3 ms·

Waste heat: the dominating root cause of current global warming (2020)

7 points by dmbche 3y ago

dmbche 3y ago
Hi! I just stumbled upon this and was very surprised by his comments on the amount of waste heat - 100% waste of energy for residential and commercial use, 70% for industry and 75% for transport. I'm not a climate scientist and would love for someone to comment on his comments on greenhouse gas - I don't know what I think of that, he's pretty scathing. And please notice there was a correction and an update to the paper. Edit: Waste heat is two orders of magnitude less energy than the energy retained by Greenhouse gases - while it is a cause of warming, it's less than 1%!
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  Waste heat is a problem in urban areas https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/research-highlights/waste-heat-urban-environments-enhances-extreme-heat-risk https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/research-highligh... but not so much a global problem. That paper is off base in so many ways, for instance a tiny concentration of CO2 really can hold back a lot of infrared because light is a wave and not a particle so it's not like this tiny photon has to make a direct hit on a CO2 molecule.
  - dmbche 3y ago
    Thank you - that makes a lot of sense, I figured something was wrong from the tone of his comments on greenhouse gases, but couldn't put my finger on it.
js8 3y ago
I am pretty skeptical of this study, see https://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm https://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm I think they even discuss the guy in the comments.
- dmbche 3y ago
  Thanks - forgot about that site, should've checked there!
cwillu 3y ago
90% of the muscle labour a human invests in driving a car is wasted, being converted into heat rather than useful mechanical work. As such, we consider it unlikely that efficiency gains from improved combustion can meaningfully improve on the gasoline efficiency crisis.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Heat is a concept that Michael Liebreich highlighted in a recent article that he also read out on his podcast: https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-the-next-half-trillion-dollar-market-electrification-of-heat/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-the-next-half-trillion... In short, particularly the notion of exergy is very interesting. Exergy is the notion that not all energy is equal. Electricity you can use to do work. Chemical or heat energy needs to be converted before you can do work with it (which is lossy). And doing work, converts everything to heat. So 1kwh of electricity is more valuable than 1kwh of heat or chemical energy. The reason he's identifying heating and especiall industrial heating as the next half trillion dollar market is that currently a lot of industry that needs heat is using fossil fuels to produce it (coal/gas). And a lot of that heat is actually wasted. The business opportunity is electrifying a lot of those processes and benefiting from more targeted use of electricity to heat things up, use of heat pumps to get better efficiencies, and a few other things. And as he points out this can actually work for almost any type of industrial processes; not just the obvious ones. The reason he sees a huge growth market here is that historically gas has been cheaper for this which is why companies have ignored alternatives. But as renewables drop in prices and gas prices are fluctuating a bit more wildly, that stops being true. Also there are some massive cost savings that gradually become more feasible. So, he expects lots of industries to expand their investments in this sort of thing for a variety of reasons relatively soon. So there are a few related things here: - industry uses a lot of energy specifically for heating and there are efficieny problems with that and huge losses - Most of the chemical energy we use (fossil fuels) for doing work, is lost as heat. - Most of the waste heat is dumped/radiated out. In some cases we have to use more energy for cooling even. Electrifying things actually addresses a lot of this. And of course the impact of us not addressing the impact of all this is huge in terms of CO2 emissions.

7 points by dmbche 3y ago

Hi! I just stumbled upon this and was very surprised by his comments on the amount of waste heat - 100% waste of energy for residential and commercial use, 70% for industry and 75% for transport. I'm not a climate scientist and would love for someone to comment on his comments on greenhouse gas - I don't know what I think of that, he's pretty scathing. And please notice there was a correction and an update to the paper. Edit: Waste heat is two orders of magnitude less energy than the energy retained by Greenhouse gases - while it is a cause of warming, it's less than 1%!

PaulHoule 3y ago
Waste heat is a problem in urban areas https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/research-highlights/waste-heat-urban-environments-enhances-extreme-heat-risk https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/research-highligh... but not so much a global problem. That paper is off base in so many ways, for instance a tiny concentration of CO2 really can hold back a lot of infrared because light is a wave and not a particle so it's not like this tiny photon has to make a direct hit on a CO2 molecule.
- dmbche 3y ago
  Thank you - that makes a lot of sense, I figured something was wrong from the tone of his comments on greenhouse gases, but couldn't put my finger on it.

js8 3y ago

I am pretty skeptical of this study, see https://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm https://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm I think they even discuss the guy in the comments.

dmbche 3y ago
Thanks - forgot about that site, should've checked there!

cwillu 3y ago

90% of the muscle labour a human invests in driving a car is wasted, being converted into heat rather than useful mechanical work. As such, we consider it unlikely that efficiency gains from improved combustion can meaningfully improve on the gasoline efficiency crisis.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Heat is a concept that Michael Liebreich highlighted in a recent article that he also read out on his podcast: https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-the-next-half-trillion-dollar-market-electrification-of-heat/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-the-next-half-trillion... In short, particularly the notion of exergy is very interesting. Exergy is the notion that not all energy is equal. Electricity you can use to do work. Chemical or heat energy needs to be converted before you can do work with it (which is lossy). And doing work, converts everything to heat. So 1kwh of electricity is more valuable than 1kwh of heat or chemical energy. The reason he's identifying heating and especiall industrial heating as the next half trillion dollar market is that currently a lot of industry that needs heat is using fossil fuels to produce it (coal/gas). And a lot of that heat is actually wasted. The business opportunity is electrifying a lot of those processes and benefiting from more targeted use of electricity to heat things up, use of heat pumps to get better efficiencies, and a few other things. And as he points out this can actually work for almost any type of industrial processes; not just the obvious ones. The reason he sees a huge growth market here is that historically gas has been cheaper for this which is why companies have ignored alternatives. But as renewables drop in prices and gas prices are fluctuating a bit more wildly, that stops being true. Also there are some massive cost savings that gradually become more feasible. So, he expects lots of industries to expand their investments in this sort of thing for a variety of reasons relatively soon. So there are a few related things here: - industry uses a lot of energy specifically for heating and there are efficieny problems with that and huge losses - Most of the chemical energy we use (fossil fuels) for doing work, is lost as heat. - Most of the waste heat is dumped/radiated out. In some cases we have to use more energy for cooling even. Electrifying things actually addresses a lot of this. And of course the impact of us not addressing the impact of all this is huge in terms of CO2 emissions.