Renewable Energy Growth Must Speed Up To Meet Paris Goals, Agency Says (theguardian.com) 195
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Renewable electricity production needs to grow eight times faster than the current rate to help limit global heating, according to a report. The International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) said urgent action was needed to keep pace with rising demand for electricity, which could require a total investment of $131 trillion in renewables by 2050. Francesco La Camera, the director general of Irena, said the "window of opportunity" to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement was closing fast. "The recent trends show that the gap between where we are and where we should be is not decreasing but widening. We are heading in the wrong direction," La Camera said. "We need a drastic acceleration of energy transitions to make a meaningful turnaround. Time will be the most important variable to measure our efforts."
The agency's outlook report says keeping a lid on rising temperatures will require electricity to surpass fossil fuels as the dominant source of energy before 2050, as more economies electrify transport and heating to help cut carbon emissions. Clean electricity will also be in high demand to produce "green hydrogen" to burn in heavy industry and manufacturing plants where direct electrification is not possible. The surge in electricity use could mean that electric power will make up just over half of all energy consumed by 2050, compared with 21% in 2018. Fossil fuels have made up almost two-thirds of energy consumption in recent years but may be reduced to 10% by 2050.
The agency's outlook report says keeping a lid on rising temperatures will require electricity to surpass fossil fuels as the dominant source of energy before 2050, as more economies electrify transport and heating to help cut carbon emissions. Clean electricity will also be in high demand to produce "green hydrogen" to burn in heavy industry and manufacturing plants where direct electrification is not possible. The surge in electricity use could mean that electric power will make up just over half of all energy consumed by 2050, compared with 21% in 2018. Fossil fuels have made up almost two-thirds of energy consumption in recent years but may be reduced to 10% by 2050.
There is Another (Score:5, Insightful)
In reality, the only solution to meet every expanding energy needs while still reducing CO2 leads only to one answer - nuclear power.
Nuclear power is the one cheap CO2 free source we can make happen all around the globe quickly for a large amount of power produced, at this point the plants are well-understood and quite safe.
When even people like Bill Gates [cnbc.com] are pushing nuclear power, you know a sea-change is at hand.
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Bullshit. How much energy is needed? In other words, how much electrical demand is perfectly price-inelastic? I think the amount of perfectly price-inelastic electrical demand that exists is so little that rooftop solar plus a little energy storage is more than enough to cover it.
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Bullshit. How much energy is needed? In other words, how much electrical demand is perfectly price-inelastic? I think the amount of perfectly price-inelastic electrical demand that exists is so little that rooftop solar plus a little energy storage is more than enough to cover it.
Its 50% in CA and Germany...its more than 90% in China. The world (and thermodynamics) cares little for your beliefs.
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Again: what has thermodynamics to do with this?
And the rest of your argument _supports_ his case, but you try to contradict him, or not?
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Really? 50% of Germany's demand for electricity is perfectly price-inelastic?
Are you lying, or do you have proof? Because even water isn't perfectly price-inelastic [quora.com].
So I'm going to need a citation for your claim that 50% of Germany's demand for electricity is perfectly price-inelastic.
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Bullshit. How much energy is needed?
Enough to meet your standard of living demands. Yeah. I went there.
Re: There is Another (Score:5, Informative)
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Nuclear power and renewable power are mutually antagonistic.
You can't shut off a nuclear power station easily, and you can only throttle them down so much. It's also stupidly expensive, meaning you want to run a nuclear plant at 100% capacity as much as possible to earn every cent you can during the plant's operational life to get back the cost of building and operating it.
Most renewables are inexpensive to install and very inexpensive to operate. Sunlight and wind are free, so once you cover the cost of co
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Note, for the record, that nuclear submarines can throttle power output MUCH quicker than that. So, it is possible to design a nuke plant that can adjust power output up and down quickly.
Mind you, that doesn't really matter to the nuclear-phobic among us. So settle for having power sometimes....
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Naval reactors are fundamentally different in design than civilian reactors. Also worth noting is that the largest naval reactor is about half the size (in terms of thermal output) as the smallest civilian power reactor. You might as well be comparing the acceleration and braking performance of a superbike with a 200-car freight train.
Being fully submerged in cold water probably helps too.
=Smidge=
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You can run your nuclear plant at full capacity. And then use the excess power to recharge pumped hydro or batteries. You can sell the excess power to various industries that can throttle demand up and down easily. Like producing hydrogen.
The economic problem of fixed capital costs vs practically free fuel is shared by solar and wind generation. Tell the people with the wind farms that we can't buy your power today and they will have an absolute fit. Not to mention running to the media with stories about '
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In what world do you think one to three days of capacity is a "small" (emphasis in the original) buffer for an entire electric grid? The record-setting one in Australia [wikipedia.org] is tiny in comparison to the overall grid; for example, its short-term "grid services" mode provides on 70 MW of power -- which was enough to protect against total failure when a 560 MW coal generator failed, but far from enough to power the grid.
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Why are you talking about 2017 technology in 2021, let alone in a conversation a
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Because (a) we are talking about many orders of magnitude difference here between what has been done and what you claim is "small", and (b) payback time increases to "never" as you attach more battery capacity on the grid.
Now answer the question about in what world you think three days of whole-grid supply is "small", and stop attacking people for pointing out that you are full of baloney.
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You realize that if you have a 20-month payback on something that lasts for 15 years, you're an order of magnitude beyond the point of it being economic, don't you? Meanwhile, we're looking at an order of magnitude price reduction over the coming decade. There's nothing remotely unusual about talking about 1 order of magnitude increases in facility sizes when there's two orders
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You're mixing orders of magnitude in a way that isn't even really defensible, and you still come up short. The current (yes, in 2021) example (singular, unless Strata Oxnard or some other project began operation very quietly) has an eighth the output of a single unit it backstopped. That level of output is rated for one one-hundred-and-forty-forth the minimum time you claimed was "small". Combine those two, and you get three orders of magnitude. If we take your three-day "small" number, it's three and a
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The generic name for this concept is Power-to-X [wikipedia.org] and is often assumed to be large part of on the long-term future of renewable energy in Europe (Gemany especially). This covers a whole load of related ides, like power-to-hydrogen, power-to-fuel, power-to-ammonia, power-to-chemicals, power-to-methane, etc (mostly using power-to-hydrogen as a starting point). Basically anything that is derived from or uses fossil fuels in one form or another at the moment.
I haven't actually seen your idea of power-to-freshwate
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perhaps because most of Europe already has CO2 neutral solutions for fresh water.
Basically true but due to climate change rapidly changing.
Last year (2020), official 8 out of 12 month were to dry, in Germany. 2019 was a super bad and dry year This winter we at least had a bit snow, that should soften the spring and early summer a bit.
Lets see.
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I haven't actually seen your idea of power-to-freshwater mentioned in this context, perhaps because most of Europe already has CO2 neutral solutions for fresh water.
Water can be a by-product anytime you use heat to make electricity via steam. So you could do it with a nat gas plant but it only makes economic sense if you are overproducing a lot of heat.
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You are glossing over the renewable intermittency problem like it is nothing.
Germany estimated that it needs 5 times overcapacity to go 100% renewable. That means that your renewable energy is going to be 5 times more expensive that it is now when it can rely for fossil fuel plants to take care of low renewable production. But the 5 times overcapacity is not enough. You also need backup production for about 89% of peak load. Can you imagine how much batteries it is to provide 89% of the energy from them whe
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No, I'm not.
Without storage perhaps. In general, the optimal balance for 2030 is about 2-4x overcapacity with 1-3 days battery storage. The exact details depend on the location, interconnects, and how solar, wind, and battery price trends shape up over the coming decade.
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New wind installations on land are heavily scaled down. Most new wind is offshore.
I doubt we will have an overproduction of 500% ever. Makes no sense. We are in a pan European super grid, everyone is installing offshore wind power.
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In reality, the only solution to meet every expanding energy needs while still reducing CO2 leads only to one answer - nuclear power.
Nuclear power is the one cheap CO2 free source we can make happen all around the globe quickly for a large amount of power produced, at this point the plants are well-understood and quite safe.
When even people like Bill Gates [cnbc.com] are pushing nuclear power, you know a sea-change is at hand.
Nuclear power is simply too expensive when all relevant costs are considered.
Also Solar & Wind plants can be put into production much faster and for far less cost than nuclear.
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Sure, if it's hot fusion.
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Then why has Germany failed to decarbonize after spending 500 billion euros?
And why did your country fail?
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Re: There is Another (Score:2)
Who's supposed to build them exactly? The klutzes who build them now in the west would be hard up getting two done by 2050.
Re: There is Another (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: There is Another (Score:4, Informative)
While it may be restarting existing nuclear plants, it is NOT constructing any new ones:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/... [world-nuclear.org]
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The current nuclear plants in Japan are slowly re-starting or being decommissioned early, with no new plants planned or under construction. The government has signalled that renewable energy is the way forward, not nuclear.
Fukushima Daiichi continues to suck vast amounts of money out of the industry, and has created additional costs for other plants as they improve safety and do new surveys of the land they are built on. Several have found previously unknown risks from earthquakes and tsunami that had to be
Re:There is Another (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad. During the tsunami, Fukushima power plant complex, including the reactor that actually melted down were the safest places to be in the region.
Total dead from tsunami and follow up devastation death toll is still uncertain because of segmented way in which Japan keeps books on its citizenry and the fact that tsunami destroyed a lot of archives. We have a good guess, but we still don't have a full count. All we know that it's somewhere between 18.000 and 30.000. No accurate figures can be stated because if your entire family got killed in a tsunami which is a common thing in rural Japan where multiple generations live under a single roof, and prefectural archive is gone, no one knows to even look for you. All we have is educated guesses. It was a massive disaster.
Meanwhile, we have a number for those dead from the power plant disaster. Zero, plus one settlement for "thyroid cancer probably partially caused by the disaster". Green religion lobby desperately looked for any and all deaths, and actually cited two of the workers who fell and injured themselves during the containment and repair work as "fatalities", as there was a deafening absence of any fatalities and desperate search for any and all that would meet criteria even remotely.
As a point of comparison, deaths of wind power techs maintaining wind mills falling down due to failure of safety protocols are sadly far less uncommon and stand significantly above zero.
By any measure, this was a resounding success story. A reactor designed to withstand 7 magnitudes took 9, survived it, got hit by a tsunami that devastated the region causing tens of thousands of deaths and millions displaced. And no one died because of the reactor melting down. And yet, propaganda efforts of anti-scientific green lobby convinced the general public that the exact opposite happened.
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During the tsunami, Fukushima power plant complex, including the reactor that actually melted down were the safest places to be in the region.
What? Maybe the reactor complex. The reactor itself is still too hot to visit.
By any measure, this was a resounding success story.
Absolutely not. A success story would have been noting the historical stone markers that outright said don't build below this line because a tsunami can reach here. A slightly less wonderful but still essentially successful result would have been putting the generators on pylons so they could have been used in the incident. By any reasonable measurement, the whole debacle was just that, and equally, a failure.
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Well,
the generators were a problem, but the earth quake had destroyed the cooling system, too.
They brought in emergency generators relatively quickly, but it did not work, because: see above.
With better management, perhaps it would have been possible to do more, e.g. bring some ships ashore for electricity, probably cooling options were overseen.
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>What? Maybe the reactor complex. The reactor itself is still too hot to visit.
When you lose on principle, you go to pedantry - a typical sign of a religious zealot arguing for dogma against reality. Reactors are generally not visited while they operate, because there's no need to. People sit in control room
>A success story would have been noting the historical stone markers that outright said don't build below this line because a tsunami can reach here. A slightly less wonderful but still essentially
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I bet blockchain would solve the problem of the segmented way in which Japan keeps books on its citizenry.
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I bet any universal bookkeeping system would solve "the problem", just like a universal electric grid would solve their "incompatibility problems" for anything that hooks to an electric socket. In case you didn't know, depending on where you are in Japan, your AC electricity can be 50Hz or 60Hz.
Their country is very segmented and compartmentalized for historic reasons, and lack of centralized/universal bookkeeping on citizenry is just one out of many things that many countries take for granted.
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You mean like could bananas please stop being radioactive? No.
The narrative is hilarious. "We have a tiny amount of extra radiation that is so small, we need to measure on level of atom per litre to get an accurate number of radioactive isotopes in the ocean. Let's pretend this is relevant and ignore that you get more dose from a eating a single banana than you'll get from Fukushima in a year when living near the site".
And let's not even talk about the actual thing to worry about if you fear those things. R
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How can a smart man like you mix up radioactivity in Bananas with a nuclear disaster?
Oh ... I have an idea.
Re:There is Another (Score:5, Informative)
How can a smart man like you mix up radioactivity in Bananas with a nuclear disaster?
Oh ... I have an idea.
Because you don't know that Potassium is naturally radioactive? Scientists use the example of a banana because people like you can't (or won't) understand radioactivity is around you all the time and you just have no natural perspective as what a safe vs dangerous dose is. So we use the example of a banana to give some perspective about what a safe dose would be. Its just people like you that want to be histrionic that don't understand that. Oh, and PS we could pour 1000X Fukushima's worth of waste into the ocean and it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the 4,000,000,000 tons of UO2 that are in there naturally. Have some perspective...
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No, just replying to Baghdad Bob.
Re:There is Another (Score:4, Insightful)
>Around 1,500 people are believed to have died as a result of the nuclear disaster are Fukushina Daiichi, mostly due to the necessary evacuation and inability to return home afterwards.
Rephrasing you, "anti-scientific green hysteria about nuclear killed 1500 people". We agree.
Public opinion can alter (Score:3, Insightful)
Even countries that were staunchly pro-nuclear like France, have turned their backs on it in the face of overwhelmingly negative public opinion.
I couldn't find a link to it anywhere, but France recently held off decommissioning a number of nuclear plants for quite some time.
Public opinion can and will change, because it has to - the governments all want to get rid of CO2 and as stated, nuclear power is the only way that happens in reality. That's why I mentioned people like Bill Gates are out in front, wor
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France's "nuclear success story", Areva, despite decades of government largesse of it and its pre-merger entities, went bankrupt in 2016. Nuclear combines four properties to fatal effect: (A) high cost per kWh, (B) extremely high capacity factors (e.g. always near-max) required to even get that, (C) a negative learning curve (getting more expensive, not less), and (D) exceedingly long lead times, which makes (A) and (C) particular bugbears to remedy. And renewables keep shifting the goalposts with ever-dr
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1. Nuclear takes too long to be built, we need solutions fast.
4 years [iaea.org] is not that long.
Nuclear costs way more than renewable energy and energy saving measures,
How much does a new Earth cost? It is not possible to reduce CO2 by the amount needed with wind/solar expansion alone.
A lot of countries can't have nuclear power and need an alternative.
Every country can make use of nuclear power, ones without advanced infrastructure can make use of small self contained plants [wikipedia.org].
You are living in the distant past in re
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4 years is the construction time, assuming no issues. I'm talking about the time from deciding to build a nuclear plant to having a working one ready to go.
For example, Hinkley C was announced by the government in 2010, and is still many years away from being operational.
If anyone ever builds a working, safe self contained reactor that produces useful grid scale energy and is affordable and free enough from regulation that you could hand one to North Korea, let me know.
We should just listen to the scientists... (Score:3, Insightful)
...and pursue nuclear energy. There are reasons why all of the worlds top climate scientists support nuclear energy. Nuclear energy averages 12 g CO2 per kWh. Attempting to power our entire world with only intermittent renewables is not a viable option.
Look at Germany. They have spent 500 billion on renewables and failed to decabonze their grid. They average more than 350 g CO2 per kWh after spending that much money. They have the highest energy costs in Europe. France on the other hand is much cleaner with their nuclear baseload, and their electricity is much cheaper
We should pursue the options guaranteed to be successful such as nuclear. Given German failures pursing renewables we can not guarantee renewables will be successful.
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The price of renewables have been falling dramatically and will continue to do so.
"The costs of solar photovoltaic power, onshore wind, and lithium-ion battery energy storage (SWB) have plummeted over the last two decades, and they will fall another 70%, 40% and 80% respectively during the 2020s as their adoption continues to grow exponentially worldwide."
https://www.utilitydive.com/ne... [utilitydive.com]
Germany started early with renewables so it paid very high prices for it.
Conversely nuclear prices have either remained s
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Locally, downunder, one of the failures of privatisation was illustrated this week.
Distributors are refusing to accept solar feed-in because nobody, neither them nor the government, are willing to pay for grid upgrades.
https://www.theage.com.au/poli... [theage.com.au]
And this is despite coal plants being scheduled for closure years earlier than forecast because they aren't worth the maintenance.
https://www.theage.com.au/busi... [theage.com.au]
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This is why German's power is so expensive and dirty. ... you live under a rock.
Germanys power is neither expensive nor dirty.
The price is similar to our neighbours, with exception of France where half of the price is paid by the state.
In total 50% of electricity is produced CO2 free
Germany is the leading country that has transformed its grid from 90% CO2 producing energy sources down to ~50% CO2 producing (hm, I think it is down to 40% but to lazy to google). Anyway: you can find the errors of your way he
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There is hardly scientific consensus about the need for nuclear, and in fact many scientists point out that due to the very high costs and slow development times it makes more sense to invest the money in renewable energy.
By the way, CO2/Watt in Germany has fallen dramatically. It's actually more than halved since 1990.
CO2/Watt is misleading though, because it doesn't account for energy saving. Not generating electricity doesn't show up in a per-Watt normalized figure, and Germany has been improving energy
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350 g CO2 per kWh is a failure. Get back to me when they get to 35 g CO2 per kWh like nuclear France.
For the record intermittent sources have much greater costs than nuclear energy. German failures after spending 500 billion is proof of that. Energy costs in Germany are the highest in Europe.
And yes there is a scientific consensus among the top climate scientists and the IPCC for nuclear energy. Just because your head is so far up your ass that you can't hear them is not my fault.
And for the r
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Your argument would be more persuasive if the market agreed with you and was pouring money into nuclear. It's not though, renewables have already won that argument.
Energy has to be affordable, and if Germany had decided to go all nuclear the cost would have been crippling. The path they picked leads to sustainable, net zero emissions at an affordable price. Better still it makes Germany a renewable energy powerhouse, with technology and know-how that can be exported to the rest of the world.
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There are 50 nuclear startups developing factory built rectors with NuScale being on the forefront. So there is money being poured into nuclear. China, Russia, and South Korea are also building nuclear power plants around the world.
Germany has the highest energy costs in Europe. Their electricity is not affordable.
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Germany produces nearly 50% of its energy CO2 free. I consider that a win and not a loss.
They have spent 500 billion on renewables /. posters?
Who cares? Seriously WHO CARES? How many nuclear reactors can you build with that money?
SERIOUSLY? Are you as stupid as the other
And as a side note: where the funk would we build them? Who would guard them from civil unrest?
France on the other hand is much cleaner with their nuclear baseload, and their electricity is much cheaper
That is just nonsense.
a) the industry
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350 g CO2/ kWh is a fail.
Who cares? Seriously WHO CARES?
Every antinuclear person who complains about costs cares. It matters that they failed. If the money was spent on nuclear energy they would be 100% clean today. You can build 50 nuclear power plans at a cost of 10 billion euros each. Mass production can reduce costs much more than that.
The government fucking owns the power plants.
Who cares? Seriously WHO CARES?
that peanuts money above would not have been enough to replace 40% of our CO2 producing plants with Nukes, only an complete idiot does not grasp that. Probably 10% we could have done, perhaps 20%.
50 nuclear power plants at 1 GW each would be enough to power 100% of German electricity. You clearly are dumb.
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Yes, as long as you penalize everyone while favouring solar and wind in the grid, they'll be reasonably cheap in a small handful of regions on the planet. Everywhere else, they won't be cheap even if you do that, which is why they need massive subsidies.
See how much wind and solar get to produce if they are not privileged on their ability to input their output into the grid, and actually have to compete with everyone else on even terms. Which would mean that when they produce, there's massive overproduction
Re:We should just listen to the scientists... (Score:4, Informative)
What is the current life-cycle cost of energy for a nuclear power plant, assuming it runs 8760 hours per year?
The only way nuclear (currently) stands a chance is if it is THE base generation and given top priority.
Solar and wind need to be coupled with storage to make them generally dispatchable sources if they are not given priority on in-feed. But, even when you add the extra $0.03-0.07 to the LCOE for the batteries it still comes out cheaper than a new nuclear power plant.
To make nuclear work we need to figure out how to reduce the cost of construction an order of magnitude without compromising on delivered safety. The best-case scenario I have seen is that NuScale can reduce the cost of a reactor by about 10%, and save about a year or two in the approval and construction phase giving a total savings of maybe 15-20% on construction. That really isn’t enough to make the magic work.
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>Solar and wind need to be coupled with storage to make them generally dispatchable sources if they are not given priority on in-feed
As recent Californian events showed, this is the best laid plans. That don't really work when you start deploying intermittents at volume.
>But, even when you add the extra $0.03-0.07 to the LCOE for the batteries it still comes out cheaper than a new nuclear power plant.
And if you make building of a nuclear power plant cost $0.03-0.07, everyone would be building them. In
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>It's not given it's earned.
It is literally given. There are regulations and laws in place where intermittents like wind and solar are allowed on spot markets that they have production priority. It's the only way to make them be able to sell electricity at any reasonable cost, because when they're operating, if stable power generators are allowed to operate at same amount that it operates during no wind/sun, price of electricity goes to zero and even negative (producers literally pay for someone to take
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You forgot the last line in the poem.
"And genocide billions for the planet".
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Base load is an outdated idea though, and won't be around for much longer.
https://energypost.eu/intervie... [energypost.eu]
As the grid moves towards more long distance transmission, opportunistic consumption and excess renewable capacity there just won't be a need for "base generation" or anything expensive.
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Exactly. You end up with a push for lowest cost of energy.
To some degree that needs to be balanced with the need for reliability, as recent events in Texas show... but even then it is hard to make nuclear power a viable source.
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Right, and both the lowest cost and most reliable is renewable. You can't beat distributed generation for reliability.
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That was the point being made by the CEO of the National Grid, whose job is to predict demand and keep the lights on. In future there just won't be a need for base load suppliers that are optimized for constant output levels, because the amount of distributed renewable energy will maintain it and demand will become much more variable anyway.
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It's funny how these sorts of copy pastas just keep going. It doesn't matter how many times they're debunked in the very same thread. They just keep going.
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Germany decommissioned all their nuclear power plants after Fukushima. Maybe they know something we don't.
More like they did something popular and stupid at that time, and is now paying the price, including the huge reliance on natural gas import.
Fortunately most of the rest of the world did not follow their example.
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Electricity production in Germany 2010 -> 2020:
lignite: 146 TWh -> 92 TWh
coal: 117 TWh -> 43 TWh
nuclear: 141 TWh -> 64 TWh
gas: 89 TWh -> 92 TWh
renewables: 105 TWh -> 255 TWh
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Wrong.
Just about half of them are decommissioned.
https://energy-charts.info/?l=... [energy-charts.info]
They have it backwards (Score:2)
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According to Paris Agreement, "developing nations" have a massive incentives to add as much CO2 emissions as possible until 2030. That becomes their baseline from which they should formulate their reduction goals.
They're simply acting according to incentives.
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People who insisted on having Paris Accords in the first place. If you knowingly play the role of a village idiot who wants to give their fortune to everyone else, why wouldn't everyone take advantage of this generous offer?
Source of energy? (Score:2)
The agency's outlook report says keeping a lid on rising temperatures will require electricity to surpass fossil fuels as the dominant source of energy
That... could've been worded better.
So, China then... (Score:2)
They have 100+ new coal plants planned...
Change our way of life (Score:3)
No matter what we do, whether we can make nuclear engergy safe or not, we will have to change our way of life.
If we don't do it in time, and limit our growth and human activities, we will be forced to do so involuntarily.
It won't be pretty. It will be the least pretty for those that are the least to blame for the problem. Those consuming the most resources will be able to protect themselves longer, but it will be impossible for them too. By then it will be too late for everyone.
Yes, the truth remains inconventient. Many seem to continue to search for some way out to continue as we did.
The longer we try, the harder we will be hit.
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If everyone went back to burning wood for energy, then we could get back to 90% of our energy coming from renewable sources.
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Humanity went from relying on horses and wind power for travel, to depositing scientific robots on Mars, in just the span of a few generations. That was made possible through industrialization and supporting large populations who enjoyed a quality of life never seen before.
"we will have to change our way of life" is the shibboleth of socialist would-be tyrants who never bothered to consider unintended consequences, but think they know what is best for everyone. Consequences, like smothering the desire to in
Conflict of Interest (Score:2)
Sorry, not gonna read beyond the summary, where it's clear that the people putting the "report" together have a vested interest.
Direct ways to help (Score:2)
Re:Artificial time constraint (Score:4, Insightful)
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Then clearly the Lizard people win, and that can't happen! Down with progress!
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It's only "nothing" if you don't believe in opportunity cost. The billions wasted on ill conceived green energy solutions could have gone towards other important programs.
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Whats next... is the Pope going to come out against war?
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Whats next... is the Pope going to come out against war?
No, he came out against gay marriage (again) even though he wears silk gowns with gold thread over ruby slippers and has personally participated in the relocation of priests who molested little boys.
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If you are in the US, that is already the case, so a little more shouldn't bother you. Have you complained that your taxes don't go towards healthcare, or infra structure? The US is critically broken, this is just another straw, but this one might actually be helpful.
China is on the forefront of change, Russia is ... Russia.
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Yes, China is building new coal plants, but they are also building massive quantities of wind, solar and nuclear power. https://www.powermag.com/solar-takes-lead-role-in-latest-china-five-year-plan/ [powermag.com] https://gwec.net/a-gust-of-growth-in-china-makes-2020-a-record-year-for-wind-energy/ [gwec.net] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx [world-nuclear.org]. Far more of their new energy is coming from carbon neutral sources. Meanwhile, currently per a capita Chinese CO2 produc
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If you'd carbon tax, you'd prioritize innovation and energy efficiency over 1940's technology. You think that strategy would benefit who the most, again?
By 1940's technology do you mean PVs? Because civilian nuclear power is from 1951. Solar PV cells were invented in the 1880s and Windmills are from antiquity. But don't let facts mess with your one liner.
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This planet has been storing solar energy for millions of years for us without any work on our part in the form of fossil fuels.
And that dam has been storing water for a few years. Lets release it all at once. What could go wrong?