear to me - France gets something like 75% of its energy from nuclear. It seems the main limit on nuclear has been public sentiment, which must be weighed with public sentiment on climat…

Back in the 50s, nuclear was being treated as the magic that would solve all energy problems. There were ideas for making fission cars, trains, planes, etc. But since then, civilization has only benefited from nuclear reactors via power plants, naval ships, RTGs, and depending on how you see it, bombs. The magic of nuclear fission never provided the complete revolution it was setup to do. Just as we weren't responsib…

I think fusion is a lot closer than 50 years away.

We should know without a doubt whether it is workable by 2050, perhaps before then.

I strongly recommend the book "The Future of Fusion Energy"[1] as a good summary of the current state of the field. It's written by two fusion researchers and is legit (I have a Master's in Physics myself and almost did a Plasma Physics PhD so I am somewhat familiar with the field).

The book isn't dry either, it's honestly one of the best books I've read in years.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Future-Fusion-Energy-Jason-Parisi/dp/...

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#57

Post by Spooky23 »

credit_guy wrote: post #18
burlesona wrote: post #16

This strikes me as a very defeatist and Malthusian take on the world, and, frankly, too US-centric. While the US hasn’t managed the political will for significant climate reform, we are far from the majority of the world, and even if we magically had a green revolution and became the worlds first zero-emission nation, it’s unlikely that this would be enough to avert climate change. The developing world wants modern l…

> even if we magically had a green revolution and became the worlds first zero-emission nation, it’s unlikely that this would be enough to avert climate change. It's actually quite likely that it would go a long way towards averting climate change. Sure, the US contributes only about 6 GT of greenhouse gases of the 50 GT emitted by the whole world annually, so it first seems that zeroing out this would still result i…

The innovation is the easy part.

The hard part is that the structure of our governance is such that extractive industries wield way more power than they would in other environments.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#58

Post by ThomPete »

dredmorbius wrote: post #54
ThomPete wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problems are solved by optimists. Dont be pessimistic, we will solve problems as they arise. If you are truly worries about your future the best way is to get into the trenches.

Problems are solved by realists, not optimists. Unbridled optimists sell woo.

Realists just accept things as they are. Optimist believe they can change the future in ways realists can't. Optimism is the mental beacon for any progress not realism.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#59

Post by oceanplexian »

Retric wrote: post #22
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why in the world is this comment being downvotes? There is nothing in this comment that I see is incorrect, and if you’re going to vigorously down vote because “I don’t like things that make me feel bad!” you at least ought to comment as to what could be wrong here.

It’s not a question of political will solar is now cheaper than coal in the vast majority of the world. It’s one of the reasons why coal went from 39% in 2014 of US generation down to 19.3% in 2020 with a lot more scheduled for decommissioning over the next 5 years. Even when Trump was making many pro coal speeches, industry viewed coal as a dead end. China is often mentioned as adding new coal power plants, but even…

Coal use had decreased quite a bit in the US but I believe it’s understood that cheap natural gas has been responsible and not solar.

So far as the importance of coal I think an overlooked aspect is that it’s a major ingredient in manufacturing steel. In the last year alone steel has shot up 37% in price, which has big implications for all sorts of industries.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#60

Post by Retric »

oceanplexian wrote: post #59
Retric wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a question of political will solar is now cheaper than coal in the vast majority of the world. It’s one of the reasons why coal went from 39% in 2014 of US generation down to 19.3% in 2020 with a lot more scheduled for decommissioning over the next 5 years. Even when Trump was making many pro coal speeches, industry viewed coal as a dead end. China is often mentioned as adding new coal power plants, but even…

Coal use had decreased quite a bit in the US but I believe it’s understood that cheap natural gas has been responsible and not solar. So far as the importance of coal I think an overlooked aspect is that it’s a major ingredient in manufacturing steel. In the last year alone steel has shot up 37% in price, which has big implications for all sorts of industries.

The US also dropped total fossil fuels due to a mix of wind and solar. What specifically killed coal however wasn’t just prices but dispatch ability as natural gas is far cheaper to turn off and on daily. Crazy cheap solar means the ability to turn off generation every day will continue to become more valuable.

  Per person annual electricity generation was: 
  Fossil Fuel   8,626 kWh in 2014 vs 7,861 kWh in 2019
  Solar            55 kWh in 2014 vs   327 kWh in 2019
  Wind            570 kWh in 2014 vs   914 kWh in 2019
  All Renewable 1,689 kWh in 2014 vs 2,302 kWh in 2019
Fossil fuels actually peaked in 2007 at 9,922 kWh vs 1,170 kWh of Renewable.
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