8 ms·

Making energy too cheap to meter

39 points by jseliger 4y ago

tuatoru 4y ago
> The way to address the real problems behind ergophobia is, counterintuitively, more energy. With enough cheap energy, we could literally pull excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and bury it again. With cheap energy, we could literally pull excess carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen out of the air and make fats, carbohydrates and amino acids. No need for agricultural land.
- mr_mitm 4y ago
  But then it will end up in the atmosphere again shortly after. I think the idea is to achieve a reduction in CO2. However, is there a process that sucks out CO2 more effectively than trees doing photosynthesis?
  - szpght 4y ago
    If we are able to produce food without agriculture, then we can rewild farmlands and get CO2 sequestration and more wild nature.
    - tuatoru 4y ago
      Exactly!
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    You can do both, producing hydrocarbon fuels and carbohydrate calories, and also sequestering carbon. Maybe as diamonds, instead of soot to bury. Yes, you absolutely can trap much more CO2 per unit of collection area with photovoltaics than trees can manage. The trees are cheaper per unit of carbon capturing capacity, but what they bind the carbon into is less useful. That said, wood can be burned in such a way that only the hydrogen oxidizes, leaving charcoal that, powdered, can massively improve soil quality particularly in rainforests. Up until 500 years ago there was a thousands-of-years-long project doing this in the Amazon, interrupted by plague and collapse.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Yes. Multiple promising direct air carbon capture technologies exist. At scale, they will cost about $1 to recapture the C02 released by a gallon of gas. None are at scale yet. There is a lot of hand wringing about the cost (negligible compared to annoying Putin or OPEC), and some moral arguments from the greens about how it is unethical to expect our kids to spend electricity to clean up our mess (even though the cost of electricity production is currently dropping faster than it has in our lifetimes).
  - picsao 4y ago
- mickdeek86 4y ago
  Those processes, once developed, would probably use less energy than existing industrial agriculture. So far, the only progress I've heard of in this front is Solar Foods' protein powder
- pixl97 4y ago
  All energy is entropy the best way to reduce entropy is to work efficiently.
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    All poverty is energy poverty.
RagnarD 4y ago
A beautiful article. Read it and think.
- jabthedang 4y ago
metadat 4y ago
Why do so many sites pop the "sign up for our newsletter" modal a few moments after you've begun to read TFA? It is jarring and disrespectful, and I feel the need to leave without reading further.
neltnerb 4y ago
Summary: If energy is free and doesn't impact anything then of course you would want to use more of it. I don't know why they think this is a unique perspective, I guess just pointing out that people don't discriminate by electricity source when they condemn extra energy use beyond what is needed to do a job. If the electricity source is free and does no harm there is no obvious way to label the electrons. I don't understand why they see it as harmful to use less energy to do the same job, as long as the job is done the rest is a bunch of words to confuse the issue. Use less energy = generate less heat = use less heat sink = more compact device, it's all coupled and biased towards using what we have effectively. I think perhaps the point of the article is its strawman that people want "constant energy use" which as best I can tell is just made up? I'm literally the child of professional environmentalists and I have never heard anyone focus on "constant energy use" -- it's always about reducing waste (obviously landfill space is an issue beyond energy...), reducing pollution (containment would still be an issue beyond energy...), and improving health (maybe energy can help a little but I mean, mostly beyond energy...).
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Yeah, it's weird, but some people really do think that way, and need to be gentled along.
- csense 4y ago
  My personal inclination makes me a natural devil's advocate and skeptic of political movements across the spectrum. To me, the average supporter of the green agenda sounds like this: We Americans / Europeans are sinful and wasteful with our conspicuous energy consumption, air conditioning and air travel. The only path to redemption is to see the light and worship the planet. Importantly, this means we must practice austerity and poverty, to be humble and pure like the poorest black and brown people of Africa and Asia. The government will tell you, for the good of society of course, what temperature you're allowed to have in your buildings on your property, or whether you're allowed to let your car engine idle at a stoplight [1]. The green agenda is only partly based in science. It has dark corners and extremes of irrationality and hypocrisy. This article's author is trying to remind those who have gotten lost in the political theater that our goal should be improving lives and easing resource constraints. Perhaps we should examine whether we're overfunding solar and wind, why we fear fission and neglect fusion, and whether it's wise to regulate, control and limit rather than innovate, build and overcome. [1] <politicalrant> Of course, prominent politicians and climate activists travel by air, in some cases private jets, to environmental conferences in the age of Internet videoconferencing. While they're eager enough to embrace using government force to remove freedoms of action from everybody, they balk at voluntarily following their stated principles in their personal lives when the result would be the slightest personal inconvenience. When the price of oil increases due to war, the President's staunch environmentalism disappears in the face of populist handouts to grease the midterms (a thing his party is famous about criticizing the other party for). A true statesman who actually believed the planet was in danger would urge us to seize this moment to let market forces do the hard work of weaning us off fossil fuels; it would mean sacrifices and hardship, but we should endure it to save the planet for our grandchildren. Instead, the President we've got does everything in his power to lower gas prices -- from releasing oil from strategic petroleum reserve, to fist bumping a slicer and dicer of journalists in a process of futile begging for oil. Actions speak louder than words, and in this case the PotUS's observed behavior is exactly what I would expect of a world leader who secretly believes the green agenda he publicly embraces is actually just a steaming pile of biomass. </politicalrant>
jacknews 4y ago
'... leave for work. On your commute ...' This reads like the jetsons. I agree we should aim for energy abundance, but for what? For a more intense version of the 20th century, with offices, commutes, dinner with the boss, etc? Bah, we need a bolder vision. We could use abundant energy to largely remove agriculture from the environment. It is the second biggest greenhouse emitter even only by official figures, and by far the most damaging to the overall ecosystem. Grow or culture our food in factories, maybe at sea, and leave the land to nature.
- buck4roo 4y ago
  > In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. [0] Perhaps it is the largest industrial category with the largest % of its output turned directly into CO2 and methane? (food waste placed into the landfills instead of composted.) 0: https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs
skybrian 4y ago
> I like an analogy I heard recently […] If a man is coming at you with the intent to do you harm, it hardly matters what technology he employs: hammer, gun, knife, mace, sword. The technology is neither the problem nor the solution. The fundamental problem is the intent of the assailant. Unless we radically change our intent on this planet, “unlimited” energy—by any technological means—only accelerates our demise. I think of it this way: if every jackass on the planet has access to cheap and abundant energy, what do you think they’ll do with it? Will they use it to restore ecosystems, or hack more of it down for their own short-term gain? https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/a-climate-love-story/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/a-climate-love-story/
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  As they say, great power comes with great responsibility. Fortunately, we already have systems of mandatory education in place. Just add Responsible Energy Use 101 to the curriculum.
  - manicdee 4y ago
    Why are there so many fatalities on our roads or from interpersonal violence? Did these people not attend the mandatory education about not killing people?
- prepend 4y ago
  This is interesting as free/cheap and abundant doesn’t mean unlimited. I think we’d have to work out systems where no one has to pay for an electricity bill and we have replicators but we don’t have enough energy to replicate a barrel of chlorine gas.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  Of course, if the person with intent to do you harm is motivated by a dispute over energy then making energy much more available would change his intent. For instance, who will fight oil wars if the price of oil is 10x cheaper? Who will fund global terrorism if Saudi Arabia has to build an actual economy? Who will kill their neighbour to steal bread when the price of bread is much lower because cheap energy means cheap fertiliser, cheap irrigation, cheap transportation etc and the price of bread is suddenly very affordable? On the other hand, we could ignore energy and just hope for a sudden unexpected change in human nature and economics?
carapace 4y ago
How do you handle the heat? At the rate we're going the surface of the Earth would glow like a light bulb in a handful of centuries. > we’re too close to an astounding point for me to leave it unspoken. At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from now. By 2500 years, we would use energy at the rate of the entire Milky Way galaxy—100 billion stars! I think you can see the absurdity of continued energy growth. 2500 years is not that long, from a historical perspective. We know what we were doing 2500 years ago. I think I know what we’re not going to be doing 2500 years hence. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
- Iwan-Zotow 4y ago
  Kardashev, here I come...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Seeing people talk about unlimited carbon free energy with the exact same logic as rejections of climate change from a century ago with the exact same ratio between total energy consumption and armageddon is incredibly frustrating.
- nynx 4y ago
  If we’re not using the equivalent of 100% of the total solar input striking earth in 400 years, we’ve gone down the wrong path
  - carapace 4y ago
    That's beside the point. How do we handle the heat? From the same link (as my previous comment): > the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. [Pained expression from economist.] And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.
euroderf 4y ago
With enough cheap power, can we build AND POWER enough heat pumps & A/C's to permit people to continue to live in their current abodes rather than migrating towards the hills, mountains, and poles ?
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I don't really understand what they are saying? Why does efficiency work against having more energy or more stuff? I'm sure there were a thousand efficiency improvements needed to make the aluminium foil that is mentioned, we didn't just plug a lump of bauxite into the mains and scream "more power!" like a mad scientist in a horror film.

39 points by jseliger 4y ago

> The way to address the real problems behind ergophobia is, counterintuitively, more energy. With enough cheap energy, we could literally pull excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and bury it again. With cheap energy, we could literally pull excess carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen out of the air and make fats, carbohydrates and amino acids. No need for agricultural land.

mr_mitm 4y ago
But then it will end up in the atmosphere again shortly after. I think the idea is to achieve a reduction in CO2. However, is there a process that sucks out CO2 more effectively than trees doing photosynthesis?
- szpght 4y ago
  If we are able to produce food without agriculture, then we can rewild farmlands and get CO2 sequestration and more wild nature.
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    Exactly!
- ncmncm 4y ago
  You can do both, producing hydrocarbon fuels and carbohydrate calories, and also sequestering carbon. Maybe as diamonds, instead of soot to bury. Yes, you absolutely can trap much more CO2 per unit of collection area with photovoltaics than trees can manage. The trees are cheaper per unit of carbon capturing capacity, but what they bind the carbon into is less useful. That said, wood can be burned in such a way that only the hydrogen oxidizes, leaving charcoal that, powdered, can massively improve soil quality particularly in rainforests. Up until 500 years ago there was a thousands-of-years-long project doing this in the Amazon, interrupted by plague and collapse.
- hedora 4y ago
  Yes. Multiple promising direct air carbon capture technologies exist. At scale, they will cost about $1 to recapture the C02 released by a gallon of gas. None are at scale yet. There is a lot of hand wringing about the cost (negligible compared to annoying Putin or OPEC), and some moral arguments from the greens about how it is unethical to expect our kids to spend electricity to clean up our mess (even though the cost of electricity production is currently dropping faster than it has in our lifetimes).
- picsao 4y ago
mickdeek86 4y ago
Those processes, once developed, would probably use less energy than existing industrial agriculture. So far, the only progress I've heard of in this front is Solar Foods' protein powder
pixl97 4y ago
All energy is entropy the best way to reduce entropy is to work efficiently.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  All poverty is energy poverty.

RagnarD 4y ago

A beautiful article. Read it and think.

jabthedang 4y ago

metadat 4y ago

Why do so many sites pop the "sign up for our newsletter" modal a few moments after you've begun to read TFA? It is jarring and disrespectful, and I feel the need to leave without reading further.

neltnerb 4y ago

Summary: If energy is free and doesn't impact anything then of course you would want to use more of it. I don't know why they think this is a unique perspective, I guess just pointing out that people don't discriminate by electricity source when they condemn extra energy use beyond what is needed to do a job. If the electricity source is free and does no harm there is no obvious way to label the electrons. I don't understand why they see it as harmful to use less energy to do the same job, as long as the job is done the rest is a bunch of words to confuse the issue. Use less energy = generate less heat = use less heat sink = more compact device, it's all coupled and biased towards using what we have effectively. I think perhaps the point of the article is its strawman that people want "constant energy use" which as best I can tell is just made up? I'm literally the child of professional environmentalists and I have never heard anyone focus on "constant energy use" -- it's always about reducing waste (obviously landfill space is an issue beyond energy...), reducing pollution (containment would still be an issue beyond energy...), and improving health (maybe energy can help a little but I mean, mostly beyond energy...).

ncmncm 4y ago
Yeah, it's weird, but some people really do think that way, and need to be gentled along.
csense 4y ago
My personal inclination makes me a natural devil's advocate and skeptic of political movements across the spectrum. To me, the average supporter of the green agenda sounds like this: We Americans / Europeans are sinful and wasteful with our conspicuous energy consumption, air conditioning and air travel. The only path to redemption is to see the light and worship the planet. Importantly, this means we must practice austerity and poverty, to be humble and pure like the poorest black and brown people of Africa and Asia. The government will tell you, for the good of society of course, what temperature you're allowed to have in your buildings on your property, or whether you're allowed to let your car engine idle at a stoplight [1]. The green agenda is only partly based in science. It has dark corners and extremes of irrationality and hypocrisy. This article's author is trying to remind those who have gotten lost in the political theater that our goal should be improving lives and easing resource constraints. Perhaps we should examine whether we're overfunding solar and wind, why we fear fission and neglect fusion, and whether it's wise to regulate, control and limit rather than innovate, build and overcome. [1] <politicalrant> Of course, prominent politicians and climate activists travel by air, in some cases private jets, to environmental conferences in the age of Internet videoconferencing. While they're eager enough to embrace using government force to remove freedoms of action from everybody, they balk at voluntarily following their stated principles in their personal lives when the result would be the slightest personal inconvenience. When the price of oil increases due to war, the President's staunch environmentalism disappears in the face of populist handouts to grease the midterms (a thing his party is famous about criticizing the other party for). A true statesman who actually believed the planet was in danger would urge us to seize this moment to let market forces do the hard work of weaning us off fossil fuels; it would mean sacrifices and hardship, but we should endure it to save the planet for our grandchildren. Instead, the President we've got does everything in his power to lower gas prices -- from releasing oil from strategic petroleum reserve, to fist bumping a slicer and dicer of journalists in a process of futile begging for oil. Actions speak louder than words, and in this case the PotUS's observed behavior is exactly what I would expect of a world leader who secretly believes the green agenda he publicly embraces is actually just a steaming pile of biomass. </politicalrant>

jacknews 4y ago

'... leave for work. On your commute ...' This reads like the jetsons. I agree we should aim for energy abundance, but for what? For a more intense version of the 20th century, with offices, commutes, dinner with the boss, etc? Bah, we need a bolder vision. We could use abundant energy to largely remove agriculture from the environment. It is the second biggest greenhouse emitter even only by official figures, and by far the most damaging to the overall ecosystem. Grow or culture our food in factories, maybe at sea, and leave the land to nature.

buck4roo 4y ago
> In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. [0] Perhaps it is the largest industrial category with the largest % of its output turned directly into CO2 and methane? (food waste placed into the landfills instead of composted.) 0: https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs

skybrian 4y ago

> I like an analogy I heard recently […] If a man is coming at you with the intent to do you harm, it hardly matters what technology he employs: hammer, gun, knife, mace, sword. The technology is neither the problem nor the solution. The fundamental problem is the intent of the assailant. Unless we radically change our intent on this planet, “unlimited” energy—by any technological means—only accelerates our demise. I think of it this way: if every jackass on the planet has access to cheap and abundant energy, what do you think they’ll do with it? Will they use it to restore ecosystems, or hack more of it down for their own short-term gain? https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/a-climate-love-story/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/a-climate-love-story/

hypertele-Xii 4y ago
As they say, great power comes with great responsibility. Fortunately, we already have systems of mandatory education in place. Just add Responsible Energy Use 101 to the curriculum.
- manicdee 4y ago
  Why are there so many fatalities on our roads or from interpersonal violence? Did these people not attend the mandatory education about not killing people?
prepend 4y ago
This is interesting as free/cheap and abundant doesn’t mean unlimited. I think we’d have to work out systems where no one has to pay for an electricity bill and we have replicators but we don’t have enough energy to replicate a barrel of chlorine gas.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Of course, if the person with intent to do you harm is motivated by a dispute over energy then making energy much more available would change his intent. For instance, who will fight oil wars if the price of oil is 10x cheaper? Who will fund global terrorism if Saudi Arabia has to build an actual economy? Who will kill their neighbour to steal bread when the price of bread is much lower because cheap energy means cheap fertiliser, cheap irrigation, cheap transportation etc and the price of bread is suddenly very affordable? On the other hand, we could ignore energy and just hope for a sudden unexpected change in human nature and economics?

carapace 4y ago

How do you handle the heat? At the rate we're going the surface of the Earth would glow like a light bulb in a handful of centuries. > we’re too close to an astounding point for me to leave it unspoken. At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from now. By 2500 years, we would use energy at the rate of the entire Milky Way galaxy—100 billion stars! I think you can see the absurdity of continued energy growth. 2500 years is not that long, from a historical perspective. We know what we were doing 2500 years ago. I think I know what we’re not going to be doing 2500 years hence. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

Iwan-Zotow 4y ago
Kardashev, here I come...
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Seeing people talk about unlimited carbon free energy with the exact same logic as rejections of climate change from a century ago with the exact same ratio between total energy consumption and armageddon is incredibly frustrating.
nynx 4y ago
If we’re not using the equivalent of 100% of the total solar input striking earth in 400 years, we’ve gone down the wrong path
- carapace 4y ago
  That's beside the point. How do we handle the heat? From the same link (as my previous comment): > the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. [Pained expression from economist.] And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.

euroderf 4y ago

With enough cheap power, can we build AND POWER enough heat pumps & A/C's to permit people to continue to live in their current abodes rather than migrating towards the hills, mountains, and poles ?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I don't really understand what they are saying? Why does efficiency work against having more energy or more stuff? I'm sure there were a thousand efficiency improvements needed to make the aluminium foil that is mentioned, we didn't just plug a lump of bauxite into the mains and scream "more power!" like a mad scientist in a horror film.