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How many industries are throttled on energy cost/availability and nothing else? Crypto mining for sure. What else? Aluminium smelting perhaps? For whatever rea

How many industries are throttled on energy cost/availability and nothing else? Crypto mining for sure. What else? Aluminium smelting perhaps? For whatever reason, energy production seems to be about meeting demand, rather than finding use for surpluses.

philwelch 5y ago
That’s mostly because we don’t use a lot of renewables though.
treeman79 5y ago
Would hate to think of how much worse crypto would be If power was free. Mining for materials, waste products, waste heat, noise. Already have regular extended family complaining about the huge number of noisy shipping containers in their communities. These are middle of nowhere towns.
- philwelch 5y ago
  See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. People have the intuition that it's somehow inherently virtuous to use less energy, even if it's from clean and sustainable sources.
belorn 5y ago
In context of Sweden: Steel production require massive amount of energy, especially if you want to go coal free. Forest products also depend on cheap energy. An other area is concrete production. After those I suspect it is food production. Read somewhere that fish farms on land is suffering in particular. Basically any production dealing with raw materials.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Can you use these if they are intermittent and unreliable? I'm thinking, maybe we get to the point where we have lots of nuclear humming at a constant (ish) rate, and some much cheaper, but unreliable renewables. Can steel mills start and stop? Forestry, ming etc. work on the schedules of wind and sun? Sounds tricky for sure. Especially because then, renewables will have to compete with marginal cost of nuclear (which is drastically lower than average, since it doesn't include the massive cape, fuel is cheap etc.)
  - philwelch 5y ago
    I don't know off the top of my head how much of industry runs 24/7 and how much is just during the day, but it's possible that "solar power only works during the day" and "factories operate during the day when their workers are awake and at work" will both sort of work out together.
  - belorn 5y ago
    Employees cost money, as does buildings and storage. They can shutdown for periods when the energy cost is high but it hurts profitability and the economical viability. The steel industry here try to build next to hydro, in areas where the price is relative low. The price point can differ by more than 100% when we compare the cheapest regions with the most expensive, for reason that has to do with transmissions. There is also experiments with hydrogen. A few paper mills have cut down on employees, and in some cases shutdown the plants during periods of low wind. Food production can't shutdown. A fish farm need to keep the water at a set temperature or the fish dies. Greenhouses that depend on artificial light can't just close down or the plants dies. I would say that the answer is mostly a no. Short term some industries can adapt a little while waiting for the energy prices to stabilize, but long term it is a hard sell to have employees and building just sitting around.
wbl 5y ago
Make electricity free and I can decarbonize steelmaking entirely.
SeanSpearo 5y ago
That's because too much power overloads the power wires. You can only get that by making surplus, and when surplus occurs a lot of that power is lost from overload. And before you say to upgrade the wires, that would cost a lot of money and be an infrastructural nightmare.
rotexo 5y ago
Two ideas: desalination and direct air CO2 capture plants? Though maybe the primary bottleneck isn’t lack of energy, and you don’t want all that expensive equipment idle while you are waiting for excess electricity from renewables.
megaman821 5y ago
A few I can think of: * Desalinization * Hydrogen * Steel * Concrete * Recycling * Carbon Capture

philwelch 5y ago

That’s mostly because we don’t use a lot of renewables though.

treeman79 5y ago

Would hate to think of how much worse crypto would be If power was free. Mining for materials, waste products, waste heat, noise. Already have regular extended family complaining about the huge number of noisy shipping containers in their communities. These are middle of nowhere towns.

philwelch 5y ago
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. People have the intuition that it's somehow inherently virtuous to use less energy, even if it's from clean and sustainable sources.

belorn 5y ago

In context of Sweden: Steel production require massive amount of energy, especially if you want to go coal free. Forest products also depend on cheap energy. An other area is concrete production. After those I suspect it is food production. Read somewhere that fish farms on land is suffering in particular. Basically any production dealing with raw materials.

rich_sasha 5y ago
Can you use these if they are intermittent and unreliable? I'm thinking, maybe we get to the point where we have lots of nuclear humming at a constant (ish) rate, and some much cheaper, but unreliable renewables. Can steel mills start and stop? Forestry, ming etc. work on the schedules of wind and sun? Sounds tricky for sure. Especially because then, renewables will have to compete with marginal cost of nuclear (which is drastically lower than average, since it doesn't include the massive cape, fuel is cheap etc.)
- philwelch 5y ago
  I don't know off the top of my head how much of industry runs 24/7 and how much is just during the day, but it's possible that "solar power only works during the day" and "factories operate during the day when their workers are awake and at work" will both sort of work out together.
- belorn 5y ago
  Employees cost money, as does buildings and storage. They can shutdown for periods when the energy cost is high but it hurts profitability and the economical viability. The steel industry here try to build next to hydro, in areas where the price is relative low. The price point can differ by more than 100% when we compare the cheapest regions with the most expensive, for reason that has to do with transmissions. There is also experiments with hydrogen. A few paper mills have cut down on employees, and in some cases shutdown the plants during periods of low wind. Food production can't shutdown. A fish farm need to keep the water at a set temperature or the fish dies. Greenhouses that depend on artificial light can't just close down or the plants dies. I would say that the answer is mostly a no. Short term some industries can adapt a little while waiting for the energy prices to stabilize, but long term it is a hard sell to have employees and building just sitting around.

wbl 5y ago

Make electricity free and I can decarbonize steelmaking entirely.

SeanSpearo 5y ago

That's because too much power overloads the power wires. You can only get that by making surplus, and when surplus occurs a lot of that power is lost from overload. And before you say to upgrade the wires, that would cost a lot of money and be an infrastructural nightmare.

rotexo 5y ago

Two ideas: desalination and direct air CO2 capture plants? Though maybe the primary bottleneck isn’t lack of energy, and you don’t want all that expensive equipment idle while you are waiting for excess electricity from renewables.

megaman821 5y ago

A few I can think of: * Desalinization * Hydrogen * Steel * Concrete * Recycling * Carbon Capture