This reads like a parody, what's the reasoning behind putting Sultan Al Jaber as the president of cop28? He seems very unsuitable for the role, even before this statement, even if just by his...
This reads like a parody, what's the reasoning behind putting Sultan Al Jaber as the president of cop28? He seems very unsuitable for the role, even before this statement, even if just by his other role as chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company,
I mean they were literally caught planning to broker oil deals with the visiting countries at this event. The reason is that the member states of the event are entirely unserious about the issues...
I mean they were literally caught planning to broker oil deals with the visiting countries at this event.
The reason is that the member states of the event are entirely unserious about the issues and events like this are just reluctant PR to give the appearance something is being done about out boiling planet….
Yea it would have spoke volumes more if Biden announced "I'm not going to attend this farce of an event that was co-opted by the very industry that needs reigned in by it."
Yea it would have spoke volumes more if Biden announced "I'm not going to attend this farce of an event that was co-opted by the very industry that needs reigned in by it."
To not completely post-hoc those pricetags, I'm pretty sure that in 2001, the expected cost of said FAFO (I assume you mean the various wars, rather than fossil fuel imports?) was much lower than...
To not completely post-hoc those pricetags, I'm pretty sure that in 2001, the expected cost of said FAFO (I assume you mean the various wars, rather than fossil fuel imports?) was much lower than it ended up being; meanwhile the cost of renewables was exorbitantly higher then, though with the caveat that it was known these prices would go down by an unknown amount.
In other words: If you made the same calculation when those decisions would've had to be made, the math would've looked the other way around.
Besides, I'm not sure how much of the wars in the middle east are realistically linked to energy. Afghanistan doesn't have any appreciable oil, and I'm not sure if a lack of oil would've had Bush change course in Iraq.
I suppose the reasoning is that if the USA can afford to blow 8 trillion dollars on nonsense, then surely they can afford to invest 2/3 of that into something beneficial and it won't be any worse...
I suppose the reasoning is that if the USA can afford to blow 8 trillion dollars on nonsense, then surely they can afford to invest 2/3 of that into something beneficial and it won't be any worse on the economy than the campaigns in the Middle East were.
In fact it would have been better for the economy, given that the money wouldn't have vanished, but instead have been spread all over the nation to pay manufacturers to make the new equipment and...
In fact it would have been better for the economy, given that the money wouldn't have vanished, but instead have been spread all over the nation to pay manufacturers to make the new equipment and people to install and maintain it. As it was, most of the ME campaign money went into military hardware. Which still funds certain communities, but isn't as distributed as energy infrastructure.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this? As far as I know, there's no real way to shift most large developed countries to 100% renewables, no matter how much money you throw at the problem. The...
The cost to entirely convert the US to renewable energy? $5.6 trillion.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this?
As far as I know, there's no real way to shift most large developed countries to 100% renewables, no matter how much money you throw at the problem. The sun still won't shine at night and the wind also doesn't blow 24/7, and we don't have (and likely never will) the battery technology or capacity to power entire cities like that.
Save for some notable exceptions, such as the Nordic countries with their abnormally high hydro production (not reproducible elsewhere), most developed countries can probably aim to cover somewhere around 50% of their year-round demand with renewables... but you're always going to need some other energy source(s) for the base load, which is the other half. Hopefully nuclear or some other net-zero, non-fossil source, but... something.
I'm not from the US so apologies if this figure is well known in American circles, but I'm just suprised to see such as precise pricetag attached to a problem that, as far as I understand, doesn't even have a technical solution yet.
Could you clarify where you're getting the idea we'll likely never be able to store enough energy from intermittent generation to power cities? That Twitter clip is tangential to the issue of...
Could you clarify where you're getting the idea we'll likely never be able to store enough energy from intermittent generation to power cities? That Twitter clip is tangential to the issue of being able to store enough intermittent energy to use later. There's a lot of energy storage solutions coming to market to store electricity beyond just batteries that will help address our storage needs. We're not quite there yet, sure, but saying we'll never get there doesn't seem to match the development we're seeing to address that very problem.
I agree in part, that over the next couple decades we're certainly going to need other technologies to meet our base load. However I think in 50-60 years renewables and a mix of storage technologies will absolutely be able to meet most countries energy needs.
Well, by "never" I really meant not in any reasonable timeframe and scale to avoid massive damage from climate change. E.g.: in your and my lifetime. I obviously don't know if humanity will have...
Could you clarify where you're getting the idea we'll likely never be able to store enough energy from intermittent generation to power cities?
Well, by "never" I really meant not in any reasonable timeframe and scale to avoid massive damage from climate change. E.g.: in your and my lifetime. I obviously don't know if humanity will have some incredible storage solutions 500 years from now... but I think that's not very relevant to the topic at hand.
And I'm basing that on the fact that, well... there aren't really any readily available technologies that we can expect to use to solve that problem in the next 30-40 years, are there? Which is where we need to put all our efforts today if we want to have any hope at all of making it past the next century or two.
As said, save for some spectacular, miraculous breakthrough in battery technology, those are out of the question for this kind of problem.
The next best thing is probably pumped hydro, which works well where feasible, but is obviously very limited in terms of locations as it's very geography dependent. For instance, in my country (mid sized European country, bit bigger than California), we have around 120GW of total capacity installed adding all sources. We have VERY favourable weather for renewables, which is why wind is our 2nd biggest source in terms of capacity (29GW, only after gas at 30GW), and solar comes 3rd at 20GW. In other words, we're pretty much maxed out in terms of renewables.
Pumped hydro has also been widely deployed due to favourable geography and lots of existing swamps and dams. Still, it only accounts for... less than 6 GW. We might be able to maybe... double that in the next decade or two if we go nuts building dams? Still won't solve the problem.
As a result, much of our solar and wind production simply goes to waste, and we often have to turn wind turbines off at peak hours or just give away renewable energy at 0 cost (or even pay other countries to take it off our grid), because it's useless in that moment and nobody can store that much energy. So where does our energy actually come from when we need to heat our homes at night? Well, there's the 7GW of nuclear that we have, that ends up producing around 20% of our total year-round energy despite making up just 5% of our total installed capacity. And the rest is obviously covered by gas, which accounted for 25% of our production last year.
And keep in mind, I'm talking about a country with one of the most favourable situations here. Extremely favourable weather and geography for both renewables and hydro storage, insane amount of subsidies to build renewables in the last 20 years... I don't think you can realistically expect most developed countries to replicate this.
So, what other solutions are there? Hydrogen is likely going nowhere in the short term considering all the challenges in terms of storage, transport and even difficulty (and pollution) splitting it out of water. And every other technology I've heard of is little more than a pipe dream at this point. Hell, I'm pretty sure nuclear fusion might be closer (this time for real) than many of those storage technologies that are still in the inception phase.
So I was pretty suprised to read the parent comment saying that not only is this a "solved" problem, but you guys actually have an accurate figure of the cost needed to somehow shift a huge country like the US to "100% renewables"? As far as I know, the only thing we can realistically hope for in the next 50 years or so is to achieve around 50% renewables + 50% something else. Nuclear is probably our best net-zero option for the other half, especially considering some of advantages of the newer reactor designs that are already being built and deployed. But we'd need to start building all of that capacity NOW, so that it's ready in 20 years or so.
As you can probably tell, I'm honestly quite pessimistic about this whole topic. My feeling is that we've just been collectively beating around the bush for the past 20 years, signing meaningless "agreements" while selling people hopes and dreams. It also doesn't help that this has sadly become a heavily politized/ideological topic, with many people hyping up renewables and other "futuristic" solutions far beyond what's realistic, while at the same time discouraging solid technologies that we absolutely need if we want to have any shot at the problem.
Anyway, sorry for the rant... went a bit offtopic there 😅
I can't address the issue of "will it happen?" since I think you're dead on, this issue has become an issue of political will and has strong pull in both directions. Reduction and eventual...
I can't address the issue of "will it happen?" since I think you're dead on, this issue has become an issue of political will and has strong pull in both directions. Reduction and eventual elimination of fossil fuels is going to kill a huge industry and a lot of jobs which is something we should worry about (making an equitable transition for our energy). Clean and renewable energy will certainly create new jobs, but I'm not sure they'll be created at the scale to replace fossil jobs since the technologies tend to be much more efficient. The other issue is scaling supply chains and sourcing enough materials to build out storage in these new industries.
However, in several parts of the US, utilities are essentially saying, "We know for certain how to hit 80% renewable generation by 2030, however reaching the next 20% is still a bit uncertain." So while I'm not familiar with the European energy landscape, the US energy landscape knows how to reach 80% and is cautiously optimistic they'll be able to reach 100%. States without utilities talking about this are mostly states with big fossil fuel industries and/or still largely powered by coal, so it looks to be more of a political will issue rather than feasibility.
Now, as for:
there aren't really any readily available technologies that we can expect to use to solve that problem in the next 30-40 years, are there?
I believe the answer is that yes, there are.
You've pointed back to batteries so I'll start there. Two battery technologies are coming to market aimed at grid energy storage for utilities but will likely permeate to storage in buildings directly in 10-20 years once the companies scale. Form energy and EnerVenue both with their own advantages.
Form energy's big selling point is it uses cheap, abundant materials (iron and water), and is extremely safe (no risk of thermal runaway). It's not suitable for things like EVs because it has much lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries, but for grid storage that's not as much of a problem especially if it's much cheaper per kWh. You don't have the same volume restrictions.
EnerVenue is selling a battery with similar benefits in that they don't lose capacity after 10s of thousands of cycles, no risk of thermal runaway, and on a life-cycle basis is cheaper than lithium batteries (still more expensive up front). A big benefit is that they're self-contained vessels and I don't think they rely on the same heavy metals as other batteries, so they're not competing for the same supply chain. It doesn't look like they've published what the batteries are made from, however, they do say "The Energy Vessel’s components are easily recyclable, increasing sustainability and environmental responsibility when compared with toxic, Li-ion alternatives." They have a lower energy density than lithium-ion so you have a similar space issue as a technology as with Form energy's iron-air batteries, but again that's not really as much an issue for grid or building-based storage.
Now for non-battery-based storage solutions, I'm aware of Malta Inc, Antora, and Energy Dome. There is a lot of research for solid particle thermal energy storage (which is aimed as an alternative to molten salt energy storage like with concentrated solar power or with a system like Malta's), however, I haven't seen any companies actively marketing a solution using it. Lots of research papers on the topic and I have some friends doing graduate research on the topic, so my understanding at least is that it's getting close to coming to market.
I need to run so I'll leave with this and follow-up later if I can think of anything else of value to share. I absolutely understand your pessimism and share aspects of it. I think we're going to continue doing irreversible damage to the environment and climate before we get this ship turned around. However, from what I can see, the ship is turning. Maybe not fast enough, but turning all the same. Insurance companies and financial markets, politics aside, are at least recognizing that if the climate continues changing on its current course, it's going to be extremely expensive. I just hope they realize the costs of business as usual are going to outweigh significant course correction in the present. We need a shift in pressure on politicians to recognize that the damage coming isn't far off in the future, it's happening now. Crops are getting wiped out in heat waves, cities are becoming flooded with increasing frequency, and natural disasters are coming with bigger price tags each year. (I think the human costs of all of these are the biggest and at least the most important to me, however, the financial costs seem to be all that motivate politicians/governments :/ ).
So whether or not it will change, multi-day storage is here and being built as fast as these companies can meet the demand (EnerVenue has contracts like 10-15 years out because they're selling them faster than they can build them while they scale). Seasonal storage is a bit more tricky, but over-building renewable sources and using inter-day solutions could be a possible option. Not cost-optimal, but a feasible solution all the same. We do have the technology though to do a 100% shift to renewables likely at a faster scale than we can build nuclear. Whether or not people/countries/governments will cooperate and pay for that transition I think is the current choke point.
We basically already have plenty of options for large scale, utility usage. You don't need chemical batteries, and those would probably not even be a good approach for something like this anyway....
Well, by "never" I really meant not in any reasonable timeframe and scale to avoid massive damage from climate change. E.g.: in your and my lifetime.
We basically already have plenty of options for large scale, utility usage. You don't need chemical batteries, and those would probably not even be a good approach for something like this anyway. The most efficient, and conceptually simple options just store the power as kinetic energy. You move a cart full of rocks up a hill and roll it back down, you build an elevator to move bricks up a tower and then drop it. You pump water up a slope and then run it back over turbines.
This is all stuff we've been doing forever because even fossil fuel plants need to be able to smooth their output throughout the day. Right now it's just an engineering problem to affordably scale them up, improve their durability, and figure out best practices around what mix of options to use at that scale.
I've already addressed that option in my comments. Pumped hydro is one of the best storate methods we have, we have lots of that in my country. But I don't think people realise the scale we're...
The most efficient, and conceptually simple options just store the power as kinetic energy. You move a cart full of rocks up a hill and roll it back down, you build an elevator to move bricks up a tower and then drop it. You pump water up a slope and then run it back over turbines.
I've already addressed that option in my comments.
Pumped hydro is one of the best storate methods we have, we have lots of that in my country. But I don't think people realise the scale we're talking about when dealing with nationwide power supply in developed countries, and how far off that mark we are in terms of storage. It's just not realistic to expect to cover everything with renewables + storage, not anytime soon at least.
That article (which honestly reads like GPT), and the non-paywalled link I could see, offered no details on how exactly one would achieve 100% renewable in the US. In fact, the source confirms all...
That article (which honestly reads like GPT), and the non-paywalled link I could see, offered no details on how exactly one would achieve 100% renewable in the US. In fact, the source confirms all my points one by one.
A “Green New Deal” that includes a proposal to move 100 percent of U.S. electricity production to renewable sources would require at least $5.7 trillion of investment in renewable energy and storage.
...
While the GND stretches beyond environmental policy, this analysis is limited to the GND’s 100 percent renewable energy target. It finds that such a target is impractical and, even using extremely favorable assumptions, would cost $423.9 billion annually—more than the entire retail cost of electricity in the United States in 2016. This finding is broadly in line with other estimates. The analysis further explains that such a policy is not the most efficient way to abate greenhouse gas emissions.
...
An accurate assessment of what a 100 percent renewable target costs is extremely difficult, and presumably only feasible with econometric analyses, like those published by the Energy Information Administration
Then they go on to say exactly what I mentioned in my comment:
For the sake of estimating the cost of a 100 percent renewable target, this analysis makes a series of substantial assumptions. These are as follows: the United States could entirely use solar power during the day, and wind power during the night; for the hours in the day where neither solar nor wind produce their stated capacity (due to capacity factors of electricity sources), it is assumed that a mixture of hydroelectricity and storage is used; the United States builds the entirety of all potential hydroelectricity resources; storage costs associated with batteries is their average operation and maintenance cost, rather than the (significantly higher) costs of batteries that can discharge a lot of electricity quickly and repeatedly throughout the day; electricity demand is roughly flat (rather than demand spiking during afternoon hours); and there is no increase in the price of wind, solar, hydro, or storage, even though a GND would cause the price of those resources to increase as demand is artificially inflated.
Hint: NONE OF THIS IS EVEN REMOTELY POSSIBLE
Despite the apparent popularity of a “100 percent renewable electricity” goal, there is surprisingly little academic research on what it would cost. This dearth is because renewable electricity is not the same as clean or low-carbon electricity. As explained by Jenkins in the MIT study, restricting low-carbon electricity objectives to renewable electricity creates much higher policy costs—10 to 62 percent higher. This expense results from a phenomenon known as the “duck curve,” which is that the more non-dispatchable (i.e. renewable) resources you have supplying electricity, the greater the demands are upon your dispatchable (i.e. fossil) resources.
There are two commonly cited analyses, though, which are used to claim that a 100 percent renewable electricity target is affordable. The first, and most notable, is by Dr. Mark Jacobson of Stanford University. In his 2015 analysis, Jacobson et al. assert that it is net beneficial to switch to 100 percent renewable electricity, and that the reason it has not happened yet is because people are “unaware” of the benefits or ease of transition. This study has since been widely debunked, as it assumes far more hydroelectric usage than is even remotely technically achievable in the United States.
Also, from your original link:
Conclusion
As these two studies indicate, a 100-percent renewable electricity system is not realistic by 2030 as the Green New Deal requires and certainly not at a reasonable cost. Wind and solar technologies are intermittent, as they depend on the weather and have low capacity factors, meaning that much more capacity would be required than the coal or natural gas capacity that they would be replacing. Further, battery storage is currently not a viable option as the technology is expensive and still developing.
And, fwiw, there are countries much poorer than the US that are already hitting the 100%+ renewable for months at a time, for real, right now; your linked Tweet notwithstanding.
Yes, which is why I tried to be precise in my wording:
As far as I know, there's no real way to shift most large developed countries to 100% renewables
...
Save for some notable exceptions, such as the Nordic countries with their abnormally high hydro production (not reproducible elsewhere)
Of course Costa Rica can live 100% on renewable energy. They use a grand total of 9 GWh anually, their weather is ideal for renewable energy and they can live with constant power outages every other day. Now try a developed country with 200-500 GWh of annual demand to cover, while also requiring reliable power 24/7. Let alone the US at 4,000 GWh or China at 5,500 GWh.
Would that we had as much skepticism on the cost before heading to the Middle East for them mythical WMDs.
So because the US did something stupid once, it should continue to do stupid things forever?
You cannot create something that doesn't exist out of thin air, and today we simply do not have a way to shift the whole world to 100% renewables, at least not in the foreseeable future. But as long as some interested parties keep spreading that myth, we will struggle to make any progress on the right fronts, and we'll continue to depend on what's already widely deployed: coal, oil and gas. The fossil fuel industry is of course very happy with the current state of affairs, and they let the 100% renewable myth live on because they know it ultimately benefits them, while our CO2 emissions keep going up.
But we've already wasted 20 years doing that... I honestly hope we can get past that already and start being pragmatic and realistic.
Well... it's your text. You told me to read that, and I'm just quoting your own article. And as always, it takes a few paragraphs to debunk a 1-line lie. Your point was that this problem can be...
That's a lot of text.
Well... it's your text. You told me to read that, and I'm just quoting your own article. And as always, it takes a few paragraphs to debunk a 1-line lie.
Shame it's so marginally related to my point.
Your point was that this problem can be solved with 5.6 trillion, which is false as your own article says. I'm debunking that. How can that be "marginally related"? You're the one who brough it up!
On the other hand, I guess what the US has done in the Middle East is much more on topic...
Btw, labelling 20 years and 8 trillion dollars in the ME as "one mistake" is one of the most fucked-up statements I've ever read on the matter. Well done.
I don't even know what you mean here. I 100% agree with you that what the US has done in the ME has been a complete and total disaster. You can pick whatever adjectives you want to describe it, and I'll likely be with you on that. I just don't see how that could somehow make it OK to go ahead and make all the wrong choices again, this time when it comes to energy policy.
If I want to critique a source, I have to find your one. If I debunk some other source then that's irrelevant to the discussion, and Google can't tell me which source you were thinking of. Because...
I hate to be snarky, but do y'all not have Google?
If I want to critique a source, I have to find your one. If I debunk some other source then that's irrelevant to the discussion, and Google can't tell me which source you were thinking of.
And yes, it's over decades; so? 8 trillion is a stunning number, even over 20 years.
Because on the face of it, if that number were over 20 only years, it sounds like they took the ~$500B/year that's been the US military budget and assumed it was (almost) all spent on the middle east (and thus that if it weren't for middle eastern wars the US budget would be near-$0, which is absurd). In other words, the figure doesn't pass the sniff-test.
But, looking at your cited figure:
That figure includes $1T in Homeland Security spending, which is not in the middle east but in the Homeland as the name suggests. In other words, you're claiming that "FAFOing in the middle east" includes the TSA. I think that if anythiing, the Homeland Security spending would increase as some operations that were done in the middle east would have to be compensated for at home, e.g. Osama Bin Laden/his top execs would still be alive and their main HQ still intact, which would make Al Qaeda more effective than if they were dead and their main base destroyed.
The figures also include $1T in interest off unpaid debt. Weird, and I don't know enough about accounting to be sure but that sure seems like double-counting because that's a function of any government spending. For instance, If that $6.5T for renewables doesn't also include interest payments then comparing the numbers isn't apples-to-apples.
They're also counting future expected costs for veterans (to the tune of $2T) under the definition of "we have spent". Which is arguable but stretching definitions nonetheless.
I don't know enough to properly analyze that report, but with the stuff I do know (homeland security/TSA) it looks a bit dodgy. If we assume it's $2-4T that would make more sense to me - that's $100-200B/year out of a roughly $500B/year budget (for a total military budget of $10T over the last 20 years), because the US splits its focus between the middle east, the asia-pacific, and Europe So 1/3 of its budget being in the middle-east is just business as usual.
More broadly, my criticism with this sort of claim like "the US spent $X in Y war" is that it's claiming a counterfactual that it wouldn't have spent that money otherwise; it's claiming that those overseas bases either wouldn't be necessary or wouldn't be expensive if it weren't for Y war, which is a deeply sweeping and political claim. Like, if someone managed to shut down the strait of Hormuz then south-east asia would immediately (i.e. within a few weeks, the time it takes for the fuel tankers to travel to their destinations) face a massive energy crisis, which would devastate the world economy.
In other words, the US projecting power gives it the ability to nip problems in the bud, which is often cheaper than being reactive as isolationist countries must be.
You might respond "but if we don't spend money on renewables then we'll have to spend even more on disasters like the New York flood, anyway!" which is true but irrelevant - if switching to renewables saves more than it will cost long-term, then obviously the US should do it regardless of its middle-east policy; the reason 100% renewables didn't happen is because the US is politically fucked, not because it decided that spending money on a war was a mutually exclusive alternative to renewables. And, it's not - the US is already producing about as much oil as it's consuming right now, but 1) not all types of oil are fungible (some plastics just need arabian oil), and 2) US self-sufficiency doesn't necessarily help Asian allies (and we're all rather dependent on Taiwan's microchips, even if Kpop is strictly optional). So the US will continue to have security interests in the middle east, post-renewables.
This reads like a parody, what's the reasoning behind putting Sultan Al Jaber as the president of cop28? He seems very unsuitable for the role, even before this statement, even if just by his other role as chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company,
I mean they were literally caught planning to broker oil deals with the visiting countries at this event.
The reason is that the member states of the event are entirely unserious about the issues and events like this are just reluctant PR to give the appearance something is being done about out boiling planet….
Yea it would have spoke volumes more if Biden announced "I'm not going to attend this farce of an event that was co-opted by the very industry that needs reigned in by it."
To not completely post-hoc those pricetags, I'm pretty sure that in 2001, the expected cost of said FAFO (I assume you mean the various wars, rather than fossil fuel imports?) was much lower than it ended up being; meanwhile the cost of renewables was exorbitantly higher then, though with the caveat that it was known these prices would go down by an unknown amount.
In other words: If you made the same calculation when those decisions would've had to be made, the math would've looked the other way around.
Besides, I'm not sure how much of the wars in the middle east are realistically linked to energy. Afghanistan doesn't have any appreciable oil, and I'm not sure if a lack of oil would've had Bush change course in Iraq.
I suppose the reasoning is that if the USA can afford to blow 8 trillion dollars on nonsense, then surely they can afford to invest 2/3 of that into something beneficial and it won't be any worse on the economy than the campaigns in the Middle East were.
In fact it would have been better for the economy, given that the money wouldn't have vanished, but instead have been spread all over the nation to pay manufacturers to make the new equipment and people to install and maintain it. As it was, most of the ME campaign money went into military hardware. Which still funds certain communities, but isn't as distributed as energy infrastructure.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this?
As far as I know, there's no real way to shift most large developed countries to 100% renewables, no matter how much money you throw at the problem. The sun still won't shine at night and the wind also doesn't blow 24/7, and we don't have (and likely never will) the battery technology or capacity to power entire cities like that.
Save for some notable exceptions, such as the Nordic countries with their abnormally high hydro production (not reproducible elsewhere), most developed countries can probably aim to cover somewhere around 50% of their year-round demand with renewables... but you're always going to need some other energy source(s) for the base load, which is the other half. Hopefully nuclear or some other net-zero, non-fossil source, but... something.
I'm not from the US so apologies if this figure is well known in American circles, but I'm just suprised to see such as precise pricetag attached to a problem that, as far as I understand, doesn't even have a technical solution yet.
Could you clarify where you're getting the idea we'll likely never be able to store enough energy from intermittent generation to power cities? That Twitter clip is tangential to the issue of being able to store enough intermittent energy to use later. There's a lot of energy storage solutions coming to market to store electricity beyond just batteries that will help address our storage needs. We're not quite there yet, sure, but saying we'll never get there doesn't seem to match the development we're seeing to address that very problem.
I agree in part, that over the next couple decades we're certainly going to need other technologies to meet our base load. However I think in 50-60 years renewables and a mix of storage technologies will absolutely be able to meet most countries energy needs.
Well, by "never" I really meant not in any reasonable timeframe and scale to avoid massive damage from climate change. E.g.: in your and my lifetime. I obviously don't know if humanity will have some incredible storage solutions 500 years from now... but I think that's not very relevant to the topic at hand.
And I'm basing that on the fact that, well... there aren't really any readily available technologies that we can expect to use to solve that problem in the next 30-40 years, are there? Which is where we need to put all our efforts today if we want to have any hope at all of making it past the next century or two.
As said, save for some spectacular, miraculous breakthrough in battery technology, those are out of the question for this kind of problem.
The next best thing is probably pumped hydro, which works well where feasible, but is obviously very limited in terms of locations as it's very geography dependent. For instance, in my country (mid sized European country, bit bigger than California), we have around 120GW of total capacity installed adding all sources. We have VERY favourable weather for renewables, which is why wind is our 2nd biggest source in terms of capacity (29GW, only after gas at 30GW), and solar comes 3rd at 20GW. In other words, we're pretty much maxed out in terms of renewables.
Pumped hydro has also been widely deployed due to favourable geography and lots of existing swamps and dams. Still, it only accounts for... less than 6 GW. We might be able to maybe... double that in the next decade or two if we go nuts building dams? Still won't solve the problem.
As a result, much of our solar and wind production simply goes to waste, and we often have to turn wind turbines off at peak hours or just give away renewable energy at 0 cost (or even pay other countries to take it off our grid), because it's useless in that moment and nobody can store that much energy. So where does our energy actually come from when we need to heat our homes at night? Well, there's the 7GW of nuclear that we have, that ends up producing around 20% of our total year-round energy despite making up just 5% of our total installed capacity. And the rest is obviously covered by gas, which accounted for 25% of our production last year.
And keep in mind, I'm talking about a country with one of the most favourable situations here. Extremely favourable weather and geography for both renewables and hydro storage, insane amount of subsidies to build renewables in the last 20 years... I don't think you can realistically expect most developed countries to replicate this.
So, what other solutions are there? Hydrogen is likely going nowhere in the short term considering all the challenges in terms of storage, transport and even difficulty (and pollution) splitting it out of water. And every other technology I've heard of is little more than a pipe dream at this point. Hell, I'm pretty sure nuclear fusion might be closer (this time for real) than many of those storage technologies that are still in the inception phase.
So I was pretty suprised to read the parent comment saying that not only is this a "solved" problem, but you guys actually have an accurate figure of the cost needed to somehow shift a huge country like the US to "100% renewables"? As far as I know, the only thing we can realistically hope for in the next 50 years or so is to achieve around 50% renewables + 50% something else. Nuclear is probably our best net-zero option for the other half, especially considering some of advantages of the newer reactor designs that are already being built and deployed. But we'd need to start building all of that capacity NOW, so that it's ready in 20 years or so.
As you can probably tell, I'm honestly quite pessimistic about this whole topic. My feeling is that we've just been collectively beating around the bush for the past 20 years, signing meaningless "agreements" while selling people hopes and dreams. It also doesn't help that this has sadly become a heavily politized/ideological topic, with many people hyping up renewables and other "futuristic" solutions far beyond what's realistic, while at the same time discouraging solid technologies that we absolutely need if we want to have any shot at the problem.
Anyway, sorry for the rant... went a bit offtopic there 😅
I can't address the issue of "will it happen?" since I think you're dead on, this issue has become an issue of political will and has strong pull in both directions. Reduction and eventual elimination of fossil fuels is going to kill a huge industry and a lot of jobs which is something we should worry about (making an equitable transition for our energy). Clean and renewable energy will certainly create new jobs, but I'm not sure they'll be created at the scale to replace fossil jobs since the technologies tend to be much more efficient. The other issue is scaling supply chains and sourcing enough materials to build out storage in these new industries.
However, in several parts of the US, utilities are essentially saying, "We know for certain how to hit 80% renewable generation by 2030, however reaching the next 20% is still a bit uncertain." So while I'm not familiar with the European energy landscape, the US energy landscape knows how to reach 80% and is cautiously optimistic they'll be able to reach 100%. States without utilities talking about this are mostly states with big fossil fuel industries and/or still largely powered by coal, so it looks to be more of a political will issue rather than feasibility.
Now, as for:
I believe the answer is that yes, there are.
You've pointed back to batteries so I'll start there. Two battery technologies are coming to market aimed at grid energy storage for utilities but will likely permeate to storage in buildings directly in 10-20 years once the companies scale. Form energy and EnerVenue both with their own advantages.
Form energy's big selling point is it uses cheap, abundant materials (iron and water), and is extremely safe (no risk of thermal runaway). It's not suitable for things like EVs because it has much lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries, but for grid storage that's not as much of a problem especially if it's much cheaper per kWh. You don't have the same volume restrictions.
EnerVenue is selling a battery with similar benefits in that they don't lose capacity after 10s of thousands of cycles, no risk of thermal runaway, and on a life-cycle basis is cheaper than lithium batteries (still more expensive up front). A big benefit is that they're self-contained vessels and I don't think they rely on the same heavy metals as other batteries, so they're not competing for the same supply chain. It doesn't look like they've published what the batteries are made from, however, they do say "The Energy Vessel’s components are easily recyclable, increasing sustainability and environmental responsibility when compared with toxic, Li-ion alternatives." They have a lower energy density than lithium-ion so you have a similar space issue as a technology as with Form energy's iron-air batteries, but again that's not really as much an issue for grid or building-based storage.
Now for non-battery-based storage solutions, I'm aware of Malta Inc, Antora, and Energy Dome. There is a lot of research for solid particle thermal energy storage (which is aimed as an alternative to molten salt energy storage like with concentrated solar power or with a system like Malta's), however, I haven't seen any companies actively marketing a solution using it. Lots of research papers on the topic and I have some friends doing graduate research on the topic, so my understanding at least is that it's getting close to coming to market.
I need to run so I'll leave with this and follow-up later if I can think of anything else of value to share. I absolutely understand your pessimism and share aspects of it. I think we're going to continue doing irreversible damage to the environment and climate before we get this ship turned around. However, from what I can see, the ship is turning. Maybe not fast enough, but turning all the same. Insurance companies and financial markets, politics aside, are at least recognizing that if the climate continues changing on its current course, it's going to be extremely expensive. I just hope they realize the costs of business as usual are going to outweigh significant course correction in the present. We need a shift in pressure on politicians to recognize that the damage coming isn't far off in the future, it's happening now. Crops are getting wiped out in heat waves, cities are becoming flooded with increasing frequency, and natural disasters are coming with bigger price tags each year. (I think the human costs of all of these are the biggest and at least the most important to me, however, the financial costs seem to be all that motivate politicians/governments :/ ).
So whether or not it will change, multi-day storage is here and being built as fast as these companies can meet the demand (EnerVenue has contracts like 10-15 years out because they're selling them faster than they can build them while they scale). Seasonal storage is a bit more tricky, but over-building renewable sources and using inter-day solutions could be a possible option. Not cost-optimal, but a feasible solution all the same. We do have the technology though to do a 100% shift to renewables likely at a faster scale than we can build nuclear. Whether or not people/countries/governments will cooperate and pay for that transition I think is the current choke point.
We basically already have plenty of options for large scale, utility usage. You don't need chemical batteries, and those would probably not even be a good approach for something like this anyway. The most efficient, and conceptually simple options just store the power as kinetic energy. You move a cart full of rocks up a hill and roll it back down, you build an elevator to move bricks up a tower and then drop it. You pump water up a slope and then run it back over turbines.
This is all stuff we've been doing forever because even fossil fuel plants need to be able to smooth their output throughout the day. Right now it's just an engineering problem to affordably scale them up, improve their durability, and figure out best practices around what mix of options to use at that scale.
I've already addressed that option in my comments.
Pumped hydro is one of the best storate methods we have, we have lots of that in my country. But I don't think people realise the scale we're talking about when dealing with nationwide power supply in developed countries, and how far off that mark we are in terms of storage. It's just not realistic to expect to cover everything with renewables + storage, not anytime soon at least.
That article (which honestly reads like GPT), and the non-paywalled link I could see, offered no details on how exactly one would achieve 100% renewable in the US. In fact, the source confirms all my points one by one.
From the '5.7 trilion' source:
Then they go on to say exactly what I mentioned in my comment:
Hint: NONE OF THIS IS EVEN REMOTELY POSSIBLE
Also, from your original link:
Yes, which is why I tried to be precise in my wording:
Of course Costa Rica can live 100% on renewable energy. They use a grand total of 9 GWh anually, their weather is ideal for renewable energy and they can live with constant power outages every other day. Now try a developed country with 200-500 GWh of annual demand to cover, while also requiring reliable power 24/7. Let alone the US at 4,000 GWh or China at 5,500 GWh.
So because the US did something stupid once, it should continue to do stupid things forever?
You cannot create something that doesn't exist out of thin air, and today we simply do not have a way to shift the whole world to 100% renewables, at least not in the foreseeable future. But as long as some interested parties keep spreading that myth, we will struggle to make any progress on the right fronts, and we'll continue to depend on what's already widely deployed: coal, oil and gas. The fossil fuel industry is of course very happy with the current state of affairs, and they let the 100% renewable myth live on because they know it ultimately benefits them, while our CO2 emissions keep going up.
But we've already wasted 20 years doing that... I honestly hope we can get past that already and start being pragmatic and realistic.
Well... it's your text. You told me to read that, and I'm just quoting your own article. And as always, it takes a few paragraphs to debunk a 1-line lie.
Your point was that this problem can be solved with 5.6 trillion, which is false as your own article says. I'm debunking that. How can that be "marginally related"? You're the one who brough it up!
On the other hand, I guess what the US has done in the Middle East is much more on topic...
I don't even know what you mean here. I 100% agree with you that what the US has done in the ME has been a complete and total disaster. You can pick whatever adjectives you want to describe it, and I'll likely be with you on that. I just don't see how that could somehow make it OK to go ahead and make all the wrong choices again, this time when it comes to energy policy.
Where's that figure from? It'd have to be over decades.
If I want to critique a source, I have to find your one. If I debunk some other source then that's irrelevant to the discussion, and Google can't tell me which source you were thinking of.
Because on the face of it, if that number were over 20 only years, it sounds like they took the ~$500B/year that's been the US military budget and assumed it was (almost) all spent on the middle east (and thus that if it weren't for middle eastern wars the US budget would be near-$0, which is absurd). In other words, the figure doesn't pass the sniff-test.
But, looking at your cited figure:
That figure includes $1T in Homeland Security spending, which is not in the middle east but in the Homeland as the name suggests. In other words, you're claiming that "FAFOing in the middle east" includes the TSA. I think that if anythiing, the Homeland Security spending would increase as some operations that were done in the middle east would have to be compensated for at home, e.g. Osama Bin Laden/his top execs would still be alive and their main HQ still intact, which would make Al Qaeda more effective than if they were dead and their main base destroyed.
The figures also include $1T in interest off unpaid debt. Weird, and I don't know enough about accounting to be sure but that sure seems like double-counting because that's a function of any government spending. For instance, If that $6.5T for renewables doesn't also include interest payments then comparing the numbers isn't apples-to-apples.
They're also counting future expected costs for veterans (to the tune of $2T) under the definition of "we have spent". Which is arguable but stretching definitions nonetheless.
I don't know enough to properly analyze that report, but with the stuff I do know (homeland security/TSA) it looks a bit dodgy. If we assume it's $2-4T that would make more sense to me - that's $100-200B/year out of a roughly $500B/year budget (for a total military budget of $10T over the last 20 years), because the US splits its focus between the middle east, the asia-pacific, and Europe So 1/3 of its budget being in the middle-east is just business as usual.
More broadly, my criticism with this sort of claim like "the US spent $X in Y war" is that it's claiming a counterfactual that it wouldn't have spent that money otherwise; it's claiming that those overseas bases either wouldn't be necessary or wouldn't be expensive if it weren't for Y war, which is a deeply sweeping and political claim. Like, if someone managed to shut down the strait of Hormuz then south-east asia would immediately (i.e. within a few weeks, the time it takes for the fuel tankers to travel to their destinations) face a massive energy crisis, which would devastate the world economy.
In other words, the US projecting power gives it the ability to nip problems in the bud, which is often cheaper than being reactive as isolationist countries must be.
You might respond "but if we don't spend money on renewables then we'll have to spend even more on disasters like the New York flood, anyway!" which is true but irrelevant - if switching to renewables saves more than it will cost long-term, then obviously the US should do it regardless of its middle-east policy; the reason 100% renewables didn't happen is because the US is politically fucked, not because it decided that spending money on a war was a mutually exclusive alternative to renewables. And, it's not - the US is already producing about as much oil as it's consuming right now, but 1) not all types of oil are fungible (some plastics just need arabian oil), and 2) US self-sufficiency doesn't necessarily help Asian allies (and we're all rather dependent on Taiwan's microchips, even if Kpop is strictly optional). So the US will continue to have security interests in the middle east, post-renewables.