All poverty is energy poverty
omnibudsman.substack.com
All poverty is energy poverty
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Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#2On this:
> "There's probably about 3 million households in Rwanda, and a vanishingly small number have a fridge. A refrigerator uses about 2 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy per day, so if we were able to get one into every household, that would add about 2 billion kWh (2 terawatt-hours, or tWh) to Rwanda's annual energy usage. That's about as much energy as there is contained in 1 million barrels of oil — and fully one-third of Rwanda's current primary energy consumption."
1) Energy-efficient refrigerators are available at ~1.1 kwH/day. This reduces the needed energy estimate by about half.
2) Energy capture for refrigeration from solar in Rwanda makes much more sense than oil production does. Under full sunlight, a decent 2.5 kW solar array produces about 10 kWH per day (as the full 2.5 KW is only produced at noon, tailing off towards morning and evening). As you probably want to run the refrigerator at night, a battery capable of storing about half that output (5 kWH) would also be needed.
The notion that you'd want to set up an oil-burning power plant (which only converts energy stored in oil to electricity at ~25% efficiency or so) in Rwanda is pretty silly.
As far as claims that there isn't enough land to set up solar panels to provide this minimal home energy supply, the roofs of most dwellings would provide adequate area. It's also possible to grow a wide variety of crops in conjunction with wind turbines and solar panels on agricultural land (wide spacing is all).
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#3Or another way I like to put it - unnafordable energy = unaffordable everything.
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#4[deleted]
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#5More reading:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Worlds-Energy-Prob...
> No politician wants to tell us the real story of fossil fuel depletion. The real story is that we are already running short of oil, coal and natural gas because the direct and indirect costs of extraction are reaching a point where the selling price of food and other basic necessities needs to be unacceptably high to make the overall economic system work. At the same time, wind and solar and other “clean energy” sources are nowhere nearly able to substitute for the quantity of fossil fuels being lost.
> This unfortunate energy story is essentially a physics problem. Energy per capita and, in fact, resources per capita, must stay high enough for an economy’s growing population. When this does not happen, history shows that civilizations tend to collapse.
And Hyman Rickover's 1957 speech on energy and scarcity: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/02/speech-from-1957-predi...
Climate change is chiefly caused by two things: uncontrolled population growth and energy consumption growth.
A high standard of living - and civilization itself - is impossible without high energy consumption per capita.
Do you see the problem?
I can think of solutions that would be effective, but it would involve a lot of suffering.
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#6Telephony is one of the analogies. Many developing countries' rural villages could simply leapfrog the landline telephone technology and move directly to cell phones.
Computers - instead of desktops, straight to smart phones and tablets.
Banking - instead of a lot of bank branch offices and having to travel and queue, straight to online banking (and even being very advanced compared to many western countries).
It could be so with refrigeration. Solar power is potentially a really good fit for that.
Maybe electric scooters will do a lot for mobility at some point and people can skip the whole car thing.
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#7More reading: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Worlds-Energy-Prob... > No politician wants to tell us the real story of fossil fuel depletion. The real story is that we are already running short of oil, coal and natural gas because the direct and indirect costs of extraction are reaching a point where the selling price of food and other basic necessities needs to be unacceptably high to make the overall econ…
That first article just reads like scare porn, calibrated to maximize clicks, while being light on actual substance.
It looks like the author has a history of writing like this. I wonder what her track record of being "right" is?
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#8More reading: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Worlds-Energy-Prob... > No politician wants to tell us the real story of fossil fuel depletion. The real story is that we are already running short of oil, coal and natural gas because the direct and indirect costs of extraction are reaching a point where the selling price of food and other basic necessities needs to be unacceptably high to make the overall econ…
You might be pleased to learn that the Malthusians have a nearly 200 year record of being wrong.
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#9I assumed they were just going to ignore renewables, since the kind of person who writes these things generally does.
But instead they weirdly skipped over it and started fantasizing about some new technology that doesn't exist yet.
What happened to energy poverty being important? "The current cheapest, cleanest, safest sources of energy in history aren't green enough for me" was not an ending I expected.
Is this intentional pro-fossil fuels propaganda, written with full self-knowledge of that fact, or are they just so wrapped up in lies that they think this weird rant somehow reflects reality and is helpful to society?
I genuinely don't get it.
Is it possible to write that many words on a topic and intentionally get "primary energy" wrong and believe that it reflects the actual useful economic work done? They mention nuclear a couple of times, so surely they're aware that nuclear can generate both heat and electricity and it's the electricity that's most helpful?
Quick summary from the boring stodgy IEA
https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/7ebafc81-74ed-412b-...
> In the net zero pathway, global energy demand in 2050 is around 8% smaller than today, but it serves an economy more than twice as big and a population with 2 billion more people. More efficient use of energy, resource efficiency and behavioural changes combine to offset increases in demand for energy services as the world economy grows and access to energy is extended to all.
> Instead of fossil fuels, the energy sector is based largely on renewable energy. Two-thirds of total energy supply in 2050 is from wind, solar, bioenergy, geothermal and hydro energy. Solar becomes the largest source, accounting for one-fifth of energy supplies. Solar PV capacity increases 20-fold between now and 2050, and wind power 11-fold.
> Net zero means a huge decline in the use of fossil fuels. They fall from almost four-fifths of total energy supply today to slightly over one-fifth by 2050. Fossil fuels that remain in 2050 are used in goods where the carbon is embodied in the product such as plastics, in facilities fitted with CCUS, and in sectors where low-emissions technology options are scarce.
> Electricity accounts for almost 50% of total energy consumption in 2050. It plays a key role across all sectors – from transport and buildings to industry – and is essential to produce low-emissions fuels such as hydrogen. To achieve this, total electricity generation increases over two-and-a-half-times between today and 2050. At the same time, no additional new final investment decisions should be taken for new unabated coal plants, the least efficient coal plants are phased out by 2030, and the remaining coal plants still in use by 2040 are retrofitted.
> By 2050, almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for nearly 70%. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear.
Re: All poverty is energy poverty
#10I’ve long suspected that currencies are really just units of measurement convertible to the joule (or calorie).