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The cheapest energy systems are the carbon free ones. Maintaining a fossil fuel based energy system will be more expensive and costly than switching to a carbo

The cheapest energy systems are the carbon free ones. Maintaining a fossil fuel based energy system will be more expensive and costly than switching to a carbon free economy. Every single delay in the transition is wasted money, a transfer to fossil fuel interests at the expense of all the rest of humanity. And once you add in the environmental externalities on top of just the pure cost, it becomes even more egregious. Saying that it's impossible is as ridiculous as saying it's impossible for us to have built the huge energy system we have today. Rebuilding it all will take just a few percentage of global GDP, less than would be spent on fossil fuels, and create the infrastructure for cheaper more abundant energy, laying the groundwork for more technological advancement. Instead of repeating tired narratives of the past, it's time to start thinking critically and apply even the tiniest amount of skepticism to the received wisdom of entrenched interests. We only hurt ourselves when we wear the rose-colored glasses that let us live with the out-dated "truths" of the 20th century. It's time for us to advance technologically.

logifail 3y ago
> The cheapest energy systems are the carbon free ones I would really like to believe this claim to be true. Unfortunately my recent real-world data points gathered as a consumer while doing such mundane stuff as heating and powering my home and fueling my ageing vehicles leave me wondering what I'm missing. I'd love to drive an EV. I'd love to have PV at home. A geothermal heat pump would be nice, too. I just haven't got enough spare money to make any of these choices until they get considerably cheaper.
- danans 3y ago
  I think when they say "systems" they are referring to large grid scale energy generation systems, not what you can install at home, which is necessarily more expensive per unit energy than at grid scale.
- dalyons 3y ago
  Ok fair, but that has very little to do with utility sized energy production which I assume the OP is talking about.
  - logifail 3y ago
    Well the OP claimed "Maintaining a fossil fuel based energy system will be more expensive and costly than switching to a carbon free economy. Every single delay in the transition is wasted money." The key question would be: expensive for whom? Take a look at "Why is cheap renewable electricity so expensive?"[0] (published last week) which details the changes in electricity generation in the UK: 'The proportion of electricity generated [..] by renewables has increased from 3% in 2000 to 42% in 2022, whereas the proportion generated by fossil fuels has decreased from 73% in 2000 to 41% in 2022' ...but thanks to marginal cost pricing consumers don't see this because... "The wholesale price of all electricity is set by the most expensive method of producing electricity, which is usually from burning gas" [0] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/why-is-cheap-renewable-electricity-so-expensive/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/why-is-cheap-renewable-...
    - epistasis 3y ago
      Wait, so you have this whole document you can produce about how renewable energy is cheaper, but you started with complaints about how it's not cheaper? Very odd. Almost as if you are not trying to argue based on data, but just being contrarian.
      - logifail 3y ago
        > renewable energy is cheaper Again: cheaper for whom? Are we talking producers or consumers? > Very odd Renewables being cheaper unfortunately doesn't mean the electricity consumers purchase will necessarily be cheaper, at least not if we use the current market approaches and rely on gas to top up what can't be provided elsewhere.
- baq 3y ago
  PV+storage with subsidies (which I count as the regulator pricing in positive externalities) should be economical in large parts of the world. Where do you live?
  - logifail 3y ago
    Although household power prices have risen steadily over the last 20 years (and increased not so steadily in the last two!), PV feed-in tarifs have been falling relentlessly (see slide 41 from https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p... for specific data) so as far as I can tell, the ROI period for household PV still seems to be measured in decades.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  You probably don't need a geothermal (i.e. ground source) heat pump. They rarely make financial sense against modern air source heat pumps. Spend the saved money from digging on insulation and PV instead.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > I just haven't got enough spare money to make any of these choices No, you haven’t got credit. Solar panels pay for themselves like 3 or 4 times 9n their lifespan. We had a period of zero-interest rates, we could have bought everyone solar panels. But our bankers are too busy playing with fictitious derivatives instead of providing favourable credit to honest homeowners for renewables investment.
  - logifail 3y ago
    > But our bankers are too busy playing with [..] It's not clear that our politicians are actually particularly serious about change, either. The only big change I've noticed this side of the pond in the last year is that our drink cartons now have tethered plastic caps. OK, they're still made of bonded layers of cardboard, aluminium and polyethylene which make them hard work to recycle, and according to a 2021 German study indeed less than 1/3rd of them are actually recycled ... ...but at least now the hard-to-recycle plastic lids now stay attached to the empty and hard-to-recycle cartons! <sigh>
Gibbon1 3y ago
> Every single delay in the transition is wasted money About ten years ago I realized that solar, wind, and batteries were going to beat fossil fuels on pure balance sheet accounting. Bonus: better long term risk. Were now in a rentier capitalist stages of grief situation where they're having to deal with all their fossil fuel based assets being suddenly worthless. But there is nothing they can do to stop what's coming.
midoridensha 3y ago
>Every single delay in the transition is wasted money, a transfer to fossil fuel interests at the expense of all the rest of humanity. Ok, exactly how do you propose to: 1) Get China to stop building more coal-burning power plants, and 2) Get Americans (and others) to start building and moving to dense, walkable cities and stop driving SUVs? The problem isn't "fossil fuel interests", it's a very large number of "normal" people who refuse to change their lifestyles, plus various authoritarian governments that refuse to change their trajectories. The only way you can "rebuild it all" is to somehow take control of the whole world militarily and set up a single global authoritarian government to do all this. Trying to get the world's existing governments, some authoritarian (and not caring about the problem) and others democratic (with most of their populations refusing to change their lifestyles), is like herding cats. What you want to do is technically possible, but politically completely impossible. Getting everyone to work together just to deal with a virus turned out to be a disaster, in case you forgot that.
- djaychela 3y ago
  I would only disagree in one part of this: >The problem isn't "fossil fuel interests", I would say it's not "just" fossil fuel interests. But they are playing a huge part in this - particularly in sowing misinformation about clean technologies, and how being carbon neutral will mean the end of your life, or that some kid in a country you've never been to will be digging stuff out of the ground for your EV/solar panel. Most of which isn't actually true (or is a minority case), but they have successfully made everyone think that it is. I actually read people on here (who I'm assuming are intelligent) last week saying they were not going to give up any part of their current lifestyle to reduce emissions, so you're right in that respect. It's like dealing with stroppy 8 year-olds in many cases. But I do think that it's still worth countries who can do (democratic ones) going ahead anyway. The only way will be to do this, otherwise it'll be game over.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    It's game over. >I actually read people on here (who I'm assuming are intelligent) last week saying they were not going to give up any part of their current lifestyle to reduce emissions, so you're right in that respect. It's like dealing with stroppy 8 year-olds in many cases. Exactly. And these aren't people in authoritarian countries; there are people in democratic nations. If politicians try to hard to push these people to give up their current lifestyles, they'll be voted out. >But I do think that it's still worth countries who can do (democratic ones) going ahead anyway. What we're going to get is some smaller, rich, democratic nations like Netherlands and Finland making real changes, and not making any significant change planet-wide because these places are small and have little population compared to India, China, and USA. Meanwhile, Americans will still be driving everywhere in 6000-pound SUVs (some of which might become EVs, but lots of EVs still means lots of electricity needed, which has to come from somewhere) and heating and cooling their huge 5000 square foot (464 square meters) homes, and China will still be running coal-fired power plants and probably building even more so their people can live more like Americans, etc. etc. I simply see no way that you're going to get most of humanity to agree to the degree of changes in energy use and emissions output needed within the next 5 years to head off a climate catastrophe. Making significant and meaningful changes in 100 years isn't going to help because it's going to be much too late. Basically, we're like the Titanic, 30 seconds before it hits the iceberg: there's simply no practical way to change course at this point. The best thing to do is stop arguing how to avoid the iceberg, and start talking about who gets the lifeboats.

logifail 3y ago

> The cheapest energy systems are the carbon free ones I would really like to believe this claim to be true. Unfortunately my recent real-world data points gathered as a consumer while doing such mundane stuff as heating and powering my home and fueling my ageing vehicles leave me wondering what I'm missing. I'd love to drive an EV. I'd love to have PV at home. A geothermal heat pump would be nice, too. I just haven't got enough spare money to make any of these choices until they get considerably cheaper.

danans 3y ago
I think when they say "systems" they are referring to large grid scale energy generation systems, not what you can install at home, which is necessarily more expensive per unit energy than at grid scale.
dalyons 3y ago
Ok fair, but that has very little to do with utility sized energy production which I assume the OP is talking about.
- logifail 3y ago
  Well the OP claimed "Maintaining a fossil fuel based energy system will be more expensive and costly than switching to a carbon free economy. Every single delay in the transition is wasted money." The key question would be: expensive for whom? Take a look at "Why is cheap renewable electricity so expensive?"[0] (published last week) which details the changes in electricity generation in the UK: 'The proportion of electricity generated [..] by renewables has increased from 3% in 2000 to 42% in 2022, whereas the proportion generated by fossil fuels has decreased from 73% in 2000 to 41% in 2022' ...but thanks to marginal cost pricing consumers don't see this because... "The wholesale price of all electricity is set by the most expensive method of producing electricity, which is usually from burning gas" [0] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/why-is-cheap-renewable-electricity-so-expensive/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/why-is-cheap-renewable-...
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Wait, so you have this whole document you can produce about how renewable energy is cheaper, but you started with complaints about how it's not cheaper? Very odd. Almost as if you are not trying to argue based on data, but just being contrarian.
    - logifail 3y ago
      > renewable energy is cheaper Again: cheaper for whom? Are we talking producers or consumers? > Very odd Renewables being cheaper unfortunately doesn't mean the electricity consumers purchase will necessarily be cheaper, at least not if we use the current market approaches and rely on gas to top up what can't be provided elsewhere.
baq 3y ago
PV+storage with subsidies (which I count as the regulator pricing in positive externalities) should be economical in large parts of the world. Where do you live?
- logifail 3y ago
  Although household power prices have risen steadily over the last 20 years (and increased not so steadily in the last two!), PV feed-in tarifs have been falling relentlessly (see slide 41 from https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p... for specific data) so as far as I can tell, the ROI period for household PV still seems to be measured in decades.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
You probably don't need a geothermal (i.e. ground source) heat pump. They rarely make financial sense against modern air source heat pumps. Spend the saved money from digging on insulation and PV instead.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> I just haven't got enough spare money to make any of these choices No, you haven’t got credit. Solar panels pay for themselves like 3 or 4 times 9n their lifespan. We had a period of zero-interest rates, we could have bought everyone solar panels. But our bankers are too busy playing with fictitious derivatives instead of providing favourable credit to honest homeowners for renewables investment.
- logifail 3y ago
  > But our bankers are too busy playing with [..] It's not clear that our politicians are actually particularly serious about change, either. The only big change I've noticed this side of the pond in the last year is that our drink cartons now have tethered plastic caps. OK, they're still made of bonded layers of cardboard, aluminium and polyethylene which make them hard work to recycle, and according to a 2021 German study indeed less than 1/3rd of them are actually recycled ... ...but at least now the hard-to-recycle plastic lids now stay attached to the empty and hard-to-recycle cartons! <sigh>

Gibbon1 3y ago

> Every single delay in the transition is wasted money About ten years ago I realized that solar, wind, and batteries were going to beat fossil fuels on pure balance sheet accounting. Bonus: better long term risk. Were now in a rentier capitalist stages of grief situation where they're having to deal with all their fossil fuel based assets being suddenly worthless. But there is nothing they can do to stop what's coming.

midoridensha 3y ago

>Every single delay in the transition is wasted money, a transfer to fossil fuel interests at the expense of all the rest of humanity. Ok, exactly how do you propose to: 1) Get China to stop building more coal-burning power plants, and 2) Get Americans (and others) to start building and moving to dense, walkable cities and stop driving SUVs? The problem isn't "fossil fuel interests", it's a very large number of "normal" people who refuse to change their lifestyles, plus various authoritarian governments that refuse to change their trajectories. The only way you can "rebuild it all" is to somehow take control of the whole world militarily and set up a single global authoritarian government to do all this. Trying to get the world's existing governments, some authoritarian (and not caring about the problem) and others democratic (with most of their populations refusing to change their lifestyles), is like herding cats. What you want to do is technically possible, but politically completely impossible. Getting everyone to work together just to deal with a virus turned out to be a disaster, in case you forgot that.

djaychela 3y ago
I would only disagree in one part of this: >The problem isn't "fossil fuel interests", I would say it's not "just" fossil fuel interests. But they are playing a huge part in this - particularly in sowing misinformation about clean technologies, and how being carbon neutral will mean the end of your life, or that some kid in a country you've never been to will be digging stuff out of the ground for your EV/solar panel. Most of which isn't actually true (or is a minority case), but they have successfully made everyone think that it is. I actually read people on here (who I'm assuming are intelligent) last week saying they were not going to give up any part of their current lifestyle to reduce emissions, so you're right in that respect. It's like dealing with stroppy 8 year-olds in many cases. But I do think that it's still worth countries who can do (democratic ones) going ahead anyway. The only way will be to do this, otherwise it'll be game over.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  It's game over. >I actually read people on here (who I'm assuming are intelligent) last week saying they were not going to give up any part of their current lifestyle to reduce emissions, so you're right in that respect. It's like dealing with stroppy 8 year-olds in many cases. Exactly. And these aren't people in authoritarian countries; there are people in democratic nations. If politicians try to hard to push these people to give up their current lifestyles, they'll be voted out. >But I do think that it's still worth countries who can do (democratic ones) going ahead anyway. What we're going to get is some smaller, rich, democratic nations like Netherlands and Finland making real changes, and not making any significant change planet-wide because these places are small and have little population compared to India, China, and USA. Meanwhile, Americans will still be driving everywhere in 6000-pound SUVs (some of which might become EVs, but lots of EVs still means lots of electricity needed, which has to come from somewhere) and heating and cooling their huge 5000 square foot (464 square meters) homes, and China will still be running coal-fired power plants and probably building even more so their people can live more like Americans, etc. etc. I simply see no way that you're going to get most of humanity to agree to the degree of changes in energy use and emissions output needed within the next 5 years to head off a climate catastrophe. Making significant and meaningful changes in 100 years isn't going to help because it's going to be much too late. Basically, we're like the Titanic, 30 seconds before it hits the iceberg: there's simply no practical way to change course at this point. The best thing to do is stop arguing how to avoid the iceberg, and start talking about who gets the lifeboats.