Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

anamensis25 said:

Any information about this?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1532100583590711296

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W20 said:

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The price of photovoltaic electricity is already so cheap* that we will see (2030-) a revolution in the various forms of storage.

*: Obviously not all sites are the Atacama Desert in Chile. That is, there are a handful of variables: (1) sun and latitude (2) space, terrain (3) financing, which is a big variable and depends on credit quality.

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foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/06/china-energy-nationalism-coal/

The arithmetic of an actual coal phaseout is even tougher. For China to cut coal use by a third by 2035—while holding oil and hydropower usage at today’s level and slightly reducing total primary energy use through efficiency improvements and electrification—the following would be required: expansion of natural gas use equal to what Japan and South Korea combined used in 2020, the addition of nuclear generation on a par with what France (the world’s second-largest producer) generated in 2020, the addition of wind power equivalent to about 2.5 times what the United States (the world’s second-largest producer) generated in 2020, and expansion of solar power to the tune of 3.5 times what the United States (again the world’s second-largest producer) generated in 2020. Each additional expansion of coal production and use only increases the challenge, which already requires an energy transformation moonshot to attain China’s 2060 net-zero emissions target.

foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/06/china-energy-nationalism-coal/

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gelgoog said:

Hydrogen fuel cells and so called green hydrogen is sheer nonsense. The vast amount of energy losses in a system like that make it a non starter. Then add to that the huge costs such a system has compared with other ways to store or discharge energy on top.

Flow batteries are much cheaper than even sodium ion batteries. They also need much lower amounts of strategic materials.

Gas is expensive in China because it needs to be imported, and worst of all most of it comes via LNG by ship. Huge costs to liquefy and regasify the gas. It costs billions to build a liquefaction facility, billions more to build a regasification facility, and then you need to build tanker ships to transport it. Piped gas takes like a third the cost to build in terms of infrastructure. The pipelines themselves last decades. And piped gas uses the gas energy more efficiently as well. You only use LNG when you have no other choice.

Can't China improve their own gas production capabilities with coalbed methane or something?


The economic rationale for nuclear reactors is dependent on your own resource supply base and certain economic factors. For a country like China which has lots of coal mines the coal is cheaper. The biggest cost in coal is the transport because you need to transport so much volume of it to generate power. In the case of China you have Inner Mongolia, which is not particularly far away from the main cities in the north of China including the capital. The main issue with coal is the air pollution. This is why China is now building the power plants in Inner Mongolia itself and transporting the energy via electric power cables. For the southernmost cities in China which are further away from the coal mines nuclear might make more economic sense. The main cost for nuclear is financing, since it takes a long time to build a power plant and in the meantime you need to finance the debt, another issue is the decommissioning costs. But the longer a nuclear power plant operates the lower the impact of those will be with amortization. And modern nuclear power plants have estimated 60 years lifetime of the plant. Compared with 20 years for designs in the 1970s.

So I think we will see coal power plants in the north, nuclear in the south, gas for variable load, and it will be imported via pipe from Russia or Central Asia as much as possible to cut costs.


I think this is a major mistake. China should not have caved in to Western pressure with regards to this. Countries in the emerging world do not have either the economic nor the industrial base to run nuclear power plants. And coal provides the cheapest baseload. Not allowing coal is pushing the poor and emerging economies into economic backwardess indefinitively. And China itself certainly went back on its decision and is now building dozen of modern coal power plants in China proper.

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Weaasel said:

You are thinking in a very short term manner, China is thinking and actually acting in a long term manner over decades. Wake up and smell the coffee. If you have been following China's progress with regards to greatly increasing its renewables capacity and also significantly improving its nuclear power capacity, with the latter including the construction of less hazardous and less waste producing third and fourth generation uranium utilizing power stations, you will know that despite actual increases in its capacity of fossil fuel power generating capacity, China is actually on its way to fulfilling Xi's pledge of carbon neutrality by 2060, and also that achieving such carbon neutrality will be achieved with sufficient capacity to easily meet demand for electricity by that time. Added to this is that the great improvement in battery storage capacity, including the great improvements undertaken in sodium ion batteries, sodium being a much more abundant than lithium is.

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Weaasel said:

LASTLY, before anyone asks the question, with an highly affordable globally highly dominant nuclear and renewables power generation grid, it also means that space planes can be much more affordably and plausibly built, and space planes can be launched from Earth to dump nuclear and other wastes that cannot be reutilized into the sun. Get it?

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AndrewS said:

Erickson and Collins at the US Naval War College have started writing about Chinese carbon emissions.

They argue that China would have to do to the following to make a dent, yet seem to be unaware that Chinese plans for gas/nuclear/wind/solar will be far in excess of the targets they've set below






Chinese Gas consumption is currently 365 BCM, and is expected to reach 500+ BCM by 2030. That increase is roughly what Japan and South Korea combined used in 2020.

On nuclear reactors, China is planning on 180GWe of capacity by 2035. The increase works out as the equivalent of two Frances rather than 1.

On wind, China installed 47GW of capacity in 2021. At this rate, it would take just 6.5 years to reach the target set above.

On solar, China is set to install 108GW of capacity in 2022. At this rate, it would take just 3.2 years to reach the target set above.


References below
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-30/china-set-to-double-last-year-s-record-solar-panel-installations
chinaenergyportal.org/en/2021-electricity-other-energy-statistics-preliminary/
energypost.eu/chinas-14th-five-year-plan-will-reshape-its-growing-gas-sector/
forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2021/04/23/china-will-lead-the-world-in-nuclear-energy-along-with-all-other-energy-sources-sooner-than-you-think/

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