I would say energy doesn’t just appear itself, it comes from good infrastructure+support, which comes from a well planning from the government, which also require the govt to be competent, which require a well govt structure. Therefore the energy correlation is there but not a causation.
All poverty is energy poverty
81–90 of 466 posts
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#82Interesting 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 right now, though. And we'd have more, cheaper energy if we deployed new renewables. But the author seems to lose his interest in helping the poor if it didn't involve fossil fuels being used inefficiently.
See Europe now for an example of how over-reliance on intermittent generation with no storage yields incredible energy instability.
Who wants a grid where your refrigerator can't run when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining?
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#83Interesting 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…
> 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 over for developed countries. That's why Europeans are currently terrified.
For those wishing to go a bit further than nitpicking the article, look up the following two concepts:
- Peak oil [1] - Energy returned on energy invested [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#84In order to build systems to extract and use energy requires an educated society - that is the root deficiency. And it’s a lot more than just dropping books from airplanes.
Well, there's a circular dependency here - or if you're more optimistic, a virtuous cycle.
People who have to fetch water by hand and wash clothes manually don't have time to read books on nuclear power plant design.
And societies with poor education can't build and maintain complex power infrastructure like nuclear power plants.
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#85Also even here and Europe when price of energy goes up poor people swich to burning wood or coal.
This is bad for enviroment and the air qualit in their house causing disease.
Alot of the policy decisions are made by people least affected by them. This also explains rise of Trump and populisim.
Here in Canada, in our 5 party system, Trudue was voted in by the margin of office workers in Toronto. And proceeded locked down hard, responding to their hypochondriac fears. Their suffering of laptop work from home and food delivert to their door was so bad that many wanted to extend the lockdowns indefinetly.
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#86In order to build systems to extract and use energy requires an educated society - that is the root deficiency. And it’s a lot more than just dropping books from airplanes.
Access to electricity is a major driver of educational attainment.
1. Access to lighting at night means students can actually do their homework.
2. Access to internet also boosts students attainment.
3. Having access to electricity means you are able to retain the best teachers as they won’t stay for long without all the mod cons.
We’re trying solve both problems at the same by teaching kids electronics by building a solar charge controller:
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#87You can be poor while easily meeting your energy needs. A classic example is remote rural areas where virtually all inhabitants own some plot of land. Even if they are poor they can feed their fireplace with some wood, for free.
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#88Interesting 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 ~22.8B kWh per day.
If I'm doing my math right, that's more than enough energy for 3B households to have refrigeration.
The problem isn't that we don't have enough energy.
The problem is that most of the world is really poor.
In the simplest of terms - you can't get much cheaper energy at scale than $0.10 per kWh. A lot of households are living on $2 per day. They can maybe afford 5% for refrigeration - but a refrigerator only lasts 7 years or so and costs $200+. That's another $0.08 per day. That's pushing 10% for refrigeration. I don't think they can afford it.
And when you're that poor - you're probably not going to be able to get electricity reliably for $0.10 per kWh...
When you're that poor, $0.18 = close to half the calories you need for the day. I don't think you can just shift that to refrigeration. What are you going to refrigerate anyway?
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
We do have the energy right now, though. And we'd have more, cheaper energy if we deployed new renewables. But the author seems to lose his interest in helping the poor if it didn't involve fossil fuels being used inefficiently.
The author seems to advocate for renewables and while we have plenty of energy available capturing it still needs work done. Some of the energy we could use now needs to go mining an manufacturing then we need physically build the infrastructure. The author is saying we should do all those things, that they need done, that the total amount of energy humanity uses should grow not shrink
> The author is saying we should do all those things, that they need done, that the total amount of energy humanity uses should grow not shrink
Well...yea.
It's unbelievably naive how some believe humanity should somehow start using _less_ energy. If they actually got their way, we would see a recession/depression that would be the most painful of our lifetime.
We should be focused on raising the standard of living for ALL people. We can work towards that goal by generating as much energy as possible with the caveat of doing so intelligently and responsibly.
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#90If we had energy cheap enough for every human to live at the highest current levels of consumption, wouldn’t we have to do something with the waste heat? Radiator fins on space elevators? Or can we send it out into space from the ground?
I am amused by the optimism of these responses. Nobody is concerned that if we end up with cheap nuclear fusion that humanity won’t use a lot more of it? Would humans stop building resorts in deserts?