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It would cost around about as much spent on the pointless military genocides/cash grabs in Middle East to return CO2 to pre-Industrial levels (290 ppm ± 10). CC

It would cost around about as much spent on the pointless military genocides/cash grabs in Middle East to return CO2 to pre-Industrial levels (290 ppm ± 10). CCS at scale is proven. There's no political will and omnicide/suicide is the de-facto majority policy.

hutzlibu 7y ago
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary sources ... (for sure the money spend on the wars would have been better spend on green tech, but ... I think the amount of money to change the whole industry to preindustrial exhaust levels ... is a bit higher)
- adrianN 7y ago
  US primary energy consumption: ~30 trillion kWh/year. You can probably cut this at least in half when switching to renewables because of power plant inefficiencies. Wind power: ~1500 Euros per kW (solar is similar) 1 kW of Wind power produces at most 8760 kWh per year, lets add some inefficiencies and say 3000 kWh per year. So you'd need 5 billion kW of wind power So you'd need 7.5 trillion Euros. The Iraq war cost about 1.1 trillion dollars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War). Given that this is just napkin math, it is surprisingly in the same ballpark.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    And how is that bringing us back to "preindustrial CO2 levels"? There are some more contributers to CO2 than plants. Also, cars? Also, energy storage? Also non scaleable of wind? ... So yes, it was just napkin math. Not helpful.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      Primary energy consumption includes all forms of energy. Electricity, but also fuel, heating, etc. If you make it fully renewable the country becomes pretty much carbon neutral, save for things like metallurgical coal. Energy storage raises cost a bit, but not too much, depending on the quality of the electric grid. You don't very much storage if your grid is good because it's always windy somewhere. Excess energy can be converted to Methane via power-to-gas and stored in the existing strategic gas storage facilities. Better informed people than me wrote long papers about this, and also looked into scalability issues. It's a bit hard to reproduce in HN comments.
      - hutzlibu 7y ago
        Trust me, I am informed on that topic. And I am all for a green Energy base. And there are countless other options than just methan or hydrogen for storing energy around or in develepoment. But it is still hard and expensive. Did you factor in redesigning of the energy grid? Renewables need much more flex .. the current system is designed for huge plants, giving constant energy, not many small ones fluctating. Did you factor in, replacing all gasoline engine in cars? Did you factor in designing and replacing airplane engines? (And with what, running then on hydrogen? maybe. Would be awesome, but the tech does not exist yet) And even if we achieve 100 renewable ... there are still lots of industrial processes that release CO2, like concrete production, that reaching preindustrial CO2 levels is a very, very hard and therefore expensive challenge. So maybe be careful with your claims.

hutzlibu 7y ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary sources ... (for sure the money spend on the wars would have been better spend on green tech, but ... I think the amount of money to change the whole industry to preindustrial exhaust levels ... is a bit higher)

adrianN 7y ago
US primary energy consumption: ~30 trillion kWh/year. You can probably cut this at least in half when switching to renewables because of power plant inefficiencies. Wind power: ~1500 Euros per kW (solar is similar) 1 kW of Wind power produces at most 8760 kWh per year, lets add some inefficiencies and say 3000 kWh per year. So you'd need 5 billion kW of wind power So you'd need 7.5 trillion Euros. The Iraq war cost about 1.1 trillion dollars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War). Given that this is just napkin math, it is surprisingly in the same ballpark.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  And how is that bringing us back to "preindustrial CO2 levels"? There are some more contributers to CO2 than plants. Also, cars? Also, energy storage? Also non scaleable of wind? ... So yes, it was just napkin math. Not helpful.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Primary energy consumption includes all forms of energy. Electricity, but also fuel, heating, etc. If you make it fully renewable the country becomes pretty much carbon neutral, save for things like metallurgical coal. Energy storage raises cost a bit, but not too much, depending on the quality of the electric grid. You don't very much storage if your grid is good because it's always windy somewhere. Excess energy can be converted to Methane via power-to-gas and stored in the existing strategic gas storage facilities. Better informed people than me wrote long papers about this, and also looked into scalability issues. It's a bit hard to reproduce in HN comments.
    - hutzlibu 7y ago
      Trust me, I am informed on that topic. And I am all for a green Energy base. And there are countless other options than just methan or hydrogen for storing energy around or in develepoment. But it is still hard and expensive. Did you factor in redesigning of the energy grid? Renewables need much more flex .. the current system is designed for huge plants, giving constant energy, not many small ones fluctating. Did you factor in, replacing all gasoline engine in cars? Did you factor in designing and replacing airplane engines? (And with what, running then on hydrogen? maybe. Would be awesome, but the tech does not exist yet) And even if we achieve 100 renewable ... there are still lots of industrial processes that release CO2, like concrete production, that reaching preindustrial CO2 levels is a very, very hard and therefore expensive challenge. So maybe be careful with your claims.