5 ms·

A surprise solar boom reveals a fatal flaw in our climate change projections

30 points by rntn 2y ago

KingLancelot 2y ago
[dead]
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Related: https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-solar-power-renewable-energy-power-grid-v2/a-70885544 https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-solar-power-renewable-energy-... https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/The-Unintended-Consequences-of-Pakistans-Solar-Energy-Boom.html https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/The-Uni...
hedora 2y ago
So, there are two problems? First, even though we’ve known we have to transition off fossil fuels since the 1980’s, governments and individual investors bet we’d keep using them through the 2030’s. Second, solar panels are now so cheap, they’re fueling economic growth and quality of life improvements in places that developed regions think shouldn’t have those things. I’m having a really hard time seeing the downside here. For what it’s worth, these problems aren’t limited to developing regions: In California, we’re seeing exactly the same effects: PG&E’s cost structure is insane, and they thought they could just pass the burden to consumers indefinitely. I guess I should feel guilty that my solar panels cover the electricity demand of our vehicles, so now we’ll have fewer oil / natural gas wars and that’ll put a bunch of human rights violators out of a job?
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  > they’re fueling economic growth and quality of life improvements in places that developed regions think shouldn’t have those things This strikes me as both extremely cynical and missing the point Even if you celebrate the rising quality of life across the world, you have to acknowledge that a knock-on effect of rising quality of life is going to be that those regions that are catching up to the first world are going to be polluting more, just like the first world currently does If climate models were not including this source of increased pollution from rising living standards then the models are probably wrong and increased cheap solar may inadvertently be resulting in a net increase in overall pollution and worsening climate change. It is worth analyzing if this is the case or not, and if it is the case then we probably need to adjust climate plans somehow It seems like a similar situation to how introducing western medical care and pharmaceuticals led to population explosions in many countries as they started to live longer and more children survived to adulthood, without adjusting the number of children families were having Similarly it is not surprising that increasing the available power in a country could similarly create a consumption explosion as their standard of living suddenly skyrockets
  - thworp 2y ago
    Climate change is going to have more of an impact on people who have little resources and are already suffering from a lack of infrastructure, healthcare and stability. If these populations get more resources and can afford more services, they can be better prepared. Should they continue to suffer today‘s very real problems only to prevent the predicted but not certain worse suffering later?
    - bluefirebrand 2y ago
      > Should they continue to suffer today‘s very real problems only to prevent the predicted but not certain worse suffering later? No probably not, but it's reasonable to look a bit sideways at actions that are causing growth in some places, while other places are being told that we desperately need to embrace degrowth
- rini17 2y ago
  The issue is made clear here: > When oil got cheap and plentiful after World War II, humans didn’t enjoy the savings. They built more cars. In the same way cheap solar will induce massive demand for all kinds of stuff, which is still made by emitting CO2. Like, yes, your car has lower carbon footprint than ICE car. But it has some, and far from negligible. And when billions of newly minted middle class buy their own first car, it will add up, even if these are all solar powered BEVs. Maybe it will turn into a nonproblem, idk(that happens rarely)...but our predictions and projections ough to be fixed in any case.
  - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
    > And when billions of newly minted middle class buy their own first car Where are these supposed billions? Because populations are either already contracting or on the verge of contracting nearly everywhere: China, India, Nigeria, even Pakistan, etc. The first things people do when they get richer is that they stop having so many kids.
    - rini17 2y ago
      In Africa and Asia. Or they will all die off in just few decades?
      - 1oooqooq 2y ago
        it's so boring. it's a lame balancing act by the elites who based all their livelihood off masses of people to explore, and the need to be sensible with resources to keep the status quo a little longer. china, when they were briefly communists, put a population limit as it was sensible when the plan was to make everyone enjoy the benefits of society. ...then they jumped to capitalism as usual and changed gears.
      - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
        We all die in just a few decades. Anyway, there are no billions of new middle class people ready to buy a car there. You are far, far overestimating the growth potential and at the same time underestimating the current rate of vehicles ownership (mostly two wheeled). Electrification, certainly, more A/C definitely, more cars, sure a bit but infrastructures are already under heavy load which limits the interest. Billions of cars, never.
RandomThoughts3 2y ago
The article is so all over the place, it’s hard to understand the point it’s making. It mixes together different agencies doing forecasting for different purposes and widely fail to actually go where it should. I’m starting to wonder if it’s not a puff piece from a company with an interest in pretending that the target for emissions should be higher (it probably is actually). As it doesn’t at all address how the IPCC scenarios which are the main tools for political discussion nowadays use energy consumption forecasting, it’s kind of completely useless. Spoiler alerts, the IPCC does scenarios based modelling using five broadly different scenarios called SSP which take into account economic development and its impact (with varying levels depending of the SSP). The point is that this covers a broad range of possibilities. Plus, these SSP are reviewed for each reports while trying to take into account what was misestimated (speed of development of renewable was one thing which was underestimated before). The problem pointed in the Vox article basically doesn’t exist.
psiconaut 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
tim333 2y ago
>fatal flaw in our climate change projections... We need better models. I think the future is inherently a bit unpredictable. We probably need policies that can deal with a wide range of outcomes more than better models. It's a good thing that solar panel production is cracking away on exponential growth and hopefully batteries will pick up as well. There's even some good news recently on carbon absorbtion tech https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/29/covalent-organic-framework-carbon-capture-powder https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/29/covalent...

30 points by rntn 2y ago

[dead]

Related: https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-solar-power-renewable-energy-power-grid-v2/a-70885544 https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-solar-power-renewable-energy-... https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/The-Unintended-Consequences-of-Pakistans-Solar-Energy-Boom.html https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/The-Uni...

hedora 2y ago

So, there are two problems? First, even though we’ve known we have to transition off fossil fuels since the 1980’s, governments and individual investors bet we’d keep using them through the 2030’s. Second, solar panels are now so cheap, they’re fueling economic growth and quality of life improvements in places that developed regions think shouldn’t have those things. I’m having a really hard time seeing the downside here. For what it’s worth, these problems aren’t limited to developing regions: In California, we’re seeing exactly the same effects: PG&E’s cost structure is insane, and they thought they could just pass the burden to consumers indefinitely. I guess I should feel guilty that my solar panels cover the electricity demand of our vehicles, so now we’ll have fewer oil / natural gas wars and that’ll put a bunch of human rights violators out of a job?

bluefirebrand 2y ago
> they’re fueling economic growth and quality of life improvements in places that developed regions think shouldn’t have those things This strikes me as both extremely cynical and missing the point Even if you celebrate the rising quality of life across the world, you have to acknowledge that a knock-on effect of rising quality of life is going to be that those regions that are catching up to the first world are going to be polluting more, just like the first world currently does If climate models were not including this source of increased pollution from rising living standards then the models are probably wrong and increased cheap solar may inadvertently be resulting in a net increase in overall pollution and worsening climate change. It is worth analyzing if this is the case or not, and if it is the case then we probably need to adjust climate plans somehow It seems like a similar situation to how introducing western medical care and pharmaceuticals led to population explosions in many countries as they started to live longer and more children survived to adulthood, without adjusting the number of children families were having Similarly it is not surprising that increasing the available power in a country could similarly create a consumption explosion as their standard of living suddenly skyrockets
- thworp 2y ago
  Climate change is going to have more of an impact on people who have little resources and are already suffering from a lack of infrastructure, healthcare and stability. If these populations get more resources and can afford more services, they can be better prepared. Should they continue to suffer today‘s very real problems only to prevent the predicted but not certain worse suffering later?
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    > Should they continue to suffer today‘s very real problems only to prevent the predicted but not certain worse suffering later? No probably not, but it's reasonable to look a bit sideways at actions that are causing growth in some places, while other places are being told that we desperately need to embrace degrowth
rini17 2y ago
The issue is made clear here: > When oil got cheap and plentiful after World War II, humans didn’t enjoy the savings. They built more cars. In the same way cheap solar will induce massive demand for all kinds of stuff, which is still made by emitting CO2. Like, yes, your car has lower carbon footprint than ICE car. But it has some, and far from negligible. And when billions of newly minted middle class buy their own first car, it will add up, even if these are all solar powered BEVs. Maybe it will turn into a nonproblem, idk(that happens rarely)...but our predictions and projections ough to be fixed in any case.
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  > And when billions of newly minted middle class buy their own first car Where are these supposed billions? Because populations are either already contracting or on the verge of contracting nearly everywhere: China, India, Nigeria, even Pakistan, etc. The first things people do when they get richer is that they stop having so many kids.
  - rini17 2y ago
    In Africa and Asia. Or they will all die off in just few decades?
    - 1oooqooq 2y ago
      it's so boring. it's a lame balancing act by the elites who based all their livelihood off masses of people to explore, and the need to be sensible with resources to keep the status quo a little longer. china, when they were briefly communists, put a population limit as it was sensible when the plan was to make everyone enjoy the benefits of society. ...then they jumped to capitalism as usual and changed gears.
    - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
      We all die in just a few decades. Anyway, there are no billions of new middle class people ready to buy a car there. You are far, far overestimating the growth potential and at the same time underestimating the current rate of vehicles ownership (mostly two wheeled). Electrification, certainly, more A/C definitely, more cars, sure a bit but infrastructures are already under heavy load which limits the interest. Billions of cars, never.

RandomThoughts3 2y ago

The article is so all over the place, it’s hard to understand the point it’s making. It mixes together different agencies doing forecasting for different purposes and widely fail to actually go where it should. I’m starting to wonder if it’s not a puff piece from a company with an interest in pretending that the target for emissions should be higher (it probably is actually). As it doesn’t at all address how the IPCC scenarios which are the main tools for political discussion nowadays use energy consumption forecasting, it’s kind of completely useless. Spoiler alerts, the IPCC does scenarios based modelling using five broadly different scenarios called SSP which take into account economic development and its impact (with varying levels depending of the SSP). The point is that this covers a broad range of possibilities. Plus, these SSP are reviewed for each reports while trying to take into account what was misestimated (speed of development of renewable was one thing which was underestimated before). The problem pointed in the Vox article basically doesn’t exist.

psiconaut 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

tim333 2y ago

>fatal flaw in our climate change projections... We need better models. I think the future is inherently a bit unpredictable. We probably need policies that can deal with a wide range of outcomes more than better models. It's a good thing that solar panel production is cracking away on exponential growth and hopefully batteries will pick up as well. There's even some good news recently on carbon absorbtion tech https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/29/covalent-organic-framework-carbon-capture-powder https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/29/covalent...