After Rising For 100 Years, Electricity Demand is Flat (vox.com) 229
An anonymous reader shares a report: The US electricity sector is in a period of unprecedented change and turmoil. Renewable energy prices are falling like crazy. Natural gas production continues its extraordinary surge. Coal, the golden child of the current administration, is headed down the tubes. In all that bedlam, it's easy to lose sight of an equally important (if less sexy) trend: Demand for electricity is stagnant. Thanks to a combination of greater energy efficiency, outsourcing of heavy industry, and customers generating their own power on site, demand for utility power has been flat for 10 years, and most forecasts expect it to stay that way. The die was cast around 1998, when GDP growth and electricity demand growth became "decoupled." This historic shift has wreaked havoc in the utility industry in ways large and small, visible and obscure. Some of that havoc is high-profile and headline-making, as in the recent requests from utilities (and attempts by the Trump administration) to bail out large coal and nuclear plants.
EVs will change that (Score:2, Interesting)
When you switch to more energy efficient products, this is a natural side effect. EVs will change that obviously.
Re:EVs will change that (Score:5, Interesting)
When you switch to more energy efficient products, this is a natural side effect. EVs will change that obviously.
But with a corresponding drop in demand for fossil fuels at the point of consumption.
Of course fossil fuels will still be used a lot for generation of electricity for EVs, but if renewables are actually dropping in price then that has to trend downward.
Which, of course, will cause the price of gasoline to crash because of the resulting glut.
The thing to watch for is if gasoline prices drop because of that then ICE cars become more cost-competitive against EVs than they were before. If that is true then EV cars need to become more cost-efficient than they currently are. And for that, Li-ION batteries have to both improve and drop in price.
Maybe Elon is on to something.
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Or Li-ion batteries will be replaced by supercapacitors. This will also solve the charging time problem. Assuming of course that low-cost commercially available supercapacitors ever become a thing.
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The charging time problem is one of charging cable size. Supercapacitors do shit for that issue. If humans are expected to plug the cable in, you're limited to about current supercharge rates.
What your looking for is superconducting cables or huge contractors that lift out of the floor.
Re:EVs will change that (Score:4, Insightful)
The charging time problem is one of charging cable size.
You can get around that by upping the voltage. Tesla Superchargers use 400 volts.
Supercapacitors do shit for that issue.
The biggest problem with super-caps is energy density, currently less than a tenth that of lithium batteries.
Re:EVs will change that (Score:5, Informative)
The formula for a capacitor has in its formula A/d
A is the area (of the plates)
d is the distance (between the plates)
so a small distance and big area is how to make super capacitors. The problem comes when you want to charge the capacitor because the d distance sets the limit of the voltage (due to the breakdown the the diametric, which is whatever material is between the plates) the charge stored on a capacitor is
0.5 (CV^2) so the charge is proportional to the square of the voltage meaning you need lots of voltage to get a big charge (or amount of stored energy) so what makes the capacitor value large makes the amount of charge you can store small. This is the issue currently with super capacitors just because of the basic physics of capacitors. So unless an amazing dielectric is found that has super incredibly high breakdown voltage and is easy to form onto the plates we probably will have to keep looking to batteries.
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Why aren't they higher voltage?
There are a bunch of practical limits on voltage. 1kv/inch for dirty insulator surfaces. 10kvDC/inch for humid air.
You can safely assume they aren't running at a low voltage now by choice.
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Why aren't they higher voltage?
Homes don't have higher voltages available, and charging speed really isn't that big of an issue.
My spouse drives an EV. She comes home from work, plugs it in, and usually doesn't need to drive again for 14 hours.
If she does need to drive to the grocery store or somewhere else, that is no problem, because the battery range is 240 miles, and her commute is 30 miles, so she has a cushion of 210 miles.
Over the last few years, there have been a handful of times on long trips where faster charging time would ha
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The biggest problem with super-caps is energy density, currently less than a tenth that of lithium batteries.
Another big problem is the initial steepness of the discharge curve. The voltage across a battery is much more constant, requiring less regulation and therefore delivering higher efficiency.
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Who says humans have to plug it in? See the Tesla snake.
Re:EVs will change that (Score:4, Funny)
that sounds like the lead-in to an Elon #meToo moment.
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Wires/conductors are limited in *current* carrying capacity, not power transfer capacity. There is always raising the voltage to get more power at the same current.....
The issue with charging rates has to do with the safe operating voltage that can be used at the rated current of the wires and connectors and more importantly the rate at which the battery can accept a charge and not overheat. It's actually the battery that is the biggest limiter here.
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Re:EVs will change that (Score:5, Insightful)
Which, of course, will cause the price of gasoline to crash because of the resulting glut.
What glut? EV's driving down petrol sales will be a gradual process, and vehicle fuel plants shift production on a monthly basis. Gasoline production will be adjusted (as is true now) so that there is a razor thin margin of excess supply.
Liquid fossil fuels is a world-wide industry in every respect (production, refining, consumption) and prices are set at the global level and on a world-wide scale U.S. shifts to EVs will have a small effect. And any drop in primary resource prices suppresses high cost fuel production (fracking, tar sands) which compensates significantly.
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The thing to watch for is if gasoline prices drop because of that then ICE cars become more cost-competitive against EVs than they were before.
Which would result in demand for ICE cars increasing until the number of ICE cars causes gasoline prices to rise again, and eventually an equilibrium is reached.
OR states could start increasing tax on gasoline fuel for on-road purposes in order to offset the decrease in price.
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Which, of course, will cause the price of gasoline to crash because of the resulting glut.
I've got to admit, I'm not so sure about this.
One issue is that gasoline is manufactured from oil. If there's "too much" gasoline, I just make less of it. Which means I buy less oil. Which moves the "glut" to the oil producing and exporting countries (OPEC). They will produce less oil in order to keep the prices where they want them to be.
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Peak demand != demand.
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Peak demand != demand.
For energy producers, it is peak demand that is the problem. Plenty of solar energy at noon doesn't help when people get home and turn on the AC, TV, and oven at 6pm.
EVs can be programmed to draw power only when supply exceeds demand, thus smoothing out the gaps. Currently, this means charging in the middle of the night, In the future, when solar is more common, it will mean charging in the middle of the day.
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The problem is that "electricity demand is flat" is misleading. It doesn't mean we aren't consuming more, rather a lot of industries that use electricity have been shut down.
It would be interesting to see graphs of "consumer demand - consumer generation" and "industry demand - industry generation." I would expect that first graph would be climbing.
Demand is Still Rising... (Score:4, Insightful)
...but in developing countries.
While TFA did point out, "US", it seems rather pointless because the demand, and thus the generation, and thus the pollution is occurring overseas.Just because it's not here doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It's like you cleaned up your back yard by throwing all the trash over the fence. Coming soon, we will be bitching at our neighbors about all the trash in their yard.
So before the Enviro's celebrate, they should consider that they have successfully pushed the pollution into countries that are ill equipped to handle it from regulatory and societal standpoints, yet the US and other western countries are still benefiting from it.
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It's like you cleaned up your back yard by throwing all the trash over the fence.
It's not like the US is to blame for developing nations evolving to use more electricity. If we were forcing those countries to consume that power or if we were outsourcing power generation I could see your point. But how are we "throwing garbage over the fence"? Because these countries use electricity to produce things we buy?
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Actually, the US is to blame for trade agreements without any consideration for environmental regulation of our trade partners. We are a major consumer of the goods whose production was shifted from the US to those foreign nations. The corporations that sourced their goods from China are fully capable of reviewing their manufacturing and energy generation practices to ensure they're meeting a high standard. We may not be physically throwing garbage over the fence, but it's in our closing our eyes, pluggi
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It's like you cleaned up your back yard by throwing all the trash over the fence.
It's not like the US is to blame for developing nations evolving to use more electricity. If we were forcing those countries to consume that power or if we were outsourcing power generation I could see your point. But how are we "throwing garbage over the fence"? Because these countries use electricity to produce things we buy?
Well, yeah. I'm a "conservative" and I still can more or less agree with that.
We moved so much of our manufacturing there, so it's not here. So the energy use, pollution, etc. happens there, not here.
So unless we are bragging about shifting it over there, it's not much to brag about.
Re:Demand is Still Rising... (Score:5, Insightful)
We are literally outsourcing power generation by outsourcing production. We have "bettered" the environment game not because we implemented "green" policies, but because we moved large swathes of power consumption out of this country.
Steel production is a big user, we moved virtually all steel production to China hence moving the power generation issue. Same goes for most factories, moving it to South America and Asia moves the power generation and production issue.
We are not 'forcing' them, they are bettering themselves and their population in the process, but that comes at an expense of energy. Luckily FOR ALL OF US China is bringing a decent amount of nuclear generators online
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Fortunately those developing nations seem to care more about doing it right than we did coming up. China leads the world in renewable energy and in cleaning up. They hit peak coal a 4 years ago, something many developed nations can't claim. India is making a big effort too.
Aside from helping their own people, they see it as their chance to leapfrog the developed nations. They represent vast markets in themselves, and are developing (i.e. patenting) a lot of the clean technology that will be key this century
Re:Demand is Still Rising... (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China
"electricity consumption is expected to grow by 3.6-4 percent over 2016 to 2020 according to (China's Official) Thirteenth (five-year) Plan (2016–2020).[4] According to the same five-year plan, coal power capacity will be expanded from 960 GW to under 1,100 GW by the end of 2020 to meet some of the continued growth in electricity demand.[4] Indeed, in the first two months of 2016, China had added 22 GW of capacity, 14 GW of which was coal, according to the China Electricity Council.[5] "
Re:Demand is Still Rising... (Score:5, Informative)
Yup, they've agreed to peak emissions 'around 2030'
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
BEIJING, Nov 14 (Reuters) - China's total volume of carbon emissions is set to rise by a third in the next 16 years, according to scholars from China's Tsinghua University, even as the world's biggest carbon polluter has pledged the climate-warming gas emissions will peak by 2030.
China's president Xi Jinping announced this week that the country would strive to bring its spiralling carbon emissions to a peak by "around 2030" as part of a joint commitment with the United States to combat global warming.
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In addition China is deploying Gen IV nuclear reactors to eliminate the need for coal. They are breaking ground for new fast breeder reactor designs [globalcons...review.com]. They are spending billions of USD in research towards the development of thorium molten salt reactors.
It seems that China appreciates the potential for nuclear energy to combat emissions. I applaud them for this.
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You are confusing coal generation capacity with coal consumption.
The amount of coal they burn but peak a few years ago. Old plants are being replaced with more efficient, cleaner ones.
http://ieefa.org/ieefa-update-... [ieefa.org]
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Fortunately those developing nations seem to care more about doing it right than we did coming up.
That's the benefit of hindsight and piggybacking on all we learned along the way. That and the small fact that much of these "developing nations" were, until recently, pretty much third-world countries. It's easy to build shiny new infrastructure when you don't have anything currently in place with sunk costs to overcome.
They hit peak coal a 4 years ago, something many developed nations can't claim. India is making a big effort too.
China is nowhere near peak coal as several others have commented. As for India's "big
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WE regulated to the extent that production of products became too expensive.
WE also loosed trade laws to make manufacturing more cost effective overseas.
WE also seem to be fighting any efforts to put tariffs on products from over seas.
And finally, WE purchase these products.
So unless you are living in a cave, eating stick and twigs, and walking everywhere you go, you have a part in all of this.
Dude, wrong website (Score:2)
Nonpartisan reality checks don't get the "insightful" mod around here any more. You need to be more loudly in favor of nuclear railguns.
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Worldwide most new power plants being constructed are renewable. They are cheaper and start producing power within weeks instead of years. Read the power and utility media and you quickly find out everything has changed in last 2 years. The rate of change keeps increasing.
Very interesting development (Score:5, Interesting)
...but in developing countries.
While TFA did point out, "US", it seems rather pointless because the demand, and thus the generation, and thus the pollution is occurring overseas.Just because it's not here doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It's like you cleaned up your back yard by throwing all the trash over the fence. Coming soon, we will be bitching at our neighbors about all the trash in their yard.
So before the Enviro's celebrate, they should consider that they have successfully pushed the pollution into countries that are ill equipped to handle it from regulatory and societal standpoints, yet the US and other western countries are still benefiting from it.
This is a *very* interesting development, for the following reason:
All modern theories of economics ("schools of thought" as they are called) assume infinite demand, either by infinitely increasing population or infinitely increasing demands per person, or both.
So for example, theory has it that you can double your sales income if you double your sales outlets - by opening stores in other states, for instance. Problem with this is that the world is finite and eventually you reach diminishing returns. Many companies found this out the hard way when they started selling through WalMart - once your jeans (or pickles) are sold at Walmart, you're done. You can no longer increase sales *at all*.
We know that population begins to level off and decline when countries become modernized, and now it looks like demand itself has a fixed upper limit.
If consumption is fixed, then lots of macro economic theory is simply incorrect. If efficiency per-worker reaches a level where half the available workers can fulfill the demands of the population, what do you do with the other half that can't find work?
It's these sorts of observations and extrapolations that lead people to think of possible solutions like reduced-hours work week (for the same pay), or UBI.
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All modern theories of economics ("schools of thought" as they are called) assume infinite demand
They assume infinite aggregate demand, not infinite demand for any particular product.
I own one laptop, and would have no use for two. My demand for laptops is fixed.
On the other hand, I would love to have my own starship.
Re:Very interesting development (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, I would love to have my own starship.
Which implies another laptop, doesn't it? I mean, you can't run a starship with just one laptop..
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I mean, you can't run a starship with just one laptop..
I can use voice commands: "Alexa, go to warp one."
And with demand, comes supply (Score:2)
the demand, and thus the generation, and thus the pollution is occurring overseas.
Exactly - and with demand up just where are all these countries getting coal? Why partly from the U.S. of course, which saw an INCREASE in both price and production [eia.gov] of coal in 2017.
The summary claim that coal is "headed down the tubes" (much less that it is the "golden child") is sadly yet more Fake News by people who don't understand the modern world economy, they only see things as they wish them to be.
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wrong title. Demand continues to increase (Score:3, Interesting)
However, what is missing is that this is about to change in a HUGE way. In particular, EVs will be coming on very strong esp with Commercial trucking. While cars will outsell the trucks, the trucks are ran 5-10x as much . As such, within 5 years, these will put a huge demand on electricity. Worse, it will not be a simple increase in electricity but will be heavy spikes in demand.
It is for exactly this reason that we need base-load powers, such as nuclear.
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nonsense, charging can be done in off-peak hours, in fact the grid is already ready to handle electric vehicles, charged mostly at night
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The first thing it showed was that the grid could handle it just fine (save the northwest, which needs a bit of help), as long as less than 25% of the vehicles charge in the daytime. Note that it was NOT individual vehicles, but based on the demand. IOW, as long as no more than 25% of the total energy used by vehicles was in the daytime, things were fine. BUT, a Tesla Semi is going to draw 1MW, while a tesla Model 3 will draw say 50 KW
Re:wrong title. Demand continues to increase (Score:4, Insightful)
Low MPC (I assume "miles per charge") driver here. I charge almost exclusively during low demand times: typically at night.
Remember that most journeys are less than 15 miles (30 miles round trip), so that most use of any electric vehicle allows overnight charging.
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I have an ICE and a Leaf (~100 mile range). I use the Leaf for almost all my trips now, but the ICE is still easier for certain situations. Once the standard range is 250+ miles, though, I would have no problem ditching the ICE and being all-EV. Having lived with the Leaf for a while now I think that 250 miles is the point where 97% of my trips would be super easy, and 3% would require some thought or compromises. I'd be totally comfortable with that. For those who aren't comfortable with that, there's the
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My point was to refute the idea that only long range EVs are charged at night.
You haven't actually priced up an EV, have you? You can get a Leaf either new via a lease or used, off-lease vehicle and they are cheap, when you take into account the cost of electricity vs. gasoline.
Yes, we have another car: an ICE. Actually, two ICE vehicles, but one is a hobby vehicle (over 60 years old). We also have a deposit down on a Tesla Model 3. We need at least 2 ca
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The problem comes when work places and parking garages install chargers. There are probably 20 people at my company who drive all-electric vehicles, and the majority of them do not have chargers at home. Instead, they rely on being able to use the chargers at work, so they plug in in the morning and move their car at noon when the other set of folks plug in for the rest of the day.
Chargers are not cheap, especially if you have to have an electrician install a new circuit at your house because the electrical
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My utility offers EV owners (and only EV owners) access to off peak rates, presumably to deal with exactly this. And it works; I set up my car to only charge in the off-peak hours and haven't overridden it yet. Maybe once a month I'll charge at a fast charger outside those hours, on a longer trip. I think it's going to be pretty easy to keep charging in the desired time periods.
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Solar power can be stored in molten salt systems.
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nothing happens, peak demand during day still more than level 1 car charging draw at night at 25% uptake.
Instead electric bills go up and the power companies put in more gear over many years. problem solved, because it will be profitable to solve that problem.
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Utilities are the largest owners of renewable energy systems in the US so I'm not sure why you equate renewable with not being a part of the utility. The truth is ten years ago Nuclear was more cost effective than any other source of energy
Ten years ago? 2008? No, it wasn't. Natural gas.
which is why it was so poplar with utilities.
Ten years ago? 2008? No, it wasn't. The last nuclear plant built in the U.S. was the River Bend plant in LA, which was started in 1977 . You're off by thirty years.
And ten years ago energy storage was too expensive.
Now, on that one, you're right.
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... and uneducated far left wingers continue to make large 1GW nukes far too expensive. ...
Ah yes the all powerful hippies who crush multi-national corporations under their dirty Birkenstocks! Will their tyranny never end? Will the capitalist never get a break?
The high capital costs of nuclear power plants are, as the nuclear industry's World Nuclear Association says are "In general the construction costs of nuclear power plants are significantly higher than for coal- or gas-fired plants because of the need to use special materials, and to incorporate sophisticated safety features and back-up co
Re:wrong title. Demand continues to increase (Score:4, Informative)
You're right about solar but utilities are figuring it out and making it work.
Battery storage is now cost effective and IS being deployed in large scale nationwide. It isn't intended to provide the total power for any location but to provide stress relief for the grid during peak usage.
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If you are working in the industry, how come you folks are NOT pushing the GOP to support the nukes? While AE is fine, wind, solar, etc are NOT capable of replacing 100% of the baseload power. We need Nukes, esp. the SMRs. Is your company pushing this, i.e. lobbying for it?
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LEDs I think. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would expect the electric use to start a downward trend from this point.
Re:LEDs I think. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not only has the price come down, but there are so many options now that you can pretty much find whatever you need for any purpose. I've found some sweet candelabra ones, I got some quirky fake-incandescent ones for the entry light fixture, nice flat-white globes for the bathroom, appliance bulbs, etc.
The most expensive ones were all of about $5 each, have about a 10 year lifespan, and if run 24 hrs per day, would cost me about 2 cents. That's half to a third of the energy draw of CFLs, which themselves we
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I would expect, because a lot of electronics are far more energy efficient now, is part of the issue. For a lot of devices USB is the new power-plug and many devices are now working on 5 volt or 12 volt power. LED Lights+Energy Efficient TVs The general lack of mechanical parts in your computer Solid state drive, no CD/DVD... All this stuff adds up. However Normally such efficiencies just lead to greater usage. More Always on Devices and lights.
I expect what is also a factor is people with their own power g
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Exactly, my power usage has dropped a lot from 10 years ago. LED lighting, CRT TV replaced with one that uses a fraction of the power, much more efficient heat pump and refrigerator and washer/dryer combo. The computer I use as well is about half the power drain, not to mention moving from a CRT monitor to an LED one which is a huge savings as well. My power bill used to hit 500-550 in the summer and now it's seldom over 300 dollars. My biggest power drain now is the hot water system and I plan to do someth
Re:LEDs I think. (Score:5, Interesting)
LED have a longer life, Can be dimmed, A wide verity of color hues, brighter bulbs can be put into lamps that normally would have cause a fire problems.
There are a lot of Benefits from LEDs over Incandescent or CF. It isn't just greenies who use them. They are a practical light source. It just took the invention of the Bright Blue LED in 1995 (23 years ago) to help make it a reality. Otherwise we would be having Red-Yellow-Green lights with them, Which are not overly useful for normal lighting.
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LED have a longer life
I don't know about that. 10 years into all LED bulbs and I'm on my 2nd or third replacement of all of them.. I'd still pat extra because my energy costs are so high, but I don't believe their longer life estimate. I have/had good quality bulbs too.
Re:LEDs I think. (Score:4, Informative)
LED have a longer life
I don't know about that.
I do. I've been running LEDs since 2008; I have 75 of them in my house. Some of the earlier ones did die early, but the current versions just keep on going; a lot more long-lived than even the old CF bulbs.
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Yes, there's a difference, I think, between the cheap ones and the good ones.
I got a bunch of the Philips L-Prize bulbs when they just came out-- those were very seriously tested against extreme environmental conditions.
These days I see you can get LED bulbs at the dollar store-- don't know how well those will last.
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The oldest LED bulb I have is 5 years old. I guess I'll have to see how long it lasts. When I moved I took all the incandescent bulbs from my new house and swapped them out with the LEDs from my old one. Only time I ever moved and worried about bringing the bulbs with me!
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Otherwise we would be having Red-Yellow-Green lights with them
Would that make brown light? I wonder if it might have an unexpected effect [wikipedia.org]...
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My wife and I converted our entire house to LEDs over the last two years, and we're very happy. Less $ spent on electricity, plus I don't have to change bulbs as often; in fact, I've yet to change one since we started the conversion.
I just recently had my first LED bulb burn out. I have been replacing incandescent and CFL bulbs with LEDs for the past 5 years.
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I had an LED "burn" out after a couple of months of use, and I suspect the ones that go quickly have manufacturing defects. Generally they should die a lot more slowly, until one day you notice the light is visibly dimmer than when it was new., and so dim that you decide to replace it.
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Not surprising (Score:2)
(n the US (Score:2)
Multiple factors:
Flat screen TVs replacing most of television CRTs.
LED Bulbs replacing Incandescent.
Laptops and tablets replacing a lot of desktops, remaining desktops not using CRTs any more.
Some of that is offset by huge gaming systems with enormous power supplies, and bitcoin mining rigs. They are probably a minority nowadays..
The two things that use the most power in my household are my furnace (for the blowers) and probably my DVR.
Rounding errors (Score:2)
Some of that is offset by huge gaming systems with enormous power supplies, and bitcoin mining rigs. They are probably a minority nowadays..
I think you hugely overestimate the number of people who have gaming rigs with their attendant out sized power requirements. Compared to the number of computers out there it is a fraction of a single percent. In other words a rounding error. Same with bitcoin mining. It's getting way more play in the media than it really justifies and really the number of people involved is a good approximation of insignificant.
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The two things that use the most power in my household are my furnace (for the blowers) and probably my DVR.
Heating coils and compressor motors are usually your biggest draws.
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If you've got an ice maker there's a noticeable power draw, I shit you not, when it turns on the heater so that it can remove the cubes from the maker.
My ice maker is some cube trays I bought. Never hooked up the ice maker... It was an energy efficient fridge 20 years ago,,,
Outsourcing? (Score:2)
Demand for electricity is stagnant. Thanks to a combination of greater energy efficiency, outsourcing of heavy industry, and customers generating their own power on site, demand for utility power has been flat for 10 years, and most forecasts expect it to stay that way.
Assuming that demand has been flat domestically, the outsourcing of certain energy intensive industries doesn't mean the demand has gone away. It just places it in a different geographic location. That's not the same thing as flat demand.
Um, the utilities helped make this happen (Score:2)
The utilities (at least the power companies at my workplace and at my home) have very aggressive energy efficiency programs and rebates for things like upgrading to CFLs and LEDs. Every time I open a bill, half the contents are literature on other ways I can reduce my energy consumption.
Perfectly flat electricity demand is the ideal case for the utilities. They don't have to spend money on buildi
What about electric cars? (Score:3)
Maybe not for long... (Score:3)
Electricity is the key to de-carbonization over the next few decades. The easy part is carbon-free electricity generation. As noted, renewable prices are in free-fall. I've been a big nuke-booster for decades, but even that option may not be needed, so low are wind and solar prices getting to be. (We need a major new grid to make that work, of course: only across a large continent is the wind always blowing somewhere... Also, we need some power storage; people had been thinking mountain lakes, pumps and turbines, but the Australian mega-battery has me wondering...)
Then there's transportation, and battery improvements would indicate we might be able to replace most cars and light trucks with electric; trains can be electric.
And there's home heating. Heat pumps have gotten so good we could ditch our entire piping infrastructure that moves, basically, an explosive around the city into every home. That's been a nutty idea since it started, and now there's more reason than ever to move off of it.
We can eliminate 90% of natural gas, 90% of gasoline, half of diesel, half of avgas, with technologies that now exist, given only determination and, well, a huge pile of money. We'd have to build a lot of infrastructure, from that trillion-dollar grid, a few trillion in renewable power plants, to a zillion changing stations to an all-electric train system. But it's engineering and accounting, not new science.
Even the staggering costs are not that daunting, really. Yes, you're talking a whole year's GDP for the US ($13 T) but that would be spread over about 25 years, and most of it would be private investments into utilities and trains and private vehicle purchases. [No, I don't know *how* you get 100 million households to all convert to heat pumps at $10K each when they hated giving up light bulbs; I'm just saying the engineering and money are do-able. ]
And it would all depend on using a LOT more electricity instead of combustible gases and fluids.
Headline is right, details are bonkers (Score:2)
for now (Score:2)
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The incentive for anyone to be in the business, at all, is driven by customer demand as well as the ability to produce bulk quantities at reasonable rates. Demand is not only quantity, but also includes the expectation of real-time delivery "on-demand
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There's some trolling going on here, but I'll be more specific: hostile tone, trying to masquerade as a /. admin, frothing about Donald's election win (yeah, ok, we get it), and then there's the second paragraph:
Also, "flat" is not good thing. Electricity should go DOWN to prevent climate change. Only can then we be certain ice bergs will not melt and so forth. Ban natural gas. Ban coal. Ban hydro. Only solar and batteries is the real solution in the end game.
This is either total trolling as well, or just someone who really hasn't thought things through. Or you're twelve, pre-teens typically believe in fairies and unicorns and think solutions fit into a few words. "Ban natural gas," oh, ok! Geez, you make it sound so simple, as if we can issue a proclama
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You're funny.
The Russian economy is dependent upon oil revenue. Putin's power is helped by higher oil prices so Putin would be far more interested in preventing fracking than just about anything else that could be promoted (or discouraged) by a US President.
Which of the two candidates was for fracking (which brings prices of oil down)? Hillary or Trump?
Whatever the case may be about the environmental consequences of fracking Hillary and her supporters were (and are) dead set against
Re: Obligitory Trump Bashing (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason Trump won is because Democrats underestimated the raw hatred people have of Hillary. I am a liberal and I can't stand her. She stands for nothing but power for herself.
Democratic leadership is just as corrupt and incompetent as Republican.
Re: Obligitory Trump Bashing (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Obligitory Trump Bashing (Score:5, Insightful)
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The only reason Trump won is because Democrats underestimated the raw hatred people have of Hillary. I am a liberal and I can't stand her. She stands for nothing but power for herself.
Democratic leadership is just as corrupt and incompetent as Republican.
I would have preferred Sanders but the fact is that Clinton got many more votes.
Someone figured out a way to score a strategic win. Trump didn't think that up - he doesn't have the brains.
Conway might have been cunning enough but the likely strategist is Manafort.
Or perhaps someone closer to Putin.
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Electricity use has plateaued because the biggest industrial users of electricity have moved overseas. This includes the manufacture of aluminum and steel....
U.S. steel production has fluctuated in the broad range of 6 million and 8 million tons a year for 35 years [tradingeconomics.com] and has been pretty much level since recovery from the Great Recession. U.S. primary production of aluminum however has dropped sharply, the large majority of aluminum production is secondary (recycled) aluminum, which uses much less electricity (and even the primary production consumption per ton has been cut with superior technology).
Re: (Score:2)
Funny, I figured that Microsoft will do the same "OS Version 10 Forever" strategy that Apple is doing.
I wouldn't expect a major UI revamp from either Apple or Microsoft without a major technology breakthrough like 3D holographic displays. After the Windows 8 debacle, I think that most of their customers are afraid of change.