6 ms·

Of course we can. All signs show we aren’t willing to though.

gottorf 3y ago
> Of course we can. Can we really, without either a massive reduction in population, a massive reduction in standard of living, or a massive centralization of capital and authority to force a switch to alternative energy sources? And if it requires any of those three, is it really a lack of willingness that prevents us?
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  > to force a switch to alternative energy sources Let me start with this part of the framing. Fossil fuels have historically and still benefit from incredible amounts of explicit subsidies (e.g. government money) and implicit policies (e.g. unpriced externalities like pollution and CO2). If governments stop providing these subsidies and stop people from treating the atmosphere as a free sewer then nobody has to be forced to use renewables, people will gladly choose them because they're simply cheaper AND better for their personal health and the environment.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > Fossil fuels have historically and still benefit from incredible amounts of explicit subsidies (e.g. government money) and implicit policies (e.g. unpriced externalities like pollution and CO2). Fossil fuels receive an estimated ~$7T ($1.3T of which are direct "government money" subsidies) subsidies globally[0]. That's about 7.3% of global GDP subsidizing an energy source that comprises over 80% of the world consumption[1]. Honestly, it sounds like a pretty good deal. Are you claiming that without any subsidies, that >80% of all energy consumed (or some substantial fraction thereof) would naturally come from renewable sources? That sounds unrealistic with present-day technology, and optimistic even for the foreseeable future. Besides, renewables aren't free of negative externalities, either. In the end, existence itself is an imposition on the surroundings. Would you tell the caveman not to burn sticks for warmth, out of respect to CO2 emissions? Would you tell the people of the developing world that increased energy expenditure per capita, no matter the source, necessarily results in a greater impact to the environment? No policy is going to "solve" the fact that we live in a world of limited resources that we must economize to bring about maximal human flourishing. Fossil fuels have done a pretty good job at that. I welcome developments in nuclear and renewable technology, but I question your assertion that some kind of panacea can be achieved with renewables where we can maintain our present population and standards of living and have a radically smaller footprint on the environment. [0]: https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel... [1]: https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2021/supply https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2021...
    - _aavaa_ 3y ago
      > Honestly, it sounds like a pretty good deal. Firstly, that's 7% of global GDP per year, not some one-time fee. But more important that sounds like a horrible deal since 100% of that is leading to climate change. And as a bonus it's also going to the companies fighting most strongly to prevent any change on the matter. > Besides, renewables aren't free of negative externalities, either. Neither is breathing. The comparison between renewables and fossil fuels is not even close, not by a few orders of magnitude. Take the figure halfway through the article as comparison [0]. > Would you tell the caveman not to burn sticks for warmth, out of respect to CO2 emissions? This is a blatant strawman, I won't even comment. > Would you tell the people of the developing world that increased energy expenditure per capita, no matter the source, necessarily results in a greater impact to the environment? I did not say this, I don't know why you think I did. I will simply repeat my previous comment: the levelized cost of solar in north America is already below that for gas and coal. In Africa, where the sun shines a heck a lot more, that number will be even better. They can either build fossil fuel energy, which will be costlier, worse for their people, and make them dependent on outside oil and coal imports. Or the can build cheap and cleaner renewables, which will also give them better energy independence from the rest of the world. See China. Do you think they're building wind, hydro, and solar like crazy out of the goodness of their heart? Or perhaps their doing it to not be dependent on oil and gas imports and to get cheaper electricity to boot? > but I question your assertion that some kind of panacea can be achieved with renewables where we can maintain our present population and standards of living and have a radically smaller footprint on the environment. I made no such statement. Renewable are not a panacea. Everyone in the world cannot have a McMansion, if only because there isn't the surface area for it. But by stopping the burning of fossil fuels and switching to renewables we will have a substantial decrease in our footprint on the environment. (oil and gas still have important uses as chemical feedstocks, and as long as we don't pollute with them they're no different from other things we extract from the ground) [0]: https://ieefa.org/resources/how-big-indias-solar-waste-challenge-compared-coal-fired-power https://ieefa.org/resources/how-big-indias-solar-waste-chall...
      - gottorf 3y ago
        > the levelized cost of solar in north America is already below that for gas and coal The levelized cost of solar in the US is comparable to combined-cycle gas plants (at around ~$37/MWh) without taking into account the cost of storage[0]. Add battery storage to the mix and the cost more than quadruples. The grid as it exists currently does not handle intermittency very well at all. Wind and solar cannot provide base load and need to be paired with some other source, which at the moment is most often gas combustion. You can very well argue that we need to modernize the grid so that it can handle intermittent sources better, and I agree, but that ends up being a lot more expensive than your simple LCOE comparison would suggest. > In Africa, where the sun shines a heck a lot more, that number will be even better. They can either build fossil fuel energy, which will be costlier, worse for their people, and make them dependent on outside oil and coal imports. I mean, that's great. By all means, they should build whatever makes sense. If fossil fuels are in fact worse by every metric as you imply, it would be ridiculous to invest more in that direction. But the fact remains that over the past decade, they've added more generation capacity from natural gas in one year (on average) than all renewables combined over the ten years[2]. So either renewables don't make as much sense as you claim, or there's something else going on. How do you explain the discrepancy? > See China. Do you think they're building wind, hydro, and solar like crazy out of the goodness of their heart? Of course they have a strategic interest in reducing dependency on foreign oil imports. But 60% of their electric grid is still from coal, and they've added almost as much coal generation capacity as they did all forms of renewables over the past 10 years[1]. And if you look at their total energy consumption (including thermal needs, not just electricity generation), 85% of all energy consumed in China comes from coal, oil, and natural gas[3]. [0]: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China [2]: https://www.iea.org/regions/africa https://www.iea.org/regions/africa [3]: https://www.iea.org/countries/china https://www.iea.org/countries/china

> Of course we can. Can we really, without either a massive reduction in population, a massive reduction in standard of living, or a massive centralization of capital and authority to force a switch to alternative energy sources? And if it requires any of those three, is it really a lack of willingness that prevents us?

_aavaa_ 3y ago
> to force a switch to alternative energy sources Let me start with this part of the framing. Fossil fuels have historically and still benefit from incredible amounts of explicit subsidies (e.g. government money) and implicit policies (e.g. unpriced externalities like pollution and CO2). If governments stop providing these subsidies and stop people from treating the atmosphere as a free sewer then nobody has to be forced to use renewables, people will gladly choose them because they're simply cheaper AND better for their personal health and the environment.
- gottorf 3y ago
  > Fossil fuels have historically and still benefit from incredible amounts of explicit subsidies (e.g. government money) and implicit policies (e.g. unpriced externalities like pollution and CO2). Fossil fuels receive an estimated ~$7T ($1.3T of which are direct "government money" subsidies) subsidies globally[0]. That's about 7.3% of global GDP subsidizing an energy source that comprises over 80% of the world consumption[1]. Honestly, it sounds like a pretty good deal. Are you claiming that without any subsidies, that >80% of all energy consumed (or some substantial fraction thereof) would naturally come from renewable sources? That sounds unrealistic with present-day technology, and optimistic even for the foreseeable future. Besides, renewables aren't free of negative externalities, either. In the end, existence itself is an imposition on the surroundings. Would you tell the caveman not to burn sticks for warmth, out of respect to CO2 emissions? Would you tell the people of the developing world that increased energy expenditure per capita, no matter the source, necessarily results in a greater impact to the environment? No policy is going to "solve" the fact that we live in a world of limited resources that we must economize to bring about maximal human flourishing. Fossil fuels have done a pretty good job at that. I welcome developments in nuclear and renewable technology, but I question your assertion that some kind of panacea can be achieved with renewables where we can maintain our present population and standards of living and have a radically smaller footprint on the environment. [0]: https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel... [1]: https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2021/supply https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2021...
  - _aavaa_ 3y ago
    > Honestly, it sounds like a pretty good deal. Firstly, that's 7% of global GDP per year, not some one-time fee. But more important that sounds like a horrible deal since 100% of that is leading to climate change. And as a bonus it's also going to the companies fighting most strongly to prevent any change on the matter. > Besides, renewables aren't free of negative externalities, either. Neither is breathing. The comparison between renewables and fossil fuels is not even close, not by a few orders of magnitude. Take the figure halfway through the article as comparison [0]. > Would you tell the caveman not to burn sticks for warmth, out of respect to CO2 emissions? This is a blatant strawman, I won't even comment. > Would you tell the people of the developing world that increased energy expenditure per capita, no matter the source, necessarily results in a greater impact to the environment? I did not say this, I don't know why you think I did. I will simply repeat my previous comment: the levelized cost of solar in north America is already below that for gas and coal. In Africa, where the sun shines a heck a lot more, that number will be even better. They can either build fossil fuel energy, which will be costlier, worse for their people, and make them dependent on outside oil and coal imports. Or the can build cheap and cleaner renewables, which will also give them better energy independence from the rest of the world. See China. Do you think they're building wind, hydro, and solar like crazy out of the goodness of their heart? Or perhaps their doing it to not be dependent on oil and gas imports and to get cheaper electricity to boot? > but I question your assertion that some kind of panacea can be achieved with renewables where we can maintain our present population and standards of living and have a radically smaller footprint on the environment. I made no such statement. Renewable are not a panacea. Everyone in the world cannot have a McMansion, if only because there isn't the surface area for it. But by stopping the burning of fossil fuels and switching to renewables we will have a substantial decrease in our footprint on the environment. (oil and gas still have important uses as chemical feedstocks, and as long as we don't pollute with them they're no different from other things we extract from the ground) [0]: https://ieefa.org/resources/how-big-indias-solar-waste-challenge-compared-coal-fired-power https://ieefa.org/resources/how-big-indias-solar-waste-chall...
    - gottorf 3y ago
      > the levelized cost of solar in north America is already below that for gas and coal The levelized cost of solar in the US is comparable to combined-cycle gas plants (at around ~$37/MWh) without taking into account the cost of storage[0]. Add battery storage to the mix and the cost more than quadruples. The grid as it exists currently does not handle intermittency very well at all. Wind and solar cannot provide base load and need to be paired with some other source, which at the moment is most often gas combustion. You can very well argue that we need to modernize the grid so that it can handle intermittent sources better, and I agree, but that ends up being a lot more expensive than your simple LCOE comparison would suggest. > In Africa, where the sun shines a heck a lot more, that number will be even better. They can either build fossil fuel energy, which will be costlier, worse for their people, and make them dependent on outside oil and coal imports. I mean, that's great. By all means, they should build whatever makes sense. If fossil fuels are in fact worse by every metric as you imply, it would be ridiculous to invest more in that direction. But the fact remains that over the past decade, they've added more generation capacity from natural gas in one year (on average) than all renewables combined over the ten years[2]. So either renewables don't make as much sense as you claim, or there's something else going on. How do you explain the discrepancy? > See China. Do you think they're building wind, hydro, and solar like crazy out of the goodness of their heart? Of course they have a strategic interest in reducing dependency on foreign oil imports. But 60% of their electric grid is still from coal, and they've added almost as much coal generation capacity as they did all forms of renewables over the past 10 years[1]. And if you look at their total energy consumption (including thermal needs, not just electricity generation), 85% of all energy consumed in China comes from coal, oil, and natural gas[3]. [0]: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China [2]: https://www.iea.org/regions/africa https://www.iea.org/regions/africa [3]: https://www.iea.org/countries/china https://www.iea.org/countries/china