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Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Regardless how expensive it get, it won't burn tons of fossil fuels.

Government should just set the conditions for new power and heating infrastructure. No fossil fuels. Zero carbon. A minimum and peak capacity based on current and projected demands. Private companies can bid, but they can't change the conditions.

If a private company can more cheaply and faster build massive amount of battery and use exclusively wind farm to charge them, and have enough capacity to carry through any weather, then cheaper is better. If someone can more cheaply drill into the earth core and use thermal heat (an other promising technology) then great!

If the whole UK energy grid could become fossil free, and the only cost would be a 2x increase in costs, then that would be to me a fair price to pay. It is costly, and by the look from the private companies involved a bit financially risky, but continuing burning fossil fuels is bad enough that all alternatives should be used until the last fossil fueled power plant get demolished.

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Cost matters. If you can build renewable power at a fraction of the price, why go nuclear? We can keep gas as backup until storage solutions are better developed.

If money was no issue you could just build a ton of pumped hydro in Scotland and or batter storage.

And if you absolutely want to spend on nuclear power, spend it in SMRs and molten salt reactors. ThorCon is probably not that far from a working solution if given enough funding.

> If money was no issue you could just build a ton of pumped hydro in Scotland and or batter storage.

Wikipedia says "The potential for further practical and viable hydroelectricity power stations in the UK is estimated to be in the region of 146 to 248 MW for England and Wales,[4] and up to 2,593 MW for Scotland.[5] However, by the nature of the remote and rugged geographic locations of some of these potential sites, in national parks or other areas of outstanding natural beauty, it is likely that environmental concerns would mean that many of them would be deemed unsuitable, or could not be developed to their full theoretical potential." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity_in_the_United...

Pumped-hydro storage doesn't need existing water, but the national grid averages 30GW and peaks at 40GW ( http://grid.iamkate.com/ ) are there enough places to build "a ton of pumped hydro" for that kind of size which are suitable for the above criteria as well?

There are many other solutions than traditional pumped hydro when it comes to electrical storage : new pump hydro on isolated reservoirs (eg gordon butte), battries (eg flow batteries), compressed air, liquid air, stacked bloks, heat to energy come in mind

And you can store energy as heat or cold, which is easier and cheaper, with a bigger potential

And you can have an impact on the demand side, with energy efficiency and demand-response

Renewables are intermittent, pumped hydro could work at the expense of destroying Scottish national parks. Freewheel storage could also work. But SMRs are not ready yet, as outlined in the article. MSR thorium reactors are far in the future, probably past 2030. The closest to being done is NuScale's design which is a natural circulation PWR. But it was just approved this year. Also Russia has a barge with two naval reactors, but theycre small and I don't see the UK licensing Russian designs anytime soon.

> If you can build renewable power at a fraction of the price

We keep thinking of "building renewable power" as "we can produce this amount of watts at peak". What we should demand of these projects instead is "we can provide this amount of renewable power 24/7". There is a big difference. We're ending up in a situation where we can "build renewable power at a fraction of the price" for half of the time. For the other half we rely on fossil fuels but we don't see the issue because we're focused on the amount of clean watts we get at peak.

This is a solved problem, particularly in the UK. Battery prices are constantly dropping and pumped storage is a proven solution. It requires investment, but far less than fission plants.

It is far from a solved problem, in fact it is a problem that shows the simple solutions to be infeasible. Battery prices are several orders of magnitude above where they would need to be to provide true grid-scale storage and production capacity is a fraction of what would be required for same. Pumped storage is a dead-end solution because we have simply run out of places for effective hydro and are quire soon going to run out of places where we can turn existing hydro resources into pumped storage.

There is no level of investment that can magic away the storage problems of current renewables, which is why they continue to become a bigger and bigger problem as more and more production shifts in that direction.

> Battery prices are several orders of magnitude above where they would need to be to provide true grid-scale storage and production capacity is a fraction of what would be required for same.

Thankfully prices are falling, efficiency improving, and massive battery factories are planned. The growth of EV means that will continue. Peaker plants are already being replaced with batteries.

> Pumped storage is a dead-end solution because we have simply run out of places for effective hydro

Nope. There is large pumped storage being built in Scotland right now and there are hundreds more glens where it would be feasible.

>There is no level of investment that can magic away the storage problems of current renewables

Just as one example that may well magic away these problems, grid attached storage in the form of electric cars and home storage is growing massively right now. It may be we rethink entirely our centralised approach to production and storage.

Fission is expensive, centralised and carries heavy decommissioning costs and extreme tail risks. Fusion may someday give renewables a worthy rival but till then the falling prices mean nuclear has had its day.

Scotland can provide, at most, less than 5% of required capacity if you turned every available loch into pumped storage. Claiming that pumped storage is in any way a viable grid-storage system that can handle baseload in the UK is inaccurate.

Even if every battery production facility on the planet was dedicated entirely to producing storage batteries for the UK it would take almost half a decade to meet the requirements. You can claim that more will be built, but there are resource pipelines involved that are not as elastic and just throwing a pile of money at someone to build a factory. Battery production is growing, but nowhere near fast enough to meet the requirements for grid scale storage.

Right now fission has no competition from renewables+storage because the storage part of that equation remains a fantasy.

It doesn’t have to handle baseload, it has to handle peaks.

This is where a market solution should be used. Set up the conditions for minimum delivery of carbon-free power for a given period and let private companies bet on it. If people can deliver a battery solution that exclusively use renewable to charge them, and do this cheaper than nuclear, then they win the bid.

They don't get to use natural gas as a backup. They also need to be held liable to maintain the minimum capacity just as effective as more expensive solutions, but if they are willing and able to do that cheaper then they should win the bid and we should let them deliver carbon-free energy.

In the EU there is actually already a market of different contingents of electrical energy with different availability guarantees. Sources with high availability are more expensive and this helps to finance the required technology. And all this works rather in an evolutionary way. For example, we can, today, predict how much wind power will roughly be generated within the next days, and we can adjust reserve capacities with different costs to even that out. It is not only feasibly but also the economical thing to do.

Yes, we do have that system and people do bid to deliver energy. We do however allow fossil fuels to be used when wind power is not producing, and such, the carbon-free reserve capacities are competing against fossil fuels on production cost without the external cost of climate change being added. The economical outcome of that is an constant increase in fossil fueled capacity in practically every country in EU, with new fossil fueled power plant being built today even when we know that the climate can't take it.

The costs and risks involved in large scale power generation facilities isn't really fit for private companies and market competition. And when you add a market element to it, companies might cut corners to increase profits ( or minimise losses), and you certainly don't want that.

> What we should demand of these projects instead is "we can provide this amount of renewable power 24/7".

Humans have always adapted to power being available in different quantities and forms over time. This is why we have corn stores, mills, corned beef, and cold houses. No farmer expects that the sun makes his corn grow in January. In the end, we adapt to our environment, and we have done that though all the ages. Today, we can make it technically much smarter, for example by adding a price signal to electricity, and generating hot water for doing laundry during strong-wind night hours. If this is cheaper and more efficient than battery storage, then why not do it?

> We can keep gas as backup until storage solutions are better developed.

No thanks. Continuing burning fossil fuels until a better solution exist is not going to work. Climate change is already causing long term damage on a global scale, causing species to go extinct, raises water levels, expands deserts, displaces people, and is a problem that need to be taken serious. No waiting for a future technology yet undiscovered.

If we stop building new fossil fuel plants and only build nuclear and renewable, then maybe in 20-30 years we will reach a zero carbon energy grid. Given some of the most optimistic research, that might give us a small chance in prevent global crisis. A small chance. Continuing to burn gas until we have something better developed will rob us of that small chance. A 2x cost in energy, while somewhat costly, is still small cost compared to the consequences long term if we continue to burn fossil fuels.

The UK grid is on track to eventually becoming fossil free, although there will likely be a long 'tail' period where natural gas backup plants still operate during periods of unusually high demand and/or restricted supply.

2020 will very likely be the first year that renewables overtake fossil fuels in total electricity generated.

Here's a satisfying video of UK coal-fired power plants being demolished: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-52985841

> Regardless how expensive it get, it won't burn tons of fossil fuels.

Maybe it won’t be a lot once built, but fuel extraction and processing are energy intensive. Also, 10 years of construction and the vast quantity of steel and concrete are going to burn one hell of a lot of fossil fuel.

It would be interesting to compare the lifetime fossil fuel usage of all power generators, including construction and disposal (and waste storage).

Fair comparison here is overall energy invested for energy obtained. For nuclear, as it is much denser energy-wise then anything else, you need to do the least amount of digging per MW capacity / let alone overall produced MWh. Nuclear is orders of magnitude better than other low-co2 options. For example for solar it is about 6, versus 75 for nuclear. [1]

Also instructive to keep in mind just how energy dense nuclear fuel is. [2]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-to...

[2] https://xkcd.com/1162/

Nuclear is orders of magnitude better than other low-co2 options

The sibling post seems to indicate otherwise though and mentions they're about the same? Any idea where that difference in numbers come from?

I was specifically referring to energy spent to build and operate / energy actually generated over lifetime, so called EROI. My post refers to the sources of the info

Nuclear is not orders of magnitude better in EROI, so I don't know what you think you were claiming.

> ”Fair comparison here is overall energy invested for energy obtained.”

We think of “energy invested” as having an environmental cost, and of course that’s true when it comes from polluting fossil sources.

But as grids get cleaner, and transport vehicles and construction equipment are electrified, this is no longer such a concern. Eventually we’re just using clean energy to build more clean energy - a virtuous cycle!

New low-carbon concrete formulas and steel production technology are also needed, of course, since these are a major source of emissions whether for a nuclear plant or wind farm.

> Nuclear is orders of magnitude better than other low-co2 options.

Then, why is it not economically viable when fairly competing with solar and wind energy? Because it requires much more subsidies and nuclear developers cannot even bear the financial risks of their projects, as one would expect from a economically viable technology.

Nuclear and offshore wind are equivalent (median: 12 gCO2eq/kWh)

Source: IPCC, 2014

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emis...

Although offshore has continued to get cheaper and nuclear only seems to be getting more expensive since then.

Getting cheaper doesn't mean requiring less CO2 emissions. GP's proposal would let the market decide what makes financial sense, given the constraints.

> offshore has continued to get cheaper

What is the cost of an offshore generation plant that can produce power with the same reliability of a nuclear one? This needs to get into the equation.

Probably the 100% renewable system will end up cheaper than one that includes nuclear. This requires prediction of where costs will be going, but the worldwide the market seems to be betting on that outcome, not nuclear, which only gets built when governments heavily tilt the scales.

https://model.energy/

The cost of wind turbines has little to do with the cost of ensuring that the power plant will provide a set amount of 100% renewable energy all the time. Because when the wind is not blowing the plant has either to provide energy from a storage system or source it somewhere else, again with 100% reliability.

You didn't look at that link, did you? It has models using predicted costs for wind, solar, nuclear, batteries, and hydrogen storage, and computes the minimum cost system to produce reliable baseload power using real historical weather data (at 5 minute intervals). You can alter the assumptions and see what the costs optimize to. Nuclear is "Dispatchable 2" in the advanced settings.

No, I didn't look at the link- you could have at least described what it contained.

I gave it a quick look, but frankly it would take me a lot of time to check if the model and assumptions make sense (it also seems to reply "job failed" whenever it doesn't have a cached answer). But I think real costs can be estimated only from working plants. Do we have, now, renewable energy plants that are capable of delivering a constant amount of energy by storing the excess production? How many have been built around the world? Why aren't we building more if they're so cheap?

> Do we have, now, renewable energy plants that are capable of delivering a constant amount of energy by storing the excess production?

They have plenty of drawbacks, but hydro meets this. The storage occurs pre production though.

> Do we have, now, renewable energy plants that are capable of delivering a constant amount of energy by storing the excess production?

As long as we are burning fossil fuels (and in particular natural gas) it doesn't make much sense to build such things, even if we could. The natural gas provides pre-stored energy.

If the whole UK energy grid could become fossil free, and the only cost would be a 2x increase in costs, then that would be to me a fair price to pay.

A large number of people would die as a result of such a policy. Fuel poverty is already a significant problem, the UK government gives out 'winter fuel payment' benefits to some, but doubling the price of energy would push a lot of elderly, infirm, and poor people to stop heating their homes.

This idea would need to come with nationalised energy costs for it to work.

doubling the price of energy would push a lot of elderly, infirm, and poor people to stop heating their homes

2x increase in cost doens't necessarily directly translate to doubling the price for everyone. For example it could be coupled with a scheme where consuming way above average makes the part which is above much more expensive, depending on income, to yield the ones consuming less and/or low income not having to pay double. Plus taxing overconsumption could be an incentive to getting rid of some needless energy usage.

And yet it's often the people on smallest income who consume the most for heating because their houses as unlikely to be insulated well. The government is giving out grants to improve insulation/boiler efficiency, but if you live in council housing you're screwed again.

In the UK homes are heated with gas, not electricity.

Yes, have you replied to the wrong comment?

Besides, very soon all new construction in the UK will be required to be heated exclusively by electricity, so for new housing heating costs will be absolutely huge compared to gas.

My rough calculations me that switching my 1970s UK detached home from gas to electric for hot water and central heating would triple my usage costs (and that doesn't include the cost of switching in the first place).

I'm still interested in doing it though because it would massively simplify the heating system. Removing gas from the system would mean I could do all the regular maintenance by myself whereas at present I'm obliged to use a registered, gas-trained plumber on the boiler itself because the law requires it.

It's an interesting point. The law actually allows a competent person to work on their own gas systems themselves but doesn't define exactly what that means. I've seen people claim that it only narrowly applies to previously qualified Gas Safe engineers who have allowed their registration to lapse but I think that is a stretch.

Also, I think the idea would be to install an air source heat pump rather than resistive electrical heating.

You could use a heat pump if your radiators allow it.

for new housing heating costs will be absolutely huge compared to gas

Isn't it more nuanced than that? Don't know UK rules, but since you mention new housing: aren't these required to adhere to some minimum of insulation, likewise for renovations, thereby drastically reducing the energy required in the first place (I mean if I just compare our renovated house with my parent's, energy requirement is 4 to 5 times less per square m)? Moreover depending on climate, cost to produce a given amount of energy is lower for heta pumps than for gas?

I mean, yes, there are standards, but the standards are sometimes shit. As an example - my friend just bought a very expensive brand new house, fancy insulation, but.....all radiators are like 2 feet wide? Even for the living room where intuitively, that cannot be the correct size of a radiator for that. But apparently(having complained) nope, these are regulation size etc. Now he spends 2x as much on heating for a house the same size as his old one built 20 years ago, because predictably, the rooms never get hot enough in winter with those crappy undersized radiators.

Again, that's just anecdote, feel free to ignore it.

Wrt insulation I really meant law, not standard. I hope there are no laws limiting the size of radiators? That would not make a lot of sense i.e. story sounds more like whoever was in charge of calculating the size completely messed up.

It could be, but coming from happy Energiewende Germany, as a household you pay more than twice as much for your power as any industrial or commercial user, 30ct/kWh vs. 12ct/kWh. The difference comes from the usual rebates, but the largest part is that commercial users don't pay the renewable tax that is mandatory for non-commercial users. For the really big users, such as smeltings, there are additional subsidies on top to keep the price of power even lower.

So the situation might be different elsewhere, but in Germany, poor consumers pay for Energiewende plus subsidies.

Yes unfortunately it's not uncommon at all that certain industries effectively get subsidized for their energy use and/or pay less taxes on it. In an ideal world that could be adjusted as well though but realistically that's not going to happen. Example from neighbouring country how crippled things can be: solar would be subsidized, leading to the ones with enough money putting complete factory roofs full with solar, to the point the time in which they'd gain back the initial cost would be a couple of years only. Don't get me wrong, great that they have solar energy, but there's way, way more concumer roofs out there but with an average income the initial cost for them is just too much.

https://www.businesselectricityprices.org.uk/historical/

They've already doubled.

Now, of course this is more complex because some of that price rise is due to "levies" being placed to support both "green" initiatives and support for the vulnerable.

...and for nuclear. Look at how Hinkley point got subsidised.

Hinkley was and is an aberration.

Its a fucking stupid project that was signed to make a political point. Instead of thinking about the needs of the next 100 years, it was signed to fulfill a short term political goal.

The government were over a barrel, the people making the contract knew it, and the government signed anyway.

The combination of a carbon tax and universal basic income is the solution here.

It would also push adoption of non-fossil energy sources, since poor people have more than enough incentives to chose the economically best solution for them.

If only countries could work together to institute a global carbon tax. Pollute too much - pay the tax. Don't pollute - great and, if you are poor/developing, here is help (funded by polluters) to stay that way while still being able to develop.

It’s amazing they could all come together to make sure people couldn’t pirate movies and music and video games. But save the planet? Nah.

We don't need anywhere near global consensus, a small group of nations can start. The idea is called a "climate club", and it won William Nordhaus a Nobel Prize.

https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/

The problem is the largest CO2 polluting country is unwilling to join any such agreements. This is true now and it was true 30 years ago.

So levy punitive tariffs against it, and anyone else who does not sign onto a carbon tax.

I don’t think the Europe Union really wants a trade war with the US. Basically, Germany is the weak spot in this. They are an export driven economy and a US embargo on Germany would be devastating.

The US isn't the largest CO2 emitter, though it used to be.

China's emissions are approximately double the US's and growing.

> China's emissions are approximately double the US's and growing.

China's population is 1.4 billion compared to 330 million for the US though. Surely you should be comparing this relative to population size (China is four times bigger) and countries with smaller emissions per person should be recognised as doing well?

China's per capita CO2 emissions are still 1/2 that of the U.S. More importantly, neither the Chinese government nor powerful Chinese politicians deny anthropogenic climate change. And they've recently recommitted to nuclear energy expansion despite growing public fear after Fukushima and a subsequent rise in costs as Chinese regulatory policies became more strict.

Part of the reason for the gap in nuclear construction in recent years, separate from Fukushima, seems to have been growing trade tensions with the U.S. Now that construction and approvals have resumed, it seems like China has decided to ditch almost all foreign designs and only build their "homegrown" AP1000 derivative. Unlike American politicians, Chinese politicians haven't forgotten the art of turning lemons into lemonade. Nuclear, solar, electric cars--they're using the transition to bolster and develop their industrial sectors. As countries should be making many of these investments anyhow to hedge and supplement the often myopic and short-sighted pursuits of the free market, the net costs to abandoning the fossil fuel economy can be significantly reduced. (In retrospect the contracts for American nuclear plants were probably handouts, anyhow, intended to mitigate balance of trade tensions. But with all goodwill having been burned to ash by the current administration, not to mention the collapse of the American nuclear construction industry, it became a pointless gesture.)

Mother nature doesn't handicap for overpopulation.

The earth has a carrying capacity, locally, regionally and globally, and a high population density does nothing to increase it.

Not entirely unrelated, China is also building a system of high-speed long-distance trains like few countries have. There will be a time after the individual gas-powered car. I guess it will be propelled electrically, but it's quite likely that the power will come from an overhead line.

Are you seriously proposing that CO2 be capped per country, as opposed to per capita?

That's a fascinating proposal.

I don't think that will be particularly favorable to the US, though. There are 195 countries in the world, yet the US accounts for 14% of all of the world's emissions.

You have to look at who is polluting the most. If country A represents 2x the emissions of country B, then it's twice as important to curb their pollution.

Country borders mean nothing to the planet in ecological terms. How about looking at emissions per square kilometer as a target, but focusing treaty efforts on the largest CO2 emitting countries (or coalitions of countries that can be dealt with as a block)?

> If country A represents 2x the emissions of country B, then it's twice as important to curb their pollution.

Capping emissions per capita accomplishes just that. Why are you so opposed to it?

> How about looking at emissions per square kilometer as a target

So, Canada (Population 38 million) should get to pollute three times more, in absolute values than India (Population 1.35 billion), because it has three times the land area?

> Country borders mean nothing to the planet in ecological terms.

Country borders don't mean anything to the planet, but they mean everything to how we must solve this problem.

People need energy to live.

The world has a limited carbon budget.

Distributing it equally, per capita is the least you can do to be fair about it. (In order to actually be fair about it, you must also count historic emissions, which means that the western world has long blown its share of that budget.)

You're confusing is with ought.

It's not that Canada "should get to" pollute more than India. Canada can pollute more than India and still have the effects absorbed by its environment. Canada has vast forests absorbing CO2 on a scale sufficient to mostly counteract the harmful effects caused by its relatively sparse population. India doesn't have those vast forests, and its population is enormous.

I'm making no claim that it should be this way. It is this way.

Despite emitting more CO2 per capita, Canada is putting a negligible strain on the planet compared to India, the US, or especially China.

> I don’t think the Europe Union really wants a trade war with the US.

Who bothers, the US already wants one. Why should the EU let determine the future of the planet by some political backwater?

Put taxes on imports from big polluters. That will make them tow the line. Frankly it should have been the approach from the start to avoid need for cooperation.

Each country can do this on their own and tax fossil energy imports at the border.

This should include embodied energy, or "gray energy", in materials like steel, aluminum and cement.

If we want to speed up the end of fossil fuels, while not increasing poverty, and not artificially distorting markets and technological developments by politically meddling with costs, we have to do these 3 things:

1. Introduce a substantial carbon tax on extraction and import of any fossil energy source. This should include embodied energy, like aluminum.

2. Pay back part of the tax gains to the poorer population in form of a universal basic income (it could be some other scheme but I think this is the best one).

3. Subsidize any form of non-fossil energy generation, INCLUDING STORAGE, from the carbon tax. This subsidy MUST be non-discriminatory, it must not depend on promised future efficiencies in a technology but what it actually delivers, today. And it must give incentive to make any technology, and also energy distribution, consumption and storage, more efficient. It could be, for example, night time storage heaters (which were heavily promoted in the 1950s / 1960s to make nuclear more economical).

What we should NOT do is to subsidize some technology which has been making fancy promises since five decades, without really delivering them. Among other things, this would be market distortion, and precisely because it would reduce our effectiveness in fighting climate change, it would be very harmful. At worst, it would result in that we do effectively nothing, while pretending we do.

If its like the other projects, it may never generate a single kWh when it gets cancelled.

Also, it will be much too late to avoid massive climate change so its a bit mute. And that's assuming we also cut all our other emissions and every other country on earth cuts theirs...

Plus "no matter what the cost" is a pretty weird attitude if you don't mind me saying. If we can save more carbon by spending the same money elsewhere, shouldn't we do that instead?

s/mute/moot/

Damn, too late to edit!

The easiest way to implement your policy is an emissions trading scheme, where the amount of issued certificates is reduced every year.

Emissions trading is a single gigantic failure. What we need is a stiff carbon tax.

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