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100% renewables doesn’t equal zero-carbon energy, and the difference is growing
- jgamman 7y agoi love the fact that they posted their jupyter notebooks on github ie, https://github.com/jdechalendar/why100renewable-suppl/blob/master/notebooks/UK_efs.ipynb https://github.com/jdechalendar/why100renewable-suppl/blob/m... but there's nothing there to _read_ other than code - it may as well have been a txt file. i'm not trying to be mean to the author, i'm just pointing out that notebooks are a good fit for a style of literate programming and if you aren't into writing the narrative, then why use a notebook?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- HaukeHi 7y agoIf you want to do something about climate change—I've just launched crowdfunding campaign to raise $2 million dollar for effective climate policy. It's for the Clean Energy Innovation program at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)—a top-ranked US think tank. The program is led by Professor David Hart and Dr. Colin Cunliff whose policy research focuses on the effectiveness of higher and smarter clean energy R&D spending and communicating this to policy-makers. We have done hundreds of hours of research to figure out most effective way to donate to combat climate change and believe this is best place to donate. Why? You can read our in-depth analysis at https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy/ https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy/, but briefly: Advanced economies like the US and EU are prioritizing reducing their own emissions. But by 2040, 75% of all emissions will come from emerging economies such as China and India. Only if advanced economies’ climate policies reduce emissions in all countries will we prevent dangerous climate change. The best policies to do this are those that stimulate innovation and clean energy technology cheaper in all countries. We compared 10 climate policies that stimulate innovation (e.g. carbon taxes, deployment subsidies, cutting fossil fuel subsidies) and found that increasing government budgets for public clean energy research and development (R&D) is the most effective—even more effective than carbon taxes. Public clean energy R&D is neglected: only $22 billion is spent per year globally compared to $140 billion spent on clean energy deployment subsidies and trillions spent on energy. Many advanced economies (e.g. U.S., EU) could unilaterally increase this substantially without international coordination—which makes this much more politically tractable than carbon taxes. Better yet, advanced economies can coordinate spending parts of their GDP on clean energy R&D. Many countries have already done so by signing an international ‘Mission Innovation’ agreement, but are not on track to fulfill their pledges. Donating to this campaign might lead countries to get back on track and increase clean energy R&D budgets. This would make low-carbon energy cheaper, carbon taxes more politically acceptable, and prevent dangerous climate change.
- adrianN 7y agoHow much more research can you do, realistically? If we want any chance at meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement we (the whole world) need to be at net zero emissions in at most twenty years (assuming a linear reduction starting now!). That doesn't seem to be enough time to go from research to market. We already have the technology we need. More research might make it cheaper, or it might not. But more money for deploying the technology we have has an immediate effect. By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the emissions from the developing world are coming from consumption that happens in the rich countries. A carbon tax that is also applied to imports would be a pretty good incentive for countries like China to push harder for carbon neutrality (not that they're currently not pushing harder than most of the western countries).
- HaukeHi 7y agoWe think it's very effective to spend more. Consider that, globally, only $22 billion in public funds are spent on clean energy R&D annually—this is only 0.02% of World GDP. For comparison, world energy expenditure was 6% of the World's GDP. This means we spend about 300 times as much on energy than on making energy better. Why is there so little investment in clean energy innovation? Generally, basic R&D is under-supplied at both the private and public level. There are several theoretical reasons for this: On a global level, basic clean energy R&D is under-supplied by both governments and the private sector. Why? Because it suffers from the free-rider problem, as all basic R&D and public goods do. Countries and firms can just let others do the basic research and then reap the benefits because knowledge is hard to protect internationally. Private R&D cannot be protected perfectly because patents expire or industry know-how diffuses to other firms and not all rents from investments can be captured. This results in a socially suboptimal investment. In other words, additional public investment through basic R&D funding and subsidies increase social surplus, because private capital can only capture a fraction of the social surplus pie. Generally, venture capital and the market neglect capital-intensive, high-risk, high-return, long time-horizon investments. Clean energy R&D, in particular, is under-supplied because externalities of carbon are not priced adequately, leading to insufficient commercial applications for clean energy R&D. So, advanced economies should be spending much more on clean energy R&D. This view is shared by a number of academics, international organizations, and members of the private sector, including: 1. Daron Acemoglu, the most cited economic scholar in the recent decade, who argues that optimal climate change policy requires both carbon pricing and subsidies for clean energy research. Clean energy research should be heavily front-loaded to carbon taxation, which can be phased in gradually to minimize switching costs for industry.[19] This argument is not about how high carbon taxes should be in absolute terms or when exactly they should come. It merely suggests that we need to prioritize clean energy R&D, because it would not make much sense to create better clean energy technology later this century. In short, there is good reason to prioritize clean energy R&D. 2. The International Energy Agency notes that public R&D on energy technologies grew at an average rate of only 2% per year in the last 5 years.[20] For that reason, they argue that more spending on public and private clean energy R&D would be productive and is needed.[21] 3. The Breakthrough Energy Coalition,[22] a private sector coalition of billionaires led by Bill Gates, has started a venture to invest in breakthrough energy projects. According to recent analyses, public energy R&D can productively absorb large amounts of additional funding[23] and should increase 5-fold to be socially optimal. The US R&D budgets should even increase 10-fold.[24] A 2018 meta-analysis summarized the results of several studies[25] that all asked several experts by how much clean energy prices if clean energy R&D were to increase. The meta-analysis concludes: "[...] experts largely believe that increased public RD&D investments will result in reductions in future technology costs by 2030, although possibly with diminishing marginal returns. [....] for all technologies, experts see the possibility of breakthroughs that would make the technology cost competitive, envisioning sustained annual rates of cost reduction on the order of 10 percent per year. Moreover, such breakthroughs appear more likely under higher RD&D."[26] The results from these experts surveys: moving from low to medium or high R&D investment scenarios might decrease clean energy costs by several percent. You can find all citations and the full report here: https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy
- jvanderbot 7y agoClimate change isnt just energy production, anyway. I highly recommend the book Drawdown. The sector that they recommend as the highest impact intervention is actually refrigerants.
- strainer 7y agoThey are ranked a bit confusingly by the metric of 'potential future impact' divided by 'cost'. Refrigerants could have a huge impact if they are not controlled and/or improved, but they need not be very costly to control and improve. They don't yet present the scale of problem that carbon emissions present. The IPCC after decades of studying and advising on the matter is pretty well clear on that.
- jvanderbot 7y agoI do like that the impact is in "equivalent CO2 tons" allowing comparison across more than emissions. Yes, scaling by cost is questionable but allows simple policy comparisons.
- strainer 7y agoDrawdown seems very interesting overall, but their ranked list is confusing with the top 'solution' being about refrigerants, which amount to no more than a couple of percent gross CO2e emissions. Thats not what most people would expect from a top ranked solution, and potentially detracts from IPCCs seriously worked out advice - that we need to deal most with CO2.
- HaukeHi 7y agoYou're right. Super-pollutants like methane, tropospheric ozone, black carbon, and hydrofluorocarbon have up to 2,000 times the warming potential of carbon over a 100 year time scale.[264], [265] Advanced economies can investigate good mitigation strategies and pay emerging economies to phase them out as soon as possible. However, the overall funding gap is likely much lower (perhaps in the hundreds of millions) than for clean energy R&D (which is in the tens of billions) and so diminishing returns will set in earlier. Thus, while investing in this is quite cost-effective, there is an upper bound on the benefits (low benefit-costs). citations here: https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy/ https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy/
- mavhc 7y agoWe need 70x more nuclear power than we have today, just replacing electricity with zero carbon power only fixes some of the problem, still have all the fossil fuel powered machines to replace. If everyone in the world reduced the energy usage to 2kW (which if you switched to electric motors rather than fossil fuel would be quite easy) we'd need to build 3000 nuclear power stations per year for 10 years, to cover 50% of our total energy needs. Better start yesterday.
- HaukeHi 7y agoYes, current nuclear technology will not play a big part in preventing climate change because: It’s not infinitely powerful: It only contributes 5% to the world’s energy supply[159] and even in China, where regulation is lax and public opposition to nuclear is not as big an issue for policy-makers, few reactors are currently being built (_six_ in the last 18 months). It carries safety risks.[160] While advanced nuclear power in some advanced economies might actually reduce nuclear proliferation risk by using up nuclear material, in other countries, nuclear power might increase proliferation risks.[161] It will not be used in many emerging economies.[162] Consider that only 1–5 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are currently plan to have commercial nuclear power and these countries are at least 10 years away from starting construction on nuclear plants.[163] Continued reliance on outdated nuclear technology might not have the same crucial global technology spillovers as investments in other clean energy (including advanced nuclear). Since the best path towards global decarbonization is through global technology spillover into emerging economies, the actors that have the best emissions score may, surprisingly, not be the most effective actors at reducing the global rate of emissions in the future. We need more energy R&D to make nuclear better new small modular nuclear reactor designs. All citations here: https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy/ https://lets-fund.org/clean-energy/
- WillPostForFood 7y agoOn the other hand, France seems to have gotten it right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
- sunkenvicar 7y agoCarbon emissions and climate change were solved decades ago in France with nuclear power. We can adopt the French model and export it worldwide.
- legulere 7y agoFrance imports electricity in summer when the rivers are too warm for nuclear power and in winter they also start to have problems (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-power-analysis-idUSKBN16K1CX https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-power-ana...).
- perfunctory 7y ago"France passed an ambitious energy law in 2015 with a target of cutting the share of nuclear in its electricity mix to 50 percent by 2025 from 75 percent currently, while investing in renewables and efficiency to curb consumption and heat loss." Didn't know that.
- anoncake 7y agoI'll laugh at you blind nuclear supporters when one the French reactors inevitability fails catastrophically. Unless I'm busy dying or evacuating to some place that has spare housing for a few million people. I mean, nuclear is still better than fossils, but it's still a ridiculously stupid idea.
- macspoofing 7y agoThere is no alternative to nuclear, if you care about cutting CO2 emissions. Wind and solar is necessairly paired with natural gas (or coal) because they cannot power a modern economy by themselves (and there is no battery technology capable of operating at city-scale). So how else are you supposed to cut CO2 emissions?
- tzs 7y ago> and there is no battery technology capable of operating at city-scale Batteries aren't the only way to store energy. Isn't pumped hydraulic able to work at city scale?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ridicter 7y agoIn the United States, meaningful climate action is primarily a political problem to be solved -- not technology, policy, technology research, or policy research. If you're interested in getting involved in addressing climate change, here are two options for citizens to get involved: 1) The Citizens Climate Climate Lobby has been around ten years, and it currently has a bill in Congress that has bipartisan (1 Republican, 30+ Dems) support: The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (http://energyinnovationact.org/ http://energyinnovationact.org/). With this plan, all the revenue from a carbon tax* is directly returned to citizens as a yearly check--no enlargement of the state. This is the organization cofounded by NASA scientist James Hansen, who first testified to Congress about the perils of climate change over 30 years ago. 2) If you're a millennial/gen Z, and you're more skeptical of a market-based solution, the Green New Deal and Sunrise Movement are making waves. Rather than a concrete policy in Congress, they have a set of principles/values that they are pushing forward. In addition, if you live in the states of Oregon and New York, both are on the cusp of passing similar legislation. And there are many more out there in various stages of development... *Carbon pricing (which can come in the form of a tax or cap and trade) is the single most effective mechanism to address climate change, according to economists. The idea is to internalize the _real_ costs of climate change into the price we actually pay--ramping up the price on carbon over time until it is prohibitively expensive to use fossil-fuel-expensive products, and incentivizing the economy to adapt.
- fuckyah 7y agoBut who knows if there’s climate change?
- briandear 7y agoIsn’t this comment a verbatim cut and paste from a few days ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19981905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19981905 Using HN as a campaign platform seems to violate the guidelines.
- chias 7y agoI can only speak for me, but I found the comment informative and helpful, even if it had already been made elsewhere.
- perfunctory 7y agoI think this title is a bit misleading. "100% renewables" in the title does not refer to the 100% renewable capacity worldwide. It simply refers to the energy consumption accounting at the company level. "Corporations that claim to be 100 percent renewable do not actually cover all their power use with renewables, as some acknowledge."
- corodra 7y agoJust an observation. To all the folks who say we all need to consume less, not drive cars, yada yada. Et toi? Y’all love telling other people they have to do xyz to save the world. Are you ACTUALLY doing just that of which you say you must do? See, I do agree, we need to consume less. But let’s be practical. Do you grow your own food to not fuel the industrial capitalist complex? But nay you say! I live in a city! I can do no such thing! Whose fault is that? Don’t live in a damn city. Go live in the evil republican counties where they happily teach you the best way to grow veggies and cut the heads off chickens. The elderly are fucking awesome on gardening techniques. And don’t give me this urban farming shit. It can barely produce 2% of a city’s needs on average. Not practical. I also think more efficient everything is a good start. Like LED bulbs cut a lot of daily wattage across the board. However, all of that was negated when this stupid blockchain fad starting rolling in and added another Denmark (in essence) to the world power consumption. But that anti fiat currency stuff is all in the name of giving economic power to the poor who don’t have access to money or computers... Yea and that New green deal requires the fed to print enough extra notes to make the war on terror look like a candy bar purchase at the checkout. Because why care about bankruptcy today when it will happen in 10 years down the road? Climate change won’t happen through policy. You know why? Y’all think your congressmen and women are retarded anyways. Don’t lie. You do. You think they’re all morons. Why would you give an idiot the responsibility to do something smart? Why would you follow any of it? Be the change you want to see. Go out and do the actual change for yourself, to yourself. Don’t buy big ag if you don’t like the industrialized farming methods. You have options. Pricey ones. Or do it yourself. How about turning off your own damn lights without a power sucking smart home system and getting high efficient everything? Walk around for fucks sake. Read one of those low energy devices called a fucking book instead of streaming everything non fucking stop. After your own damn carbon footprint is nill, then you have the right to start telling others what to do. I’m off to smoke a cigar and check on my tomato plants.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago"Be the change you want to see." This phrase should be the top comment of every environmental-related post !
- vaylian 7y ago
- perfunctory 7y agoIt's sad to read in the comments the overwhelming disbelief in the possibility of consumption reduction. I believe (want to believe) that most of us wouldn't actually mind to reduce our own consumption (even drastically), but we assume that "other" people won't. I might be naive but I tend to believe that actually most other people are less different from us than we think. So, let's start a discussion with our friends and relatives. Bring the subject up at the next dinner party.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAs I'm posting a lot of such disbelieving comments, let me address it here: it's not about consumption reduction in general - it's about enough people voluntarily reducing consumption enough to matter. We should each try their best at it, but I don't believe you can count on it when planning climate policy. The best way to trigger a bottom-up consumption reduction would be massively brainwashing people. But I can't see the usual brainwashers (media, advertisers) interested in doing it, nor do I see why would they all want to do that, on a systems level. The incentives are not there. Then there's a matter of effect size. As the climate saying goes, "a lot of people helping a little helps a little". How far are you willing to voluntarily reduce your quality of life? Are you willing to change your job just so that you could stop using your car? Because current predictions indicate that it's the least it would take, from everyone. Most people don't engage in enough spurious consumption to have a lot to cut back before it starts significantly degrading their quality of life, and possibly becoming a health issue. I do my best to reduce my carbon footprint; I even work remotely these days. But I also have several people depending on me, so you can bet that ensuring I'm physically and mentally capable of doing my job is one of my top priorities, and I'm not going to cut consumption down to the point it degrades my ability to support my family. Most people I know ultimately face the same situation - they could cut down on some trivialities of no consequence, but beyond that, it quickly becomes a matter of survival. The situation is even worse if you consider the developing nations, who are slated to have the biggest carbon footprint in the near future. Asking them to cut down on consumption is asking them to go back to living in extreme poverty. Not going to happen. So sure, let's talk to our friends and relatives some more. But we need systemic solutions, and we need more alternatives with smaller carbon footprint.
- imtringued 7y agoI wonder when hydraulic energy storage [0] will become a reality to finally solve the storage problem for good. [0] http://eduard-heindl.de/energy-storage/energy-storage-system.html http://eduard-heindl.de/energy-storage/energy-storage-system...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nanomonkey 7y agoIt's crazy that we've know how to create carbon negative energy for a hundred years now but no one seems to be aware. We were running cars off of wood-gas during WW2. By gasifying unused woody biomass (wood chips, corn husks, walnut shells, pellets made from essentially trash, etc.) you can run an internal combustion, steam, Stirling or turbine engine and produce char ash (biochar a.k.a terra preta) which can be buried in the soil to enrich it, and also lock away the carbon for hundreds to thousands of years (depending on who you ask). This is carbon negative energy. Next time you go for a walk, look at all of the tree branches and burnable fuel all over. Think of all of the forests that went up in flames in Norther California. All fuel that could have been put to use. Plants are great solar accumulators. We should be putting them to work collecting energy and CO2.
- bubblewrap 7y agoBiofuels do exists, but afaik they were a net negative so far. You can't simply grow so many plants, and you also need plants to eat, not just burn.
- nanomonkey 7y agoI'm not talking about biofuels, I'm talking about Syngas, a.k.a producer's gas or wood gas. Gasification is the process to create these fuels, using pyrolysis (heat) to break down organic material into tar gases and carbon (charcoal). Then using the hot charcoal to reduce the tar gases into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The process is used for so called "clean" coal plants, but can be utilized on any organic material. All Power Labs and a few other companies are making small scale (20kW - 150kW) power plants, but mostly it's just used for running logging mills (off sawdust and end cuts) as it's a good source of heat and power. Note: one only utilizes the unused portions of the plant with gasification, so it doesn't affect the supply of edible plant components. If anything it causes the cost to go down, as your utilizing the waste components (corn cobs, walnut shells, etc.) to produce the power and heat to run your farm, or selling it to neighbors. Gasification also helps with removing the methane that would normally be made when these materials are composted. Methane is a much greater greenhouse gas than CO2.
- alexandercrohde 7y agoAccording to terrapass.com the average citizen can offset their annual footprint for < $200 a year. They say their audited, but I'd love to know if they're legit?