What does the future look like when we have 10 times the efficency on energy use? This is the right question/goal.
Denemark (IIRC) has sometimes reached the 100% solar/wind coverage, sure in a sunny day and low demand situation, but 10 years ago this was unthinkable. This appear the true way of prosperity, not the growt of availability/consumption.
No. I have seen the effects of this "goal" at scale in my personal life. Semi-non-effective HVAC systems that I now have to run 24/7/365, LED lights with weird flicker that perpetually antagonize me everywhere, vehicles with obnoxious start/stop mechanisms that absolutely induce premature wear (causing much more serious waste than otherwise). Oh yeah - my washing machine doesn't really fill up with water all the way, so I run FOUR cycles just to make sure everything is properly rinsed. This one isn't even directly about energy (someone was trying to save water), but it consumes more energy as a consequence. Is this what the environmentalists were going for with the fake "deep fill" selector knob on my ultra-high "efficiency" machine?
The people pushing "efficiency at any cost" are either completely blind to the idea of 2nd order+ consequences or are evil/anti-human. I cannot fathom a different set of options. Do you realize that you have to live on this damn planet with all these side-effects too?
I am completely over it. Let's figure out how to make energy carbon free and infinite. Let's stop fucking over the user experience in every possible way just so we can feel like we are doing something to "help".
Moen already has a "smart" shower.
Energy efficiency improvements of that magnitude don’t exist. In most industries, getting a 10% efficiency improvement would be groundbreaking. These are limits dictated by physics.
If your measure of efficiency of photosynthesis is how much sunlight is turned into chemical energy, its in the low single digit percentages. C4 photosynthesis is something like ~4% efficient, C3 is lower still.
It's closer to 2% efficient:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency#Plan...
We can use it for alot of useful stuff. For example to:
- Recycle waste products. Most (not all) things are recyclable you just need the energy.
- Grow food vertically so more land can be nature.
- Siphon greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere.
- Desalinate Water
The result is that don’t need seasonal storage only daily storage. It is likely better to build more capacity than long-term storage. Although, generated fuels like hydrogen might work well for long-term storage.