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Earth United States

Study Says We've Already Built Too Many Power Plants, Cars To Meet Paris Climate Targets (technologyreview.com) 492

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: In 2010, scientists warned we'd already built enough carbon-dioxide-spewing infrastructure to push global temperatures up 1.3 degrees C, and stressed that the fossil-fuel system would only continue to expand unless "extraordinary efforts are undertaken to develop alternatives." In a sequel to that paper published in Nature today, researchers found we're now likely to sail well past 1.5C of warming, the aspirational limit set by the Paris climate accords, even if we don't build a single additional power plant, factory, vehicle, or home appliance. Moreover, if these components of the existing energy system operate for as long as they have historically, and we build all the new power facilities already planned, they'll emit about two thirds of the carbon dioxide necessary to crank up global temperatures by 2C.

If fractions of a degree don't sound that dramatic, consider that 1.5C of warming could already be enough to expose 14% of the global population to bouts of severe heat, melt nearly 2 million square miles (5 million square kilometers) of Arctic permafrost, and destroy more than 70% of the world's coral reefs. The hop from there to 2C may subject nearly three times as many people to heat waves, thaw nearly 40% more permafrost, and all but wipe out coral reefs, among other devastating effects, research finds. The basic conclusion here is, in some ways, striking. We've already built a system that will propel the planet into the dangerous terrain that scientists have warned for decades we must avoid. This means that building lots of renewables and adding lots of green jobs, the focus of much of the policy debate over climate, isn't going to get the job done.

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Study Says We've Already Built Too Many Power Plants, Cars To Meet Paris Climate Targets

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  • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @10:34PM (#58864804) Journal

    Only one thing matters, the price. You gotta make non-carbon cheaper and more profitable than carbon. Then people will switch instantaneously.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @10:47PM (#58864844)

      It actually is. There is some catchup to do with regard to power storage capacity but absolutely renewables are the cheapest and most profitable. That's why investment in them is exploding about 50% year over year growth.

      Fracking has absolutely destroyed America's most valuable long-term resource which is clean potable water, 1/20th of 1% of the water on Earth and shrinking every day. Fracking has decimated that resource at a cost of Trillions.

      Socialized losses, unfortunately.

      • by Oceanplexian ( 807998 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @12:25AM (#58865216) Homepage
        I would argue the opposite. Energy is a lot more precious than water. There's more than enough seawater int he oceans to provide humanity with clean, drinkable water for millennia. Even a small fraction of the relative humidity in the air could provide enough drinking water for all of humanity. The problem is we don't have enough energy to desalinate or extract it.
        • by dryeo ( 100693 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @01:07AM (#58865340)

          The big use of fresh water is growing food. Many places depend on ground water for farming and that ground water is running out.
          Imagine the infrastructure to supply the mid-west with desalinated water. Now think of India doing the same.

          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            India is indeed thinking of what it would take to do this as continued melt water from the Himalayas is not certain.
            • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @01:55AM (#58865492)

              India is indeed thinking of what it would take to do this

              They are not thinking very hard. Indian ground water policy is astoundingly stupid and short-sighted.

              They provide farmers with free electricity, so that the farmers can waste both power and water by leaving ground water pumps running 24/7. Much of the "free" water ends up draining into ditches as run-off, and farmers have no reason to care since it costs them nothing. Aquifers are being destroyed, electricity is being squandered, CO2 is spewed into the atmosphere, and tax dollars are diverted from programs that actually make sense, like prenatal nutrition and literacy.

              Once idiotic subsidies like this are in-place, they are seen as "rights" and become politically impossible to curtail.

              Problems with India's power sector [wikipedia.org] - See item #4.

          • Many places depend on ground water for farming and that ground water is running out. Imagine the infrastructure to supply the mid-west with desalinated water.

            With sufficient amounts of cheap enough energy this becomes a much smaller problem.

            • Don't underestimate the challenge of transporting huge amounts of water over large distances, especially uphill.

              • Water transports itself (figuratively) over long distances if you don't cut down all the trees between there and the ocean.

                GP is right. Enormous quantities of energy enable you to tackle enormous problems. Also, if you have more immediately available energy on-demand, you can accomplish more at the location needed.

                Energy is the universal currency, everything else is there for the pushing around with it. (Also, it appears to be finite, unless we've badly misunderstood entropy. The word "renewables" irks me,

                • Water transports itself (figuratively) over long distances if you don't cut down all the trees between there and the ocean.

                  how many acre feet does a tree transport ?

          • a significant part of eurasia is full of unused land and plenty of groundwater as well as surface fresh water. It's just not in a practical location vs. people who would need that land.

            but saying that fossils aren't cheaper is kinda dishonest. sure, hydroelectric is cheaper,but come on, that's well beyond the point of it. if it was actually cheaper, would be having this discussion at all? it's not like companies just do stuff just to be evil for the f of it.

            despite all the huff and puff and end of the world

        • There's more than enough seawater int he oceans to provide humanity with clean, drinkable water for millennia.
          So, you want to replace oil and gas pipelines with water pipelines?

          You make no sense ...

      • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @12:30AM (#58865232)

        When renewables have to pay the write-off costs of their backup (and obviously they need backup) and increased transmission infrastructure they are not cheap. They are still fucking expensive, getting less so, but they have some way to go.

        It's only the regulated energy market insulating renewable projects from those costs which make them profitable, it's just another way of giving them subsidy.

        • by locketine ( 1101453 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @01:17AM (#58865392) Homepage

          Did you know that coal power is subsidized?

          Do people want to live closer to solar, wind or coal power plants? Maybe renewable energy reduces transmission costs because production can be located closer to customers.

          Finally, on your point about backup energy sources. Tesla installed a multi-megawatt battery in Australia that more than pays for itself by leveling out energy production from coal, among other things: https://electrek.co/2018/01/23... [electrek.co]

          So I'm going to guess that backup capacity is not going to bring wind power up to 3x its current price in order to make it comparable to coal. It might in fact make it even cheaper as demonstrated in Australia.

          Coal power is dead. It's a market failure, a health failure and climate failure.

          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            Maybe renewable energy reduces transmission costs because production can be located closer to customers.

            In the UK that's not really the case as onshore wind is pretty much dead due to changes in planning rules. But then you wouldn't get a new coal plant built either anywhere near people either, although a coal plant tends to be more geographically dense. In the UK even wind offshore is best in the North Sea, Scotland, and off Wales, which are the least densely populated areas.

        • by q_e_t ( 5104099 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @01:41AM (#58865458)

          When renewables have to pay the write-off costs of their backup (and obviously they need backup) and increased transmission infrastructure they are not cheap. They are still fucking expensive, getting less so, but they have some way to go.

          It's only the regulated energy market insulating renewable projects from those costs which make them profitable, it's just another way of giving them subsidy.

          No subsidy for new wind, etc. in the UK, but it's still being planned. Onshore wind construction is down, but that's due to planning changes on the whole. If things were going to be mostly renewables you'd need to take into account backup sources, though, to have a fair cost, but that's not relevant with the current power mix which includes a lot of peaking plants which are already a sunk cost. At the point where backup and storage is required then the cost landscape may or may not have shifted.

        • by angel'o'sphere ( 80593 ) <angelo...schneider@@@oomentor...de> on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @03:40AM (#58865782) Journal

          It's only the regulated energy market insulating renewable projects from those costs
          Renewables are not "insulated" from such costs. How the funk should that work? You have no clue about power markets and grids, why do you post?

          When I run a power plant, regardless of what type, I have contract with my customers to deliver "such an amount" of power. If I can not deliver, for what ever reason, for what ever power plant type, I have to buy power from the reserve power market, ooops!! You did not know that? And I have to pay for the delivery of that power to the customer.

          And to make that work, I have to pay already at the moment the contract is signed. Because at that point I have to provide a reserve power delivery contract/insurance. That means for every MW I produce and deliver I have to pay a small fee to a reserve power company/plant to keep the plant idle/ready, and if I actually need that power, I have to pay a hefty fee for using it.

          You can not make a power delivery contract in Europe without having a reserve power contract. REGARDLESS WHAT YOUR POWER PLANTS TECHNOLOGY IS!!
           

        • When you consider an electricity grid as a whole then "backup" is not a relevant term. You just need sufficient power available from a diverse selection of power sources. Renewable energy suppliers do not themselves build any so called "backup" power generation.

          For example, the UK has some interconnect power cables capable of 1 or 2 GW with other countries. The capacity of these interconnect cables are slowly being increased over time, I agree that this is expensive but not impossible. These cables can allo

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Most people vastly over-estimate the amount of storage that renewables need. The idea that the whole country is going to run on battery power for weeks on end is a joke.

          Storage is mainly needed for smoothing output, not some kind of giant UPS. Instead, we just need more renewable capacity. With enough capacity distributed over a wide area there is always enough energy available. For example, conservative estimates put the amount of offshore wind in the UK at 20x what is required, with 24/7/365 coverage.

      • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @12:41AM (#58865266)

        Renewables have come way down in price, but for around the clock reliable power, coal and gas are cheaper, and WAY more new coal plants are coming on line every year than wind or solar.

        Remember that North America and Europe are irrelevant. The battle against climate change is happening in India, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. That is where nearly all the growth in emissions is happening.

        If your "solution" is not cost effective in a village in Tamil Nadu, then it is not going to help.

        Much of the solution is not cleaner generation, but cleaner consumption. For instance, more efficient air conditioners would make a HUGE difference. More than a million ACs per day are installed in South & SouthEast Asia, and most of them are crappy inefficient window units.

        We should have an X-Prize for a better AC. Even if we spent $10B on research for a 10% improvement, it would be worth it many times over.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      It easily could be. The problem is the the same people who whine about global cooling or global warming or climate change or climate emergency or whatever they're calling it these days are the same ones who scream about awful nuclear power is and how awful hydro power is. Then they push infeasible wind and solar options that will likely never work sufficiently well.

      Maybe it's time just to ignore such people. They will never be happy with any feasible solution. There really isn't that many of them, either. T

    • by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @11:03PM (#58864902)

      This is very easy to achieve, actually - you have to include all external costs of the fossil energy. You'll be surprised how expensive it will become. Even the US citizens will run away from it and recycle the gas guzzlers and airconditioning.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        If you do the same for solar or wind power, it turns out they aren't so "green" after all. It takes a lot of energy to extract the raw materials used in their construction. It takes a lot of energy to transport those materials huge distances. It takes a lot of energy to process them into something usable. It takes even more energy to convert them into solar or wind power generation equipment.

        Some will claim that eventually all of this energy could be generated by solar or wind. Yet this is highly doubtful c

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          it turns out they aren't so "green" after all.

          [citation needed], preferably independent, peer-reviewed analysis that makes it possible to compare options. All research that I have seen points to conclusion exactly opposite to the fossil fuel shills on /. and their ignorant followers.

          • by jythie ( 914043 )
            It is a 30 year old meme that people have gotten really attached to.
            • Which one, "green is expensive because of the high cost of silicon"? Or GP's implicit assumption that extraction, processing and transportation of fossil fuels is cost and resource free?

          • by dwillden ( 521345 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @03:32AM (#58865754) Homepage
            First you cite your claim Mr Dollar Ton. You can't make an unsupported claim and then turn around and demand a citation when someone counters your point. You want a citation, let's see the support for your claim.
        • Some will claim that eventually all of this energy could be generated by solar or wind.

          Q: "Why doesnt the solar panel manufacturer use solar panels to power their factories?"
          A: "Too expensive"

        • The lower limits on natural resource use for PV are really low. At the end of the day a stack only needs to be 10s of microns thick and when you increase voltages to medium voltage DC ASAP the metal needed to distribute the generated electricity isn't all that relevant either.

          Assuming technological civilization survives for a few more decades, which I'm not optimistic about, I predict PV systems where PV just comes on huge rolls. You roll it out across minimally prepared deserts with just vegetation and the

          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            They are working on trying to find ways of less efficient PV (i.e. 5% rather than 25%) which you can just paint on. If cheap enough and safe enough you could then just paint your house with it. It might be a while before we see that, though.
    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      If people paid the actual cost of carbon power, it would be far more expensive.
    • Then people will switch instantaneously.

      It is cheaper and more profitable. But that doesn't account for sunk costs. It's more profitable to be driving a prius today but if you bought a fuel efficient car 5 years ago you are unlikely to sell the car and buy a new one.

      We are seeing that with coal plants closing on a small scale but it's still not so incredibly profitable that it makes sense to just close up shop on existing plants.

    • by denzacar ( 181829 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @12:12AM (#58865184) Journal

      Only one thing matters, the price. You gotta make non-carbon cheaper and more profitable than carbon. Then people will switch instantaneously.

      That makes sense only if one believes in the magically invisible hand of the market WHILE ignoring existence of corruption, lobbying and government subsidies.

      Solar has crossed into hydro and geothermal numbers a while back.
      Wholesale, prices of solar panels were already around 0.4$ per Watt last year. [pv-magazine.com]
      For large-scale projects price of a kilowatt/hour is down to around 0.1$... going down to 0.03$... Which is hydro-power and geothermal numbers.
      I.e. Cheaper than fossil fuels.

      But despite green tech overtaking fossil fuels [unfccc.int] - there's still a whole lot of money in dirty fuels for bribes and lobbying.
      After all, we're living in a world where you can buy yourself a president if you let him suck you off. [youtu.be]

    • Don't want to be alarmist, but we should be really worried about positive feedback loops, such as thawing permafrost (on the scale of Siberia) releasing even more CO2 to the atmosphere in an uncontrolled cycle.
      Without taking immediate measures, the environment that is able to support human civilization might be doomed.
      Sceptics and deniers say otherwise. But to those I say: practically all climate scientists agree that this is happening. Do we really want to take the risk of them being wrong? Can we afford t

  • by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @10:40PM (#58864818)
    Photosynthesis peaks at 25C and drops essentially to zero for all plants we farm at 40C. The noon temperature for much of the worlds crops is in the mid 30s. Screw the polar bears, the coral, the last rhinos. World wide calories produced by farming will take a huge hit. And you know what? The rich will still eat exactly the same way because food will just become to expensive for a few billion people.
    • Photosynthesis peaks at 25C and drops essentially to zero for all plants we farm at 40C

      What temperature is that in American?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's bullshit. I live in Arizona and right now the average temperature outside is 100F (38C) -- the only time it drops below 100F is after the sun goes down and it's dark outside.

      Things are growing just fine. I've got watermelons visibly gaining heft each and every day. Pomegranates, figs, peaches, broccoli, tomatoes, cantaloupes, grapes, etc... It's all going good. If you can't get your farm to grow at 40C, you're doing something wrong...

      Two things you need to be able to grow in a hot climate like Arizon

      • Things are growing just fine. I've got watermelons visibly gaining heft each and every day.

        "just fine" is not a very accurate number, is it ? If you want to claim bullshit, you need to present exact yield numbers from professional growers.

        I plant many of my crops under big trees in the summer and they perform better than crops planted under full sun with no shade trees.

        Not sure if farmers will be happy with a bunch of trees in their corn fields.

    • by xtal ( 49134 )

      What people don't want to say is the opposite could happen.

      Climate warming opens up huge swaths of land, much of it with lots of water. In fact, it could even end up as a net positive.

      The problem is .. well, it sucks to live in hell. Sorting out population migrations is going to be interesting.

      • Climate warming opens up huge swaths of land, much of it with lots of water. In fact, it could even end up as a net positive.

        Swamp lands with low amounts of sun are not very good for growing crops.

        • Swamps ( we call them wetlands these days) are actually effective carbon sinks. So that's an interesting experiment.
          • If they were formerly frozen, then they become huge carbon emitters from all the plant material that has collected but not decayed.

  • we tried our best and failed miserably. The lesson here is "never try".
  • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
    If only there was a way to make our populations smaller somehow so that we wouldn't be putting such a strain on the environment. Shame about those declining birth rates though - let's import people from high birth rate countries so we can fix that "problem"!
    • let's import people from high birth rate countries so we can fix that "problem"!

      More of those dirty Swedes? The last thing we need.

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