Global Wind and Solar Power Capacity Grew At Record Rate In 2020 (theguardian.com) 184
The world's wind and solar energy capacity grew at a record rate last year while the oil industry recorded its steepest slump in demand since the second world war, according to BP. The Guardian reports: The impact of coronavirus lockdowns on the energy industry led carbon emissions to plummet by 6% on the year before, the sharpest decline since 1945, according to BP's annual review of the energy sector. But the report says the impact of Covid on carbon emissions needs to be replicated every year for the next three decades if governments hope to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. "Yes, they were the biggest falls seen for 75 years," said Spencer Dale, BP's chief economist. "But they occurred against the backdrop of a global pandemic and the largest economic recession in postwar history. The challenge is to reduce emissions without causing massive disruption and damage to everyday lives and livelihoods."
Meanwhile the "relentless expansion of renewable energy" meant electricity generated by wind, solar and hydroelectricity plants was "relatively unscathed," Dale said. The report found that global wind and solar power capacity grew by 238GW in 2020, more than five times greater than the UK's total renewable energy capacity. The increase was mainly driven by China, which accounted for roughly half of the global increase in wind and solar energy production capacity, but even controlling for that 2020 was a record year for building wind and solar farms. Dale said the trend away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy last year was "exactly what the world needs to see as it transitions to net zero."
Meanwhile the "relentless expansion of renewable energy" meant electricity generated by wind, solar and hydroelectricity plants was "relatively unscathed," Dale said. The report found that global wind and solar power capacity grew by 238GW in 2020, more than five times greater than the UK's total renewable energy capacity. The increase was mainly driven by China, which accounted for roughly half of the global increase in wind and solar energy production capacity, but even controlling for that 2020 was a record year for building wind and solar farms. Dale said the trend away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy last year was "exactly what the world needs to see as it transitions to net zero."
too slow (Score:5, Interesting)
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This.
Need much much more renewables !
Re:too slow (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Here in Australia where I live we always had extremely dry summers, and now increasingly things are behaving more tropical, as if Perth had somehow travelled 500km north.
Which is a real shit. Dry heat is easy to deal with. evaporative air conditioning is cheap to run, but it only works in low humidity. If its that nasty sticky heat, evaporative just makes it *worse*.
I think thats part of what people miss. Its not a simple increase in temperatures, its a an increase in energy to the entire atomospheric system. Some of that will be in the form of thermal energy, and some of that will be in the form of kinetic energy, Storms, winds , weird-ass changes to complex weather systems.
The boring climate deniers who love to bang on about how the predictions wont work because 'climate is complicated' miss the point that thats not a good thing, its a *very bad thing*. (And for reference we can make pretty good predictions, the climate might be complicated by the simple fact of increased energy to the system is very simple. Increase IR absorbsion by CO2=>energy retained.)
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You can tell a lot about Climate by just working from First Principles. This was already done in the 1970ies, and the general development of Climate over the course of 50 years has predicted the actual curves quite accurately. Yes, some details are quite nitty and gritt
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evaporative air conditioning is cheap to run, but it only works in low humidity.
Here in the USA we colloquially call them "swamp coolers", and officially "evaporative coolers", but they are never called "air conditioning". We reserve that name for systems that use a phase change. And I bring this up only because it actually makes sense. Particularly the name "swamp cooler", because they make the air humid. The big problem with evaporative coolers is that they work efficiently and also produce comfortable temperatures only in a very narrow window of temperatures and also, as you say, on
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We reserve that name for systems that use a phase change.
You mean like evaporation? ;)
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Nice :D
Maybe I shoulda said something about a sealed loop
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First, evaporative cooling does involve a phase change. It's right there in the word "evaporative".
Second, the name "air conditioning" is not reserved for refrigerant expansion and compression cycle phase change systems. Technically, "air conditoioing" describes systems that control temperature and other en
Look into the M-cycle. MODERATE humidity. (Score:2)
evaporative air conditioning is cheap to run, but it only works in low humidity.
Look into M-cycle (Maisotsenko cycle) cooling. That's multi-stage evaporative cooling using a heat exchanger so the product air isn't humidified, and which approaches the dewpoint, rather than the wet-bulb, temperature. So it's useful in MODERATE humidity.
The equipment is somewhat more expensive than an evaporative cooler and currently not all that easy to obtain. But it's getting there.
Re: too slow (Score:2)
Exponential growth may save us yet.
Last year 238 GW and this year 400 GW, by 2025 we may build 1000 GW a year. Total works capacity is around 30 000 GW, and by 2030 we might reach 3 000 GW solar + wind production per year.
Future will tell!
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We have no plan for replacing aviation or global shipping.
Perhaps not, but you could at least tax them properly.
And the US military is the single largest consumer of fossil fuels in the US. What are they going to do? Run tanks and F18s on electric?
Chances are that the F-18s are not your biggest worry. Tanks, perhaps quite a bit more. But not having to run forward military bases 24/7 on fossil fuel to power air conditioning surely will help. Hell, perhaps you might even expect fewer casualties from having to run convoys all the time. Well, not now since US troops tiptoed out of Afghanistan in the middle [militarytimes.com]
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Electricity is only part of the CO2 generation. Keep in mind agriculture accounts for 1/3 of greenhouse gas emissions. We have no plan for replacing aviation or global shipping.
Synthetic fuels are generally inefficient to make in terms of energy, but if you throw enough windfarms at them it would be potentially be possible to make it close to carbon neutral for aviation. It would not necessarily be cheap, though. After the first and second oil shocks of the 1970s quite a bit of research was done on using wind again to reduce oil requirements for shipping, but the oil became cheap again and that ended, but it's not impossible that such research could be revised.
And the US military is the single largest consumer of fossil fuels in the US. What are they going to do? Run tanks and F18s on electric?
Its oil consumption
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We used to have real Winters in my home area, with schools actually closing down and villages being snowed in and unreachable for weeks during the worst times.
Last year, we didn't even have snow.
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Last year, we didn't even have snow.
This winter we had snow. In Málaga (Spain). The last time it snowed there was in 1954. People here suffered below zero temperatures for a few weeks & the housing here isn't built to cope with that. Many homes don't have heating. But at least we could get out into the sun during the day to warm up a little.
Expect increasingly more intense & extreme weather events to become the norm.
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Some parts in Austria had 4.5C yesterday. Some others 38C.
For the Americans here, that's 40F and 100F in two places in a country the size of South Carolina.
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I have no idea why coastal South Carolina doesn't have temperature ranges like that with it's truly massive mountains which stretch almost an entire kilometer up into the sky.
Maybe, just maybe, geography plays a bit of a factor in the difference in temperature range across the two regions, given one is a landlocked mountainous region and the other is a hilariously flat coastal floodplain.
Maybe.
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The reason I picked South Carolina was that the CIA factbook uses it as a size comparison, not for its terrain features.
Take, I dunno, Colorado which is as far as I know (sorry, not a US geography expert myself) has a couple mountains, and try to find two places there within that distance of a 60F temperature difference.
But how do you get politicians to change? (Score:3)
Our global fossil fuel industry hires a lot of good paying stable blue collar jobs. Keeping this group of people happy is the Political Low hanging fruit.
* They are paid well for a comfortable life style, so they have money to contribute towards the party.
* Their jobs are stable, so they would be having more traditional nuclear families. Meaning their values will be moved to the next generation.
* Many (not all) of these jobs only require a basic set of education. And are do what the boss says type of work,
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I'll tell you my own story. I live in coastal British Columbia, and live on the same property I grew up on. When I was a kid, back in the 70s and 80s, there was a wonderful pond that used to freeze over every winter. We'd get at least two or three weeks of good skating a year on that pond. This is just a few hundred feet above sea level, not more than five miles from the ocean.
The last time that pond ever froze over sufficiently to even walk on was when I was 18 years old, back around 1990-91. After that, w
Re: too slow (Score:2)
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It's nice, but a distraction. What affects the environment is not how much more solar we produce but how much less carbon we emit.
We should trumpet how many coal factories we closed, how many flights airlines kept grounded, container ships stayed in port, and so on, all globally, no counting a closed factory here when we open another elsewhere to do the same thing. If solar enables those reductions, great, but we can reduce them without solar given how much we overconsume.
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As long as the Kochs' are making money do your duty to Baby jesus and keep the oil flowing.
All the coal plants around here (Score:2)
have been gone for 20+ years. One was replaced by a tiny set of natural gas generators.
I'm in a place where there's huge amounts of hydro some nuclear plants, also lots and lots of wind power.
I used about 216 Kwh in June in my 3k sq foot house.
China? Not just half (Score:5, Insightful)
Say what you want about China, but they added more wind capacity to their grid last year than the entire rest of the world combined in any previous year on record.
We need more of this investment not just in China, but everywhere. We need more of 2020 level primary energy consumption. We are not on track to avert global warming, not even close. While 2020 brought us close to being on track, 2021 has already undone that and taken us off track in the first 4 months of the year.
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This.
Need to double the investment in renewables !
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This. Need to double the investment in renewables !
How about gradually switching govt. subsidies from fossil fuels over to renewables? Do it strategically for maximum benefit with minimum disruption.
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How about gradually switching govt. subsidies from fossil fuels over to renewables? Do it strategically for maximum benefit with minimum disruption.
How about we stop the energy subsidies and allow competition to bring us the lowest cost options? I'll have people claim that solar + storage is cheaper than natural gas, so why subsidize a choice people would make anyway?
The answer is that because if solar power was not subsidized the industry would collapse, with nuclear fission and onshore wind being the dominate forms of energy. Nearly all the reductions in CO2 emissions from the USA came from a switch from coal to natural gas, and from the reduced ec
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At the moment, the govt. gets a higher ROI from wind & solar so it makes sense to push more money in that direction.
Sure, the higher "return on investment" is politicians can buy more votes with money they took from us with taxes by using wind and solar subsidies. The economic ROI on solar power is negative, and wind power is profitable enough on it's own that it doesn't need government subsidies any more.
Remember that existing nuclear reactor designs were mostly to breed fissile materials for nuclear warheads during the cold war & the nuclear arms race. The electricity they generated was secondary.
Who's asshole did you pull that one from?
In terms of rapid global roll out of well-proven technologies goes, wind & solar seem to be meeting the objectives.
What objectives are those? Wind and solar power roll out can't even keep up with the growth in electricity demand, and certainly not with the demand created by the closure of o
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Re:China? Not just half (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing about the Chinese is that they can actually see this catastrophe coming and, because they are in part totalitarian, they can do something about it systematically. Generally, the system they have is terrible. But in a slowly happening catastrophe, it is an advantage. And were the west has lawyers disconnected from reality in their governments, the Chinese have engineers and scientists.
As to being not at all "on track", I completely agree. If we do not take drastic action very soon, we are on track to 3..4C. I think most people have no clue what that actually means and how exceptionally bad that is. After all, it is just a few degrees, right? Wrong.
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The thing about the Chinese is that they can actually see this catastrophe coming
And America can't...?
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The thing about the Chinese is that they can actually see this catastrophe coming
And America can't...?
Apparently a rather large part if it cannot. That is fatal in a democracy. In a totalitarian regime, as soon as the leadership has seen it and decided to do something you have won. In a democracy you need a solid majority of the people to push through unpleasant measures.
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In a democracy you need a solid majority of the people to push through unpleasant measures.
Donald Trump seemed to push quite a few environment-altering measures through without majority support.
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In a democracy you need a solid majority of the people to push through unpleasant measures.
Donald Trump seemed to push quite a few environment-altering measures through without majority support.
Well, if you have industry support because you make the problem worse for everybody, but allow the industry to rake in more money, that helps a lot.
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Donald Trump seemed to push quite a few environment-altering measures through without majority support.
That's what happens when Congress grants the executive branch so much authority on regulations. What Republicans and Democrats in Congress apparently can agree on doing is handing their job over to the executive branch when there's a difficult decision to be made.
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The thing about the Chinese is that they can actually see this catastrophe coming and, because they are in part totalitarian, they can do something about it systematically. Generally, the system they have is terrible. But in a slowly happening catastrophe, it is an advantage.
By far, the most efficient and effective form of government is a beneficent dictatorship. Unfortunately, it's the beneficent part that is impractical.
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The thing about the Chinese is that they can actually see this catastrophe coming and, because they are in part totalitarian, they can do something about it systematically. Generally, the system they have is terrible. But in a slowly happening catastrophe, it is an advantage.
By far, the most efficient and effective form of government is a beneficent dictatorship. Unfortunately, it's the beneficent part that is impractical.
Indeed. And even if you get it, as soon as their offspring takes over, things go to shit.
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By far, the most efficient and effective form of government is a beneficent dictatorship. Unfortunately, it's the beneficent part that is impractical.
Indeed. And even if you get it, as soon as their offspring takes over, things go to shit.
Come to think of it, that is pretty much what is going to happen to China when Xi croaks. If not before. His move to put himself into power for life was by far the most anti-China act I have ever seen. He could probably not have done more long-term damage in any other way. The good thing for the rest of the world is that a hostile take-over by China is pretty much off the table after that move.
Re:China? Not just half (Score:5, Interesting)
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Norway's government doesn't work like our two party system though. The largest single party is the Labour Party (socialist), and initially the conservatives were ruling as a minority government (i.e. they needed socialist votes to pass anything). Next election is due in September, looks like the socialists could regain overall control.
And of course the conservatives in Norway are more like the centre in the US. Socially liberal, pro-EU, pro Nordic model.
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Norway has a right wing government currently.
Norway's right-wing doesn't even appear on the USA's furthest left-wing mainstream positions, e.g. Norway has universal healthcare, 46 weeks paid parental leave, 30% of labour force works for government, & among the world's lowest rates of wealth inequality.
Re: China? Not just half (Score:2)
What, specifically, do you believe is at Bidenâ(TM)s disposal that will force the Republicans to accept that climate change is real, and that they should cooperate in doing something about it? Iâ(TM)ll wait.
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The Democrats have a majority in both houses and the presidency, so they have enough votes themselves to pass anything they like. Seems like some Democrats are quite conservative though.
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The Democrats have a majority in both houses and the presidency, so they have enough votes themselves to pass anything they like. Seems like some Democrats are quite conservative though.
Republicans and Democrats alike work primarily for major corporate donors, not The People. And, of course, to enrich themselves; insider trading is the norm in Congress. Nancy Pelosi is something of a poster child for it, so it ain't just a Republican problem.
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The Dems can't pass even 1/10th of the bills that they want because of the Fillibuster. The clearly stated aim of the GQP is to block everything until they win back both houses in 2022. There are several videos on YouTube that show a GQP Congressman boasting that this was their sole aim.
many of the GQP inhabitants of Capital Hill will state that the Dems are socialist, communist and fascist all at the same time. Just listen to the garbage coming out of the mouth of MTG.
I fear for the USA. From where I sit,
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Doubtful that you actually believe it's that simple. I'm sure there's a fascinating reason why you'd feign ignorance.
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I'm not American. In the UK once a party gets a majority of even 1 they basically do what they like, and most of the time the MPs vote in line with what the leadership wants. Occasionally they rebel but not usually if it would mean their party is defeated on a vote.
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Well we have a dumb "rule" in the Senate which, for all intents and purposes, requires 60 votes to pass a bill, not a simple majority. There is a lot of debate around whether the Democrats can and should change that rule, or scrap it altogether, but a handful of Democratic senators will not go along. So here we are.
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That's interesting, thanks. So basically unless there are >59 Democrats they need to get some Republicans on side, and being an extremely polarized two party system you end up with stuff like the budget not getting passed.
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Precisely.
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And apologies for my assumption!
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No worries, thanks for explaining it.
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The Democrats have a majority in both houses and the presidency, so they have enough votes themselves to pass anything they like. Seems like some Democrats are quite conservative though.
The rules of the US Senate require a 60% super-majority to pass anything. That is not in the Constitution, it's a rule that they adopted a long time ago to keep a simple majority from passing crazy laws. Democrats have 50 seats (48 declared as Democrats and 2 independents that caucus with them) and 1 tie breaking vote from VP Harris. When it comes to energy policy the Biden Administration has become more and more vocal on supporting nuclear power. The Republicans have been trying to get more nuclear pow
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Did I mention the US anywhere? No, I did not.
But since you did: The US is going to be one of the really big losers in climate change. It is both very vulnerable and probably one of the least prepared nations in the west. That is tragic, but unless US politics learns to put the country first (and not in the sense some orange ape likes to scream out), and political "sides" and all that bullshit second, the US is screwed. And it did it all to itself.
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The US is going to be one of the really big losers in climate change. It is both very vulnerable and probably one of the least prepared nations in the west.
The USA produces enough energy to meet their needs. The USA produces enough crops and livestock to feed and clothe the population of the nation, with plenty to spare. There's enough industrial capacity to build whatever infrastructure we need to deal with rising sea levels or whatever else global warming can bring. That's quite a leap to say the USA is the lest prepared nation in the West to deal with global warming. Who is better prepared? Not just in the West but in the world? China? They are one b
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They're already heading that direction themselves.
https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2021/jul/06/some-in-gop-seek-global-warming-fix/ [nwaonline.com]
Several more good links in here: https://www.salon.com/2021/06/27/republicans-care-more-about-the-climate-if-you-speak-their-language_partner/ [salon.com]
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House Republicans recently launched what they're calling the Conservative Climate Caucus to highlight the issue while also combating "radical progressive climate proposals that would hurt our economy, American workers, and national security."
That's called "lip service". They're still dithering around whether or not humanity is causing climate change and how, and until they do that, their motives should be suspect. You can't claim to support responsible climate policy while denying the science underpinning
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That's called "lip service". They're still dithering around whether or not humanity is causing climate change and how, and until they do that, their motives should be suspect. You can't claim to support responsible climate policy while denying the science underpinning the causes and necessary changes.
Indeed. And it does a lot of harm because some people will think that something is actually being one and forget about the issue.
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They're already heading that direction themselves.
Meaninglessly, because Republicans vote in lock step.
Of course, not enough Democrats work for The People to do what needs to be done, either.
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It's how the Slashcode deftly handles apostrophes on mobile, apparently.
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Doesn't need to be a totalitarian state.
Fortunately not. But it can help, if you do not care bout all the other problems such a state brings with it.
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Europe is more progressive and socialist than the US and is making more progress. In fact the most socialist countries, the Nordic ones, are leading the way on things like switching to electric vehicles.
You lost me there. Nordic countries are capitalist as fuck. Hell, apparently Norway is even dabbling in fascism these days.
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Socialism is not the opposite of capitalism.
In fact if you actually read Marx it's clear that he intended for people to work together within a capitalist system. He just wanted the capital in the hands of the people who actually do the work, rather than the people who own the machines and land they work on.
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Socialism is not the opposite of capitalism.
Of course not, it's merely its successor, not some kind of binary opposite doing everything exactly the other way -- but that still means that if you have socialism, you don't have capitalism anymore.
In fact if you actually read Marx it's clear that he intended for people to work together within a capitalist system.
We'd had a Marxist government for almost half a century. Somehow they never put it in this way in my school lessons.
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Hmm... Well Marx wasn't really a Marxist, ironically. The thing that bares his name is a lot different to the things he believed at the time, but that's besides the point.
For example in Norway the government owns 37% of the Oslo stock market, and 30% of the workforce is working for the government. It's also the only developed country in the world where the young are doing better than their parents.
Sounds pretty socialist to me.
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Indeed. Being totalitarian only makes the response easier once the problem is identified. It does not help with recognizing reality.
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Just in this aspect, I think the former US president was as totalitarian, but headed the other way.
The man sent people to an energy industry conference to argue in favour of coal fired power plants and they got laughed at. In terms of divining where the future of energy generation technology is going he was mostly just completely clueless.
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So basically you are full of shit. No, I do not love China and I said so very clearly.
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But they're also still building coal plants (Score:5, Informative)
LOTS of coal fired electricity plants
https://e360.yale.edu/features... [yale.edu]
Sometimes it seems like it's a good rule to think: whenever someone produces a apparently good news story about China, be very, very doubtful...
Re:But they're also still building coal plants (Score:5, Informative)
That article is a good example of how climate hand-wringers try to mislead you. The 4% figure has a link, but the link is broken because there is a random character at the end of the URL. If you fix it you get this page:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/an... [carbonbrief.org]
Note that it says that overall emissions are up 1.5% from 2019, the 4% figure is because there was a big COVID dip in the first half of 2020 and they cherry-picked H1 to H2 of that year.
If you scroll down further you can see that China actually reduced emissions in 2015/16, and that the rebound in 2020 H2 was mostly due to heavy industry, not coal powered electricity generation.
The story with coal power plants in China is that most of the new ones are mothballed or unprofitable. The central government used to plan electricity generation, but decided to let regional governments do it because it thought that they would be better placed to meet local needs in a rapidly growing economy. Unfortunately the local governments just built loads of coal plants, and most of them ended up being superfluous due to massive amounts of wind power coming online. The ones that are running tend to be replacements for older plants are are cleaner, as well as being more able to follow demand and variations in wind output.
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Congratulations on being downvoted for sanity (Score:2)
Good answer; shame they won't listen - at least about the first element of your reply!
Re: China? Not just half (Score:2)
Re: China? Not just half (Score:4, Informative)
China is the world leader in bringing green energy to mix when increasing energy production. In the past 15 years they have brought online more green energy as a percentage of total new energy than any other nation in its development. Bonus points for the number of coal plants they brought online which actively replaced older less efficient coal plants (largely to address their very serious smog issues).
It's great to try and dis China's efforts from a high horse, but when doing so it's always important to actually be on a high horse, and not the trojan horse made of a 100 year history of pollution that basically every developed nation stands on.
The very real risk is if nothing is ever good enough, then why would someone continue trying?
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Say what you want about China, but they added more wind capacity to their grid last year than the entire rest of the world combined in any previous year on record.
I'll be the first person to call out China's authoritarian rule, their crushing of personal freedoms, profiteering of international trade, the hypocrisy of the government, their dystopian social controls, their practically cultural genocide of Tibetans and Uigurs... there is so much to condemn about the Chinese government and I can rave on about it all day.
But you have to give credit where credit is due. And for certain, the Chinese government respects science and seems to be at least willing to take steps
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But, I would be very careful about taking numbers coming out of China at face value. China likes to present itself as the posterboy in terms of environmentalism and is known to exaggerate or downplay numbers, whatever benefits the most. The truth probably looks quite different.
So you mean the "soon leading nation on the planet", is putting up fake solar plants and fake wind mills to look shiny on satellite photos?
Do you really think they waste money for something as stupid as that?
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So you mean the "soon leading nation on the planet", is putting up fake solar plants and fake wind mills to look shiny on satellite photos?
Do you really think they waste money for something as stupid as that?
Yes, they would.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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China has also created a lot of coal plants during this time.
Ignore this (Score:2)
Info about the US. (Score:5, Informative)
There is an easy to understand graph and map new energy installation that came online in 2020, courtesy of the US government: https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov] (They are both SVG, so you can zoom in real good if you like.)
Besides solar and wind scattered everywhere, some neat details is that battery installations, which you need to level out the grid, are starting to happen (but much more is needed). Also, in Georgia, 1.1GW nuclear plant came online. (Just add another 100MW and a DeLorean to make time travel yours.) Then we have Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania dragging down our progress by installing a bunch natural gas energy generation plants.
Meanwhile, in Texas . . . (Score:4, Informative)
June's power outages in Texas were caused by loss of thermal power plant electricity production [dallasnews.com].
ERCOT reported unplanned, or “forced,” outages on June 14 of about 12,000 megawatts at generating plants, enough to power more than 2 million homes. About 9,000 of those lost megawatts were from thermal power sources fueled by natural gas, coal or nuclear power.
Although Cohan blames thermal resources, which make up the bulk of Texas’ installed generating capacity, for most of the unplanned outages, he acknowledged the role of wind in mid-June’s tight grid conditions. At the lowest output during that week, only 179 megawatts — out of 25,121 megawatts of installed wind capacity — were being produced.
Cohan said one other thing the data makes clear is that “solar kept the lights on.”
With this data in hand, it's obvious what needs to be done [statesman.com].
In a letter to the commission, Abbott directed the board to take steps to increase the amount of electricity produced in Texas. Specifically, Abbott told the utility commission to work to provide incentives for the construction and maintenance of natural gas, coal and nuclear power.
Further, Abbott directed his appointees at the utility commission to take aim at wind and solar power, which have been criticized for their perceived unpredictability in producing power, even as failures at natural gas plants played a significant role in power failures during the February freeze and in last month's conservation call.
Abbott directed the utility commission to begin assessing "reliability costs," which could take the form of fines, to power plants "that cannot guarantee their own availability, such as wind or solar power," the letter states
"When they fail to do so, those generators should shoulder the costs of that failure," Abbott's letter states. "Failing to do so creates an uneven playing field between non-renewable and renewable energy generators and creates uncertainty of available generation in" the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.
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Thing is, wind and solar CAN guarantee availability... if they do it in the right terms. That's not 100%, always-on availability.
All they have to do is make reasonable guarantees...
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Does the availability clause also apply to fossil fuel plants?
Oh no, I'm sure they'll get a waiver. Though actually they will probably have a clause about fuel supply, since you can't expect them to store days of fuel on site.
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Just remember, Texas sued the federal government for the right to fuck up their power grid...
You can personally help speed this up even further (Score:3)
Not good enough, hooplah over nothing (Score:2)
84 percent of global energy is met with fossil fuels, and that is projected to grow over next few years. The pandemic cut demand for fossil fuel, that will come roaring back.
Massive trillion plus dollar infrastructure projects are needed to change this, not the nickel and dime quarter of a TW this article is trying to make sound impressive in light of a 18 TW draw.
At about 1/3rd capacity factor (Score:2)
I spotted another article on this that gave both the nameplate capacity of new installs (I think 238(?) GW), and the total TeraWatt-Hours generated. It divided out to 17%. But then I realized that the "average" install would be half-way through the year, so the capacity factor was really double that, about 1/3rd. Which is the usual for solar and onshore wind.
Solar can really never be more than 1/3rd, what with the sun down half the time, and not high in the sky for half the day. (And then, weather.)
How renewable are turbine blades/solar cells? (Score:2)
A big failing of many industries is dealing with by products.
Sometimes that's exhaust gases (eg. coal/natural gas plants), sometimes it's the fuel itself (eg. nuclear power). In the renewables it's the converter (eg. solar cells, turbines).
What plans are in place for dealing with the by-products of renewables?
Or is it just about slowing down the rate of pollution or changing to a more easily hidden waste product?
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At-home wind turbines are generally stupid and wrong.
This is not to say that nobody should have a wind turbine at their home, but that MOST people shouldn't, for reasons. What reasons?
1) Noise
2) Cost
3) Worthlessness
Unless you've got reliable wind you're not going to get much power. Note I am not talking about reliable power, that's a whole other consideration but one which we can safely ignore for the sake of this conversation because intermittent power is useful too. I'm just talking about having a very lo
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This is not to say that nobody should have a wind turbine at their home, but that MOST people shouldn't, for reasons. What reasons?
You missed one of the biggest reasons. A lot of people live in urban areas and having a wind turbine on every lot is just impractical.
8^)
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Well, it makes sense to me that if you had a large piece of agricultural land, a few wind turbines wouldn't bother you. But you wouldn't want them right next to your house, either. I think they should put them in BLM lands, they have roads already at least.
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