US transition to clean energy is happening faster than you think, reporter says | Hacker News Reader

US transition to clean energy is happening faster than you think, reporter says

npr.org

41 pointstoomuchtodo74 comments

The source of power is one thing but at the consuming end I just cannot wait for at least 50% of cars to be electric, hope I live long enough to see it.

It is just so disgusting out there on the roads for pedestrians and cyclists.

Clean air from power sources is good, but at the local level is critical.

> I just cannot wait for at least 50% of cars to be electric, hope I live long enough to see it.

> It is just so disgusting out there on the roads for pedestrians and cyclists.

I would caution against getting too excited. "Non-exhaust emissions, which include tire, brake and road surface wear, account for 90% of all particulate emissions from vehicles." [1]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/16/world/tyre-collective-micropl...

What about non-particulate emissions?

Sorry, what do you mean by non-particulate emissions? Emissions that... aren't particles? Like broken glass from car windows?

Things like ozone and carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide.

Oh I see. But this is about non-exhaust emissions... does e.g. rubber rolling on the road generate gases like carbon monoxide? I feel like I'm missing something.

I think 20after4 forgot we were talking about electric vehicles...? Or more charitably, they're talking about the supply chain? Unsure as well.

At least for me, >90% of the annoyance caused by motorized vehicles is due to their exhausts.

In my old city there was a spot where cyclists used to use the bus lane, combined with a stop. I would often have to wait behind the bus. Each time the bus started, it caused a bunch of smelly exhausts that I would breathe in directly. Absolutely horrible smell and also not a great feeling. The city then made a test with electric buses, and the bad smell was gone.

Buses are the second worst only after mopeds, which have tiny motors so can't efficiently burn the gases. They are not just noisy but also leave a wake of horrible smell.

If I recall, that's kind of deceptive. Particulate emissions from tires are much larger particles that fall out of the air much more rapidly and aren't nearly as linked to bad health compared to combustion products.

I guess I'm confused what specifically they were finding disgusting on the road. I thought they meant smog, which is mostly particulate matter?

The concerning bits are mostly “Ground-level ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide” which are all gases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smog

Particulate matter from tires is more concerning if you live next to a major highway. However in cities it’s almost all combustion byproducts with significantly lower tire ware due to low speeds + lots of idling at stoplights. Which is why catalytic converters made such a huge impact.

I get that those are concerning, but "disgusting for pedestrians and cyclists"? O3, SO2, and CO are all invisible, and even SO2 is not something people see at a close distance AFAIK. Moreover I don't understand how they would be noticeably different for drivers vs. pedestrians/cyclists. Only the particulate emissions (smoke etc.) are things that would seem noticeably different, no?

Exercise means significantly faster breathing and thus significantly more exposure per minute. Road cyclists can and should use a mask which helps vs particulates, but they can’t easily avoid these gasses.

Also, while most cars have some air filtration for the cabin the quality of that filtration can vary quite a bit. It can be well worth an aftermarket upgrade.

> ... particles that fall out of the air much more rapidly and aren't nearly as linked to bad health ...

... unless you eat seafood[0]?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37726539

There's is also pulling out an actual source rather than hand waving conjecture based on random opinion pieces.

https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehic...

Gasoline cars 2020: Exhaust 0.005 g/mile. Brakes 0.003 g/mile, tires 0.001 g/mile.

So exhaust + brakes produce 8 times as much PM2.5 as tires. So the argument but 'but but EV's are heavier and produce more PM2.5 than gasoline cars' doesn't cut it.

Also I've seen references that show natural gas heating isn't nearly as clean as portrayed.

Because exhaust emissions are non particulate. That’s like saying in this bag with 200 blue balls and 10 red balls, 90% of the red balls are red.

Has anyone attempted to regulate this? Seems like the kind of thing that maybe no one has even bothered trying to improve.

Tires would be very very different if they weren’t allowed to generate particles.

Yes exactly and I’m wondering if that path has been explored.

Would be a great federal challenge program. We might accidentally make tires that last forever.

Technically we regulate emissions, yet we have people rolling coal; technically you have to drive safely and not speed and yield to pedestrians and yet we have people getting killed on our roads daily. It’s pretty hard to keep the auto industry in check when we’re all so brainwashed in the US (and because of our poor urban planning)

This is not like that though. Granular citizen behavior is hard to regulate. Product aspects are easy to regulate.

Are there many cars driving around without airbags because regulation is hard? No, not really.

There is no brake dust from EVs, they use regen to recapture energy.

That stuff is mostly not airborne and much heavier than the sooth that coats buildings and lungs equally. And of course the toxic fumes that you breath. If you have small kids, the toxicity at knee level is a lot higher if you are near a busy road.

If you want a sneak preview of the future, visit Oslo. Traffic is mostly clean and quiet there.

I'm curious, why is this the goal rather than something like a decreased dependance on automobiles?

Any concerns that population growth may mean that a lifetime from now we have 50% electric vehicles but still a higher total number of ICE vehicles than we have today?

The rate of population growth would have to make up for more than the EV conversion rate for this to happen.i highly doubt it can be reached, given the declining birth rate .

Electric cars won't make things easier for pedestrians and cyclists. You are really asking for fewer cars.

The world has already exceeded 30% of electricity from renewables.

The hold-outs will be FF and industrial processes.

Decarbonization and net negative emissions are achievable when corporate interests don't have undue influence to manipulate public policy.

FF?

Presumably fossil fuels

Flexible fuel?

Source?

I don't think 30% of the world electricity comes from solar and wind.

How much from hydro-electric dams? There are a lot of them in Canada. The Canadian province of Quebec is almost entirely powered by them.

It could be true.

Because if it were obviously untrue the headline would have read:

Is the US transitioning to clean energy faster than we thought?

The question is of course who the royal we is in such headlines. There are predictions such as provided by the IEA, which are notable for being repeatedly proven way too conservative (i.e. wrong) over the years.

Then there are the usual skeptics, arm chair experts, etc. who don't notice any changes happening until they have happened. And then there are the various lobbies and special interest groups who deliberately downplay trends they know of in order to protect their legacy businesses. E.g. selling petrol to skeptical/indifferent ice car owners. Every month they can postpone those people buying evs is another month where they keep on buying fuel. There is a lot of misinformation being spread around.

So, asking some critical questions about which of those groups the royal we refers to is a good idea.

I think the big picture that not a lot of people see yet is that a lot of the clean energy trends have a self re-enforcing effect. For example, you get a lot of negativity about range anxiety when it comes to EVs (a typical argument that seems popular with EV skeptics). But those very same people are not yet talking about the range anxiety for petrol cars they should start worrying about soon. One reason is that that doesn't serve their argument. But another reason could be that they simply don't realize it yet.

Either way, double digit percentages of EVs on the road means a double digits decline in demand for fuel. Logical result: a lot of petrol stations will go out of business and pretty soon too. Especially in remote places where demand was low to begin with. Especially petrol stations already operating on very thin margins will start dropping like flies pretty soon. About 20-30% by the end of this decade. And an absolute massacre in the following decade. That's just an inevitable result of what happens when you remove >50% of the demand for petrol and diesel from the market.

This will drive reluctant ice car drivers to buy EVs a lot sooner than they currently think. Especially in areas where they'd have reasons to be range anxious. Because those are going to the first places where this starts happening. If your local petrol station goes out of business and you now have to drive (and pay for that fuel) tens of miles to fill up, that's going to result in some obvious decision making and drive up demand for EVs further.

Another effect is that all those nice gas plants that countries have been building that have been designed to run most cost effectively when operating 24/7 are being pushed into peaker plant role where they are a lot less lucrative to operate. The simple reality is that in a market with cheap renewables, selling expensive gas generated electricity at cost price is neither feasible nor profitable. So, effectively, a lot of investments in gas plants are becoming problematic financially. The more renewables come online, the longer the periods become that those gas plants are simply redundant and not generating any revenue.

Effects like this lead to very rational decisions to invest more in renewables and less in fossil fuel based solutions. And to shift existing investments before they become completely worthless. The more that happens, the more it happens, and the cheaper it gets. What that means is that a lot of companies that are not adapting to this are heading for a problematic future a lot sooner than they currently think. And a lot of money is moving away from such companies.

> You know, there are companies now that will basically install the panels with no upfront cost and then sort of lease it for you and defray that cost by selling electricity. So it's really just been an explosion of business models.

Ah yes, nothing like the explosion of predatory business models to bring a tear of joy to my capitalist heart.

> They're not always the same types of jobs. So those sorts of changes can be quite wrenching for workers.

“Quite wrenching” indeed. What an ivory tower asshole.

> What an ivory tower asshole

The Pacific Islanders watching their countries sink into the waves, or Africans or Asians facing the prospect of drought and famine may have a different idea of who the "ivory tower assholes" are. Compared to what their future holds, a little career change is nothing.

Sounds like we agree.

>Ah yes, nothing like the explosion of predatory business models to bring a tear of joy to my capitalist heart.

How is it predatory? Are you just against any sort of financing because "capitalists" are making money?

There are a bunch of things wrong with having someone else own the solar on your roof. Read the contracts, they are not particularly fair to the home owner.

It's not financing. You'll never own those panels. You now have a permanent, physical relationship with the stupid solar company. Business models like that normalize two things:

1. Everything should be absurdly, suspiciously cheap or even free.

2. You don't own things you buy, you just own the right to use them according to your lengthy legal agreement with the real owner.

These have become very popular ideas! So popular, in fact, that if you object you're stuck paying for specialty items that are dramatically more expensive than they would be if they could be produced at scale.

The unfortunate truth about living in a big economy is that everybody merely exercising their free choice really does affect everybody else. So we reserve the right to talk shit about annoying business models, in the hopes that we will make them at least a little bit less cool and less popular so the competitors with "purer" models (like, "build a thing people want and trade full ownership of that thing for money") have more of a chance to scale up.

> You'll never own those panels.

There’s actually one scenario where you do — the panels reach end of life right around the time the lease is up. So you are now the proud owner of a removal and disposal liability that you’re going to want to handle before you sell the house.

And those sort typically don't include batteries or an ATS with the ability to generate during a grid outage. If a homeowner wanted a usable solar installation aligned with their interests, it's unlikely to happen without investing the capital to do so.

So-called "free choice" coming from a reckless, hyper-individualist outlook imposing on others are externalities. This is where government must step in and mediate potential disputes between the boundaries of positive and negative rights of multiple parties.

Leasing is not risk free. These programs are generally structured to extract maximum value for the leasing company while minimizing risk. They are not designed to provide some kind of equitable win-win for the homeowner, though obviously the marketing copy doesn’t reflect that.

I have a free couch to lease to you for only $15 a month.

That's not really a good analogy because couches can't generate revenue.

That's why it's discounted from $25! Unless you use it in a coffee shop, in which case paragraph 18 of the lease applies and the cost is $25 plus cleaning fees for the cleaning company of my choice.

As an aside, this is just written in jest. I don't feel strongly about a debatable position against your position or something. You're welcome to continue explaining your point as you have and I am open mindedly considering what you're saying. You bring up a good point about the revenue generation.

I like solar, but there are a lot of slimy salesmen. I've seen installs that were heavily shaded to the point that they certainly couldn't be profitable. They weren't new and just waiting on tree trimming either.

There are good companies, but the most effective salesmen aren't necessarily the most honest.

I can’t spell out specifics, but as I understand it, in California if a solar install isn’t working efficiently or bringing in the savings that it’s supposed to, it’s on the installer to make it right.

And there’s some kind of third party incentive on this as I’ve had a couple of different folks ding my door asking if the panels are doing their job.

The last person mentioned about getting my address registered as a happy consumer, and since then the folks have stopped coming to ask about it.

Oh, there are definitely things that can help a consumer avoid the slimiest ones. For example, if you get a loan, they will often be contractually obligated to the lender to meet their production targets. You can also ask for a production guarantee.

But not all states force them to do that, and salesmen are paid on commission.

> …reducing methane is the fastest strategy available to reduce warming…

Source: https://www.state.gov/dipnote-u-s-department-of-state-offici...

I commute into Chicago for work and always see endless tankers in Buffett's BNSF petroleum pipeline and more coal cars than I can count. Seems like it's going to take a lot of "dirty" energy to make that clean energy. Economic and quality of life consequences be damned.

We have the Metra electric rail from Millennium station that goes south to University Park. I assume it's possible to electrify the other rails but I figure it's because they're shared with freight that it's harder to swing.

A lot of coal powers that line. I work in a building right next to that Metra station and have the occasion to take that ride down to Flossmoor rather frequently. Nice ride with a lot of post-apocalyptic scenery along the way. Hyde Park used to be a breath of fresh air when I was going to school there in the 80's, but not anymore.

your choices are either keep using dirty energy, or phase it out over the next 20 to 30 years. honestly, you will not have a choice as marginal demand will force weird dynamics on supply and consequently prices

Hydrogen, concentrated solar, petroleum or "something else". Everything else is an ecological and aesthetic disaster.

Once the world runs on electricity, it’s future proof. It’s the a matter of gradually switching over to 100% renewable.

"Once the world runs on electricity, it’s future proof".

Hmm, ok, yeah, electricity is future proof. I agree. Buuuut what's making the electricity with enough density to guarantee your quality of life?

The entire world is in the process of building out a lot of renewable energy. China and India are in the process of building dozens of nuclear plants right now.

I am very worried that the article is true.

Like everyone, I want clean energy. I am fortunate enough to be able to afford an EV (I’m on my third Tesla; happy owner since 2015).

BUT I am extremely concerned that we are destroying the resilience of our energy grid. Case in point was the Texas cold snap the other year.

The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine and hailstorms and tornadoes happen.

I’m extremely concerned that situations like occurred in Texas, and brownouts like have become common in California, are going to become the rule rather than the exception.

It’s not just about creature comfort. People tend to die in cold spells when heat is not available. And if we’re all driving electric but there is no charging available, then food can’t get to stores, and people can’t get to stores to buy food, and DoorDash cannot bring food to you, and you go hungry.

The bottom line is that you cannot replace fossil fuel energy with green energy unless you have truly massive power storage, which we don’t. You can ADD green energy to fossil fuel without reducing resilience, until you start turning off the fossil fuel plants. Plus fossil fuel plant generation capacity is relatively inelastic; you have to plan ahead for capacity increases (eg increase deliveries of fossil fuel, which means increasing production of fossil fuel, etc.). You can’t just “turn on” a coal plant when it gets cold overnight or you have a week of rain or a hailstorm takes out a solar farm.

Wasn't the Texas disaster caused by perverse incentives and not grid composition?

> I’m extremely concerned that situations like occurred in Texas, and brownouts like have become common in California, are going to become the rule rather than the exception.

That connection is tenuous at best. Think about it, CA struggles the most on the hottest days of summer. Those aren't days that lack sun.

They have made some dumb choices, but a lot of the blame on renewables is misguided.

I think you’re blaming the wrong things. Climate change is stressing all electrical grids, but it’s obviously worse in Texas where there are no interconnections to the rest of the US. Fossil fuel plants were not resilient in the face of the Texas cold, while solar was. If they had interconnections to another grid, well, it was sunny in California at the time.

Storage is a highly tractable problem, and people are making money in energy arbitrage today.

This false narrative must die. There will be lots of energy storage coming online very soon, at zero cost to the grid. All the EVs are sitting idle 23 hours/day. They can store energy when it is negative and car owners can get paid for it[1]. They will supply energy back to the grid when needed -- replacing natural gas peaker plants and get paid for it[2].

The grid will evolve into best grid we can have, distributed, decentralized and resilient.

This fearmongering of renewables is like let us stick with circuit switched networks, because we don't understand packet switched networks. Just like the underlying telecom infrastructure changed to packet-switched networks, this change is inevitable, clean, and profitable to all car owners.

[1] Energy prices go negative 200 million times/year and growing: https://archive.ph/nFsOk [2] Tesla Electric customers report making as much as $150 a day: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo...

Bullshit.

EVs do not stay plugged in all the time. So the idea that they will be free capacity is a pipe dream. But let’s say that they do. My EV has a 100kwh battery (when brand new). The average household power usage in Florida where I live is 1500kwh/month, or 50kwh/day (obviously few people charging EVs). So assuming 100% efficiency, and assuming the pessimistic California brownout length of 2 hours (average is 1-2 hours), my EV could power 24 homes during one brownout before being fully discharged. Less than one percent of homeowners own EVs, and only about a quarter percent of renters, so we’re looking at having well less than a quarter of the power we need just for residences, assuming every EV was plugged in. Add in commercial power usage and the fact that people will still want to get around and you’ll find that EVs are not a viable power storage system. And they couldn’t have helped in TX where the outage was up to 17 days in some areas.

You keep pushing a false narrative of renewables failing in TX.

Those failures are fossil fuel failures.

More than half of ERCOT’s winter generating capacity, largely powered by natural gas, was offline due to the storm, an estimated 45 gigawatts, according to Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlins...

Read my post. I never said that renewables caused the TX incident. I pointed out that outages happen, and that outages are more predictable and likely in the case of renewables.

Oddly, the fact that fossil fuel sources were a precipitating cause in TX bolsters my claim, because removal of those sources from the grid supply could not be offset by renewables (some of which were also offline).

>Plus fossil fuel plant generation capacity is relatively inelastic; you have to plan ahead for capacity increases (eg increase deliveries of fossil fuel, which means increasing production of fossil fuel, etc.). You can’t just “turn on” a coal plant when it gets cold overnight or you have a week of rain or a hailstorm takes out a solar farm.

Thats only true for coal. Gas plants can be very flexible.

Capacity lost during winter storm Uri was due to power infrastructure that wasn't sufficiently winterized, and that shortfall was broad across the energy mix.

Most of the unexpected capacity offline was actually natgas. This is unambiguous in even an analysis commissioned by the Texas Oil and Gas Association: https://docs.txoga.org/files/2644-4-22-21-enverus_txoga_wint...

Page/slide 21 is particularly instructive on this point. If you believe anything else, you need to take a pretty critical look at whoever's been disinforming you on this topic and why.

Coal and gas unburnt because of solar and wind generation is still energy stored. The rate at which you consume/burn it is less constant and if renewables deliver eg. 30% of power on average over a year, you need 30% less burnable stuff, which is a win.

No need for brownouts, especially in winter when solar is low already and fossil plants would already take most of the load.

The Texas grid has been buckling because of extreme weather events and rapidly increasing load. Texas broke electricity demand records 11 times last summer [2022] and 9 times this summer.

The rapid deployment of renewables and grid-scale batteries is saving the Texas grid from brownouts and blackouts.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/texas-power-use-hits-record...

Grid-scale batteries have also been saving California from blackouts. Back in 2020, the California grid wasn't able to handle the peak demand of 46.8 GW during a heat wave and resulted in blackouts. But in 2022, thanks to the rapid deployment of several GW of additional batteries, California weathered a peak of 51.4 GW without issue.

https://www.icf.com/insights/energy/battery-energy-storage-b...

GW hours of batteries you mean?

California's utility batteries can supply 5GW for a few hours. In the morning today they were charging at about 2.8GW and then early evening output peaked at 3.5GW.

They're basically competing with natural gas peaking plants. You could argue they're buying natural gas power in the morning for cheap and selling it in the early evening when it's expensive.

Oh okay. I’m curious what the capacity is.

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