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This is only about electricity generation not overall energy usage (transportation, heating, etc) from given source. This is always misleading and gives impress

by pzo 1y ago

This is only about electricity generation not overall energy usage (transportation, heating, etc) from given source. This is always misleading and gives impression that renewables cover 50% of needs already. Its so much worse - it's only around 20% in EU: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?country=~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

mrtksn 1y ago
They are also very fast at electrifying everything. Especially for transportation, they built large high speed train network(runs on electricity) and are far ahead in electrifying the public transport like busses which also resulted in Chinese electric cars dominance. Future is electric, USA can't give up its fossils and EU not happy about ICE cars being phased out(or more precisely someone else winning the phase out) but that's really inevitable. US, EU should just drop everything and go electric or in a few years will look like backward civilizations because China is exporting that all over the world.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  How much of total transportation is trains?
  - vkou 1y ago
    Not great. 7.0% of person-kilometers travelled. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240916-1#:~:text=Transport%20by%20planes%20made%20up,Hungary%20(13.0%25)%20trailing%20behind.&text=Austria%20ranked%20highest%20in%20rail,awareness%20of%20sustainable%20urban%20mobility. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...
    - kragen 1y ago
      That's in the EU, though. China?
  - csomar 1y ago
    China is probably doing it for geo-political purposes (ie: if there is no oil, I can still move people with trains). They are ready to take a financial hit for that safety net. Europe is in a similar predicament but even the Russian war didn’t seem to teach them a lesson?
    - dzhiurgis 1y ago
      There already more people in EVs than in trains
    - kragen 1y ago
      Trains also enjoy great economies of scale, so once you have high ridership and an extensive network, you aren't taking a financial hit anymore. For medium distances, like 300–3000km, trains also provide speeds that passengers can't get any other way, because they avoid the huge overhead of going through an airport. It's an investment, not an expense. But China has also electrified a lot of its cars and trucks, and continues to do so rapidly.
- nonethewiser 1y ago
  >Future is electric, USA can't give up its fossils and EU not happy about ICE cars being phased out(or more precisely someone else winning the phase out) but that's really inevitable Claims like this would need to be quantified further in order to make any real predictions, but I think these sorts of predictions about future electrification may turn out to be shockingly wrong. For example, many predict we have or will soon hit peak oil. Whereas I would wager it will continue to grow. You didn't mention global oil production, but I want to get specific. 50 years from now I think global oil production will be higher than it is today. There is a strong desire by many for oil production to decrease and to electrify, but the incentive structure just isnt there. It's too cheap and useful and the energy demand is effectively unlimited. Im not even saying we shouldnt move away from it. Just that we wont.
  - fakedang 1y ago
    Oil isn't a binary for energy though. There's a growing need for it in other industries, from plastics to pharma to fertilizers. Moreover, oil production is currently staying high because the OPEC cartel can't simply afford to shut down well production - only scale it down very gradually and pray that no one finds out (which is impossible given that oil is sold on the spot market). On the other hand, American Big Oil is dependent on global prices - too low and drilling deep or fracking becomes infeasible for them, while high prices mean economic slowdown (due to domino effects on other industries) until OPEC bandies together to stabilize prices to reasonable levels (which is $65-75 per barrel). Currently we're in a situation where OPEC, remembering 2014 and hell bent on diversification, is offloading record quantities of crude into the market, to ensure that American production stays infeasible.
    - nonethewiser 1y ago
      Yes, hence more demand for oil
      - metalman 1y ago
        less d3mand for oil, more demand for energy, much more to the point is the endless potential of abundent solar energy and the comming crisis caused by the end of scarcity your grandkids will dealing meems of archiologists finding fossil fossil fuel cars
- port11 1y ago
  It must be considerably easy for China to do all this since a lot of this stuff is made in China.
tialaramex 1y ago
However, electrical solutions are often more efficient, so this can be misleading because a transition means you're getting a large amount "for free" as a result of the improved efficiency. Instead of moving your car from oil to solar, you're moving the car from oil to electricity, and then electricity is fungible so you don't care that it was made with a solar array - but the efficiency win was from going to electricity.
- vladms 1y ago
  You have to distinguish between transportation (electricity and oil) and source of energy (only oil). To have electricity you would need to invest at once in both generation, transport (the grids are not enough), storage and change in use (replace cars with electric ones). Your return will depend as well on the technology developed and none of the above fields is stable yet. I am a fan of going electric, even if only for more sovereignty, but it is not as simple as "electricity is more efficient".
  - megaman821 1y ago
    You have to be especially careful when comparing oil/gasoline vs solar/electric through. Oil has an especially well developed infrastructure for it being drilled, refined, delivered and stored. Electricity on the scale to power all transportation does not, so there are large short-term costs. In terms of effeciency, you don't replace a billion BTU's of oil with the same amount of electricity, what you want is locomation. Only about 25% of oil's energy ends up spinning the wheels, compared to 85% of energy using an electric powertrain.
    - kragen 1y ago
      In rich countries the electrical grid only needs to roughly double to power all transportation. The US did that in the 01960s, and China did it in the 02010s and probably will have done it again this decade.
      - ben_w 1y ago
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
So 20% from renewbles, 10% from nuclear, and roughly 25% from fossil fuels and 45% lost as waste heat when using fossil fuels. So we're more than half way there.
nonethewiser 1y ago
Yes, because you can't just increase capacity with solar. It has to be backed up by base power. Add 10% solar? OK now you need 10% from natural gas, nuclear, oil, etc. You need to add both solar and something durable then you can just use the solar until you cant. Look what happened in Portugal when it got cloudy.
- lompad 1y ago
  This comment is always so strange to me - do you really, seriously believe that the people setting up the grids never thought about dunkelflaute? And I don't mean that in an attacking way, I'm genuinely curious about your thoughts there. Like, yes, we're aware. At least in the german south we have the opposite problem right now. We are getting negative electricity prices (you get paid for taking some) more often because we have more electricity than we can use due to solar, at least during the day. Proper power storage is being built at this very moment all over the country. Aside from dunkelflaute, the wind is statistically stronger when solar power generation is low, so at night and when it's super cloudy. And dunkelflaute is a couple days to weeks per year. (german perspective, don't know enough about the other countries' grids) Regarding that problem in portugal, you misunderstood something there. The big 2025 power outage wasn't caused by clouds, it was an combination of localized blackouts and a sudden power _surge_ which caused a cascading failure which couldn't be stabilized by the conventional power plants even though on paper they had the capacity. How did you get the idea it had anything to do with "cloudy" weather?
  - asdefghyk 1y ago
    RE "... dunkelflaute is a couple days to weeks per year..." My guess is its VERY expensive to build the needed storage so the supply reliability matches the current reliability 99.99%? ? ( in my area there has never been any unintended power outages for several years ) Which is why its never been done? Then again maybe people will be more tolerant of the situation. I've always though smart meters could always have a "mode" to reduce everyone's max demand to a small amount ...like a few hundred watts ...too help handle extended periods of dunkelflaute
asdefghyk 1y ago
.... and is that the maximum percentage of renewables 54% ? what is the minimum daily percentage? There should be a measure what is the maximum percentage over a month? to see how renewable system handles outages of renewables ( ie no solor or wind ? and storage is the sole supply? How long can storage supply the needed power is the next question ? The needed storage and transmission changes are hard and expensive.
Retric 1y ago
That chart is misleading in the other direction, it’s comparing energy released by burning fossil fuels not useful work preformed. A solar powered EV goes a lot further per unit energy working with electricity than per unit energy of gasoline. Heat pumps are vastly efficient using electricity than even the most efficient natural gas furnace. It’s actually more efficient to use natural gas to make electricity to then use a heat pump than it is to run natural gas to people’s homes.

by pzo 1y ago

mrtksn 1y ago

They are also very fast at electrifying everything. Especially for transportation, they built large high speed train network(runs on electricity) and are far ahead in electrifying the public transport like busses which also resulted in Chinese electric cars dominance. Future is electric, USA can't give up its fossils and EU not happy about ICE cars being phased out(or more precisely someone else winning the phase out) but that's really inevitable. US, EU should just drop everything and go electric or in a few years will look like backward civilizations because China is exporting that all over the world.

dzhiurgis 1y ago
How much of total transportation is trains?
- vkou 1y ago
  Not great. 7.0% of person-kilometers travelled. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240916-1#:~:text=Transport%20by%20planes%20made%20up,Hungary%20(13.0%25)%20trailing%20behind.&text=Austria%20ranked%20highest%20in%20rail,awareness%20of%20sustainable%20urban%20mobility. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...
  - kragen 1y ago
    That's in the EU, though. China?
- csomar 1y ago
  China is probably doing it for geo-political purposes (ie: if there is no oil, I can still move people with trains). They are ready to take a financial hit for that safety net. Europe is in a similar predicament but even the Russian war didn’t seem to teach them a lesson?
  - dzhiurgis 1y ago
    There already more people in EVs than in trains
  - kragen 1y ago
    Trains also enjoy great economies of scale, so once you have high ridership and an extensive network, you aren't taking a financial hit anymore. For medium distances, like 300–3000km, trains also provide speeds that passengers can't get any other way, because they avoid the huge overhead of going through an airport. It's an investment, not an expense. But China has also electrified a lot of its cars and trucks, and continues to do so rapidly.
nonethewiser 1y ago
>Future is electric, USA can't give up its fossils and EU not happy about ICE cars being phased out(or more precisely someone else winning the phase out) but that's really inevitable Claims like this would need to be quantified further in order to make any real predictions, but I think these sorts of predictions about future electrification may turn out to be shockingly wrong. For example, many predict we have or will soon hit peak oil. Whereas I would wager it will continue to grow. You didn't mention global oil production, but I want to get specific. 50 years from now I think global oil production will be higher than it is today. There is a strong desire by many for oil production to decrease and to electrify, but the incentive structure just isnt there. It's too cheap and useful and the energy demand is effectively unlimited. Im not even saying we shouldnt move away from it. Just that we wont.
- fakedang 1y ago
  Oil isn't a binary for energy though. There's a growing need for it in other industries, from plastics to pharma to fertilizers. Moreover, oil production is currently staying high because the OPEC cartel can't simply afford to shut down well production - only scale it down very gradually and pray that no one finds out (which is impossible given that oil is sold on the spot market). On the other hand, American Big Oil is dependent on global prices - too low and drilling deep or fracking becomes infeasible for them, while high prices mean economic slowdown (due to domino effects on other industries) until OPEC bandies together to stabilize prices to reasonable levels (which is $65-75 per barrel). Currently we're in a situation where OPEC, remembering 2014 and hell bent on diversification, is offloading record quantities of crude into the market, to ensure that American production stays infeasible.
  - nonethewiser 1y ago
    Yes, hence more demand for oil
    - metalman 1y ago
      less d3mand for oil, more demand for energy, much more to the point is the endless potential of abundent solar energy and the comming crisis caused by the end of scarcity your grandkids will dealing meems of archiologists finding fossil fossil fuel cars
port11 1y ago
It must be considerably easy for China to do all this since a lot of this stuff is made in China.

tialaramex 1y ago

However, electrical solutions are often more efficient, so this can be misleading because a transition means you're getting a large amount "for free" as a result of the improved efficiency. Instead of moving your car from oil to solar, you're moving the car from oil to electricity, and then electricity is fungible so you don't care that it was made with a solar array - but the efficiency win was from going to electricity.

vladms 1y ago
You have to distinguish between transportation (electricity and oil) and source of energy (only oil). To have electricity you would need to invest at once in both generation, transport (the grids are not enough), storage and change in use (replace cars with electric ones). Your return will depend as well on the technology developed and none of the above fields is stable yet. I am a fan of going electric, even if only for more sovereignty, but it is not as simple as "electricity is more efficient".
- megaman821 1y ago
  You have to be especially careful when comparing oil/gasoline vs solar/electric through. Oil has an especially well developed infrastructure for it being drilled, refined, delivered and stored. Electricity on the scale to power all transportation does not, so there are large short-term costs. In terms of effeciency, you don't replace a billion BTU's of oil with the same amount of electricity, what you want is locomation. Only about 25% of oil's energy ends up spinning the wheels, compared to 85% of energy using an electric powertrain.
  - kragen 1y ago
    In rich countries the electrical grid only needs to roughly double to power all transportation. The US did that in the 01960s, and China did it in the 02010s and probably will have done it again this decade.
    - ben_w 1y ago

ZeroGravitas 1y ago

So 20% from renewbles, 10% from nuclear, and roughly 25% from fossil fuels and 45% lost as waste heat when using fossil fuels. So we're more than half way there.

nonethewiser 1y ago

Yes, because you can't just increase capacity with solar. It has to be backed up by base power. Add 10% solar? OK now you need 10% from natural gas, nuclear, oil, etc. You need to add both solar and something durable then you can just use the solar until you cant. Look what happened in Portugal when it got cloudy.

lompad 1y ago
This comment is always so strange to me - do you really, seriously believe that the people setting up the grids never thought about dunkelflaute? And I don't mean that in an attacking way, I'm genuinely curious about your thoughts there. Like, yes, we're aware. At least in the german south we have the opposite problem right now. We are getting negative electricity prices (you get paid for taking some) more often because we have more electricity than we can use due to solar, at least during the day. Proper power storage is being built at this very moment all over the country. Aside from dunkelflaute, the wind is statistically stronger when solar power generation is low, so at night and when it's super cloudy. And dunkelflaute is a couple days to weeks per year. (german perspective, don't know enough about the other countries' grids) Regarding that problem in portugal, you misunderstood something there. The big 2025 power outage wasn't caused by clouds, it was an combination of localized blackouts and a sudden power _surge_ which caused a cascading failure which couldn't be stabilized by the conventional power plants even though on paper they had the capacity. How did you get the idea it had anything to do with "cloudy" weather?
- asdefghyk 1y ago
  RE "... dunkelflaute is a couple days to weeks per year..." My guess is its VERY expensive to build the needed storage so the supply reliability matches the current reliability 99.99%? ? ( in my area there has never been any unintended power outages for several years ) Which is why its never been done? Then again maybe people will be more tolerant of the situation. I've always though smart meters could always have a "mode" to reduce everyone's max demand to a small amount ...like a few hundred watts ...too help handle extended periods of dunkelflaute

asdefghyk 1y ago

.... and is that the maximum percentage of renewables 54% ? what is the minimum daily percentage? There should be a measure what is the maximum percentage over a month? to see how renewable system handles outages of renewables ( ie no solor or wind ? and storage is the sole supply? How long can storage supply the needed power is the next question ? The needed storage and transmission changes are hard and expensive.

Retric 1y ago

That chart is misleading in the other direction, it’s comparing energy released by burning fossil fuels not useful work preformed. A solar powered EV goes a lot further per unit energy working with electricity than per unit energy of gasoline. Heat pumps are vastly efficient using electricity than even the most efficient natural gas furnace. It’s actually more efficient to use natural gas to make electricity to then use a heat pump than it is to run natural gas to people’s homes.