Cost of reducing emssions

mmmmikey

GreatApe wrote: »

How do you fill in the gaps for when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine?

1. You start by managing demand to use energy when it is readily available and cheap. Lots of ways of doing this as long as you accept that you just have to do things differently. Why not smelt aluminium (or whatever) on windy/sunny days only? Might be difficult to do this with UK work patterns, but in a developing country why not be much more flexible - it's windy today so come into work, it's calm today so stay at home.



2. You minimise consumption during the "gaps" and store what energy you do need. This doesn't have to be batteries, although they have a part to play. For example, at this time of year I store 30 or 40 kWh per day as thermal energy in storage heaters and my hot water cylinder but only 3 or 4 kWh in batteries and this works fine.



It's just a question of being bold and imaginative - which I think it would be fair to say you're no stranger to

Cardew

ABrass wrote: »

The article is trying to be negative,



They are funded in part by the fossil fuel industry.

Absolutely agree; they clearly have an agenda.


However we get multiple articles - particularly on one thread - all with positive publicity from the RE industry.


The article makes several unambiguous statements: e.g.

solar and wind today(July 2019) supply less than two percent of the global energy.

Does anyone have a quotable source of statistics that contradict the above statement?

EVandPV

Cardew wrote: »

Does anyone have a quotable source of statistics that contradict the above statement?

According to this article, around a third of global generation is now from RE and about half of that is from wind and solar .....

https://www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2019/Apr/Renewable-Energy-Now-Accounts-for-a-Third-of-Global-Power-Capacity

ABrass

Ah but that's including electricity, not energy. Energy includes coal for heating and cooling, or gas etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

According to Wikipedia solar and wind were about 4% of energy in 2018, hydro which is ignored in that article was another 7%.

The difficulty is that trying to define and measure this stuff is very detail oriented and just swapping kWh here for kWh there isn't quite right.

GreatApe

mmmmikey wrote: »

1. You start by managing demand to use energy when it is readily available and cheap. Lots of ways of doing this as long as you accept that you just have to do things differently. Why not smelt aluminium (or whatever) on windy/sunny days only? Might be difficult to do this with UK work patterns, but in a developing country why not be much more flexible - it's windy today so come into work, it's calm today so stay at home.

I've worked in heavy industry you have no idea how ridiculous this idea is

Heavy industry is akin to a nuclear power stations it's hugely capital intensive
I'd you spend £10 billion on a heavy industry plant with 20 years life that's £1.37 million pounds per day if you run at 100% capacity. If you run at 30% capacity only when the wind blows or the sub shines that's £4.6 million pounds per day

In short electricity is an economic enabler it has to be on all the time
You don't save 10p on electricity to lose £100 on sales

2. You minimise consumption during the "gaps" and store what energy you do need. This doesn't have to be batteries, although they have a part to play. For example, at this time of year I store 30 or 40 kWh per day as thermal energy in storage heaters and my hot water cylinder but only 3 or 4 kWh in batteries and this works fine.

You can't run a advanced economy on part time electricity this is ridiculous behind ridiculous

It's just a question of being bold and imaginative - which I think it would be fair to say you're no stranger to

I. Imaginative but trust me electricity has to always be available

It costs 0.01 pennies on electricity to make a coffee which sells for £3.50
Electricity is an economic enabler it has to be on always


More importantly I can state state the obvious
Look at any ANY developing county with increasing electricity demand
Are they able to 'just be imaginative' or are they having to build conventional thermal and hydropower to make things work?

Martyn1981

Sticking with the thread title, here's an article I posted a while back on the Energy thread, showing that the 'cost' of reducing emissions is far less than the cost of not reducing emissions, so the faux argument/choice is null and void, and we'd have to be completely bonkers to opt for, or even argue for anything else.

Green New Deals For The World Are Green Good Deals

The Earth is rapidly approaching 1.5°C global warming, air pollution kills over 7 million people worldwide each year, and diminishing fossil fuel resources portend social instability. Yet, recently, world leaders at the United Nations Madrid climate talks failed to agree on a path forward. The core of the problem is the belief by some leaders that solving global warming will be expensive and drain the economy of their country. However, new research indicates that this belief is incorrect. Solving the problems is much cheaper and creates many more jobs than not solving them while also keeping the lights on. This result was learned from a scientific study I and colleagues published December 20, in the scientific journal One Earth.

In that study, we developed Green New Deal roadmaps for each of 143 countries, representing 99.7% of global human-produced CO2 emissions. The plans involve transitioning each country’s all-purpose energy (electricity, transportation, building heating and cooling, industry, etc.) to 100% clean, renewable electricity and heat that is provided by wind, water, and solar (WWS) power after accounting for energy efficiency.

In this new paradigm, we will use electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles instead of fossil fuel or biofuel vehicles; electric heat pumps for air and water heating instead of gas, oil, or wood based heaters; electric furnaces instead of fossil fuel furnaces; and electric induction cooktops instead of gas cooktops. The electricity will come from wind turbines, solar panels, concentrated solar power plants, hydroelectric plants, geothermal electricity plants, tidal turbines, and wave devices. Building heat will come from solar and geothermal heat and electric heat pumps. We will also need electricity, heat, cold, and hydrogen storage. To avoid 1.5°C global warming, at least 80% of the transition needs to occur by 2030 and 100% by no later than 2050.

One of the most important results from our study is that, worldwide, WWS reduces energy needs by 57%. This is due to the efficiency of electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles over fossil fuel vehicles; the efficiency of electric heat pumps over fossil fuel heating; the efficiency of electrified industry over fossil fuel industry; eliminating energy to mine, transport, and refine fossil fuels, biofuels, and uranium; and modest energy efficiency improvements beyond those in a fossil-fuel economy.

This large reduction in energy requirements is important because it, along with a slight reduction in WWS energy cost per unit energy compared with fossil fuels, reduces all-purpose energy costs worldwide by an astounding 61% (from $17.7 to $6.8 trillion per year in 2050). Because WWS eliminates almost 7 million deaths annually and emissions associated with global warming, it also reduces social costs (energy plus health plus climate costs) worldwide by an even larger 91% (from $76.1 to $6.8 trillion per year).

The upfront capital needed for this transition worldwide (which is spread over 30 years) is about $73 trillion. However, this cost pays for itself in about 7 years due to the $11 trillion in annual energy cost savings due to WWS over fossil fuels. In the United States, the capital cost of the Green New Deal is $7.8 trillion. In Europe, it is $6.2 trillion. In China, it is above $16 trillion.

WWS creates 28.6 million more long-term, full-time jobs than lost worldwide, including 3.1 million in the United States, 2.9 million in Europe, and over 8.5 million in China. It needs only 0.65% of the world’s land, of which two-thirds is space between wind turbines that can be used for multiple purposes.

In sum, WWS needs less energy, costs less, and creates more jobs than current energy. What is there not to like? A transition to WWS will improve the quality of life while solving three major problems worldwide. It is truly a Green Good Deal. The key is to deploy, deploy, deploy as fast as possible.

silverwhistle

Cardew wrote: »

Incidentally this link to a USA website was put on this forum:

https://fee.org/articles/41-inconvenient-truths-on-the-new-energy-economy/

Not sure it's a messenger I would trust: it's a right-wing "libertarian" thinktank with a good bit of funding from people like the Koch brothers.

Martyn1981

silverwhistle wrote: »

Not sure it's a messenger I would trust: it's a right-wing "libertarian" thinktank with a good bit of funding from people like the Koch brothers.

I'm sure it's purely coincidental that his links, quotes and articles always trace back to climate denial organisations.

After all he's only been doing it for about 10yrs, so statistically there is still time for it to average out if he starts posting only positive RE news regularly for say the next 20yrs.

Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group
$353,167 from Koch foundations, 2000-2017.

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is a free market organization with offices in Irvington, New York and Atlanta, Georgia that publishes The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, a largely libertarian publication. Unscientific skepticism and obstructionism regarding global warming are promoted both on FEE’s blogs and through The Freeman–including Willie Soon, whose grants since 2002 are exclusively from fossil fuel interests, and the promotion of two books by discredited industry apologist scientists Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling.

In an apparent rebuttal to an article in Nature linking global warming to increased extinction rates,The Freeman cites the Koch-funded Marshall Institute and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a project of the Western Fuels Association (a coal industry front), which has received grants from Koch foundations and ExxonMobil with staff currently contracted by The Heartland Institute—see Greenpeace’s investigation of Heartland Institute leaked documents.

The Foundation for Economic Education promoted a list created by Senator James Inhofe, who gets more political donations from Koch Industries than any other single source, naming 400 scientists who supposedly doubt the climate change scientific consensus. In examination of the authenticity of this list, the Daily Green found that of the 400 names, 44 were TV weathermen, 70 have no background in climate science, and 84 were recipients of industry money.

FEE staff are linked to the Mackinac Center, Americans for Prosperity and the Cato Institute.

FEE is a member of the State Policy Network.

Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Stance on Climate Change
“Given the uncertain prospects for drastic climate change in the immediate future and considering the potential for crippling costs of aggressive emissions-abatement policies, reasoned concern and continued study appear to be the responsible courses of action.” [4]

“Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) implies we should do very little to prevent climate change. Instead, we should create wealth. Expanding the productive capacity of the economy will compensate future generations better than reductions in GHG will. A richer world in 2100, after all, will be able to afford to do things like relocating people affected by rising sea levels and constructing new port facilities and seawalls.” [5]

“In the most recent 5,000-year period, there have been numerous periods of distinct global warming and global cooling. However, the overall long-term climatic trend indicates that the earth has been getting cooler, not warmer.” [6]

“CO2 generally provides great benefits for the earth and mankind, […] These benefits are in addition to those that are likely to occur in the event that warming actually takes place. Increased temperatures, especially those that occur overnight, will delay the first frost and prolong growing seasons, further expanding crop yields.” [7]

“The dirty little secret behind nearly all the alarmists' policy proposals is that they will not have any noticeable impact on the climate.” [8]

Foundation for Economic Education

Overall, we rate The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) Right-Center biased based on left leaning views regarding social issues and far right views pertaining to economics. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting based on not supporting the consensus of science regarding climate change.

PasturesNew

I drive a diesel. I often wonder how my 3000 miles/year compares to a top sports car that's doing 60,000 miles/year including driving down most weekends to their second home in Cornwall/Devon. My 3000 miles are pretty much "need", their 60,000 are mostly "want".

Solarchaser

It kinda depends on what kind of driving is done by both.
If your 3k miles is all motorway speeds then your footprint will be fairly small, as diesels do much better emissions wise when they are heated up and at motorway speeds (assuming a modern ish deisel)

But if it's all 5 min nips to the shops etc, where it's not getting up to temperature, I wouldn't be surprised if you were a bigger polluter.

Diesels are worse than petrol, vast majority of sports cars are petrol..

But that wasnt really the point you were making I guess