3 ms·

> The greatest trick that has been pulled on us this century is somehow billing gas as a 'green' source of energy. Gas has significantly lower emissions than c

by timr 4y ago

> The greatest trick that has been pulled on us this century is somehow billing gas as a 'green' source of energy. Gas has significantly lower emissions than coal. Progress is progress. Absolutism gets us nowhere, unless your goal is to drive humanity back to the stone age by "switching" to energy production systems that do not currently exist (with the exception of nuclear, which is the only currently practical solution for "green" base load that we stubbornly refuse to consider). All of those electric transportation doo-dads add significant load to a system that can barely keep up as it is (in the US, anyway). Just to emphasize the point, in NYC environmental extremists shut down Indian Point, thus converting about a quarter of NYC's power demands from clean energy (nuclear) to fossil fuel. Meanwhile, each of the past few summers the city has come close to rolling blackouts. Good job, folks.

vkou 4y ago
> Absolutism gets us nowhere, And building out natgas will get us into a situation where we are locked into decades of guaranteed emissions, as all the vested interests in the production and consumption space fight tooth and nail to protect their line of business, and the capex they've dumped into it. There's no plausible net-carbon zero path this century that's compatible with our current buildout of natgas. Perfect is the enemy of the good, but this isn't even good!
- Retric 4y ago
  Natural gas is a great pathway to net zero because the fuel is so vastly more explosive than the equipment. People own gas turbines that are literally used for less than a week a year and are simply paid for standby capacity. Quite literally you’re better off building solar where 1/2 it’s output is wasted over a year than burning natural gas. When you’re building that much solar things are very close to net zero. Eventually batteries will replace natural gas, but until that happens we need technologies that can fill the gaps in demand and nuclear can’t do it economically.
  - Retric 4y ago
    *expensive not explosive Auto corrupt…
  - timr 4y ago
    > nuclear can’t do it economically. It can, we're just stupid (in the US).
    - Retric 4y ago
      No country on earth can operate nuclear at 20% capacity factor economically. It needs massive subsidies to operate at even 70% capacity factor quite literally everywhere.

by timr 4y ago

vkou 4y ago

> Absolutism gets us nowhere, And building out natgas will get us into a situation where we are locked into decades of guaranteed emissions, as all the vested interests in the production and consumption space fight tooth and nail to protect their line of business, and the capex they've dumped into it. There's no plausible net-carbon zero path this century that's compatible with our current buildout of natgas. Perfect is the enemy of the good, but this isn't even good!

Retric 4y ago
Natural gas is a great pathway to net zero because the fuel is so vastly more explosive than the equipment. People own gas turbines that are literally used for less than a week a year and are simply paid for standby capacity. Quite literally you’re better off building solar where 1/2 it’s output is wasted over a year than burning natural gas. When you’re building that much solar things are very close to net zero. Eventually batteries will replace natural gas, but until that happens we need technologies that can fill the gaps in demand and nuclear can’t do it economically.
- Retric 4y ago
  *expensive not explosive Auto corrupt…
- timr 4y ago
  > nuclear can’t do it economically. It can, we're just stupid (in the US).
  - Retric 4y ago
    No country on earth can operate nuclear at 20% capacity factor economically. It needs massive subsidies to operate at even 70% capacity factor quite literally everywhere.