Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

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dingyibvs

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This is an article advocating for fossil fuels, but it contains interesting data about electricity usage. The usage of electricity will skyrocket in the near future, even in relatively de-industrialized nations due to the rise of data centers and AI. The author states that as the reason that all manners of energy, including fossil fuels, are needed to support this growth, but IMO he's wrong.

Fossil fuels are not able to scale the way renewables and nuclear can, even disregarding their respective climate impact. The West's misguided attempt to reject Chinese products in the renewable and EV market will compound their problems both on the demand and supply sides. Blocking Chinese EVs will likely reduce their near-term electricity demand, while blocking Chinese renewables and battery tech will reduce their medium term supply.

In the near term, EVs will probably be the biggest driver of electricity use in de-industrialized regions of the world. Without rapid EV growth, these areas can probably indeed satisfy their electricity needs by a mix of fossil fuels and renewanbles/nuclear. This would lessen their impetus for the energy transition, as the article advocates.

In the medium term, however, once the EV transition is well underway or complete, there won't be much further electricity demand growth from that sector. The requirement for more data, however, is just starting and like the author of the article, I see no end to it even in the longer term and I don't see efficiency increasing at the same pace. There is simply no way that fossil fuels can keep up with the exponential growth of electricity demand coming from data/AI in the medium and long term.

What this all adds up to is that lack of organic near-term demand from EVs will suppress advances in the renewables/nuclear sector in the West, which will have to be mainly supported by policies and subsidies. This will put them further behind China in the medium term when electricity demand boom for data/AI becomes substantial in absolute terms and they don't have access to China's renewable, nuclear, or grid tech to keep up. If you add climate change to the equation, which requires full world participation to stop and that seems rather unlikely right now, then you'll have even further, gargantuan demand of energy to deal with that (desalination and canals for drought, relocation of currently prosperous coastal cities, etc.)
 
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tacoburger

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doggydogdo said:
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tphuang said:
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I will say to thank Lauri fore being the leading voice in the West to talk about this, because his stuff does get reported and now we see it on Bloomberg
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Even better news is that data was from March, back when southwestern China was still in drought conditions. In April rainfall has been steadily increasing, same for May. Not to the point where Sichuan and Yunnan are completely out of drought conditions, but it's a lot better then last year's mega-drought. And in June-the start of the rainy season, it's projected to be quite intense, to the point where China is expected to see some heavy flooding in south, central and eastern China, maybe even in the northern areas. We might see a record year for hydroelectric generation, further cutting down coal usage.
 
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