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> * More of the energy we use will come from the electric socket. And we aren’t ready.* I don’t get this argument that increasing electricity generation is goi

> * More of the energy we use will come from the electric socket. And we aren’t ready.* I don’t get this argument that increasing electricity generation is going to be particularly hard. From 1950 to 1959, the US more than doubled electricity generation. The article says by 2050 we’ll need about double current electricity production. That’s three times as long! From 1950 to 1973, just 23 years, electricity production increased by over 450%. People trying to make it sound like this will be unprecedentedly hard either forgot about the time when America used to grow electricity quickly, or they’re pessimistic about modern America’s ability to build anything big any more.

anonporridge 5y ago
> or they’re pessimistic about modern America’s ability to build anything big any more. This wouldn't be an entirely unfounded concern.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Yeah, I was throwing the author a bone, there. Unfortunately, with scare articles like this, it’s somewhat of a self fulfilling prophecy. We need articles talking about how it’s relatively easy given historical capabilities, but we need actual action.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    True that. Setting expectations and believing something is possible is an underrated part of the process to get there. Pessimism leads to inaction.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Too bad the nature of politics has changed. We need another FDR and WPA. Too many politicans favor crafting lucrative public contracts to their cabal of friends than crafting a productive public works project. There is no job security in that. Another big issue is the cost to run. In order to be a decent candidate, you need to buy national advertising, which is owned by a handful of companies, which would prefer certain candidates who would provide them with profitable legislation. The current crop is rotten and the mechanisms we have to get a new one are coopted by these entrenched private interest groups who actively fight to ensure their profitable status quo doesn't change, and only does if a profitable angle has been already conceived. Maybe this is the American Way.
    - simplicio 5y ago
      I disagree. The FDR era featured a lot more public corruption and cronyism then currently exists. Indeed, I suspect there's some trade-off between anti-corruption and the ability to get things built, as layers of checks, hearings, certifications, etc. end up making it much harder and more time consuming to build anything.
      - jessaustin 5y ago
        The FDR era featured a lot more public corruption and cronyism then [sic] currently exists. This is a bizarre misrepresentation of history. There are entire industries of corruption now that didn't even exist in FDR's time. The current government spends far more as a percentage of (a vastly larger) GDP; the fact that nothing useful gets done can't very well argue for less corruption.
xenocyon 5y ago
It's important to remember that electricity isn't an energy source, it's an energy medium. This seems trivial, but seems to be a blind spot for people who, for instance, try to set up comparison between electricity and fossil fuels. The comparison doesn't make sense when one is an energy source and the other merely a medium. Generating electricity is a bit of a misnomer, because it's more about repackaging energy than creating it. Again, this is trivial but easy to lose sight of. The important question is: what's the energy source?
- dheera 5y ago
  Install solar on everyone's roofs. Subsidize it with money from property taxes. Make it mandatory for owners of rented buildings, and mandatory for businesses. That alone will easily meet all our projected energy requirements for quite a while.
  - nemosaltat 5y ago
    As of Jan 1, 2020 California has come very close to these requirements. Most new construction residences (with a few exceptions) must have enough solar generation equipment to meet 100% of the buildings electrical needs.
  - eldaisfish 5y ago
    lol no it won't. This is a horrible oversimplification. Solar panels can only offset some energy requirements for a limited time in certain climates. Even if you were to install batteries in every home, the cost is monumental, battery supply is limited and you lose the economy of scale.
    - dheera 5y ago
      If they had controlled COVID early enough the economic losses could have quite possibly allowed for everyone to have solar already.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      It’s the future actually. https://www.tesla.com/en_au/support/energy/savpp-faqs https://www.tesla.com/en_au/support/energy/savpp-faqs (South Australia Virtual Power Plant FAQs) https://www.utilitydive.com/news/teslas-australian-virtual-power-plant-propped-up-grid-during-coal-outage/568812/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/teslas-australian-virtual-p... (Tesla's Australian virtual power plant propped up grid during coal outage) > Once complete, the VPP will include 50,000 houses fitted with 5 kW rooftop solar systems and 13.5 kWh Tesla batteries. Together, they will be capable of delivering up to 250 MW of solar power and 650 MWh of energy storage. > So far, less than 1,000 homes have been completed. Still, the aggregated storage was able to make a difference. With regards to Australian rooftop solar potential, it’s estimated at almost 179GW, roughly a bit more than 3.5x total current Australian generation capacity.
hannob 5y ago
Well, we will need to increase electricity generation while at the same time replacing existing fossil fuel generation. So that adds to the challenge. Not saying this is impossible, but it surely is a challenge.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  40% of our electricity is clean. So even if we need to more that double electricity while making all the existing electricity clean, the growth rate is still only a factor of 5 over 29 years compared to the factor of 5.5 we grew from 1950 to 1973.
eldaisfish 5y ago
Generating electrical energy isn't difficult. Distributing it is. Balancing variable generation against variable demand is even more difficult. What you've forgotten here is that doubling or tripling the carrying capacity of electrical infrastructure isn't a trivial task. Remember that in the 50s, electrical energy was generated at large sites like the Hoover dam or the James Bay project in Quebec. It was then distributed out to houses that didn't have many high capacity electrical appliances. Today, all that has changed with dishwashers, electric dryers and now EVs slowly becoming standard. You are making it seem like these infrastructure upgrades can be magicked into existence without decades of investment, planning and effort. The article is right - no country is ready for the sudden change. Watch as EVs go from a rich person's toy to the mainstream and the electrical infrastructure keeps collapsing dealing with the sustained surge in demand.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Infrastructure is sized for peak power usage, so for those early evening times when somebody might have their air conditioner, range and clothes dryer running simultaneously. Electrification will significantly increase energy usage (kWh), but it has a much smaller impact on peak power (kW). Electric cars charge at night, electric heat pumps replace air conditioners, et cetera. Also, infrastructure was designed for rising demand. For infrastructure was built in the 60s the planners would say "demand is doubling every decade, so if we want our infrastructure to last 100 years..." Sure, there will be some places that don't have adequate infrastructure, but it will be a small fraction.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    And just like the internet, the 'generation' is getting closer and closer to the customer. As netflix installs appliances in my region, we're also generating electricity at the rooftop or regional cogen systems. That parked electric car may very well back-feed into the grid to shave the peaks of demand. That clothes dryer might run 'slow' until it's peak pricing time, same with EV charging. My 'smart' thermostat already does it for HVAC. Everything else will too.
  - 5y ago
WalterBright 5y ago
> modern America’s ability to build anything big any more. The first transcontinental railroad took 6 years to 1,900 miles. All the grading, track laying, and bridge construction was done by muscle. Black powder was used for the tunnels, but the holes to put the power in were bored by hand. In contrast, Seattle Transit will take 30 years to build 22 miles of track, with modern construction equipment, and that's in the remote possibility they'll be on schedule. Seattle used to have rail networks. The right-of-ways are still there, but Sound Transit very carefully avoids using them. Nobody is ever able to explain why. Some even still have rusting rail on them, while the ST crews are blasting new right of way a block over.
- Hypx_ 5y ago
  You should be aware of the death toll for the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. It's not something we can legally replicate.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Life was generally more dangerous and harder those days, and medical practice was terrible. Horses, for example, regularly killed people in those days (more than cars do), and their use is not the romantic image we have of them today. If you can show that the railroad was built on blood, I'd be interested.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Exactly. It was a high dollar construction project. If anything it was safer than a mundane bottom dollar "cut whatever corners we need to be the lowest bidder" project. Everything was just that much more dangerous then.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        Workers also flocked to those railway jobs, because they were better than their other options.
endymi0n 5y ago
After all, it's not even that hard or costly in comparison. Total expected lifetime cost of the F-35 program [1]: 1.5T$ Expected cost of shifting the US to 100% renewables [2]: 4.5T$ (note these estimates are probably at least double that of the real costs in light of the rapidly dropping deployment costs since) Environmental cost of not doing it: Projected at 1.5T$ for the US by 2050, so it's almost self financing. This is not even about serious economic restraint, it's literally just about having a frickin' fighter or not. Note the Apollo program was a bargain compared to both at just 280B$... "We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too." [1] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/f35-fighter-jet-pentagon/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/f35-fighter-jet-pe... [2] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/shifting-u-s-to-100-percent-renewables-would-cost-4-5-trillion-analysis-finds https://e360.yale.edu/digest/shifting-u-s-to-100-percent-ren...
- swader999 5y ago
  You need to build 300 square miles of wind farms or two nuke plants every three days to get to net zero by 2050. Won't happen. There's a forbes article that breaks it all down.

anonporridge 5y ago

> or they’re pessimistic about modern America’s ability to build anything big any more. This wouldn't be an entirely unfounded concern.

Robotbeat 5y ago
Yeah, I was throwing the author a bone, there. Unfortunately, with scare articles like this, it’s somewhat of a self fulfilling prophecy. We need articles talking about how it’s relatively easy given historical capabilities, but we need actual action.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  True that. Setting expectations and believing something is possible is an underrated part of the process to get there. Pessimism leads to inaction.
- asdff 5y ago
  Too bad the nature of politics has changed. We need another FDR and WPA. Too many politicans favor crafting lucrative public contracts to their cabal of friends than crafting a productive public works project. There is no job security in that. Another big issue is the cost to run. In order to be a decent candidate, you need to buy national advertising, which is owned by a handful of companies, which would prefer certain candidates who would provide them with profitable legislation. The current crop is rotten and the mechanisms we have to get a new one are coopted by these entrenched private interest groups who actively fight to ensure their profitable status quo doesn't change, and only does if a profitable angle has been already conceived. Maybe this is the American Way.
  - simplicio 5y ago
    I disagree. The FDR era featured a lot more public corruption and cronyism then currently exists. Indeed, I suspect there's some trade-off between anti-corruption and the ability to get things built, as layers of checks, hearings, certifications, etc. end up making it much harder and more time consuming to build anything.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      The FDR era featured a lot more public corruption and cronyism then [sic] currently exists. This is a bizarre misrepresentation of history. There are entire industries of corruption now that didn't even exist in FDR's time. The current government spends far more as a percentage of (a vastly larger) GDP; the fact that nothing useful gets done can't very well argue for less corruption.

xenocyon 5y ago

It's important to remember that electricity isn't an energy source, it's an energy medium. This seems trivial, but seems to be a blind spot for people who, for instance, try to set up comparison between electricity and fossil fuels. The comparison doesn't make sense when one is an energy source and the other merely a medium. Generating electricity is a bit of a misnomer, because it's more about repackaging energy than creating it. Again, this is trivial but easy to lose sight of. The important question is: what's the energy source?

dheera 5y ago
Install solar on everyone's roofs. Subsidize it with money from property taxes. Make it mandatory for owners of rented buildings, and mandatory for businesses. That alone will easily meet all our projected energy requirements for quite a while.
- nemosaltat 5y ago
  As of Jan 1, 2020 California has come very close to these requirements. Most new construction residences (with a few exceptions) must have enough solar generation equipment to meet 100% of the buildings electrical needs.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  lol no it won't. This is a horrible oversimplification. Solar panels can only offset some energy requirements for a limited time in certain climates. Even if you were to install batteries in every home, the cost is monumental, battery supply is limited and you lose the economy of scale.
  - dheera 5y ago
    If they had controlled COVID early enough the economic losses could have quite possibly allowed for everyone to have solar already.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    It’s the future actually. https://www.tesla.com/en_au/support/energy/savpp-faqs https://www.tesla.com/en_au/support/energy/savpp-faqs (South Australia Virtual Power Plant FAQs) https://www.utilitydive.com/news/teslas-australian-virtual-power-plant-propped-up-grid-during-coal-outage/568812/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/teslas-australian-virtual-p... (Tesla's Australian virtual power plant propped up grid during coal outage) > Once complete, the VPP will include 50,000 houses fitted with 5 kW rooftop solar systems and 13.5 kWh Tesla batteries. Together, they will be capable of delivering up to 250 MW of solar power and 650 MWh of energy storage. > So far, less than 1,000 homes have been completed. Still, the aggregated storage was able to make a difference. With regards to Australian rooftop solar potential, it’s estimated at almost 179GW, roughly a bit more than 3.5x total current Australian generation capacity.

hannob 5y ago

Well, we will need to increase electricity generation while at the same time replacing existing fossil fuel generation. So that adds to the challenge. Not saying this is impossible, but it surely is a challenge.

Robotbeat 5y ago
40% of our electricity is clean. So even if we need to more that double electricity while making all the existing electricity clean, the growth rate is still only a factor of 5 over 29 years compared to the factor of 5.5 we grew from 1950 to 1973.

eldaisfish 5y ago

Generating electrical energy isn't difficult. Distributing it is. Balancing variable generation against variable demand is even more difficult. What you've forgotten here is that doubling or tripling the carrying capacity of electrical infrastructure isn't a trivial task. Remember that in the 50s, electrical energy was generated at large sites like the Hoover dam or the James Bay project in Quebec. It was then distributed out to houses that didn't have many high capacity electrical appliances. Today, all that has changed with dishwashers, electric dryers and now EVs slowly becoming standard. You are making it seem like these infrastructure upgrades can be magicked into existence without decades of investment, planning and effort. The article is right - no country is ready for the sudden change. Watch as EVs go from a rich person's toy to the mainstream and the electrical infrastructure keeps collapsing dealing with the sustained surge in demand.

bryanlarsen 5y ago
Infrastructure is sized for peak power usage, so for those early evening times when somebody might have their air conditioner, range and clothes dryer running simultaneously. Electrification will significantly increase energy usage (kWh), but it has a much smaller impact on peak power (kW). Electric cars charge at night, electric heat pumps replace air conditioners, et cetera. Also, infrastructure was designed for rising demand. For infrastructure was built in the 60s the planners would say "demand is doubling every decade, so if we want our infrastructure to last 100 years..." Sure, there will be some places that don't have adequate infrastructure, but it will be a small fraction.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  And just like the internet, the 'generation' is getting closer and closer to the customer. As netflix installs appliances in my region, we're also generating electricity at the rooftop or regional cogen systems. That parked electric car may very well back-feed into the grid to shave the peaks of demand. That clothes dryer might run 'slow' until it's peak pricing time, same with EV charging. My 'smart' thermostat already does it for HVAC. Everything else will too.
- 5y ago

WalterBright 5y ago

> modern America’s ability to build anything big any more. The first transcontinental railroad took 6 years to 1,900 miles. All the grading, track laying, and bridge construction was done by muscle. Black powder was used for the tunnels, but the holes to put the power in were bored by hand. In contrast, Seattle Transit will take 30 years to build 22 miles of track, with modern construction equipment, and that's in the remote possibility they'll be on schedule. Seattle used to have rail networks. The right-of-ways are still there, but Sound Transit very carefully avoids using them. Nobody is ever able to explain why. Some even still have rusting rail on them, while the ST crews are blasting new right of way a block over.

Hypx_ 5y ago
You should be aware of the death toll for the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. It's not something we can legally replicate.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Life was generally more dangerous and harder those days, and medical practice was terrible. Horses, for example, regularly killed people in those days (more than cars do), and their use is not the romantic image we have of them today. If you can show that the railroad was built on blood, I'd be interested.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Exactly. It was a high dollar construction project. If anything it was safer than a mundane bottom dollar "cut whatever corners we need to be the lowest bidder" project. Everything was just that much more dangerous then.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Workers also flocked to those railway jobs, because they were better than their other options.

endymi0n 5y ago

After all, it's not even that hard or costly in comparison. Total expected lifetime cost of the F-35 program [1]: 1.5T$ Expected cost of shifting the US to 100% renewables [2]: 4.5T$ (note these estimates are probably at least double that of the real costs in light of the rapidly dropping deployment costs since) Environmental cost of not doing it: Projected at 1.5T$ for the US by 2050, so it's almost self financing. This is not even about serious economic restraint, it's literally just about having a frickin' fighter or not. Note the Apollo program was a bargain compared to both at just 280B$... "We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too." [1] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/f35-fighter-jet-pentagon/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/f35-fighter-jet-pe... [2] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/shifting-u-s-to-100-percent-renewables-would-cost-4-5-trillion-analysis-finds https://e360.yale.edu/digest/shifting-u-s-to-100-percent-ren...

swader999 5y ago
You need to build 300 square miles of wind farms or two nuke plants every three days to get to net zero by 2050. Won't happen. There's a forbes article that breaks it all down.