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I’m skeptical of demand reduction. History shows that we keep finding more ways to use energy to improve our lives. We’re unlikely at a global scale to reduce l

I’m skeptical of demand reduction. History shows that we keep finding more ways to use energy to improve our lives. We’re unlikely at a global scale to reduce lifestyle to reduce energy usage. We’ve got a big enough problem here with meat eating, where there isn’t a substantially lower carbon option and we’ll probably just have to move to more plant based diets. For energy consumption it seems much easier to me for us to replace energy generation with green alternatives. I was skeptical of this 10 years ago, but we’ve since seen huge rollouts of wind and solar, the near phasing out of coal in many countries, and continually dropping prices for the necessary hardware. We need to accelerate these, but this feels feasible.

sokoloff 3y ago
Sorry. I wasn’t clear enough. I meant demand reduction for specifically fossil fuels (to include indirect fossil fuels used for electricity generation), not for energy in general. That includes making it economically advantageous to choose electricity as the local source while accelerating the greening of the grid. That is frequently not the most advantageous choice for consumers now, and we should not be surprised when they choose what’s most advantageous for them.
- jdsnape 3y ago
  This is happening in the UK at the moment. I'm not an expert, but my undestanding is that there is an incentive plan to reduce the cost of install electical heatpumps, with the goal that the increased volume reduces the price over time. The sale of new gas/oil fired boilers will only be allowed for a few more years. This means that as the grid is made greener there is an increased impact in terms of reduced emissions overall.
  - hodgeheg 3y ago
    Even with the government grant taken into account it would cost me £3,000 to have a heat pump installed at my house. The running costs would be around £500-600 a year more than I'm paying to heat my home with gas at present, and that's with my gas bill having almost trebled over the last year and a bit. Financially, as things stand, it would be lunacy for me to scrap the gas boiler in favour of a heat pump.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      GP's logic is exactly why I wanted to convert. Your findings are exactly why I didn't (only the up-front delta was about 5x worse in my case). If we can't remove the skew in the economics, it's going to be very slow to make progress.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Ah yes in that case I completely agree!
laratied 3y ago
Coal use in 2022 set a new record globally though. It is exemplary of how difficult this problem is.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  This is mostly driven by a small number of countries. Many countries are dropping their usage and replacing it with renewables.
sieabahlpark 3y ago
[dead]
danpalmer 3y ago
To the dead comment that I think is worth discussing... > Meat eating isn't a "problem" to be solved IMHO. Although I'm sure you'll see me as an eco terrorist for even wanting steak and chicken. While this is a little inflammatory I basically agree, meat eating is not in isolation an environmental issue, it's arguably a moral issue, and one I have made my peace with. I eat meat and enjoy it. However, rearing animals in any way (whether it's for meat, dairy, even pets) carries with it a lot of environmental cost – animal feed production, methane emissions from cows, carbon emissions from farming, water use, etc. Completely ignoring the moral part, there's a significant environmental cost that can't be replaced – we can't switch to non-methane-producing cows. Unfortunately regardless of dietary preferences, this is something we're going to have to contend with as unlike electricity usage there isn't a like-for-like replacement.
m463 3y ago
you can't save yourself rich.

sokoloff 3y ago

Sorry. I wasn’t clear enough. I meant demand reduction for specifically fossil fuels (to include indirect fossil fuels used for electricity generation), not for energy in general. That includes making it economically advantageous to choose electricity as the local source while accelerating the greening of the grid. That is frequently not the most advantageous choice for consumers now, and we should not be surprised when they choose what’s most advantageous for them.

jdsnape 3y ago
This is happening in the UK at the moment. I'm not an expert, but my undestanding is that there is an incentive plan to reduce the cost of install electical heatpumps, with the goal that the increased volume reduces the price over time. The sale of new gas/oil fired boilers will only be allowed for a few more years. This means that as the grid is made greener there is an increased impact in terms of reduced emissions overall.
- hodgeheg 3y ago
  Even with the government grant taken into account it would cost me £3,000 to have a heat pump installed at my house. The running costs would be around £500-600 a year more than I'm paying to heat my home with gas at present, and that's with my gas bill having almost trebled over the last year and a bit. Financially, as things stand, it would be lunacy for me to scrap the gas boiler in favour of a heat pump.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    GP's logic is exactly why I wanted to convert. Your findings are exactly why I didn't (only the up-front delta was about 5x worse in my case). If we can't remove the skew in the economics, it's going to be very slow to make progress.
danpalmer 3y ago
Ah yes in that case I completely agree!

laratied 3y ago

Coal use in 2022 set a new record globally though. It is exemplary of how difficult this problem is.

danpalmer 3y ago
This is mostly driven by a small number of countries. Many countries are dropping their usage and replacing it with renewables.

sieabahlpark 3y ago

[dead]

danpalmer 3y ago

To the dead comment that I think is worth discussing... > Meat eating isn't a "problem" to be solved IMHO. Although I'm sure you'll see me as an eco terrorist for even wanting steak and chicken. While this is a little inflammatory I basically agree, meat eating is not in isolation an environmental issue, it's arguably a moral issue, and one I have made my peace with. I eat meat and enjoy it. However, rearing animals in any way (whether it's for meat, dairy, even pets) carries with it a lot of environmental cost – animal feed production, methane emissions from cows, carbon emissions from farming, water use, etc. Completely ignoring the moral part, there's a significant environmental cost that can't be replaced – we can't switch to non-methane-producing cows. Unfortunately regardless of dietary preferences, this is something we're going to have to contend with as unlike electricity usage there isn't a like-for-like replacement.

m463 3y ago

you can't save yourself rich.