I find this remarkable and uplifting, because if I ask myself whether I could live using only 1/3 of my current electricity consumption, my answer is that I would have to make sacrifices, but relatively painless ones.
And this is the baseline - renewable capacity is only going to grow.
We are making progress towards clean energy but it is much slower then propaganda numbers.
PS. Congrats to India...
Biomass can be as 'clean' as you want it. The term is applicable to anything from a heap of sticks used to cook a pot of cassave to a combined biogas/gasifier plant which emits nothing but CO₂ and H₂O. Don't get scared by CO₂, it is 'clean' as long as it is part of a cycle.
The problem here does not lie with the use of biomass but with those who decide to implement it in such a way. Biomass works when there is a reliable fuel source in the form of forestry or agricultural waste, water treatment plant waste, sewage, etc. If you have to import biomass from the other side of the planet just to satisfy some 'green' requirement it is far better to use another power source - this being France I'd say nuclear power should be one of the first options.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_em...
Solar is listed at 4x more and wind seems to be on par with nuclear. Both solar and wind are far better than the hydrocarbon alternatives.
I used to be very pro nuclear but I think nuclear has a lot of hidden costs - very long ramp up time, long and expensive cleanups.
See some numbers in https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/05/sustainability-off...
> Both solar and wind are far better than the hydrocarbon alternatives.
Agreed, of course. I'm only mentioning nuclear because people tend to think that merely replacing fossil with pv/wind is good enough. Not only is it not enough, it's also more expensive and barely getting us to the right track. Nuclear isn't perfect of course, but all things considered it's still better.
Solar EROEI: 9-35
Wind EROEI: 20-50
Nuclear EROEI: 59-70
Which certainly looks great for nuclear (I do actually like nuclear in general), but is it actually important to be the best when it’s high enough to be economic?
In the other side, a nuclear plant does provide a reliable current, has a long lifespan, and turns out to be cheaper. Even the GIEC says so: we won't be able to efficiently reduce our greenhouse gases without nuclear.
Are you accounting for the cost of sufficiently overbuilding nuclear and/or storage? Mostly people seem to fixate on nuclear supplying the legendary "baseload" and leave all the other power as someone else's problem.
And if you add in whatever supplies the power until the nuclear gets built (either solar and wind, which makes nuclear redundant or fossil, which makes it a non solution) then nuclear doesn't really pencil out.
> And if you add in whatever supplies the power until the nuclear gets built
I don't understand. Are you suggesting building a throwaway source of power until nuclear reactors are built ? That's not how things work. When there really isn't enough countries buy from neighbors. But I agree with your underlying point that building a plant takes a long time; that's why we need to stop being freaked out already and start building them, so we can get rid of all those coal plants.
They also are one of the largest power exporters in the world, which doesn't really scale up unless we start exporting power to mars.
But regardless of those two separate fatal flaws, I don't think wind/solar advocates would be let off by nuclear advocates if they just handwaved away 10-25% of power and just ignored costs because the extra money would come from hidden subsidies to a nationalised energy sector so I don't see why the reverse isn't fair.
That makes them not too different from any other nation, and they've made the same decision as every other nation, which is that nuclear is too expensive and slow to be considered.
So I agree that other things should be done as well but unless someone has some secret method of building cheap nuclear that they're not sharing then France will spend 120 Billion to replace nuclear with renewables because the alternative would cost even more.
If you just want to please the masses and don't care about the environment, then sure, that choice was the good one.
And I’m saying this as someone who is a fan of nuclear tech and who thinks most of the public fears are disproportionate.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20317168
"a reliable electricity source, and that's _always_ fossil based"
Hydro, bio fuels?
And don't forget that big nuclear reactor will need maintenance, so you'll need overprovisioning just like wind and solar.
Ps "be able produce N GW of electricity with a 10% variation over a 60 year timespan"
I know you're attempting to compare like with like, but there isn't any inherent reason why this should be the case. Just because the grid has been based on a certain model in the past, doesn't mean we can't use a different model in the future.
Nuclear is expensive, slow to build, but worst of all, it doesn't have the political support. Personally I'm not against nuclear, you get someone to build it then I'll support it, but I don't want to spend time talking other people round to the idea when we could and should be doing something now.
If this is all from (currently) dirty electric grids, then aren't you arguing against cleaning up the grid, because the grid is dirty? That doesn't seem to make much sense.
In short: in the very good case of an insolation of 1900 kWh/m2/year and panels built in Spain (who has a relatively clean electricity), a reliable system of panels+battery will have emitted 85gCO2eq/kWh over its life. If we correct for the more realistic case of 1000kWh/m2/year (the average in Germany) and panels being built in China with its dirty electricity, the system will have emitted 217gCO2eq/kWh. On the US the insolation is higher, at 1700 kWh/m2/year, so it is going to be around 100gCO2eq/kWh. Here's a map of insulations here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Global_M...
In contrast, nuclear is at 12 gCO2eq/kWh (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_em...). The disaster that solar is should be clear for everyone.
The same reference also put coal at 820 gCO2e/kWh.
Given the two options are:
1) nuclear power in 5-10 years when the reactor is finished, saving nothing for the intervening period and (820-12) = 808 gCO2e/kWh for the next 50 years
Or 2) solar power now, saving (820-48) = 772 gCO2e/kWh for the next 30 years, while totally not preventing you from also building nuclear reactors and simultaneously lowering the carbon footprint of any new power plants whose construction involves a lot of electricity…
…I think you’re making the good the enemy of the perfect.
One is a 98.5% reduction, the other is a “mere” 94.14% reduction, where in both cases we need to also roughly halve non-electric CO2 emissions.
The lowtechmag link is for an off grid solar and battery combo. Off grid nuclear isn't a thing as far as I'm aware.
Whereas the wikipedia link includes comparisons on all generating methods, which I would guess means they're an apples to apples comparison, so that means onshore wind in better than nuclear, offshore wind is as good as, and solar is only 5 times worse.
And to restate the point in my last comment, the lowtechmag figures at least are based on a dirty grid, as the grid cleans up and the solar figures improve. Lets assume you get your way and we build out nuclear. Solar's figures will improve and eventually surpass those of nuclear. In that situation would you support moving over to solar?
Heating, air conditioning, refrigerators, washing machines, tumble dryers, dishwashers, hobs or ovens are typically responsible for more electricity consumption.
Personally, since I don't have air conditioning, only use heating ~3 months a year (I live in a very mild climate) and almost don't use the tumble dryer, I would have a very hard time cutting my consumption by two thirds. Maybe not using the dishwasher, washing clothes less (or by hand) and cooking less, but probably it wouldn't be enough.
That’s just in the home.
All would involve sacrifices, but doable ones without having to live in Mad Max.
If you want to simply save energy, avoid the car. It's really apparent if you have an electric car because you have units that you can compare with other things, but for example, we burn probably 6 kWh per day in the car and this absolutely dwarfs our daily consumption in our apartment. If it's close enough to walk, then walk it.
Just dryer and car may get you close to your goal.
Arent these just displacing your electricity usage? I assume you aren't going to have less showers for example. And I can't see a trip to the coffee shop or cinema being 'greener' than the stay at home equivalent.
And, well, for tips, a washing line. There is no need to tumble-dry anything, a piece of rope, some pegs, and wind and relative humidity do a pretty good job themselves.
Do all of those and cutting your emissions by 2/3 is very easy with most of your quality of life intact. Big homes, cars and flights don't make people happy, so moving to such a lifestyle wont be a catastrophe. I am not sure why so many in the western world dreads it.
[1] https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/how-much-elec...
I'm very surprised by and suspicious of lighting being 600 kWh/year, so I question their sources or analysis. They note themselves LED lights are around 6 kWh/year.
Edit: Their source appears to be a 10 year old survey from before LEDs being generally available in shops, and before tungsten was banned from general sale. No wonder the numbers are off.
A super computer in your spare room? Tesla coil security??
> Due to low availability of solar energy in December, the required area is as much as 341.0 m2.
No one will put 340 sq meters of solars panels on small house's roof or on it's lawns. And no one is Suwalki would like to freeze in December.
There are other technologies like heat pumps etc. But solar is not of use in winter. Not for heating.
https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/pdf/2018/24...
You'd have to drink a lot of tea (or rather stop drinking) before kettle usage starts accounting for anywhere near 2/3rds of your electrical usage.
Air conditioning/electrical heating is possible. But if its 2/3rds of your energy usage, it doesn't sound that optional.
The biggest users of electricity are ones you can't easily cut out. Electric car, hot water, heating/cooling, cooking, washing machine, dryer, fridge. They're the major energy users in the home, and you can't easily reduce them by the 2/3rds required. Unless you took your shack to passivehaus standards, and that's only for heating cooling.
Electric hot water is another huge power drain, switch to solar hot water and 3/4 of the year your hot water could be free (depending on climate, of course). Otherwise keep showers short, set the water heater thermostat to 50°C instead of 70°C and you could save a lot.
Depends on your TV, my old one pulled 400W or so. Not huge compared with heating/cooling but still significant if you leave it on all the time.
Tumble dryers use tons of power. Hang your laundry up instead and you could save yourself 20-30kWh/week.
If you're driving an electric car you're loaded enough that the cost of charging it will not be an issue anyway (especially given that every dollar you spend in electricity is saving you several dollars' worth of petrol).
So basically all of these things can be reduced a lot for very little extra effort or inconvenience. I don't think 2/3rds would be out of the question without making major sacrifices.
"Tumble dryers use tons of power. Hang your laundry up instead and you could save yourself 20-30kWh/week"
How much washing do you do each week?! You're right though, in the best best case this could be reduced to zero, assuming no rain, or winter.
"solar hot water" this is kind of cheating. If solar hot water were the cheapest or generally accepted option v solar electric I'd accept, but that isnt the case as far as I aware. I wouldn't accept gas heating or hot water either.
I don't deny that you could construct a scenario where you can trivially save 2/3rds of your electricity usage, but we have an OP who has done the work to identify that they can save this without too much trouble, so they have some awareness of the issue, but then we have to assume they are starting from a high base and haven't done anything to lower their usage, which doesn't make much sense, and then also assume they live in an incredibly temperate climate where they don't need heating/cooling, but simultaneously assume they they like it really warm in winter and really cool in summer. That's too many leaps for me.
I havent done these sums, so I'm less dedicated than the op?, but I already have an lcd tv, led lights, hang my washing out when its sunny, put a jumper on in winter, and don't possess aircon. I don't have 2/3rd fat to trim, and that's energy usage. If anything I'd expect my long term electricity usage to increase, my heating, hot water and hob are gas, and my cars petrol. I expect those to become electric in the medium term.
The only 2 classes of devices that could save that much is incandescent -> led light and resistive heating -> heat pump.
And those efficiencies aren't enough to offset all the other devices where efficiency improvements are in the single digit percent.
So you're still having to combine that with something else, which seems to be moving away from the relatively painless the great(?) grandparent described it as.
An electric shower is about 20 kW, so at 30 minutes per day that’s an average of 417 W. I’m not sure about electric ovens, but I think it’s a similar range.
Heating/cooling and transport are the biggest users. The low-hanging fruit is mostly a mixture of “eaten” and “not tasty” if you’ll excuse extending the metaphor.