Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

According to german newspaper, EU comission is finalising a (nonbinding) draft to reduce reliance on fossile fuels, mainly driven with gas in mind. Bear in mind EU resulutions are traditionally solid as cow dung, but still the overall direction of energy "self-reliance" comes clear

Since the article mentains solar energy in particular, Chinese firms must take their chances on this, doubling down on export of green energy. Italy just installed Mingyang turbines in their offshore portfolio.

When being excluded by stupid EU law, China must retaliate. Maybe seize assets from european oligarchs

Also wind is quite interesting since Goldwind, Mingyang and the likes grow to a serious competition to western turbine manufacturers.
So it is not an overestimation that by 2025 Solar & Wind are 100% Chinas backyard.

At the same time, China must also increase their green energy if they want to shackle off any anglo bullshit in future oil pricing.

This is retarded. They should be investing in coal and nuclear. They should reopen coal mines and invest in additional uranium enrichment capacity. Adding more variable renewable energy to a network without natural gas as a buffer is sheer nonsense. If gas supplies are cut or gas price increases dramatically, even proving a buffer for existing renewables will prove difficult.

gelgoog said:

This is retarded. They should be investing in coal and nuclear. They should reopen coal mines and invest in additional uranium enrichment capacity. Adding more variable renewable energy to a network without natural gas as a buffer is sheer nonsense. If gas supplies are cut or gas price increases dramatically, even proving a buffer for existing renewables will prove difficult.

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Bro I understand that this behaviour of them is big poopoo kaka, but this is the EU, they are known for self inflicted bullshittery.

Make no mistakes, another ones fail is China's gain.

EU has enough problems with their self created asshattery about their energy security and subsequent future irrelevance of their industry. China must strike while this enemy is weak, there is no future for EU anyway since they dont want to free themselves from US influence, they rather shoul just disintegrate.

Let them succumb in their misguided ideology, what I want to see is China pressing the last Euro out of their A**es while their succumb from drinking their "slava ukraini" kool aid.

What do you guys think about a megaproject involving massive desalination facilities and an East-West canal? Massive pumps along the way would pump desalinated water against gravity from the sea shores toward the arid west. At night time water flow is reversed and water would flow down through hydropower stations to generate electricity. At any time water can be withdrawn to satisfy water needs during droughts. They can be connected with existing rivers to alleviate flooding as well.

Essentially it would be a massive pumped-hydro storage system which also addresses water shortage and flood relief related needs at the same time. Some very large UHV lines along the way would carry renewable solar/wind power primarily from the West to power the whole system.

dingyibvs said:

What do you guys think about a megaproject involving massive desalination facilities and an East-West canal? Massive pumps along the way would pump desalinated water against gravity from the sea shores toward the arid west. At night time water flow is reversed and water would flow down through hydropower stations to generate electricity. At any time water can be withdrawn to satisfy water needs during droughts. They can be connected with existing rivers to alleviate flooding as well.

Essentially it would be a massive pumped-hydro storage system which also addresses water shortage and flood relief related needs at the same time. Some very large UHV lines along the way would carry renewable solar/wind power primarily from the West to power the whole system.

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You need to review the law of conservation of energy in secondary school physics, and then understand the geography of China.
The combined efficiency of PSH is about 0.65-0.75, and this assumes that the losses in the conversion of potential and kinetic energy of the water are small enough, and that the terrain changes from the east to the west are mostly very slow, without the altitude differences over short distances that are commonly needed for PSH.

And what is the sense of building a large number of PSH on such a slow terrain? Is it to transport water to the west? Then why is your water flowing back to the east at night?
Is it to generate electricity? The overall energy distribution in China, whether thermal or hydropower, is that a lot of power is delivered from the west to the east. Why use a lot of electricity to pump water up and then generate electricity at a maximum efficiency of no more than 0.75 to places that don't need that much electricity?

I can probably understand where you are coming from, not to mention that this is essentially a giant perpetual motion machine, but the system itself is contradictory in its purpose and approach.

dingyibvs said:

What do you guys think about a megaproject involving massive desalination facilities and an East-West canal? Massive pumps along the way would pump desalinated water against gravity from the sea shores toward the arid west. At night time water flow is reversed and water would flow down through hydropower stations to generate electricity. At any time water can be withdrawn to satisfy water needs during droughts. They can be connected with existing rivers to alleviate flooding as well.

Essentially it would be a massive pumped-hydro storage system which also addresses water shortage and flood relief related needs at the same time. Some very large UHV lines along the way would carry renewable solar/wind power primarily from the West to power the whole system.

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Is it a joke or sarcastic ?

gelgoog said:

This is retarded. They should be investing in coal and nuclear. They should reopen coal mines and invest in additional uranium enrichment capacity. Adding more variable renewable energy to a network without natural gas as a buffer is sheer nonsense. If gas supplies are cut or gas price increases dramatically, even proving a buffer for existing renewables will prove difficult.

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Nuclear is the way to go big time. The more we are using it, the more the process will be perfected. With most of the world turning is back of it after Chernobyl was clearly a loss of knowledges and development possibilities.

Atomicfrog said:

Nuclear is the way to go big time. The more we are using it, the more the process will be perfected. With most of the world turning is back of it after Chernobyl was clearly a loss of knowledges and development possibilities.

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I believe that many of the now mandatory coal plant upgrades are also compatible with swapping the coal furnace for a small nuclear reactor in the future.

An electricity infrastructure base with coal use reduced to <25% by 2030 would greatly free up coal for higher value added uses while decreasing emissions.

Coal gasification and liquefaction could offset petroleum, for instance, and the inputs for coal gasification and liquefaction are just coal and power. Coke is a byproduct, which is used for steel.

A renewable/non fossil electricity infrastructure can also generate hydrogen as a byproduct which has both chemical (Haber Bosch production of ammonia, replacing natural gas reformers) and fuel uses (direct use, methanol generation or ammonia). Sulfur-iodine cycle for instance.

Once you have renewable and cheap electricity everything becomes easier.

Confusionism said:

You need to review the law of conservation of energy in secondary school physics, and then understand the geography of China.
The combined efficiency of PSH is about 0.65-0.75, and this assumes that the losses in the conversion of potential and kinetic energy of the water are small enough, and that the terrain changes from the east to the west are mostly very slow, without the altitude differences over short distances that are commonly needed for PSH.

And what is the sense of building a large number of PSH on such a slow terrain? Is it to transport water to the west? Then why is your water flowing back to the east at night?
Is it to generate electricity? The overall energy distribution in China, whether thermal or hydropower, is that a lot of power is delivered from the west to the east. Why use a lot of electricity to pump water up and then generate electricity at a maximum efficiency of no more than 0.75 to places that don't need that much electricity?

I can probably understand where you are coming from, not to mention that this is essentially a giant perpetual motion machine, but the system itself is contradictory in its purpose and approach.

Click to expand...

The changes in elevation would not occur gradually, it would occur in steps. The route of course would need to be carefully selected for that to happen so that minimal land engineering is needed to achieve that and natural geography is used as much as possible. Excuse my crude drawing, but it'd be something like this:


There would be net east to west water flow due to water being progressively removed from the canal for water usage. That's one of the two main purposes of this project. In fact, I would argue this is THE main purpose of the project. I see water scarcity to be a bigger issue than energy scarcity in the future. As you can probably surmise, much of the energy will be used to desalinate water and distribute it rather than being stored as potential energy for night time use.

As for why it would be pumped west, where there's less need for electricity, the answer is for energy storage. At night the flow is west to east, meaning the desalination plants would be mostly idle since there's no place for the water to go. The UHV lines which send solar/wind generated electricity east to power desalination plants during the day would instead be sending hydropower generated electricity east to power households at night.

Being able to recover 75% of the energy input is pretty good, which is why pumped hydro storage is one of the most commonly used energy storage solutions. A relatively small area of solar panels placed in the Gobi desert is enough to power the entire world, this project thus imagines a future where the quantity of renewable energy generated is not a major issue, but the time distribution of it is a more significant problem.