8 ms·

If you enjoy this read, you should also read the author’s earlier masterpiece of a post on the energy and materials transition (~1h40 read) : https://www.tsungx

by rhl 4y ago

If you enjoy this read, you should also read the author’s earlier masterpiece of a post on the energy and materials transition (~1h40 read) : https://www.tsungxu.com/clean-energy-transition-guide/ https://www.tsungxu.com/clean-energy-transition-guide/

tsungxu 4y ago
Thanks for sharing!
clairity 4y ago
a quick skim suggests this guide is largely motivated reasoning rather than being objective, as it immediately jumps to solar, wind, and batteries as its conclusive remedy. that's unrealistically simplistic, despite its length. something as large and complex as our global energy supply will need us pursuing every option simultaneously. and the most immediate thing to tackle is coal (being the most polluting, estimated to kill millions per year), for which nuclear needs to be a significant component (being baseload).
- lossolo 4y ago
  I think he is over optimistic about future and not taking human factor into consideration (human nature, geopolitics, wars, upcoming big crisis around the world because of climate change effects, huge human migrations etc). What he describes is the best case scenario.
  - clairity 4y ago
    right, it's the most optimistic possible scenario, if all of the assumptions (of which there are a lot) are correct and as you point out, all omissions (of which there are a lot, despite the length) are negligible. there are some citations, but the narrative project a certain future way beyond what the meager research suggests. the article does provide a nice survey of clean tech, but the conclusions should be disregarded.
    - tsungxu 4y ago
      Nuclear is very important. It's just not scaling fast enough. I don't see a future where next-gen SMR nor fusion gets to cost parity with renewables quickly or easily. They will have to scale up via beachhead markets adjacent to existing electricity demand sources. Long term, I do think economically viable fusion will supplant renewables, but that's decades away.
      - clairity 4y ago
        nuclear is not scaling fast enough because it's been subject to 40 years of negative mediopolitical narrative reinforced by poor market and technical regulation. nuclear easily gets to cost parity with renewables when you consider the needed storage for baseload usage and the more advanced grid control variable generation requires. in the US, had we continued to build nuclear at the rate we were between the 70s and 90s, we'd be at over 50% nuclear for electricity generation, which would have knocked coal completely out of the equation, leaving only nuclear (baseload), gas (variable demand), and renewables (opportunistic generation). over 70 years, fission-based nuclear has caused 99+% fewer human deaths than fossil fuels have. and yes, there's no need to pin any hopes on fusion right now, which is decades away at best.
        pixl97 4y ago
        If we wanted to build nuclear out like it was the 70's we needed to ensure that 3MI didn't happen in '79. This was the death of the industry in the US. Chernobyl buried it in a lead coffin 6 feet deeper, and Fukushima topped it with concrete. On top of that in the war in Ukraine with fighting around the nuclear power plants has made us that much more aware that the stable political environments that nuclear requires cannot be guaranteed.
- cma 4y ago
  We're now seeing nuclear plants in a conventional warfare warzone for the first time in history. Creators of a Texas plant thought it would never freeze (or that if it did it wouldn't matter with the government's gift of a an extremely small liability cap on nuclear), so they didn't put enough safety stuff for that scenario and had to shut down a reactor unplanned.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Wind, solar and batteries dominating electricity generation isn't a 'jump', why would you think that? That's been the consensus for about a decade. Only the relative dominance has changed, with 80% being commonly accepted for a few years and 100% now broadly accepted as reasonable.
  - k8wk1 4y ago
    There are many different consensuses. In this case the most important consensus is what is the opinion shared by the operators of electricity grids and the like, because ultimately they will need to match energy supply and demand. Their consensus is that specifically batteries are completely nonviable for long-term balancing of intermittent energy sources. Physics simply do not add up.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Batteries aren't used for long term balancing, so that bit is correct. They are great at short term balancing though. So they'll still use mostly wind/solar/batteries. This is what grids are rolling out right now around the world.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Batteries are not produced at a scale nearly large enough to be impactful. The world consumes 2,500 TWh of electricity per hour. And that's set to increase as less wealthy countries develop and start demanding A/C, street lights, etc. And on top of that, electricity production is only ~40% of carbon emissions (meaning, electrifying heating, transport, metallurgy, etc. will drive up electricity demand even further). By comparison, the world produces 300-400 GWh of batteries each year. Most of which is going to electronics and electric vehicles. Battery production has been increasing, but it's unclear if the supply of input materials can keep up. The price of lithium jumped 400% last year: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium In short, the chart on the right is not something to be taken for granted: https://www.tsungxu.com/content/images/size/w1600/2022/01/solar-battery-tipping-intro-1.jpeg https://www.tsungxu.com/content/images/size/w1600/2022/01/so... Moore's law is the exception, not the norm, because making chips faster works by making transistors smaller. This doesn't apply to most products, as even zero manufacturing costs cannot bring cost below input materials. Imagine the cost of a car went from $500,000 in 1910, $50,000 in 1920, and $5,000 in 1930. Is is safe to assume that a car would cost $5 in 1960 and $0.50 in 1970?
- flgb 4y ago
  What’s baseload? If you mean minimum demand from the grid, in Western Australia where I am it’s around 5% of peak demand, In South Australia it’s zero. In Western Australia coal will be gone by the end of the decade. In South Australia it’s gone already and generation from gas is on a strong downward trend too. Australia’s conservative electricity system planning is expecting the country to hit 80% renewables. That’s going to end up being the lower bound.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    > What’s baseload? If you mean minimum demand from the grid, in Western Australia where I am it’s around 5% of peak demand, In South Australia it’s zero. This is an extreme exception to the norm. Usually minimum demand is around 70-80% of the peak demand: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915

by rhl 4y ago

tsungxu 4y ago

Thanks for sharing!

clairity 4y ago

a quick skim suggests this guide is largely motivated reasoning rather than being objective, as it immediately jumps to solar, wind, and batteries as its conclusive remedy. that's unrealistically simplistic, despite its length. something as large and complex as our global energy supply will need us pursuing every option simultaneously. and the most immediate thing to tackle is coal (being the most polluting, estimated to kill millions per year), for which nuclear needs to be a significant component (being baseload).

lossolo 4y ago
I think he is over optimistic about future and not taking human factor into consideration (human nature, geopolitics, wars, upcoming big crisis around the world because of climate change effects, huge human migrations etc). What he describes is the best case scenario.
- clairity 4y ago
  right, it's the most optimistic possible scenario, if all of the assumptions (of which there are a lot) are correct and as you point out, all omissions (of which there are a lot, despite the length) are negligible. there are some citations, but the narrative project a certain future way beyond what the meager research suggests. the article does provide a nice survey of clean tech, but the conclusions should be disregarded.
  - tsungxu 4y ago
    Nuclear is very important. It's just not scaling fast enough. I don't see a future where next-gen SMR nor fusion gets to cost parity with renewables quickly or easily. They will have to scale up via beachhead markets adjacent to existing electricity demand sources. Long term, I do think economically viable fusion will supplant renewables, but that's decades away.
    - clairity 4y ago
      nuclear is not scaling fast enough because it's been subject to 40 years of negative mediopolitical narrative reinforced by poor market and technical regulation. nuclear easily gets to cost parity with renewables when you consider the needed storage for baseload usage and the more advanced grid control variable generation requires. in the US, had we continued to build nuclear at the rate we were between the 70s and 90s, we'd be at over 50% nuclear for electricity generation, which would have knocked coal completely out of the equation, leaving only nuclear (baseload), gas (variable demand), and renewables (opportunistic generation). over 70 years, fission-based nuclear has caused 99+% fewer human deaths than fossil fuels have. and yes, there's no need to pin any hopes on fusion right now, which is decades away at best.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        If we wanted to build nuclear out like it was the 70's we needed to ensure that 3MI didn't happen in '79. This was the death of the industry in the US. Chernobyl buried it in a lead coffin 6 feet deeper, and Fukushima topped it with concrete. On top of that in the war in Ukraine with fighting around the nuclear power plants has made us that much more aware that the stable political environments that nuclear requires cannot be guaranteed.
cma 4y ago
We're now seeing nuclear plants in a conventional warfare warzone for the first time in history. Creators of a Texas plant thought it would never freeze (or that if it did it wouldn't matter with the government's gift of a an extremely small liability cap on nuclear), so they didn't put enough safety stuff for that scenario and had to shut down a reactor unplanned.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Wind, solar and batteries dominating electricity generation isn't a 'jump', why would you think that? That's been the consensus for about a decade. Only the relative dominance has changed, with 80% being commonly accepted for a few years and 100% now broadly accepted as reasonable.
- k8wk1 4y ago
  There are many different consensuses. In this case the most important consensus is what is the opinion shared by the operators of electricity grids and the like, because ultimately they will need to match energy supply and demand. Their consensus is that specifically batteries are completely nonviable for long-term balancing of intermittent energy sources. Physics simply do not add up.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Batteries aren't used for long term balancing, so that bit is correct. They are great at short term balancing though. So they'll still use mostly wind/solar/batteries. This is what grids are rolling out right now around the world.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Batteries are not produced at a scale nearly large enough to be impactful. The world consumes 2,500 TWh of electricity per hour. And that's set to increase as less wealthy countries develop and start demanding A/C, street lights, etc. And on top of that, electricity production is only ~40% of carbon emissions (meaning, electrifying heating, transport, metallurgy, etc. will drive up electricity demand even further). By comparison, the world produces 300-400 GWh of batteries each year. Most of which is going to electronics and electric vehicles. Battery production has been increasing, but it's unclear if the supply of input materials can keep up. The price of lithium jumped 400% last year: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium In short, the chart on the right is not something to be taken for granted: https://www.tsungxu.com/content/images/size/w1600/2022/01/solar-battery-tipping-intro-1.jpeg https://www.tsungxu.com/content/images/size/w1600/2022/01/so... Moore's law is the exception, not the norm, because making chips faster works by making transistors smaller. This doesn't apply to most products, as even zero manufacturing costs cannot bring cost below input materials. Imagine the cost of a car went from $500,000 in 1910, $50,000 in 1920, and $5,000 in 1930. Is is safe to assume that a car would cost $5 in 1960 and $0.50 in 1970?
flgb 4y ago
What’s baseload? If you mean minimum demand from the grid, in Western Australia where I am it’s around 5% of peak demand, In South Australia it’s zero. In Western Australia coal will be gone by the end of the decade. In South Australia it’s gone already and generation from gas is on a strong downward trend too. Australia’s conservative electricity system planning is expecting the country to hit 80% renewables. That’s going to end up being the lower bound.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  > What’s baseload? If you mean minimum demand from the grid, in Western Australia where I am it’s around 5% of peak demand, In South Australia it’s zero. This is an extreme exception to the norm. Usually minimum demand is around 70-80% of the peak demand: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915