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We can have 100% clean energy by 2035 if we assume the US is China and the state can build whatever it wants despite any local objections. And assume we increas

We can have 100% clean energy by 2035 if we assume the US is China and the state can build whatever it wants despite any local objections. And assume we increase battery supply by 40x (even though lithium price is going up dramatically now). And assume that clean power is actually 100% clean. It's good to have a vision for clean energy though that is shared with the country that we start working towards. I can see the benefit of not letting reality weight down an initial brainstorm of that. Hopefully we can come up with a realistic vision as a next step.

bushbaba 4y ago
Lithium price declined recently due to over supply. The US can do this without objection by declaring a state of emergency. We’ve done it before and we can do it again
- milsorgen 4y ago
  That's a huge problem, you think that's a viable way to get things done and I don't fault you as I am sure you truly believe it's an emergency. However ,I don't see things as being that dire and instead I see your state of emergency being an act of authoritarianism.
davidw 4y ago
> local objections That's a big component of all this. NIMBYism in this country is becoming a big problem in a lot of ways. Want to build a dense, mixed use development that is less carbon-intensive than single family suburbia? NIMBYs oppose it. Build a transmission line from your green energy source? NIMBYs, again! Build a solar farm? NIMBYs will try and block it.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If by NIMBYs you mean paid actors attending council meetings and incredibly loud reactionaries from other places, then yeah. There aren't that many actual NIMBYs for this shit.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > If by NIMBYs you mean paid actors attending council meetings Exactly, most anti-renewable objections are outright fraud by the oil companies, it is groups like 'Citizens for responsible solar' that are recieve fossil fuel donations through shell companies. Theu go and complain that a solar farm will spoint the veiw on somw derelic wasteland and robbing locals of job opportunities ities. There isnt a single local person in those groups.
    - wahern 4y ago
      And what about situations like the following, "‘It’s got nasty’: the battle to build the US’s biggest solar power farm", https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/30/its-got-nasty-the-battle-to-build-the-uss-biggest-solar-power-farm https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/30/its-got-... Unfortunately, I don't think people like Connie Ehrlich are rare, especially considering that you typically don't need much money to be as obstructive as she has. Yes, there are corporate-funded "grassroots" lobbying organizations, but when you look at how this stuff plays out across the country, it's not obvious who is using whom. (Also, from what I've seen following disputes over the years, most "grassroots" organizations that fight projects are fronts created by local citizens--or local citizen, singular--at least in California.) The fundamental problem is that 1) local zoning laws permit too much discretion and 2) are too deferential to public input. These policies were supposed to be empowering to communities, but they're in tension with the principal of rule of law. Rule of law says that a community first makes the rules, then applies them in a principled, arms-length manner to individual cases as they arise. Contemporary zoning policies and procedures permit so much discretion that what we have is a system that effectively makes up the law on a case-by-case basis. It's a system that is fundamentally arbitrary, capricious, and unjust. It's also unconstitutional as a violation of Due Process (even under strict conservative definitions of Due Process), but the Supreme Court is deathly afraid of unleashing a tsunami of constitutional objections to zoning policies so has historically made it very difficult to appeal such cases up to the Federal courts. They usually languish and die in administrative and states courts if they even make it that far, because projects and their developers tend to be time sensitive (you don't spend money, even on lawyers, unless you have a firm time horizon on RoI) and also averse to antagonizing zoning boards.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  Our local library wanted to put in an automated drop-off bin that patrons could drive up to and return books into. It was bitterly contested because the adjacent home owners association was worried about the increased noise and traffic. Keep in mind they were already living next to this library and it already had a parking lot. The city paid to construct a high wall as a compromise. It wasn't terribly expensive, but it wasn't cheap either. I really do think there is such a thing as "over democratizing" our development process. Sometimes you really do just need to tell someone "this is getting built" and they can get bent if they don't like it.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Agreed 100%. You may like this article, that has academic research to back up your thoughts— Not Everyone Should Have a Say; To speed up permitting for energy projects, we’ll need to rethink community input: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/environmentalists-nimby-permitting-reform-nepa/671775/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/environmen... This sort of "participatory democracy," where the most motivated can dominate those with less time, can be traced back to the New Left, which was criticized by social democrats at the time. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-socialist-citizen https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-day-in-the-life-of... And it goes back further to the 30-40s where communists would drag out meetings late into the night in order to thin out the crowd, and then wait until they had a majority for a vote.
    - davidw 4y ago
      Jerusalem Demsas is a fantastic writer. One of the highlights of my year was getting to meet her and say "thank you" at the YIMBYTown conference in Portland.
    - jimmygrapes 4y ago
      The commoner should have a say, unless they oppose the ideas of Those Who Know Best. The bureaucracy is made of Those Who Know Best. The commoner wants Things to be Better but is worried that changes will make their lot worse. The commoner has few choices: find other commoners with reasonably similar concerns and use the power of numbers (and perhaps law) to represent their concerns to The Powers That Be (union, HOA, PAC, gang/mafia/mob/activist, some voters); capitulate to Those Who Know Best and hope Things Will Get Better (other voters, slacktivists, Eternally Online people); or, wait for Someone Else to rectify the concern (Enlightened Centrists, anarchists, 9-5ers, mostly everyone else). Lots of other options and variations are possible, but I can't think of them at this time. I don't have a point, I just wanted to document a stray thought you inspired.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  And if they don't exist, they can be manufactured quite cheaply.
- everdrive 4y ago
  I think you're falsely putting a variety of different people into a single group called "NIMBY" -- people will object to all sorts of measures, and outside of the fact that they have objected they might not necessarily have anything else in common.
  - davidw 4y ago
    You're correct that it's not necessarily a single group of people. The broader point is that perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in favor of people who say no to... a wide variety of things, many of which would benefit society.
- xkcd-sucks 4y ago
  Want to start a backyard steel-smelting campaign? NIMBYs will block it. Want to eradicate sparrows who seem to be eating crops? Environmental review will block it. Want to set up a space launch facility near a village and jettison booster stages over agricultural fields? NIMBYs will block it. Want to operate a pig farm in a residential neighborhood? NIMBYs will block it.
  - InitialLastName 4y ago
    This is a weird straw-man of the YIMBY argument. There's a huge (gaping) chasm between blocking heavy industry and grievous environmental damage and standing in the way of your neighbor being allowed to add an ADU to their house.
- pstuart 4y ago
  Parking lots should be ripe for solar canopies. Every viable roof could have panels. There will always be obstacles but it doesn't mean we should give up trying to make it work.
- m463 4y ago
  I can still think of reasons to think of local people. What if transmission lines increase the risk of forest fires in specific areas? What if windmills mix with residential neighborhoods? Additionally, what if local people are prevented from putting up solar panels, or prevented from selling their power?
roenxi 4y ago
You left out an important step - assuming that all the planning and modelling has been done correctly in and doesn't turn out to be politically motivated, have mistakes or miss unknown unknowns. Reconstituting all of society's energy consumption is a large project with a lot of technical uncertainties that will be discovered along the way. These sort of forecasts routinely turns out to be very wrong. Centrally planned economies often look like they are about to power ahead when the plans are still on paper. It is only when people start starving that there is the "oh, the plan wasn't actually very good" moment and/or crackdown to cover up the disaster depending on how authoritarian the government has gotten.
- epistasis 4y ago
  There is clear political motivation in those who oppose the energy transition. Despite hundreds upon hundreds of papers on 100% clean energy electricity grids, they are produced by scientists that tend to follow the data rather than use data to justify their politics. There are a few counter examples (perhaps Marc Jacobs?) but there are so many other modelers coming to the same conclusion as DOE here, and nobody has seriously refuted these models in any way.
  - ngmc 4y ago
    Agreed except for the dig at Mark Jacobson. He was my undergrad and grad advisor, and I only knew him to be driven by data and a deep concern for the welfare of people and the planet. There are bad scientists out there but Mark isn't one of them. lol I recall him declining my request to put something about Al Gore in our common area because he didn't want to politicize the space.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Hah, point taken. When he sued other research over their research, I think he became highly political within the field, even if not along US national political lines.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > Reconstituting all of society's energy consumption is a large project with a lot of technical uncertainties that will be discovered along the way. These sort of forecasts routinely turns out to be very wrong I frequently see this type of comment, and I like to imagine what if people with this attitude won the debate that was happening 300 yeara ago. 300 years ago, thousands of people in London were dying of cholera and the city was debating development of a sewage system. They would argue that its not proven that shit in the streets causes disease, and a system of this size was never tested, and how much would it cost? If they won the argument back then, we'd still be shitting in pots and throwing it out of the window. Todays debate is literally the same problem, it's about cleaning up and about not tossing a different kind of waste out into the environment irresponsibly. People with this attitude are never the ones i proving the human condition.
epistasis 4y ago
A clean power grid means cheaper power. And the faster we push towards that future, the more money we save. Every day of delay, every bit of FUD about renewables, only serves to keep our energy costs higher, and make our future CO2 cleanup problem harder. The future for energy is cheap and clean, and the major roadblock are the people who profit from expensive and dirty electricity.
- angrycontrarian 4y ago
  > A clean power grid means cheaper power. That's a pretty wild assertion, given current events. Care to back it up with some evidence from a neutral source?
  - kjksf 4y ago
    https://tonyseba.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/RethinkingEnergy2020-2030-LRR.pdf https://tonyseba.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/RethinkingEn... This research is solid and goes in depth about the costs etc.
    - angrycontrarian 4y ago
      The PDF you linked does not contain empirical data on existing solar and wind installations. It's an investment pitch.
  - DeRock 4y ago
    Not who you are asking, but here is some recent research using probabilistic cost forecasts: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00410-X https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00410-X
    - angrycontrarian 4y ago
      I am not asking for forecasts of what could theoretically happen in the future: I want to see an analysis of existing installations.
kornhole 4y ago
And if Americans simplify their lives and stop using so much energy.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Indeed, noone talk about this. An average french person emits 3 or 4 times less CO2. Does an average american live 4 times better than an average frenchman? French people live longer on average, have less obsesity and other health issues. Insulated homes or apartments, smaller cars and less meat in diet could cut CO2 footprint 2x. But also we must not fool ourselves, majority of energy emissions are industrial - as a consumer I have no control over 70% of emissions
  - cypress66 4y ago
    > Does an average american live 4 times better than an average frenchman? I don't know about that "4 times better" (how do you measure that, diminishing returns, etc). But your average house in the US is for sure more comfortable than your average house in France.
    - enraged_camel 4y ago
      >> But your average house in the US is for sure more comfortable than your average house in France. "For sure more comfortable"? Like you said though, by what measure? I'm visiting my sister in London right now. She lives in a 750 sqft two bedroom apartment. Sure, it's smaller than my 1700 ft house back in the US, but she seems fairly comfortable.
      - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
        Yes I know plenty of people who rather live in the big city with all its amenities and interesting people than in a giant house in suburbia. There is a reason why housing prices are so high for the Amsterdam's and New York's of this world.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
treeman79 4y ago
Much is easier is to simply ban anything not labeled clean. Redefine things to clean when power grids fail. Or just let millions suffer insane prices. Helping people rarely a priority.
lost_tourist 4y ago
don't forget where the vast majority of the solar, wind, and battery tech is currently built... and we're going to trust the source completely as we transition? I don't see that happening. Also storage simply isn't ready. Until they can all store 2-5 days of power at a generating facility you're living in a pipe dream to claim "reliable power". Over 200 people in Texas died because of a shitty design during the 2021 arctic blast. Imagine 10x of that because of unreliable sources on a regular basis if we just assume everything will just be okay.
_8j50 4y ago
Eminent domain might overcome NIMBY
- wankle 4y ago
  If the fashion is to approve of the gov taking our stuff, then that includes your pot too right, you know, like for the clean biofuel plant man?
  - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    Eminent domain means that you get paid market price for your stuff.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    Sure
matrix_overload 4y ago
Some objections are reasonable. Achieving 100% clean energy in one country by moving "dirty" industries to less scrupulous countries is not a very good idea. It kills the local engineering culture, destroys meaningful jobs and makes us dependent on dictatorships that would just lie to your face. If you want a more meaningful goal, how about "all physical goods consumed in the U.S. being manufactured with 100% clean energy"? Otherwise, it's just not fair to say "look, we are all green" while completely ignoring the emissions from refining lithium and making non-recyclable batteries from it. If we go further down that lane, we will discover that 100% will never be realistic, but there are some nice compromises to be had, and we might end up with some economic growth that is not about reselling crypto tokens and ads in a circular fashion.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
1) sodium ion goes into mass production next year: CATL 150 wh/LG. 2) there's this thing called roofs. Residential / commercial solar can go into lots of places and makes the buildings they are on partially / fully grid independent. 3) battery supply will go up by that amount, I'd bet earlier than 2035 by years.
_ea1k 4y ago
A 40x increase in battery production by 2035 seems like a pretty reasonable goal, tbh.
throwaway9870 4y ago
I have a real problem with statements like "100% clean energy by 2035". What does that even mean? You will have electric aircraft by 2035? Completely electric ag? Electric trains and trucks? No, not a chance. The article used the term "power" and when you click through to the energy.gov site, it is clear that it is referring to the electric grid. But you said energy and when people make that mistake I often wonder if they even know the difference.
- megaman821 4y ago
  We may have electric trains and trucks. I don't think very many people are counting on transatlantic electric planes. The current plan that is being funded is synthetic aviation fuel (SAF).
- kevinak 4y ago
  They don’t. Common problem when discussing electricity and energy unfortunately :/
- ajross 4y ago
  > What does that even mean? Uh... the linked article actually discusses exactly that. Do you disagree, or did you not read it?
  - throwaway9870 4y ago
    Yes, and I even clicked through to the energy.gov article. The article does not define what "100% clean energy" is. It doesn't even use the term 100% clean energy except in the subtitles of a couple of graphs. It uses the term "100% clean power", which again, is very sloppy. Do you understand the US uses a lot of energy besides electric? Is that going to be clean or not? If not, what does the term "100% clean energy" mean?
    - ajross 4y ago
- 4y ago
Jedd 4y ago
> And assume we increase battery supply by 40x (even though lithium price is going up dramatically now). It sounds like you're assuming at large scale, Lithium is required for storage (it's not - consider pumped water), and at small scale Lithium is required for storage (it's not - consider flow batteries). Point being, increasing storage by 40x is not infeasible because of any constraints around Lithium cost / availability.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yehSooBit 4y ago
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Republicans want to burn coal out of sheer spite to own the libs.

bushbaba 4y ago

Lithium price declined recently due to over supply. The US can do this without objection by declaring a state of emergency. We’ve done it before and we can do it again

milsorgen 4y ago
That's a huge problem, you think that's a viable way to get things done and I don't fault you as I am sure you truly believe it's an emergency. However ,I don't see things as being that dire and instead I see your state of emergency being an act of authoritarianism.

davidw 4y ago

> local objections That's a big component of all this. NIMBYism in this country is becoming a big problem in a lot of ways. Want to build a dense, mixed use development that is less carbon-intensive than single family suburbia? NIMBYs oppose it. Build a transmission line from your green energy source? NIMBYs, again! Build a solar farm? NIMBYs will try and block it.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
If by NIMBYs you mean paid actors attending council meetings and incredibly loud reactionaries from other places, then yeah. There aren't that many actual NIMBYs for this shit.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > If by NIMBYs you mean paid actors attending council meetings Exactly, most anti-renewable objections are outright fraud by the oil companies, it is groups like 'Citizens for responsible solar' that are recieve fossil fuel donations through shell companies. Theu go and complain that a solar farm will spoint the veiw on somw derelic wasteland and robbing locals of job opportunities ities. There isnt a single local person in those groups.
  - wahern 4y ago
    And what about situations like the following, "‘It’s got nasty’: the battle to build the US’s biggest solar power farm", https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/30/its-got-nasty-the-battle-to-build-the-uss-biggest-solar-power-farm https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/30/its-got-... Unfortunately, I don't think people like Connie Ehrlich are rare, especially considering that you typically don't need much money to be as obstructive as she has. Yes, there are corporate-funded "grassroots" lobbying organizations, but when you look at how this stuff plays out across the country, it's not obvious who is using whom. (Also, from what I've seen following disputes over the years, most "grassroots" organizations that fight projects are fronts created by local citizens--or local citizen, singular--at least in California.) The fundamental problem is that 1) local zoning laws permit too much discretion and 2) are too deferential to public input. These policies were supposed to be empowering to communities, but they're in tension with the principal of rule of law. Rule of law says that a community first makes the rules, then applies them in a principled, arms-length manner to individual cases as they arise. Contemporary zoning policies and procedures permit so much discretion that what we have is a system that effectively makes up the law on a case-by-case basis. It's a system that is fundamentally arbitrary, capricious, and unjust. It's also unconstitutional as a violation of Due Process (even under strict conservative definitions of Due Process), but the Supreme Court is deathly afraid of unleashing a tsunami of constitutional objections to zoning policies so has historically made it very difficult to appeal such cases up to the Federal courts. They usually languish and die in administrative and states courts if they even make it that far, because projects and their developers tend to be time sensitive (you don't spend money, even on lawyers, unless you have a firm time horizon on RoI) and also averse to antagonizing zoning boards.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
Our local library wanted to put in an automated drop-off bin that patrons could drive up to and return books into. It was bitterly contested because the adjacent home owners association was worried about the increased noise and traffic. Keep in mind they were already living next to this library and it already had a parking lot. The city paid to construct a high wall as a compromise. It wasn't terribly expensive, but it wasn't cheap either. I really do think there is such a thing as "over democratizing" our development process. Sometimes you really do just need to tell someone "this is getting built" and they can get bent if they don't like it.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Agreed 100%. You may like this article, that has academic research to back up your thoughts— Not Everyone Should Have a Say; To speed up permitting for energy projects, we’ll need to rethink community input: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/environmentalists-nimby-permitting-reform-nepa/671775/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/environmen... This sort of "participatory democracy," where the most motivated can dominate those with less time, can be traced back to the New Left, which was criticized by social democrats at the time. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-socialist-citizen https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-day-in-the-life-of... And it goes back further to the 30-40s where communists would drag out meetings late into the night in order to thin out the crowd, and then wait until they had a majority for a vote.
  - davidw 4y ago
    Jerusalem Demsas is a fantastic writer. One of the highlights of my year was getting to meet her and say "thank you" at the YIMBYTown conference in Portland.
  - jimmygrapes 4y ago
    The commoner should have a say, unless they oppose the ideas of Those Who Know Best. The bureaucracy is made of Those Who Know Best. The commoner wants Things to be Better but is worried that changes will make their lot worse. The commoner has few choices: find other commoners with reasonably similar concerns and use the power of numbers (and perhaps law) to represent their concerns to The Powers That Be (union, HOA, PAC, gang/mafia/mob/activist, some voters); capitulate to Those Who Know Best and hope Things Will Get Better (other voters, slacktivists, Eternally Online people); or, wait for Someone Else to rectify the concern (Enlightened Centrists, anarchists, 9-5ers, mostly everyone else). Lots of other options and variations are possible, but I can't think of them at this time. I don't have a point, I just wanted to document a stray thought you inspired.
anigbrowl 4y ago
And if they don't exist, they can be manufactured quite cheaply.
everdrive 4y ago
I think you're falsely putting a variety of different people into a single group called "NIMBY" -- people will object to all sorts of measures, and outside of the fact that they have objected they might not necessarily have anything else in common.
- davidw 4y ago
  You're correct that it's not necessarily a single group of people. The broader point is that perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in favor of people who say no to... a wide variety of things, many of which would benefit society.
xkcd-sucks 4y ago
Want to start a backyard steel-smelting campaign? NIMBYs will block it. Want to eradicate sparrows who seem to be eating crops? Environmental review will block it. Want to set up a space launch facility near a village and jettison booster stages over agricultural fields? NIMBYs will block it. Want to operate a pig farm in a residential neighborhood? NIMBYs will block it.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  This is a weird straw-man of the YIMBY argument. There's a huge (gaping) chasm between blocking heavy industry and grievous environmental damage and standing in the way of your neighbor being allowed to add an ADU to their house.
pstuart 4y ago
Parking lots should be ripe for solar canopies. Every viable roof could have panels. There will always be obstacles but it doesn't mean we should give up trying to make it work.
m463 4y ago
I can still think of reasons to think of local people. What if transmission lines increase the risk of forest fires in specific areas? What if windmills mix with residential neighborhoods? Additionally, what if local people are prevented from putting up solar panels, or prevented from selling their power?

roenxi 4y ago

You left out an important step - assuming that all the planning and modelling has been done correctly in and doesn't turn out to be politically motivated, have mistakes or miss unknown unknowns. Reconstituting all of society's energy consumption is a large project with a lot of technical uncertainties that will be discovered along the way. These sort of forecasts routinely turns out to be very wrong. Centrally planned economies often look like they are about to power ahead when the plans are still on paper. It is only when people start starving that there is the "oh, the plan wasn't actually very good" moment and/or crackdown to cover up the disaster depending on how authoritarian the government has gotten.

epistasis 4y ago
There is clear political motivation in those who oppose the energy transition. Despite hundreds upon hundreds of papers on 100% clean energy electricity grids, they are produced by scientists that tend to follow the data rather than use data to justify their politics. There are a few counter examples (perhaps Marc Jacobs?) but there are so many other modelers coming to the same conclusion as DOE here, and nobody has seriously refuted these models in any way.
- ngmc 4y ago
  Agreed except for the dig at Mark Jacobson. He was my undergrad and grad advisor, and I only knew him to be driven by data and a deep concern for the welfare of people and the planet. There are bad scientists out there but Mark isn't one of them. lol I recall him declining my request to put something about Al Gore in our common area because he didn't want to politicize the space.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Hah, point taken. When he sued other research over their research, I think he became highly political within the field, even if not along US national political lines.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> Reconstituting all of society's energy consumption is a large project with a lot of technical uncertainties that will be discovered along the way. These sort of forecasts routinely turns out to be very wrong I frequently see this type of comment, and I like to imagine what if people with this attitude won the debate that was happening 300 yeara ago. 300 years ago, thousands of people in London were dying of cholera and the city was debating development of a sewage system. They would argue that its not proven that shit in the streets causes disease, and a system of this size was never tested, and how much would it cost? If they won the argument back then, we'd still be shitting in pots and throwing it out of the window. Todays debate is literally the same problem, it's about cleaning up and about not tossing a different kind of waste out into the environment irresponsibly. People with this attitude are never the ones i proving the human condition.

epistasis 4y ago

A clean power grid means cheaper power. And the faster we push towards that future, the more money we save. Every day of delay, every bit of FUD about renewables, only serves to keep our energy costs higher, and make our future CO2 cleanup problem harder. The future for energy is cheap and clean, and the major roadblock are the people who profit from expensive and dirty electricity.

angrycontrarian 4y ago
> A clean power grid means cheaper power. That's a pretty wild assertion, given current events. Care to back it up with some evidence from a neutral source?
- kjksf 4y ago
  https://tonyseba.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/RethinkingEnergy2020-2030-LRR.pdf https://tonyseba.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/RethinkingEn... This research is solid and goes in depth about the costs etc.
  - angrycontrarian 4y ago
    The PDF you linked does not contain empirical data on existing solar and wind installations. It's an investment pitch.
- DeRock 4y ago
  Not who you are asking, but here is some recent research using probabilistic cost forecasts: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00410-X https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00410-X
  - angrycontrarian 4y ago
    I am not asking for forecasts of what could theoretically happen in the future: I want to see an analysis of existing installations.

kornhole 4y ago

And if Americans simplify their lives and stop using so much energy.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
Indeed, noone talk about this. An average french person emits 3 or 4 times less CO2. Does an average american live 4 times better than an average frenchman? French people live longer on average, have less obsesity and other health issues. Insulated homes or apartments, smaller cars and less meat in diet could cut CO2 footprint 2x. But also we must not fool ourselves, majority of energy emissions are industrial - as a consumer I have no control over 70% of emissions
- cypress66 4y ago
  > Does an average american live 4 times better than an average frenchman? I don't know about that "4 times better" (how do you measure that, diminishing returns, etc). But your average house in the US is for sure more comfortable than your average house in France.
  - enraged_camel 4y ago
    >> But your average house in the US is for sure more comfortable than your average house in France. "For sure more comfortable"? Like you said though, by what measure? I'm visiting my sister in London right now. She lives in a 750 sqft two bedroom apartment. Sure, it's smaller than my 1700 ft house back in the US, but she seems fairly comfortable.
    - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
      Yes I know plenty of people who rather live in the big city with all its amenities and interesting people than in a giant house in suburbia. There is a reason why housing prices are so high for the Amsterdam's and New York's of this world.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago

treeman79 4y ago

Much is easier is to simply ban anything not labeled clean. Redefine things to clean when power grids fail. Or just let millions suffer insane prices. Helping people rarely a priority.

lost_tourist 4y ago

don't forget where the vast majority of the solar, wind, and battery tech is currently built... and we're going to trust the source completely as we transition? I don't see that happening. Also storage simply isn't ready. Until they can all store 2-5 days of power at a generating facility you're living in a pipe dream to claim "reliable power". Over 200 people in Texas died because of a shitty design during the 2021 arctic blast. Imagine 10x of that because of unreliable sources on a regular basis if we just assume everything will just be okay.

_8j50 4y ago

Eminent domain might overcome NIMBY

wankle 4y ago
If the fashion is to approve of the gov taking our stuff, then that includes your pot too right, you know, like for the clean biofuel plant man?
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  Eminent domain means that you get paid market price for your stuff.
- _8j50 4y ago
  Sure

matrix_overload 4y ago

Some objections are reasonable. Achieving 100% clean energy in one country by moving "dirty" industries to less scrupulous countries is not a very good idea. It kills the local engineering culture, destroys meaningful jobs and makes us dependent on dictatorships that would just lie to your face. If you want a more meaningful goal, how about "all physical goods consumed in the U.S. being manufactured with 100% clean energy"? Otherwise, it's just not fair to say "look, we are all green" while completely ignoring the emissions from refining lithium and making non-recyclable batteries from it. If we go further down that lane, we will discover that 100% will never be realistic, but there are some nice compromises to be had, and we might end up with some economic growth that is not about reselling crypto tokens and ads in a circular fashion.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

1) sodium ion goes into mass production next year: CATL 150 wh/LG. 2) there's this thing called roofs. Residential / commercial solar can go into lots of places and makes the buildings they are on partially / fully grid independent. 3) battery supply will go up by that amount, I'd bet earlier than 2035 by years.

_ea1k 4y ago

A 40x increase in battery production by 2035 seems like a pretty reasonable goal, tbh.

throwaway9870 4y ago

I have a real problem with statements like "100% clean energy by 2035". What does that even mean? You will have electric aircraft by 2035? Completely electric ag? Electric trains and trucks? No, not a chance. The article used the term "power" and when you click through to the energy.gov site, it is clear that it is referring to the electric grid. But you said energy and when people make that mistake I often wonder if they even know the difference.

megaman821 4y ago
We may have electric trains and trucks. I don't think very many people are counting on transatlantic electric planes. The current plan that is being funded is synthetic aviation fuel (SAF).
kevinak 4y ago
They don’t. Common problem when discussing electricity and energy unfortunately :/
ajross 4y ago
> What does that even mean? Uh... the linked article actually discusses exactly that. Do you disagree, or did you not read it?
- throwaway9870 4y ago
  Yes, and I even clicked through to the energy.gov article. The article does not define what "100% clean energy" is. It doesn't even use the term 100% clean energy except in the subtitles of a couple of graphs. It uses the term "100% clean power", which again, is very sloppy. Do you understand the US uses a lot of energy besides electric? Is that going to be clean or not? If not, what does the term "100% clean energy" mean?
  - ajross 4y ago
4y ago

Jedd 4y ago

> And assume we increase battery supply by 40x (even though lithium price is going up dramatically now). It sounds like you're assuming at large scale, Lithium is required for storage (it's not - consider pumped water), and at small scale Lithium is required for storage (it's not - consider flow batteries). Point being, increasing storage by 40x is not infeasible because of any constraints around Lithium cost / availability.

deleted 4y ago

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yehSooBit 4y ago

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Republicans want to burn coal out of sheer spite to own the libs.