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>"This particular solar cell is very expensive, however researchers believe it was important to show the upper limit of what is possible in terms of efficiency.

>"This particular solar cell is very expensive, however researchers believe it was important to show the upper limit of what is possible in terms of efficiency. Despite the current costs of the materials involved, the technique used to create the cells shows much promise. Eventually a similar product may be brought to market, enabled by cost reductions from very high solar concentration levels and technology to recycle the expensive growth substrates." We will end our reliance on fossil fuels not by forcing masses of people to change their lifestyles and inconveniencing them, but by developing green energy tech that is simply more efficient and cost effective than fossil fuels. Once this happens the transition away from carbon based energy sources will be swift. Given the rate of progress, I believe we'll see widespread adoption of renewable energy far before climactic conditions on earth become dire for humanity.

vkou 9y ago
When do you think we will reach 1/10th of our current GHG emissions? 2020? 2030? 2040? 2050? 2100? Plus or minus five years? Will we have a linear decline to that level? When do you think that decline will start? Is there a particular model you're thinking of? What degree of GHG concentrations/temperature increase will be the limit of what you consider to be 'not dire for humanity'? Is it compatible with your expected model of GHG emissions? Are the billion people living in the Indian subcontinent included in your definition of humanity, or are we talking about North Americans and Europeans? If yes, will we be willing to shelter environmental refugees from impacted areas? I'd really love to believe that everything will turn out fine - but while I've ran into many optimists, I've yet to run into one that is willing to quantify the reasons for their optimism.
- guimarin 9y ago
  10% -> 2025; 20% -> 2030; 50% -> 2040; 95% -> 2050. India/Africa are included there. I think 95% of potential GHG emmissions (not just indexed to today but to 'present time') will be crossed in like 2060 or so. Renewables are going extremely quickly. we are in the steep part of the s-curve and there is no reason to believe we wont' get a few doublings due to battery cost decreases and deployed solar cost efficiencies. The transition will be a lot faster than ppl believe.
  - vkou 9y ago
    By that plan, we'd be looking at ~21.6 years of current GHG emissions. This will add ~777 GT of CO2 to the atmosphere. Which will put us at ~500 ppm CO2 (We just passed 400 ppm). That would be warming between 2.5C and 3C. If you want to hit a 95% reduction in GHG emissions, you're also going to have to: * Shut down every single fossil fuel power plant over the next 25 years. * Build enough renewable/nuclear powerplants to replace all of our fossil fuel power sources, twice over. (Assuming we switch to electrical transportation.) And, the elephant in the room: * Halve all current trans-continental shipping and air travel. It is currently responsible for ~6-7% of our GHG emissions. (And if it were to grow unconstrained, would likely double in volume in the next 30 years.) * While bringing our other emissions down to nearly zero. We can clearly do all this, but it would require significant changes in our lifestyles - something that optimists tend to not be willing to accept.
    - themgt 9y ago
      Agreed. It is more dire than most scientists are willing to admit or the public are willing to hear. At this point I think the best hope is: a) incredibly rapid adoption of renewables b) a Manhattan project to find a way to pull carbon out of the atmosphere starting within ~1-3 decades, once it becomes beyond obvious we've already emitted far too much and the consequences of inaction are more than human civilization can bear
    - guimarin 9y ago
      This is the craziest thing I've written in 2017 but: I sincerely believe we will have consumer fusion reactors by 2030 if not sooner. The work of MIT SPARC combined with graphene manufacture will make this a reality. Combine this with all the investment in battery load leveling and electric vehicles and you'll see a very rapid energy cost reduction and deployment. Probably 10 years once the design is functioning. As to the boats, these reactors are well sized for boats. My guess is ICE Air-travel will be completely eliminated for mass consumption by 2070 if not 2050, replaced by faster cheaper evacuated trains and electric short-range aircraft. The power density of li-ion batteries at roughly 350WHr/liter is not great, I'd wager we can easily get to 700WHr/liter with graphene supercapacitors utilizing a combination of 3D layering and fractal interaction. I've seen an experimental graphene supercap with fractal interaction at 1200Whr/Liter but it had a tendency to explode with only a few cycles. The normal graphene supercaps go like 100k cycles with no degradation, or 30 times longer than lithium ion cobalt (what tesla uses). We are so freaking close to cheap graphene it's ridiculous. That's the technology no one sees coming, it's just about to enter the productivity plateau. /end crazy person talk.
- Retric 9y ago
  My guess is ~2070-2090 will see 20% of current fossil fuel use. Boats and Aircraft are going to be hardest to transition and will likely make up a large chunk of that 10+%. Bio fuels may take some of this, but it really depends on overall demand for liquid hydrocarbons. Electricity and home heating are going to change from market forces. Cars have many options, but oil is going to get expensive (as in 2-3x current price not 10x) which will push alternatives. Electric trains can take over most long distance trucking and shorter distance is easier to transition. This will be a fairly fast transition if oil spikes again in ~2030-2040 combined with some form of carbon tax. PS: Plastics / fertilizer and other chemical processes are going to be the wildcard IMO. But, they don't involve burning carbon so they are also less important.
  - vkou 9y ago
    I was writing up a response to your initial guess of 10% by 2060, which was... Pretty dire. Past-the-Paris agreement, 2.5C to 3C warming dire. 20% by 2070-2090, on the other hand, is a lost cause. That would put atmospheric at 580 PPM by 2080. That's >4C of warming, if we don't hit any positive feedback loops. I'm not particularly concerned about plastics. They can be synthesized from biomass.
    - Zigurd 9y ago
      In a few years the question will become "How to do geoengineering safely relative to the risks of warming?" The planet may be able to support 9-11 billion people with mostly renewable energy, but perhaps humanity will not get there fast enough to avert risk of hitting a positive feedback level that would commit humanity to far more massive and therefore far riskier geoengineering.
      - quantum_magpie 9y ago
        The planet is unable to sustainably support the current 7 billion people. The only way I see 9 billion fitting in here is if we switch to purely artificial stuff and eradicate all wildlife and their habitat. The way I see it, the limit is at 1 billion people if we want to preserve current situation, and even less if we want to let the nature regenerate.
birdmanjeremy 9y ago
I like your optimism, but I think you're wrong. It may already be too late.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  This will make a very nice ecological pressure on humans.
pishpash 9y ago
Climactic conditions will always be a problem. The next headache will be how to deal with a heat bath from uniformly dissipated waste heat from this energy rather than natural gradients and storage that drive climactic processes. When greedy humans get their hands on 'unlimited energy' that is not a panacea, but a much bigger catastrophe waiting to happen.
- vkou 9y ago
  Since we're talking about solar power, this is not a huge concern.
- wernercd 9y ago
  meh... people have been screaming DHOOOOOOOOOM!!! for generations upon generation... We'll never make enough food... we'll never have enough energy... we'll never get along... Things are always bordering on the end of the world yet we survive.
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    Prior returns don't guarantee future results. Have you considered that people have taken steps to avoid catastrophy.
    - wernercd 9y ago
      Granted, it only takes one "failure"... but... "people taking steps" is exactly what I was alluding too... Time and time again, cries of "Too many people!!!"... how will we feed 1 billion people? Advances in farming, logistics, technology, etc... What's being done now? More advances in farming, vertical farming, AI, etc...
  - Zigurd 9y ago
    That depends on the nature of the threat. Running out of feedstock for plastic? Not a problem. That's the sort of thing for which one can assume a technology fix will happen, and there is probably plenty of time. On the other hand, missing the population slow-down projections and ending up with a 20 billion population? That's doom, and there is no techno-savior.
the8472 9y ago
Electricity and transportation, which you often see in the headlines about progress about moving to renewables, are not the only GHG emitters. Agriculture, deforestation, heating are also big sources. As far as I have read there has been a lot less progress in that area.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  In the US, electricity + transportation makes up 56% of anthropogenic emissions and agriculture makes up 9%: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... The European Union reports aggregates a bit differently, but agriculture is only 10% there too (see Figure 3): http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Greenhouse_gas_emission_statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/... Neither the USA nor the EU are undergoing deforestation at present, and electrical heating can substitute for the vast majority of applications currently served by fossil-combustion heat. That's why most research and headlines about GHG reductions in the developed world focus on transport electrification and electricity decarbonization. In poorer parts of the world, where automobile use is less common and/or fewer people have grid tied electrical service, deforestation and agricultural emissions make up a larger share of total anthropogenic emissions. But most of the world's anthropogenic emissions, and most of the low-hanging mitigations for emissions, come from geographic regions that commonly have grid tied electrical service and other modern amenities.
  - the8472 9y ago
    But those replacements, electrical heating and industrial processes, are also holes. Basically, if we replaced 100% of the current electricity production with renewables that wouldn't even provide the energy needed for electric vehicles. So we already have to go >100%. And then we need to overhaul heating and energy-intensive industries too. And even if we get to that point we still would not be carbon-neutral due to the remaining sectors. And possibly due to new natural sources (permafrost) we're already locked into due to the warming that is already in progress. So the point is that just inventing our way to replace the current grid with green sources is insufficient for meeting the climate budget within a few decades.

vkou 9y ago

When do you think we will reach 1/10th of our current GHG emissions? 2020? 2030? 2040? 2050? 2100? Plus or minus five years? Will we have a linear decline to that level? When do you think that decline will start? Is there a particular model you're thinking of? What degree of GHG concentrations/temperature increase will be the limit of what you consider to be 'not dire for humanity'? Is it compatible with your expected model of GHG emissions? Are the billion people living in the Indian subcontinent included in your definition of humanity, or are we talking about North Americans and Europeans? If yes, will we be willing to shelter environmental refugees from impacted areas? I'd really love to believe that everything will turn out fine - but while I've ran into many optimists, I've yet to run into one that is willing to quantify the reasons for their optimism.

guimarin 9y ago
10% -> 2025; 20% -> 2030; 50% -> 2040; 95% -> 2050. India/Africa are included there. I think 95% of potential GHG emmissions (not just indexed to today but to 'present time') will be crossed in like 2060 or so. Renewables are going extremely quickly. we are in the steep part of the s-curve and there is no reason to believe we wont' get a few doublings due to battery cost decreases and deployed solar cost efficiencies. The transition will be a lot faster than ppl believe.
- vkou 9y ago
  By that plan, we'd be looking at ~21.6 years of current GHG emissions. This will add ~777 GT of CO2 to the atmosphere. Which will put us at ~500 ppm CO2 (We just passed 400 ppm). That would be warming between 2.5C and 3C. If you want to hit a 95% reduction in GHG emissions, you're also going to have to: * Shut down every single fossil fuel power plant over the next 25 years. * Build enough renewable/nuclear powerplants to replace all of our fossil fuel power sources, twice over. (Assuming we switch to electrical transportation.) And, the elephant in the room: * Halve all current trans-continental shipping and air travel. It is currently responsible for ~6-7% of our GHG emissions. (And if it were to grow unconstrained, would likely double in volume in the next 30 years.) * While bringing our other emissions down to nearly zero. We can clearly do all this, but it would require significant changes in our lifestyles - something that optimists tend to not be willing to accept.
  - themgt 9y ago
    Agreed. It is more dire than most scientists are willing to admit or the public are willing to hear. At this point I think the best hope is: a) incredibly rapid adoption of renewables b) a Manhattan project to find a way to pull carbon out of the atmosphere starting within ~1-3 decades, once it becomes beyond obvious we've already emitted far too much and the consequences of inaction are more than human civilization can bear
  - guimarin 9y ago
    This is the craziest thing I've written in 2017 but: I sincerely believe we will have consumer fusion reactors by 2030 if not sooner. The work of MIT SPARC combined with graphene manufacture will make this a reality. Combine this with all the investment in battery load leveling and electric vehicles and you'll see a very rapid energy cost reduction and deployment. Probably 10 years once the design is functioning. As to the boats, these reactors are well sized for boats. My guess is ICE Air-travel will be completely eliminated for mass consumption by 2070 if not 2050, replaced by faster cheaper evacuated trains and electric short-range aircraft. The power density of li-ion batteries at roughly 350WHr/liter is not great, I'd wager we can easily get to 700WHr/liter with graphene supercapacitors utilizing a combination of 3D layering and fractal interaction. I've seen an experimental graphene supercap with fractal interaction at 1200Whr/Liter but it had a tendency to explode with only a few cycles. The normal graphene supercaps go like 100k cycles with no degradation, or 30 times longer than lithium ion cobalt (what tesla uses). We are so freaking close to cheap graphene it's ridiculous. That's the technology no one sees coming, it's just about to enter the productivity plateau. /end crazy person talk.
Retric 9y ago
My guess is ~2070-2090 will see 20% of current fossil fuel use. Boats and Aircraft are going to be hardest to transition and will likely make up a large chunk of that 10+%. Bio fuels may take some of this, but it really depends on overall demand for liquid hydrocarbons. Electricity and home heating are going to change from market forces. Cars have many options, but oil is going to get expensive (as in 2-3x current price not 10x) which will push alternatives. Electric trains can take over most long distance trucking and shorter distance is easier to transition. This will be a fairly fast transition if oil spikes again in ~2030-2040 combined with some form of carbon tax. PS: Plastics / fertilizer and other chemical processes are going to be the wildcard IMO. But, they don't involve burning carbon so they are also less important.
- vkou 9y ago
  I was writing up a response to your initial guess of 10% by 2060, which was... Pretty dire. Past-the-Paris agreement, 2.5C to 3C warming dire. 20% by 2070-2090, on the other hand, is a lost cause. That would put atmospheric at 580 PPM by 2080. That's >4C of warming, if we don't hit any positive feedback loops. I'm not particularly concerned about plastics. They can be synthesized from biomass.
  - Zigurd 9y ago
    In a few years the question will become "How to do geoengineering safely relative to the risks of warming?" The planet may be able to support 9-11 billion people with mostly renewable energy, but perhaps humanity will not get there fast enough to avert risk of hitting a positive feedback level that would commit humanity to far more massive and therefore far riskier geoengineering.
    - quantum_magpie 9y ago
      The planet is unable to sustainably support the current 7 billion people. The only way I see 9 billion fitting in here is if we switch to purely artificial stuff and eradicate all wildlife and their habitat. The way I see it, the limit is at 1 billion people if we want to preserve current situation, and even less if we want to let the nature regenerate.

birdmanjeremy 9y ago

I like your optimism, but I think you're wrong. It may already be too late.

agumonkey 9y ago
This will make a very nice ecological pressure on humans.

pishpash 9y ago

Climactic conditions will always be a problem. The next headache will be how to deal with a heat bath from uniformly dissipated waste heat from this energy rather than natural gradients and storage that drive climactic processes. When greedy humans get their hands on 'unlimited energy' that is not a panacea, but a much bigger catastrophe waiting to happen.

vkou 9y ago
Since we're talking about solar power, this is not a huge concern.
wernercd 9y ago
meh... people have been screaming DHOOOOOOOOOM!!! for generations upon generation... We'll never make enough food... we'll never have enough energy... we'll never get along... Things are always bordering on the end of the world yet we survive.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Prior returns don't guarantee future results. Have you considered that people have taken steps to avoid catastrophy.
  - wernercd 9y ago
    Granted, it only takes one "failure"... but... "people taking steps" is exactly what I was alluding too... Time and time again, cries of "Too many people!!!"... how will we feed 1 billion people? Advances in farming, logistics, technology, etc... What's being done now? More advances in farming, vertical farming, AI, etc...
- Zigurd 9y ago
  That depends on the nature of the threat. Running out of feedstock for plastic? Not a problem. That's the sort of thing for which one can assume a technology fix will happen, and there is probably plenty of time. On the other hand, missing the population slow-down projections and ending up with a 20 billion population? That's doom, and there is no techno-savior.

the8472 9y ago

Electricity and transportation, which you often see in the headlines about progress about moving to renewables, are not the only GHG emitters. Agriculture, deforestation, heating are also big sources. As far as I have read there has been a lot less progress in that area.

philipkglass 9y ago
In the US, electricity + transportation makes up 56% of anthropogenic emissions and agriculture makes up 9%: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... The European Union reports aggregates a bit differently, but agriculture is only 10% there too (see Figure 3): http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Greenhouse_gas_emission_statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/... Neither the USA nor the EU are undergoing deforestation at present, and electrical heating can substitute for the vast majority of applications currently served by fossil-combustion heat. That's why most research and headlines about GHG reductions in the developed world focus on transport electrification and electricity decarbonization. In poorer parts of the world, where automobile use is less common and/or fewer people have grid tied electrical service, deforestation and agricultural emissions make up a larger share of total anthropogenic emissions. But most of the world's anthropogenic emissions, and most of the low-hanging mitigations for emissions, come from geographic regions that commonly have grid tied electrical service and other modern amenities.
- the8472 9y ago
  But those replacements, electrical heating and industrial processes, are also holes. Basically, if we replaced 100% of the current electricity production with renewables that wouldn't even provide the energy needed for electric vehicles. So we already have to go >100%. And then we need to overhaul heating and energy-intensive industries too. And even if we get to that point we still would not be carbon-neutral due to the remaining sectors. And possibly due to new natural sources (permafrost) we're already locked into due to the warming that is already in progress. So the point is that just inventing our way to replace the current grid with green sources is insufficient for meeting the climate budget within a few decades.