- To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas.
- There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.
This is either stupidly wrong or stupidly right.
Stupidly right, there's fairly new nuclear plants in operation that there's no real reason to shut down, so will probably be running in 2050.
Stupidly wrong, it seems to be placing some entirely unwarranted implication that without nuclear we'd be lost, when most serious analysis agree that renewables will be about 80% of energy production, which doesn't really leave much room for nuclear to take all the credit.
IEA's net zero roadmap:
> In the net zero pathway, global energy demand in 2050 is around 8% smaller than today, but it serves an economy more than twice as big and a population with 2 billion more people. More efficient use of energy, resource efficiency and behavioural changes combine to offset increases in demand for energy services as the world economy grows and access to energy is extended to all.
> Instead of fossil fuels, the energy sector is based largely on renewable energy. Two-thirds of total energy supply in 2050 is from wind, solar, bioenergy, geothermal and hydro energy. Solar becomes the largest source, accounting for one-fifth of energy supplies. Solar PV capacity increases 20-fold between now and 2050, and wind power 11-fold.
> Net zero means a huge decline in the use of fossil fuels. They fall from almost four-fifths of total energy supply today to slightly over one-fifth by 2050. Fossil fuels that remain in 2050 are used in goods where the carbon is embodied in the product such as plastics, in facilities fitted with CCUS, and in sectors where low-emissions technology options are scarce.
> Electricity accounts for almost 50% of total energy consumption in 2050. It plays a key role across all sectors – from transport and buildings to industry – and is essential to produce low-emissions fuels such as hydrogen. To achieve this, total electricity generation increases over two-and-a-half-times between today and 2050. At the same time, no additional new final investment decisions should be taken for new unabated coal plants, the least efficient coal plants are phased out by 2030, and the remaining coal plants still in use by 2040 are retrofitted. By 2050, almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for nearly 70%. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear.
Well, let's see them; and see how much they rely on yet to be proven industrially new storage tech (and without humongous mining activity)
Once battery storage doesn't pan out(and it won't currently for trucks), I see synth hydrocarbons picking up the transport slack. But that will require alot of energy..
>IEA's net zero roadmap...
I'd like to make a slightly vague rebuttal to your slightly vague rebuttal (ofc not your fault if the IEA doesn't explicitly say anything about nuclear, not blaming you). The IPCC has said that nuclear is necessary if we want to hit our climate goals.
> By 2050, almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for nearly 70%. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear.
So "no path to clean energy without solar" and "no path to clean energy without wind" are a bit more defensible, though in both cases, we'd just build more of the other one.
"no path to clean energy without hydro"? Maybe, again we'd just build more solar and wind.
So, if someone waves a wand and magically makes nuclear disappear (or just economically unattractive) then I think the our path is still fairly clear. No real need to take that path unless nuclear becomes much more relatively expensive, but it's definately an option, and possibly one we'll gladly take because it's cheaper.
In other words, IPCC counts nuclear as "renewable"?
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
[2] https://imgur.com/a/xvkZSRi
[3] https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1064529619951513600
Since we're going to stop doing that, by electrifying lots of things that currently burn fuel, we can achieve both goals at the same time.
The text on top of the graph you cite says this:
"Primary energy is calculated based on the 'substitution method' which takes account of the inefficiencies in fossil fuel production by converting non-fossil energy into the energy inputs required if they had the same conversion losses as fossil fuels."
It would be clearer to reduce the fossil fuel amounts by that percentage, since we currely don't use that energy, and in fact expend more energy trying to get rid of it as waste heat in many cases.
And, note the difference betwene energy and electricity, they say electricity will grow by nearly 3x ("To achieve this, total electricity generation increases over two-and-a-half-times between today and 2050").
You should look up recent graphs of renewable growth, with hydro seperated out, to see that your quick mock-up looks positively sedate by the recent standards of growth.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-renewables?...
global renewables including hydro. Solar and Wind are barely noticeable until 2000, when wind, then solar (in 2010) grow from nothing to octuple previous hydro within about a decade:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-solar?tab=c...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-wind?tab=ch...
They have an article about why this is occuring too: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
I didn't choose IEA to demonstrate because they are the only outlier that support my point. My whole claim is that even the boring, cautious industry analysts are saying broadly the same thing.
I think their assumptions about carbon capture are silly and more renewables will be built instead, but even their numbers make it clear than nuclear is a sideshow at best.
Conversion efficiency of Solar/EV/battery storage vs. extraction/refining/storage/burning just for transportation is like 10x better.
If EVs go with their curve (especially with petrol prices) we can project 80% are EVs on the road by 2040, that'd be a massive improvement in transport alone.
The source I provided (current to 2019) does show coal down a hair (Peaked at ~45000 TWh in 2013, hovering around 44,000 TWh in 2019), but oil continuing to increase (49700 to 53600 over same period) and natural gas increasing even more (33700 to 39300). Renewables all increasing (solar 356-1793, Wind 1628-3540, even hydro 9765-10,455).
The part that I think is unrealistic is dropping the fossil fuels to 20% and simultaneously restricting growth to negative 8%. Increased energy usage is desirable for anyone, so while decreasing renewable cost will certainly encourage wider adoption, I think a more realistic prediction would be at least 20-30% growth over the next 30 years (compared with ~75% growth over the last 30 years, ~20% over the last 10 years alone). Fingers crossed we can do this simultaneously with abandoning current fossil assets.
Well there's no opportunity for him to make inflated profits off a technology that he can't patent...
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bi...
He is personally responsible for "have you tried turning it off and on again?". Before MS, that was plenty of reason to demand a refund.
28 times that, ignoring the shutdowns (I don't actually know how long wind lasts, IIRC nuclear is "about 50-70 years" and PV is "about 30 years"), gives a total of: 5124 GW PV, 2800 GW wind, 218 GW nuclear.
But that's a lower bound for PV, as that's growing with what looks like an approximately exponential long-term trend (since 1992) of 36.5% per year.
While such a growth rate is physically possible to maintain for 28 years even without going into space, given that if we did make so much we wouldn't merely give everyone an American lifestyle but also be able to get the entire human population continuously flying[3], I'm assuming it will turn into a sigmoid before then.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...
[3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28105*1.365%5E%2828%2B...
Storage seems hard and expensive. We're going to need a whole lot of approaches:
- Wind taking a bigger share of renewables
- Whatever storage we can reasonably build, including some exotic stuff like power-to-gas-to-power.
- Nuclear filling in a little bit
- PV comically overbuilt and routinely throwing away a lot of power midday on most days.
- Still peaking off natural gas, a little bit.
> Renewables' capacity factor is much greater than 10%, in practice. If you need falsehoods to make your case, you have no case.
Residential/commercial PV -- e.g. rooftop solar-- very often is 10% or less.
If you want to only look at utility-scale fixed tilt, instead, recent deployments average near (not quite) 20%.
https://emp.lbl.gov/pv-capacity-factors
Nuclear's capacity factor is 93%. In which case, 183GW from utility-scale, fixed-tilt PV is like 183/.93 * .20 = 39GW. Which, admittedly, is outside of my range of 20-30, but also relies on generous assumptions (utility scale projects only-- which are only ~25% of US solar wattage).
If you consider only tracking, you can get all the way to 49GW, which still doesn't eliminate the point.
Perhaps the bigger point is looking at the eastern seaboard. Shipping power 2000 miles is not super practical for various reasons, and the capacity factors for a whole region of the US are pretty poor.
Nuclear should be part of the equation (it has it's own issues with wastewater) but if adding nuclear means not investing equally or more in solar/wind renewables, that's completely misguided.
I'm not sure how much is residential, but about 25% is utility-scale projects. The rest is stuff on commercial buildings and homes-- which have an average capacity factor around 12%.
> Nuclear should be part of the equation (it has it's own issues with wastewater) but if adding nuclear means not investing equally or more in solar/wind renewables, that's completely misguided.
I totally agree. I think our priorities should be, in order:
- Wind
- Pumped storage
- Improved utility interties
- Demand-side management
- PV
- Nuclear
- Battery storage
- Electrolyzers, etc
But even the lowest priority item should be aggressively pursued.
Your graph shows in total generated energy per year it's roughly even--- not in nameplate power. Because the capacity factor is worse, you need a lot more nameplate power at non-utility installations to get the same energy out.
> This is good, because utility scale solar is cheaper per unit output than small scale solar.
Yup. Small scale solar really needs to stop, other than for installations that have special requirements (e.g. need for power backup / diversity).
Better that production go to installations that have good capacity factors than to your roof.
It's also time to reconsider how good an idea net metering at retail electrical prices is. Grandfather existing customers, but ... sure looks like we need a grid, so maybe only buy power from new end customers at wholesale rates (this further incents storage!)
China has a project to send it 8000 miles from solar farms they are building in Chile, for use during nighttime in China.
DC interconnect makes it more practical, and it's better than storage, but losses and costs accumulate.
> China has a project to send it 8000 miles from solar farms they are building in Chile
Chile has proposed a project to do just that. It is in exceptionally early conceptual planning stages-- but look at you acting like it's a fait accompli!
I doubt it will end up built, but that will not be because it is impractical. It will be because local generation and storage will turn out to be cheaper and less vulnerable to geopolitical upset.
Almost all current utility storage is gravity. That probably won't change.
I definitely don't see any other gravity batteries being useful on this scale.
[0] specifically I suggested that there was a lot of room for a lot of additional pumped hydro — I don't mean my more recent claim, which is merely that existing pumped hydro is cool
People like to insist pumped hydro is badly limited by geography, but hills are very common, and need not be nearby: transmission lines work very well. Transmission losses matter little when top-line generation has zero opex and minimal capex. You just build a little more of it.
Chile proposes it, hoping that Asia invests a very large amount of money into Chile to make it happen. Thus far, this latter bit has not happened.
https://www.gob.cl/en/news/president-pinera-presents-proyect...
Any evidence it has progressed past the Chile-showing-other-countries-Slideware-phase?
You tend to uncritically read the most positive, tentative stuff about PV/storage and accept it as absolute fact.
Nukes will shortly be mothballed, to perhaps be fired up once in a while in response to spiking demand.
It doesn't lead to productive conversation.
From what I've seen, the cheapest solution is a few square meters' cross section of HVDC encircling the planet, but that would almost certainly take a big increase in global metal mining even on these time scales and even when ignoring the political issues.
Note non-utility scale solar is 75% of the installed watts, too-- so you have a huge share of it pulling towards that 10-12% number.
Storage cost being excessive means it's early adoption timeframe. As the need for it becomes clear options will open up.
PV throwing off excess during peak is fine even if we don't have storage, because it means PV is adequate for a bigger fraction of the morning and evening (and in turn, the needs for storage become a little less because of the over-provisioning of production).
Batteries will only ever be a tiny fraction of storage.
What business have they gotten into? Thermal storage of grid energy with a > 50% round trip efficiency. It heats sand with a compact resistive heater, stores the sand in insulated silos, and recovers the energy by a Brayton cycle system with a really interesting and compact fluidized bed heat exchanger. Storage capacity is sized for 100 hours of operation. Not just overnight, but four days.
https://www.babcock.com/home/about/corporate/news/babcock-wi...
Westinghouse is also doing thermal grid storage now. Pumped TES can have a round trip efficiency > 60%.
https://www.energy-storage.news/nuclear-power-company-westin...