Indirect fusion's nothing less than HiiiPoWeR
November 30, 2013 7:42 AM   Subscribe

 
When I hear about the growth in renewables and stats like wind and solar can power the earth's energy needs X times over, I wonder why nuclear fission and hydrocarbon investment has any basis at all. Is it just a matter of rise and decline?
posted by pashdown at 7:53 AM on November 30, 2013


All these alternative energy sources are a good start, and I'm heartened to see localized power generation working out economically for companies.

But I can't help but think that the bigger gains are on the other side of the switch, in conservation.

The amount of energy wasted in unnecessary lighting alone is huge.
Our expectation for every building to be held within a degree of "ideal" is unreasonable and unsustainable.

We need a 70's oil-crisis style energy conservation campaign aimed at all the new gadgets purchased yesterday.
posted by madajb at 7:57 AM on November 30, 2013 [3 favorites]


We're overlooking the very obvious infinite supply of power that is generated by wagging dog tails.
posted by yoga at 8:06 AM on November 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


But I can't help but think that the bigger gains are on the other side of the switch, in conservation.

These are not contradictory options, really.

Our expectation for every building to be held within a degree of "ideal" is unreasonable and unsustainable.

We need a 70's oil-crisis style energy conservation campaign aimed at all the new gadgets purchased yesterday.


Because this worked so very well the first time around, right?

Most people are going to see this as slashing their quality of life. Seems that for the most part, shifting more energy to renewables is likely to be more possible politically than trying for the complete rewriting of the Western (and these days, prevalent far outside the West as well) cultural gestalt. If nothing else, the former will make whatever we do with the latter more palatable
posted by AdamCSnider at 8:07 AM on November 30, 2013 [3 favorites]


For those not canny enough to grasp the title, it's a reference to Kendrick Lamar's HiiiPOWER.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:12 AM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


This is being driven by solar power becoming actually cheap as a) technology improves dramatically, and b) PV cells are being produced at levels where there are real economy of scale benefits.

And when you're powered by solar, it really doesn't matter so much if you leave your lights on... That's the whole point of doing things like building data centers next to waterfalls: you want a power source with a fixed pollution and economic cost (initial building the dam or the pv cell) with no obvious endpoint...
posted by kaibutsu at 8:13 AM on November 30, 2013


Because this worked so very well the first time around, right?

Most people are going to see this as slashing their quality of life. Seems that for the most part, shifting more energy to renewables is likely to be more possible politically than trying for the complete rewriting of the Western (and these days, prevalent far outside the West as well) cultural gestalt. If nothing else, the former will make whatever we do with the latter more palatable


Your new fridge uses half to a third of the energy it did back in 1970. LED TVs use a third of the energy of an equivalent sized CRT. Laptops use a third to a quarter less energy than ye olde desktops. If you want a desktop the newer 80Plus power supplies get far better efficiency of the 30-50% of yesteryear. Heat pumps use one third to one quarter of your old electric bar heaters.

None of these have required a slashing of the quality of life and have resulted in massive savings of energy. If anything the quality of life on all of these options is far better.
posted by Talez at 8:22 AM on November 30, 2013 [4 favorites]


or the moon

I... what... why the hell would you put solar cells on the moon where they'll stare at cold starlight for half the month? Are they using special magical solar cells that only work under acceleration?

GEO I can understand, since they'll only be eclipsed a small fraction of the time. If you were going to go all silly and put the solar power station Very Far Away, surely L1, L4, or L5, where they'd never be eclipsed by nuthin', would be a much better choice than the moon.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:24 AM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


But I can't help but think that the bigger gains are on the other side of the switch, in conservation.

Passiv Haus: climate controlled buildings that use very little energy for cooling or heating. Several thousand already exist in Europe, thirteen in the US.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:27 AM on November 30, 2013 [3 favorites]


These are not contradictory options, really.

Physically, no, but from a governmental point of view, there is tendency towards a sort of trendiness, where the focus (and thus, grant money) gets directed to a certain aspect to the exclusion of others.
posted by madajb at 8:31 AM on November 30, 2013


And when you're powered by solar, it really doesn't matter so much if you leave your lights on...

It does if you have to keep building solar arrays to keep up with the demand for "free" electricity.
posted by madajb at 8:32 AM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


None of these have required a slashing of the quality of life and have resulted in massive savings of energy. If anything the quality of life on all of these options is far better.

And there are so many other possible efficiencies that we haven't started to capture yet. The most obvious to me is running plumbing so that the waste heat from the refrigerator and a/c go into the hot water heater.

Passiv Haus: climate controlled buildings that use very little energy for cooling or heating. Several thousand already exist in Europe, thirteen in the US.

That's hardly surprising given the climatic differences between Europe and the US.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:35 AM on November 30, 2013


It's good to see this type of momentum building up for renewable energy. Conservation is part of the solution though, we should be looking at unpriced insulation, passive cooling and more natural light. Smaller houses and better public transport links are all part of the solution, but that involves the government to commit to building and improving infrastructure.
posted by arcticseal at 8:50 AM on November 30, 2013


re: conservation, as the chart from the 'thirst' link in the FPP shows, 'developed world' oil demand has been in decline, partly because of economic stagnation but also because of increased energy efficiency, which you can see for example in miles driven vs. truck tonnage or in electricity generation vs. economic activity...
posted by kliuless at 9:20 AM on November 30, 2013


Of course we could always go to geostationary orbit -- or the moon -- as well we may (if politics allow it) as thirst from the developing world grows beyond the earth's carrying capacity.

This seems like a bad idea to me since the delivery mechanisms often LITERALLY involve microwaving the earth from some point in space - why should we do that if the whole point is to reduce global warming? Even if there are delivery means that are not actually huge microwave guns, it is almost inevitable that the extra energy delivered to our surface will dissipate as heat at some point, even if it's just the friction from turning the turbines.

I can't find the relative numbers right now, but the earth already is hit with more energy in solar radiation every year than all of the proven reserves of fossil fuel in the entire world - I think it's something like 10 times as much, but anyway it's more. If our current problem is that the CO2 in our atmosphere is capturing too much heat by absorbing certain solar radiation, it seems clear we need to more efficiently use the energy we already have on hand before we pour even MORE energy into the system.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 9:23 AM on November 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


I think we need a new doll that says "Physics is hard"

What a stupid WSJ article, to quote: "Batteries of the future will come in all shapes and sizes..." gosh has the author walked past the battery wall of a pharmacy? The future is now, I guess.

The link to the article about a new station in the Atacama Desert in Chile was interesting, an Italian power company in South America, infrastructure that is international shows long term optimism. The companies press release says they generate 950MW in South and Central America!

The early idealistic optimism of solar power usually forgot to consider the realities of transmission, storage, major changes to the huge existing infrastructure, politics and dead birds but all of that is beginning to be addressed. The realities of physics and chemistry are hard but it's good to see real projects mixed in with the moon crazies.
posted by sammyo at 9:51 AM on November 30, 2013


our current problem is that the CO2 in our atmosphere is capturing too much heat

yea, so the other relevant line in that chart is 'non-OECD' crude oil demand; these stats are old but you can still see the dilemma:
"if we look at what happened to per capita oil consumption during phases of industrialization in the US between 1900 and 1970, we see that per capita consumption rose from one barrel per year to around 28 barrels. In the case of Japan's industrialization between 1950 and 1970 and South Korea's between 1965 and 1990, per capita oil consumption rose from one barrel to 17 barrels. In the case of China, oil demand per capita is still only 1.7 barrels per year, and for India it has only reached 0.7 barrels. By comparison Mexico consumes annually about 7 barrels of oil per capita and the entire Latin American continent around 4.5 barrels..."
oh hey! quickly googling (dividing by 1000 and multiplying by 365 ;) it looks like as of 2012 the US was at 22 barrels per capita, japan@13 and s.korea@16 (w/n.korea just 0.2!), while mexico is under 7, china@2.6 & india@1 :P
posted by kliuless at 9:54 AM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


Speaking of tech, the thing that rarely gets talked about is how efficient modern tech is becoming. For example, an iPad that can last 10 hours on a single charge, or a laptop that might only draw 45 watts. Desktops use more, of course, but they're often getting the benefit of LCD monitors compared to their CRT grandparents, SSD drives with no moving parts (and therefore no electric motors) instead of spinning-disks. Modern monitors are using LEDs for backlights instead of fluorescents... so while the total number of devices in use on the planet continues to mushroom, the efficiencies built-in to each device are providing some modicum of relief.
posted by Wild_Eep at 9:58 AM on November 30, 2013


The early idealistic optimism of solar power usually forgot to consider the realities of transmission, storage, major changes to the huge existing infrastructure, politics and dead birds...

What do solar panels have to do with dead birds?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:11 AM on November 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


Orbital solar will never make any sense whatsoever. It will always be more technically challenging to install and maintain, far more expensive, and involve greater energetic losses than installing the exact same solar panels farther away from cities and further into, say, the desert. And there is more than enough solar energy hitting the earth to be captured for all of our needs.

I predict the only batteries needed for a 100% renewable future outside of a handful of special cases will be plug-in electric vehicles. Check out Bombardier's inductive charging for electric vehicles. I could imagine a future scenario where modern cities have inductive chargers under the pavement of 70% of all public parking spots.
posted by molecicco at 10:11 AM on November 30, 2013 [3 favorites]


And localized solar is a lot more of a thing than ever before. Quite a bit of recently constructed low-income housing here in North Seattle was built with huge arrays on the roof, and various incentives last year caused a lot of residential installations.

We're at 5.93 MWh for the year, and we didn't get ours installed until mid June. I hope battery storage becomes more feasible, as it would be sweet to be able to have some power should the grid go down.

Anyway, yay Solar!
posted by Windopaene at 10:40 AM on November 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


Eponysterical.
posted by Sphinx at 11:16 AM on November 30, 2013


Pashdown:

The problem is the difference between base load and flex load. Across California, for example, the difference between the average end load and the peak demand is gigawatts of power. Solar and wind are all well and good, but when you've got an increase in demand, it's hard to just turn up the Sun or wind. If the wind isn't blowing when and how you need it, it doesn't matter how much you need that power, it's not going to happen. (Small-scale hydroelectric power is more flexible than that, allowing for bringing additional generators online on demand, which is why I think that's by far the most overlooked part of green power generation. I think that we're missing a big opportunity by not putting multiple small-scale hydro stations across every constrained river in a major city, like the LA and Santa Ana rivers as they move through Los Angeles and Orange counties.)

What nuclear and large-scale hydro (and in the shorter term, natural gas) give is that base load, a large percentage of the overall power demand that you can guarantee will be there (except when it's down for maintenance). When you have a load spike, you can just turn up nuclear or natural gas, and you have more power on demand. More green alternatives like solar, wind and small-scale hydro are too dependent on seasons and weather conditions to be trusted as the way we guarantee the power will run. However, what they can do is reduce the overall number of large scale power stations, decreasing our overall ecological footprint. We can run large power stations to guarantee a set amount of power generation, with greener power filling the gap between that and actual load. If and when the demand spikes or solar and wind have problems, we can increase power generation from the large scale stations to compensate.
posted by Punkey at 11:39 AM on November 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


Well, turning up when you need more isn't the only option. There's also the option of turning off the wind and solar generators when you're producing too much (or storing the extras) -- the official name for that option is called curtailment. The truth is, there are many different ways to meet our power requirements, and the jury is still out on whether a guaranteed "baseload" is at all necessary.
posted by molecicco at 11:50 AM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


madajb: "We need a 70's oil-crisis style energy conservation campaign aimed at all the new gadgets purchased yesterday."

Talez: "None of these have required a slashing of the quality of life and have resulted in massive savings of energy."

If the proposal is a dramatic increase in the price of electricity to spur household investment in more efficient equipment, this will lead to decreased quality of life in a few ways:

1. Rather large investment outlays that don't really scale with household wealth, making the household investment method arguably regressive.
2. A noticable tax on those that cannot afford to upgrade.
3. Substantial decreases in the value of used appliances that consume more power.

If you mean CAFE, sure, but I think Energy Star is already occupying that role. While labelling may work for PCs, I think game consoles, notorious for energy draw when not in use, aren't commoditized enough that I can substitute a Wii U for a PS3.
posted by pwnguin at 12:20 PM on November 30, 2013


The Obama administrations investments in Solar and Battery tech combined with their cafe standards and fleet policies related to the bail out are his most important acomplishments.
posted by humanfont at 1:17 PM on November 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


The most interesting thing I've heard about solar recently, is that some Tea Partiers and Conservatives are starting to embrace it.

One group even made an awesomely bad "Total Eclipse of the Heart" parody about Arizona's utility company trying to kill solar:
Once upon a time they liked the light from above
With solar now they want to depart
There's nothing we can do
They totally think we're not smart
Heck, even Glenn Beck is on board.

Solar is still a good idea, right? It feels so wrong to actually agree with these guys.
posted by gueneverey at 2:06 PM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


That's hardly surprising given the climatic differences between Europe and the US.

Yes, since tropical Germany is such a vacation spot.

Seriously, that's knee-jerk thinking. Most of the northern US has a similar climate to Germany.

Several thousand already exist in Europe, thirteen in the US.

Let's address this. The standard was created in Germany and has spread from there. The count of thirteen was as of 2010, but today we have not only a US-based institute, but at least dozens of Passive House certified consultants. I'm pretty sure that the numbers are much higher today in both cases, with possibly hundreds of Passive Houses being built this year alone, judging by the discussion of them in magazines like Fine Homebuilding and Green Building Advisor. Frankly, from watching this topic explode over the last few years, there's been no shortage of interest; it's primarily been held back by the up-front expense of building this way, which slashes energy costs down the road but requires more of an investment during construction. I've also seen energy-saving rehabs that cost six figures with a goal of saving four, e.g. with no reasonable payback. It's going to take a while to become mainstream, in any case, but with alternate standards such as LEED making strides, I don't think we need to make quick judgements about American culture here, especially coming out of a multi-decade low in home construction overall.
posted by dhartung at 3:20 PM on November 30, 2013


What nuclear and large-scale hydro (and in the shorter term, natural gas) give is that base load, a large percentage of the overall power demand that you can guarantee will be there (except when it's down for maintenance).

Nuclear is pretty expensive though. Not really competitive and that is a problem in terms of the merit order. I would be fascinated to see some stats for unexploited large-scale hydro in the US. I know there is not a lot left in the Europe (not including Scandinavia, but the Scandinavian governments are not keen to keep building) and I would be surprised if there is that much in the US.

When you have a load spike, you can just turn up nuclear or natural gas, and you have more power on demand.

Well you can with natural gas, not so much with nuclear. Nuclear output is pretty blocky, and does not lend itself well to matching volatile demand. If you are going to have stacks of nuclear than you are going to have to take some of the same measures that will be necessary with lots of intermittent renewables. That is, increasing action on the demand side of the meter. Invest enough in this and you will be able to aggregate well into the gigawatts of power such that you can turn off demand when RE supply availability goes down and back on when supply goes up.
posted by biffa at 3:29 PM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


That's hardly surprising given the climatic differences between Europe and the US.
Belgium's Princess Elisabeth is the first zero-emission station in Antarctica. Perched on a nunatak, the aerodynamic stainless steel structure integrates renewable wind and solar energy, water treatment facilities, passive building technologies and a smart grid for maximising energy efficiency. It has no interior heating system.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:41 PM on November 30, 2013 [3 favorites]


I'm not saying that the efficiency side isn't important - I'd say it's probably moreso, actually. Replacing all our dirty coal plants with natural gas/nuclear plants (and long term, ideally just nuclear) is probably the most brute-force way to adjust greenhouse gas emissions and certainly the least cost-effective. More energy efficient devices and living might not cut out big chunks of CO2 emissions in one go, but they cost very little or nothing at all, while rebuilding massive power plants or even a widescale solar/wind rollout would cost billions if not trillions of dollars.

As for power storage, that tech is...not exactly with us quite yet, outside of specialized or experimental circumstances, and I would question if building solar/wind up to the extent where that plus the power storage facilities equals just having a base amount of power generation provided by nuclear would be as cost-effective as just building nuke plants.

I don't quite know what you mean by "whether a guaranteed 'baseload' is at all necessary". Unless you're talking about having electricity be a lottery where you may or may not get power today, which simple economic survival dictates will screw residences first, you have to have provide enough power for everyone - which is what baseload requirements are.
posted by Punkey at 4:55 PM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


Seriously, that's knee-jerk thinking. Most of the northern US has a similar climate to Germany

No, it doesn't. Berlin has average winter lows comparable to Washington DC, for God's sake, except that DC has normal summer highs 7C higher. NYC has slightly colder normal winter lows than Berlin but normal summer highs 5C higher.

Which was really my point. Designing a solar-passive house where the overwhelming concern is moderate heating in winter seems (to a non-engineer) to be a much simpler exercise than building a solar-passive house that has to deal with Oslo winters and Rome/Madrid summers like Chicago has.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:29 PM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


What do solar panels have to do with dead birds?

Habitat destruction (solar farms are big) and strikes.

The main impact on birds is due to the large footprint needed for commercial-scale energy production. In addition, there has been some data on bird strikes. Researchers, who have studied avian mortality at Solar One over a 40-week period, documented the death of 70 birds (of 26 species). The estimated morality rate was 1.9-2.2 birds per week; 57 birds (81%) of 20 species died from collisions with Solar One structures, mainly the mirrored surfaces of heliostats; 13 birds (19%) of 7 species died from burns received by flying through "standby" points. The impact of this mortality on the local bird population was found to be minimal (0.6-0.7% per week).

Water birds turning up dead at solar projects in the desert


More on water birds thinking desert solar farms are water
posted by rtha at 6:58 PM on November 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


While I'm a big fan of solar, I am not a big fan of using the desert in the misguided notion that going into pristine desert to build large scale solar (whether solar collector or large PV farms). Why? Because 1. The desert is an incredibly fragile ecosystem (including the birds and desert tortoises who are being directly harmed by the construction) and many of these projects are being built in pristine desert; 2. Too many of these facilities are built out where land is cheap - and hence you have to build transmission lines and endure transmission losses to get the energy to the big cities; 3. Given 1 & 2, why are we not putting the PVs on rooftops in the LA basin? 22.9MW of power could be generated where the power is needed.
posted by BillW at 7:26 PM on November 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


Don't photovoltaics use heavy metals which we're going to run out of?
posted by Teakettle at 7:43 PM on November 30, 2013


... why the hell would you put solar cells on the moon where they'll stare at cold starlight for half the month?

No, we should put them on the Earth where they'll stare at cold starlight for half of every day. (Dips finger in barrel of molten salt. "Smokin'!!" )
posted by sneebler at 7:51 PM on November 30, 2013


Tea Partiers and Conservatives are starting to embrace it.

there's also a TNR article on this in the FPP 'politics allow' link :P oh and look out for "the politics of technology," the fourth part of acemoglu & robinson's series on technology, resource scarcities and the role of gov't!
  1. Ehrlich, Simon and Technology
  2. Is Endogenous Technology Conservative?
  3. Directed Technological Change and Resources
the last one so far being the 'as well we may' link in the FPP, viz. 'the earth's carrying capacity', cf. Gambling with Civilization

Speaking of tech, the thing that rarely gets talked about is how efficient modern tech is becoming.

Stirling engines are finally go?
One is at Sunpower, an American company founded by William Beale, the principal inventor of the free-piston design. The other is at the University of Oxford, and is led by Paul Bailey, Mike Dadd and Richard Stone. Both have previously built and deployed satellite-cooling systems, and both now plan to use free-piston engines to drive electricity generators...

Such a design can be powered by nothing more than sunshine concentrated by a concave mirror. That approach was being employed by Infinia, an American firm. Unfortunately, despite having a contract to build a solar farm containing 429 of the things for the American army, Infinia filed for bankruptcy protection. This may prove just a glitch; Qnergy, an Israeli-based producer of Sterling engines, recently acquired Infinia's assets.
posted by kliuless at 9:49 PM on November 30, 2013


Designing a solar-passive house where the overwhelming concern is moderate heating in winter seems (to a non-engineer) to be a much simpler exercise than building a solar-passive house that has to deal with Oslo winters and Rome/Madrid summers like Chicago has.

Perhaps. I do concede you were making a broader point than I realized. Still, I think you're misunderstanding the overall technology: the main thing that makes a Passivhaus work is the superinsulation and the suppression of thermal bridging (via, for example, the wooden framing of a structure) through which heat is lost.

My point, I believe, still stands, which is that this is a concept developed in Germany and first taking root there, with interest arising only within the last five years in the US. There's a constant conversation about materials, techniques, and fairly complex mathematics explaining it all. It's sure not something that's easy for a DIYer or even a least-cost mass homebuilder. But it demonstrates a possibility of constructing our built environment in a way that costs us a tiny fraction of the energy that standard homebuilding technology does not.

For example, early solar and insulation advances were stymied until a famous study demonstrated that even with basic improvements in retaining heat, much of a building's warmth would simply be lost up through the loose (and often grossly inadequate) insulation in its walls, right out into the (open to the elements or nearly so) attic. From that point on more attention has been paid to closing those "thermal bypasses", and we are to the point where most of them are known to your average insulation contractor. But the amount of sealing and bypass-closing and bridge-interrupting you can do is something that often involves iteration after iteration of design where both the structure and the choice of materials are involved. Even so, it should be emphasized that any energy savings generated is energy savings generated for the life of the structure. Just as a drafty old farmhouse designed around wood or coal stove heating is going to be a challenge to bring up to mid-20th-century standards -- like the one I'm sitting in now was when I was a kid -- so too are regimes such as the Passive House standard. But they generate that savings year after year indefinitely into the future, so your ROI/payback is only limited by your future expectations of remaining in a structure (assuming those economics are part of your consideration). Ultimately, what was begun in Germany has already generated at minimum dozens or scores of new technologies and techniques that can be applied equally to mainstream building procedures.

It will take decades, of course, for such techniques to be incorporated into a majority of a country's housing stock. But the sooner we start building that way the more energy will be saved -- even if the Passivhaus standard is not met. LEED buildings in the US are 10s or 100s of times more common and while they may not be Passivhaus-compliant by any stretch, they are still saving tremendous amounts of heating and/or cooling energy from the day they open.

Why am I harping on this? Because, again, I believe that conservation will continue to be the major source of "new" energy capacity on the planet.
posted by dhartung at 10:57 PM on November 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


Still, I think you're misunderstanding the overall technology:

I assumed that they're also oriented around maximizing whatever solar gain is available at the location; they'd be foolish not to.

Why am I harping on this? Because, again, I believe that conservation will continue to be the major source of "new" energy capacity on the planet.

Me too. But I expect that to be complicated in US use cases by a stronger need for heat exchange systems to help cool in summer and designs that put less emphasis on solar gain than I would expect in Eurocentric designs.

I took Martin's comment to be critical of US nonadoption of Passivhaus. While, like any nonidiot, I support energy conservation, it's my limited experience that Europeans who haven't lived in the US (or the populated parts of Canada for that matter) tend to Not Get how much wider the temperature extremes in the eastern megalopolis are compared to back home. And once you get into the prairies, all bets are truly off. So even when conservation takes better root here, I'd expect it to look different from conservation in the Netherlands or Germany.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:53 AM on December 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


No I'm sorry, the options are not baseload or lottery. For a non-baseload scenario, feel free to read here.

Also, I never really understand what statements like this are supposed to mean:

As for power storage, that tech is...not exactly with us quite yet

It actually is completely with us. The technology is there. It works. Whether you're talking small scale or large scale, lead or lithium, pumped hydro or electrolysis with fuel cells, it's there, it's reliable, and it works. There are a myriad of companies in Germany offering residential battery storage systems, that people are actually purchasing and installing in their home and using to store their rooftop solar for what is called "self-consumption" (see SMA, Voltwerk, SAFT, NEDAP, etc ad nauseum). Heliocentris is a Germany company that does quite well installing PV-hydrolosis/fuel-cell combos in the desert for isolated telco towers. Xtreme Power is an American company which has built tons of battery systems for "ramp control" of PV power plants and wind farms (they did have fire recently, but I don't think that's much compared to say, Chernobyl).

All that being said, I don't think those (existing, functioning) solutions are even necessary long term for massive adoption of renewables. Electric vehicle adoption is growing and represents a fantastic opportunity for switchable demand, helping to match demand to available production. Your general algorithm is that the cars always automatically charge to 70%, but then charge the remainder when it best suits the grid (and within a certain time-limit). Switchable demand, curtailment, and a small amount of dispatchable conventional is a doable, workable solution that involves ZERO fantasy technologies. And it is cheaper and safer than nuclear.

Also, I made the comment about expanding into the desert only as a counterpoint to building in space. Rooftop solar can indeed provide a good 30-40% of our needs. Throw in some select PV power plants and windfarms (and a small amount of dispatchable conventional) and you have your bases covered.
posted by molecicco at 6:25 AM on December 1, 2013


hey, so i just got around to watch john baez talk at the perimeter institute about Energy and the Environment – What Physicists Can Do, which i'd recommend highly to anyone! some personal highlights for me after a nice exposition of the anthropocene...
  • at the 16m mark he goes thru the 'wedges' we all know and love about how to reduce carbon emissions (by the jiggaton ;) -- including conservation and efficiency -- leading off with a 30x increase in solar capacity to replace 700 jiggawatts of coal; two years ago it was 80x
  • (also btw at the 40m mark he mentions quantum dot solar cells as potentially lowering generation costs below fossil fuels)
  • in the Q&A @53m in he mentions carbon removal by trees, which i'm particularly fond of (also referencing gregory benford, whose twin brother james has also been in the news lately)
  • introducing the concept of resource limits in economics and human behaviour @60m wrt demographics and population growth ('rethinking finance')
for more...
-What To Do About Climate Change?, cf.
-Bridging the Greenhouse-Gas Emissions Gap, viz.
-Tipping Points in Climate Systems
-Localizing and Networking Basic Technology
-Prospects for a Green Mathematics: "We're at the start of a revolution as big as the Agricultural or Industrial Revolution, and mathematics - like everything else - is going to change."
posted by kliuless at 10:56 AM on December 1, 2013


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