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> “Electricity is just 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Gates. “There is no substitute for how the industrial economy runs today.” That’s why...

• D_Alex 8y ago
  That's a bit stupid, really. We can substitute many GG producing activities with carbon free electricity. Some examples: - Heat pumps for space and water heating, instead of gas, heating oil etc. Cooking on an induction stovetop instead of gas. - Electric transport (cars, buses, trains.... maybe hyperloops to substitute for airplanes) - Electric heating for furnaces, kilns etc - Production of industrial chemicals via electric processes, eg hydrogen (hence ammonia, methanol etc) by electrolysis instead of steam methane reforming etc. etc. With electricity, you can even reform CO2 into useful products (eg methanol, synthetic hydrocarbons, dimethyl ether), replacing current CO2 producing processes with ones that utilise CO2. (And if you are interested in supporting this, I would like to hear from you as this is my current area of work).
  • barry-cotter 8y ago
    > Cooking on an induction stovetop instead of gas. Congratulations, you have banned Chinese food. I’m reasonably confident most professional chefs and a lot of amateurs would be very, very angry if you tried to ban cooking with gas. People aren’t actually willing to make sacrifices to their own personal quality of life to fight climate change as we’ve seen many times with carbon taxes or with the yellow vest movement in France.
    • fastbeef 8y ago
      I'd say that resturant-grade induction stovetops perform as good as or even outperform gas.
    • mikekchar 8y ago
      Actually induction woks are amazing. You can get them as hot as gas. Here's a really bad Youtube video showing some guys testing one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUuu6nRT29Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUuu6nRT29Y They aren't cheap though. I seriously want one :-) But your general point is well taken.
    • perfunctory 8y ago
      > with carbon taxes or with the yellow vest movement in France. I believe the main problem with yellow vests was that they balanced raised diesel tax by eliminating wealth tax. Had they instead reduced income tax in the lowest bracket for example, people might have been much less angry.
    • AstralStorm 8y ago
      As far as I'm aware, Chinese food is cooked in pans, not over open flame. But, you've banned the kebab shop instead. They will have to use the slower heated stone frying. ;)
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • patall 8y ago
      In addition to what others have said, you could still use biogas or synthetic derivatives when you really have to. It becomes more expensive and people do not like that but I would not call it a ban.
    • Broken_Hippo 8y ago
      Not really. Induction boils water faster most times - there are multiple videos showing this, my link is just one of them. I'm pretty sure you can get quick and very hot with the induction tops. If you specialise in wok-type food, i'm pretty sure they will be customised to be even better. https://youtu.be/h45dzeugIZw https://youtu.be/h45dzeugIZw
      • jamil7 8y ago
        My understanding is the preference for gas is more about being able to instantly adjust the heat and see it rather than the raw heat output. I also haven't used an induction top in a long time so maybe this is better now.
        • PeterisP 8y ago
          Being able to instantly adjust heat works great for induction devices; you can go from 0 to 100% and back to 0 pretty much immediately, the only limit is the heat inertia of your pan/pot/wok/whatever. Being able to see that heat is different - yes, gas flame is more visible and intuitive.
          • jamil7 8y ago
            Thanks for clarifying, didn't know it was so instant.
    • zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
      Well, not sure anyone would actually mind working with induction woks, but if you really need "natural gas", you can generate that using electricity as well. And not only can you do that, it's actually a thing that's being done right now, as a method of storing surplus renewable energy: You simply use it to generate methane and feed that into the existing natural gas distribution infrastructure for storage, and as a side effect you displace some fossil fuel.
    • D_Alex 8y ago
      >Congratulations, you have banned Chinese food. No, I have not. Stop being silly.
  • mikekchar 8y ago
    I had an interesting conversation with my wife's friend's son who is a buyer of natural gas for a large electronics company in Japan. He told me that they generate all their electricity on site with gas. The main reason is that they need gas for heating furnaces and things, they need the waste heat from the generators and they need the electricity. While they could replace quite a lot of the things they have with electric alternatives, it basically means rebuilding the entire factory from scratch. It made be realise that it's going to be a bit of a long haul for getting industry away from greenhouse gas producing energy. BTW, this also largely explains why Japan's auto makers didn't have a massive problem when the nuclear power plants shut down after the Fukushima disaster. It's a bit depressing to think about it...
  • agumonkey 8y ago
    What about less dense social poles ? it seems history liked to have big poles for jobs or industries that everybody would migrate to, especially since we have cars and highways .. Maybe a more organic + local mindset..
• dragonwriter 8y ago
  Electricity may be only around 25% (it's actually a little more than that for the US and almost half globally), but cheap renewables don't just affect the share currently from electricity, they also (by way of emerging use of electric vehicles) attack the share that comes from transportation, which together with electricity is over half in the US and close to 70% globally. US: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Global: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissions-by-sector-or-source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissi...
  • benj111 8y ago
    Don't forget space heating also. There's a lot of things that can be electrified, that currently aren't.
    • AstralStorm 8y ago
      Funny thing, space heating is probably the last thing you want electrified, instead investing in heat (re)capture and building design. Air conditioning including plain old ventilation is the hard one to tackle and is already electrified.
      • benj111 8y ago
        By heat recapture do you mean heat pumps and insulation? I (personally) include heat pumps in the heating category, and yes most houses are probably under insulated. Insulation can lower the air con load also.
  • jessriedel 8y ago
    I think the point is that electric transport is not limited by the cost of electricity, so it will largely happen or not happen independent of whether power generation is low carbon. Yes, conditional on transport being electrified, reducing the carbon cost of electricity increases in importance. But the latter is not enough on its own.
  • 8y ago
• davedx 8y ago
  Huge swathes of the world are currently transitioning from fossil fuel powered transport to electric. This statement seems to ignore future trends that are already upon us. The longest range Teslas have 100 KWh batteries in them. Our house of 6 people uses about 8-10 KWh per day. It's not just cars too - every transportation system is in some state of transitioning now, even boats and planes (though very early stages there). All of the trains in the Netherlands are powered by wind energy. Civilization is electrifying, so cheap renewables are only becoming more effective at mitigating CO2 emissions.