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This year ie 2024 world will add more solar power than the total consumption growth. This is despite the tariffs and sanctions on Chinese panels and batteries.

This year ie 2024 world will add more solar power than the total consumption growth. This is despite the tariffs and sanctions on Chinese panels and batteries. I think the world is at the cusp of dramatic change that would come faster if not for western countries trying to protect their industries. I think adding more renewables as fast as possible specially solar is the best option as this will make essentially energy free which will decrease carbon production as well as allow to use the energy to capture carbon. Maybe we can get some nuclear fission or fusion breakthrough in the future but adding solar, wind and batteries as fast as possible should be the main focus for now.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
there was a quote, and I can't remember exactly so I paraphrase: "the person who creates a new form of energy for the world, without creating an equivalent heatsink, would be history's greatest monster", although I suppose that is very perfect being the enemy of the good.
- codethief 2y ago
  I don't think that is "very perfect being the enemy of the good" at all. Any new energy source (like fusion) would be a very real threat to mankind, see also https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
  - hcurtiss 2y ago
    He very early assumes/disregards we remain confined to earth. In the face of exponentially growing energy resources, this is a terrible assumption.
    - carapace 2y ago
      Do you imagine we will box up our terrestrial waste heat and launch it into the sun? The portion people who leave the Earth do not matter, the fate of the portion who remain remains the same. See "Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101", Al Bartlett https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy.html https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_populati... Full length video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        The point is that you can have exponential growth in human energy consumption without exponentially heating the Earth by having the growth take place off-planet. Which is hardly irrelevant to the people still there, e.g. if you find your data centers are using too much power, put them in space. The computation may take a megawatt-hour but transmitting the result back to the surface is only a few watt-seconds for a radio link. Likewise, the humans who live on other planets can be consuming local energy without heating Earth, and the people still on Earth would still get the value of their inventions, discoveries and writings.
        carapace 2y ago
        > you can have exponential growth in human energy consumption without exponentially heating the Earth by having the growth take place off-planet No. It doesn't matter, unless you postulate that the people left behind have zero population growth and constant energy dissipation, which seems unrealistic? In any event exponential growth in human energy consumption is physically unrealizable. Eventually the whole solar system resembles a red giant star, and sooner than you might think. - - - - The point is that anyone who good enough at physics to invent a free energy generator also understands why it must be kept secret. Some secrets keep themselves. That's why you can't buy one even though there are videos on the YT showing how to make them. Like the Philosophers' Stone the point of the technology is the internal transformation it engenders when you actually confront the thing itself.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > It doesn't matter, unless you postulate that the people left behind have zero population growth and constant energy dissipation, which seems unrealistic? Why does it seem unrealistic? More than that, you only need one of those things. You could have population growth with declining energy consumption if energy use is moved off-planet (even if the population benefits from the off-planet use), or increasing local energy use per-capita if local population is declining, e.g. because the number of people leaving to explore other planets is higher than the population growth rate. > Eventually the whole solar system resembles a red giant star, and sooner than you might think. The universe is a lot bigger than the solar system. > That's why you can't buy one even though there are videos on the YT showing how to make them. Uh, nope. That's not why you can't buy one.
- onethought 2y ago
  Isn’t this why solar is good. We already have the heat sink (earth) we just aren’t using the energy.
  - lupire 2y ago
    Not exactly because the Earth naturally reflects a large amount of solar energy back into space.
    - Taniwha 2y ago
      A lot of that is from clouds that are above the panels
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      That's more of the solution than the problem. Most of the light is absorbed rather than reflected, but causing more to be reflected isn't that hard, e.g. cover a large surface area of low value land or ocean with cheap reflective material.
gmuslera 2y ago
So far we are still increasing the rate at which we extract fossil fuels, even with all the investment in renewables and alternate power sources in the last decades (https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels). The Jevon paradox seem to still be valid in this, even with a few countries that managed to have most of their energy matrix on clean sources. And with all the time that CO2 remains in the atmosphere it is not enough to just extract a bit less, thing that still may take years to be achieved, all that was managed to be captured by some expensive carbon capture technology is probably orders below of how much we increased emissions. Absolute global numbers matters here. And yes, it is not possible to just stop extracting fossil fuels and try to solve our energy needs with what we have built so far. But time is running out (if it is not over already). Severe drop in consumption should be in the map too, there was a shortlived dent in the trends around 2020.
- standeven 2y ago
  And that’s why carbon taxes are so beneficial. It’s a shame they’ve been villainized and are unpopular.
  - _bent 2y ago
    The issue is that they do not work. If your constituents made bad investments and are stuck with oil heating because they heard that solar is woke on Fox, you cannot actually have them face the consequences of their actions. You will either not be elected or the media response will be so bad that you won't be able to govern. You will have to bail them out or add exemptions
    - jeauxlb 2y ago
      This is easily solved. Particularly as industry is such a large contributor to GHG emissions, imposing a carbon tax on industry and possibly even allowing grandfathering allows the costs to be baked in to (only) future considerations, and makes cleaner companies more competitive compared to dirtier ones.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pavon 2y ago
In the US, the rate at which we install utility scale solar and wind is currently limited by how quickly we can upgrade the grid to support it, with interconnect wait lists taking over 5 years in some areas[1]. Lifting tariffs wouldn't speed things up without fixing that first. [1] https://emp.lbl.gov/news/grid-connection-backlog-grows-30-2023-dominated-requests-solar-wind-and-energy-storage https://emp.lbl.gov/news/grid-connection-backlog-grows-30-20...
- neltnerb 2y ago
  The government also sets up regulations that protect incumbent electricity generators. Delaying a renewable facility from earning money for years when it has to borrow everything up front to start is extra deadly. I want proper environmental review though, to the extent it's possible to have that without it being weaponized by NIMBYs to simply run out the clock on a project's viability.
- jaggederest 2y ago
  Interconnect is going to be old news once batteries and balance-of-system costs get low enough. Local microgrids at the substation level are going to be the way to go, with only a minority of current traveling long distances (except for certain natural features, i.e. hydroelectric)
  - hedora 2y ago
    Our car can run our all-electric house for days. We have more than one car. It’s not clear to me how much the power grid will matter in ten years. I can imagine cities using substations to route N solar installations to M bidirectional EV chargers, I guess. For places as or less dense than suburbs, it’s not obvious that it makes sense to bother.
    - naasking 2y ago
      The power grid will always be absolutely essential. I have no idea why you'd think otherwise.
yodsanklai 2y ago
To put this statement into perspective, see this graph "Global primary energy consumption by source" https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years 1. Share of solar is negligible 2. New sources of energy have always come on top of existing sources, never replaced them
- tialaramex 2y ago
  Sure, look at that chart. According to that chart, we'll burn coal forever. Now, consult reality for a moment, or take a look around. Coal is finite, a resources stored away over a tremendous period of time, much of it burned in about a century. So your "always" is at best temporarily true, and thus worthless, it can't actually have predictive power. Although you insist that new sources "always come on top" you're either just observing that the chart was designed this way (facile) or you didn't look at the actual data closely. In 2014 there was more "traditional biomass" (ie people burn stuff) than today. Since this practice is extremely inefficient it makes sense to see it phased out, cooking food over a literal log fire is simple but that's the only upside. Also Solar looks like about 2.5% to me. How is that "negligible" ? Is the population of Bangladesh "negligible"? That's about 2.5% of the world's population.
  - newpavlov 2y ago
    >Coal is finite, a resources stored away over a tremendous period of time, much of it burned in about a century Sure, it's finite, but we will run out of oil and natural gas much faster than of coal. There are centuries worth of known economically viable coal reserves. Even more, if we count low-quality lignite and peat reserves.
    - DrScientist 2y ago
      Do those 'centuries' include the large increases in power demands across the world, ( as the wider world develops ) and the requirement to replace the missing oil and gas when they run out?
globnomulous 2y ago
This should reduce carbon emissions, but the dow.stream consequences seem complex and difficult to anticipate. For instance, what happens to human consumption of other resources when energy becomes essentially free? How much cheaper does it become, say, to exploit, extract, refine, and manufacture? And if extraction becomes cheaper, maintaining oil infrastructure becomes arguably a simple matter of industrial convenience: why bother to change when it's only becoming cheaper?
alex_duf 2y ago
Focusing on reducing emissions is important, but it's only the first step of the plan. If we want to be anywhere near the 2°C scenario, starting from 2050, we need to be sequestering carbon directly from the atmosphere. So I'm okay with people spending a little effort on step 2 of the plan now, especially given that we don't have yet proven technology to realise it.
arresin 2y ago
It is crazy to me that there are any tariffs anywhere on solar panels. You can make them more efficiently? Great.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago

there was a quote, and I can't remember exactly so I paraphrase: "the person who creates a new form of energy for the world, without creating an equivalent heatsink, would be history's greatest monster", although I suppose that is very perfect being the enemy of the good.

codethief 2y ago
I don't think that is "very perfect being the enemy of the good" at all. Any new energy source (like fusion) would be a very real threat to mankind, see also https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
- hcurtiss 2y ago
  He very early assumes/disregards we remain confined to earth. In the face of exponentially growing energy resources, this is a terrible assumption.
  - carapace 2y ago
    Do you imagine we will box up our terrestrial waste heat and launch it into the sun? The portion people who leave the Earth do not matter, the fate of the portion who remain remains the same. See "Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101", Al Bartlett https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy.html https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_populati... Full length video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      The point is that you can have exponential growth in human energy consumption without exponentially heating the Earth by having the growth take place off-planet. Which is hardly irrelevant to the people still there, e.g. if you find your data centers are using too much power, put them in space. The computation may take a megawatt-hour but transmitting the result back to the surface is only a few watt-seconds for a radio link. Likewise, the humans who live on other planets can be consuming local energy without heating Earth, and the people still on Earth would still get the value of their inventions, discoveries and writings.
      - carapace 2y ago
        > you can have exponential growth in human energy consumption without exponentially heating the Earth by having the growth take place off-planet No. It doesn't matter, unless you postulate that the people left behind have zero population growth and constant energy dissipation, which seems unrealistic? In any event exponential growth in human energy consumption is physically unrealizable. Eventually the whole solar system resembles a red giant star, and sooner than you might think. - - - - The point is that anyone who good enough at physics to invent a free energy generator also understands why it must be kept secret. Some secrets keep themselves. That's why you can't buy one even though there are videos on the YT showing how to make them. Like the Philosophers' Stone the point of the technology is the internal transformation it engenders when you actually confront the thing itself.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > It doesn't matter, unless you postulate that the people left behind have zero population growth and constant energy dissipation, which seems unrealistic? Why does it seem unrealistic? More than that, you only need one of those things. You could have population growth with declining energy consumption if energy use is moved off-planet (even if the population benefits from the off-planet use), or increasing local energy use per-capita if local population is declining, e.g. because the number of people leaving to explore other planets is higher than the population growth rate. > Eventually the whole solar system resembles a red giant star, and sooner than you might think. The universe is a lot bigger than the solar system. > That's why you can't buy one even though there are videos on the YT showing how to make them. Uh, nope. That's not why you can't buy one.
onethought 2y ago
Isn’t this why solar is good. We already have the heat sink (earth) we just aren’t using the energy.
- lupire 2y ago
  Not exactly because the Earth naturally reflects a large amount of solar energy back into space.
  - Taniwha 2y ago
    A lot of that is from clouds that are above the panels
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    That's more of the solution than the problem. Most of the light is absorbed rather than reflected, but causing more to be reflected isn't that hard, e.g. cover a large surface area of low value land or ocean with cheap reflective material.

gmuslera 2y ago

So far we are still increasing the rate at which we extract fossil fuels, even with all the investment in renewables and alternate power sources in the last decades (https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels). The Jevon paradox seem to still be valid in this, even with a few countries that managed to have most of their energy matrix on clean sources. And with all the time that CO2 remains in the atmosphere it is not enough to just extract a bit less, thing that still may take years to be achieved, all that was managed to be captured by some expensive carbon capture technology is probably orders below of how much we increased emissions. Absolute global numbers matters here. And yes, it is not possible to just stop extracting fossil fuels and try to solve our energy needs with what we have built so far. But time is running out (if it is not over already). Severe drop in consumption should be in the map too, there was a shortlived dent in the trends around 2020.

standeven 2y ago
And that’s why carbon taxes are so beneficial. It’s a shame they’ve been villainized and are unpopular.
- _bent 2y ago
  The issue is that they do not work. If your constituents made bad investments and are stuck with oil heating because they heard that solar is woke on Fox, you cannot actually have them face the consequences of their actions. You will either not be elected or the media response will be so bad that you won't be able to govern. You will have to bail them out or add exemptions
  - jeauxlb 2y ago
    This is easily solved. Particularly as industry is such a large contributor to GHG emissions, imposing a carbon tax on industry and possibly even allowing grandfathering allows the costs to be baked in to (only) future considerations, and makes cleaner companies more competitive compared to dirtier ones.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pavon 2y ago

In the US, the rate at which we install utility scale solar and wind is currently limited by how quickly we can upgrade the grid to support it, with interconnect wait lists taking over 5 years in some areas[1]. Lifting tariffs wouldn't speed things up without fixing that first. [1] https://emp.lbl.gov/news/grid-connection-backlog-grows-30-2023-dominated-requests-solar-wind-and-energy-storage https://emp.lbl.gov/news/grid-connection-backlog-grows-30-20...

neltnerb 2y ago
The government also sets up regulations that protect incumbent electricity generators. Delaying a renewable facility from earning money for years when it has to borrow everything up front to start is extra deadly. I want proper environmental review though, to the extent it's possible to have that without it being weaponized by NIMBYs to simply run out the clock on a project's viability.
jaggederest 2y ago
Interconnect is going to be old news once batteries and balance-of-system costs get low enough. Local microgrids at the substation level are going to be the way to go, with only a minority of current traveling long distances (except for certain natural features, i.e. hydroelectric)
- hedora 2y ago
  Our car can run our all-electric house for days. We have more than one car. It’s not clear to me how much the power grid will matter in ten years. I can imagine cities using substations to route N solar installations to M bidirectional EV chargers, I guess. For places as or less dense than suburbs, it’s not obvious that it makes sense to bother.
  - naasking 2y ago
    The power grid will always be absolutely essential. I have no idea why you'd think otherwise.

yodsanklai 2y ago

To put this statement into perspective, see this graph "Global primary energy consumption by source" https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years 1. Share of solar is negligible 2. New sources of energy have always come on top of existing sources, never replaced them

tialaramex 2y ago
Sure, look at that chart. According to that chart, we'll burn coal forever. Now, consult reality for a moment, or take a look around. Coal is finite, a resources stored away over a tremendous period of time, much of it burned in about a century. So your "always" is at best temporarily true, and thus worthless, it can't actually have predictive power. Although you insist that new sources "always come on top" you're either just observing that the chart was designed this way (facile) or you didn't look at the actual data closely. In 2014 there was more "traditional biomass" (ie people burn stuff) than today. Since this practice is extremely inefficient it makes sense to see it phased out, cooking food over a literal log fire is simple but that's the only upside. Also Solar looks like about 2.5% to me. How is that "negligible" ? Is the population of Bangladesh "negligible"? That's about 2.5% of the world's population.
- newpavlov 2y ago
  >Coal is finite, a resources stored away over a tremendous period of time, much of it burned in about a century Sure, it's finite, but we will run out of oil and natural gas much faster than of coal. There are centuries worth of known economically viable coal reserves. Even more, if we count low-quality lignite and peat reserves.
  - DrScientist 2y ago
    Do those 'centuries' include the large increases in power demands across the world, ( as the wider world develops ) and the requirement to replace the missing oil and gas when they run out?

globnomulous 2y ago

This should reduce carbon emissions, but the dow.stream consequences seem complex and difficult to anticipate. For instance, what happens to human consumption of other resources when energy becomes essentially free? How much cheaper does it become, say, to exploit, extract, refine, and manufacture? And if extraction becomes cheaper, maintaining oil infrastructure becomes arguably a simple matter of industrial convenience: why bother to change when it's only becoming cheaper?

alex_duf 2y ago

Focusing on reducing emissions is important, but it's only the first step of the plan. If we want to be anywhere near the 2°C scenario, starting from 2050, we need to be sequestering carbon directly from the atmosphere. So I'm okay with people spending a little effort on step 2 of the plan now, especially given that we don't have yet proven technology to realise it.

arresin 2y ago

It is crazy to me that there are any tariffs anywhere on solar panels. You can make them more efficiently? Great.