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Pithy answer: You can’t pump solar panels into the gas tank of a 1998 Honda Civic and expect it to run. Mathematically: 1.44 billion metric tons of coal were s
by fwlr 4y ago
Pithy answer: You can’t pump solar panels into the gas tank of a 1998 Honda Civic and expect it to run.
Mathematically: 1.44 billion metric tons of coal were shipped by sea in 2019, representing a need for 4.2x10^13 megajoules, or 11,667 terawatt-hours. Total global power output by solar panels in 2019 was 681 terawatt-hours (pg 24 in this pdf https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/52f66a88-0b63-4ad2-94a5-29d36e864b82/KeyWorldEnergyStatistics2021.pdf https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/52f66a88-0b63-4ad2-...).
So you need to 20x global solar energy output and somehow spread most of that to countries that can’t afford or aren’t interested in building and maintaining huge solar plants. But they already have built and know how to maintain their coal plants. Zero-emission synthetic coal and gasoline are zero-friction drop-in upgrades that obviate the need for probably trillions of international investment and enormous political and diplomatic effort.
Alternatively, you could run the massive carbon capture plants on solar energy instead of nuclear, and still ship these “completely clean conventionals” worldwide. It would mean building 3x as many plants for the same output since they could only run during bright daylight hours. You could bring this 3x number down by instead building (once again commensurately massive) energy storage plants as an intermediary between the solar plants and the carbon capture plants, calculating the impact of all three in order to optimally balance generation, storage, and production.
There’s even a crude political/rhetorical argument: you don’t have to convince redneck hicks to sell their gas guzzling Hummer and buy a Prius. Likewise there’s no need to sanction holdout countries to force them to accept enormous globalist investments in order to build solar power plants in their country.
Finally, I would add this emphatically is a solution looking for a problem. I want to see nuclear power used because I believe it is currently being misrepresented by at least one or two orders magnitude due to regulation and subsidy differentials, and its usage at scale will reveal that discrepancy.
- Gwypaas 4y agoNow you are conflating primary energy usage and what the consumers need. Any thermal engine is cooling away 40-80% of the energy. For coal it is about 60% to 70% depending on if the plant uses supercritical steam or not.
- fwlr 4y agoI am gesturing at the scale of things using readily available numbers and napkin math. Feel free to shift my conclusions an order of magnitude in your preferred direction.
- Gwypaas 4y agoThe scale is quite manageable. https://assets.weforum.org/editor/t61Gval6jNxKl0xG9POelafG3Hd8xXeguLdVcHzSUz4.PNG https://assets.weforum.org/editor/t61Gval6jNxKl0xG9POelafG3H... https://i.imgur.com/JYMNAWR.png https://i.imgur.com/JYMNAWR.png
- pfdietz 4y agoYou can't put a nuclear reactor in your gas tank either. Yet this is somehow an argument against solar and for nuclear?
- fwlr 4y agoAnswered in the comment you’re replying to: “Alternatively, you could run the massive carbon capture plants on solar energy instead of nuclear, and still ship these “completely clean conventionals” worldwide. It would mean building 3x as many plants for the same output since they could only run during bright daylight hours. You could bring this 3x number down by instead building (once again commensurately massive) energy storage plants as an intermediary”
- donny2018 4y agoNuclear would take hundreds of times less land area and preserve natural ecosystems. Also, technically it can be built anywhere, and it will be just as efficient, whereas solar is way less efficient outside of certain geographical latitudes. Which means you need to double or triple the use of land to reach the same power generation.