The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: polly_mer on November 05, 2020, 07:13:20 AM
I am also always amused when the climate science is trotted out with the discussion by members of the public focusing at about the 3-5 level on the technology effects.  The changes that would have to be made to move the needle with our current level of technology are pretty unpalatable to the people who will need make the daily changes.  The people who get the immediate negative consequences are not those who get the medium-term benefits.

Even the temporary behavioral changes necessary for COVID when the technologies are on the horizon with better therapeutics and vaccines are a hard sell in most of the country.  It's pretty common to hear something like: You can't expect people to basically stay home for two years!

But we can expect people with very comfortable lives due to the modern conveniences that all rely on energy consumption unimaginable a century ago to dramatically reduce forever?  I have this bridge for sale.

I also think the way the discourse focuses on technology is laughable. The tech focus is pie-in-the-sky bullshit. If the tech materializes, great, but you can't actually make nonexistent tech the centrepiece of your plan of attack. Most of the tech discourse focuses on carbon capture and storage, which exists but is seriously inefficient, and the hopes for improving it sufficiently are actually pretty dim.

But a few other things are worth noting. First, the overwhelming bulk of GHG emissions are industrial, not lifestyle, emissions. Even if you cut lifestyle emissions back to the bone, you'd still have anthropogenic climate change. Second, industrial emissions skyrocketed in the early aughts, at the same time as we were busy stripping the last vestiges of most local industrial capacity (especially manufacturing) and shipping it overseas to the lowest bidder so that all that was tangibly left of many corporations was their branding (and also thereby externalizing what were previously local emissions). Third, the US military is the single largest emitter on the planet. It's also a bullshit, useless entity that's been allowed to bloat to incredible proportions since WWII (well, since WWI, really, but post-II is when it gets serious about bloat).

Getting serious about emissions doesn't mean leading the life of a medieval peasant. Again, in the 1990s and early aughts, it would actually have meant quite minimal lifestyle changes. At this point, however, thirty years of total inaction and ramped-up emissions means that the lifestyle changes would be much more significant. Even so, however, we're only talking about cutting back to the way things were in the 1990s, and that was pretty good. It just means that you're not flying several times a year or buying a new phone every year. And--gasp!--maybe reducing your meat intake somewhat.

The more serious changes that are required are at the industrial level. And those are big changes now, there's no getting around that. Which is why we need to fight for a just transition, to minimize the economic harms associated with that transition, and why, in the US, we need to fight for some type of universal healthcare (i.e. healthcare not tied to employment, which covers everyone, and, preferably, which is free at the point of service).

One relatively easy change would be to drastically reduce the US military's budget. It's not clear to me why the US needs much of a standing army at all, but even so, there's no reason why it needs to be such a behemoth. Cut the funds, use them for a New Deal-style (greening) jobs program, and you'll have made a huge dent in national emissions. Another easy set of changes is simply to end the exploration and opening of new oil and gas wells, and curtail or end fracking. We know those fossil fuels have to stay in the ground, after all, and the oil majors already have something like 100 years' worth of it on tap.

Climate change is especially difficult to deal with effectively because it's a deferred, backloaded, and resilient phenomenon in addition to being a huge collective action problem that stretches across time as well as geography. Make no mistake: we will have to address it at some point in the increasingly near future. And the later we do so, the more enormous the costs and hardships involved, even if "dealing with it" ends up just involving mitigating the consequences when they're manifested (e.g. in terms of flooding, fires, smoke, refugees, mass extinctions, etc.). The cumulative costs of doing so will be enormous. It's not a question of doing basically nothing and ignoring it and not paying a dime for it; ignoring it is actually incredibly expensive.

I'm optimistic that much of the world will somewhat rise to the occasion, and we'll succeed in significantly limiting our emissions in the next decades. I'm not optimistic that we'll actually succeed in avoiding 4° of warming in the next hundred or so years, and that's horrific. I also don't think the US will be meaningfully participating in the effort for decades to come, and that's really disappointing, but I'm glad that China has picked up the baton and is leading the charge.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on November 05, 2020, 08:01:39 AM

But a few other things are worth noting. First, the overwhelming bulk of GHG emissions are industrial, not lifestyle, emissions. Even if you cut lifestyle emissions back to the bone, you'd still have anthropogenic climate change. Second, industrial emissions skyrocketed in the early aughts, at the same time as we were busy stripping the last vestiges of most local industrial capacity (especially manufacturing) and shipping it overseas to the lowest bidder so that all that was tangibly left of many corporations was their branding (and also thereby externalizing what were previously local emissions). Third, the US military is the single largest emitter on the planet. It's also a bullshit, useless entity that's been allowed to bloat to incredible proportions since WWII (well, since WWI, really, but post-II is when it gets serious about bloat).

Getting serious about emissions doesn't mean leading the life of a medieval peasant. Again, in the 1990s and early aughts, it would actually have meant quite minimal lifestyle changes. At this point, however, thirty years of total inaction and ramped-up emissions means that the lifestyle changes would be much more significant. Even so, however, we're only talking about cutting back to the way things were in the 1990s, and that was pretty good. It just means that you're not flying several times a year or buying a new phone every year. And--gasp!--maybe reducing your meat intake somewhat.

The more serious changes that are required are at the industrial level. And those are big changes now, there's no getting around that. Which is why we need to fight for a just transition, to minimize the economic harms associated with that transition, and why, in the US, we need to fight for some type of universal healthcare (i.e. healthcare not tied to employment, which covers everyone, and, preferably, which is free at the point of service).

One relatively easy change would be to drastically reduce the US military's budget. It's not clear to me why the US needs much of a standing army at all, but even so, there's no reason why it needs to be such a behemoth. Cut the funds, use them for a New Deal-style (greening) jobs program, and you'll have made a huge dent in national emissions. Another easy set of changes is simply to end the exploration and opening of new oil and gas wells, and curtail or end fracking. We know those fossil fuels have to stay in the ground, after all, and the oil majors already have something like 100 years' worth of it on tap.

What are these "industries" that have nothing to do with consumers? I have a hard time seeing how "lifestyle" is not one of, if not "the", primary driver of industrial emissions. Anything which makes industry more environment-friendly is going to have significant effects on consumer prices.

We want stuff, and especially cheap stuff. No questions asked. That's the problem.

Three thousand plastic baby Yodas vs. three nuclear submarines might suggest the issue, which is both materials-intensive and energy-expensive as well as unbalanced in an order-of-magnitude kind of way.

M.

Quote from: mamselle on November 05, 2020, 08:21:45 AM
Three thousand plastic baby Yodas vs. three nuclear submarines might suggest the issue, which is both materials-intensive and energy-expensive as well as unbalanced in an order-of-magnitude kind of way.

M.

Except that the packaging and disposal of the nuclear submarines is much more carefully handled than the baby Yodas. Does NYC stil just tow their garbage out into the ocean and dump it there?

Quote from: polly_mer on November 05, 2020, 07:13:20 AM
https://theweek.com/articles/947824/left-just-got-crushed for those who are still insisting that somehow a tie within rounding is a real win that will matter.

A mandate from a big win for a given platform means passing legislation or rejiggering appropriations is easier because most of the newly/re-elected are on the same page about what needs to be done to satisfy the electoreate. 

Being essentially tied means equal numbers of people want very different things with the result that an idea of serving everyone equally doesn't really work when nearly half the people will be angry at any action.  Abandoning the idea of serving everyone in favor of pushing through dramatic change is not going to fly at all.

I am also always amused when the climate science is trotted out with the discussion by members of the public focusing at about the 3-5 level on the technology effects.  The changes that would have to be made to move the needle with our current level of technology are pretty unpalatable to the people who will need make the daily changes.  The people who get the immediate negative consequences are not those who get the medium-term benefits.

Even the temporary behavioral changes necessary for COVID when the technologies are on the horizon with better therapeutics and vaccines are a hard sell in most of the country.  It's pretty common to hear something like: You can't expect people to basically stay home for two years!

But we can expect people with very comfortable lives due to the modern conveniences that all rely on energy consumption unimaginable a century ago to dramatically reduce forever?  I have this bridge for sale.

Going to ask for you to don your optimist cap for a minute, and school me on alternative energy development. Everywhere I go it seems there is significant progress with wind and solar. Am I just imagining this?

Keep in mind I'd rather not be depressed, but can handle it if necessary.

Quote from: jimbogumbo on November 05, 2020, 09:24:31 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 05, 2020, 07:13:20 AM
I am also always amused when the climate science is trotted out with the discussion by members of the public focusing at about the 3-5 level on the technology effects.  The changes that would have to be made to move the needle with our current level of technology are pretty unpalatable to the people who will need make the daily changes.  The people who get the immediate negative consequences are not those who get the medium-term benefits.

Even the temporary behavioral changes necessary for COVID when the technologies are on the horizon with better therapeutics and vaccines are a hard sell in most of the country.  It's pretty common to hear something like: You can't expect people to basically stay home for two years!

But we can expect people with very comfortable lives due to the modern conveniences that all rely on energy consumption unimaginable a century ago to dramatically reduce forever?  I have this bridge for sale.

Going to ask for you to don your optimist cap for a minute, and school me on alternative energy development. Everywhere I go it seems there is significant progress with wind and solar. Am I just imagining this?

Keep in mind I'd rather not be depressed, but can handle it if necessary.

I'm a big fan (no pun intended) of wind and solar. However, the big limitation is storage. It's especially big since the focus in on centralized, grid-level storage. The real way forward for wind and solar is to push toward distributed production and storage, a.k.a. every house has its own panels and storage, with the grid to allow arbitrage. (To do this, I would propse changing building codes to require 5% of the cost of a building to some combination of panels, turbines, batteries, and electronics, chosen to fit the site.)   

However, in keeping with the points Polly has made, this is a long term shift, as new construction replaces older buildings. If it started tomorrow it would still be decades before it would reach 50% of buildings.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 05, 2020, 08:10:49 AM

What are these "industries" that have nothing to do with consumers? I have a hard time seeing how "lifestyle" is not one of, if not "the", primary driver of industrial emissions. Anything which makes industry more environment-friendly is going to have significant effects on consumer prices.

We want stuff, and especially cheap stuff. No questions asked. That's the problem.

The largest GHG-emitting sectors are energy (including transportation--but note that the emissions involved in individual transportation pale in comparison to those involved in maintaining global supply lines, etc.; on the energy front, electricity generation is the largest source of emissions, and again, the energy expended on heating and cooling homes pales in comparison to that used for commercial and industrial purposes), agriculture, land use change, industrial processes (that's in addition to the electricity industry consumes), and waste.

Shifting over the bulk of electricity-generation from coal, natural gas, etc. to 'clean' sources would make a huge difference. But again, the point is that while household electricity usage is significant, it pales in comparison to other uses. Likewise, although individual transportation is a significant source of GHGs, it pales in comparison to the emissions generated by commercial transportation.

We're long past the point where individual choices can make enough of a difference to change the outcome. What we need to do is start going after the source of the problem. And yes, that might mean that $5 T-shirts and yearly iPhones are a relic of the past. But we're not talking about $100 T-shirts and no more iPhones.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 05, 2020, 09:53:06 AM

I'm a big fan (no pun intended) of wind and solar. However, the big limitation is storage. It's especially big since the focus in on centralized, grid-level storage. The real way forward for wind and solar is to push toward distributed production and storage, a.k.a. every house has its own panels and storage, with the grid to allow arbitrage. (To do this, I would propse changing building codes to require 5% of the cost of a building to some combination of panels, turbines, batteries, and electronics, chosen to fit the site.)   

However, in keeping with the points Polly has made, this is a long term shift, as new construction replaces older buildings. If it started tomorrow it would still be decades before it would reach 50% of buildings.

That's right: the big obstacle is storage capacity. And while we have made and will continue to make improvements on that front, it's simply not realistic to bank our hopes on a new super-battery which will probably never come (and whose global distribution will be impossible anyway).

And all that's why we've really screwed the pooch. The time to start getting serious about all this was thirty years ago. Or twenty years ago. Or ten. The longer we defer starting, the more monumental and disruptive the task will be, and the more the short- and medium-term costs will accrue.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 05, 2020, 09:53:06 AM

Quote from: jimbogumbo on November 05, 2020, 09:24:31 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 05, 2020, 07:13:20 AM
I am also always amused when the climate science is trotted out with the discussion by members of the public focusing at about the 3-5 level on the technology effects.  The changes that would have to be made to move the needle with our current level of technology are pretty unpalatable to the people who will need make the daily changes.  The people who get the immediate negative consequences are not those who get the medium-term benefits.

Even the temporary behavioral changes necessary for COVID when the technologies are on the horizon with better therapeutics and vaccines are a hard sell in most of the country.  It's pretty common to hear something like: You can't expect people to basically stay home for two years!

But we can expect people with very comfortable lives due to the modern conveniences that all rely on energy consumption unimaginable a century ago to dramatically reduce forever?  I have this bridge for sale.

Going to ask for you to don your optimist cap for a minute, and school me on alternative energy development. Everywhere I go it seems there is significant progress with wind and solar. Am I just imagining this?

Keep in mind I'd rather not be depressed, but can handle it if necessary.

I'm a big fan (no pun intended) of wind and solar. However, the big limitation is storage. It's especially big since the focus in on centralized, grid-level storage. The real way forward for wind and solar is to push toward distributed production and storage, a.k.a. every house has its own panels and storage, with the grid to allow arbitrage. (To do this, I would propse changing building codes to require 5% of the cost of a building to some combination of panels, turbines, batteries, and electronics, chosen to fit the site.)   

However, in keeping with the points Polly has made, this is a long term shift, as new construction replaces older buildings. If it started tomorrow it would still be decades before it would reach 50% of buildings.

Completely agree. An example near me is a rural school district which owns and operates its own wind turbine, which provides for 100% of the MS-HS building's electric needs. I'm thinking of advances in large scale solar generation in Sun Belt states, which appears to be getting much more efficient and inexpensive.

I live in the Sun Belt, and every utility company here is fighting solar panels tooth and nail. Every house with it's own panels and battery would kill the utilities. Further complicating this is the fact that some utilities (like where I live) are own by their municipalities and so are a major source of governmental revenue.

The Dems really need to find ways to explain their solutions to these issues (climate change, health care etc) that still preserve some semblance of a normal economy. The example I just gave is a good illustration of these issues. Until they figure out how to do that, the vote will continue to be essentially money concerns vs everything else.

Quote from: mythbuster on November 05, 2020, 11:10:25 AM
I live in the Sun Belt, and every utility company here is fighting solar panels tooth and nail. Every house with it's own panels and battery would kill the utilities. Further complicating this is the fact that some utilities (like where I live) are own by their municipalities and so are a major source of governmental revenue.

This is ridiculously short-sighted of them. Natural gas utilities rent water heaters to consumers, and it makes a revenue stream. Utilities could rent (lease, whatever) solar panels, batteries, etc. to consumers. The deal for the consumer is that their average energy bill would go down. The deal for the utility is that part of the power (at least the surplus, as on sunny days), goes into the grid for the utility.

Part of the problem for utilities is maintaining a grid which has to be able to handle peak demand. With more distributed production and storage, the grid wouldn't need to be nearly as oversized.

It's not hard to figure out how to make this pay if the focus is on the future (and how things will eventually be, regardless), rather than trying to just preserve the past (which will become increasingly impossible, regardless).

Quote
The Dems really need to find ways to explain their solutions to these issues (climate change, health care etc) that still preserve some semblance of a normal economy. The example I just gave is a good illustration of these issues. Until they figure out how to do that, the vote will continue to be essentially money concerns vs everything else.

As in the example above, part of the way to do this is to highlight how proposed solutions address well-known problems with the existing infrastructure (such as grid maintenance above) so that current players have an opportunity to actually be part of the solution.

Go nuclear, young man, go nuclear.

Uh, no.

Three-mile Island, anyone?

Chernobyl?

Solar's safer.

M.

Quote from: mamselle on November 05, 2020, 01:16:18 PM
Uh, no.

Three-mile Island, anyone?

Chernobyl?

Solar's safer.

M.

But the storage problem means that places with more solar and wind rely more heavily on nuclear and fossil fuel plants at night when there is zero solar output.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 05, 2020, 11:50:25 AM

Quote from: mythbuster on November 05, 2020, 11:10:25 AM
I live in the Sun Belt, and every utility company here is fighting solar panels tooth and nail. Every house with it's own panels and battery would kill the utilities. Further complicating this is the fact that some utilities (like where I live) are own by their municipalities and so are a major source of governmental revenue.

This is ridiculously short-sighted of them. Natural gas utilities rent water heaters to consumers, and it makes a revenue stream. Utilities could rent (lease, whatever) solar panels, batteries, etc. to consumers. The deal for the consumer is that their average energy bill would go down. The deal for the utility is that part of the power (at least the surplus, as on sunny days), goes into the grid for the utility.

Part of the problem for utilities is maintaining a grid which has to be able to handle peak demand. With more distributed production and storage, the grid wouldn't need to be nearly as oversized.

It's not hard to figure out how to make this pay if the focus is on the future (and how things will eventually be, regardless), rather than trying to just preserve the past (which will become increasingly impossible, regardless).

Quote
The Dems really need to find ways to explain their solutions to these issues (climate change, health care etc) that still preserve some semblance of a normal economy. The example I just gave is a good illustration of these issues. Until they figure out how to do that, the vote will continue to be essentially money concerns vs everything else.

As in the example above, part of the way to do this is to highlight how proposed solutions address well-known problems with the existing infrastructure (such as grid maintenance above) so that current players have an opportunity to actually be part of the solution.

I wonder if they are not willing to risk the investment in these new revenue streams. If there are private investors in there who like their returns; or if there are a lot of union jobs tied up with maintaining the current infrastructure, these can be two big barriers to change.

Quote from: dismalist on November 05, 2020, 12:21:35 PM
Go nuclear, young man, go nuclear.

There is always that guy, who suggests nuclear. Why? I mean, why?

Solar is the cheapest energy https://webstore.iea.org/world-energy-outlook-2020, except in some places wind is cheaper. There technology is here.  It doesn't need subsidies, it just needs and open, level market.  Which, because this is a collective decision in most respects, it doesn't have.

I know nuclear is familiar, and so a go-to for many people. It is even featured on the Simpsons.  In my view, that is not a recommendation.  So stop recommending it. 

Yes, with solar and wind, presumably in some locations supplemented by  biomass, geothermal, and hydro, you need storage and/or other ways to cope with intermittency.  That's just part of the system, but it can and will be built out as it is needed.   This is not hard, there are smart people who are doing this stuff and it all just needs to scale up.

The only reason we aren't shifting away form fossils fuels in a massive way is that there are interest groups that have politicians by the short hairs, and energy transition is in most respects, as I  said before, a collective decision.   There are some specific uses where this transition is more challenging, but in general  for most of the world the solutions are all there, and no real decline  of living standards is required.  Except for people with a vested interest in fossil fuels, who will really lose a lot of money, so it will be protracted and contested transition process, which probably will not happen soon enough to save us from massive ecological disasters. 
     

 

Quote from: MonsterX on November 06, 2020, 01:47:19 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 05, 2020, 12:21:35 PM
Go nuclear, young man, go nuclear.

There is always that guy, who suggests nuclear. Why? I mean, why?

Solar is the cheapest energy https://webstore.iea.org/world-energy-outlook-2020, except in some places wind is cheaper. There technology is here.  It doesn't need subsidies, it just needs and open, level market.  Which, because this is a collective decision in most respects, it doesn't have.

I know nuclear is familiar, and so a go-to for many people. It is even featured on the Simpsons.  In my view, that is not a recommendation.  So stop recommending it. 

Yes, with solar and wind, presumably in some locations supplemented by  biomass, geothermal, and hydro, you need storage and/or other ways to cope with intermittency.  That's just part of the system, but it can and will be built out as it is needed.   This is not hard, there are smart people who are doing this stuff and it all just needs to scale up.

The only reason we aren't shifting away form fossils fuels in a massive way is that there are interest groups that have politicians by the short hairs, and energy transition is in most respects, as I  said before, a collective decision.   There are some specific uses where this transition is more challenging, but in general  for most of the world the solutions are all there, and no real decline  of living standards is required.  Except for people with a vested interest in fossil fuels, who will really lose a lot of money, so it will be protracted and contested transition process, which probably will not happen soon enough to save us from massive ecological disasters. 
     

For one, because the environmental impacts of mining/refining (and shrinking reserves) of the components needed for solar energy are a big deal, not to mention the issues with scaling battery technologies. Nuclear replaces our need for "on demand" generation.

Carter did a great job of convincing people that nuclear was scary and should be avoided. With current technologies, there's not a good reason not to embrace it to a much more significant degree.

::edit:: Carter, not Reagan. Should not post in a hurry between classes.

QuoteReagan did a great job of convincing people that nuclear was scary and should be avoided.

Why ever would one think that?

Looks like the opposite is true https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/statement-announcing-series-policy-initiatives-nuclear-energy (https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/statement-announcing-series-policy-initiatives-nuclear-energy)

Quote from: dismalist on November 06, 2020, 07:27:17 PM

QuoteReagan did a great job of convincing people that nuclear was scary and should be avoided.

Why ever would one think that?

Looks like the opposite is true https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/statement-announcing-series-policy-initiatives-nuclear-energy (https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/statement-announcing-series-policy-initiatives-nuclear-energy)

Because one posted without thinking. I meant Carter and my brain thought one thing while I typed another.

Quote from: eigen on November 06, 2020, 04:41:33 PM


For one, because the environmental impacts of mining/refining (and shrinking reserves) of the components needed for solar energy are a big deal, not to mention the issues with scaling battery technologies. Nuclear replaces our need for "on demand" generation.

This is not an argument for nuclear power, it is an argument for dismantling the consumer society. Fine, if you are taking that position; it would indeed be better for the environment to do this than to shift to renewables.  I am taking the politically more realizable position that we should transition to cheaper and cleaner energy, which should regard reduced environmental impact as a high priority, but not the only one.

Like everything else, renewable energy infrastructure is made of stuff, which, surprise, surprise, very much like fossil fuel or uranium or anything else in industrial society, needs to be obtained somehow, and this has an environmental impact.  The difference is, build it and it is putting out power for decades, instead of having to always pump out or dig up more  every time you use a watt of energy.  For fossil fuels and nuclear not only do you need to build the infrastructure, but you need to fuel it every day, with trucks and ships moving this fuel around the world, at massive environmental cost (as well as financial cost).    Environmental damage from renewables is a concern and we should mitigate it, but it is tiny compared to fossil fuels and nuclear, so this is not a reason to slow the transition.   (I do think already built nuclear should continue to operate as long as it is still economically viable - building new nuclear plants is not, however, economical)

Are you seriously asserting we should subsidize fossil fuels and/or nuclear, while trying to stop renewable growth, out of concern for the environment?

The need to  avoid loosing votes and campaign contributions from fossil-fuel dependent locations have kept Biden from addressing this issue, but the issue is not really about keeping fossil fuel jobs, because without massive government support, those will disappear over the coming decade.  Oil companies know this, as do investors, see this Financial Times article  https://www.ft.com/content/95efca74-4299-11ea-a43a-c4b328d9061c

The real issue here is the economic devastation this will cause the affected communities who depend on fossil fuel jobs, and this needs to be addressed.

Quote from: MonsterX on November 07, 2020, 12:47:40 AM

Quote from: eigen on November 06, 2020, 04:41:33 PM


For one, because the environmental impacts of mining/refining (and shrinking reserves) of the components needed for solar energy are a big deal, not to mention the issues with scaling battery technologies. Nuclear replaces our need for "on demand" generation.

This is not an argument for nuclear power, it is an argument for dismantling the consumer society. Fine, if you are taking that position; it would indeed be better for the environment to do this than to shift to renewables.  I am taking the politically more realizable position that we should transition to cheaper and cleaner energy, which should regard reduced environmental impact as a high priority, but not the only one.

Like everything else, renewable energy infrastructure is made of stuff, which, surprise, surprise, very much like fossil fuel or uranium or anything else in industrial society, needs to be obtained somehow, and this has an environmental impact.  The difference is, build it and it is putting out power for decades, instead of having to always pump out or dig up more  every time you use a watt of energy.  For fossil fuels and nuclear not only do you need to build the infrastructure, but you need to fuel it every day, with trucks and ships moving this fuel around the world, at massive environmental cost (as well as financial cost).    Environmental damage from renewables is a concern and we should mitigate it, but it is tiny compared to fossil fuels and nuclear, so this is not a reason to slow the transition.   (I do think already built nuclear should continue to operate as long as it is still economically viable - building new nuclear plants is not, however, economical)

Are you seriously asserting we should subsidize fossil fuels and/or nuclear, while trying to stop renewable growth, out of concern for the environment?

The need to  avoid loosing votes and campaign contributions from fossil-fuel dependent locations have kept Biden from addressing this issue, but the issue is not really about keeping fossil fuel jobs, because without massive government support, those will disappear over the coming decade.  Oil companies know this, as do investors, see this Financial Times article  https://www.ft.com/content/95efca74-4299-11ea-a43a-c4b328d9061c

The real issue here is the economic devastation this will cause the affected communities who depend on fossil fuel jobs, and this needs to be addressed.

Very little of our current renewable infrastructure lasts for decades. Batteries certainly don't, neither do solar panels.

Nuclear will generate more energy, with less waste, for a lower cost if we invest in the infrastructure. And this has been true for quite some time.

Whether you're talking about cost or environmental impact, we should be investing in nuclear.

That doesn't mean we can't also continue to iterate on solar technology, but we are still a way from the advances needed to. And it truly useful.

Quote from: MonsterX on November 06, 2020, 01:47:19 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 05, 2020, 12:21:35 PM
Go nuclear, young man, go nuclear.

There is always that guy, who suggests nuclear. Why? I mean, why?

Solar is the cheapest energy https://webstore.iea.org/world-energy-outlook-2020, except in some places wind is cheaper. There technology is here.  It doesn't need subsidies, it just needs and open, level market.  Which, because this is a collective decision in most respects, it doesn't have.

I know nuclear is familiar, and so a go-to for many people. It is even featured on the Simpsons.  In my view, that is not a recommendation.  So stop recommending it. 

Yes, with solar and wind, presumably in some locations supplemented by  biomass, geothermal, and hydro, you need storage and/or other ways to cope with intermittency.  That's just part of the system, but it can and will be built out as it is needed.   This is not hard, there are smart people who are doing this stuff and it all just needs to scale up.

The only reason we aren't shifting away form fossils fuels in a massive way is that there are interest groups that have politicians by the short hairs, and energy transition is in most respects, as I  said before, a collective decision.   There are some specific uses where this transition is more challenging, but in general  for most of the world the solutions are all there, and no real decline  of living standards is required.  Except for people with a vested interest in fossil fuels, who will really lose a lot of money, so it will be protracted and contested transition process, which probably will not happen soon enough to save us from massive ecological disasters. 
     

Another aspect that is often overlooked is that about half of a barrel of oil goes into other products such as plastics, so the oil industry is not only about fuel.  Even if you replace energy from oil, it will continue to be needed as long as we keep our plastic lives.  There are some alternative plastics, but they are not practical at the scale we "need".

I would love to see a transition to renewables (I would really support a combination of nuclear, solar, wind, biofuels, and others, diversification is always good) and a shift away from so much plastic, but my point is that the oil industry is more than just fuel.

Quote from: eigen on November 07, 2020, 01:31:07 AM

Quote from: MonsterX on November 07, 2020, 12:47:40 AM

Quote from: eigen on November 06, 2020, 04:41:33 PM


For one, because the environmental impacts of mining/refining (and shrinking reserves) of the components needed for solar energy are a big deal, not to mention the issues with scaling battery technologies. Nuclear replaces our need for "on demand" generation.

This is not an argument for nuclear power, it is an argument for dismantling the consumer society. Fine, if you are taking that position; it would indeed be better for the environment to do this than to shift to renewables.  I am taking the politically more realizable position that we should transition to cheaper and cleaner energy, which should regard reduced environmental impact as a high priority, but not the only one.

Like everything else, renewable energy infrastructure is made of stuff, which, surprise, surprise, very much like fossil fuel or uranium or anything else in industrial society, needs to be obtained somehow, and this has an environmental impact.  The difference is, build it and it is putting out power for decades, instead of having to always pump out or dig up more  every time you use a watt of energy.  For fossil fuels and nuclear not only do you need to build the infrastructure, but you need to fuel it every day, with trucks and ships moving this fuel around the world, at massive environmental cost (as well as financial cost).    Environmental damage from renewables is a concern and we should mitigate it, but it is tiny compared to fossil fuels and nuclear, so this is not a reason to slow the transition.   (I do think already built nuclear should continue to operate as long as it is still economically viable - building new nuclear plants is not, however, economical)

Are you seriously asserting we should subsidize fossil fuels and/or nuclear, while trying to stop renewable growth, out of concern for the environment?

The need to  avoid loosing votes and campaign contributions from fossil-fuel dependent locations have kept Biden from addressing this issue, but the issue is not really about keeping fossil fuel jobs, because without massive government support, those will disappear over the coming decade.  Oil companies know this, as do investors, see this Financial Times article  https://www.ft.com/content/95efca74-4299-11ea-a43a-c4b328d9061c

The real issue here is the economic devastation this will cause the affected communities who depend on fossil fuel jobs, and this needs to be addressed.

Very little of our current renewable infrastructure lasts for decades. Batteries certainly don't, neither do solar panels.

Nuclear will generate more energy, with less waste, for a lower cost if we invest in the infrastructure. And this has been true for quite some time.

Whether you're talking about cost or environmental impact, we should be investing in nuclear.

That doesn't mean we can't also continue to iterate on solar technology, but we are still a way from the advances needed to. And it truly useful.

Two concerns about nuclear:  1.  nuclear waste and 2. Price Anderson

Quote from: eigen on November 07, 2020, 01:31:07 AM

Very little of our current renewable infrastructure lasts for decades. Batteries certainly don't, neither do solar panels.

Nuclear will generate more energy, with less waste, for a lower cost if we invest in the infrastructure. And this has been true for quite some time.

Whether you're talking about cost or environmental impact, we should be investing in nuclear.

That doesn't mean we can't also continue to iterate on solar technology, but we are still a way from the advances needed to. And it truly useful.

Solar panels typically have 25 year warranties. 

https://news.energysage.com/shopping-solar-panels-pay-attention-to-solar-panels-warranty/#:~:text=A%20solar%20panel%20has%20two,10%2D12%20years%20without%20failing.

Batteries are not the only form of energy storage, though utilities are adopting them pretty rapidly . 
Others types might be more economic for many use cases https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/74426.pdf  There is too much variety of type and many are too new to be definite about  how long they last,  but Tesla offers a 10 year warranty on its powerwall as a household product. Decades, meaning 2 decades :), is  not an unreasonable guess, but these things haven't been used in this way long enough to know for sure.  Battery capacity is certainly useful for intermitency, but it is not the only way to deal with the problem, and so concerns about needing it, and not being able to get it, are overstated. 

Warranty period is generally a massive underestimate of useful lifetime.  In 25 years a solar panel will be at 80% capacity, so you can guess it will keep going at ever declining capacity after that for many years until it gets replaced.   

Money put in nuclear at this point is money flushed down the toilet, as it WILL get out-competed.  New nuclear plants take like 10 years to build and they are already too expensive to compete with solar and wind. Utility scale solar can be built in a year or two, and by the time any nuclear plants which are started now are finished, no one will need or want them. Discussing nuclear is a distraction from what needs to be done. 

Sorry to be so OT, but it is annoying to hear the same misinformation repeat every time alternative energy is discussed. 

The NREL link does not discuss alternatives to batteries, other than one off-hand mention of water pumping for hydroelectric storage, which isn't very efficient. It discusses different types of batteries, as well as how to mix renewable generation with power plant generation to share loads. Of particular concern is that the current leading technology requires lithium, of which world-wide sources are dwindling.

Your link to warranties is interesting, but doesn't seem supported by the science in terms of longevity of components in most common solar panels. The other rub is that the current technologies have really low conversion efficiency, and the newer panels have lower longevity (things like DSCs).

If you'd like to provide links to sites that aren't consumers trying to sell things to support either of your points, I'll listen, but I'm a bit irked at someone I don't know telling me I'm spreading "misinformation" about a field I I keep up with pretty well because they disagree with me.

I have an off-grid cabin. I could easily increase the number of solar panels I have, but batteries will awlays be the weakest link. They require maintenance, and I didn't get cheap batteries. If I spent 10x the amount of money, I could get more batteries, but I couldn't get better batteries. Many of the storage technologies being developed now are still at the research stage, and their performance at scale over time is unknown.

When I was a kid in the 70's I wanted to have a solar house. Batteries have been around for a century, so this is not a new issue; there is no silver bullet, and there isn't one on the horizon. Improvements will likely be incremental, and over time renewables will be able to play a bigger role, but it's not just a matter of some legislation flipping the switch.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 07, 2020, 03:00:27 PM
I have an off-grid cabin. I could easily increase the number of solar panels I have, but batteries will awlays be the weakest link. They require maintenance, and I didn't get cheap batteries. If I spent 10x the amount of money, I could get more batteries, but I couldn't get better batteries. Many of the storage technologies being developed now are still at the research stage, and their performance at scale over time is unknown.

When I was a kid in the 70's I wanted to have a solar house. Batteries have been around for a century, so this is not a new issue; there is no silver bullet, and there isn't one on the horizon. Improvements will likely be incremental, and over time renewables will be able to play a bigger role, but it's not just a matter of some legislation flipping the switch.

And this gets magnified when you're trying to do it on an immense scale. An off-grid house or cabin isn't likely to have a serious crisis with a short interuption of power, beyond inconvenience. But when you're doing it grid-wide, you have places like hospitals that really can't afford variable power. Or, for instance, times like the recent fires in the PNW that led to almost zero solar production over most of several states for an extended period of time.

I think it will be quite some time before we are able to divorce ourselves of a need for on-demand power generation. That need is currently supplied from coal plants, with a smaller subsection using other fossil fuels. Hydroelectric is a good source in some parts of the world (country) as well.

An ideal longer-term plan would be to replace our on-demand power generation that is currently fossil fuels with nuclear generation, and pair that with a significant amount of renewable sources (hydroelectric, solar, wind).

There are worries about waste, but a lot of that is because the US does not refine and re-use its waste. If you look at "modern" nuclear power with multiple tiers of plants, each refining and re-using the waste, the final product is both small in amount and not nearly as dangerous as what we end up with in the US. France is a great example of this, imo.

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet in my skimming of the thread is the limitations related just to material availability, except eigen's mention of lithium.  We don't have enough rare earth metals, even if we mined every last molecule we currently know exist, to meet demands.  We can't rewire everything electrical for transport and storage using the good materials, now that we are so, so far past the energy usage last century.  One of the interesting (and sad for the details of humans doing it by hand with no protective gear) part of recycling electronics is how much of the rare earth metals and the precious (gold, silver, platinum) metals are in a normal electronic device.

We did start battery research decades ago.  I know because that paid for some of my grad schooling and, every few years, I get paid again to come back up to speed on current technology to contribute to the research.  I sigh every time about how the progress is much, much slower than even moderate predictions based on the physical chemistry/chemical physics involved down at the near individual atom level (grains, orientation, stacking faults, impurities at the ppm and smaller concentration both desired and undesired).  I have spent tons of quality time with lithium for battery uses over the years and there's a lot of interesting chemistry for polymer electrolytes and solid electrolytes.

Solar panel technology is limited in many ways by physical/chemical constraints.  Sure, lots of sand exists and could be made into solar panels.  The materially efficient ways to construct the solar panels are hugely energy intensive (ever tried growing a perfectly structured crystal with exactly the right impurities in exactly the right places?).  Better materials to build the most energy efficient solar panels are limited by their existence and therefore expensive.  We still can't get really efficient solar panels in terms of solar energy in transformed to usable energy out.  The losses in just the solar energy capture, unless they have done something incredible since the last time I was up to speed, are huge.  We as a community are sometimes better off in an overall sense of efficient material usage just concentrating the sun with large parabolic mirrors to boil water in a central tower to turn a turbine in a central place and then transmit the electricity to the community instead of having lots of small solar panels on individual houses.

The nuclear power plant questions are a fascinating example of the high consequence decisions we as a technologically advanced society are attempting to make with good simulations using the limited experimental data we can get coupled with the observations of opportunity we can make (my current day job is also related to risk from simulations when we cannot do the experiments we would like to do).  The science and engineering for the new power plants are heavily reliant on models that we can't necessarily validate (i.e., compare to exactly what happens in physical reality) and must build in huge margins of error.  I am far from an expert in this area, but I spend a lot of time with colleagues at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) discussing the ways we can use the limited data we can get to put uncertainty margins on the simulations and thus make decisions to go forward.

The nuclear materials are also much more limited (both physically on Earth and politically because of alternate uses for those materials) than one might desire if the goal were to do something like large numbers of smaller plants close to where the electrical need exists.  Our geographic region is officially going forward with the smaller nuclear plant option as the coal-fire plant is nearing end of life and crossing every digit imaginable that we can make the timelines work.  We have absurdly high electrical needs for our region and there's no way, even with 300 days of sun per year and a nearly constant blowing wind, to replace even a large fraction of our electrical needs with renewables.

Quote from: MonsterX on November 07, 2020, 12:40:32 PM
Money put in nuclear at this point is money flushed down the toilet, as it WILL get out-competed.  New nuclear plants take like 10 years to build and they are already too expensive to compete with solar and wind. Utility scale solar can be built in a year or two, and by the time any nuclear plants which are started now are finished, no one will need or want them. Discussing nuclear is a distraction from what needs to be done. 

Anyone who immediately discards nuclear as a distraction from what needs to be done is very unlikely to actually be working in the energy sector or even anything adjacent because of the material limitations and the fact that much more energy is needed in many places than can be met with what we could ever build, especially the constant demand with no gaps in service as eigen mentioned.

Like eigen, I tend to keep a close eye on this science and technology because I often get to work in it and am frequently employed at Department of Energy labs so the seminars are frequently on energy topics including overviews.  When I decided to stop teaching and get serious about being paid good money to do research, the Department of Energy welcomed me back with open arms.

Yeah, I alluded to the material limitations (I'm thinking mostly of rare earth metals for organometallic catalysts), but I appreciate you bringing it back up. I think it's a really crucial limitation of most of our PV devices relative to, say, photosynthetic approaches at light harvesting.

I really wish people had put more research into biological membranes 30 years ago (or even now), since the main barrier to photosynthetic mimics is the membrane environment providing the exact spacing needed for efficient transfer, and one of our biggest gaps in biochemical research (IMO) is synthetic membranes.

There have been advances in PV technology here and there, but I think most of the work (probably rightfully) is going into water splitting / fuel cells. A lot of the limits I see are in longevity and durability, where there are some really promising new materials that just do not last very long, or for many of the liquid DSCs aren't durable enough for long, constant use.

So the trade-off is often between low conversion (efficiency) and durability and longevity.

We, as a polymer research community, were doing a lot of research into membranes about fifteen years ago and it was much easier to get separation membranes to work.  As a related application, getting the polymers to work as masks (membrane/coatings) on semiconductors to manufacture the denser packed computer chips have run into physical limitations related to the polymer size compared to the desired feature size.

Research into self-assembled polymer films was the next thing, but again the physics gets fun and not always in the good way.  For example, a polymer that is rubbery in bulk can be glassy in a thin layer, which means the membrane properties don't necessarily work as expected once you get a membrane thin enough to work on the diffusion scales.

Quote from: eigen on November 07, 2020, 06:08:02 PM
Yeah, I alluded to the material limitations (I'm thinking mostly of rare earth metals for organometallic catalysts), but I appreciate you bringing it back up. I think it's a really crucial limitation of most of our PV devices relative to, say, photosynthetic approaches at light harvesting.

I really wish people had put more research into biological membranes 30 years ago (or even now), since the main barrier to photosynthetic mimics is the membrane environment providing the exact spacing needed for efficient transfer, and one of our biggest gaps in biochemical research (IMO) is synthetic membranes.

There have been advances in PV technology here and there, but I think most of the work (probably rightfully) is going into water splitting / fuel cells. A lot of the limits I see are in longevity and durability, where there are some really promising new materials that just do not last very long, or for many of the liquid DSCs aren't durable enough for long, constant use.

So the trade-off is often between low conversion (efficiency) and durability and longevity.

Slightly tangential, but this relates to the possibility of hydrogen energy storage. The idea has been around since at least the 70's, and while there have been technological advances, (including things like membrane developments), there still isn't an off-the-shelf industrial or residential hydrogen storage system including an electrolyzer, storage, and fuel cell. This is just one illustration of how hard the storage problems really are, because of the limits of chemistry and physics.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 07, 2020, 07:04:32 PM

Quote from: eigen on November 07, 2020, 06:08:02 PM
Yeah, I alluded to the material limitations (I'm thinking mostly of rare earth metals for organometallic catalysts), but I appreciate you bringing it back up. I think it's a really crucial limitation of most of our PV devices relative to, say, photosynthetic approaches at light harvesting.

I really wish people had put more research into biological membranes 30 years ago (or even now), since the main barrier to photosynthetic mimics is the membrane environment providing the exact spacing needed for efficient transfer, and one of our biggest gaps in biochemical research (IMO) is synthetic membranes.

There have been advances in PV technology here and there, but I think most of the work (probably rightfully) is going into water splitting / fuel cells. A lot of the limits I see are in longevity and durability, where there are some really promising new materials that just do not last very long, or for many of the liquid DSCs aren't durable enough for long, constant use.

So the trade-off is often between low conversion (efficiency) and durability and longevity.

Slightly tangential, but this relates to the possibility of hydrogen energy storage. The idea has been around since at least the 70's, and while there have been technological advances, (including things like membrane developments), there still isn't an off-the-shelf industrial or residential hydrogen storage system including an electrolyzer, storage, and fuel cell. This is just one illustration of how hard the storage problems really are, because of the limits of chemistry and physics.

Very true. I should say there have been great improvements in the development of water splitting catalysts, but building them large scale is going to be difficult.

Harry Gray's work for new combinations of materials in a high-throughput scale (solar army) is interesting, and while I don't like the guy, Nocera is certainly the farthest along in making individual home fuel-cells, mostly based off of a combination of light harvesting and microbes. There are a ton of other new players in the field as well.

But yeah, I'd say we've got another 10 years before the tech is good enough in the lab, and another 10-15 after that until it is refined enough to be widespread, both of those estimates conservative.

Quote from: eigen on November 07, 2020, 07:47:40 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 07, 2020, 07:04:32 PM

Quote from: eigen on November 07, 2020, 06:08:02 PM
Yeah, I alluded to the material limitations (I'm thinking mostly of rare earth metals for organometallic catalysts), but I appreciate you bringing it back up. I think it's a really crucial limitation of most of our PV devices relative to, say, photosynthetic approaches at light harvesting.

I really wish people had put more research into biological membranes 30 years ago (or even now), since the main barrier to photosynthetic mimics is the membrane environment providing the exact spacing needed for efficient transfer, and one of our biggest gaps in biochemical research (IMO) is synthetic membranes.

There have been advances in PV technology here and there, but I think most of the work (probably rightfully) is going into water splitting / fuel cells. A lot of the limits I see are in longevity and durability, where there are some really promising new materials that just do not last very long, or for many of the liquid DSCs aren't durable enough for long, constant use.

So the trade-off is often between low conversion (efficiency) and durability and longevity.

Slightly tangential, but this relates to the possibility of hydrogen energy storage. The idea has been around since at least the 70's, and while there have been technological advances, (including things like membrane developments), there still isn't an off-the-shelf industrial or residential hydrogen storage system including an electrolyzer, storage, and fuel cell. This is just one illustration of how hard the storage problems really are, because of the limits of chemistry and physics.

Very true. I should say there have been great improvements in the development of water splitting catalysts, but building them large scale is going to be difficult.

Harry Gray's work for new combinations of materials in a high-throughput scale (solar army) is interesting, and while I don't like the guy, Nocera is certainly the farthest along in making individual home fuel-cells, mostly based off of a combination of light harvesting and microbes. There are a ton of other new players in the field as well.

But yeah, I'd say we've got another 10 years before the tech is good enough in the lab, and another 10-15 after that until it is refined enough to be widespread, both of those estimates conservative.

Thank you all for this thread, and I am especially glad polly, marshwiggle and eigen are continuing to post. When I made my original comment I was well aware of the work that has been occurring. I have no allusions that this would be a fast process. I also think that a President has little to do with it except stay out of the way. An administration can make a difference via incentives, but mostly shouldn't thRow up roadblocks. I'm hoping significant gains to an everyday lifestyle level can be made by the time my grandkids (two junior high and one struggling to emerge even as I write) are adults.

Quote from: jimbogumbo on November 08, 2020, 05:42:13 AM
Thank you all for this thread, and I am especially glad polly, marshwiggle and eigen are continuing to post. When I made my original comment I was well aware of the work that has been occurring. I have no allusions that this would be a fast process. I also think that a President has little to do with it except stay out of the way. An administration can make a difference via incentives, but mostly shouldn't thRow up roadblocks. I'm hoping significant gains to an everyday lifestyle level can be made by the time my grandkids (two junior high and one struggling to emerge even as I write) are adults.

One of my goals is to counter the conspiracy theories that everything is "suppressed by big oil", (not much different from "covid is a governement conspiracy!"), and that the magic technology has been kept hidden. The people who think fossil fuels can be eliminated tomorrow (Green New Deal?) are as deluded as the climate change deniers.

Upthread, someone mentioned solar being repressed by the utility companies.  A different technology challenge is the smart grids to have multiple generation points with multiway flow that depends on the current need.

My bet is the private power companies are pushing to ensure they don't end up with most of the expenses and all the blame for glitches while someone else gets the benefits and any money around.  One strong argument for utilities to be public is to spread the costs to those who get the benefits.

Many people are willing to pay higher taxes for better lives for themselves and their neighbors.  Few people want to pay higher taxes when the benefits go to unknown others far away when their local communities have crummy schools, bad roads, minimal libraries, and unreliable utilities (water, power, sewer, garbage pickup, phone service, and increasingly internet access).  People with means and money will move to the better communities and then pay not only higher taxes, but often homeowner association (HOA) fees with enforced rules to ensure that the place remains nice.

Someone also did a toss away "don't have to live like a peasant" comment somewhere recently.  One doesn't have to go all the way down to old-tyme peasant for life to be unpleasant enough to desire to opt out.  In late 2018, France had riots by the farmers and other rural folks for increased taxes that would much more heavily affect them than the urban folks (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/03/france-fuel-protests-heres-whats-happening-and-why-it-matters.html).

Transportation is a large user of the energy-dense, extremely convenient fossil fuels.  In modern America, being able to order consumer goods and have them delivered to the house is normal.  The sticker is called the last mile (https://onfleet.com/blog/last-mile-problem/).  It's pretty efficient to mass transport things by train, big trucks, and even cargo planes to a warehouse.  Getting a single package to a doorstep millions of times per day is a huge inefficiency, even if drone delivery takes off, when many of those doorsteps are several hours from the warehouse (Polly waves cheerily from a minimum of two hours from an officially urban area when the roads are open with much of the last 30 miles unsuitable for a semitrailer and a minimum of six hours from an urban area that people not in the region might name as an urban area).

Mass transit in cities has a similar last mile problem moving people (https://seesense.cc/blogs/hub/why-public-transport-isn-t-working-the-last-mile-problem-1).  One way the problems of the urban poor are different from the rural poor is technically having access to jobs that pay acceptably well, but having significant transportation problems between the current neighborhood and the new job. (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/stranded-how-americas-failing-public-transportation-increases-inequality/393419/)  The routes that are the less well used are often the ones that should be most subsidized and expanded if the goal is helping poor people work their way out of poverty.

But, again, people who can move to a better connected hub, do and then they want something different that directly supports their neighborhood.  One of the running jokes in some quarters is the people who live in Connecticut and yet it's an easier commute every morning on the train (only one stop, can work or read for most of an hour) than living geographically closer (multiple legs of the journey, much less pleasant seating if one can get it, divided attention because of the multiple legs).

Don't even get me started on meat and other food choices where doing one's part is small for those who already have constricted choices through lack of money, but is very noticeable for those of us who have benefited from the expanded choices so that "in season" is no longer meaningful and a good cut of meat is part of most meals.  Going from modern first-world choices to a level of life that was common in the 1950s American suburbia is a hard sell for anyone who isn't a true believer and really didn't get accustomed to the modern amenities anyway.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 08, 2020, 06:12:17 AM
The people who think fossil fuels can be eliminated tomorrow (Green New Deal?)

Nope.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 08, 2020, 06:12:17 AM

Quote from: jimbogumbo on November 08, 2020, 05:42:13 AM
Thank you all for this thread, and I am especially glad polly, marshwiggle and eigen are continuing to post. When I made my original comment I was well aware of the work that has been occurring. I have no allusions that this would be a fast process. I also think that a President has little to do with it except stay out of the way. An administration can make a difference via incentives, but mostly shouldn't thRow up roadblocks. I'm hoping significant gains to an everyday lifestyle level can be made by the time my grandkids (two junior high and one struggling to emerge even as I write) are adults.

One of my goals is to counter the conspiracy theories that everything is "suppressed by big oil", (not much different from "covid is a governement conspiracy!"), and that the magic technology has been kept hidden. The people who think fossil fuels can be eliminated tomorrow (Green New Deal?) are as deluded as the climate change deniers.

Well, it dosnt help when government's around the world subsidize the oil industry, making other technologies less competitive.  So, even if the oil industry is not holding them down, the oil industry is being artificially propped up, kind of the same thing.

It also doesn't help that big oil companies have been actively suppressing and hiding climate change data for decades, including their own internal findings. 

Perhaps if big oil was not subsidized and people were told the truth, alternative energies would be far more advanced by now. 

QuoteWell, it dosnt help when government's around the world subsidize the oil industry, making other technologies less competitive.  So, even if the oil industry is not holding them down, the oil industry is being artificially propped up, kind of the same thing.

Nay, only renewable processes and products are subsidized worldwide. Petroleum products in transportation are taxed.

Since I initiated this with a comment about a First World rail system, I guess I should comment.

My energy consumption is driven mostly by constraints imposed by existing systems and personal financial benefit. I discount the future, like most humans. For example:

Our house, which is twice as large as what we really need, is one hundred years old. Our main heat source is natural gas-fired steam. I calculated that fixing or replacing the house's thirty-three windows would significantly reduce our heating bill. But I went with vinyl-frame windows, even though, according to the information I've read, they generate far more carbon emissions when manufactured than wood-frame windows. They also are made from non-renewable toxic materials, don't last as long, and get tossed into landfills instead of being recycled. So why didn't I go with restoring the original windows or buying new wood-frame windows? It would have cost me twice as much as the vinyl replacement windows did. And someone else will own the house in twenty years, when these windows need to be replaced because the seals are failing.

Probably there is zero net benefit to the environment from this. My energy consumption would be much less in a house half as large with concrete walls and solar hot water and electricity systems on the roof. But even if that were the situation, we still own two cars, have a two-hour round trip commute for work, and eat food that is produced unsustainably. And we now have two cats as pets; instead of feeding them canned ground up industrially-raised animals for the next decade or two, it would be far better for the environment if we killed and ate them.

I don't see much chance of big changes from individuals lowering their thermostats in the winter or eating organic vegetables in the summer. Public policy needs to be designed to make old habits more costly and incentivize the development of new habits.

Precisely!

Look, friends, those who are truly fearful of global warming should advocate a carbon tax. That would fix the problem at source, the cheapest way of fixing any problem.

In the absence of advocacy, I infer no one is really worried about global warming and that the term is a mere mantra, as in religion.

You could have pinned your hopes on a carbon tax thirty years ago. Today, it's clear that the expected utility would be nowhere near enough.

That said, there's no reason it can't be part of the package, and indeed, it typically is. California, for one, is part of a carbon market. I have no idea where you've gotten the idea that nobody is advocating for it. What's true is that the conversation has moved past mere carbon taxes, because it's clear they're not sufficient.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on November 08, 2020, 06:12:27 PM
You could have pinned your hopes on a carbon tax thirty years ago. Today, it's clear that the expected utility would be nowhere near enough.

That said, there's no reason it can't be part of the package, and indeed, it typically is. California, for one, is part of a carbon market. I have no idea where you've gotten the idea that nobody is advocating for it. What's true is that the conversation has moved past mere carbon taxes, because it's clear they're not sufficient.

As they would solve the problem, if it exists, and we don't have them in sufficient quantity, I infer this is all bs. :-)

Quote from: dismalist on November 08, 2020, 04:50:57 PM

QuoteWell, it dosnt help when government's around the world subsidize the oil industry, making other technologies less competitive.  So, even if the oil industry is not holding them down, the oil industry is being artificially propped up, kind of the same thing.

Nay, only renewable processes and products are subsidized worldwide. Petroleum products in transportation are taxed.

According to the international monetary fund, the global oil industry was subsidized to a tune of 5.2 trillion in 2017...

Perhaps they are taxed, but the companies are subsidized.

Quote from: Kron3007 on November 08, 2020, 06:52:43 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 08, 2020, 04:50:57 PM

QuoteWell, it dosnt help when government's around the world subsidize the oil industry, making other technologies less competitive.  So, even if the oil industry is not holding them down, the oil industry is being artificially propped up, kind of the same thing.

Nay, only renewable processes and products are subsidized worldwide. Petroleum products in transportation are taxed.

According to the international monetary fund, the global oil industry was subsidized to a tune of 5.2 trillion in 2017...

Perhaps they are taxed, but the companies are subsidized.

Source please. I'd like to know what the IMF's definition of a subsidy is. And I don't trust the IMF! :-)

The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on November 08, 2020, 07:18:17 PM
The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

Quote from: Kron3007 on November 08, 2020, 04:43:44 PM
Perhaps if big oil was not subsidized and people were told the truth, alternative energies would be far more advanced by now.

Research alone doesn't fix the problem if the problem is actually chemistry, physics, or some other limitation that is outside the control of humans. 

Above a certain level, additional research effort does not correlate with additional research progress.  More resources invested works great if the problem is epistemic (i.e., we just don't know yet).  More resources invested is much less effective if the problem is physical reality doesn't work like that, no matter how much wishing, hoping, and pleading one does because it'd be more convenient for the humans.

Nothing I've seen anywhere reputable (i.e., actual science outlets run by and for scientists and engineers) indicate the problem is Big Oil or some other group keeping the scientists down.  The current problems appear to be related to known physics, chemistry, material limitations, and geographic limitations.

In contrast, nuclear energy advancements do seem to be much more limited by human-imposed restrictions on the research than by Mother Nature.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 08, 2020, 07:46:28 PM

Quote from: Kron3007 on November 08, 2020, 04:43:44 PM
Perhaps if big oil was not subsidized and people were told the truth, alternative energies would be far more advanced by now.

Research alone doesn't fix the problem if the problem is actually chemistry, physics, or some other limitation that is outside the control of humans. 

Above a certain level, additional research effort does not correlate with additional research progress.  More resources invested works great if the problem is epistemic (i.e., we just don't know yet).  More resources invested is much less effective if the problem is physical reality doesn't work like that, no matter how much wishing, hoping, and pleading one does because it'd be more convenient for the humans.

Nothing I've seen anywhere reputable (i.e., actual science outlets run by and for scientists and engineers) indicate the problem is Big Oil or some other group keeping the scientists down.  The current problems appear to be related to known physics, chemistry, material limitations, and geographic limitations.

In contrast, nuclear energy advancements do seem to be much more limited by human-imposed restrictions on the research than by Mother Nature.

No, it's not about the laws of nature, it's about incentives! :-)

Quote from: dismalist on November 08, 2020, 07:27:19 PM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on November 08, 2020, 07:18:17 PM
The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

OK, it's due course time. So I found the IMF document. From the abstract:

This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.

That's a not bad definition of subsidy if their estimate of "efficient prices" is correct, though I don't understand "revenue considerations". We should call this an "implicit" subsidy. So, they get a constructed number which may be well or not well estimated. Note that the estimated cost of the global warming is in the subsidy.

Now, put on a carbon tax, which one could do if one convinced a sufficiently large portion of the population, and that implicit subsidy declines.

I am not against this, but my point stands: Because there is no general carbon tax, this shows no one cares about global warming very much to pay any actual money. Just religion.

Anyway, next time somebody else do the woik.

Quote from: spork on November 08, 2020, 05:15:03 PM
I don't see much chance of big changes from individuals lowering their thermostats in the winter or eating organic vegetables in the summer. Public policy needs to be designed to make old habits more costly and incentivize the development of new habits.

That faith in public policy runs immediately into the Sam Vimes Theory of Boots.

Quote
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned

When you raise cost enough to change behavior for the privileged folks to feel it, the poor people have been run over.

Years ago, I saw a pretty good talk about how long various changes to the transportation sector would take to trickle through for better energy efficiency.  Those numbers will be outdated, but a quick check now brings up:

• About a quarter of the personal vehicles on the road are 16+ years old (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/25percent-of-cars-in-us-are-at-least-sixteen-years-old----record-high.html)
• The average age of personal vehicle is 12 years old (https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33457915/average-age-vehicles-on-road-12-years/)

If someone can get a car to last 300k miles or 16+ years, then they are not going to buy a new one, especially if money is tight and so the best option is continuing to operate with something that is paid off.  Money isn't tight in my house, but I'm going to keep driving my 2004 until paying one fixed, known amount every month for a reliable car is more convenient than the random amount as the 2004 needs fixing almost every month.

What that means is any fuel efficiencies that have come about in the past 15 years take quite a while to trickle down to everyone.  I have paid $4/gallon and kept driving because it was more convenient than my other options.  With fuel in town currently at $1/gallon, there's no way I'm trading my 15-minute commute with under five minutes of walking at any time I choose for a schedule-constrained, no-additional-cost bus ride that takes the better part of an hour with more than 15 minutes out in the weather and that's if I time it exactly right. 

Yep, the bus stops 50 feet from my front door and the buses are the nicest city buses I've ever seen with (pre-covid) plenty of seating on this route, but that's not good enough to make up for having to keep an eye on the clock to get the timing right to have only a 2h commute every day instead of about half an hour.

You'd have to get up to the point where the gasoline cost (or some taxes on personal car use/ownership) approach what my time is worth per hour.  That's going to hurt many people in this region and cause huge resentment before folks like me give up their personal vehicles.

Even more years ago, I took a course in energy taught out of the materials department.  The professor kept using $50/barrel of oil as a pain point for US society.  It's pretty clear that he was optimistic and even $100/barrel wasn't enough for a true pain point.

QuoteEven more years ago, I took a course in energy taught out of the materials department.  The professor kept using $50/barrel of oil as a pain point for US society.  It's pretty clear that he was optimistic and even $100/barrel wasn't enough for a true pain point.

We don't want pain! We want to have less driving on account a CO₂. One can give some money fro carbon tax proceeds to the poor who will spend it less on energy and more on other things than if there were no tax.

None of this and such discussion in the public arena. Why not? No one cares is my tentative answer.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 08, 2020, 07:46:28 PM

Quote from: Kron3007 on November 08, 2020, 04:43:44 PM
Perhaps if big oil was not subsidized and people were told the truth, alternative energies would be far more advanced by now.

Research alone doesn't fix the problem if the problem is actually chemistry, physics, or some other limitation that is outside the control of humans. 

This relates very much to the issue of energy storage, which has come up earlier. Energy density is one of the biggest challenges, especially for things like transportation. Gasoline is very useful becuase the wmount of weight and volume required is small in relation to how far a vehicle can travel on a tank. (The time taken to refuel is also an issue, but that's for another time.)

Simple rule about energy density:
Nuclear power has extremely high energy density.
Chemical storage (such as fossil fuels) has reasonable energy density.
Physical storage (such as dams, flywheels, etc.) has low energy density.

The differences between these are orders of magnitude, so the options are finite.

I have mentioned my off-grid cabin. I use essentially car batteries for storage. Overnight the amount of energy used is typically about 10% of my battery capacity. If I were to replace that amount of energy by physical storage, it would require something like a refrigerator raised several hundred metres in the air to store that 10% of my battery capacity.
(The reason hydrolectric dams are practical is that they are at a huge scale.)

One of the big chemistry issues with batteries is that they require a reversible chemical process. (And one that preferably can occur over the desired range of temperatures that the system is going to encounter, so energy doesn't have to be used to control the battery temperature.)

Any energy storage system is limited by the laws of physics, and so any improvements will be incremental as a result. There is no silver bullet around the corner which will revolutionize everything.

Quote from: dismalist on November 08, 2020, 08:08:30 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 08, 2020, 07:27:19 PM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on November 08, 2020, 07:18:17 PM
The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

OK, it's due course time. So I found the IMF document. From the abstract:

This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.

That's a not bad definition of subsidy if their estimate of "efficient prices" is correct, though I don't understand "revenue considerations". We should call this an "implicit" subsidy. So, they get a constructed number which may be well or not well estimated. Note that the estimated cost of the global warming is in the subsidy.

Now, put on a carbon tax, which one could do if one convinced a sufficiently large portion of the population, and that implicit subsidy declines.

I am not against this, but my point stands: Because there is no general carbon tax, this shows no one cares about global warming very much to pay any actual money. Just religion.

Anyway, next time somebody else do the woik.

How does the fact that a carbon tax does not exist show that no cares? I'm in favor of all kinds of stuff that won't get enacted because I don't belong to a group with enough political capital to accomplish the goal.

Quote from: dismalist on November 08, 2020, 08:30:40 PM

QuoteEven more years ago, I took a course in energy taught out of the materials department.  The professor kept using $50/barrel of oil as a pain point for US society.  It's pretty clear that he was optimistic and even $100/barrel wasn't enough for a true pain point.

We don't want pain! We want to have less driving on account a CO₂. One can give some money fro carbon tax proceeds to the poor who will spend it less on energy and more on other things than if there were no tax.

None of this and such discussion in the public arena. Why not? No one cares is my tentative answer.

A carbon tax is one political way to influence human activities that will generally fail because (a) the people who can't opt out are the ones who don't really matter enough to make a difference and (b) adding an additional operator's fee generally doesn't do much to change the behavior for the solidly established players who can afford that fee.  The focus on a one-off (at best) that can be gamed instead of addressing any of the reasons why people consume a lot of energy and without good large-scale alternatives in place so people can continue to live modern lives is like insisting that the adjunct problem can be solved by merely paying those folks better and combining some of the part-time jobs into full-time jobs.

The tendency of the general public and even officials running for office to focusing on one political tool without looking at all the consequences and keeping in mind the limitations imposed by physical reality (science and technology) is the biggest reason I don't engage with these topics in public.  This is exactly an example of trying to argue from a 3 on the science knowledge scale of 1 to 10 where a solid 8 is the needed level.

Quote from: dismalist on November 08, 2020, 07:27:19 PM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on November 08, 2020, 07:18:17 PM
The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

I assumed you knew how to use google.  It is not obscure information.

 

Quote from: dismalist on November 08, 2020, 08:08:30 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 08, 2020, 07:27:19 PM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on November 08, 2020, 07:18:17 PM
The IMF is evil. But they're not wrong on this score.

Perhaps it would be easier to begin by asking which kinds of sources you would trust.

Put more generally, substantive comments should be backed up with evidence. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard. It's all a question of who is going to do the work!

What the IMF says is an argument from power. Using it without details is  pure rhetoric.  The argument may be right, or it may be wrong. We don't know.

I will divulge my sources in due course. :-)

OK, it's due course time. So I found the IMF document. From the abstract:

This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.

That's a not bad definition of subsidy if their estimate of "efficient prices" is correct, though I don't understand "revenue considerations". We should call this an "implicit" subsidy. So, they get a constructed number which may be well or not well estimated. Note that the estimated cost of the global warming is in the subsidy.

Now, put on a carbon tax, which one could do if one convinced a sufficiently large portion of the population, and that implicit subsidy declines.

I am not against this, but my point stands: Because there is no general carbon tax, this shows no one cares about global warming very much to pay any actual money. Just religion.

Anyway, next time somebody else do the woik.

Even if their definition of subsidy is off and the total value is debatable, I think it is pretty clear that governments around the world subsidize the industry.  They get tax breaks, and all sorts of incentives.  I have heard that one justification is that prospecting for oil is high risk, so they get incentives to lower the risk.  This just seems crazy and directly competes with emerging technologies. 

I am in Canada, and while we do have a carbon tax our government always jumps in to prop up the oil sector.  They just recently announced $320 000 000 to support the off shore oil industry in Newfoundland, not to mention bailouts for the Alberta oil sector.  These are companies that bring in billions, yet any time there is a (very predictable) drop in oil prices they need bailouts.  So, while I agree with a carbon tax, I think it needs to be done along with other actions.

I know Poly is arguing that the problem is chemistry and not investment, but I think the truth lies somewhere in between.  If you subsidize the oil industry you are making wind and solar relatively more expensive.  One of the main issues with alternative energy (at least in the beginning) is economy of scale.  If the market is not large enough, the cost of implementation is too high.  If there is a large enough market, the price drops and it becomes more feasible, regardless of technology.  By artificially making oil cheaper it is hard to achieve critical mass.

My research is in solar energy, and I'm generally an advocate for renewable energy. I won't belabor points that have already been made. Also, for those who are unfamiliar with our existing energy portfolio, I recommend the EIA web site, starting here (https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/what-is-energy/sources-of-energy.php).

The main difference between renewable energy and conventional sources is controllability. That's what energy storage provides. Currently, if you have an on-grid solar power system, you are using the utility's generation plants as "storage." That is, even if you provide all of your own energy needs, the instantaneous power you need is assured by the utility's coal, nuclear, hydro, and (especially) natural gas generation assets.

That has a real cost to it, as do all of the power lines, substations, etc. Where I live, the cost of the energy is about $0.02/kWh, but the retail cost of electricity is about $0.08/kWh. Why? Primarily, debt service on the capital investments the utility has made in the infrastructure that ensures availability. Secondarily, labor costs of maintaining the infrastructure. The reality is that the way power distribution companies incur cost does not scale (much) with load. We allocate cost on an energy basis as a matter of fairness: the people who use the most energy should pay the most for the infrastructure that delivers that energy.

Utilities push back against customer-owned generation because of the difference between energy cost and the cost of providing the service. I live in a net-metering state. If I had an appropriately-sized solar array, I could drive my electric bill nearly to zero. But without a battery bank, I would be exchanging power with the utility virtually all of the time. So I would be gaining a benefit from the infrastructure without paying for it. In Sun Belt states, enough people are doing this that utilities are in real trouble.

There is also a social justice aspect to it. Installing an appropriately-sized solar array might cost me $10,000. I could probably afford that, and might make it back in net-metering savings. As a result, the cost of providing the infrastructure would be borne disproportionately by those who cannot afford to install a solar array, those who rent, etc. (In a similar way, rich people who buy a Tesla don't pay gas taxes that support transportation infrastructure, while those who cannot afford to replace their 15-year-old gas guzzler do.)

Please don't misunderstand me. I think solar and wind are important components of our future energy portfolio. However, they have the potential to disrupt society in unpredictable ways.

Quote from: Kron3007 on November 09, 2020, 07:09:44 AM
I know Poly is arguing that the problem is chemistry and not investment, but I think the truth lies somewhere in between.  If you subsidize the oil industry you are making wind and solar relatively more expensive.  One of the main issues with alternative energy (at least in the beginning) is economy of scale.  If the market is not large enough, the cost of implementation is too high.  If there is a large enough market, the price drops and it becomes more feasible, regardless of technology.  By artificially making oil cheaper it is hard to achieve critical mass.

pgher makes a good case on distribution of electricity.

I will expand on Marshwiggle's post: focusing on how to generate electricity neglects the facts that we can't address all (or even the majority) of societal energy needs by electricity generation.  The storage mechanisms really, really matter, even for stationary outposts, and nothing is anywhere near as good as fossil fuels for many applications.  Converting something to electricity involves losses.  Transmitting the electricity involves losses.  Transforming the electricity back to something useful involves losses.  Reducing the cost of solar panels or wind turbines doesn't matter if all the losses for the uses we care about outweigh other considerations.

In addition, the price of a technology usually drops if automation works and the materials costs don't go up rapidly as demand goes up.  For example, when the whole town has to rebuild after a natural disaster, while demand goes up and some economies of scale kick in (the lumber yard can order in huge bulk), prices for materials and skilled labor skyrocket.  Demand alone is not enough to drive prices down if the main sticking point was needing to change from each unit being a special order one-off to an assembly line.  If we can't convert to an assembly line, but need to remain high-touch, special order, then the economies of scale are much less and throughput hardly increases at all.  No matter how convenient it would be 9 women cannot make a baby in one month.  Indeed, our economist friends would point out that when demand skyrockets and supply can't increase nearly at the same rate, then cost per unit will increase.

Yes, money put into subsidizing oil is money that wasn't spent on something else.  However, subsidizing convenient energy to the point that the lower middle-class folks can still participate in the modern society is often a social good that pays back much more than continuing to double down on the notion that something should work when the physical reality that we currently know replies back, nope.  Disenfranchising large numbers of people who have nothing left to lose because a decision maker just "knows better" is generally a way to foment uprisings by desperate people.

One really fun fact related to physical critical mass: if you hit critical mass in the wrong way, then you get a very exciting bomb instead of a controlled, sustained reaction that will produce power.  Focusing solely on level required for critical mass instead of how to get the desired sustained reaction doesn't work out in nuclear plants or, often, in social areas.  How you get to the critical mass and then pause at the right point matters much more than the general public thinks.

Good luck with the batteries! :-)

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 08:58:20 AM

Quote from: Kron3007 on November 09, 2020, 07:09:44 AM
I know Poly is arguing that the problem is chemistry and not investment, but I think the truth lies somewhere in between.  If you subsidize the oil industry you are making wind and solar relatively more expensive.  One of the main issues with alternative energy (at least in the beginning) is economy of scale.  If the market is not large enough, the cost of implementation is too high.  If there is a large enough market, the price drops and it becomes more feasible, regardless of technology.  By artificially making oil cheaper it is hard to achieve critical mass.

pgher makes a good case on distribution of electricity.

I will expand on Marshwiggle's post: focusing on how to generate electricity neglects the facts that we can't address all (or even the majority) of societal energy needs by electricity generation.  The storage mechanisms really, really matter, even for stationary outposts, and nothing is anywhere near as good as fossil fuels for many applications.  Converting something to electricity involves losses.  Transmitting the electricity involves losses.  Transforming the electricity back to something useful involves losses.  Reducing the cost of solar panels or wind turbines doesn't matter if all the losses for the uses we care about outweigh other considerations.

In addition, the price of a technology usually drops if automation works and the materials costs don't go up rapidly as demand goes up.  For example, when the whole town has to rebuild after a natural disaster, while demand goes up and some economies of scale kick in (the lumber yard can order in huge bulk), prices for materials and skilled labor skyrocket.  Demand alone is not enough to drive prices down if the main sticking point was needing to change from each unit being a special order one-off to an assembly line.  If we can't convert to an assembly line, but need to remain high-touch, special order, then the economies of scale are much less and throughput hardly increases at all.  No matter how convenient it would be 9 women cannot make a baby in one month.  Indeed, our economist friends would point out that when demand skyrockets and supply can't increase nearly at the same rate, then cost per unit will increase.

Yes, money put into subsidizing oil is money that wasn't spent on something else.  However, subsidizing convenient energy to the point that the lower middle-class folks can still participate in the modern society is often a social good that pays back much more than continuing to double down on the notion that something should work when the physical reality that we currently know replies back, nope.  Disenfranchising large numbers of people who have nothing left to lose because a decision maker just "knows better" is generally a way to foment uprisings by desperate people.

One really fun fact related to physical critical mass: if you hit critical mass in the wrong way, then you get a very exciting bomb instead of a controlled, sustained reaction that will produce power.  Focusing solely on level required for critical mass instead of how to get the desired sustained reaction doesn't work out in nuclear plants or, often, in social areas.  How you get to the critical mass and then pause at the right point matters much more than the general public thinks.

Sure, but your examples are of rapid increases in demand that outstrip supply.  My point is that oil subsidies have artificially given us access to cheap power for decades and stifled the natural growth of the alternative energy sector.  If oil based energy was a little more expensive all of these years, other approaches would have been more competitive and would have naturally developed the infrastructure so that supply may have developed as demand grew.  Wind and solar are now about on par with oil from what I have read, but this may have come much earlier if we were not subsidizing oil.

The storage issue is very real, and a good reason we cannot simply drop oil (along with many other reasons).  However, that dosn't mean that we couldn't have a higher proportion of our energy come from renewable sources and use oil during off times without major issues.  Solar and wind can also be integrated into the grid and do not necessarily mean micro-generation as pgher describes.

The cheap energy we have grown accustom to may increase our standard of living, but also encourages waste.  I think we all recognize that it is often cheaper in the long run to spend more on your shoes so they dont wear out as fast (for example).  Likewise, higher quality windows pay for themselves over time.  Perhaps instead of subsidizing oil, we should have been subsidizing windows...         

     

Quote from: Kron3007 on November 09, 2020, 12:06:23 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 08:58:20 AM

Yes, money put into subsidizing oil is money that wasn't spent on something else.  However, subsidizing convenient energy to the point that the lower middle-class folks can still participate in the modern society is often a social good that pays back much more than continuing to double down on the notion that something should work when the physical reality that we currently know replies back, nope.  Disenfranchising large numbers of people who have nothing left to lose because a decision maker just "knows better" is generally a way to foment uprisings by desperate people.

One really fun fact related to physical critical mass: if you hit critical mass in the wrong way, then you get a very exciting bomb instead of a controlled, sustained reaction that will produce power.  Focusing solely on level required for critical mass instead of how to get the desired sustained reaction doesn't work out in nuclear plants or, often, in social areas.  How you get to the critical mass and then pause at the right point matters much more than the general public thinks.

Sure, but your examples are of rapid increases in demand that outstrip supply.  My point is that oil subsidies have artificially given us access to cheap power for decades and stifled the natural growth of the alternative energy sector.  If oil based energy was a little more expensive all of these years, other approaches would have been more competitive and would have naturally developed the infrastructure so that supply may have developed as demand grew.  Wind and solar are now about on par with oil from what I have read, but this may have come much earlier if we were not subsidizing oil.

Even with fossil fuels, we've been using electricity for over a century, so there has been lots of incentive for battery technology to improve, even without advances in solar and wind. The fact that the progress has been as slow as it has suggests that subsidized oil may not have had as large an effect as some might believe.

Quote
The storage issue is very real, and a good reason we cannot simply drop oil (along with many other reasons).  However, that dosn't mean that we couldn't have a higher proportion of our energy come from renewable sources and use oil during off times without major issues.  Solar and wind can also be integrated into the grid and do not necessarily mean micro-generation as pgher describes.

But to have oil for off-peak times still requires pipelines, exploration, etc., all of which require funding, and so those nasty questions about subsidies reappear.

Quote
The cheap energy we have grown accustom to may increase our standard of living, but also encourages waste.  I think we all recognize that it is often cheaper in the long run to spend more on your shoes so they dont wear out as fast (for example).  Likewise, higher quality windows pay for themselves over time.  Perhaps instead of subsidizing oil, we should have been subsidizing windows...         
 

Better  windows won't make your car go farther. As many people have indicated, as soon as changes are proposed which will impact consumer lifestyles, people become a lot less "green". It's a much easier sell when it will only affect "those big oil companies".
Electric cars, for instance, will be more expensive, have a shorter range, and take longer to "refill". (Which may not matter for commuting, but on vacation, who wants to have to stop for an hour at a roadside fueling station every day?) And maintenance costs will probably be higher, and vehicle lifespan may be shorter, both due to increased complexity.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 09, 2020, 12:19:42 PM

Quote from: Kron3007 on November 09, 2020, 12:06:23 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 08:58:20 AM

Yes, money put into subsidizing oil is money that wasn't spent on something else.  However, subsidizing convenient energy to the point that the lower middle-class folks can still participate in the modern society is often a social good that pays back much more than continuing to double down on the notion that something should work when the physical reality that we currently know replies back, nope.  Disenfranchising large numbers of people who have nothing left to lose because a decision maker just "knows better" is generally a way to foment uprisings by desperate people.

One really fun fact related to physical critical mass: if you hit critical mass in the wrong way, then you get a very exciting bomb instead of a controlled, sustained reaction that will produce power.  Focusing solely on level required for critical mass instead of how to get the desired sustained reaction doesn't work out in nuclear plants or, often, in social areas.  How you get to the critical mass and then pause at the right point matters much more than the general public thinks.

Sure, but your examples are of rapid increases in demand that outstrip supply.  My point is that oil subsidies have artificially given us access to cheap power for decades and stifled the natural growth of the alternative energy sector.  If oil based energy was a little more expensive all of these years, other approaches would have been more competitive and would have naturally developed the infrastructure so that supply may have developed as demand grew.  Wind and solar are now about on par with oil from what I have read, but this may have come much earlier if we were not subsidizing oil.

Even with fossil fuels, we've been using electricity for over a century, so there has been lots of incentive for battery technology to improve, even without advances in solar and wind. The fact that the progress has been as slow as it has suggests that subsidized oil may not have had as large an effect as some might believe.

Quote
The storage issue is very real, and a good reason we cannot simply drop oil (along with many other reasons).  However, that dosn't mean that we couldn't have a higher proportion of our energy come from renewable sources and use oil during off times without major issues.  Solar and wind can also be integrated into the grid and do not necessarily mean micro-generation as pgher describes.

But to have oil for off-peak times still requires pipelines, exploration, etc., all of which require funding, and so those nasty questions about subsidies reappear.

Quote
The cheap energy we have grown accustom to may increase our standard of living, but also encourages waste.  I think we all recognize that it is often cheaper in the long run to spend more on your shoes so they dont wear out as fast (for example).  Likewise, higher quality windows pay for themselves over time.  Perhaps instead of subsidizing oil, we should have been subsidizing windows...         
 

Better  windows won't make your car go farther. As many peole have indicated, as soon as changes are proposed which will impact consumer lifestyles, people become a lot less "green". It's a much easier sell when it will only affect "those big oil companies".
Electric cars, for instance, will be more expensive, have a shorter range, and take longer to "refill". (Which may not matter for commuting, but on vacation, who wants to have to stop for an hour at a roadside fueling station every day?) And maintenance costs will probably be higher, and vehicle lifespan may be shorter, both due to increased complexity.

Perhaps battery technology would not have gone faster, I dont know.  However, if large scale electrical generation from wind/solar was more common there would have been a bigger need and perhaps it would have.

Yes, off peak use of oil requires pipelines etc., but that dosnt mean we need to subsidize it.  We would have to pay more to use it, but I still don't see a need to subsidize it.  We should be paying the real price of oil.

You are right that windows wont make cars run longer, but it was one of few examples.  Perhaps smaller cars, or efficiency standards would be a better example.  In reality, it should be all of the above and many more.  The point is that instead of promoting oil and cheap energy, the governments should have been promoting efficiency.  Of course, this is not good for the bottom line of oil nations... 

Quote from: Kron3007 on November 09, 2020, 12:29:57 PM
Perhaps battery technology would not have gone faster, I dont know.  However, if large scale electrical generation from wind/solar was more common there would have been a bigger need and perhaps it would have.

Faster development or not, because of limitations on materials, we cannot make enough solar panels and the related batteries to meet more than a modest fraction of our current electricity demand.  We cannot make additional rare earth metals--they are elements and what we have is what we have*.  That is an upper limit on how many of these systems in any configuration.

To bring in another facet, China controls most of the sources of rare earth metals that would be needed: https://www.businessinsider.com/rare-earth-metals-elements-what-they-are-2019-6 is very readable and gives an overview.

For those who skipped the link, not only are rare earth metals important to the energy generation aspects, but also for many of the electronics that use the electricity.  It is bad to have multiple industries competing for exactly the same supplies.  It's worse when those industries are interlinked so that the optimum solution is spread across all of them to ensure that devices have the electricity to operate and that the electricity will have something to power.


* If anyone wants to quibble about how nuclear reactions work, then I remind you about the huge energy investment to get the rare earth metals we want.  The scaling does not work.

Whether subsidizing oil is good or not, many states get a noticeable fraction of their state budgets from fossil fuels.  A good enough overview is https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-09-24/its-time-for-states-that-grew-rich-from-oil-gas-and-coal-to-figure-out-whats-next

These poor, rural states (for the most part) will not be able to replace the place-bound jobs for the people who will be affected.  Having more jobs elsewhere that need different skills doesn't help the communities built around the mines, rigs, and fields.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 05:01:05 PM
Whether subsidizing oil is good or not, many states get a noticeable fraction of their state budgets from fossil fuels.  A good enough overview is https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-09-24/its-time-for-states-that-grew-rich-from-oil-gas-and-coal-to-figure-out-whats-next

These poor, rural states (for the most part) will not be able to replace the place-bound jobs for the people who will be affected.  Having more jobs elsewhere that need different skills doesn't help the communities built around the mines, rigs, and fields.

Subsidizing anything is bad! There are cheaper ways of helping those who lose.

Quote from: dismalist on November 09, 2020, 05:07:34 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 05:01:05 PM
Whether subsidizing oil is good or not, many states get a noticeable fraction of their state budgets from fossil fuels.  A good enough overview is https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-09-24/its-time-for-states-that-grew-rich-from-oil-gas-and-coal-to-figure-out-whats-next

These poor, rural states (for the most part) will not be able to replace the place-bound jobs for the people who will be affected.  Having more jobs elsewhere that need different skills doesn't help the communities built around the mines, rigs, and fields.

Subsidizing anything is bad! There are cheaper ways of helping those who lose.

What solution are you proposing for the states that currently get more than 25% of their budget from selling fossil fuels?

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 05:16:50 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 09, 2020, 05:07:34 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 05:01:05 PM
Whether subsidizing oil is good or not, many states get a noticeable fraction of their state budgets from fossil fuels.  A good enough overview is https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-09-24/its-time-for-states-that-grew-rich-from-oil-gas-and-coal-to-figure-out-whats-next

These poor, rural states (for the most part) will not be able to replace the place-bound jobs for the people who will be affected.  Having more jobs elsewhere that need different skills doesn't help the communities built around the mines, rigs, and fields.

Subsidizing anything is bad! There are cheaper ways of helping those who lose.

What solution are you proposing for the states that currently get more than 25% of their budget from selling fossil fuels?

States worry me not. People have my thoughts.

Carbon tax with some or much  of the proceeds given to those individuals and families that lose from the policy, over and above Unemployment Insurance.

States will become efficient with respect to energy usage. :-)

Quote from: dismalist on November 09, 2020, 05:24:02 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 05:16:50 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 09, 2020, 05:07:34 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 05:01:05 PM
Whether subsidizing oil is good or not, many states get a noticeable fraction of their state budgets from fossil fuels.  A good enough overview is https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-09-24/its-time-for-states-that-grew-rich-from-oil-gas-and-coal-to-figure-out-whats-next

These poor, rural states (for the most part) will not be able to replace the place-bound jobs for the people who will be affected.  Having more jobs elsewhere that need different skills doesn't help the communities built around the mines, rigs, and fields.

Subsidizing anything is bad! There are cheaper ways of helping those who lose.

What solution are you proposing for the states that currently get more than 25% of their budget from selling fossil fuels?

States worry me not. People have my thoughts.

Carbon tax with some or much  of the proceeds given to those individuals and families that lose from the policy, over and above Unemployment Insurance.

States will become efficient with respect to energy usage. :-)

My point was how will those states replace the funds that are currently going to schools, libraries, and social programs.

A carbon tax on the much less fuel being sold that goes to some entity that is not even the state, let alone schools, libraries, and social programs will actually make matters worse for poor people in the states that currently have more than a quarter of their budget coming from fossil fuel sales.

Texas will be fine because their state budget isn't reliant on oil sales.  Alaska, last year before Covid, was cutting higher ed, partially due to lower than expected oil sales.  I don't even know how a state copes with a loss of 30-40% of their revenue in a year or two, but some states will do something in the next two years.

People at non-flagship universities in some states will find out pretty quick as states deal with Covid.  Maybe the lessons learned will carry over to the states that need to transition away from fossil fuel revenues, but don't have any good backup possibilities.

Let me repeat: I don't care about States. They can take care of themselves. People are worth caring about. Taxing carbon, nationally, generates revenue that can be redistributed to those who lose from the policy.

If this is too much to ask, one can ask our elected representatives if they see global warming as a serious problem. Given policy, I infer they do not.

So, nothing to worry about from lack of State oil revenues! :-)

An article about how to plan (or not) for the future:

https://slate.com/technology/2017/09/how-social-discounting-helps-explain-why-we-dont-prepare-for-disasters-like-hurricane-harvey.html (https://slate.com/technology/2017/09/how-social-discounting-helps-explain-why-we-dont-prepare-for-disasters-like-hurricane-harvey.html).

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 05:16:50 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 09, 2020, 05:07:34 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 09, 2020, 05:01:05 PM
Whether subsidizing oil is good or not, many states get a noticeable fraction of their state budgets from fossil fuels.  A good enough overview is https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-09-24/its-time-for-states-that-grew-rich-from-oil-gas-and-coal-to-figure-out-whats-next

These poor, rural states (for the most part) will not be able to replace the place-bound jobs for the people who will be affected.  Having more jobs elsewhere that need different skills doesn't help the communities built around the mines, rigs, and fields.

Subsidizing anything is bad! There are cheaper ways of helping those who lose.

What solution are you proposing for the states that currently get more than 25% of their budget from selling fossil fuels?

So do we allow the world to go down to save Alaska?  Do we keep dead industries alive to save jobs? 

States will adapt.  People will adapt.  Times change, and industries become obsolete as new ones develop.  Oil dependent states should have seen the writing on the wall and started diversifying their economies long ago.  Instead, many of them have been living above their true means and running irresponsible budgets.

Interesting. 

To summarize what I'm reading:

* The collective groups of people don't matter because only the individual people matter.

* The individual people should figure it out all alone because it's not worth the collective effort.

* The science doesn't matter; only the politics matter.

* We have to save the planet, but only for the people smart/lucky/priviledged enough to be able to adjust.



Wow, I thought I was pragmatic to the point of being cold.  Didja vote democrat to save the world, but just the good people who matter, not those unlucky fools who chose to be born poor in flyover country?

That looks like a straw summary to me, if ever I saw one.

Quote from: spork on November 10, 2020, 03:32:09 AM
An article about how to plan (or not) for the future:

https://slate.com/technology/2017/09/how-social-discounting-helps-explain-why-we-dont-prepare-for-disasters-like-hurricane-harvey.html (https://slate.com/technology/2017/09/how-social-discounting-helps-explain-why-we-dont-prepare-for-disasters-like-hurricane-harvey.html).

That article is really, really good, Spork! Lays out the temporal dimension of the problem.

It even gets into insurance, as it should, though there is surely an error there.

No worries, my piffle.

What's the error? I thought the NRDC's economist was assuming loss aversion behavior.

Quote from: spork on November 11, 2020, 04:40:07 PM
What's the error?

Expected [financial, I guess] value of insurance is < 0 is misleading. Expected utility, i.e. one's personal valuation, of insurance must be > 0. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it, or: I'd rather have my house burn down than pay for insurance! :-)

Pity about the insurance part, because that's the way we should be thinking about such problems. Never mind, the article is really good for the inter-temporal stuff.

Quote from: dismalist on November 11, 2020, 04:44:53 PM

Quote from: spork on November 11, 2020, 04:40:07 PM
What's the error?

Expected [financial, I guess] value of insurance is < 0 is misleading. Expected utility, i.e. one's personal valuation, of insurance must be > 0. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it, or: I'd rather have my house burn down than pay for insurance! :-)

Pity about the insurance part, because that's the way we should be thinking about such problems. Never mind, the article is really good for the inter-temporal stuff.

It is misleading, but also factual. It also isn't useful. I mean, the expected value has to be less than 0 for the consumer or insurance companies couldn't exist.

Quote from: jimbogumbo on November 11, 2020, 06:16:55 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 11, 2020, 04:44:53 PM

Quote from: spork on November 11, 2020, 04:40:07 PM
What's the error?

Expected [financial, I guess] value of insurance is < 0 is misleading. Expected utility, i.e. one's personal valuation, of insurance must be > 0. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it, or: I'd rather have my house burn down than pay for insurance! :-)

Pity about the insurance part, because that's the way we should be thinking about such problems. Never mind, the article is really good for the inter-temporal stuff.

It is misleading, but also factual. It also isn't useful. I mean, the expected value has to be less than 0 for the consumer or insurance companies couldn't exist.

Cancel your fire insurance!

Quote from: dismalist on November 11, 2020, 04:44:53 PM

Quote from: spork on November 11, 2020, 04:40:07 PM
What's the error?

Expected [financial, I guess] value of insurance is < 0 is misleading. Expected utility, i.e. one's personal valuation, of insurance must be > 0. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it, or: I'd rather have my house burn down than pay for insurance! :-)

Pity about the insurance part, because that's the way we should be thinking about such problems. Never mind, the article is really good for the inter-temporal stuff.

You can always have the government force others to pay for your insurance, at least in part, as happens with beachfront vacation homes in hurricane zones.

Quote from: dismalist on November 11, 2020, 07:08:44 PM

Quote from: jimbogumbo on November 11, 2020, 06:16:55 PM

Quote from: dismalist on November 11, 2020, 04:44:53 PM

Quote from: spork on November 11, 2020, 04:40:07 PM
What's the error?

Expected [financial, I guess] value of insurance is < 0 is misleading. Expected utility, i.e. one's personal valuation, of insurance must be > 0. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it, or: I'd rather have my house burn down than pay for insurance! :-)

Pity about the insurance part, because that's the way we should be thinking about such problems. Never mind, the article is really good for the inter-temporal stuff.

It is misleading, but also factual. It also isn't useful. I mean, the expected value has to be less than 0 for the consumer or insurance companies couldn't exist.

Cancel your fire insurance!

?

Not I. I was agreeing with you, and mocking the inclusion of the statement by the author.