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The problem with that argument is that wind and solar needs backup from fossil fuel.

dmbche 3y ago
Or a buffer system with batteries - there are a few options that are being researched!
ericd 3y ago
There’s always wood… those stoves have gotten surprisingly efficient, and no new carbon in the carbon cycle, it’s basically a solar battery.
- doublesocket 3y ago
  Except they produce horrendous small particle pollution, which even the most efficient stoves haven't solved. https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-burning-air-pollution-uk-doubled-decade https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-bur...
  - Pxtl 3y ago
    I am curious if wood-burning technology would be a suitable solution for rural settings where lower population density means particulates and smog are a lesser concern. Pellet stoves for heating, wood-gas for long-ranged vehicles. But while trees are a renewable fuel, they still mean converting carbon from a sequestered place (a tree) into being released into the air.
    - brianwawok 3y ago
      Trees are net neutral. Tree starts as a seed. Grows up and sequesters X tons of carbon. Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon. Tree is re-planted, grows up, sequesters X tons of carbon. Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon. If everything in the world right now was wood powered, we would not have a global warming problem. We would have massive tree farms sequestering the same amount of carbon we are releasing. (We might have a soot and particle problem, but that's another story). The problem with oil and coal, is we have no way to make more. We burn oil and release carbon.. how are we making more oil and pumping back underground to sequester that carbon?
      - throwbadubadu 3y ago
        Very true, but we likely couldn't have that amount of farmland for what we currently just pull out of earth with millions of years of sequestring.. not sure if getting rid of most of the livestock needs would free enough ("Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories").. are there any calculations how many tree farms we'd need besides a huge solar/wind/geothermal mix?
        brianwawok 3y ago
        I don't know the math to globally power the world with wood. I don't think it's even a good idea. But I don't feel bad when I burn firewood pulled from a local forest. As that burning is not adding carbon to the world overall.
      - TravelPiglet 3y ago
        Discounting all the power consumed planting, growing, cutting down and delivery of the logs to the power generator.
      - 7952 3y ago
        We don't have a way to make trees quickly enough. In the timespans relevant to climate change it is far from neutral.
        brianwawok 3y ago
        I make no claims it's a global clean energy. Just pointing out it's not actually carbon increasing.
    - ericd 3y ago
      It might be useful to keep in mind that culling trees means that a forest that was in steady state and pulling very little net carbon can go back into more active growth. But I suppose that the total carbon sequestered would be less with a decrease in the average age of the trees.
    - rgmerk 3y ago
      In a densely populated country like the UK, nobody lives in a remote enough setting for their particulate emissions to not be a concern. Unfortunately, it seems like middle-class Brits are completely obsessed with log fires, judging by British home renovation shows.
      - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
        Probably because of British home renovation shows.
  - ericd 3y ago
    Looking at the report that that was based on (page xiv on https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1124738/chief-medical-officers-annual-report-air-pollution-dec-2022.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... ), it looks like the efficient stoves are at about 1/15-1/10 the open fire amount. Those “450x” numbers are compared to methane, which is close to zero particulate, so it’s a little misleading. But burning methane means you’re adding prehistoric carbon to the atmosphere. I’m guessing that if all the open fires were instead “low particulate” stoves, then it wouldn’t be a concern compared to PM2.5 generation from vehicles. I don’t see a perfect here until we all have heat pumps driven by nuclear.
    - ericd 3y ago
      This is kind of interesting: https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehicle-emissions-rates-vehicle-vehicle-type-using-gasoline-and https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehic... Exhaust particulate per mile has plummeted over the past couple of decades! By comparison, EPA stoves put out a couple grams of particulate per hour. But, it seems like it's not apples to apples, because brake dust is metal dust, whereas wood smoke tends to be mostly organic compounds. Maybe the body is better at dealing with organic wood smoke compounds? We've certainly been heavily exposed over many generations. Also, seems like there are some efforts to make electrostatic filters for fine particulate in flue gas: https://enervex.com/systems/particle-filter-system-for-stoves-and-fireplaces https://enervex.com/systems/particle-filter-system-for-stove...
ljf 3y ago
Wind and solar need back up yes - but it doesn't have to be from fossil fuel. Currently that is often the cheapest and quickest - but batteries and other energy storage are fast becoming economical. We are already using less non-renewables each year.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- vixen99 3y ago
  Fast becoming economical? How fast? Current cost for battery storage I've seen quoted (open to correction) is around $600K per MWh. For every MW of wind or solar power that would be $120 million. Wind farms at around $1.5 million per MW ie., around 80 times that. And are there that numbers of batteries available? Currently dependent on availability of cobalt, lithium,manganese and nickel with China as the main supplier of these and world’s largest producer of graphite, the primary anode material for Li-ion batteries.
  - SuoDuanDao 3y ago
    Batteries are currently following their own version of Moore's law, though they double in quality (or halve in price) every 48 instead of every 18 months. Of course, that isn't a trend that can continue forever, but it doesn't need too many more iterations to be the only game in town.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    8minute energy is building solar plants with overnight battery backup for 4 cents/kWh. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8minute-Solar-Energy-Expands-Development-Pipeline-to-18-Gigawatts-with-New-Solar-Plus-Storage-Power-Plants https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8mi...
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Batteries are much cheaper today than they were yesterday, and it’s a clear push downward over time. China being the “main supplier” has more to do with them undercutting everyone else in refining by not paying attention enough to their environment, it isn’t sustainable. All of these raw materials have ample reserves outside of China. Some of battery economy comes from that, but not most of it. There are other ways to store energy than batteries. The Pacific Northwest and even California has a lot of pumped storage hydro capacity. Hydro is a renewable that can be used on demand, and can be combined with other renewables to move water back up to reservoirs.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
It's not really a problem, even just moving all fossil fuels from heating and transport and using it in electrical generation gets you a 4x gain, from which you lose about 50-60% when turning it to electricity, so still ahead by about 2x even before you start adding in the wind and solar. Plus we already built all that storage for gas and oil, might as well use it as part of the transition.
- FinnKuhn 3y ago
  Additionally with an ever improving grid in Europe local variables such as weather or seasons be can also partially balanced.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Yeah, another story covering this had interconnects as just below gas in rank order of usage. Also, despite that large import, UK was a net exporter for the first time in a while last year since France was having issues with its nuclear fleet.
    - stuaxo 3y ago
      We need to get more interconnects between Scotland and England. They are building them, but in the sea which could be interesting with an annoyed Russia. Wind farms were built at sea, on the surface because of nimbyism on land, but being ever cynical I think the real reason was to push the cost and difficulty up giving oil companies more time. Later, during Liz Truss's short and disasterous tenure, just as solar panels were getting very cheap, even very low quality farm land was reclassified as a strategic asset for food to be grown on and no solar. In what was possibly a distraction wind was now to be allowed on land (of course it's much less convenient to put up a wind turbine than to get some very cheap solar panels and that's before all the nimby groups, some of which get dark money funding).
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > from which you lose about 50-60% when turning it to electricity Does this include transmission losses? I think they average 10% for UK electricity.
Pxtl 3y ago
With what argument? Parent post was talking about measuring energy needs and how efficiency of consumption works, not wind and solar. Did you mean to reply to a different post?

Or a buffer system with batteries - there are a few options that are being researched!

There’s always wood… those stoves have gotten surprisingly efficient, and no new carbon in the carbon cycle, it’s basically a solar battery.

doublesocket 3y ago
Except they produce horrendous small particle pollution, which even the most efficient stoves haven't solved. https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-burning-air-pollution-uk-doubled-decade https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-bur...
- Pxtl 3y ago
  I am curious if wood-burning technology would be a suitable solution for rural settings where lower population density means particulates and smog are a lesser concern. Pellet stoves for heating, wood-gas for long-ranged vehicles. But while trees are a renewable fuel, they still mean converting carbon from a sequestered place (a tree) into being released into the air.
  - brianwawok 3y ago
    Trees are net neutral. Tree starts as a seed. Grows up and sequesters X tons of carbon. Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon. Tree is re-planted, grows up, sequesters X tons of carbon. Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon. If everything in the world right now was wood powered, we would not have a global warming problem. We would have massive tree farms sequestering the same amount of carbon we are releasing. (We might have a soot and particle problem, but that's another story). The problem with oil and coal, is we have no way to make more. We burn oil and release carbon.. how are we making more oil and pumping back underground to sequester that carbon?
    - throwbadubadu 3y ago
      Very true, but we likely couldn't have that amount of farmland for what we currently just pull out of earth with millions of years of sequestring.. not sure if getting rid of most of the livestock needs would free enough ("Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories").. are there any calculations how many tree farms we'd need besides a huge solar/wind/geothermal mix?
      - brianwawok 3y ago
        I don't know the math to globally power the world with wood. I don't think it's even a good idea. But I don't feel bad when I burn firewood pulled from a local forest. As that burning is not adding carbon to the world overall.
    - TravelPiglet 3y ago
      Discounting all the power consumed planting, growing, cutting down and delivery of the logs to the power generator.
    - 7952 3y ago
      We don't have a way to make trees quickly enough. In the timespans relevant to climate change it is far from neutral.
      - brianwawok 3y ago
        I make no claims it's a global clean energy. Just pointing out it's not actually carbon increasing.
  - ericd 3y ago
    It might be useful to keep in mind that culling trees means that a forest that was in steady state and pulling very little net carbon can go back into more active growth. But I suppose that the total carbon sequestered would be less with a decrease in the average age of the trees.
  - rgmerk 3y ago
    In a densely populated country like the UK, nobody lives in a remote enough setting for their particulate emissions to not be a concern. Unfortunately, it seems like middle-class Brits are completely obsessed with log fires, judging by British home renovation shows.
    - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
      Probably because of British home renovation shows.
- ericd 3y ago
  Looking at the report that that was based on (page xiv on https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1124738/chief-medical-officers-annual-report-air-pollution-dec-2022.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... ), it looks like the efficient stoves are at about 1/15-1/10 the open fire amount. Those “450x” numbers are compared to methane, which is close to zero particulate, so it’s a little misleading. But burning methane means you’re adding prehistoric carbon to the atmosphere. I’m guessing that if all the open fires were instead “low particulate” stoves, then it wouldn’t be a concern compared to PM2.5 generation from vehicles. I don’t see a perfect here until we all have heat pumps driven by nuclear.
  - ericd 3y ago
    This is kind of interesting: https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehicle-emissions-rates-vehicle-vehicle-type-using-gasoline-and https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehic... Exhaust particulate per mile has plummeted over the past couple of decades! By comparison, EPA stoves put out a couple grams of particulate per hour. But, it seems like it's not apples to apples, because brake dust is metal dust, whereas wood smoke tends to be mostly organic compounds. Maybe the body is better at dealing with organic wood smoke compounds? We've certainly been heavily exposed over many generations. Also, seems like there are some efforts to make electrostatic filters for fine particulate in flue gas: https://enervex.com/systems/particle-filter-system-for-stoves-and-fireplaces https://enervex.com/systems/particle-filter-system-for-stove...

ljf 3y ago

Wind and solar need back up yes - but it doesn't have to be from fossil fuel. Currently that is often the cheapest and quickest - but batteries and other energy storage are fast becoming economical. We are already using less non-renewables each year.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
vixen99 3y ago
Fast becoming economical? How fast? Current cost for battery storage I've seen quoted (open to correction) is around $600K per MWh. For every MW of wind or solar power that would be $120 million. Wind farms at around $1.5 million per MW ie., around 80 times that. And are there that numbers of batteries available? Currently dependent on availability of cobalt, lithium,manganese and nickel with China as the main supplier of these and world’s largest producer of graphite, the primary anode material for Li-ion batteries.
- SuoDuanDao 3y ago
  Batteries are currently following their own version of Moore's law, though they double in quality (or halve in price) every 48 instead of every 18 months. Of course, that isn't a trend that can continue forever, but it doesn't need too many more iterations to be the only game in town.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  8minute energy is building solar plants with overnight battery backup for 4 cents/kWh. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8minute-Solar-Energy-Expands-Development-Pipeline-to-18-Gigawatts-with-New-Solar-Plus-Storage-Power-Plants https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8mi...
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Batteries are much cheaper today than they were yesterday, and it’s a clear push downward over time. China being the “main supplier” has more to do with them undercutting everyone else in refining by not paying attention enough to their environment, it isn’t sustainable. All of these raw materials have ample reserves outside of China. Some of battery economy comes from that, but not most of it. There are other ways to store energy than batteries. The Pacific Northwest and even California has a lot of pumped storage hydro capacity. Hydro is a renewable that can be used on demand, and can be combined with other renewables to move water back up to reservoirs.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

It's not really a problem, even just moving all fossil fuels from heating and transport and using it in electrical generation gets you a 4x gain, from which you lose about 50-60% when turning it to electricity, so still ahead by about 2x even before you start adding in the wind and solar. Plus we already built all that storage for gas and oil, might as well use it as part of the transition.

FinnKuhn 3y ago
Additionally with an ever improving grid in Europe local variables such as weather or seasons be can also partially balanced.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Yeah, another story covering this had interconnects as just below gas in rank order of usage. Also, despite that large import, UK was a net exporter for the first time in a while last year since France was having issues with its nuclear fleet.
  - stuaxo 3y ago
    We need to get more interconnects between Scotland and England. They are building them, but in the sea which could be interesting with an annoyed Russia. Wind farms were built at sea, on the surface because of nimbyism on land, but being ever cynical I think the real reason was to push the cost and difficulty up giving oil companies more time. Later, during Liz Truss's short and disasterous tenure, just as solar panels were getting very cheap, even very low quality farm land was reclassified as a strategic asset for food to be grown on and no solar. In what was possibly a distraction wind was now to be allowed on land (of course it's much less convenient to put up a wind turbine than to get some very cheap solar panels and that's before all the nimby groups, some of which get dark money funding).
robertlagrant 3y ago
> from which you lose about 50-60% when turning it to electricity Does this include transmission losses? I think they average 10% for UK electricity.

Pxtl 3y ago

With what argument? Parent post was talking about measuring energy needs and how efficiency of consumption works, not wind and solar. Did you mean to reply to a different post?