3 ms·

we do? How do you do heavy industrial production without coal, gas or oil?

Dylan16807 6y ago
Production of what? I've worked in one industrial plant, and they mostly just needed power and steam to run the processing equipment. If you need oil as a chemical input, you could offset that carbon or likely synthesize it. But even just reducing our fossil oil use to ingredients and not fuel would make a massive difference.
adrianN 6y ago
Yeah we do. Nuclear, solar, wind. If you absolutely can't do something without releasing carbon (concrete and air travel are an example that comes to mind), you use carbon-free energy to suck CO2 from the air and sequester it. That just costs money.
- mrpopo 6y ago
  Money, and space, and natural resources for the CCS membrane / infrastructure, etc. No guarantee that none of those will run out if we try to do this at the required scale.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    No guarantee until we do it, but all signs point to it easier than, say, WW2.
- ThomPete 6y ago
  It's not that simple. Less than 1% of energy comes from wind and solar and we aren't looking at more than 3-4% in 2030. Wind and solar require either nuclear, gas, coal and oil as backup. Nuclear is completely out of vogue and will take years to build. It's not just concrete and air travel it's ships, trucks, steel production, anything that require large amount of heat. You can't power a hospital based on solar and wind etc. Fossil fuels are not going anywhere until we either get fusion or some sort of fuel cell technology, but they require som fundamental breakthroughs we aren't close to meeting just yet. The problem is doing things at scale not just proving in some lab what is theoretically possible.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    It's that simple going up to maybe 70% of energy consumption. As you note we're still in single digits. Until we reach critical points where large scale storage becomes truly necessary we still have time to get things that work in small scales up to mass production. For example batteries and Power-to-X technology. The only thing missing is political will to address the problem.
    - ThomPete 6y ago
      No it's not that simple and if it was we would already have done it. It's not just a matter of political will it's a matter of what makes sense from a market perspective. It doesn't make any sense to rely on wind and solar. The are not and will never be the primary source of energy for our needs. We will have fusion before we have wind and solar covering just 50% of the worlds energy consumption.
      - adrianN 6y ago
        If we don't have wind and solar covering more than 50% of the world's energy consumption in the next twenty years the climate will be fucked beyond repair.
        ThomPete 6y ago
        We won't, it's simply not physically possible. And of course we won't be fucked. Climate catastrophism is the last thing we need.
        adrianN 6y ago
        It's not physically impossible to cover 2-4% of the land with solar panels and wind turbines, replace ICE vehicles with electrics and home heating systems with heat pumps. It just costs money. And as the COVID response shows, when we want to, trillions suddenly become available.

Production of what? I've worked in one industrial plant, and they mostly just needed power and steam to run the processing equipment. If you need oil as a chemical input, you could offset that carbon or likely synthesize it. But even just reducing our fossil oil use to ingredients and not fuel would make a massive difference.

adrianN 6y ago

Yeah we do. Nuclear, solar, wind. If you absolutely can't do something without releasing carbon (concrete and air travel are an example that comes to mind), you use carbon-free energy to suck CO2 from the air and sequester it. That just costs money.

mrpopo 6y ago
Money, and space, and natural resources for the CCS membrane / infrastructure, etc. No guarantee that none of those will run out if we try to do this at the required scale.
- adrianN 6y ago
  No guarantee until we do it, but all signs point to it easier than, say, WW2.
ThomPete 6y ago
It's not that simple. Less than 1% of energy comes from wind and solar and we aren't looking at more than 3-4% in 2030. Wind and solar require either nuclear, gas, coal and oil as backup. Nuclear is completely out of vogue and will take years to build. It's not just concrete and air travel it's ships, trucks, steel production, anything that require large amount of heat. You can't power a hospital based on solar and wind etc. Fossil fuels are not going anywhere until we either get fusion or some sort of fuel cell technology, but they require som fundamental breakthroughs we aren't close to meeting just yet. The problem is doing things at scale not just proving in some lab what is theoretically possible.
- adrianN 6y ago
  It's that simple going up to maybe 70% of energy consumption. As you note we're still in single digits. Until we reach critical points where large scale storage becomes truly necessary we still have time to get things that work in small scales up to mass production. For example batteries and Power-to-X technology. The only thing missing is political will to address the problem.
  - ThomPete 6y ago
    No it's not that simple and if it was we would already have done it. It's not just a matter of political will it's a matter of what makes sense from a market perspective. It doesn't make any sense to rely on wind and solar. The are not and will never be the primary source of energy for our needs. We will have fusion before we have wind and solar covering just 50% of the worlds energy consumption.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      If we don't have wind and solar covering more than 50% of the world's energy consumption in the next twenty years the climate will be fucked beyond repair.
      - ThomPete 6y ago
        We won't, it's simply not physically possible. And of course we won't be fucked. Climate catastrophism is the last thing we need.
        adrianN 6y ago
        It's not physically impossible to cover 2-4% of the land with solar panels and wind turbines, replace ICE vehicles with electrics and home heating systems with heat pumps. It just costs money. And as the COVID response shows, when we want to, trillions suddenly become available.