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Renewables are not a panacea and may never be able to power a modern economy as they will probably always require fossil fuel baseload You say that like it's t

Renewables are not a panacea and may never be able to power a modern economy as they will probably always require fossil fuel baseload You say that like it's true, and it's not. Anyway, the climate doesn't care. Human emissions will reach equilibrium with what's compatible with life on Earth, one way or the other. Figuring this out is preferable to massive loss of life and degraded standards of living for the survivors. I find it particularly telling you exclude nuclear as a baseload and specify it has to be fossil fuel baseload.

macspoofing 6y ago
Nuclear is great but it is a terrible baseload for renewables because nuclear cannot just spin up and spin down like hydro or natural gas can.
- throwaway5752 6y ago
  That is not what baseload power is. You are talking about peak load generation. And pumped hydro is a classic smoothing solution to energy storage from uneven renewable base load generation.
- cptskippy 6y ago
  You're completely ignoring batteries which have already demonstrated their viability in southern Australia.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >You're completely ignoring batteries I'm not. >which have already demonstrated their viability in southern Australia. They didn't. They replaced natural gas in one specific use-case, namely to provide grid stability. Those batteries (no batteries) are capable of bridging renewable variability.
    - cptskippy 6y ago
      Southern Australia's wind farms alone are enough to meet demand and when their new synchronous capacitor projects are completed they won't need stand by gas power plants.
      - macspoofing 6y ago
        >Southern Australia's wind farms alone are enough to meet demand When the wind is blowing. If the wind isn't blowing, you're not getting any power and you're going to have to fire up those coal/natural gas plants. >when their new synchronous capacitor projects are completed they won't need stand by gas power plants. How much power can these 'synchronous capacitors' store, and for how long? Can they even store enough to power a small city (~250k) for more than few mins? Let me spoil something for you, there is no battery technology that can scale to run a modern economy and hard industry. Not now, and not upcoming. If you have favorable geography, you may be able to do pumped storage, but that's about the best you can do. Keep in mind that EVEN if you miraculously had something to store grid-scale power over a long-term, you need to greatly overprovision renewables because those 'batteries' need to be charged (with lots of energy loss) during peaks enough to bridge daily, seasonal and inter-year variability. And of course, land-use requirements for renewables is MASSIVE (from mining to deployment to decommissioning) - so renewables are very heavy on the environment. They aren't going to work. There's a reason why no developed region relies on renewables without either fossil fuel backup (or if geography allows, geothermal or hydro). There's a reason why Germany is spending billions to build pipelines to ship natural gas from Russia for decades to come. What do they know about renewables, that you don't?
- poutrathor 6y ago
  That's actually a classic misconception : see here https://mobile.twitter.com/tristankamin/status/1102620969808658432 https://mobile.twitter.com/tristankamin/status/1102620969808... this detailed example from France nuclear power centrals

macspoofing 6y ago

Nuclear is great but it is a terrible baseload for renewables because nuclear cannot just spin up and spin down like hydro or natural gas can.

throwaway5752 6y ago
That is not what baseload power is. You are talking about peak load generation. And pumped hydro is a classic smoothing solution to energy storage from uneven renewable base load generation.
cptskippy 6y ago
You're completely ignoring batteries which have already demonstrated their viability in southern Australia.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >You're completely ignoring batteries I'm not. >which have already demonstrated their viability in southern Australia. They didn't. They replaced natural gas in one specific use-case, namely to provide grid stability. Those batteries (no batteries) are capable of bridging renewable variability.
  - cptskippy 6y ago
    Southern Australia's wind farms alone are enough to meet demand and when their new synchronous capacitor projects are completed they won't need stand by gas power plants.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >Southern Australia's wind farms alone are enough to meet demand When the wind is blowing. If the wind isn't blowing, you're not getting any power and you're going to have to fire up those coal/natural gas plants. >when their new synchronous capacitor projects are completed they won't need stand by gas power plants. How much power can these 'synchronous capacitors' store, and for how long? Can they even store enough to power a small city (~250k) for more than few mins? Let me spoil something for you, there is no battery technology that can scale to run a modern economy and hard industry. Not now, and not upcoming. If you have favorable geography, you may be able to do pumped storage, but that's about the best you can do. Keep in mind that EVEN if you miraculously had something to store grid-scale power over a long-term, you need to greatly overprovision renewables because those 'batteries' need to be charged (with lots of energy loss) during peaks enough to bridge daily, seasonal and inter-year variability. And of course, land-use requirements for renewables is MASSIVE (from mining to deployment to decommissioning) - so renewables are very heavy on the environment. They aren't going to work. There's a reason why no developed region relies on renewables without either fossil fuel backup (or if geography allows, geothermal or hydro). There's a reason why Germany is spending billions to build pipelines to ship natural gas from Russia for decades to come. What do they know about renewables, that you don't?
poutrathor 6y ago
That's actually a classic misconception : see here https://mobile.twitter.com/tristankamin/status/1102620969808658432 https://mobile.twitter.com/tristankamin/status/1102620969808... this detailed example from France nuclear power centrals