Renewables have already made a significant difference in CO2 emissions. It’s rather shocking how much wind + solar are dominating new generation simple due to cost savings.
Unfortunately, there is still a long way to go.
In terms of electricity generation solar+wind is about 10% of total generation which is a massive increase from 2010.
- The sun only shines so many hours a day and only certain latitudes are good candidates.
- Wind is quite noisy (sorry but it is, we've got a lot of wind here in Indiana that I've driven by going from Indy to Chicago. Absolutely not something I'd want near me. Much smaller scale vertical wind turbines are also quite loud and just plain annoying at higher speeds) and is ineffective at slow and high wind speeds, the wind also only blows at certain times.
- Hydroelectric generally requires dams, constructing dams often floods large areas of land which completely destroys ecosystems in that flooded land and often poses a considerable risk to downstream human settlements in the event of a catastrophic failure. They also rely heavily on obscene amounts of concrete which will build in a large amount of CO2 production into the construction.
- Hydroelectric relying on waves has varying level of impact on coastal ecosystems.
With sun and wind you can only implement it so far before you hit a wall, the wall being the need for huge amounts of grid storage to serve dark/not windy times.
Without drastic developments in battery technology, and PV efficiency, renewable aren't going to be a singular solution. They're going to remain a small percentage of the solution.
Renewables are also something that aren't really an option at a consumer level. You often have one power company that serves your home/apartment, if you do have a home and you live in an area where PV makes sense from a light availability then it is often more expensive than most people can afford and can take decades to be break even. Tesla announced something like $21.85 per square foot for their solar roof which comes to $43,700 for a 2,000 square foot home while in large parts of the country you can get a decent 2,000 square foot home for $100-200k and the median household income in the United States is only $63,688.
However adjusting your thermostat 1F warmer in the summer and 1F cooler in the winter, going to a local museum instead of taking that roadtrip or flight, eating hamburger once every other week instead of a few times a week etc are all far more practical changes people can implement in their lives than say installing PV and battery systems at their home or instead of buying an EV that costs thousands (if not tens of thousands) more than the ICE vehicle they'd otherwise purchase.
It's awesome, legitimately awesome, to pursue technology to help us solve the problem but thinking technology will be our savior is foolish at best. We have to radically change our lives if we want to even significantly slow those annual CO2 emissions. Food, clothing, recreation, convenience all needs to change.
It's not even that difficult. In the past year or so I've:
- Gone 90-95% whole food plant based with my eating
- Stopped going to the movies every other week and now only go for big films like the most recent Star Wars
- Stopped buying printed books if a digital copy is available for purchase
- Buy in bulk, with as little packaging as possible, when I can.
- Stopped driving 25-40 miles roundtrip every weekend to go sit in the living rooms of friends when we're just going to have the same conversations we do via text messages and instead only go see them once every couple of months each to eat together and actually have quality conversation
- Stopped driving to the fancy grocery 10 miles away and use the one a block from my apartment complex entrance, doing my groceries on the way home from work when I'm passing it anyway
- I pretty much only drive to work and church now instead of getting in my car on the weekend and driving around looking for something to do
- Video content I stream, I stream at lower quality now. Every gigabyte of data transfer saved is potentially several hundred of grams less CO2 generated. Podcasts, where available, I stream via their lower bitrate feed (unfortunately of the podcasts I listen to, only Mysterious Universe has a lower/higher quality feed).
If even 10% of the population adapted similar practices, you'd create much more of an impact than selling a few solar roofs to the wealthy or designing a piece of software for a regional power plant to use to make some process a fraction of a percent more efficient.
Anyway, most people pay for solar installations via loans. Generally the out of pocket costs are close to zero and monthly costs are equivalent to grid power. In some cases installing solar is a pure cost savings with zero upfront costs and lower monthly costs.
I feel sad knowing that what I've trained for and my passion aren't helpful at all to fixing this crisis.
From my experience, they are a lot less limited than people realize. The UK's use of wind is a good example [0], studies have been done in Australia where we previously thought the upper limit of renewables would be 20% of power generation only 10 years ago, each yeah they are revising this number upwards thanks to technology developments. South Australia is a good example here too [1].
Just because we can't easily foresee a solution that is 100% renewable/carbon free energy generation _right now_, doesn't mean we shouldn't head in that direction. Waiting around for a perfect solution and sitting on our hands is exactly what we shouldn't be doing.
Also in regards to your comments for individual behaviors impacting the planet, turns out people can walk and chew gum at the same time. I'm vegan, avoid flying (haven't flown in >5 years), work remote and have solar panels on my house. Making personal changes like you and I (and many others and growing) have done absolutely makes a difference, but so does the technology development. For example
> With sun and wind you can only implement it so far before you hit a wall, the wall being the need for huge amounts of grid storage to serve dark/not windy times.
I work mainly in the solar radiation forecasting area, basically thickness of clouds forecasts. Something that the _tech_ we've developed performs really well at is forecasting the next 4 hours, updating every 5-15 minutes thanks to the amazing tech that is the latest generation of geostationary weather satellites. As you likely know, one of the important properties of an electricity grid is stability which the intermittent nature of renewables like solar don't excel (as you've pointed out) at especially if you live anywhere there are commonly clouds. One way to improve stability is to smooth out the variability and to know ahead of time how much the power output is going to change. You might think this is just a 1-2% improvement but actually this is impacts _how much_ solar power generation to can add to an electricity grid by a lot and it also GREATLY reduces the size of battery required to get that smoothing of power generation. Does it get us to 100% renewable energy generation? No, but it lets us rush for higher penetration whilst maintaining stability in electricity networks, which helps generators make money, which makes investment look more attractive, which builds more solar, you see the cycle.
So yes, you can only implement them so far, but how far this can be taken is generally rising in many countries, and getting there quickly is important.
Yes, if everyone made the individual choices today, the world could drop our CO2 emissions very quickly in a short period of time. Social problems are hard and sadly we have leaders without the political will to go against their own personal self interest and that of their large emitter donors [2]. So while some lobby to try and change this, others try to encourage those with money from their large emissions to put their money somewhere else that will reduce emissions by making it more profitable. A carrot AND a stick as it were. It isn't just "hopeium", people in these fields are working their butts off and the inertia is building, it's not going to be easy so yes I think the future is bright _for the climate tech industry_ as there are positive contributions to be made. As for the general future re climate change, no, it is not looking bright but working to make it less shit is something I'd encourage others to do.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/14/renewable-e...
Wind varies wildly between locations. England being an island probably helps a ton as coastal areas tend to generally be windy. If we look at a wiki entry [1] on the coastline of the UK:
>the coastline as measured by the standard method at Mean High Water Mark rises to about 19,491 miles (31,368 km).
With the general coasltine of the United States being 12,383 miles.
The UK also has nearly 1/5 the population, has virtually no air conditioning while 16% of residential electricit consumption and 6% of total electrical consumption in the United States is from air conditioning [2].
So there is limited carryover here with something like wind. Same goes for solar, solar is great at certain latitudes and in certain regions (think weather) but other latitudes and regions is just not practical.
The UK is also much smaller than something like the United States, that means a much more efficient grid can be constructed. You will also just have less transmission loss because you have much fewer units of measure of power lines.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_of_the_United_Kingdo...
And yes, transmission of power is also a problem for places like Australia being so large, but even with this people are genuinely looking into building large _international_ electricity connections under sea between north of Australia and Singapore [0] backed by 10GW of solar generation capacity [1], a $20B investment that they are willing to bet will _make_ money, not heavily gov funded.
A lot of people are also looking at hydrogen generation from excess renewable power as another way to recoup some profit when grid generation prices go to 0 or negative. Deciding _when_ to do these kinds of activities is largely where _climate tech_ can help out. Again, even relatively small improvements allow for larger shifts if what we do and can have a large impact of investment including how attractive the scaling of these technologies can be. Because energy generation and consumption are such fundamental parts of modern life, being clever with how you do both of these things can lead to whole different approaches. As clean energy generation costs drop there will be other carbon net negative (maybe negative) activities that become economical, creating a space where money can be mode is the fastest way to accelerate change in the modern world.
Some of these choices will no doubt cause their own problems that will need to be solved, but at this stage world needs to look towards harm minimization, and quickly when it comes to the climate crises. With hindsight I'm sure we'll be able to look back and highlight ways it could have been done better, hell we can do that now but those with the power to make that change seem unwilling to show leadership.
If you are a programmer/technical minded person, climate tech is still a positive contribution and I think is an industry that will be growing. If you are a politician, yes, you'll likely have the _chance_ to make a far larger impact and all power to you, but I'll be doing what I can with the skills and knowledge I have.
[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/nt-government-backs-10gw-solar-a...
| EDIT added for clarity