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“Can be worked around in this application?” I know folks that do maintenance on the plant that produces ammonia among other things at the BASF plant in Ludwigsh

“Can be worked around in this application?” I know folks that do maintenance on the plant that produces ammonia among other things at the BASF plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany. They don’t shut this plant down. Maintenance is mostly done during production. If one stage fails, the products of the predecessor stages are usually burned - makes for a pretty spectacular evening sky. It’s likely possible to re-engineer those plants to use an intermittent power source, but it’s far from trivial.

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matthewdgreen 4y ago
And the alternatives are what, exactly? Keep basing our technology on inexpensive access to fossil fuels until war or climate problems make that unworkable? Or hope that nuclear-powered hydrolysis somehow becomes more efficient and feasible at the necessary scale? I'm completely open to the second idea, just not convinced that it's less expensive than dealing with intermittency. When you say "it's likely possible, but not trivial" what I hear is: it's a matter of calculating the cost of alternatives and then making strategic investments, preferably as soon as possible (because CO2 emissions are cumulative and we don't have an efficient technology for CO2 removal.)
- Xylakant 4y ago
  It’s definitely worth working on, don’t get me wrong. But the timelines for these projects are decades, not years. Expecting large scale payoffs anytime soon would be fooling yourself. In Germany, I see a very dangerous trend of expecting that such changes will save us, but the timelines just don’t work out. So the primary effort should be directed to places where faster results are viable - heating/warm water via heat pumps where possible, insulation efforts, reducing car traffic, replacing existing power generation with non-fossil methods, energy reuse. For example, waste heat from industrial processes and data centers is mostly lost in germany, often due to planning/legal restrictions. (Sorry, source in German https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Green-IT-Abwaerme-aus-Rechenzentren-fuer-Heizungen-nutzen-6327090.html https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Green-IT-Abwaerme-aus-Reche...) Datacenter alone use about 3% of germanys electricity and turn it into heat - recapturing even half of that would place use closer to the goal.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    I don't see a path to global decarbonization that doesn't include major reductions in fossil fuel production, and I don't see a path to major reductions in fossil fuel production that doesn't produce major price variability in (fossil) fertilizer production inputs. It's good that we aim to reduce our datacenter energy usage, but that may not prevent the avoidable starvation of millions of people.
    - Xylakant 4y ago
      Reducing car size and mileage would be a good start - I don‘t have numbers at hand for the US, but in Germany, the individual mobility via cars produces about 20% of the entire CO2. Even a speed limit would already cut that by a few percent. Immediately, as in „the day after the law is in force“. In 2021, cars (trucks not included) used 60 billion tons of fuel in Germany alone and rising https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/dateien/3_abb_kraftstoffverbrauch-strassenverkehr_2022-01-31.pdf https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38... Shutting down the BASF steamcrackers would be equivalent to a reduction of that fuel consumption by 0.5% or so. So, a speed limit would be more effective and faster to implement. But that’s a holy cow no one touches, neither here, nor in the US.
      - concordDance 4y ago
        Note that just because that would cut CO2 does not mean its worth doing. E.g. that speed limit could easily cost more QALYs (e.g. via longer commutes meaning more tired people and less quality time with kids and more spousal arguments) than are saved with it. Particularly if, for example, geoengineering via sunshades or somesuch proves viable this century.
        Xylakant 4y ago
        Like civilization died in all the surrounding European states? It’s a bleak wasteland of people trecking for days to reach their workplace, ravaged by wars kicked off because a spouse got tired of waiting for their husband. I’m sorry for the ridicule, but that’s frankly the worst argument I’ve ever heard rejecting speed limits.

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matthewdgreen 4y ago

And the alternatives are what, exactly? Keep basing our technology on inexpensive access to fossil fuels until war or climate problems make that unworkable? Or hope that nuclear-powered hydrolysis somehow becomes more efficient and feasible at the necessary scale? I'm completely open to the second idea, just not convinced that it's less expensive than dealing with intermittency. When you say "it's likely possible, but not trivial" what I hear is: it's a matter of calculating the cost of alternatives and then making strategic investments, preferably as soon as possible (because CO2 emissions are cumulative and we don't have an efficient technology for CO2 removal.)

Xylakant 4y ago
It’s definitely worth working on, don’t get me wrong. But the timelines for these projects are decades, not years. Expecting large scale payoffs anytime soon would be fooling yourself. In Germany, I see a very dangerous trend of expecting that such changes will save us, but the timelines just don’t work out. So the primary effort should be directed to places where faster results are viable - heating/warm water via heat pumps where possible, insulation efforts, reducing car traffic, replacing existing power generation with non-fossil methods, energy reuse. For example, waste heat from industrial processes and data centers is mostly lost in germany, often due to planning/legal restrictions. (Sorry, source in German https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Green-IT-Abwaerme-aus-Rechenzentren-fuer-Heizungen-nutzen-6327090.html https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Green-IT-Abwaerme-aus-Reche...) Datacenter alone use about 3% of germanys electricity and turn it into heat - recapturing even half of that would place use closer to the goal.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  I don't see a path to global decarbonization that doesn't include major reductions in fossil fuel production, and I don't see a path to major reductions in fossil fuel production that doesn't produce major price variability in (fossil) fertilizer production inputs. It's good that we aim to reduce our datacenter energy usage, but that may not prevent the avoidable starvation of millions of people.
  - Xylakant 4y ago
    Reducing car size and mileage would be a good start - I don‘t have numbers at hand for the US, but in Germany, the individual mobility via cars produces about 20% of the entire CO2. Even a speed limit would already cut that by a few percent. Immediately, as in „the day after the law is in force“. In 2021, cars (trucks not included) used 60 billion tons of fuel in Germany alone and rising https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/dateien/3_abb_kraftstoffverbrauch-strassenverkehr_2022-01-31.pdf https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38... Shutting down the BASF steamcrackers would be equivalent to a reduction of that fuel consumption by 0.5% or so. So, a speed limit would be more effective and faster to implement. But that’s a holy cow no one touches, neither here, nor in the US.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      Note that just because that would cut CO2 does not mean its worth doing. E.g. that speed limit could easily cost more QALYs (e.g. via longer commutes meaning more tired people and less quality time with kids and more spousal arguments) than are saved with it. Particularly if, for example, geoengineering via sunshades or somesuch proves viable this century.
      - Xylakant 4y ago
        Like civilization died in all the surrounding European states? It’s a bleak wasteland of people trecking for days to reach their workplace, ravaged by wars kicked off because a spouse got tired of waiting for their husband. I’m sorry for the ridicule, but that’s frankly the worst argument I’ve ever heard rejecting speed limits.