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And the grid is getting greener and greener every year. An electric car bought today that is powered by a coal plant today will be powered by solar/hydro/wind

by 0xfae 2y ago

And the grid is getting greener and greener every year. An electric car bought today that is powered by a coal plant today will be powered by solar/hydro/wind more and more each year. A gas car will always run on fossil fuels.

SoftTalker 2y ago
Not necessarily, synthetic fuel is being developed for air transport and could also be used in internal combustion car engines. Not sure anyone is seriously working on it, and I don't know how the economics compare. One advantage would be that we already have the distribution infrastructure in place for liquid motor vehicle fuel. Our electrical infrastructure is going to need significant upgrading at least in places to handle charging if all vehicles are EVs.
vlovich123 2y ago
An electric car is also more efficient and grid fossil fuels are better than a small ICE. Still, I’m not really seeing the evidence that the grid is getting all that much greener. There’s a lot of solar capacity installed and yet every year we use more fossil fuels than the year before. It dents the growth a bit but it doesn’t seem to be doing a good job at replacing fossil fuels. We need more gen iv fission, not more renewables, to meaningfully displace fossil fuels. And no, it’s not more expensive than solar even today if you add the cost of batteries which everyone seems to ignore when comparing solar/wind to fission. As for hydro, that resource is fully tapped; all the available capacity is fully in use at a significant environmental cost. Geothermal might be a good one but it requires a massive shift in where cities are located which limits its utility (HVDC remains extremely expensive).
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  Battery prices are going down. Solar prices are going down. Wind prices are going down. Nuclear mostly is going sideways. This is also reflected by deployment, where renewables are on an exponential (logistic) curve and nuclear isn’t. Even in China, where nuclear is growing fastest, the curves look like this: https://www.evwind.es/2024/01/13/nuclear-energy-remains-far-behind-photovoltaics-and-wind-in-china/95924 https://www.evwind.es/2024/01/13/nuclear-energy-remains-far-... TL;DR if fast deployment of low carbon sources is what you want, nuclear definitely is not the answer.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    The point of fission is that all that installed capacity is available 24/7. That isn’t true of wind and solar. So for baseload, fission is the only solution and that’s why China is building them. China fission prices have gone down by the way and it’s likely the world will soon start using their reactors because we let the coal industry kill our nuclear industry.
  - suoduandao3 2y ago
    That discrepancy is not surprising, given iteration times and cost of failure. Nuclear has great potential in space exploration, but it's never going to be economical when there are other options. It's no wonder pronuclear activists clog up any discussion of renewable energy, hoping to get some of that public subsidy money for themselves - they know the reactors can't pay for themselves by selling electricity alone.
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      The cognitive dissonance involved to say that nuclear needs public subsidies to pay for themselves when wind and solar need the same is pretty wild. And again - wind and solar, with all those subsidies, continues to fail to displace fossil fuels in the grid because the costs continue to ignore the batteries required to supplant baseload (or argue that baseload is an archaic concept with the alternative being a completely different grid which would require a massive replacement). By comparison, France which went all nuclear in the 60s is completely off fossil fuels for their grid whereas companies that continue to go the renewables-only approach continue to see fossil fuel usage continue to grow even if the percentages remain flat.
      - suoduandao3 2y ago
        Then why are you here? If nuclear doesn't need subsidies, why aren't you just investing in the next great nuclear project and proving me wrong that way?
        vlovich123 2y ago
randerson 2y ago
And even if an EV is powered by a coal plant, the air pollution is in industrial areas not the residential areas where people live, so there are health benefits regardless of the climate impact.

by 0xfae 2y ago

SoftTalker 2y ago

Not necessarily, synthetic fuel is being developed for air transport and could also be used in internal combustion car engines. Not sure anyone is seriously working on it, and I don't know how the economics compare. One advantage would be that we already have the distribution infrastructure in place for liquid motor vehicle fuel. Our electrical infrastructure is going to need significant upgrading at least in places to handle charging if all vehicles are EVs.

vlovich123 2y ago

An electric car is also more efficient and grid fossil fuels are better than a small ICE. Still, I’m not really seeing the evidence that the grid is getting all that much greener. There’s a lot of solar capacity installed and yet every year we use more fossil fuels than the year before. It dents the growth a bit but it doesn’t seem to be doing a good job at replacing fossil fuels. We need more gen iv fission, not more renewables, to meaningfully displace fossil fuels. And no, it’s not more expensive than solar even today if you add the cost of batteries which everyone seems to ignore when comparing solar/wind to fission. As for hydro, that resource is fully tapped; all the available capacity is fully in use at a significant environmental cost. Geothermal might be a good one but it requires a massive shift in where cities are located which limits its utility (HVDC remains extremely expensive).

matthewdgreen 2y ago
Battery prices are going down. Solar prices are going down. Wind prices are going down. Nuclear mostly is going sideways. This is also reflected by deployment, where renewables are on an exponential (logistic) curve and nuclear isn’t. Even in China, where nuclear is growing fastest, the curves look like this: https://www.evwind.es/2024/01/13/nuclear-energy-remains-far-behind-photovoltaics-and-wind-in-china/95924 https://www.evwind.es/2024/01/13/nuclear-energy-remains-far-... TL;DR if fast deployment of low carbon sources is what you want, nuclear definitely is not the answer.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  The point of fission is that all that installed capacity is available 24/7. That isn’t true of wind and solar. So for baseload, fission is the only solution and that’s why China is building them. China fission prices have gone down by the way and it’s likely the world will soon start using their reactors because we let the coal industry kill our nuclear industry.
- suoduandao3 2y ago
  That discrepancy is not surprising, given iteration times and cost of failure. Nuclear has great potential in space exploration, but it's never going to be economical when there are other options. It's no wonder pronuclear activists clog up any discussion of renewable energy, hoping to get some of that public subsidy money for themselves - they know the reactors can't pay for themselves by selling electricity alone.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    The cognitive dissonance involved to say that nuclear needs public subsidies to pay for themselves when wind and solar need the same is pretty wild. And again - wind and solar, with all those subsidies, continues to fail to displace fossil fuels in the grid because the costs continue to ignore the batteries required to supplant baseload (or argue that baseload is an archaic concept with the alternative being a completely different grid which would require a massive replacement). By comparison, France which went all nuclear in the 60s is completely off fossil fuels for their grid whereas companies that continue to go the renewables-only approach continue to see fossil fuel usage continue to grow even if the percentages remain flat.
    - suoduandao3 2y ago
      Then why are you here? If nuclear doesn't need subsidies, why aren't you just investing in the next great nuclear project and proving me wrong that way?
      - vlovich123 2y ago

randerson 2y ago

And even if an EV is powered by a coal plant, the air pollution is in industrial areas not the residential areas where people live, so there are health benefits regardless of the climate impact.