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> My view is that the best way to speed up the transition to clean energy is to vastly increase demand for electricity. No. Historically, and globally, when el

by mrpopo 6y ago

> My view is that the best way to speed up the transition to clean energy is to vastly increase demand for electricity. No. Historically, and globally, when electricity demand increases, electricity sources stack up. We may create more clean energy that way, and that will increase the percentage of renewables in the energy mix, but the atmosphere doesn't care about percentages. It cares about how many tonnes of carbon are released by the existing electricity sources that need to be shut down. The last thing we need is another source for more electricity demand. Electrifying transportation alone will increase demand more than enough for your dream market investment magic.

jillesvangurp 6y ago
Historically we replace expensive sources of something with cheap sources of something. As demand increases we source the best/cheapest version to meet that new demand. The energy market is no different. The vast majority of new capacity on the grid is coming from wind and solar. As the supply of clean energy increases, suppliers actually decommission and shut down more expensive existing capacity. That's why coal plants are going out of business in lots of places and why some new gas plants are not utilized at 100% and instead kept around only to address peak demand. This is enabled by a growing demand for and a supply of clean electricity at a lower price than what they can produce with legacy plants. Countries with growing economies tend to have a growing electricity market and a shrinking proportion of dirty energy. So, KWH goes up, CO2 goes down. The number of GWH from coal in Germany has actually gone down in recent years. While gas grew a little to offset that, much more growth came from re-newables. So, the CO2 production has been going down year on year. The amount of gas consumed per year in Germany is still substantial of course but not really growing at this point. Accelerated growth in the energy market increases the pace at which energy providers invest in new capacity. This in turn speeds up the process of de-commissioning economically non viable plants. Electrifying transport indeed adds a couple of tens of percent but it will take quite long to get there. If you drive 10000 miles in a year, that adds about 2.5GWH to your yearly energy bill (assuming 200 miles/50kwh of battery in your car). That's ~25% of the energy usage of an average house hold (in the US). But it will take quite some time before all households have EVs. 25% growth over 2 decades is not that much. Also a lot of that demand will be met by people putting solar on their own roofs, which technically shrinks the grid demand and overall energy market.

by mrpopo 6y ago

jillesvangurp 6y ago

Historically we replace expensive sources of something with cheap sources of something. As demand increases we source the best/cheapest version to meet that new demand. The energy market is no different. The vast majority of new capacity on the grid is coming from wind and solar. As the supply of clean energy increases, suppliers actually decommission and shut down more expensive existing capacity. That's why coal plants are going out of business in lots of places and why some new gas plants are not utilized at 100% and instead kept around only to address peak demand. This is enabled by a growing demand for and a supply of clean electricity at a lower price than what they can produce with legacy plants. Countries with growing economies tend to have a growing electricity market and a shrinking proportion of dirty energy. So, KWH goes up, CO2 goes down. The number of GWH from coal in Germany has actually gone down in recent years. While gas grew a little to offset that, much more growth came from re-newables. So, the CO2 production has been going down year on year. The amount of gas consumed per year in Germany is still substantial of course but not really growing at this point. Accelerated growth in the energy market increases the pace at which energy providers invest in new capacity. This in turn speeds up the process of de-commissioning economically non viable plants. Electrifying transport indeed adds a couple of tens of percent but it will take quite long to get there. If you drive 10000 miles in a year, that adds about 2.5GWH to your yearly energy bill (assuming 200 miles/50kwh of battery in your car). That's ~25% of the energy usage of an average house hold (in the US). But it will take quite some time before all households have EVs. 25% growth over 2 decades is not that much. Also a lot of that demand will be met by people putting solar on their own roofs, which technically shrinks the grid demand and overall energy market.