Global Investments Into Clean-Energy Technology Reach Record High (axios.com) 27
Investments into clean-energy technologies totaled more than $500 billion for the first time ever, according to a BloombergNEF report released Tuesday. Axios reports: Technologies making energy and other material cleaner needs to expand rapidly if the world is to adequately address climate change in the coming decades. Global investment in the low-carbon energy transition was $501.3 billion in 2020, up 9% from 2019 despite the pandemic driving the world into a recession. This tally includes investments in renewables, energy storage, electric vehicle charging stations, hydrogen production, carbon capture projects and more. The largest areas of investment are renewable energy and electrified transportation.
The report also reflects another broader trend, which is that investment often lags in technologies beyond renewable electricity and electric cars. This includes carbon capture and most industrial processes like cement, according to the International Energy Agency.
The report also reflects another broader trend, which is that investment often lags in technologies beyond renewable electricity and electric cars. This includes carbon capture and most industrial processes like cement, according to the International Energy Agency.
Re: (Score:2)
PA gives a 15% discount on property tax for converting to coal [for heating].
Yow. Do you have a reference to that? A quick duckduckgo search didn't find any reference to this.
Here's a question (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Artificial Sequestration? Probably a long shot.
Mass algae cultivation near coast lines? Might be easier, and replenishes the bottom of the food chain.
Seaweed farms?
Re: (Score:2)
Artificial Sequestration? Probably a long shot.
Not a long shot, but well known to be a necessary part of the solution. If we could turn off all fossil carbon output tomorrow that would just be lifting off the gas, we'd still need to hit the brakes hard to keep the Earthmobile from rolling at speed into the Mass Extinction Warehouse. I think burning down trees in a BECCS plant before they can go up in forest fires would be a great idea.
Re: (Score:2)
And to further this analogy, natural sequestration alone would be like opening a window and sticking your hand out to add air resistance :-P
Re: (Score:2)
Mass algae cultivation near coast lines? Might be easier, and replenishes the bottom of the food chain.
Not near coastlines, but far out at sea, where afte sucking up carbon and running out of nutrients, the lgae dies and sinks to the bottom.
Re: (Score:2)
What do we do in twenty or thirty years if we switch to clean sources of power and it makes no difference or it keeps getting warmer?
I do not understand the question. It will keep getting warmer for twenty years no matter what we do. If we wanted it to not get warmer for the next couple of decades, we should have stopped pumping out CO2 a decade ago at least.
Re: (Score:2)
Think of warmer madly faster. Exponential heating etc.
When we come into these debates we always debate that the climate scientists "might be wrong". We never think what the implications of that are. It is unlikely that they are wrong in a downwards direction since we already see the actual warming going on. On the other hand, given that scientists are under such pressure from the oil & fossil fuel lobbies and so never release anything they aren't sure about, it's quite reasonable to expect that globa
Re: (Score:2)
^^^
Wow, wish I had mod points.
Yes, too few people seem to realize that climate changes slowly. The greenhouse gasses we are putting into the atmosphere now are going to have an effect for a hundred years (and very likely longer-- it's not entirely clear what the long term removal mechanisms are; the data we have is mostly for near-equilibrium short term.)
Humans turn out to be very poor at dealing with slow problems. If it's not an immediate crisis, people want to ignore it.
...People always think that there's a spectrum between the skeptics and the scientists. That's not the way it is at all - the skeptics are providing no information whatsoever.
Worse; the people calling themsel
Re: (Score:3)
It will keep getting warmer.
You have to understand that the inertia of the climate system pretty much sets a course for the next 30 years that cannot be lowered without removing greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. So reduce the release of greenhouse gas is nowhere near sufficient.
The goal of switching to cleaner energy is to try to stop the acceleration of the increase in temperature during the next 30 years with the hope that the resulting increase in temperature will remain manageable for our societies.
It
Re: (Score:2)
You do know that switching to cleaner power is not believed to solve the global warming problem, right? The idea is to stop making it worse. But we will still have to do other things to make it better.
You're trying to create an argument by which you can say it's all a waste of time, but that's a lot of bullshit. If someone shoots you with an arrow, you have to remove the arrow before you can heal the wound. That's what this is about.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Here's a question (Score:2)
What I'm saying is that co2 neutral power is a necessary part of the solution, and you are full of shit.
First plug the hole [Re:Here's a question] (Score:2)
So what you're saying is your solution isn't a solution?
If there's a hole in the hull of the boat and water is gushing in, would you tell people who say we have to plug the hole to keep more water from coming in that "plugging the hole isn't a solution, because it won't remove the water that's already in the boat"?
And I'm a bullshitter?
Yes, that part seems accurate.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean, like what do we do if we created a better world for nothing [solar-power-now.com]?
There are a couple of ways of storing carbon. For instance, you could gas off biomass, burn the gas (for energy) and just dump the charcoal on fields as soil improvement, since it is apparently stable for a long period of time (search for "terra preta").
If CO2 sequestration isn't enough, well, then it's geoengineering big time.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a clever way of saying you don't believe CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But it is, so there's no point in answering your question since it's based on a false premise.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no Plan B. We are already staring a global catastrophe in the face even if we do everything that is possible. All we can do is try to reduce this catastrophe below "extinction level" or better "collapse of civilization". The first one looks possible, but it looks bad for the second one as decision makers are _still_ dragging their feet 30 years after the predictions reached high reliability.
Tesla? (Score:2)
How much investment was in nuclear? On building? (Score:3)
We aren't going to get to zero carbon without nuclear power so I'm wondering, how much of this spending was on nuclear power?
We'll need nuclear power regardless of what people think of how much human activity contributes to global warming so it would be nice to know how much investment has been made into nuclear power to get an idea how seriously the world is taking the global energy problems, as opposed to any clean energy problems.
I'm seeing a lot of bad policy out of governments around the world. One being a classification of wind and solar as "zero carbon" but not including nuclear power, even though nuclear power is closer to zero than either wind or solar. If there's a nuclear power plant closed, and it's being replaced with a natural gas plant, then this is seen by the government as a net zero gain in carbon output. Governments are placing higher priority on closing nuclear power plants, due to "safety", over closing coal power plants. Germany has been doing this with detrimental effects on air quality and public health.
Another question is how much of this investment was in actually building things? That is opposed to investments in research. Research is nice but it will not mean lower CO2 until something is built. We need clean energy produced, not just researched. I can research making a sandwich but I'm just going to get hungrier until I make a sandwich and eat it. We can put money into researching better grid batteries but that's not going to make the electrical grid more reliable until the batteries are made and connected to the grid.
So much money on research but I'm not seeing a lot of improvement. If this money was spent on building the same old stuff that worked then my guess is we'd be better off now than looking for newer and better stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of this money is being spent building stuff. No, companies are not spending half a trillion on pure research. EV charging stations, wind and solar farms are being built like gangbusters. Volkswagen Auto Group is devoting half its R&D budget to electric models - billions of dollars per year. That is near-term product development, not pie-in-the-sky stuff.
Much more detail is out there but I can't google it any more easily than you can.
Re: (Score:2)
We aren't going to get to zero carbon without nuclear power so I'm wondering, how much of this spending was on nuclear power?
A lot: https://www.world-nuclear.org/... [world-nuclear.org]
The largest part of the DOE's green energy research is for next generation nuclear. https://www.energy.gov/ne/nucl... [energy.gov]
including building next-generation reactors: https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]
Re: (Score:3)
We aren't going to get to zero carbon without nuclear power
Certain people keep saying this but all the evidence points to the contrary. We are far more likely to get there by investing in affordable clean energy.
Well, the other issue is that nuclear isn't zero carbon, and while other renewables are not either the difference is that they are better than nuclear already and rapidly improving, where as nuclear has been this bad for decades and doesn't look likely to get much better. There is always some great new nuclear tech just around the corner, a few years and a
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear isn't a great option because it's bad at peaking usage - it takes hours to days to ramp power up or down. It's great for steady base loads, but horrendous at quickly ramping up and down.
Peaking plants need to be able to react within seconds to minutes - grid storage is great for the "seconds" part which can tide the grid over for minutes until a slower peaking can take over.
Hydro does destroy a fair bit of land, but it's great at base load and peaking (within minutes) and highly renewable, so it's g
Re: (Score:2)
The other big issue with nuclear is that many countries can't have it, for one reason or another. If it was the only solution we would be screwed because many countries would never accept it, it accept their rivals having it.
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear isn't a great option because it's bad at peaking usage - it takes hours to days to ramp power up or down. It's great for steady base loads, but horrendous at quickly ramping up and down.
Also terrible at following demand is wind and solar. What's the solution for matching wind and solar to demand? Batteries. If we can match wind and solar to demand then we can match nuclear fission to demand. This is a solved problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Solar heliostats (not PV) are another base load and peaking option - the molten salt stores a ton of heat so it can provide base load even on cloudy days and at night, and it's thermal so it's great at peaking as well.
So, kind of like how we can use nuclear fission power to get molten salts for thermal energy storage?