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Comment by pstrateman | Hacker News Reader

I really don't see how western countries reducing CO2 production is going to have a net effect globally.

Are we really naïve enough to think that African and Asian countries won't just replace our consumption of fossil fuels?

Pretty sure none of these countries have emissions targets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_air_pollu...

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What a deaf way of thinking imho.

We should all strive to do what we can, regardless of what others do.

Setting an example and making investments eventually trickles down abroad with technologies being cheaper, with foreign companies being pushed by genuine or PR reasons to make investments on being greener in those countries etc.

The idea that foreign countries will be influenced or pushed by Western countries "setting a good example" into making investments that would benefit their countries from an environmental standpoint is absurd. Do you really think that Chad, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. (who are all at the top of that list for countries with the worst air pollution) give a damn about their air quality? Or PR reasons for bettering their countries? Not even slightly. The leaders of those countries couldn't care less about "their people" because their goal is to keep them poor, uneducated and scared so they can stay rich and in power. This is painfully obvious and pretending it's not real won't help any advancements.

You're on your own mission so reasoning with you seems pointless.

You made up your mind and didn't even bother checking.

But I'll leave you with that. Solar gives 14'000 Iraqis job nowadays and villages fully solar powered are more and more common [1].

Chad too, which you mention, has multiple solar projects[2].

None of this would've happened without the rest of the world making important investments and making the technology cheap.

Setting examples and doing the right thing is morally important regardless of what others do. That still stands. And as an European I much hope for cleaner air, less smog, less gas heaters, etc.

It doesn't make sense to go the other way and have tens of thousands die each year because "it's cheaper if we use fossils".

As a society we have to move forwards and stop thinking it's all about the individual and economical stats.

Economical stats go up and we're as miserable and lonely and mentally unstable as we've ever been. We may at least leave a slightly cleaner and healthier world.

[1]https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231102-iraq-inches-t...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27jermaya_Solar_Power_Stat...

>And as an European I much hope for cleaner air, less smog, less gas heaters, etc.

And everyone will be poorer. It's already happening in Europe. Coming from the tech world you probably don't notice because you are relatively wealthy. But your neighbors might.

And we have much bigger moral issues than energy...

The entire country of Portugal runs on renewables for extended time, with renewables being 60% of their energy mix.

I don't think they are any poorer because of that.

You need solid numbers and facts.

Don't forget Europe imports fossils at a high price and it makes us weak and dependent on geopolitics (see Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects on our bills).

I'd hardly call it a 'mission' to truthfully say that third world countries are struggling with much bigger issues than emissions...and that they are also the worst offenders when it comes to pollution.

These countries may have some small successful projects, but as a whole, most of their citizens are burning whatever they can get their hands on to stay alive, and living in garbage piles. They're not doing higher-level thinking about large-scale green energy projects because they're still in basic human survival mode, and they're being kept there by oppressive dictators and regimes.

It is a crutch of Western society, and a saccharine statement of moral superiority, that we feel we must make the world a better place for everyone. We should demand the same effort from every other country on the planet.

If we keep hand-holding these countries, giving them access to cheaper infrastructure and technology while turning a blind eye to their subversion of Western society, their oppressive regimes and refusing to hold them accountable for their impact on the planet, then we will condemn them to the pitiful state they're in by assuming they can't do any better - while we prostrate ourselves doing everything we possibly can, and yet never reaching the goals we set.

Per capita western countries by far lead pollution in the world.

Even if you ignore per capita, just North America/Europe/Japan/Australia/NZ combined it represents 40% of pollution in the world, despite, combined, not even being 20% of the population.

Setting an example is a minor point - but that second bit "making technologies cheaper" that's where you'll really find compelling reasons for non-western nations to switch. If the world is producing so many tons to solar cells so that western nations can convert over and the demand starts to slow as their conversion processes near their end then those production lines can find new customers.

>We should all strive to do what we can, regardless of what others do

We will go broke trying to slash emissions while the rest of the world uses cheap energy to fuel their economic growth. The days of the US being a positive example of, well, anything are rapidly diminishing.

Looking at the data, Africa and Asia have been steadily increasing their renewables and currently have higher percentage than the US, though the US are catching up very fast thanks to the IRA

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...

Literally exactly what I'm predicting will happen is what's happening today.

North American and European CO2 emissions are decreasing, but world wide emissions are constant. The rest of the world doesn't care, we're only bankrupting ourselves in a futile struggle.

If you really want to reduce atmospheric CO2 the only solution is massive sequestration or military force to stop the third world from burning fossil fuels.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?time=1941..latest&f...

Here's a better link:

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?time=1941..latest&f...

Or like, affordable renewables and reforestation. Also we need to cool the oceans ASAP so they can recover their carbon sequestration capacity. Maybe we could use the negative spot price of renewables to cool the coastal waters as a form of geo engineering.

Reforestation is a scam, the total biomass of all plants on earth is about 450 billion tons.[1] Global CO2 emissions are on the order of 55 billion tons a year. The only way reforestation is going to matter is if we cut down all the trees globally and regrow them completely every 10 years, which uh seems unlikely.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6016768/

Edit: that being said I do like forests, not because of the CO2 reduction, but because they're nice places.

Reforestation does not need to account for 100% of emissions in order to be considered “not a scam”

The graph show emissions going down in Africa, slow but steady. In fact they are going down everywhere (even globally) except for Asia. China right now is growing its coal stations alongside renewables capacity as ‘peakers’, but it doesn’t have as much access to sunlight as do much of the rest of the developing world. As it’s renewable capacity grows it will need its peakers less. India is scaling up renewables rapidly too, and will have a similar short term bump as its emerging middle class consume per capita something closer to what the west already does. The main issue may be island nations that don’t have the land for solar and will have to rely on more expensive options for renewable energy

Really? China doesn't have as much access to the sun.

That's an absurd cope.

Compared to Africa or equatorial nations in Asia. But it’s not cope, because China is building plenty of solar. 216 GW last year alone according to a cursory googling

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol....

Not much gets through the smog.

The smog is in the cities. It does not cover the entire country.

Indeed. While this requires them to do more with long distance power transmission, they are, in fact, in the process of doing more with long distance power transmission.

In the meantime, they're building more of everything else, too.

So… a mixed bag, really. There's good stuff and bad there, on the energy front.

Someone should tell those silly Chinese to look out the window and check if they actually have access to the sun before installing solar panels, because they are installing them at every increasing rates: https://www.statista.com/statistics/673444/china-solar-power... /s

The graph showing emissions decreasing in Africa is from the consumption of energy decreasing, not from more solar/wind or something.

Simply put they're getting poorer and using fewer resources as a result.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...

> The graph showing emissions decreasing in Africa is from the consumption of energy decreasing

Africa is steadily increasing its energy consumption actually

https://www.statista.com/statistics/265590/primary-energy-co....

> Simply put they're getting poorer and using fewer resources as a result.

Or energy efficiency is also now cost effective. LEDs are the laziest and most obvious example that come to mind. But even any appliance you buy today has less power consumption due to inexorable march of technological progress.

When people in richer countries buy a lot of solar panels and heat pumps and whatnot, that brings down the manufacturing cost of these items, so that they also become the rational choice in poorer countries.

Once everyone in America started driving cars, that didn't drive a resurgence in the use of horses for transportation in Africa.

I’d argue that the rich nations have an obligation to find a way to structure a less carbon intensive economy. The global south can benefit from the R&D that the west does. It’s not a forgone conclusion that the only way to grow is by burning fossil fuels, but the global south will certainly go that way if there is no known alternative.

> CO2 production ... African

This is so hypocritical it is breathtaking! Tiny UK alone has, historically, produced more CO2 that all of Africa has done so far!

Furthermore, USA & West perceives themselves to be leaders in technology and innovation. Cleantech was a perfect opportunity to sell world-leading products to the rest of the world, and make bank. Instead we dithered and delayed, missed the opportunity, and now African leaders are making fun of us, "Why do you come to our country only to complain about China? That's all we hear from you!'

Renewable production is still rapidly increasing, and prices falling. At some point, you saturate the most profitable markets relative to production, and get a race to the bottom.

Worse off nations should benefit from the glut of cheaper panels from companies fighting to stay afloat, that are far cheaper than continuing to buy oil.

Let’s just hope China doesn’t collapse then. We need to produce more panels in more places, however high startup and supply chain setup costs with falling market prices means it’s leading to only established players or national strategic investing.

If renewables are cheaper, then yes.

If the centralized power grid is poor quality (think South Africa) or there is poor quality central government, yes.

If we cant make renewables cheap in western countries, how is it possible they'll be cheap in poor countries?

The premise is false. Renewables are the cheapest form of new energy, which is why they're also the dominant form of new energy and why the targets are being met ahead of schedule.

Renewables are absolutely not the cheapest form of new energy.

Show me a solar + batteries facility that operates 24x365 at sub 0.05 USD/kWh and I'll concede they're cheaper, but you can't because no such facility exists.

> 24x365 at sub 0.05 USD/kWh

https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...

If you average the low and high estimate, onshore wind is almost exactly 50USD/MWh, and nothing else is that cheap.

(Yes, you said batteries and 24×365. But the "24×365 capable" fossil sources are nowhere near 50USD/MWh either. And power consumption is not flat across days, the week, and seasons. Particularly solar can be predicted and worked with in adjusting load to match availability.)

Natural gas primary power plants are at or below $50/MWh 24x365.

Solar and wind with batteries are in the range of $200-500/MWh.

Nice try moving the goal posts though.

First, you already moved the goal posts given how many poor countries (which you were talking about in the comment I responded to) do not have 24/365 electricity. Also: where does the magic number of 0.05 USD/kWh come from? That number is lower than the LCOE for all the items on this graph except wind which is almost exactly that number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_costs_in_doll...

Second, natural gas plants don't operate 24x365; the figures I see say 27%(!) to 71%. Even nuclear varies between low 70s and low 80s percentages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor

Third, even if batteries were as expensive as you think, PV is cheaper than the running cost of a fossil fuel plant, so all the poor countries would still want to install them even if they also used natural gas at night, and that's still a win-win over using natural gas 24/7.

Fourth, given I can't use the statista.com link without an account:

> Today the LCOE of hybrid PV-battery systems ranges from 5.24 to 19.72 €Cent /kWh. This wide cost range is due to the large price difference of the various battery systems.

- https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-o...

Which is US$ 56/MWh to US$ 197.2/MWh at current exchange rates.

For comparison, €500/MWh would be the cost of building a storage system from the kinds of battery packs supermarkets around here sell for use in off-grid caravans, and then assuming they last exactly 1000 cycles before being discarded entirely.

> Second, natural gas plants don't operate 24x365; the figures I see say 27%(!) to 71%. Even nuclear varies between low 70s and low 80s percentages:

This is because gas plants are commonly used as peaking power plants because they can respond to load changes very quickly; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant "Peaker plants are generally gas turbines or gas engines that burn natural gas. A few burn biogas or petroleum-derived liquids, […]"

A nuclear power plant is the diametral opposite, it's slow as a behemoth to change output power — it's essentially required to run at those high capacity factors.

(That said, gas power plants designed and built as peaker plants may not in fact even be able to run 24×365 since they're not engineered for that; planning for frequent idle or shutdown cycles certainly eases some constraints.)

Either way discussing a "$50/MWh 24x365" requirement is not even wrong, just 無.

I provided a source, you didn't. Ball is in your court.

Also, https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april... page 5. Onshore wind plus storage is $42 … $114. Combined cycle gas is $39 … $101, with a midpoint at $62 with "black" gas and fully depreciated, i.e. powerplant costs not included.

Now you can provide two sources to pull even.

No household can buy electricity at USD$0.05. If the generators are selling it at USD$0.05, the households are buying it at maybe USD$0.15.

In Australia I can right now install a home solar battery system that supplies power at about USD$0.13 when amortised over 10 years. I hear the USA isn't efficient at solar installations as Australia, but you will get there.

Well, even if the former were true, the answer is that capital isn’t easy to come by in poor countries so distributed generation starts coming out ahead.

But the former isn’t true. Renewables are really cheap.

Lot of R&D, tech companies operate out of west. Improving tech in the west reduces the cost for the entire world.

That doesn't explain how you expect to keep people in extreme poverty from burning fossil fuels to get out of that poverty.

By making the alternative cheaper.

Believe it or not, fossil fuels are cheap. And as demand decreases in the West, they will become even cheaper for developing nations.

Believe it or not, PV is cheaper. So is wind.

They are in extreme poverty because they can’t afford the fossil fuel to burn for economic development. As they develop, they might pick renewable because its cost is falling to the point it might become cheaper than burning fuel, at least for certain use cases.

You don’t. You help them electrify with renewables as much as possible. And the car they will buy will be more efficient and burn cleaner than the car the West developed with. And the stove they will use will be more efficient. Until it becomes electric.

And the fridge will not use freon etc…

I think there are some stories about how developing nations didn’t have to setup copper wiring all over the back country for the rural development of communication network and could just set up using cellular towers. Sometime using 10 or 15 year old tech is greener than what the west was doing at the same economic development point.

> Pretty sure none of these countries have emissions targets

That's wrong. I'm not sure why I'm replying as truth seems be to first casualty in culture wars, but the only two that matter in that list are China and India due to their population.

China: President Xi announced that China would reach its carbon emissions peak before 2030 and become “carbon neutral” before 2060. https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/the-carbon-brief-profile...

India: Reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by at least 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. Achieve the target of net zero by 2070. https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/assessing...

Most countries have announced feel good emissions targets. It's a great way to generate political feel good's, and talk is cheap.

China installed more solar panels last year than the U.S. has in total.

500GW end of 2023. 1TW in 3 years is their current goal.

Not all countries in Africa are dirty polluters (like South Africa). Kenya or Congo are basically all renewable

The US once spread democracy all over the world, surely they can spread renewable energy the same way too.

So they can keep the oil for themselves. “Look what this oil dependency makes us do! Don’t fall into that trap! (And anyway it’s ours!)”

Air pollution is not the same thing as what you’re discussing. Generally speaking, yes, we should probably expect them to use renewables because renewables are gradually cheaper than fuels.

Renewables are still an order of magnitude more expensive than fossil fuels.

Especially in countries without any infrastructure.

Yes, but as the time goes on that will be less and less true.

The LCOE of utility solar is cheaper than the LCOE of most if not all fossil fuel based alternatives for the developed US. This does of course vary by region and infrastructure. One would expect that to become more and more favorable over time.

Your numbers are a decade out of date.

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