Charlz Guybon posted:

I keep reading that 90% ~ of new power generation is renewable. Is it just not true?

https://twitter.com/DrSimEvans/status/1391993272055353346

Grouchio posted:

As long as this increase remains exponential that 'minimal' percentage will become the majority energy supply much sooner than otherwise. So that's important.

CommieGIR posted:

And it's not enough. Despite the increase renewables adoption fossil fuel generating capacity continues to rise.

The problem is despite renewables forecast to increase, their overall share of the generating capacity remains minimal.

Grouchio posted:

As long as this increase remains exponential that 'minimal' percentage will become the majority energy supply much sooner than otherwise. So that's important.

CommieGIR posted:

Not really? Because most Solar/Wind remains intermittent and there will never be enough storage to make up the difference, and energy demand growth remains.

There hasn't been a case yet where renewables alone can handle all grid demand, and in nearly every case its usually a cloaked increase in demand for Fossil Natural Gas.

Grouchio posted:

1. So you'd throw away any good news as insufficient even if it provides the base for future renewable infrastructure projects that sooner than later will be able to make a difference?
2. You certainly sound like you doubt renewable storage will ever become efficient or widespread enough to maintain a national grid. Why?
3. "A 90% increase on something that only occupies like 14% of global capacity isn't that much?" Sure as hell is better than otherwise. I'll take whatever I can get.

VideoGameVet posted:

The Jenga energy store system?

Saudi Aramco bets on Energy Vault's block-stacking energy storage
Energy Vault's storage towers should reach customers later this year, according to CEO.

Energy Vault, the splashy startup that stores clean electricity by stacking blocks of concrete, revealed Thursday that it garnered an investment from the venture arm of Saudi Aramco. The companies did not reveal how much money Aramco invested, or what valuation it assigned the startup. Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures typically invests between $2 million and $20 million at a time.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-vault-nabs-investment-from-saudi-aramco-for-block-stacking-storage/

VideoGameVet posted:

The Jenga energy store system?

Saudi Aramco bets on Energy Vault's block-stacking energy storage
Energy Vault's storage towers should reach customers later this year, according to CEO.

Energy Vault, the splashy startup that stores clean electricity by stacking blocks of concrete, revealed Thursday that it garnered an investment from the venture arm of Saudi Aramco. The companies did not reveal how much money Aramco invested, or what valuation it assigned the startup. Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures typically invests between $2 million and $20 million at a time.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-vault-nabs-investment-from-saudi-aramco-for-block-stacking-storage/

CommieGIR posted:

1. Its greenwashing. While its "good news" the charts I JUST posted show its not nearly as good as its being made out to be.
2. Its unlikely that it will, because the most efficient forms of storage are also the most impactful like Dams, River systems, and Pumped Storage, and those have ecological drawbacks as well. And the problem with storage is you have to STORE stuff versus providing to the grid, so you a stuck in a position of: Generate for the grid or generate for the storage or split between the two at diminished capacity. Batteries suck at it, and while battery tech is improving, most large battery storage installs are still only 1 hour runtimes at max capacity. That's not enough, not nearly enough.
3. Good for you? Nobody here is saying "Renewables bad" we're saying the chart is incredibly misleading versus ACTUAL capacity and how much that 90% actually goes to replacing fossil fuel generation (which is from the charts, not much). Renewables alone are not going to offset our fossil fuel generation requirements and we haven't seen a single report that says its happening.

Grouchio posted:

1 and 3: Oh I know it won't cut it as to fix the problem immediately; I was never expecting that. I was just saying that a bigger springboard for future projects/investments to make the process go quicker are always appreciated.
2. Also duly noted. I'm not worried about that as long as it eventually becomes sustainably efficient. If we reach that point this decade, all the better. All that demand and supply snowballing sure isn't wavering.

CommieGIR posted:

and that's assuming they ever get to that point, there's no indication that will be true

Grouchio posted:

Really?

CommieGIR posted:

The largest states that are pitching Renewables only are Australia and Germany, and they are bush heavily dependant on Gas/Oil generating capacity and show no interesting in slowing down that usage, and even worse in Australia's case they are openly discouraging countries who are looking at Renewables and Nuclear to keep them dependent on Australia's Coal/Gas exports which are larger than Qatar. Vietnam showed interested in going into Nuclear power and Australia actively lobbied against it.

Germany is expanding their largest lignite mine, greenwashing Nordstream 2 and wood pellet burning at coal plants. And they still produce more carbon emissions than France and a lot of their Nordic neighbors

Its incredibly ironic that Germany shuttered all their nuclear plants to buy Russian Natural Gas, while the Russians are rapidly expanding their nuclear baseload.

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

I irrationally like this method even though I know it will be really ugly.

We need to figure out how to make brutalist structures out of it.

Blorange posted:

It's neat, but I don't think it's remotely price competitive with grid scale batteries. 40 MWh of installed batteries is $30 million, and the concrete costs alone for an equivalent size tower of blocks is $26 million.

Grouchio posted:

So how can the renewables market/industry offset or mitigate this issue? I wish to become a major lobbyist for worldwide renewables production in the near future.

Aethernet posted:

Primarily through storage and gas CCS. Batteries and flywheels can provide intraday storage and fast frequency response, while gas CCS plant can provide the bulk of mid merit output when RES output is low.

For longer duration and intraseasonal storage, hydrogen - either produced through steam reformation with carbon capture initially before electrolysis starts to play a bigger role in the 2030s - can play a major role. I would expect to see hydrogen combined cycle turbines taking over the midmerit role from gas CCS in the 2040s.

Infinite Karma posted:

Batteries have an absolutely garbage lifetime. They last maybe 10 years, and then have to be completely replaced. The concrete tower might be a dumb idea, I don't know, but the engineering equivalent of pumped hydro is at least going to last longer than batteries.

CommieGIR posted:

If Gas Combined Cycle is the future of energy tech, we're hosed. The idea of allowing Fracking/Drilling to continue as normal as a supplement to renewables leaves us worse off than we are now.

Grouchio posted:

So what you're telling us is that there is in fact no good news in energy production right now.

Infinite Karma posted:

Batteries have an absolutely garbage lifetime. They last maybe 10 years, and then have to be completely replaced. The concrete tower might be a dumb idea, I don't know, but the engineering equivalent of pumped hydro is at least going to last longer than batteries.

Aethernet posted:

For longer duration and intraseasonal storage, hydrogen - either produced through steam reformation with carbon capture initially before electrolysis starts to play a bigger role in the 2030s - can play a major role. I would expect to see hydrogen combined cycle turbines taking over the midmerit role from gas CCS in the 2040s.

bawfuls posted:

This seems a bit hyperbolic on battery lifetime no? They don't work for a decade and then just cease working. They get slightly worse every time you use them. 10 year old batteries aren't worthless, they just have reduced capacity (~80-90% of original capacity). Eventually they'd degrade enough to be worth more as recycled scrap than as batteries.

CommieGIR posted:

There's plenty of good news: There's a lot of new nuclear plants going online, lots of renewable buildout is happening. The problem is we have to be careful to scrutinize the entire thing and not let ourselves get lost in the "Renewables good, more much be better", otherwise we'll just get gamesmanship over solutions that directly impact Humanities ability to survive on this planet.

You got SMRs, you've got higher efficiency solar cells, you've got thermal storage, you've got newer generations of wind farms, ocean wind farms going up....but we're still in a bad spot climate wise and that ecological and environmental debt keeps accruing interest.

DrSunshine posted:

Well I mean, sure, but we're not in any position to make policy or decisions on any of these things. It'd be one thing if you were presenting this style of argument to some governing committee, but this isn't it, this is a community of ordinary people. I think it'd be better for us, the small, to focus on talking about new developments, and learning about the issues and becoming informed citizens, rather than focusing on repeating the same "No, nothing is ever good, it is never enough" message constantly. It's actively harmful.

CommieGIR posted:

Unfortunately while we need to be optimistic, there tends to be a lot of greenwashing of tech that probably won't get us out of this.

You can discuss energy generation and still be skeptical, in fact its critical you remain skeptical, because the sort of people promising sunshine and rainbows are the same ones that are likely going to sell you up the river to keep doing the same old poo poo to make a buck.

CommieGIR posted:

If Gas Combined Cycle is the future of energy tech, we're hosed. The idea of allowing Fracking/Drilling to continue as normal as a supplement to renewables leaves us worse off than we are now.

quote:

Carbon Capture too is almost exclusively a Oil Industry push to give them right to continue business as usual like Carbon Taxes before. Right now, even the big hydrogen pushes are basically a Natural Gas/fossil subsidy as 96% of Hydrogen is fossil sourced. Hydrogen sources via electrolysis through Nuclear might have a future, but right now any talk of Hydrogen energy is almost entirely goalpost shifting to give the Fossil fuel industry more money.

quote:

Nearly all the Carbon Capture/CCS/Hydrogen stuff is being bankrolled by companies that directly profit from continued use of fossil fuels. Electrolysis sourcing of Hydrogen has its own problems, as we head further into the Anthropocene and water needs grow, there's going to be more demand to keep water potable and in liquid form than to create hydrogen with it. With companies like Hershey's already betting big on water being the next big commodity, you really want to bet that we'll be sourcing our fuel from water versus just distilling and desalinating that water to sell as a commodity?

bawfuls posted:

Intraseasonal storage is a solution in search of a problem. Seasonal (and hourly!) production of solar and wind are generally inverse. Long term it makes a whole lot more sense to simply build out solar + wind with a large grid to compliment one another, rather than grid-scale months-long storage.

If doing so produces seasonal excess capacity, the excess would be better used to produce carbon-capture-derived liquid fuels for difficult-to-electrify transportation modes such as aircraft.

MomJeans420 posted:

https://twitter.com/FamousKeven/status/1401871174192091137?s=20

Aethernet posted:

CommieGIR posted:

This actually addressed nothing? You didn't address both my links that showed Carbon Capture and Hydrogen pushes are largely being funded and driven by Fossil Fuel orgs, and did nothing to address my claim about how Electrolysis from water is a likely non-starter since demand for potable drinking water will likely outstrip demand for hydrogen from water.

Much like your previous nitpick session, you ignored all my claims just to repeat yours.

Aethernet posted:

Harold Fjord posted:

There is no cheap route that ensures everyone gets to improve their standard of living and also reverses climate change. But we'll keep choosing cheap, I'm fairly sure of that.

Harold Fjord posted:

There is no cheap route that ensures everyone gets to improve their standard of living and also reverses climate change. But we'll keep choosing cheap, I'm fairly sure of that.

Aethernet posted:

I don't think you understood my point. H2 is being funded by FF companies, but it doesn't matter because the point is to save the planet, not care who does it. Evaluate the tech, not the proponent.

You haven't provided any evidence for your water claim; I provided you with a link to a paper on salt water electrolysis because the sea is, alas, continually rising. To make your claim meaningful you would need to show that:

- There is a finite cap on desalination;
- This cap is below the level of future demand for potable water.

Best of luck with that.

Grouchio posted:

What could be super expensive now could be much cheaper later - two steps forward one step back.

Aethernet posted:

The UK's climate change committee estimates achieving Net Zero will cost the country less than 1% of GDP over the next thirty years. This is less than the trend rate of growth, so standards of living will improve. Assuming adequate distribution of wealth, of course, which is partly a separate question but one a sensible climate policy could aid in.