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Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

>4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass.

But that's not the case. America is reducing its emissions greatly by shifting from coal to natural gas (which mirrors what Germany is doing, for example). Coal is ostensibly dead in US. If you look at the charts from Wikipedia [1][2], you'll see the US has cut emissions at about the same rate (or faster) than Europe. That trend will continue. So what will Paris actually do in practical terms?

The problem is that after transitioning away from coal, there isn't a clear answer about the next step. Renewables are not a panacea and may never be able to power a modern economy as they will probably always require fossil fuel baseload ... not to mention that because renewables are a diffuse energy source, they require HUGE land areas which makes no different for CO2 emissions, but makes a huge difference for environmental collapse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...

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The US has majorly been transitioning to both natural gas AND renewables.

In fact, practically the only facilities being built for the last decade have been wind and solar and in massive quantities. If you look in the generation queues of the various RTO/ISOs (organizations that manage which units run and at what level for large parts of the grid) the only thing expected to be built is even more wind and solar along with storage. Multiple GW of wind capacity is being added each year, so it isn't slowing.

Why is this happening? It's complicated, but it's basically economics at this point.

What problems do we face? Well, sometimes wind and solar aren't available. You can solve this in three ways. The first is to have thermal generation respond when the wind/solar dips. This can be tricky as thermal generators (outside of natural gas) weren't designed to move that fast. They were designed to run near max for most of their life. Natural gas peakers are more effective here. Another option is storage, which can hold you over until you get more wind/solar again. However, we would need a massive amount of storage built for this to be effective. A third option would be to increase demand response at the industrial and customer level. Meaning, power isn't generally expected to be 100% available in that scenario. If there isn't enough generation capacity, those that aren't willing to pay the high prices are shut off (or something along those lines). That is generally how supply/demand is supposed to work anyway, but practically speaking, the demand doesn't participate today. In actuality, I expect a combination of all of that to become common place and it is what the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been pushing for.

> A third option would be to increase demand response at the industrial and customer level. Meaning, power isn't generally expected to be 100% available in that scenario. If there isn't enough generation capacity, those that aren't willing to pay the high prices are shut off (or something along those lines). That is generally how supply/demand is supposed to work anyway

I don’t think any of these solutions are viable to prove we can be reliant on renewables, and this one especially would not resonate with a populace.

Just at a consumer level, think of everything you use power for on a daily basis. It’s a cornerstone of modern life, and you can’t expect society to backtrack.

I agree it would be unpopular, but it's what the US has been pushing towards for a long time with deregulation and it's the dream of the economists as the prices should be more transparent and optimal.

In my country we already have a system where the price of electricity fluctuates hourly depending on supply and demand.

The result for individuals: many people just subscribe to a flat rate from the electricity companies to avoid the uncertainty and pay the same predictable price each month (but of course, this predictable price comes at a significant markup with respect to the "free market" price). The rest of us go with the fluctuating price but just don't bother, because we are not going to spend substantial amount of time every day looking at how the prices evolve to decide when we turn stuff on or off. So we just read the bill every two months, not even making an effort to understand it, grumble a bit and go on with our lives. I suppose there may be some people who actually try to optimize, but I don't know any - from what I know, people short on income tend to go with the flat rate because they can't afford the uncertainty.

I don't know how it works in industrial applications. I do know that some industries (e.g. steel) complain about the fluctuating prices because they operate 24/7, and basically they reaction is that if the government doesn't subsidize their electricity bill, they'll just close and go to some other country. So my guess is it's not really working either.

Interesting comment. Thank you! Does anyone have an automated system in place that would automatically curtail yourself when price gets above X at Y time?

The theory was that such systems should exist, but I haven't heard of any at the moment and Google doesn't seem to find any either. And this is several years after the system was implemented.

This already occurred back when renewables were nothing more than the fantasies of tree-hugging hippies like my mum.

Before I left the UK, the flat I lived in had two electricity rates, with the night rate being significantly cheaper then the day rate [0]. This meant the water heater and the (electric) storage heaters [1] were powered at night, when schools and offices used no power.

[0] I’m not certain, but I think it was: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater

That has the advantage that the drop in power demand during the night is extremely predictable, so everyone knew that they could reliably get cheap power for heating just by shifting their demand by half a day. (Also, the UK had and still has a fairly large nuclear power fleet which generally runs full-out 24/7, and this kind of demand shifting is a good match for that.) The trouble with renewables is that a lot of the drops in supply are both unpredictable and relatively long, which makes them hardre to deal with.

Also, storage heaters are a real pain to deal with. They're inefficient and not very controllable in terms of the amount of heat they produce.

> The trouble with renewables is that a lot of the drops in supply are both unpredictable and relatively long, which makes them hardre to deal with.

Not so; when the problem is bad weather rather than the diurnal cycle, even weather forecasting gives more forewarning than emergency stop buttons in power stations, and (given the geographical distribution) the change itself is smoother. On the scale of a continental grid, do you even need to care about anything besides diurnal storage/demand-shifting (as preferred) and seasonal issues?

The most economical option is it have a massive oversupply of wind and solar as their significantly less expensive than any alternative.

You can model this as (cost per kWh of cheapest alternative) / (cost of rentable per kWh) = marginal oversupply you want. So, if hypothetically Solar was 2c/kWh and peaking natural gas was 6c/kWh then you would want to add more solar until 3kWh of new Solar only offset 1kWh of natural gas with the other 2kWh being wasted.

Which does not mean 2/3 of total solar energy would be wasted. Further, storage and energy markets also complicate things. However, it does illustrate why you want an over supply of the cheapest option even if not all of it gets used.

There is a problem with the massive oversupply idea though. It assumes wind locations are fairly randomized and I don't think that is entirely true. Meaning you can build more in area "x", but if it isn't blowing a quarter mile away, it probably isn't blowing near you either. Think of this more as a conceptual argument. Now oversupply would help if it's just blowing a little bit I suppose.

Exactly. The big blocker to a full-scale rollout of renewables is storage and it has been this way for years. We're still facing the problem of the duck curve, which has been known for years: wind and solar peak at the wrong times because peak load is actually in the evening.

It doesn’t matter if supply sinks up 1:1 because demand doesn’t. If solar always produced the same energy evenly form exactly 10AM to 6PM EST for some parts of the day you could have an over supply of solar and at other parts of the day you would have an under supply. The same is true on the weekend vs weekday. Even seasonal power demand is less in spring and fall than summer and winter due to heating and cooling.

Though when selecting individual locations for wind, different locations favor different time of the day. And of course solar output varies significantly east/west and based on local weather conditions. That all gets modeled ahead of time and in practice get reflected in market rates.

The oversupply is coming, it seems almost inevitable by now. But a massive oversupply requires a large fall on the prices of electricity conversion and generators maintenance.

Even then, I do really expect a category of "peak demanders" to appear soon (storage is one kind, but there are other things one can do with intermittent almost free electricity). That will help increasing the spare capacity.

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens if daytime rates start to consistently dip below current night time rates.

I suspect an outgrowth of oversupply is storage will ramp up based on consistent access to very cheap rates. It makes a huge difference if you’re paying 0.4c/kWh or 4c/kWh to charge, especially when storage is significantly less than 100% efficient.

And where are you going to store this oversupply?

My point is you don’t need to store the oversupply. Grid spot prices hitting zero mean you can just dump the power as that excess is in effect worthless.

That said, consistent very low prices will likely result in someone using most of that power for something even if the power plant operators aren’t making money during that period.

Renewables are not a panacea and may never be able to power a modern economy as they will probably always require fossil fuel baseload

You say that like it's true, and it's not. Anyway, the climate doesn't care. Human emissions will reach equilibrium with what's compatible with life on Earth, one way or the other. Figuring this out is preferable to massive loss of life and degraded standards of living for the survivors.

I find it particularly telling you exclude nuclear as a baseload and specify it has to be fossil fuel baseload.

Nuclear is great but it is a terrible baseload for renewables because nuclear cannot just spin up and spin down like hydro or natural gas can.

That is not what baseload power is. You are talking about peak load generation. And pumped hydro is a classic smoothing solution to energy storage from uneven renewable base load generation.

You're completely ignoring batteries which have already demonstrated their viability in southern Australia.

>You're completely ignoring batteries

I'm not.

>which have already demonstrated their viability in southern Australia.

They didn't. They replaced natural gas in one specific use-case, namely to provide grid stability. Those batteries (no batteries) are capable of bridging renewable variability.

Southern Australia's wind farms alone are enough to meet demand and when their new synchronous capacitor projects are completed they won't need stand by gas power plants.

>Southern Australia's wind farms alone are enough to meet demand

When the wind is blowing. If the wind isn't blowing, you're not getting any power and you're going to have to fire up those coal/natural gas plants.

>when their new synchronous capacitor projects are completed they won't need stand by gas power plants.

How much power can these 'synchronous capacitors' store, and for how long? Can they even store enough to power a small city (~250k) for more than few mins? Let me spoil something for you, there is no battery technology that can scale to run a modern economy and hard industry. Not now, and not upcoming. If you have favorable geography, you may be able to do pumped storage, but that's about the best you can do.

Keep in mind that EVEN if you miraculously had something to store grid-scale power over a long-term, you need to greatly overprovision renewables because those 'batteries' need to be charged (with lots of energy loss) during peaks enough to bridge daily, seasonal and inter-year variability. And of course, land-use requirements for renewables is MASSIVE (from mining to deployment to decommissioning) - so renewables are very heavy on the environment. They aren't going to work.

There's a reason why no developed region relies on renewables without either fossil fuel backup (or if geography allows, geothermal or hydro). There's a reason why Germany is spending billions to build pipelines to ship natural gas from Russia for decades to come. What do they know about renewables, that you don't?

That's actually a classic misconception : see here https://mobile.twitter.com/tristankamin/status/1102620969808... this detailed example from France nuclear power centrals

This is what the UK did a number of years ago. At the time we got a lot of praise for dramatically cutting emissions.

The problem is, that change didn't effect anyone negatively, and thanks to cheaper gas imports it was essentially free.

Now that we are off coal, future cuts are going to be a lot harder.

>coal to natural gas

Fossil fuel to .. fossil fuel. Sigh.

CO2 per KWh is lower for natural gas than it is for coal.

https://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/CO2-spez/CO2-spez_e...

> CO2 per KWh is lower for natural gas than it is for coal.

Unfortunately there are methane leaks in the systems, and it is quite possible that when accounting for the methane releases, natural gas has equally bad climate effect (emissions of CO2 and CH4 combined) as coal.

Good point. CO2 equivalents are a better measure than CO2.

I think fixing leaks is an easier task than reducing the coal CO2 footprint. We'll have to figure this out somehow anyways, because a lot of methane will be going into the atmosphere from thawing permafrost, both on land and in the seas.

It's not easier - as I understand it, the leaks are tiny amounts along the entire length of the pipelines. Getting an absolutely perfect seal is something that's expensive to do, whereas in theory the CO2 footprint of coal is concentrated and therefore much easier to capture.

In practice, doing either of those will spike the price of the energy, and the only reason to use them over renewables is their being cheap, so it won't happen.

It's a step, though. Methane is inherently unstable and won't stick around in the atmosphere forever once we stop emitting it. CO2 gets absorbed into the ocean very slowly and with acidification as a consequence.

It's important to say explicitly what "not forever" is here. Half life of methane in the atmosphere is 9 years[0]. Then it decomposes into CO₂ and water; the latter is suspected to be a potent greenhouse gas at that altitude[1].

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#cite_ref-C...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Atmospheri...

But in the meantime methane has bigger effect (per kg) than CO2.

We need to get to zero (or negative) net carbon emissions. Building brand new infracstructure for gas is counterpruductive to say the least.

>when their new synchronous capacitor projects are completed they won't need stand by gas power plants.

Sure ... and how do we do that? Nuclear is dead in the developed world (very few new nuclear projects and lots of existing plants being decomissioned)... so what's left? What do we replace natural gas with?

What do you think Germany is doing? They are going from fossil-fuel-free (nuclear) -> fossil-fuel (Russian natural gas).

This is a gross misrepresentation of the situation.

Look at the numbers: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

Yeah, there is a slight increase in natural gas over the years (with large fluctuations), while coal is in slight decline. By far the largest share of the nuclear phaseout has been replacing it with renewables.

One can discuss the pros and cons of german energy politics (of which there are both plenty), but that should start by knowing the facts.

The main reason for German gas demand is that a lot of the residential heating still works with gas.

But the gas infrastructure synergizes extremely well with a shift to a hydrogen based energy economy, as is not just the goal in Germany, but pretty much an EU wide ambition [0].

It has nothing to do with the German nuclear phase-out that started in the early 2000s, just like European reliance on Russian resources it not anything new, nor is it bound to change, it's the consequence of geographical proximity and thus realpolitik.

Particularly considering the alternatives: LNG shipped from the US to Europe in tankers is an net-energy negative. It would be a pointless and expensive exercise of creating even more pollution all for the sake of satisfying US foreign policy ambitions to antagonize Russia and keep it as separated from the EU as possible.

[0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/dutch-pin-hopes...

There's no clear trend for German elictricity production from gas, cf [1] via [2].

[1] https://i.imgur.com/KgcCyWu.png

[2] https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

> Renewables are not a panacea and may never be able to power a modern economy as they will probably always require fossil fuel baseload

This is completely fallacious. There will always be outliers but the overwhelming majority of power needs, both residential and commercial, can be addressed with renewable energy and battery solutions.

> not to mention that because renewables are a diffuse energy source, they require HUGE land areas which makes no different for CO2 emissions, but makes a huge difference for environmental collapse.

Can you cite anything backing that up? Hydro electric does dramatically impact the environment but other renewable sources have no such impact. Wind is negligible despite the fanatic ravings of one fat orange lunatic who doesn't like it's aesthetics. Solar is easily deployed on rooftops and along transit corridors which has zero impact. You don't have to consolidate all the renewable energy sources in one location.

I have a solar array that covers less than half my roof, produces 1.5x my energy needs annually, it stores reserves in a battery, and back-feeds excess into the grid. The cost to operate the array is less than the cost of grid power, and my excess production results in a payout from the power company.

The excess production from residential and commercial arrays can be captured and distributed to outliers who are unable to directly leverage renewable energy and completely offset the need for polluting energy sources.

"So what will Paris actually do in practical terms?"

How about, at the very least it is symbolic of the fact that the US will fully take part in one of the most important global programmes there is. That it will set targets and be transparent, reporting on its efforts to reach those targets. It will share know-how and expertise with countries that are trying to solve a problem that is an existential threat to civilisation.

And if, as you suggest, the US is actually beating the progress it needs to make to keep global temperature rise to within 1.5C, then that's great - it can get the global plaudits it deserves, with no further action needed.

One of the prime objections by Trump was the need to sponsor the GCF (green climate fund). The US was already the top-most contributor with 3.5 billion+ taxpayer money signed away and even more was expected from the US. AFAIK China - a major polluter - contributed next to nil since it came into the gambit of a developing nation.

Your two liknks show per capita and total fossil fuel emissions between 2000 and 2018.

The graph in [2] is subtitled:

Since 2000, rising CO 2 emissions in China and the rest of world have eclipsed the output of the United States and Europe

The graph in [1] is subtitled:

Per person, the United States generates carbon dioxide at a far faster rate than other primary regions.

Of course a country of 1 billion people, like India or China, is going to produce more emissiosn than a country of 330 million, in total, even if each of the smaller country's citizens produces about twice as many as the citizens of every other country in the world.

Also Paris accords don't do anything to slow down emissions in China and India the next big ones whereas USA is clearly showing some progress. I think with major solar improvements in the next decade and incredible price decreases things are looking a lot better. I hope for nuclear to supplement that but it looks like the world at large just isn't ready to get over their unnecessary, irrational fear of nuclear, except maybe China.

How plausible is the electric truck migration ? I've seen the marketing but I don't know if companies are actually going for it.

Next step is to reduce energy consumption. It's so obvious I wonder why it isn't talked about more. I'm not saying it's easy. We either choose to reduce energy consumption, or the consequences of climate change will force us to do it. The difference is in the first case, we have more control over it, and it might cause less human suffering.

There is some low hanging fruit in that department. To begin with, properly isolating old buildings would make a huge difference. But I agree it won't be easy.

It's so obvious I wonder why it isn't talked about more

But is it obvious? Let's say that fusion becomes commercially viable and vast amounts of emission-free energy become available cheaply. Would reducing the usage of it still matter? I would say the driving factor is the side-effects of energy production by current methods, not the energy itself.

Because our energy consumption is ultimately tied to the exponential growth of the economy. Even if everything around us would become 10x more efficient - which already would require many scientific breakthroughs - that's just multiplying the exponential growth curve by a constant factor of 0.1. A little bit of relief, but it fundamentally doesn't change anything.

And that's ignoring the reality that if you make something 10x efficient, it tends to become used more - sometimes much more, cancelling the gains. Our economy is self-regulating; altering one factor only makes all others readjust to compensate. Permanent change will require more complex approach.

Energy efficiency is definitely a very important part of dealing with climate change, but it isn't a silver bullet.

> Because our energy consumption is ultimately tied to the exponential growth of the economy.

We need to get off this exponential! Any modification of Capitalism is painted as an attack on basic human freedoms so that the rich can go down with the ship, rather than pass it on for the rest of humanity and the world.

How do we change what we optimize for? Because it currently isn't working.

> 10x efficient, it tends to become used more

https://simplicable.com/new/jevons-paradox

Um, this is already happening, in a big way.

Cars are more fuel efficient than ever. I own an SUV and average 30.1 MPG. Imagine that in 2000. Light bulbs are overwhelmingly LED these days. New homes are much more insulating than ever. Smart homes are less wasteful.

Not quite such a rosy prospect given the short and long terms problems with LED lights. They have a phototoxic effect on the eyes causing macular degeneration after chronic exposure to lower-intensity sources - the blue light relationship. The efficacy of filters (yet more cost) has still to be established.

Tho it seems like a lot of these increases in efficiency we traded-off by being more liberal in using the tech; Light bulbs are overwhelmingly LED these days, but we now also stick LEDs in all kinds of places where a light bulb would never have fit/made sense before.

Smarthome might theoretically work, but as of right now most people are just throwing even more IT and IoT devices, constantly drawing power, into their homes. As these come from a myriad of different vendors, there is no unified platform to utilize and manage all that for electricity efficiency, it's just going on, drawing additional power.

> It's so obvious I wonder why it isn't talked about more

I think this is because energy consumption is directly related to our ability to manufacture things, and the ability to manufacture things is directly connected to both wealth and military power.

(I’m half-remembering someone else’s explanation, so I assume this is an oversimplification).

> why it isn't talked about more

Because reducing energy use reduces quality of life at constant dollar income (at least medium term), and reduces economic growth (energy's an input in all economic activities), with all the social negative consequences that produces. It's a third rail, politically. No one's going to get elected by saying "your children have to live worse than you".

The Western world is already (slowly, over decades) reducing this (look at per capita energy use dropping nicely since the 90s), and there's significant pushback even at this rate (gillets jaunes, cost of living protests). All future energy use growth is elsewhere (Africa, China, India) with no plans to stop and if the Western world tries to impose their views on them, it'll look a lot like neocolonialism for environmental reasons.

Electricity generation is responsible for only 27% of US greenhouse gas emissions - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis....

If we are serious about tackling climate change then we need to decarbonize these other sectors by moving them off of fossil fuels and onto clean electricity. We are going to need to generate a lot more energy, not less.

it certainly does bot require a fossil fuel base load, and thank goodness because that won’t be affordable forever

Now if we could get Australian politicians to stop taking that coal money...

It's also almost cheaper to build new solar than to operate natural gas.

It doesn't require coordinated action to move away from coal and gas at that point.

They’re not interchangeable.

Solar is great for marginal additional output, but to make it useful as a primary energy source it requires massive investments in storage technology. Solar doesn’t work at night or on cloudy days, so you still need other power sources. At least as long as storage solutions are rare.

Which is why Tesla is now talking about Terafactories rather than just Gigafactories for battery production.

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