The Green New Deal

[Zambo]

For me what is driving forward the change from CFPP and the introduction of electric vehicles in a large scale are (and in this order of importance):

1. Technological and pricing improvements for solar, and windpower projects and batteries.
2. Government strategies
3. The voting population

That is the opposite from what i would have thought 10 years ago.

I wonder when, or if, populations will demand action. One noticeable area of communities making a difference is objections to new CFPP in many locations in SE Asia.

 

[shuttlt]

For me what is driving forward the change from CFPP and the introduction of electric vehicles in a large scale are (and in this order of importance):

1. Technological and pricing improvements for solar, and windpower projects and batteries.
2. Government strategies
3. The voting population

That is the opposite from what i would have thought 10 years ago.

I wonder when, or if, populations will demand action. One noticeable area of communities making a difference is objections to new CFPP in many locations in SE Asia.

It's too useful as a wedge for there to be political consensus.

 

[Brainster]

The sentiment of some seems to be: why even try to stem the bleeding unless we can full restore the limb?

Nobody's saying let's stick with coal-fired plants forever. Nobody's saying let's not use electric vehicles. Nobody's saying that we can't build new solar power plants or wind turbines (other than the usual NIMBY and BANANA folks).

It's your side that is saying that is not enough, that we need to get rid of cows (or their farts), that we need to crisscross the country with high-speed rail at an impossible pace.

So we say, okay, how about nukes? No surprise, nukes are not allowed, because today's boomer environmentalists all cut their wisdom teeth as members of the Clamshell Alliance. That's quite transparently a sop to one shrill element of the environmental movement. Instead we'll just get rid of plane travel. Or maybe we'll let you fly electric planes, we haven't decided yet.

So go ahead with your hybrids and your solar power plants and your wind turbines. But when it comes to the crazy stuff like hsr eliminating the need for air travel in ten years, I say there are better uses for all that money.

 

[Belz...]

Nobody's saying let's stick with coal-fired plants forever.

No but we have to stop using those plants back 25 years ago. How much longer do you plan on using them? We're already way past the line, here.

 

[shuttlt]

I'm not sure how you replace a 1200MW coal power station with a similar sized solar one. The solar one will only produce it's peak output in the middle of the day and most of the time it will produce nothing. How do we compare them? Is that at peak? This isn't my area, so it may well be just my ignorance speaking here.

Looking at this: https://www.spiritenergy.co.uk/lease-finance-0 it seems like a 1MWh system might cost $550,000. Tesla's Powerwall 2 can do 13.5kWh for $5,500.

Buffering this amount of electricity to make it anything like reliable and continuous is going to get expensive fast if we use batteries.

Carrying the calculation further, at $500k/MWh that would be

$500,000 * 1,200 * 24 = $10 Billion to build a battery capable of delivering 1200MW for 24hrs. Smoothing out the power this way is going to cost trillions of dollars, isn't it?

Has anybody seen any costings of this?

 

[a_unique_person]

Nobody's saying let's stick with coal-fired plants forever. Nobody's saying let's not use electric vehicles. Nobody's saying that we can't build new solar power plants or wind turbines (other than the usual NIMBY and BANANA folks).



It's your side that is saying that is not enough, that we need to get rid of cows (or their farts), that we need to crisscross the country with high-speed rail at an impossible pace.



So we say, okay, how about nukes? No surprise, nukes are not allowed, because today's boomer environmentalists all cut their wisdom teeth as members of the Clamshell Alliance. That's quite transparently a sop to one shrill element of the environmental movement. Instead we'll just get rid of plane travel. Or maybe we'll let you fly electric planes, we haven't decided yet.



So go ahead with your hybrids and your solar power plants and your wind turbines. But when it comes to the crazy stuff like hsr eliminating the need for air travel in ten years, I say there are better uses for all that money.

How do you know what will be sufficient?

 

[Zambo]

I'm not sure how you replace a 1200MW coal power station with a similar sized solar one. The solar one will only produce it's peak output in the middle of the day and most of the time it will produce nothing. How do we compare them? Is that at peak? This isn't my area, so it may well be just my ignorance speaking here.

Looking at this: https://www.spiritenergy.co.uk/lease-finance-0 it seems like a 1MWh system might cost $550,000. Tesla's Powerwall 2 can do 13.5kWh for $5,500.

Buffering this amount of electricity to make it anything like reliable and continuous is going to get expensive fast if we use batteries.

There are already large solar power plants
https://www.power-technology.com/features/the-worlds-biggest-solar-power-plants/

Using batteries to the scale i mention is a new and developing technology, but the South Australia venture by Tesla is interesting
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ne...d/news-story/4c6dbf0505b6b0a6697ab8fc97cdf9b2

In my opinion there is no problem to scale a battery facility by 10x

The power generation mix has to be correct which would be different proportions of solar, wind and battery for each region. But don't forget I am talking about a first phase which substitutes renewable power for coal and oil (so no more CFPP and a massive move to electric vehicles). In the first years LNG remains. Plus of course hydro and geothermal is expanded where it can be.

 

[a_unique_person]

The Tesla installation in South Australia has been doing remarkably well. The state Government paid for it and so far the sky has not fallen in.

 

[Zambo]

Carrying the calculation further, at $500k/MWh that would be

$500,000 * 1,200 * 24 = $10 Billion to build a battery capable of delivering 1200MW for 24hrs. Smoothing out the power this way is going to cost trillions of dollars, isn't it?

Has anybody seen any costings of this?

For domestic use you will need a battery that runs for say 12 hours and is then recharged. But for supporting solar and wind you don't need 24 hours of storage. You will use a power grid system as you have now so if a CFPP is shutdown for 2 weeks notice it has no effect. The battery is going to be able to step in for say 1 hour at full power or 3 to 4 hours at reduced output.

 

[Brainster]

No but we have to stop using those plants back 25 years ago. How much longer do you plan on using them? We're already way past the line, here.

Until we don't need the power from them, unless rolling brownouts is your solution. Keep in mind, again, that one of the retrofits that the GND envisions is transitioning heating from natural gas (used in over 48% of US homes) to electric. Guess what? That is going to result in huge increases in electric demand in areas where natural gas heating is common.

 

[kellyb]

Until we don't need the power from them, unless rolling brownouts is your solution. Keep in mind, again, that one of the retrofits that the GND envisions is transitioning heating from natural gas (used in over 48% of US homes) to electric. Guess what? That is going to result in huge increases in electric demand in areas where natural gas heating is common.

But:

The fall in electricity costs from utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) projects since 2010 has been remarkable. The global weighted average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of utilityscale solar PV has fallen 73% since 2010, to USD 0.10/kWh for new projects commissioned in 2017.

Electricity from renewables will soon be consistently cheaper than from most fossil fuels. By 2020, all the renewable power generation technologies that are now in commercial use are expected to fall within the fossil fuel-fired cost range, with most at the lower end or undercutting fossil fuels.

 

[Belz...]

Until we don't need the power from them

That'll never happen. So what's your preference? Dropping fossil fuels, or becoming fossil fuels?

 

[a_unique_person]

Until we don't need the power from them, unless rolling brownouts is your solution. Keep in mind, again, that one of the retrofits that the GND envisions is transitioning heating from natural gas (used in over 48% of US homes) to electric. Guess what? That is going to result in huge increases in electric demand in areas where natural gas heating is common.

That's been the pattern of global warming denial and was predicted about 30 years ago.

There is no warming.
There is warming but it's natural and it doesn't matter.
There is warming, it's caused by us and it doesn't matter.
There is warming, it's caused by us, it does matter but it's too late to do anything about it.

 

[The Shrike]

There is warming, it's caused by us, it does matter but it's too late to do anything about it.

My favorite part about denialism and stalling on AGW is concern about "the economy", i.e., that doing something about it might cause a (gasp!) recession or (someone get my smelling salts!) a truly global slowdown in economic growth.

Of course it will, fool. Ecologists and other long-range thinkers have been harping on the point for the past 70 years or so that growth is ultimately unsustainable. If anything, we should be trying to slow economic growth in concert with a slowing of population growth. We need to speak like grown-ups to grown-ups, and we need folks to lead, follow, or get out of the way. The level of investment and commitment necessary over the next 20 years or so help us avoid to worst effects of AGW is something unknown to any of us who weren't here for WWII.

For the stallers and deniers out there, if you think trying to address AGW will lead to economic hardship, wait til you see how global economies deal with not addressing it.

 

[Zambo]

Until we don't need the power from them, unless rolling brownouts is your solution. Keep in mind, again, that one of the retrofits that the GND envisions is transitioning heating from natural gas (used in over 48% of US homes) to electric. Guess what? That is going to result in huge increases in electric demand in areas where natural gas heating is common.

Yes it will and also you need the additional power for electric vehicles. There will be some savings by reducing the electric power used by oil refineries. But after the capital costs of the new power plants you will gain in the removing of the running costs of coal and gas fired power plants.

 

[tyr_13]

For the stallers and deniers out there, if you think trying to address AGW will lead to economic hardship, wait til you see how global economies deal with not addressing it.

Exactly. Any cost/benefit analysis that disregards the costs of inaction is fatally flawed.

'But my business won't survive if I can't keep externalizing my costs!' Boo ******* hoo. Well, honestly that does suck, but that is life. Getting away with something for a long time doesn't make it right, and certainly doesn't entitle one to keep getting away with it.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Despite being around for over 60 years, nuclear power is not a mature technology: we haven't solved the waste issue, just kicked it down the road. And the safety requirements are prohibitive.
That is why building a plant today is just not economical without subsidies, direct and indirect.

I'm all for research and testing into cheaper, cleaner nuclear power and waste storage, but unlike Renewables, the technology just isn't currently available.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Despite being around for over 60 years, nuclear power is not a mature technology: we haven't solved the waste issue, just kicked it down the road. And the safety requirements are prohibitive.
That is why building a plant today is just not economical without subsidies, direct and indirect.

I'm all for research and testing into cheaper, cleaner nuclear power and waste storage, but unlike Renewables, the technology just isn't currently available.

Yeah.

This gets complicated and I can see both sides. The "waste" we have now isn't even clearly "waste". It's mostly usable fuel. Nuclear, while maybe not strictly "renewable", potentially has a very long usable lifetime. But we would need to use reprocessing and breeder technologies to make it comparable to truly renewable. And that raises very real problems with proliferation of nuclear weapons.

 

[Zambo]

Yeah.

This gets complicated and I can see both sides. The "waste" we have now isn't even clearly "waste". It's mostly usable fuel. Nuclear, while maybe not strictly "renewable", potentially has a very long usable lifetime. But we would need to use reprocessing and breeder technologies to make it comparable to truly renewable. And that raises very real problems with proliferation of nuclear weapons.

My worry is safety, not so much with say Frsnce or USA but we need worldwide solutions and i don't see high construction and maintenance standards everywhere.

Bur certainly nuclear would be good to even out the peak demand which solar and wind are not good for.

 

[portlandatheist]

Despite being around for over 60 years, nuclear power is not a mature technology: we haven't solved the waste issue, just kicked it down the road. And the safety requirements are prohibitive.
That is why building a plant today is just not economical without subsidies, direct and indirect.

I'm all for research and testing into cheaper, cleaner nuclear power and waste storage, but unlike Renewables, the technology just isn't currently available.

We need to put things into perspective, we haven't solved the solar waste problem either. All technologies will produce waste and increase entropy in other places in the environment

https://solarindustrymag.com/online...d_In_Silicon_PV_Cell_Production_A_Primer.html

Large quantities of sodium hydroxide are used to remove the sawing damage on the silicon wafer surfaces. In some cases, potassium hydroxide is used instead. These caustic chemicals are dangerous to the eyes, lungs and skin.
Corrosive chemicals like hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid and hydrogen fluoride are used to remove impurities from and clean semiconductor materials.
Toxic phosphine or arsine gas is used in the doping of the semiconductor material. Though these are used in small quantities, inadequate containment or accidental release poses occupational risks. Other chemicals used or produced in the doping process include phosphorous oxychloride, phosphorous trichloride, boron bromide and boron trichloride.
Isopropyl alcohol is used to clean c-Si wafers. The surface of the wafer is oxidized to silicon dioxide to protect the solar cell.
Lead is often used in solar PV electronic circuits for wiring, solder-coated copper strips, and some lead-based printing pastes.
Small quantities of silver and aluminum are used to make the electrical contacts on the cell.
Chemicals released in fugitive air emissions by known manufacturing facilities include trichloroethane, acetone, ammonia and isopropyl alcohol.

Nuclear is about as clean as it gets.