So I guess the most practical plan, taking into human psychology, is 99% reliable power for the rich and 80-95% for the rest? It’s true that power goes out a lot in some countries and people don’t miraculously fall over dead. But the average American would raid the Capitol if that’s what environmentalists proposed. This time with real guns!
Well, yes. Sadly, I don't think it's a practical approach, but there's some distinction to be made here between "Reliable" and "As much as you want." If you're willing to compromise some of the year on the second, the first becomes radically easier. There's a difference between the two. To point at my office, my power system is quite reliable, but I definitely don't have all the power I can possibly use during the winter months unless I want to pay around $1/kWh with the generator. However, most of the rest of the year, power is available beyond what I can use - I'm demand limited. I take the tradeoffs, because it's a lot cheaper than having the battery bank or generator use for unlimited energy year round.
The alternative is probably a lot of blackouts, because I'm not sure one can actually
do the whole "All the energy you want, any time you want it" thing on low or no carbon emissions.
But the fundamental question is, "Should we be able to use absolutely as much energy as we want, any time we want, as long as we can afford the power bill?" The answer, from a "We'd like to not fry the planet, please, and maybe keep a few species other than us alive..." perspective is a pretty clear "No." Humans can survive just fine over a far wider temperature range than "Set it at 72, year round," have done so in the past, and, I'll argue, will do so in the future - one way or another.
I guess the other way to look at it is we already know the most efficient ways to store and produce energy and there will be no further breakthroughs in the next 50-60 years. Maybe.
An awful lot of the problem space has been explored and found either to be useful (so we use it), or severely wanting in some ways or another (to include political will) - so we don't use it. If you look at a typical technology maturity curve, you see the standard diminishing returns, and we're certainly into that with a lot of our energy technologies - fundamentally, a nuclear reactor is a novel way to boil water to spin a turbine, except they've been around for about 80 years now (in some form or another). Fusion... we keep trying various things, and we're out of all the cheap ideas, so we're deep into the insanely complex, expensive ideas. If you could generate power with fusion, but it was going to cost $10/kWh, this isn't particularly useful. There's incremental work with lithium ion, but I'll argue we're into diminishing returns, and even if you get pretty close to the theoretical limits, it's only another 2-3x improvement on current cells across the various metrics. It's nice, certainly, but it's not going to revolutionize anything. It's just going to make what we can do today a bit cheaper, and extend out the number of cells you can build on the resources available (don't do the math, you won't like it, and a factor of 5 doesn't change anything of significance).
I’m very pessimistic that we will even get close to keeping warming under check in the next 60 years, so my focus is accepting the new reality and trying to not die in the coming water wars.
That's unfortunately a good idea... and I'd suggest that systems and capabilities installed today be installed with an eye towards how they can operate grid down.
I think the average American would just buy inefficient generators and kick them on when their power goes out in that scenario.
Not for long. They're a royal pain in the ass. Start paying $1/kWh delivered, and you figure out how to reduce your energy use an awful lot, in a big hurry - and, yes, that's the sort of costs for energy delivered you get off a small generator. 10% thermal to electrical is pretty good, and, no, the inverter generators don't improve that by too much. They're less-bad at light load than an open frame, but not by as much as you'd like to hope. They're just quieter, and out put cleaner power. You'd find a lot of people figuring out in a hurry that about the only things they really need are the fridge/freezer.
Maybe it's time to get into the backup power supply business. I bet a battery bigger than an Anker phone backup but smaller than a Tesla Powerwall that has enough juice to run Modem & Wifi & TV & devices for a few hours but is reasonably priced and marketed correctly could be a good business. That or run CPAP, oxygen, etc.
There are plenty out there, they're all very obscenely priced, and tend to rely more on hype than actual engineering, as far as I can tell. But I'll mutter something about supply chains and suggest you do your homework before you try to get into it. If you go with lead, you're weight and energy limited, because a good deep cycle lead acid battery weighs a lot, and the smaller, lighter ones you can fit in a small device have horrid service lives anyway (UPS batteries are good for a couple dozen cycles, if that). Lithium improves things, and I hope you enjoy hazmat shipping training, because you'll need it.
If you're able to do most of the engineering yourself, and build around LFP or something, you could probably do it, but it's tricky, and you have to be quite idiot-proof for such things to work. I'm working on the power trailer stuff (see image above), and we're struggling with basic things like "trailer axles" and "batteries" right now, in terms of supply chains. We've had trouble getting the proper size angle metal for some stuff, and while that's improving, I'm far from certain that the rest of the stuff we need will be available. But, yes, doing something with backup power is probably a good bet going forward. Not the most climate friendly thing, but stands a good chance of being profitable, if you can deal with the supply chains.
I wonder then, would an unreliable grid cause a significant number of Americans, Canadians, Australians, and Europeans to migrate (regionally or internationally) toward areas with more reliable electrical service? I can certainly see companies target new manufacturing operations in areas which are going to deliver less downtime. Probably would pull workers there too.
Rural Electrification happened in the memory of people still alive. I fully expect the reverse to happen at some point. And people will deal with it just fine, as they did before, and probably use an awful lot less power in the process.
Abe, that is a remarkably grim picture of the future. Certainly within the range of possible outcomes but very much on the pessimistic side.
I'm aware this forum tends towards a certain maniacal optimism, but recall that this forum also has never seen a bear market. It did show up after 2008. I wouldn't be surprised if the general shape of the argument proves true in the years to come, though by the end the internet will be far from reliable enough to actually come back and visit this thread.
You seem to imply that we will end up kicking the can down the road and "praying" for fusion to save the day only to repeatedly be disappointed.
In that this has been roughly the past 50 years or so, and current politicians are confident that some yet-to-be-invented technology will save the day when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, I think it's an entirely valid guess.
The US climate envoy, John Kerry, has said 50% of the carbon reductions needed to get to net zero will come from technologies that have not yet been invented, and said people “don’t have to give up a quality of life” in order to cut emissions.
He said Americans would “not necessarily” have to eat less meat, because of research being done into the way cattle are herded and fed in order to reduce methane emissions.
“You don’t have to give up a quality of life to achieve some of the things that we know we have to achieve. That’s the brilliance of some of the things that we know how to do,” he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr show. “I am told by scientists that 50% of the reductions we have to make to get to net zero are going to come from technologies that we don’t yet have. That’s just a reality.
“And people who are realistic about this understand that’s part of the challenge. So we have to get there sooner rather than later.”
In other words, "I have no idea how it's going to happen, but if we just hope hard enough, and clap our hands, Tinker Belle will come and save us!"
Long duration storage at a reasonable cost would be able to mitigate some of the issues that cause your narrative scenario. Are you just very pessimistic about the feasibility of the reduced cost of batteries over the next couple decades?
I don't think you quite understand the scale of the problem if you're thinking batteries can solve it... go play with a calculator for a bit with global electrical use, and then expand out to total global energy use.
Large scale Hydro generation isn't going anywhere. It may be relocated from where some of it currently resides to off-shore, but I actually expect hydro to grow as a source of energy, not shrink.
o.O What are you calling "Hydro"? At least in the US, western dam production is well on the way to shrinking as lakes are trying to run dry. Tidal and such has some potential, but it's quite diffuse.
It's a good question and I don't know the answer. Obviously at some point we're going to hit limits on how cheap photovoltaics can practically get. I do know that every attempt to predict when prices would stop falling has been wrong so far.
Great. Except, PV panels already aren't the dominant costs in smaller installs, and even in the big utility scale installs, they're only about a third of the cost - so dropping them to literally zero doesn't change the system costs drastically.
Figure about $0.50/W for panels in bulk, against a DIY install cost of $1.50/W, a good installer cost of $2.50/W, and a typical "Screw your customer while telling them how forward thinking they are!" cost of $3.50-$5/W.
It's not the panel costs anymore. Though if you don't want literal Chinese slave labor in your silicon, you've got some issues these days.
Second, there is always a balance between being a good stewart of the environment and human enjoyment. Where you draw the line is not where I would draw the line is not where our neighbors draw the line. My experience with most CAGW alarmist is they personally make almost zero effort to reduce their emissions (travel globally, drive a huge SUV, own multiple locations - usually McMansions, etc) which is why most CO2 reduction in the US in the last 25 years has come from switch from coal to natural gas thanks to fracking and businesses cutting energy usage for cost savings.
Humans had perfectly enjoyable lives before we got into the earth's carbon cookie jar, and will have perfectly enjoyable lives long after the last dregs have been pulled out.
But, yes, the obvious hypocrisy of those who claim it's a huge deal, and
sooooo huge that they can't possibly have any impact, so all you can do is vote Democrat and go on an overseas vacation... isn't helping the cause they claim to care about in the slightest.
I've also yet to hear a good reason why multi-millionaires or billionaires need to have gigantic homes with the energy budget of a small town, a couple yachts, etc.
Lastly, Thorium nuclear energy is *cheap* safe and an easy way to massively reduce our CO2 yet climate change groups actively oppose this.
I believe it also has the slightly irritating problem of "not actually existing yet."
Anyway, I'm going into a period of fasting so probably won't respond for a while, sorry.
