Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

Crang said:

Sure. You have things like wind and solar. You use energy carriers to store captured energy.

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Much of renewable projects are currently being subsidized both fiscally by governments (rebates, tax breaks, etc) and physically by the existing fossil fuel infrastructure (global primary fuel/energy source is still predominantly hydrocarbons) once these subsidizes go away (as they inevitably have to as renewables start becoming a larger portion of the energy mix) it will become more and more expensive to keep scaling up.... to mention nothing of the bottlenecks in raw materials that are needed to build these wind and solar and battery solutions... (rare earths will skyrocket in price)

Unlike oil/NG/coal, the wind and solar have a net energy payback period of several years.... You cannot just up and use them immediately to provide a boost of energy to society as they need energy to be sunk/invested into them in the first place and then slowly pay that energy back over time... (unlike borrowing on debt, one cannot borrow energy from mother nature and then pay it back later) this means it will be doubly hard for politicians to make the sacrifice of diverting energy away to renewable solutions right when the energy crunch is already hitting hard.... for example see China's massive u-turn on the coal plant thing.... once GDP gets hit and China sees America is cheating, China will go right back to burning coal like there is no tomorrow... there is no political will anywhere to do what is necessary for real change....

Then wind and solar infrastructure does not last forever, they need maintenance, decommission, eventually to be replaced... so they last on average 10 years (considering the rapid rise in climate disasters this is being generous) and net energy payback is say 2 years... so this a permanent 20% taxation on the entire economy and all transactions, this is the physical tax of 2nd law of thermodynamics even before the government tax hits....

No major economy can suffer a perpetual 20% energy tax dictated by the laws of nature and still hope to keep growing...

9dashline said:

Much of renewable projects are currently being subsidized both fiscally by governments (rebates, tax breaks, etc) and physically by the existing fossil fuel infrastructure (global primary fuel/energy source is still predominantly hydrocarbons) once these subsidizes go away (as they inevitably have to as renewables start becoming a larger portion of the energy mix) it will become more and more expensive to keep scaling up.... to mention nothing of the bottlenecks in raw materials that are needed to build these wind and solar and battery solutions... (rare earths will skyrocket in price)

Unlike oil/NG/coal, the wind and solar have a net energy payback period of several years.... You cannot just up and use them immediately to provide a boost of energy to society as they need energy to be sunk/invested into them in the first place and then slowly pay that energy back over time... (unlike borrowing on debt, one cannot borrow energy from mother nature and then pay it back later) this means it will be doubly hard for politicians to make the sacrifice of diverting energy away to renewable solutions right when the energy crunch is already hitting hard.... for example see China's massive u-turn on the coal plant thing.... once GDP gets hit and China sees America is cheating, China will go right back to burning coal like there is no tomorrow... there is no political will anywhere to do what is necessary for real change....

Then wind and solar infrastructure does not last forever, they need maintenance, decommission, eventually to be replaced... so they last on average 10 years (considering the rapid rise in climate disasters this is being generous) and net energy payback is say 2 years... so this a permanent 20% taxation on the entire economy and all transactions, this is the physical tax of 2nd law of thermodynamics even before the government tax hits....

No major economy can suffer a perpetual 20% energy tax dictated by the laws of nature and still hope to keep growing...

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Sure currently with feed in tariffs that may be the case. But continually lowering cost of production may make RE same price as fossil fuels.

Researchers from Harvard, Tsinghua University in Beijing, Nankai University in Tianjin and Renmin University of China in Beijing have found that solar energy could provide 43.2% of China’s electricity demands in 2060 at less than two-and-a-half U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. For comparison, coal power tariffs in China ranged 3.6 to 6.5 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2019.

“Today, subsidy-free solar power has become cheaper than coal power in most parts of China, and this cost-competitive advantage will soon expand to the whole country due to technology advances and cost declines,” said Xi Lu, Associate Professor, School of Environment, Tsinghua University and co-corresponding author of the paper.

9dashline said:

Unlike oil/NG/coal, the wind and solar have a net energy payback period of several years.... You cannot just up and use them immediately to provide a boost of energy to society as they need energy to be sunk/invested into them in the first place and then slowly pay that energy back over time... (unlike borrowing on debt, one cannot borrow energy from mother nature and then pay it back later) this means it will be doubly hard for politicians to make the sacrifice of diverting energy away to renewable solutions right when the energy crunch is already hitting hard ...

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The costs for oil / NG / coal do not arise until decades later and they do not have to be paid by the national economy that caused them. Overall, however, the costs are higher than for renewable energies.

Crang said:

“Today, subsidy-free solar power has become cheaper than coal power in most parts of China, and this cost-competitive advantage will soon expand to the whole country due to technology advances and cost declines,” said Xi Lu, Associate Professor, School of Environment, Tsinghua University and co-corresponding author of the paper.

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Economic subsidy-free is not the same as energy subsidy free... it only breakeven when China is still predominantly using the much more cheaper and energy dense fossil fuels as primary source! All these calculations are based on current existing energy prices to build/maintain these solar/wind and these prices are themselves predicated upon the prerequisite of cheap and abundant energy sources of high EROEI density!

Intrepid said:

The costs for oil / NG / coal do not arise until decades later and they do not have to be paid by the national economy that caused them. Overall, however, the costs are higher than for renewable energies.

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That's why governments and organizations are looking into carbon pricing - setting a price for carbon emissions from fossil fuels etc. This accurately prices fossil fuels in the free market.

Crang said:

Look you sound like a doomsayer. Isn't this why people are talking about hydrogen fuel cells, ammonia fuel cells, and PV plus storage?

It seems like you've just raised the white flag before the battle's begun.

By the way, tar sand flushing - you're trying to solve climate change by literally digging deeper into unconventional oil sources??

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PV is an energy source. Hydrogen and ammonia are not unless you find a natural source of them that does not require initial energy investment to obtain. But you can't. Hydrogen is a reducing gas that cannot survive for geological periods in Earth's reducing atmosphere. You can chemically produce them with an initial energy input though, but then they're just storage. It's OK for it to be storage, just recognize that it's storage.

There are only 3 sources of energy, ultimately, on this earth:

1. Solar: derived from sunlight shining on Earth whether a.) current solar (PV, solar thermal) or b.) past solar (fossil fuel)
2. Geothermal: derived from geological temperature gradients (wind, hydro, geothermal heat)
3. Nuclear: derived from certain atomic nuclei that are mined

These are the only ways energy goes into the Earth system. There are no other ways for Earth to gain energy.

Currently most energy used by humanity comes from category 1b: past solar energy. You can use other sources as 1b declines. But make no mistake, 1b is used because it is easy and has high return on investment. Anything else is not so cheap and easy, and the parts that are, have already been done.

More vote for me to blame China and getting fat on public funds.

Four zero-emissions powertrain technologies are in play for heavy-duty on- and off-highway vehicles​

Hydrogen has its own uses, which is why the State Council has named it as one of the green industries to be supported

Solar is obviously important with the caveat that I consider it almost useless without energy storage. So anytime I hear that the solar is the cheapest renewable I roll my eyes. I want to see studies about the price of solar + energy storage.

Nuclear is the ideal energy source, however it needs a lot of money and (most importantly) time. Plus there are supply chain issues which don't allow for mass building of nuclear plants

Wind turbines, they take way too much space per energy unit produced. It should be ideal for deserts or other such areas (and offshore turbines)

Hydrodams, pure love. IMO by far the best among other renewables