Renewable Energy Has 'Another Record Year of Growth' Says IEA (theguardian.com) 128
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It has been another record year for renewable energy, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and rising costs for raw materials around the world, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). About 290GW of new renewable energy generation capacity, mostly in the form of wind turbines and solar panels, has been installed around the world this year, beating the previous record last year. On current trends, renewable energy generating capacity will exceed that of fossil fuels and nuclear energy combined by 2026.
New climate and energy policies in many countries around the world have driven the growth, with many governments setting out higher ambitions on cutting greenhouse gas emissions before and at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last month. However, this level of growth is still only about half that required to meet net zero carbon emissions by mid-century. According to the IEA report, published on Wednesday, renewables will account for about 95% of the increase in global power-generation capacity from now to the end of 2026, with solar power alone providing about half of the increase.
Raw material prices have risen as the world has emerged from the Covid pandemic and on the back of the energy price rises around the world. These price increases have cancelled out some of the cost falls of recent years in the renewable sector. If they continue next year the cost of wind power will return to levels last seen in 2015, and two to three years of cost falls in solar power will be wiped out. Heymi Bahar, lead author of the report, said that commodity prices were not the main obstacles to growth, however. Wind and solar would still be cheaper than fossil fuels in most areas, he noted. Permitting was the main barrier to new wind energy projects around the world, and policy measures were needed to expand use of solar power for consumers and industry. "China installed the most new renewable energy capacity this year, and is now expected to reach 1,200GW of wind and solar capacity in 2026, four years earlier than its target of 2030," the report notes.
"India, the world's third-biggest emitter, also experienced strong growth in renewable energy capacity in the past year, but its target -- set out at Cop26 -- of reaching net zero by 2070 is also regarded as too weak by many."
New climate and energy policies in many countries around the world have driven the growth, with many governments setting out higher ambitions on cutting greenhouse gas emissions before and at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last month. However, this level of growth is still only about half that required to meet net zero carbon emissions by mid-century. According to the IEA report, published on Wednesday, renewables will account for about 95% of the increase in global power-generation capacity from now to the end of 2026, with solar power alone providing about half of the increase.
Raw material prices have risen as the world has emerged from the Covid pandemic and on the back of the energy price rises around the world. These price increases have cancelled out some of the cost falls of recent years in the renewable sector. If they continue next year the cost of wind power will return to levels last seen in 2015, and two to three years of cost falls in solar power will be wiped out. Heymi Bahar, lead author of the report, said that commodity prices were not the main obstacles to growth, however. Wind and solar would still be cheaper than fossil fuels in most areas, he noted. Permitting was the main barrier to new wind energy projects around the world, and policy measures were needed to expand use of solar power for consumers and industry. "China installed the most new renewable energy capacity this year, and is now expected to reach 1,200GW of wind and solar capacity in 2026, four years earlier than its target of 2030," the report notes.
"India, the world's third-biggest emitter, also experienced strong growth in renewable energy capacity in the past year, but its target -- set out at Cop26 -- of reaching net zero by 2070 is also regarded as too weak by many."
Wow (Score:2)
IEA and trends ... (Score:4, Informative)
... well maybe, the relationship improved in the past few years.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/20... [pv-magazine-usa.com]
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That's a great article, and reminds me of why I still come back to Slashdot. Thanks!
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They seem to have drank the coolaid and decided that renewables can't integrate well, only to be proven wrong by reality. Very disappointing from an agency that should be championing the fight against climate change.
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What's with these "records"? (Score:3)
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The editors love this shit for space filler as they continue their passive-aggressive efforts to further ruin a once great site.
Their malice towards actual techie readers knows no bounds and if either dies I will publicly rejoice as their entire Slashdot careers have basically been clickbait shitposting.
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It's an indication that the trend is continuing to grow.
If you break the record one year and don't the next, it would indicate the trend is slowing
We need more record growth. (Score:2)
If we're going to head off the most disastrous scenarios then we are going to need to break the record for growth repeatedly for several years.
So, pro-nuclear folks... (Score:2)
Can we assume that your town, specifically, is responding to the quest to house nuclear waste? Have you called your reps yet to ask them to accept it/
https://gizmodo.com/could-some... [gizmodo.com]
Re: "The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:1)
Addendum (Re:We need nuclear fission to lower CO2) (Score:1, Troll)
I should give a link to the TED Talk Dr. David MacKay gave on how poorly renewable energy performs in addition to the links in the parent comment: https://www.ted.com/talks/davi... [ted.com]
The video is only 18 minutes, and if you can keep up on 2x playback it's only 9 minutes.
IEA gave projections on the cost of different energy sources: https://www.iea.org/reports/pr... [iea.org]
It's a long article but all you need to see is the chart about 1/4 the way in that graphs out the projected costs. Nuclear power, onshore wind, and
Re:Addendum (Re:We need nuclear fission to lower C (Score:4, Insightful)
The sources that you have given again have been discussed through repeatedly in the past on Slashdot. Your failures are in a bunch of areas.
You rely on an expert - David MacKay - who died in 2016. Why do that? When MacKay was alive it was still possible to believe that renewable energy would be expensive. Since MacKay's lifetime that argument that renewables could never make it is completely transformed by the massive fall in the cost of renewable energy [wikipedia.org]. All of his arguments, that were reasonable at the time are now clearly wrong and the fact you use him as an expert shows how far out of field you are.
You then use a bunch of cranks like Mahotra for an appearance of modernity. This is a person who writes an article about energy without even mentioning cost one time. How can you discuss energy without discussing cost when, especially with electricity generation, the supply is mostly fungible and people will normally choose the cheapest option making something as expensive as Nuclear completely irrelevant due to it's has a levelised cost around $150 / megawatt-hour [wikipedia.org] compared to things like wind at $50 and coal between $80 and $100.
There is a simple challenge at present. We need to put capital and social investment into driving renewable energy. It is so cheap that, if people have the option, they will simply phase out fossil fuels to use it, will find and are finding solutions to any problems it produces (e.g. storage overnight when solar is more limited) and will take advantage of the benefits it produces (extremely cheap energy during off-peak periods). Money spent on Nuclear is money that could be better spent on other things and until there are working reactors that deliver cheaper energy than fossil fuels, it's just distracting us from actually solving the problem.
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Oh look, another crap post. Let's poke at it.
Money spent on Nuclear is money that could be better spent on other things and until there are working reactors that deliver cheaper energy than fossil fuels, it's just distracting us from actually solving the problem.
There's that bullshit catch-22 excuse again.
More of your usual crap here. The statement was not that we shouldn't be doing nuclear power research but that we should not be installing nuclear power plants left and right to try to solve the AGW problem. And in fact, we already know that it isn't the best or even a workable solution [cleantechnica.com] to that problem (article contains citations.)
Why bring up MacKay's work if he's been dead for five years? Because as much as renewable energy has developed since he died we have not seen enough change in the land area required for renewable energy to show we won't need nuclear power.
More of your lies again. You love to claim for example that the area used by renewables can't be used for anything else, which is stup
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And in fact, we already know that it isn't the best or even a workable solution to that problem (article contains citations.)
Article contains a cost comparison between a real nuclear power project and a fictional solar + storage project. I can pull numbers from my ass too.
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I can pull numbers from my ass too.
These numbers are based on real projects, and reasonably projected costs based on real world trends. Meanwhile, the trend has been for nuclear to actually get more expensive. People like you like to claim that's because of unnecessary regulation, obstructionism and such, ignoring the real facts that nuclear reactors a) have to be sited, built, fueled, operated, and decommissioned correctly in order to be safe and ensuring that all of those things happen is expensive, and b) people have good reasons for bein
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I can pull numbers from my ass too.
These numbers are based on real projects, and reasonably projected costs based on real world trends.
I did not check the article numbers carefully but there are two problems at least. One is possible selection bias since they use one particular nuclear project price instead of a statistic. Second, I concentrated on the amount of storage needed for wind & solar because the article claims that only 14 hours of storage is needed which did not pass my bullshit filter. I found these limitations of their claims when I digged deeper:
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That 94% number for Scotland is valid for a different context. It is misleading to compare it to the percentages cited by me. 96% is Scotland renewable generation in 2020 compared to Scotland consumption. But you must realize that Scotland is an exporter of energy to England. The ability to sell renewables overproduction make it economically viable to have higher overproduction which allows them to have high percentage of renewables when compared to their own consumption only. England produces a big portion
Re: Addendum (Re:We need nuclear fission to lower (Score:2)
Re:Addendum (Re:We need nuclear fission to lower C (Score:5, Insightful)
For nuclear power to get lower in cost we have to develop the technology.
At this point nuclear power is 70 years old. There has been an enormous amount of research done, much of it government funded. How much more good money do we have to throw after the bad for it to get the cost down?
Investors are often sceptical of new nuclear designs because all the previous ones have turned into expensive fiascos, and failed to produce commercially viable technology.
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At this point nuclear power is 70 years old. There has been an enormous amount of research done, much of it government funded. How much more good money do we have to throw after the bad for it to get the cost down?
Research is not development and both need to happen or costs will not come down. Development means building things.
Investors are often sceptical of new nuclear designs because all the previous ones have turned into expensive fiascos, and failed to produce commercially viable technology.
There's people that want to invest in nuclear power, so let them. Why should you care so long as it is not your money they are gambling with? If government subsidies are the problem then that's easy to solve, just don't subsidize it. What the nuclear power industry wants is permission to build and not see their profits lost because wind and solar is getting subsidies and preferential treatm
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We have been building nuclear power for 70 years too. There have always been demonstration and prototype reactors through that entire period.
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There's people that want to invest in nuclear power, so let them. Why should you care so long as it is not your money they are gambling with?
It's our biosphere they are gambling with. It's theirs too, but it's not just theirs.
What the nuclear power industry wants is permission to build and not see their profits lost because wind and solar is getting subsidies and preferential treatment.
We're giving wind and solar preferential treatment because they are preferable. Capitalism is only sustainable when we give preferential treatment to superior ideas, processes, and behaviors, because it has no natural feedback mechanisms to prevent unsustainable excesses until the systems it depends upon fails and everyone involved suffers; though the wealthy tend to have the most mobility and suffer the least, and they can
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Investors are often sceptical of new nuclear designs because all the previous ones have turned into expensive fiascos
But usually not for the investor ^_^
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Why bring up MacKay's work if he's been dead for five years?
Euclid has been dead for over 1,300 years, but his work is still valid and is taught in schools all over the world.
Archimedes has been dead for over 1,300 years, but he discovered the importance of conic sections and made a good start towards calculus.
Isaac Newton has been dead for nearly 300 years, but his work remains the basis of modern physics.
Babbage, Darwin, Maxwell, Pasteur, Einstein, Dirac, Heisenberg, Turing, Feynman... and on and on and on.
If you think a person's work necessarily becomes invalid a
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Basically everyone you named is famous for their discoveries in math, physics, or natural sciences. The work by MacKay that's being discussed is a speculative, analytical work based on data that's pretty much 15+ years old at this point. It doesn't hold up, because things have changed. Math has not changed in that time. Physics haven't either, although I should point out that you can't use Newtonian physics for anything important in physics these days because it doesn't describe the real world accurately en
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If you think a person's work necessarily becomes invalid after he has been dead for five years, you are going to have a LOT of fundamental knowledge to rediscover from scratch.
If that persons conclusions were dependent on the level of technology available and the associated costs. (as is clearly the case here) Then yes, his conclusions will become progressively more and more invalid as the technology and costs change.
It's obvious to anyone paying even a tiny bit of attention...
If you are going to keep believing things because a dead guy told you, even after they are shown to be wrong. You're going to have even more trouble learning new things. He's not going to come back and co
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Dr. David MacKay was the chief science advisor to the UK department on energy and climate change, I believe that makes him one of the most knowledgeable people on the subject.
If Dr. MacKay's numbers are too old to be relevant to today then it would be quite enlightening to see someone provide updated numbers.
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If Dr. MacKay's numbers are too old to be relevant to today then it would be quite enlightening to see someone provide updated numbers.
You say it would be enlightening, but I know it wouldn't. Because I've provided you updated numbers before to a graph of his that you're quite fond of, and you just ignored them. To be specific, the graph showed the power output for Photovoltaic parks in sunny locations as 10 Watts per square meter (based presumably on a full 24 hour cycle and averaged over a year). I showed a case study of an amateur solar setup in a non-sunny, Northern climate that produced over 10 Watts per square meter. If you just look
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If you are interested in that, then pick some random places, and google for the solar hours per year.
If the places are famous, you most likely find that on wikipedia already. Otherwise there are specialized web sites for that.
Then you only need to estimate the percentage, depending on technology 20% - 30%, of conversion of sunlight into electricity.
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That can give theoretical numbers, but hard numbers from actual solar installations are better. That's why I presented MacMann previously with case studies from actual solar installations, where even an amateur setup in a poor location easily beat the outdated numbers from the graph he keeps flouting (it shows wattage per square meter total used of various nations and compares against antiquated numbers for the energy produced per square meter by various methods). Apparently MacMann doesn't really think it
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MacMann doesn't really think it makes a difference if those numbers are off by 3X though. :P
He made a typo when he made his toon: MadMann
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Let's just see if you will actually address this. I'm going to ask a direct question, and we'll see if you can give a direct answer: Are MacKay's numbers correct that solar photovoltaic parks in sunny locations only generate 10 Watts per square meter or are modern facilities capable of producing twice that or more?
WTF? That's the very question I'm asking people like you. I'm being told that MacKay's numbers are outdated, that his estimates on solar power are not representative of current technology. Okay then, what is current technology capable of? More importantly, how does this new solar power technology show MacKay's conclusions are in error?
It also appears you and others are missing some very real implications of this land use. How much land is covered by solar power collectors now? How quickly is this bein
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WTF? That's the very question I'm asking people like you. I'm being told that MacKay's numbers are outdated, that his estimates on solar power are not representative of current technology. Okay then, what is current technology capable of? More importantly, how does this new solar power technology show MacKay's conclusions are in error?
You're missing the point entirely that you've been given this information before, but I'm just going to repaste it here from a previous discussion we had, and then I would like you to actually respond to the information provided instead of fake affront that you've never been given this information before.
So:
The other figures are pretty dubious. "Solar PV parks (sunny locations) 10 W/m^2" for example. I looked for case studies on solar farms. I found one for a black star farm in Sutton's Bay Michigan at approximately 45 degrees north latitude. Even that basically amateur setup produced 10.767 Watts per square meter averaged from November to November and it was pretty high in the summer months relative to the winter months suggesting poor weather and probably reduced power due to load, etc. If you just averaged the sunnyish months of Mar to Sep, then the average was 15 W/m^2.
This was from a case study found here [msu.edu]
For actual, large scale commercial solar installations, consider the Solar Star [wikipedia.org] facility in California. It produces 520 MW-h per acre per year, which works out to a r
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This is a public discussion so telling me I saw this before is not helping others reading this. I'm not here to convince those posting to Slashdot on the inevitability of nuclear power, it's the lurkers I want to convince. This story has moved off the Slashdot front page so it's too late for you to make your case to them. That means it is too late to make your case to me.
Most importantly your claims of getting 15 W/m^2 from solar power is not some huge leap in technology that invalidates Dr. David MacKay
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This is a public discussion so telling me I saw this before is not helping others reading this. I'm not here to convince those posting to Slashdot on the inevitability of nuclear power, it's the lurkers I want to convince. This story has moved off the Slashdot front page so it's too late for you to make your case to them. That means it is too late to make your case to me.
The problem is that you're apparently here to convince people of things that you know to be lies. See, the way it works is that if you're presenting factual information that's no longer accurate it's understandable -- if you don't know. If you do know that it's not accurate, however, then that's what is known as a lie. People keep on trying to correct your information, but you just keep on repeating it and pretending that no-one has ever provided you with updated information. Even ignoring your own respons
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I mean seriously "It is too late to make your case to me" because the story isn't on the front page any more. It's too late to correct your misinformation because you don't have an audience any more? Can you be more obvious that you just want to spread disinformation?
I'm trying to spread misinformation? I'm the one asking for those that disagree with my claims to present that information for all to see! If I'm wrong then you should be able to show it. Who's going to be more convincing to the lurkers? The person that makes a claim then provides a link to data from a college physics and engineering professor, and the former chief science advisor to the UK government department of energy? Or is the person that claims this in error, provides no links just, "I told you
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I'm trying to spread misinformation? I'm the one asking for those that disagree with my claims to present that information for all to see! If I'm wrong then you should be able to show it.
We have shown it. Multiple times. You just ignore what's presented and then regurgitate the same old outdated garbage.
Who's going to be more convincing to the lurkers? The person that makes a claim then provides a link to data from a college physics and engineering professor, and the former chief science advisor to the UK government department of energy? Or is the person that claims this in error, provides no links just, "I told you once so I'm not telling you again"?
I've presented links. You simply don't acknowledge them. Your links to very outdated information from a sadly deceased college professor are not particularly convincing. Also, the department he was chief science advisor to was the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It was a small fairly short-lived department that mainly worked on managing old nuclear sites. He was undeniable smart an
Re: Addendum (Re:We need nuclear fission to lower (Score:2)
Re:Addendum (Re:We need nuclear fission to lower C (Score:4, Interesting)
I couldn't help but notice your link goes to a TED Talk that's over a decade old. I think we all know there's been game-changing green energy advances in the last 10 years. Well, most of us know that, anyway.
Please feel free to send us links to other information old enough to need a shave. It's good for a laugh, at least.
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Feel free to share links with everyone reading this with more current data. You can say the numbers in his talk are out of date but if you can't produce more current numbers then how is anyone going to make an informed decision on solutions?
If I tell you that the sky is purple and you tell me I'm wrong then it would be expected for you to at least tell me what is the actual color of the sky. Then if I were to show pictures of a purple sky it would be expected that the person that claims the sky is no long
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What are the right numbers and where can I find them?
Start here [ted.com].
That's about as "hot off the presses" as you can get.
Solar is already the cheapest form of energy in most countries and, within a decade or so, it will be the cheapest in ALL countries.
There are still some areas where wind makes better sense than solar (areas with highly-variable amounts of solar energy, such as far from the equator). Utility-scale wind is already the cheapest source in ALL areas.
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Solar is already the cheapest form of energy in most countries and, within a decade or so, it will be the cheapest in ALL countries.
Okay then, we solved the problem. If solar power is the cheapest source of energy, is capable of providing all the energy we need, and provides this energy with low enough CO2 emissions and pollution that we end up stopping global warming and other catastrophic environmental damage, then we solved the problem.
You claimed the video would give me numbers to correct Dr. David MacKay's findings but it did not. How much land will all of this solar power require? Also, isn't that land used for solar power taki
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You're perfectly well aware that the cost of solar has nosedived while the cost of nuclear hasn't. And you persistently refuse to acknowledge that even the worst upstream costs of solar and wind are dwarfed by those of mining, refining and transporting ore that eventually becomes nuclear fuel, then disposing of the mess afterward.
Everybody here knows you're a shill for the nuclear industry. Your credibility is shot. You should probably fuck off to somewhere else where it will take a while for people to u
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Don't show me I'm wrong, show everyone else I'm wrong.
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Don't show me I'm wrong, show everyone else I'm wrong.
You're the one prattling on about bullshit. Everyone else is getting it from people like you.
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Don't show me I'm wrong, show everyone else I'm wrong.
Everyone else already knows.
You're the only one too stubborn to realise.
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You're not really in a position to be demanding that everyone else prove you wrong. You're the one commenting on an article about how renewables are poised to be the majority source of energy to say that nuclear power is actually better. You're the one who has to demonstrate why it's better in the face of the evidence that it's not winning in the real world.
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I'm not seeing anyone demand, or even suggest, we build nuclear power plants to the exclusion of all other energy sources. I'm seeing quite the opposite, people asking we diversify our energy sources so that we do not become overly reliant on any one source.
Complaints of build time and costs of nuclear power will not be resolved until we get people experienced in building nuclear power plants. For them to get this experience requires that they build nuclear power plants.
We will be building more nuclear po
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30 years from now is not too late. Those windmills and solar panels will need replacement at some point so it would be wise to have a plan to replace them with something that is as low or lower in CO2 emissions.
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Current planned build times in Europe are around the 10 year mark, but all currently under construction plants have over-ran on both time and budget. It looks like the quickest you can expect to build one is around 20 years, and for a total cost (assuming no accidents, including subsidies) of around â30-40 billion.
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price of solar by time [google.com]
The cost of solar has dropped significantly in the past several years. A decade ago, an average 6 kilowatt hour residential solar system could cost more than $50,000. Now, the outright cost of a typical home installation ranges from $16,200 to $21,400, which is a 62% average annual decrease.
That wasn't very hard.
Now you do wind and storage and get back to us...
Residential wind is a waste of time.
Now compare all that to nuclear which is getting more expensive instead.
If you dug up Dr. David MacKay and asked him to have another go with current numbers. Do you think he'd give the same answers?
Quite possibly he would not. There are other people doing analyses, though. The UK government produces shorter reports every couple of years.
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My issue with nuclear is that if you start ramping up today you will have zero new reactors online by next year and probably zero by the year after. So yes do it, but don't go all in on it unless you can bring it up faster.
Available evidence suggests lead-times of around 20 years and cost-overruns of 5...10x for nuclear. So, no, do not do it. It wastes time and money urgently needed. It only looks good when you lie grossly about time and cost. Oh, and waste-storage is still unsolved and safety is still a real problem.
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It is? Just how dangerous is nuclear power compared to other options?
I found this which shows nuclear power to be quite safe: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... [nextbigfuture.com]
Why should I believe you that nuclear power has a safety problem?
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It is? Just how dangerous is nuclear power compared to other options?
I found this which shows nuclear power to be quite safe: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... [nextbigfuture.com]
Why should I believe you that nuclear power has a safety problem?
The issue is more the cost associated with making that safe than how safe or not it is.
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The issue is more the cost associated with making that safe than how safe or not it is.
I assume you can cite sources on that? No, you can't, because if you could have then you would have.
Re: We need nuclear fission to lower CO2 (Score:2)
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The nuclear fanatics are just as stupid as the anti-vaxxers, COVID-deniers, flat-earthers, etc. Ultimately, all they do is lie.
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I don't walk around with a long list of citations for you.
Neither do I but I happen to have a computer in front of me with internet access, as do you or you would not be posting here. With that I can find sources to back up my claims.
Sometimes when you make assertions I provide links proving you are wrong and you ignore them or move the goalposts.
Yeah, I've heard that before. The times people claim I got something wrong in a source the usual tactic is to make a very selective quote, the kind where the next sentence after the quote proves I'm right. I'm not going to reply to that kind of bullshit.
In this case I was being supportive noting the generally good record on nuclear safety, although failures tend to be relative spectacular, and yet you still attacked me.
Saying nuclear power is safe but still costs too much is not "supportive". Tha
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I don't walk around with a long list of citations for you.
Neither do I but I happen to have a computer in front of me with internet access, as do you or you would not be posting here. With that I can find sources to back up my claims.
I've done that multiple times before, and you often don't take any notice, so pardon me for not being motivated.
In this case I was being supportive noting the generally good record on nuclear safety, although failures tend to be relative spectacular, and yet you still attacked me.
Saying nuclear power is safe but still costs too much is not "supportive"
It's being honest. If it was cheap it would be being built. It's not.
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Nuclear power is the safest form of energy we have, from a 2016 article: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... [nextbigfuture.com]
Nuclear power is produces the least CO2 of any energy source available to us, from 2017: https://ourworldindata.org/saf... [ourworldindata.org]
(That source shows safety data too but that's from 2007, I gave a more recent source above.)
More of that here, from as recent as 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Nuclear power uses the least raw materials of any other energy source, from US DOE 2015: https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.c [blogspot.com]
Re: We need nuclear fission to lower CO2 (Score:2)
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Links or it didn't happen.
Re: We need nuclear fission to lower CO2 (Score:2)
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Please go away. Your fanaticism and stupidity is a threat to civilization.
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Small renewables could be dedicated to fluctuation-tolerant applications like desalination and making artificial aviation fuel. If we did that, we wouldn't need a whole new electrical grid to accommodate them.
Nuclear is obsolete (Score:2, Informative)
Nuke electricity is obsolete.
It costs 4x more to produce each and every kWh.
Renewables100% is the way to go.
You live in the past.
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A combination of smart demand-shifting; storage; interconnectors; non-intermittent renewables like hydro; etc.
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No, you don't have that in California. Nowhere in the world has this yet. In particular you don't have smart demand-shifting and storage, bc those are done with large scale EV adoption and V2G, neither of which has happened in CA yet.
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The article says nothing about smart demand-shifting. It says nothing about storage. It says nothing about large scale EV adoption. And it says nothing about V2G. Those were the four things I said you didn't have in CA because nowhere has them, to which you replied "yes we do".
Well done you. Do you specialise in self-owns?
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So you *do* specialise in self-owns! At least that's clear.
To paraphrase where we've got to:
You said "but intermittency, what then?"
I said "smart demand-shifting; storage; interconnectors; non-intermittent renewables etc"
You said "already got it in CA"
I said "no one has this at scale"
You said "Yes we do" and posted a link that didn't show it
I said "No you don't no-one has them yet"
You replied "They don't exist yet"
You've managed to forget what you're arguing here. Brilliant!
But I'm glad you agree no-one has
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Let's just say that the day the Sun doesn't rise, wind stops blowing, rivers stop flowing and tides cease, most of other worries will also end and those that will manage to remain will far outweigh our worry about how to charge our phones.
In defense of MacMann's techno-optimism (Score:2)
I've argued with MacMann before on slashdot -- and I have long believed based on Amory Lovin's reasoning in renewables and energy efficiency as a viable "soft path" to meet US energy needs. That said, let me try to acknowledge some core points MacMann gets right given so many people are piling on with what MacMann gets wrong.
1. Europe has a population density about six times that of the USA, so that means that if renewables require ~2% of the USA land, then, say, Germany which at ~6 times more population de
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these advances are critical to our species' survival, especially if arable land and usable land starts decreasing so much that wars start happening because one country has absolutely nothing to lose versus another.
Losing arable land is a problem with solar and biomass (but I repeat myself because biomass is a form of solar power). Dr. David MacKay shows that nations like Germany and UK would have to cover a very large portion of their total land area with solar panels to get any meaningful amounts of their energy from the sun. That means having to choose between food or fuel. Here's a chart of what the land use calculations look like: (DANGER! Log-log scale ahead!) http://www.inference.org.uk/su... [inference.org.uk]
If the power u
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Stop prattling on about Dr. David MacKay, his research is now way out of date due to tech advances in renewables.
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nonsense, if you plan your solar farm you can still farm under the panels so giving the farmer a bonus of 2 money making opportunities on one piece of land.
Sharing the land with crops still leaves the available power per area unchanged or lower. The farmer would have 2 money making opportunities only if the energy produced can be sold at a competitive price. How much does it cost to produce electricity this way? How does that compare to nuclear power?
Stop prattling on about Dr. David MacKay, his research is now way out of date due to tech advances in renewables.
To know the numbers are out of date is to see more recent numbers that are different. Can you share these numbers with everyone? And show where everyone can find these numbers? Why should I take your word fo
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How much does it cost to produce electricity this way?
Why do you care? It is not your money.
How does that compare to nuclear power?
Irrelevant. As no one, especially not myself, will build a nuke on my farmland
But I can rent out 1% of my farmland and put a windmill every 500 yards ... or get a loan to do it myself.
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How much does it cost to produce electricity this way?
Why do you care? It is not your money.
I don't care because if it costs too much then I buy electricity from someone else. The people that would produce this electricity would care because if people like me go looking for lower rates then they don't make money. The people making national energy policy should care because if energy production doesn't make a profit then the people producing energy go out of business and they will need to find energy from someone else.
How does that compare to nuclear power?
Irrelevant. As no one, especially not myself, will build a nuke on my farmland
And nobody will build a nuclear power plant on my farmland either. Not because
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The people that would produce this electricity would care because if people like me go looking for lower rates then they don't make money.
Exactly: they care.
So why do you care?
If you don't need it, it should not bother you.
Right, and if someone comes along with a nuclear + storage plant to sell energy at a lower price then you default on the loan and lose the farm to the bank.
No one would come along. There is nothing close to my farm that supports a nuclear plant - and as we all know it costs perhaps up t
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If the power usage of a nation is about 1 watt per square meter and a combination of wind and solar produces 10 watts per square meter then that is 10% of the land not usable for crops. I'll see people argue on if it is more accurate to say if it is 5%, 20%, or whatever. The point is that we can't get much better than 10 W/m^2 from renewable energy.
I suppose if you think that there's no real difference between 5% or 20% then thinking that 20 W/m^2 to 30 W/m^2 isn't "much better" than 10 W/m^2 is at least internally consistent. To people with a sense of reality, that's a large material difference. Really though, you seem to be missing the huge flaw in this land usage argument. That flaw is that you're basically saying that, if you need a square kilometer per 4 MW wind turbine, then you can't use that square kilometer for anything else. This is obvious
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That flaw is that you're basically saying that, if you need a square kilometer per 4 MW wind turbine, then you can't use that square kilometer for anything else. This is obvious nonsense.
That is obvious nonsense. I made no such claim that windmills remove land from crop production, excepting that tiny area for the pylons. Did you even read my post? I believe you are arguing with some creation of your imagination, not me.
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That is obvious nonsense. I made no such claim that windmills remove land from crop production, excepting that tiny area for the pylons. Did you even read my post? I believe you are arguing with some creation of your imagination, not me.
You are so full of it. You specifically wrote:
If the power usage of a nation is about 1 watt per square meter and a combination of wind and solar produces 10 watts per square meter then that is 10% of the land not usable for crops
You're explicitly saying that a combination of wind and solar will remove arable land. You're also underestimating the actual current per square meter of wind+solar, even going by your outdated chart (which, among other things, lists concentrating solar power as 20 W/m^2 and overestimating the power requirements of a typical country by a factor of greater than 3X. On your chart, the majority of countries are below the US, which is at about a third of a Watt per
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You are so full of it. You specifically wrote:
I did write that. I later on wrote about how windmills and crops can share the same land. The quote included "and solar", did the use of "and" confuse you?
You didn't read my entire post before replying, did you? You found some juicy bit you thought you could pounce on and had to reply. I'm still waiting for someone to bring actual data to show Dr. MacKay got his conclusions wrong. A doubling or tripling of solar or wind power output per area will not change his conclusions. Neither will a doubling or
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I did write that. I later on wrote about how windmills and crops can share the same land. The quote included "and solar", did the use of "and" confuse you?
The discussion is about renewables vs other sources of power (and where you're involved, just about renewables vs. nuclear). You keep picking and choosing whether you're talking about renewables in general or just solar for convenience, but he fact is that you're making an argument for nuclear based on the supposed low land use relative to other sources. The problem is, you think nuclear is preferable to wind power, even though, as you now admit, wind uses a tiny fraction of the same land area relative to n
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You are not making sense. You appear to be reading but not comprehending. I'm struggling on how to even respond, and I'm not going to address every point because you don't appear to be even reading what I write.
I think I'll pick this one point...
The supposed lower labor costs are not reflected in the price. Generally, job creation is a good thing. It might be a problem if the jobs are created at unreasonable expense, but if renewables cost less money and simultaneously produce more jobs, that seems like a good thing, not a bad thing.
Producing more jobs is not always a good thing. What is in the Roadmap to Nowhere link I gave earlier is how if we were to abandon nuclear power and use only renewable energy then we'd create so many energy jobs that people would be so busy producing energy that
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You are not making sense. You appear to be reading but not comprehending. I'm struggling on how to even respond, and I'm not going to address every point because you don't appear to be even reading what I write.
This is transparently an evasion tactic on your part and everyone recognizes it, so I wonder why you bother.
Producing more jobs is not always a good thing.
Not always. However if jobs are being produced and the end product is produced at lower cost, it's hard to argue that it's a bad thing.
What is in the Roadmap to Nowhere link I gave earlier is how if we were to abandon nuclear power and use only renewable energy then we'd create so many energy jobs that people would be so busy producing energy that there might not be enough people left to grow our food. The point is that we'd need far more people working to produce energy without nuclear power than with it. With so many more people working to produce energy there would be fewer people to do other work. Instead of pouring concrete for roads and bridges those people would be pouring concrete for hydroelectric dams. Either way they have work. With nuclear power we can keep the lights on and have our roads maintained. Without nuclear power we'd have to choose between pouring concrete for maintaining the roads or pouring concrete to maintain our hydroelectric dams.
That's a ridiculous false dichotomy you're presenting there. It's hard to know how to address it since it's such a steaming mess. Among the things that have never been addressed here is that you're conflating the labor requirements of rooftop solar with utility-scale s
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Energy from biomass is literally burning our food.
You eat trees? Corn stalks? I'd agree that biomass is pretty much unworkable as a significant contributor, although it might be able to fill in gaps between renewables and storage and grid-scale effects if these are sufficiently small.
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MacMann is right again.
In order to be right again he would have to be right once. Only he never was right under his old username, and he's also never been right under his new one. I wonder if he changed it in order to try to dodge his history, or because he lost his old account somehow. He's never posted a single citation that did not, upon inspection, fail to say what he claimed it said.
How much land needs to wasted for another banner year of 1-2%?
None. Renewables are either installed on top of other construction, in places where the land is already a waste, or in harmony with other uses l
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