The Death Of Fossil Fuels

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:22 am

lpm wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:00 am
Yet more disruption to traffic. Incredibly unpopular.
Completely unacceptable disruption to hard-working people's lives here. If nature wants people to care more about it, this is totally the wrong way of going about things. I even understand there are *much* more disruptive actions planned. Disgusting!
https://twitter.com/jamzbrux/status/1437793811422498824
Shock horror! Someone is pissed off on twitter! Is the pissing off outweighed by the number of people recruited to the idea that action needs to be taken? I dunno, neither do you, but the pissing off may be worth it overall.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Grumble » Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:55 am

bjn wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:22 am
lpm wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:00 am
Yet more disruption to traffic. Incredibly unpopular.
Completely unacceptable disruption to hard-working people's lives here. If nature wants people to care more about it, this is totally the wrong way of going about things. I even understand there are *much* more disruptive actions planned. Disgusting!
https://twitter.com/jamzbrux/status/1437793811422498824
Shock horror! Someone is pissed off on twitter! Is the pissing off outweighed by the number of people recruited to the idea that action needs to be taken? I dunno, neither do you, but the pissing off may be worth it overall.
Think you’ve missed the point there bjn
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Gfamily » Wed Sep 15, 2021 9:05 am

Grumble wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:55 am
bjn wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:22 am
lpm wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:00 am
Yet more disruption to traffic. Incredibly unpopular.


https://twitter.com/jamzbrux/status/1437793811422498824
Shock horror! Someone is pissed off on twitter! Is the pissing off outweighed by the number of people recruited to the idea that action needs to be taken? I dunno, neither do you, but the pissing off may be worth it overall.
Think you’ve missed the point there bjn
You could say the "Whoosh!" was vertical rather than horizontal!
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by discovolante » Wed Sep 15, 2021 9:08 am

To be fair, it is quite hard to understand what's going on with anything on the Independent.
Screenshot_20210915-100619_Samsung Internet.jpg
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Scary stuff though.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Martin Y » Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:05 am

My satnav took me by a different route so I was blithely unaware it was directing me around an XR protest until Mrs Y texted me and asked if I'd got stuck in the jam. They did make me miss the morning Zoom though so I'm grateful for that.

Good to hear the Hydeploy experiment worked, and it raises the prospect of using renewables to make green hydrogen, perhaps principally for HGV transport, but knowing that any overproduction can just be injected into the domestic gas supply.

Though one interesting thing in the comments which I hadn't considered: "what else is needed to prevent separation of the gases whilst stagnant in the grid during periods of low/no demand/use?" I have no idea about separation but if it happens it might be an issue as I gather that the 20% limit of H2 in the blend is to prevent the hydrogen causing embrittlement of metal gas pipes.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Grumble » Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:45 am

Separation isn’t a thing that happens without equipment. Doesn’t happen by itself inside a container.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Martin Y » Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:48 am

Grumble wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:45 am
Separation isn’t a thing that happens without equipment. Doesn’t happen by itself inside a container.
Ta.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:03 pm

Grumble wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:55 am
bjn wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:22 am
lpm wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:00 am
Yet more disruption to traffic. Incredibly unpopular.


https://twitter.com/jamzbrux/status/1437793811422498824
Shock horror! Someone is pissed off on twitter! Is the pissing off outweighed by the number of people recruited to the idea that action needs to be taken? I dunno, neither do you, but the pissing off may be worth it overall.
Think you’ve missed the point there bjn
I did didn’t I. I failed to click on the link this time.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Gfamily » Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:52 pm

Looks like we may be burning Coal more than had been planned this winter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-58570893
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Grumble » Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:11 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:52 pm
Looks like we may be burning Coal more than had been planned this winter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-58570893
This year has been pretty sh.t for wind power. I thought we were bound to keep increasing our wind output year on year. I didn’t realise, though maybe it’s obvious in hindsight, that you could have whole years with low wind speeds.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Millennie Al » Thu Sep 16, 2021 12:29 am

Grumble wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:11 pm
This year has been pretty sh.t for wind power. I thought we were bound to keep increasing our wind output year on year. I didn’t realise, though maybe it’s obvious in hindsight, that you could have whole years with low wind speeds.
Wind power is part of the solution to climate change. Climate change is claimed to cause more extreme weather. Do the people installing wind power actually believe this? If so, how do they decide where to install, given that the problem they're solving makes predictions from past weather unreliable?

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Martin_B » Thu Sep 16, 2021 1:48 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 12:29 am
Grumble wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:11 pm
This year has been pretty sh.t for wind power. I thought we were bound to keep increasing our wind output year on year. I didn’t realise, though maybe it’s obvious in hindsight, that you could have whole years with low wind speeds.
Wind power is part of the solution to climate change. Climate change is claimed to cause more extreme weather. Do the people installing wind power actually believe this? If so, how do they decide where to install, given that the problem they're solving makes predictions from past weather unreliable?
Wind turbines are usually installed in locations where wind is reliable (eg, tops of ridges, just offshore, etc). More extreme weather may change wind patterns, but they are unlikely to make the windiest places other sorts of locations (tops of ridges will always be reliably windier than flat plains, for example).
What may happen with more extreme weather patterns is that strong winds become more common, but with the latest wind turbines you have to get very strong winds to move outside of the operating envelope of the turbine. (I believe that the issue is that with very high wind speeds pushing on the blades, the turbine bearings become a weak point, so above certain wind speeds the blades have to halted. But as technology improves the bearings are becoming more robust.)
Predictions on future weather events from past weather events may become less reliable with climate change (although forecasting computers are becoming better) but predictions on future generalised weather and optimised locations of wind turbines probably won't change significantly. I.e., currently Ridge A gets more wind than Ridge B, but with climate change Ridge B may become windier than Ridge A, but that is unlikely to mean that Ridge A gets no wind at all.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Martin Y » Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:07 am

Grumble wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:11 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:52 pm
Looks like we may be burning Coal more than had been planned this winter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-58570893
This year has been pretty sh.t for wind power. I thought we were bound to keep increasing our wind output year on year. I didn’t realise, though maybe it’s obvious in hindsight, that you could have whole years with low wind speeds.
They were talking about domestic energy price increases on PM the other day and mentioned how little wind there had been this year, but the main thrust of the discussion was the interviewee (can't remember, soz) telling Evan Davies that gas prices had risen a lot so gas and electric would cost more. They then spent the rest of their time repeating this idea using different forms of words, while I raged at the radio demanding to know WHY gas prices had spiked. Seems like they couldn't hear me.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by lpm » Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:22 am

Radio 4 is sh.t. But they've no incentive to stop being sh.t because idiots like you listen to it anyway. Only yourself to blame.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Woodchopper » Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:50 am

Martin Y wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:07 am
Grumble wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:11 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:52 pm
Looks like we may be burning Coal more than had been planned this winter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-58570893
This year has been pretty sh.t for wind power. I thought we were bound to keep increasing our wind output year on year. I didn’t realise, though maybe it’s obvious in hindsight, that you could have whole years with low wind speeds.
They were talking about domestic energy price increases on PM the other day and mentioned how little wind there had been this year, but the main thrust of the discussion was the interviewee (can't remember, soz) telling Evan Davies that gas prices had risen a lot so gas and electric would cost more. They then spent the rest of their time repeating this idea using different forms of words, while I raged at the radio demanding to know WHY gas prices had spiked. Seems like they couldn't hear me.
If you are looking for an explanation, as well as the lack of wind, Russia has cut supplies of gas to the rest of Europe, and there is currently a gas shortage which has increased the price. Russia is apparently putting pressure on the EU to give a green light to the Nordstream 2 pipeline. That might work in the short run but will surely increase motivation to be independent of Russian energy supplies.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Sep 19, 2021 5:02 pm

bjn wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:59 pm
lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:21 pm
bjn wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:38 pm
Regardless, the first thing that should be done is to insulate the hell out of the UK's housing stock.
These single-issue protesters are doing just that. Not only did their actions insulate a bunch of homes, they also made themselves remarkably popular with the general public. Win win.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-b ... s-58543603
How many people did they alienate as opposed to recruiting? Many of the 'bl..dy protesters!' types wouldn't care anyway, so are already alienated. How many people will now know of this because of the coverage given to the protest and go, "That's a bl..dy good idea!", even if they think the protesters are somewhat tossers?

No idea. But your implied premise that they alienate more people from their cause than recruit needs more evidence.
The usual objection to blocking major roads is that it might lead to delays for emergency response vehicles. Looks like that happened on the M25: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/m ... 5-25015653

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:52 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 5:02 pm
The usual objection to blocking major roads is that it might lead to delays for emergency response vehicles. Looks like that happened on the M25: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/m ... 5-25015653
There's something odd about that story. Reading the account in the Metro - https://metro.co.uk/2021/09/18/mum-unab ... -15279163/ - we find that:
The caller said he decided to drive her himself because of ambulance delays and was forced to watch her ‘slip away’.
...
It is unclear where the man had called an ambulance from, however, London Service NHS Trust did not report any impact on the service.
It seems very strange that someone would choose to drive to the hospital themselves because they consider it too urgent to wait for an ambulance, but then sit for six hours in a traffic jam without calling an ambulance (which could have got through on lights and siren).

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Mon Sep 20, 2021 6:42 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 5:02 pm
bjn wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:59 pm
lpm wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:21 pm

These single-issue protesters are doing just that. Not only did their actions insulate a bunch of homes, they also made themselves remarkably popular with the general public. Win win.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-b ... s-58543603
How many people did they alienate as opposed to recruiting? Many of the 'bl..dy protesters!' types wouldn't care anyway, so are already alienated. How many people will now know of this because of the coverage given to the protest and go, "That's a bl..dy good idea!", even if they think the protesters are somewhat tossers?

No idea. But your implied premise that they alienate more people from their cause than recruit needs more evidence.
The usual objection to blocking major roads is that it might lead to delays for emergency response vehicles. Looks like that happened on the M25: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/m ... 5-25015653
That’s certainly not going to make many people think kindly of them. At least XR were letting ambulances through their protests.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:32 am

bjn wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 6:42 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 5:02 pm
bjn wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:59 pm


How many people did they alienate as opposed to recruiting? Many of the 'bl..dy protesters!' types wouldn't care anyway, so are already alienated. How many people will now know of this because of the coverage given to the protest and go, "That's a bl..dy good idea!", even if they think the protesters are somewhat tossers?

No idea. But your implied premise that they alienate more people from their cause than recruit needs more evidence.
The usual objection to blocking major roads is that it might lead to delays for emergency response vehicles. Looks like that happened on the M25: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/m ... 5-25015653
That’s certainly not going to make many people think kindly of them. At least XR were letting ambulances through their protests.
So were Insulate Britain if this photo is to be believed.

Air ambulance was also used when there was a crash https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey ... y-21573856

The issue here seems to be that the stroke patient wasn't in an ambulance, but a private car. It's not clear if at any point during the six hours the driver called for an ambulance, but it seems that one would have got through.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Sep 20, 2021 9:03 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:52 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 5:02 pm
The usual objection to blocking major roads is that it might lead to delays for emergency response vehicles. Looks like that happened on the M25: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/m ... 5-25015653
There's something odd about that story. Reading the account in the Metro - https://metro.co.uk/2021/09/18/mum-unab ... -15279163/ - we find that:
The caller said he decided to drive her himself because of ambulance delays and was forced to watch her ‘slip away’.
...
It is unclear where the man had called an ambulance from, however, London Service NHS Trust did not report any impact on the service.
It seems very strange that someone would choose to drive to the hospital themselves because they consider it too urgent to wait for an ambulance, but then sit for six hours in a traffic jam without calling an ambulance (which could have got through on lights and siren).
Yes, that is odd. ETA its possible that the mother was feeling unwell but the son didn't realize how serious is was.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by shpalman » Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:50 am

Rolls-Royce’s all-electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ takes to the skies for the first time

Not that you'd actually be allowed to fly that fast under 10,000' in normal circumstances (250 knots indicated airspeed is the usual limit).

It reminds me of those racing seaplanes from the 1930's. Except not quite as fast.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:18 pm

Interesting short paper from some Oxford economists: Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition
Abstract wrote:Rapidly decarbonising the global energy system is critical for addressing climate change,
but concerns about costs have been a barrier to implementation. Most energy-economy
models have historically underestimated deployment rates for renewable energy tech-
nologies and overestimated their costs1,2,3,4,5,6. The problems with these models have
stimulated calls for better approaches7,8,9,10,11,12 and recent e↵orts have made progress in
this direction13,14,15,16. Here we take a new approach based on probabilistic cost fore-
casting methods that made reliable predictions when they were empirically tested on
more than 50 technologies17,18. We use these methods to estimate future energy system
costs and find that, compared to continuing with a fossil-fuel-based system, a rapid green
energy transition will likely result in overall net savings of many trillions of dollars -
even without accounting for climate damages or co-benefits of climate policy. We show
that if solar photovoltaics, wind, batteries and hydrogen electrolyzers continue to follow
their current exponentially increasing deployment trends for another decade, we achieve
a near-net-zero emissions energy system within twenty-five years. In contrast, a slower
transition (which involves deployment growth trends that are lower than current rates)
is more expensive and a nuclear driven transition is far more expensive.
If non-energy
sources of carbon emissions such as agriculture are brought under control, our analysis
indicates that a rapid green energy transition would likely generate considerable eco-
nomic savings while also meeting the 1.5 degrees Paris Agreement target.
Further evidence from some heavy-hitters that a rapid energy transition is the best all-round solution, and potentially achievable based on current trends.

While meeting the Paris Agreement also requires sorting out emissions from land use, where trends are considerably less encouraging, it is a nice bit of data-driven good news.

ETA and some commentary here https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/wer ... a-break-in
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by IvanV » Tue Sep 21, 2021 10:36 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:18 pm
Interesting short paper from some Oxford economists: Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition
...
Further evidence from some heavy-hitters that a rapid energy transition is the best all-round solution, and potentially achievable based on current trends.

While meeting the Paris Agreement also requires sorting out emissions from land use, where trends are considerably less encouraging, it is a nice bit of data-driven good news.

ETA and some commentary here https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/wer ... a-break-in
The main paper is more interesting, though the commentary paper is ... ETA unconvincing (edited to avoid bothering the libel lawyers.)

The paper recognises that wind is a mature technology, and close to its thermodynamic limit. So cost can't fall much further. Tick.

Yes, PV cells can still be reasonably expected to fall considerably in price. Tick. Though I don't think we can be quite as certain of it as they suggest, because PV has some key differences from the benchmarks they are using to project the falling cost. The present methods of making PV cells are mostly close to their technological limits. Breaking that limit, to keep the cost falling by orders of magnitude, requires some quite different technology. But this was not true for many of the things they are benchmarking it against. For example, with either silicon chips or windmills early in their cost reduction phases. We stuck with the same technology, and refined it, because it was capable of being refined. We had landed on the right method, and knew there was huge room for refinement. We didn't need a totally new technology to get past some thermodynamic limit of the present technology. Cost does keep reducing. But it is no the same cost reduction process. We have not found the best method yet, that we only have to refine. So I can reasonably believe that PV cells can get a lot cheaper. But it requires technological breakthroughs that are harder than some of the other things they compare it to.

So, let's suppose we can reduce the cost of PV cells by an order of magnitude. Just to be clear, this is crucial to their projections. If this doesn't happen, they don't have any other generation technology that they think can get a lot cheaper. They have sensibly stayed away from wave power and all those other things that have stubbornly refused to fall in cost despite the invesments.

So we now have very cheap solar cells. We now have available a huge quantity of electricity harvestable at low cost. But its only there when the light is bright enough. They recognise this, and put in place systems to store the electricity, so it can be used when it is wanted, not when it is generated. Tick.

What is their technology for doing this? Well, they have two, green hydrogen (or equivalent chemical carrier that PV can make), and gridscale batteries. All sorts of other energy storage mechanisms have been proposed, but they just don't show the potential for really large reductions in cost. They are usually close to thermodynamic limits even in the prototype. So tick, they have identified the two best chances, so far as we can know.

The batteries are like the PV cells. The ones we currently have are close to their thermodynamic limits. If we are to achieve order of magnitude cost improvements, we need technology changes different from just making the present technology work a lot better. Yes, I can believe that batteries can get a lot cheaper. But, like PV cells, it is not at the level of certainty of technologies where we have landed on the right method.

Green hydrogen. Well I also believe that hydrogen or some other chemical store is likely the best method of storing energy at a seasonal level. What we need is an electrolyser that is cheap enough we only run it during those relatively short periods of time when we have a large excess of solar energy. That is probably at most 25% of the time. Maybe in some low latitude desert a bit more. Half the time it is dark. During the day, the sun is low in the sky near sunrise and sunset, and in the winter if you have one. So if you have excess solar power 25% of the time, you are doing well.

So then we have the cost of electrolysing, or some other electrically run process to make a chemical with high energy storage density. We don't have much of a cost reduction record for these. I was aware that cost was just not reducing very much for much of the last couple of decades. But according to their chart, there is now some serious rate of cost reduction beginning from around mid decade. I will give them the credit of having the widest range of uncertainty around the future trend of this, including not reducing very much further at all. And we need to do this on an industrial scale. Unlike the other technologies above which are largely small things vastly replicated. I suppose you can take the vastly replicated approach to this too, though somehow it seems less likely. Again, the general problem is that we do need to think of some rather different ways of doing it, as the present electrolysers are close to thermodynamic limit.

So they have something I can roughly believe. The way is far from smooth. And they recognise it is not totally certain these cost reductions will happen.

What they haven't addressed though, is the huge supporting infrastructure that is required to make this happen. Where are all these PV cells to generate a Europe quantity of electricy going to go? I don't think we have land to afford of suitable insolation to do that within Europe itself. Wind turbines are not going to get vastly cheaper, it's solar we need, and it needs to go somewhere sunny and non-agricultural like the Sahara desert. And then we need huge power lines. All those electrolysers will have to go somewhere there is water, and, by present technology, fresh water. So, even if what they say comes to take place, there are some additional enormous infrastructural requirements that are not within their paper.

This paper is futurology, and as we know, making predictions is very difficult, especially about the future, so futurologists have to resign themselves to a high error rate. My sister gave me Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century for Christmas, a book of futurology. Whilst I have expressed my own criticism of the weak points in this paper, it is much more plausible than Harari.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Sep 22, 2021 8:42 am

IvanV wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 10:36 pm

What they haven't addressed though, is the huge supporting infrastructure that is required to make this happen. Where are all these PV cells to generate a Europe quantity of electricy going to go? I don't think we have land to afford of suitable insolation to do that within Europe itself. Wind turbines are not going to get vastly cheaper, it's solar we need, and it needs to go somewhere sunny and non-agricultural like the Sahara desert. And then we need huge power lines. All those electrolysers will have to go somewhere there is water, and, by present technology, fresh water. So, even if what they say comes to take place, there are some additional enormous infrastructural requirements that are not within their paper.
Yes, I agree, and the same applies to many other fields. Even if the unit price is very cheap, building the supporting infrastructure is expensive and time consuming, and more more importantly may well involve difficult political choices which could delay or prevent implementation (see discussions on high speed rail in the UK etc).

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:51 am

The data on PV is presumably based on places where they are currently sited, which is generally within the same countries using the power.

One handy thing with solar panels is that you can just stick them on the roofs of buildings, and cover car parks, and so on. They're technologically compatible with mixed land uses, rather than requiring virgin land or needing to be situated away from dwellings like wind. That also cuts down some of the need for long-distance infrastructure, as those places are already on the grid and using power. (The grid itself would still need adapting, unless there were also lots of local, small-scale storage - though again that's currently what often happens with batteries, and lots of such places are going to have BEVs plugged in all day.)

Solar lends itself very well to a decentralised approach, so some of the old ways of thinking about huge infrastructure projects might not hold.

I'm also engaging in futurology here of course, which I agree is less than an exact science.

I think the important point, though, is that even without considering externalities (which is a really stupid way of thinking, despite being so commonplace), renewables are probably the wise long-term strategy. Add in the health costs of pollution, and the everything costs of climate change, and governments and markets ought to be falling over themselves to solve these remaining hiccups. They're not doing so, partly because the externalities are generally free to the polluter, and largely because of ideological inertia. Homo economicus has a major time lag.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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