Meeting CO2 goals requires removing carbon actively from the atmosphere, and drastically reducing our use of CO2-producing energy sources. Burning bio-coal does neither of these things; burying it accomplishes the former, and is at least not working against the latter.
No. Either one could be sufficient alone, just as you can lose weight either by exercising more or eating less alone, though generally the combination is better.
For removing carbon from the atmosphere we could dump olivine sand into coastal waters where it would sequester carbon as it was weathered. If we want to reduce our use of CO2 producing energy sources without massive declines in quality of life or vast environmental damage there’s only one choice, nuclear.
Unsubstantiated claim detected.
Solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal are all cheaper than nuclear (and even coal) for new generation capacity. That includes capital, operation and maintenance, and transmission costs. See tables starting on page 8 for the numbers (https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....).
Solar, wind and hydro all entail a lot of damage to the environment, far more than is necessary from nuclear, just because they require much greater areas as they’re less energy dense.
I don’t deny that nuclear is more expensive on those grounds. I just think that relative safety is more important. So by the most expansive counts Chernobyl killed 4,000[2] people while air pollution kills about 7 million a year, every year[3]. Germany’s closing of its nuclear power plants has lead to an additional 1,000 deaths a year[4]
Nuclear is safer than any alternative source of energy, wind, solar and hydro included. If you include those costs nuclear looks amazing in comparison[6].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
[2]https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher...
[3]https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollu...
[4]https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/german-nucl...
[5]http://papers.nber.org/tmp/26395-w26598.pdf
[6]https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
Put the panels on lakes, reservoirs, and at sea, and of course, roofs.
Particularly for reservoirs, panels can provide shade for fish, and theres the potential for pumped-hydro storage with tiered reservoirs - or at least substitute hydro output when the sun shines.
As for toxic metals in solar panels, they're locked away in the panel. Rather like vitrification for nuclear waste encapsulation. Just make some solar-panel-only landfills, which will become future toxic-heavy-metal mines - this stuff all came out of the ground, it can temporarily go back.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48936941
Wind power kills fewer birds per unit energy than coal, and it kills orders of magnitude fewer birds than domestic cats, which we're apparently fine with.
Plus, the big growth in wind power will probably be offshore: there's more wind and fewer NIMBYs there. There is also a lower density of birds.
> Fatalities at wind turbines may threaten population viability of a migratory bat
> Large numbers of migratory bats are killed every year at wind energy facilities. However, population-level impacts are unknown as we lack basic demographic information about these species. We investigated whether fatalities at wind turbines could impact population viability of migratory bats, focusing on the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), the species most frequently killed by turbines in North America. Using expert elicitation and population projection models, we show that mortality from wind turbines may drastically reduce population size and increase the risk of extinction. For example, the hoary bat population could decline by as much as 90% in the next 50 years if the initial population size is near 2.5 million bats and annual population growth rate is similar to rates estimated for other bat species (λ = 1.01). Our results suggest that wind energy development may pose a substantial threat to migratory bats in North America. If viable populations are to be sustained, conservation measures to reduce mortality from turbine collisions likely need to be initiated soon. Our findings inform policy decisions regarding preventing or mitigating impacts of energy infrastructure development on wildlife.
I think we should absolutely be developing new nuclear plants. Hopefully we'll get designs which are cheaper, faster to build, and even safer that current ones, and then we should build loads of them. But in the next ten years, we just need to build all the offshore wind we possibly can.
The olivine plan seems to me one of the more unrealistic ones.
But to be sure, we will need to capture, in addition to switching to clean production, unless we switch a decade or more ago.
I agree nuclear can play a big role in clean production, particularly that huge reactor in the sky.
The main challenge in a decarbonized energy sector (including heat!) is not week to week or day to day variability but season to season. That's best solved with power 2 gas and storage whether the major source of energy is nuclear (leaving nuclear reactors on idle for half the year is expensive) or renewables.
That admittedly doesn't give you total system cost, but you need solid models for that anyways, as electrification of mobility and heating will completely change demand structure in the electricity secto.
The consumer price of electricity in Germany and France tells you absolutely nothing about any of that.
In the UK a low carbon tax rendered coal completely uneconomical and they smoothly phased out coal without any price hikes. The guaranteed price for rendering the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station economically viable is much higher than the price of new wind/solar, and higher than the economically optimal system cost of a 100% renewable system.
Selectively citing macro facts without considering the complicated details is no way to get to an understanding of the system constraints and possibilities, or the true cost structures. You can't avoid detailed modelling of the trade-offs involved.
Cute.
I live in Germany. Nothing you write will change the fact that I pay 30 Euro-cents per kWh. Nor will it change the fact that people in France pay much less and people in Poland pay even less than the French. Nothing that happens in the UK has any impact on that, and neither do you models of trade-off. Your models also don't change the amount of CO2 emitted per capita, which is twice higher in Germany compared to France.
Nuclear does massively reduce the French CO2 Footprint.
And French taxpayers will pay for storing the waste forever.
The EEG fee is anti efficient because of the exemptions. As money more is invested into renewables the market price goes down. Renewables are guaranteed a fixed payout per kWh so lower market prices mean that the EEG free has to be increased but since heavy industry doesn't have to pay it, the industrial electricity costs are trending down to 0 for them. When a large consumer is paying nothing then someone else has to cover that shortfall and residential consumers get no exemptions so they are the ones who have to pay for everything.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...