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I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. The typical cynical approach is to point out one potential problem

I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. The typical cynical approach is to point out one potential problem, and dismiss the entire solution as if it was worthless, which is obviously false. As others have pointed out, there are now HVDC lines that can go over thousands of kilometers (transcontinental scale!) with reasonable losses. There's no reason to believe that we've hit the peak of HVDC technology either. The need for this technology to exist will drive further innovation. Even if the OP's estimate is off. Even if we "only" get to 90% renewables by 2045, that's still pretty damn great compared to what we have now, isn't it? Is your cynical opinion that we should just keep going with the status quo because we can't get 100% ? Even if we need 15% more wind and 15% more storage to than the OP's estimate reach 99%, that's not impossible either. It will create a lot of jobs. Why not just roll up our sleeves and do the best that we can? Thankfully, the world is not only made up of cynics, and a lot of people already are. We aren't done innovating on the renewable front either. There's LOTS of research into cheaper, safer, more scaleable grid-scale batteries. The current state of the art is cobalt-free and nickel-free lithium iron phosphate, but people sodium-ion batteries look like they're going to be viable soon. I also feel pretty confident that we'll eventually manage relatively efficient ways to store energy over the long term. If we could turn electricity into methane or ethanol with even 25% efficiency, that would allow us to store energy from the summer to use in the winter, or to power transatlantic airplanes with renewables. That seems pretty exciting to me.

kkfx 4y ago
Did you consider how strategical targets became such networks? How much geopolitics nightmares they represent?
- stevesimmons 4y ago
  Conversely, did you consider how much critical infrastructure we already have today, and how surprisingly little of it is targeted?
  - kkfx 4y ago
    Yes, all are far less fragile than such worldwide grid: takes logistics, anything can go wrong but there are few hotspots and in any case we have buffers here and there, a total disruption it's hard, actual "crisis" clearly show it. We have big airports. If one goes totally out of service planes can choose some else and passengers with issue can continue their journey etc. On contrary a global-scale electricity grid means a global scale blackouts with global scale cascading effects. Something we have already seen at far smaller scales and already devastating effects. Anything can fail, but if the fail impact few it's far less big than something who impact all. Also if you have buffers you can have a bit of time, even short, to act, to reduce the impact. If you have nothing because you are actually powered by some farms in Uzbekistan thousand of miles away than you are completely TFU. Just as a sidenote: I've invested in a new (witch means well insulated) home, with p.v., a little lithium storage to survive a single night etc just to ensure I still have energy in case of disruption. So far it already worked few times, and curiously such times are more and more frequent, partially due to explicit political choices partially due to natural events, partially because we push renewables up and still have nothing to compensate energy (frequency) fluctuation they provoke in the national grid. Now instead of try solving this issue witch is VERY BIG especially if you live a bit at north (winter) or at south (aircon needs) some propose some megaprojects fully know that ALL recent megaprojects fails all over the world, and in general ANY big-enough project fail at a rate proportional of it's size and complexity. What's the outcome? Personally I'm protected, at a high price, others simply get worse and worse services and no backups. Also without any proof that we can reach a stable future and that the actual tech is less pollutant at global scale than even classic fossil (actually p.v. and battery shift pollution in exotic place, but do not reduce it at global scale)... Oh, just to be clear I'm from the EU, nephew of a WWII Partisan's family, so definitively not something like "proud boys" people.
- SlickNixon 4y ago
  As opposed to fossil fuels, famously free of geopolitical nightmares.
  - kkfx 4y ago
    You can store oil. In significant quantity. You can't store electricity in the same way, easiness and quantity. So in case of a war you still have, any country still have months of oil reserves, very little electricity reserves in the form of pumped hydro, fossils and nuclear powers. Not only: a electricity grid disruption is almost instantaneous, oil&gas issue takes at least days and can be foreseeable in months and years. At a small scale: you can easily store in your garage 1000l, 2000l of diesel. You only need two cheap plastic reservoirs with a supporting structure (something here in EU south priced 50-200€ per tank) and or a high enough support (gravity fall) or a manual/electric pump (various price but in the range of 200-500€ more maximum) and your car will be autonomous for a certain, not that small, amount of time. Similarly to heat your house you might have perhaps 5-15.000l tank underground in your garden, normally sufficient for an year of heating. You can also easy store hot water, it does not last that long but two day is doable. You might have wood burning backups etc. Electricity? Try just to compare the impact of a 5 day gas station strike vs a 5 day blackouts for yourself. My personal lithium storage suffice for a night at minimum service (just lights, fridges/freezers, home rack etc NO heating/cooling without Sun) and its price was ~4k€ (battery) + 2k€ (battery inverter) for an estimated maximum service life of 10 years. While diesel reservoirs and pumps can potentially last 100+ years. Surely the Sun tend to shine a bit all day, but just to live on it I need at my single-home scale the price of a mid-range car for a similar MTBF. With a very cheap and resilient solution I can survive few months without diesel supply. With relatively cheap freezers I can survive a month or two grocery supply without special attentions. Without water things get complicated, but I still have a bit of autonomy anyway. Without electricity I have a small autonomy thanks to p.v. + lithium but while all the rest it's doable by anyone the p.v. system is too expensive for most and still not suffice to heat the house in winter. In summer I can cool it during the day and lucky here nights are always fresh, but you get the idea. At a bigger scale I do not have sources is English, this is a study by French Gov. https://www.economie.gouv.fr/files/files/directions_services/cge/stockage_electricite.pdf https://www.economie.gouv.fr/files/files/directions_services... on the topic, it's conclusion are: we can't run France on renewable nor now nor in the foreseeable future. And that's a study by public body only, no interested parts for nor fossil nor renewables sectors...
time_to_smile 4y ago
> I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it So far, we have never globally replaced fossil fuels with renewable energy, only supplemented their usage (meaning you can't point to a single drop of oil that is designated to never be extracted due to the creation of renewables). The energy required to build an electric car is massive and results in a lot of CO2 production and takes a fairly long time to balance out. Here's the really important part: despite lots of progress in electric cars and more importantly tremendous (seriously very impressive) growth in renewables CO2 in the atmosphere is not only not decreasing, it is accelerating. Ultimately massive renewables infrastructure projects and large scale adoption of electric vehicles are capitalist friendly ways of deluding yourself into thinking you're making change while actively making things much worse. The only surefire way to slow climate change is degrowth but this is literally a forbidden topic. Most of the comments mentioning this on HN or anywhere else on the web are immediately downvoted into oblivion. Even though we know for a fact that economic contraction leads to decreased fossil fuel consumption and have no evidence that on a system level increased renewables reduces CO2. And it's not just that capitalists don't like it, but nobody really wants to seriously consider degrowth. But here's the rub: climate change will bring massive degrowth either way, and in a much worse way. The cynicism is because the optimism around renewables allows people to pretend the problem isn't getting worse, and silences any discussion about hard but real solutions. It doesn't matter much either way, we've chosen violence and are going to play this out the hard way. If you want to pretend it's otherwise, I've given up on bothering to convince other people awhile ago. Have fun in your fantasy and let me know when the rate of atmospheric CO2 starts to even stop accelerating (forget actually dropping).
- svara 4y ago
  How would you get to CO2 neutrality if degrowth is going to be the strategy? If you go back to the world of 50 years ago, you reduce emissions but you don't solve the problem, and you make it impossible to go to an entirely carbon neutral economy since you won't be able to produce the required tech anymore. Unless the plan is to actually go back to a preindustrial lifestyle. Massive investment in renewables at least is a theoretically possible strategy for going to carbon neutrality without a total destruction of people's quality of life. You're right about electric cars et al being energy intensive to produce right now, but this gets better and better with increasing electrification and CO2 reduction in power generation.
trashtester 4y ago
If there is not wind in Sidney, you may have to transport 10s of GW distances of about 4000km during peak hours. Even using HVDC, there is significant transfer loss and building and operating that kind of infra is not cheap either. Also, who wants to pay for those interconnects when they expect battery prices to plummet, as you say?
wyager 4y ago
> I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. It mostly comes from understanding how power production and distribution works. > Even if we "only" get to 90% renewables by 2045 90% renewables doesn't mean we get to cut 90% of fossil fuel production capacity, and it's almost impossible that we get to 90% renewables without taking serious quality-of-life hits (unless you're including nuclear). > We aren't done innovating on the renewable front either. Yeah, in 50 years it will probably be fine. But we're talking about now. I'm also interested in the opportunity cost of switching to renewables. Maybe we can have the same quality of life we do now off of solar in 50 years, but almost certainly our quality of life would be significantly better if we weren't on solar. The Kardashev scale is the best cheap proxy for quality of civilizational development. > It will create a lot of jobs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window > Thankfully, the world is not only made up of cynics, and a lot of people already are. Another word for "cynic" in this context is "person with realistic and accurately calibrated economic expectations".
janef0421 4y ago
People don't dismiss these things as solutions because of a single problem. They generally evaluate them on a holistic material basis and find them lacking. Then, when posting on the internet, they state their general opinion and cite what they consider the most significant and relevant issue, since comprehensively explaining their reasoning makes little sense in the context.

kkfx 4y ago

Did you consider how strategical targets became such networks? How much geopolitics nightmares they represent?

stevesimmons 4y ago
Conversely, did you consider how much critical infrastructure we already have today, and how surprisingly little of it is targeted?
- kkfx 4y ago
  Yes, all are far less fragile than such worldwide grid: takes logistics, anything can go wrong but there are few hotspots and in any case we have buffers here and there, a total disruption it's hard, actual "crisis" clearly show it. We have big airports. If one goes totally out of service planes can choose some else and passengers with issue can continue their journey etc. On contrary a global-scale electricity grid means a global scale blackouts with global scale cascading effects. Something we have already seen at far smaller scales and already devastating effects. Anything can fail, but if the fail impact few it's far less big than something who impact all. Also if you have buffers you can have a bit of time, even short, to act, to reduce the impact. If you have nothing because you are actually powered by some farms in Uzbekistan thousand of miles away than you are completely TFU. Just as a sidenote: I've invested in a new (witch means well insulated) home, with p.v., a little lithium storage to survive a single night etc just to ensure I still have energy in case of disruption. So far it already worked few times, and curiously such times are more and more frequent, partially due to explicit political choices partially due to natural events, partially because we push renewables up and still have nothing to compensate energy (frequency) fluctuation they provoke in the national grid. Now instead of try solving this issue witch is VERY BIG especially if you live a bit at north (winter) or at south (aircon needs) some propose some megaprojects fully know that ALL recent megaprojects fails all over the world, and in general ANY big-enough project fail at a rate proportional of it's size and complexity. What's the outcome? Personally I'm protected, at a high price, others simply get worse and worse services and no backups. Also without any proof that we can reach a stable future and that the actual tech is less pollutant at global scale than even classic fossil (actually p.v. and battery shift pollution in exotic place, but do not reduce it at global scale)... Oh, just to be clear I'm from the EU, nephew of a WWII Partisan's family, so definitively not something like "proud boys" people.
SlickNixon 4y ago
As opposed to fossil fuels, famously free of geopolitical nightmares.
- kkfx 4y ago
  You can store oil. In significant quantity. You can't store electricity in the same way, easiness and quantity. So in case of a war you still have, any country still have months of oil reserves, very little electricity reserves in the form of pumped hydro, fossils and nuclear powers. Not only: a electricity grid disruption is almost instantaneous, oil&gas issue takes at least days and can be foreseeable in months and years. At a small scale: you can easily store in your garage 1000l, 2000l of diesel. You only need two cheap plastic reservoirs with a supporting structure (something here in EU south priced 50-200€ per tank) and or a high enough support (gravity fall) or a manual/electric pump (various price but in the range of 200-500€ more maximum) and your car will be autonomous for a certain, not that small, amount of time. Similarly to heat your house you might have perhaps 5-15.000l tank underground in your garden, normally sufficient for an year of heating. You can also easy store hot water, it does not last that long but two day is doable. You might have wood burning backups etc. Electricity? Try just to compare the impact of a 5 day gas station strike vs a 5 day blackouts for yourself. My personal lithium storage suffice for a night at minimum service (just lights, fridges/freezers, home rack etc NO heating/cooling without Sun) and its price was ~4k€ (battery) + 2k€ (battery inverter) for an estimated maximum service life of 10 years. While diesel reservoirs and pumps can potentially last 100+ years. Surely the Sun tend to shine a bit all day, but just to live on it I need at my single-home scale the price of a mid-range car for a similar MTBF. With a very cheap and resilient solution I can survive few months without diesel supply. With relatively cheap freezers I can survive a month or two grocery supply without special attentions. Without water things get complicated, but I still have a bit of autonomy anyway. Without electricity I have a small autonomy thanks to p.v. + lithium but while all the rest it's doable by anyone the p.v. system is too expensive for most and still not suffice to heat the house in winter. In summer I can cool it during the day and lucky here nights are always fresh, but you get the idea. At a bigger scale I do not have sources is English, this is a study by French Gov. https://www.economie.gouv.fr/files/files/directions_services/cge/stockage_electricite.pdf https://www.economie.gouv.fr/files/files/directions_services... on the topic, it's conclusion are: we can't run France on renewable nor now nor in the foreseeable future. And that's a study by public body only, no interested parts for nor fossil nor renewables sectors...

time_to_smile 4y ago

> I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it So far, we have never globally replaced fossil fuels with renewable energy, only supplemented their usage (meaning you can't point to a single drop of oil that is designated to never be extracted due to the creation of renewables). The energy required to build an electric car is massive and results in a lot of CO2 production and takes a fairly long time to balance out. Here's the really important part: despite lots of progress in electric cars and more importantly tremendous (seriously very impressive) growth in renewables CO2 in the atmosphere is not only not decreasing, it is accelerating. Ultimately massive renewables infrastructure projects and large scale adoption of electric vehicles are capitalist friendly ways of deluding yourself into thinking you're making change while actively making things much worse. The only surefire way to slow climate change is degrowth but this is literally a forbidden topic. Most of the comments mentioning this on HN or anywhere else on the web are immediately downvoted into oblivion. Even though we know for a fact that economic contraction leads to decreased fossil fuel consumption and have no evidence that on a system level increased renewables reduces CO2. And it's not just that capitalists don't like it, but nobody really wants to seriously consider degrowth. But here's the rub: climate change will bring massive degrowth either way, and in a much worse way. The cynicism is because the optimism around renewables allows people to pretend the problem isn't getting worse, and silences any discussion about hard but real solutions. It doesn't matter much either way, we've chosen violence and are going to play this out the hard way. If you want to pretend it's otherwise, I've given up on bothering to convince other people awhile ago. Have fun in your fantasy and let me know when the rate of atmospheric CO2 starts to even stop accelerating (forget actually dropping).

svara 4y ago
How would you get to CO2 neutrality if degrowth is going to be the strategy? If you go back to the world of 50 years ago, you reduce emissions but you don't solve the problem, and you make it impossible to go to an entirely carbon neutral economy since you won't be able to produce the required tech anymore. Unless the plan is to actually go back to a preindustrial lifestyle. Massive investment in renewables at least is a theoretically possible strategy for going to carbon neutrality without a total destruction of people's quality of life. You're right about electric cars et al being energy intensive to produce right now, but this gets better and better with increasing electrification and CO2 reduction in power generation.

trashtester 4y ago

If there is not wind in Sidney, you may have to transport 10s of GW distances of about 4000km during peak hours. Even using HVDC, there is significant transfer loss and building and operating that kind of infra is not cheap either. Also, who wants to pay for those interconnects when they expect battery prices to plummet, as you say?

wyager 4y ago

> I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. It mostly comes from understanding how power production and distribution works. > Even if we "only" get to 90% renewables by 2045 90% renewables doesn't mean we get to cut 90% of fossil fuel production capacity, and it's almost impossible that we get to 90% renewables without taking serious quality-of-life hits (unless you're including nuclear). > We aren't done innovating on the renewable front either. Yeah, in 50 years it will probably be fine. But we're talking about now. I'm also interested in the opportunity cost of switching to renewables. Maybe we can have the same quality of life we do now off of solar in 50 years, but almost certainly our quality of life would be significantly better if we weren't on solar. The Kardashev scale is the best cheap proxy for quality of civilizational development. > It will create a lot of jobs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window > Thankfully, the world is not only made up of cynics, and a lot of people already are. Another word for "cynic" in this context is "person with realistic and accurately calibrated economic expectations".

janef0421 4y ago

People don't dismiss these things as solutions because of a single problem. They generally evaluate them on a holistic material basis and find them lacking. Then, when posting on the internet, they state their general opinion and cite what they consider the most significant and relevant issue, since comprehensively explaining their reasoning makes little sense in the context.