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I'm probably far more well-informed on the matter of renewables that you are. And I just read another article on so-called stranded assets and such, one which (

I'm probably far more well-informed on the matter of renewables that you are. And I just read another article on so-called stranded assets and such, one which (IIRC) called out Shell as being a "leader" in moving away from fossil fuels, but which I interpreted as "Shell probably won't be around too much longer". Fun facts about renewables which most people are pretty clueless about: 1. "Nameplate capacity" (the amount of energy produced under ideal conditions, which is what is always quoted in the press) is not at all the same as "actual average capacity", which as a rule of thumb may typically only be 25% of nameplate, give or take. 2. Storage capacity (battery, pumped hydro, etc.) is not at all the same as actual generating capacity, although the renewables folks like to conflate the two. 3. Actual hydropower was generally considered evil ("Because dams are bad!") until the renewables folks decided to make it their own, in order to make their numbers look better than they actually would be otherwise. 4. Individual windmills are apparently only going to last about half of their originally expected lifetimes - 10 to 15 years instead of 20 to 30 years. Not sure about solar, but I think that's generally holding up much better. 5. On the other hand, solar doesn't necessarily generate as much power as expected, even in "ideal" areas like deserts, due to dust accumulation on panels and such. Even Google infamously overestimated the generation capacity of at least one of its desert solar thermal towers by something like 2/3, based on estimated cloud cover vs. actual cloud cover. (How does something like that even happen?) And apparently a lot of solar panels which have already been installed were oriented the wrong way. That is, due South (as was originally the thinking) instead of due West, which is what the "duck curve" indicates is actually the best orientation. I could go on, but that seems sufficient. BTW, GE's troubles date back to at least the heyday of GM Financial, which is well before the whole current energy thing had any traction. Apparently it was routinely being used as something of slush fund in order to gloss over problems elsewhere. (This was an open secret within the financial community and even occasionally joked about in the financial press.) And IIRC, there are/were several billion dollars of future potential insurance liabilities which somehow just conveniently got "forgotten about" at one point. Oops!

woodandsteel 7y ago
I want to ask you about something. But first I want to say that renewable energy is immensely more practical than it was a decade ago, and it is going to continue to improve. Beyond that, there are strong forces pushing its adoption. Besides global climate change, there is air pollution and the desire of many countries to become independent of expensive fossil fuel imports. My question to you is what is your view of anthropogenic global climate change? Do you think it is a hoax or real and a grave danger? And if the latter, then what do you think should be done?
- southern_cross 7y ago
  Renewables are probably going to "run out of steam", so to speak (that's a little bit of geothermal humor there) far sooner than most proponents think, for a variety of reasons. If you're well-informed on these matters then you already know what I'm talking about. But like so many other things these days, what you generally see in the press and on proponents' web sites is often full of lies and half-truths, so you have to be careful to try and look past those. I understand that renewables costs and storage costs have declined dramatically lately and will probably continue to do so at least for a while longer, but that's only half the story. There are subsidy issues and premature end-of-life issues and reliability/deliverability/supply-demand issues and so on. But the biggest issue has to do with that 25% thing, where in reality you're potentially going to have to massively overbuild your wind and solar if you expect those to deliver as promised.(1) And even then you're probably going to have to deal with storage costs, too, be that battery or pumped hydro or whatever. So any claims that renewables are "super cheap" (cheaper than existing power-generating facilities) right now are basically bogus, if you look at the overall picture. Renewables still have a long way to go to fulfill their promises, in other words, if they ever actually even come close to doing so. I could give you local, real-world examples of this stuff if you want, but I don't want to bore you. Even if you run with the theory that existing power plants can (and maybe should only) be used intermittently as backups for renewables when those can't deliver, now you have another economic problem because that probably puts you back into "peaking rates" territory, and those rates are generally hugely expensive. And you'd have to add those onto the costs of the renewables themselves. To sum up, though, whenever you see a claim that a solar plant or whatever can produce X megawatts at a very low Y cents per KWH, the reality is going to be more like it can only provide a fraction of those megawatts and only at a multiple of those cents per KWH, if it can actually reliably produce much power on a fairly continuous basis at all. Overall you'd probably be much better off to go with more nuclear, but nuclear is still a bad word to a lot of people these days. (Fun fact: One reason why we have so much fossil-fueled power these days to begin with is because there was so much opposition to nuclear back in the day, mostly by the same type of folks who are so opposed to fossil fuels today.) As to anthropogenic global climate change, I think they're making a mountain out of a molehill. There's a whole lot of pertinent stuff that they frankly just choose to ignore, and they've somehow become overly fixated on CO2 as the end-all, be-all of what controls the climate. (This over-fixation notion is not completely true but it's true enough.) And to that end they now point their guns at the fossil fuel companies as evil incarnate, when the truth is more like they're just deep pockets in their eyes. Also, an awful lot of the "data" that they're using to make those claims and produce those dire predictions is mostly just made up, or has other major problems with it. Once again, I could give you local, real-world examples of this stuff if you want. Now let me ask you something. Do I have to be a "true believer" in the Church of Climate Change for you to give any credence to what I have to say about these things? (1) Here is the only article that I ever recall seeing (at least in recent memory) that directly addresses the overbuilding issue. And it, of course, tries to put a positive spin on the whole thing. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-solar-batteries-renewable-energy-california-20190605-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-solar-batteries-renew...

woodandsteel 7y ago

I want to ask you about something. But first I want to say that renewable energy is immensely more practical than it was a decade ago, and it is going to continue to improve. Beyond that, there are strong forces pushing its adoption. Besides global climate change, there is air pollution and the desire of many countries to become independent of expensive fossil fuel imports. My question to you is what is your view of anthropogenic global climate change? Do you think it is a hoax or real and a grave danger? And if the latter, then what do you think should be done?

southern_cross 7y ago
Renewables are probably going to "run out of steam", so to speak (that's a little bit of geothermal humor there) far sooner than most proponents think, for a variety of reasons. If you're well-informed on these matters then you already know what I'm talking about. But like so many other things these days, what you generally see in the press and on proponents' web sites is often full of lies and half-truths, so you have to be careful to try and look past those. I understand that renewables costs and storage costs have declined dramatically lately and will probably continue to do so at least for a while longer, but that's only half the story. There are subsidy issues and premature end-of-life issues and reliability/deliverability/supply-demand issues and so on. But the biggest issue has to do with that 25% thing, where in reality you're potentially going to have to massively overbuild your wind and solar if you expect those to deliver as promised.(1) And even then you're probably going to have to deal with storage costs, too, be that battery or pumped hydro or whatever. So any claims that renewables are "super cheap" (cheaper than existing power-generating facilities) right now are basically bogus, if you look at the overall picture. Renewables still have a long way to go to fulfill their promises, in other words, if they ever actually even come close to doing so. I could give you local, real-world examples of this stuff if you want, but I don't want to bore you. Even if you run with the theory that existing power plants can (and maybe should only) be used intermittently as backups for renewables when those can't deliver, now you have another economic problem because that probably puts you back into "peaking rates" territory, and those rates are generally hugely expensive. And you'd have to add those onto the costs of the renewables themselves. To sum up, though, whenever you see a claim that a solar plant or whatever can produce X megawatts at a very low Y cents per KWH, the reality is going to be more like it can only provide a fraction of those megawatts and only at a multiple of those cents per KWH, if it can actually reliably produce much power on a fairly continuous basis at all. Overall you'd probably be much better off to go with more nuclear, but nuclear is still a bad word to a lot of people these days. (Fun fact: One reason why we have so much fossil-fueled power these days to begin with is because there was so much opposition to nuclear back in the day, mostly by the same type of folks who are so opposed to fossil fuels today.) As to anthropogenic global climate change, I think they're making a mountain out of a molehill. There's a whole lot of pertinent stuff that they frankly just choose to ignore, and they've somehow become overly fixated on CO2 as the end-all, be-all of what controls the climate. (This over-fixation notion is not completely true but it's true enough.) And to that end they now point their guns at the fossil fuel companies as evil incarnate, when the truth is more like they're just deep pockets in their eyes. Also, an awful lot of the "data" that they're using to make those claims and produce those dire predictions is mostly just made up, or has other major problems with it. Once again, I could give you local, real-world examples of this stuff if you want. Now let me ask you something. Do I have to be a "true believer" in the Church of Climate Change for you to give any credence to what I have to say about these things? (1) Here is the only article that I ever recall seeing (at least in recent memory) that directly addresses the overbuilding issue. And it, of course, tries to put a positive spin on the whole thing. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-solar-batteries-renewable-energy-california-20190605-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-solar-batteries-renew...