Is solar just a stopgap tech? Like, do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild? And I know we’re now strip mining the ocean for battery metals. I don’t yet sense the sustainability in this amid all this economic hand-waving of “it’s getting cheaper”. (forgive my tone, i have a hard time of making sense of the big picture of renewables, hoping to eventually see how it actually fits into a utopic idea of a “closed-loop economy”)
I’m reminded here a bit of Ted Chiang’s short story, Exhalation, where the people devise clever ways to try to put air back in the ground without using more than they’re sequestering. I hope our situation is better than that.
Virtually all energy on available on Earth is Solar-derived. Plants all use solar power, carbon sources are all ancient stores of solar power. There's enough solar energy for several of our civilizations (4-5 orders of magnitude more, by a napkin calculation). Roughly 1/50,000 of Earth's surface covered in solar panels would suffice.
> do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild
That's not really particularly relevant. What is crucial is that they produce more energy than they consume. This is an important figure, EROI (Energy Return on Energy invested), which should be >1
Photovoltaics generally have been well over 1. There are still sustainability challenges with the technology, but I think they're minor (relative to current alternatives and carbon technology).
I can't speak about wind (not my expertise), but for solar, the energy payback is about 1-year in operation for current installations, with a predicted 30-year lifespan. Compare this against estimates for the energy cost of bringing gasoline to market which can exceed 30%.
Almost 50% of residential energy usage is HVAC and Hot Water heaters.
I see no reason we couldn't use excess solar during the daytime to heat our hot water heaters, or cool/heat the house.
Modern Construction and Water Heaters have great insulation, and its possible to use the `cheap` electricity during peak solar to store as heating/cooling.
Heat pump technology has come an amazing way, as well!
Switching to an electric heat pump water heater from my natural gas water heater saves nearly as many emissions per year as stopping 12,000 vehicle miles. And it saves money, though it front loads the cost a tiny bit.
We could have a massive economic boom just by retrofitting existing buildings with more efficient and modern technologies.
I'm not sure about the resource costs of solar in particular but the question is a very salient one. Vaclav Smil has a
great piece on this. "What I see when I see a wind turbine"
"the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.[...]
For a long time to come—until all energies used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells come from renewable energy sources—modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels."
Well we should ask this for every energy technology and fortunately people have done this. The term for this is energy return on investment (EROI) where solar has between 8.7 and 34 and wind between 10 and 20 (although other literature says 20 to 50). A value 1 means you get as much energy as you invested. So for solar that means you get your energy used for production back in 1 to 4 years.
And the EROEI has been increasing, since one aspect of driving these technologies down their experience curves is reduction in inputs, including energy, needed to make them.
You can’t get fully renewable energy production until you can use EV trucks to deliver the windmills, and you can’t get clean EVs until you have windmills to power them. Sure, we currently burn some diesel to setup these windmills, but the alternative is to burn coal. Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
Also, who’s the ominous “they” above? Energy companies don’t setup power production out of spite; they setup energy production so we can have AC and TVs. We’re the consumers of all of that electricity, directly or indirectly.
Yeah :) . They can't see those machines using electricity instead of diesels, they can't see steel making without atmospheric pollution, and same goes for cement.
I guess some people have hard times adjusting to some novelties. Their arguments don't stand, and they don't see that.
Standard hydrolysis for making (green) hydrogen from water using electricity also creates excellent chemistry for the cement process.
We must anticipate an era where there are periods of zero-marginal-cost energy so plentiful we can't use it all, followed by periods of undersupply. Storing electrical energy in hydrogen may seem completelt uneconomical right now, but combining that process with cement production could result in fantastic efficiency of process. We are going to need carbon-neutral cement somehow, and if we get hydrogen with it, and CO2 feedstock for other purposes, we may be in a really good position for all sorts of processes.
Industrial processes have been under examined as we try to become carbon neutral. That means that there's tremendous opportunity, not that it's impossible. Humans are clever when we are allowed to be, we just haven't put much innovative thought into our industrial processes in a long time, much less resigned then from the ground up!
It's not a bullshit purity test at all. It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'. In some cases it's questionable if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all.
There is a strong 'abundance' bias implicit in articles by people like Ramez Naam, who push so strongly for green energy production because they don't want to consider the very obvious alternative, dematerialisation and reduction of energy consumption. People like Naam still categorically hang onto a growth narrative so they tend to neglect the downsides of the solutions they provide.
> In some cases it's questionable if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all.
This is just FUD, unless you actually have numbers that show CO2 emissions are higher over the lifetime of a solar panel compared to a coal power plant.
> don't want to consider the very obvious alternative, dematerialisation and reduction of energy consumption.
Forcing everybody into poverty is not a viable alternative.
> It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'.
Ignored by whom? You?
In fact, embedded energy is a huge consideration in the evaluation of green technologies.
It’s a depressingly common reality that “nobody has considered” is effectively equivalent to “I haven’t considered” on the internet.
The idea that solar panels might not be more efficient than burning coal is not an opinion held by someone who has done any level of research on the subject at all.
> It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'.
Hey just because you haven't thought of them doesn't mean other people with much more knowledge and experience on the subject haven't.
> the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.
This is FUD. The mass of construction materials pads the quote but is not a useful measure of environmental impact.
Because if you leave out the first and third phases, then there is no reason to develop renewables and get off of fossil fuels. And if that was not what they thought, they should say it, but they don't.
But let me ask you the question, what is your position on global climate change and renewables? Do you believe global climate change is real, caused at least considerably by human fossil fuel emissions and dangerous? Do you believe we should be replacing fossil fuels with renewables?
Oh, so you do realize you are speculating about what other people think then? It wasn't clear in your prior comment.
> But let me ask you the question, what is your position on global climate change and renewables?
My position is that until we realize that the problem preventing us from moving forward is not a lack of climate science, but rather a lack of psychological/neurological science, and a lack of widespread knowledge of, and acceptance of, that which we already know...including, or maybe even especially, among the intellectually gifted, like many people right here on HN.
Because of this, I consider the rest of your comment is moot. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, it makes no difference. We have the same conversations here day after day, year after year, with the same self-important tones of intellectual and moral superiority. And for what? Does anything ever change? You can have a ten phase analysis and it doesn't mean shit at the end of the day if you can't get people to agree on a direction to move in.
If you cared about the environment as much as you think you do, you'd be willing to listen to what I'm saying. And if you were willing to listen to what I'm saying, you'd be the first person on HN. But I suspect, like all the others, you won't...because this is the nature of an uncontrolled Default Mode Network.
No, you are absolutely wrong that things never change. The survey data shows that the public has been steadily increasing its acceptance of the realities of global climate change and what needs to be done about it. That is true even among Republicans.
Instead of lecturing me about the psychological/neurological science (which I do know a fair amount about, though I am sure not as much as you do about the neurological side), you should be looking at how it is that conventional arguments for realities sometimes works. Also, the problem with focusing on first getting people to accept what the psychological and neurological science is that people's psychology and neurology will cause them to reject the scientific truths about the psychology and neurology.
As far as having a strong view on what other people are thinking, everyone does that all the time, including you. For instance, when someone tells you they believe something, you make a judgement as to whether or not they are telling the truth. You do it because you are not crazy.
The reason I think what I do in this case is I have been watching this debate over the years. Traditionally people who disbelieved in global climate change would present arguments it is not occuring (or not dangerous).In the last year or so, this has pretty much stopped, at least in forums like HN, and instead people have presented the argument that renewables are bad for the environment (which is in fact not true).
I assume the reason for this change is that the people who disbelieve in global climate change have realized they can't win the battle arguing directly and have switched to an indirect approach. In fact, there is an name for this, it's called "concern trolling" Furthermore I think it is clear there is an small army of trollers on this subject paid for by business or ideological interests, so I assume this switch in tactics was decided by them. Though of course some people who are not paid trollers might also follow along.
> No, you are absolutely wrong that things never change.
Actually, I'm not "absolutely wrong". I asked a question: "Does anything ever change?"
> The survey data shows that the public has been steadily increasing its acceptance of the realities of global climate change and what needs to be done about it.
Do surveys control actions and government policy, and if so, to what degree?
> ...you should be looking at how it is that conventional arguments for realities sometimes works
Oh I do, all the time. As far as I can tell, the conventional arguments being used don't work very well, especially when it comes to producing significant changes in net(!) outcome.
> Also, the problem with focusing on first getting people to accept what the psychological and neurological science is that people's psychology and neurology will(!) cause them to reject the scientific truths about the psychology and neurology.
Is that so. Upon what is this prediction of the future based? A popular meme, or actual conclusive evidence, that is directly related to psychological and neurological science, and has demonstrable predictive power?
> As far as having a strong view on what other people are thinking, everyone does that all the time, including you. For instance, when someone tells you they believe something, you make a judgement as to whether or not they are telling the truth. You do it because you are not crazy.
What you've written here is true. But the difference between myself and most other people, at least based on my observations, seems to be that I take a consciously deliberate, disciplined approach to distinguishing between "facts" and heuristic predictions - both when thinking, and when speaking/writing (broadcasting ideas into the minds of other people).
> Traditionally people who disbelieved in global climate change would present arguments it is not occurring (or not dangerous). In the last year or so, this has pretty much stopped, at least in forums like HN, and instead people have presented the argument that renewables are bad for the environment (which is in fact not true).
Yes, some people have done that ("presented the argument...") I imagine. Some people have done other things as well. Lots of things occur in the world. Why they occur, and what conclusions an individual should draw (and rebroadcast, often as "fact") from the subsets of occurrences that he is aware of is where it gets complicated.
Biomass energy (aka: wood) is renewable. Do you not consider burning wood to be bad for the environment, at the very least in the sense that it gaining a higher share in clever statistical reporting can give the general public a false sense of security?
> I assume the reason for this change is that the people who disbelieve in global climate change have realized they can't win the battle arguing directly and have switched to an indirect approach.
Is this a safe assumption? Is the assumption correct? How would you know?
Is it possible that the change in your observations of beliefs isn't directly proportional to the actual underlying existence of beliefs? For example, might censorship play a role in this? Have there been any instances where individuals who don't hold the proper beliefs are banned or rate-limited on popular forums? The answer to this is yes, because I have been the "victim" of this many times. So now the question is: to what degree is this happening? How would we even know? One can certainly form conclusions based on guessing, as you have done above, but is your guess correct?
And banning is just one possible alternate cause. What if people got tired of the increasingly ideological and authoritarian culture in mainstream forums and have voted with their feet, going somewhere else entirely where there is either less ideology, or an ideology that is more to their liking? If this is what is happening (and it is, but to an unknown degree), now people who like to opine about the behaviors and inner thoughts of others don't even have that raw material to work with anymore, because it is completely off your radar.
Furthermore, since you seem to have some expertise in psychology: do you ever consider the consequences of millions of people making (and broadcasting in the media, both social media, but also formal mainstream media) negative statements about the thoughts and behavior of groups of people? Do you ever consider how this affects the psyche of people who are denigrated on a daily basis, and how that may alter their future behavior, such as who they might vote for in an election?
Perhaps you "think" (heuristically predict) that we "shouldn't have to" worry about such things, or that this "isn't" a problem. But once again: upon what is that prediction based? And, is the prediction accurate? How would you know?
The human mind provides the holder a crystal clear, ultra high definition impression that they know what is going on in the world, but this impression is an elaborate illusion. That is a fact.
So instead of "lecturing" me that we are on the right course, no adjustments or deeper thinking required, I recommend you think a bit more deeply about what is going on here on planet Earth, because your religion's current assessment seems rather off the mark to me, and our lack of progress on climate change seems to confirm that fairly well.
This seems a little silly - of course to develop future technologies we need to use existing technologies.
Imagine debating using an abacus to develop a computer - "ah but we must remain pure to the hopes, dreams and philosophies of what the computer aspires to be." Yeah, ok. I'll be over here funding wind turbine companies, you can debate the merits of the methodology and strategies of funding green tech with petroleum-based products yourself. Sounds a little boring to me.
I don't understand your comparison at all. Given that the primary problem that a wind turbine seeks to solve is environmental, the environmental costs in making the turbine have to be considered.
There's no relationship to computers here, it's not a question of philosophical purity, but of correct evaluation of the costs and benefits of a technology.
> the environmental costs in making the turbine have to be considered.
Of course it is considered, and few short decades ago that was a valid counterargument. Not anymore - and not later, given the pace of development in efficiencies and breadth of applications.
One would certainly hope so, but lots of weird things happen on this planet.
Where could someone who is interested to learn about the degree to which this is true go to read about what is really happening on the ground? Where did you learn about it?
First, Fermi estimate. You can estimate how much something weights, costs, takes to construct etc.
Then you become particularly good in it when you read texts from this area, so you gradually replace your estimates with data. And correct your errors when they disrespect reality too much. It's harder to estimate CO2 emissions from cement production from first principles; but you may have actual numbers from typical plants, which include inefficiencies.
All of that favors data and usually requires calculations, and also often requires understanding of natural sciences - conservation laws, energy conversions, speed of processes - and some economical modeling too.
The raw material costs of producing and manufacturing windturbines has not been significantly reduced. You still need mostly as much stuff now to make one as you needed years ago, and the same goes for the transport of everything that goes into the turbine, because the energy density of electrical sources isn't high enough to say, power a containership.
You can't just wave away legitimate criticism by talking about "rapid innovation" that does not exist, mostly because it runs into physical limits.
> The raw material costs of producing and manufacturing windturbines has not been significantly reduced.
Perhaps, but we're talking about environmental concerns, not directly economical or material.
> You still need mostly as much stuff now to make one as you needed years ago
Suppose.
> and the same goes for the transport of everything that goes into the turbine, because the energy density of electrical sources isn't high enough to say, power a containership.
No, you're wrong here. Majority of pollutions from transport come from cars, and those demonstrated significant improvement over decades. More, there is no physical law forbidding transport ships using green energy sources - be that electrical (yes, batteries), wind (sails) or something else (hydrogen? nuclear?). And in fact we do see more and more examples of transport which runs on green sources - even planes.
Yes, batteries have lower energy density than gas. But batteries have enough energy density to be usable, and their characteristics improve lately; that's good enough for practical purposes. Not to mention, of course, theoretical possibility.
Ok, let's brainstorm - how do we build wind turbines without the 150 year history of industrialization, accumulated knowledge of how to build real, physical things that accomplish the goals of 100% renewable energy? I'm all ears. Maybe I'm missing something - always happy to hear solutions to real, extant problems.
> Given that the primary problem that a wind turbine seeks to solve is environmental
That's ridiculous. The problem 'building a wind turbine' seeks to solve is "How do I turn this money into more money".
In market societies (eg most of the west) functionally speaking, the % of 'green power' delivered by environmental projects is a rounding error; it's essentially all delivered by people with capital attempting to obtain more capital.
So are you saying that we should abandon renewables, and stick with fossil fuels until a truly green energy technology is invented, sometime in the future?
And if that is not what you are saying, then what exactly do you think we should be doing today?
Cut down on the energy we expend, minimize the amounts of materials we use, focus on technology that consumes less energy rather than just attempting to make more of it in marginally less dirty fashion and so on.
Instead of promoting electrical cars which consume vast amounts of materials and still run on a dirty energy mix cut down on the car reliance altogether, for a trivial example.
As somebody who advocates a lot for my local government to finally, please please allow people to build housing in ways to merely allow people to choose to drive less, I think you are looking at this all wrong.
Even if we went back to early days of energy use, we are burning wood (or worse) and that is going to make for a truly ugly air quality.
Nobody wants to use X amount of energy, they actually want to accomplish Y amount of energy services. Current tech has X about four to five times as Y. As we electrify, it enables tech to get X very close to Y. But we also get to use cleaner energy as we electrify.
If my government won't even let me reduce Y for those people that want to, then the idea of forcing everybody to drastically reduce Y, and leaving the X factor the same, will be truly disastrously ineffective.
I think that in the 1970s, this idea was far more reasonable. But as we have failed to make any progress on reducing the amount of energy services that people want, but we have made tons of progress in reducing the X factor, and in cleaning up energy generation, I no longer see it as a feasible or fruitful path.
>Instead of promoting electrical cars which consume vast amounts of materials and still run on a dirty energy mix >cut down on the car reliance altogether, for a trivial example.
I see, so you think people should abandon autos and instead use buses that run on fossil fuels, or trains that run on electricity made from fossil fuels. Forever. And of course let's not forget the fossil fuel that will be used in constructing all those new buses and trains. So it seem like you want us to stay on fossil fuels.
In the big picture, you could say that fossil fuels are a stopgap technology (with complex manufacturing and lots of parts needing maintenance) until engineers invent(ed) better/cheaper batteries. But the way I prefer to see it is that solar is helping the transition to 100% renewable energy.
Another way to see it is that we already have an electric grid, so we are just finding ways to provide electric power cheaper--then the "efficient market" will figure things out. Also, electricity is used directly in manufacturing, for example smelting aluminum, and that is often done with renewable electricity (hydro in the US Pacific Northwest, geothermal in Iceland). Trains in many parts of the world run on electric power, and of course you can charge EVs with solar power or other renewable energy. And I'm sure some ICE cars are manufactured with electric-powered tools that run on solar energy during the day.
PS: if you know your tone is off, why not ask in a different tone?
If the manufacturing facility that makes the panels is itself powered by solar, then the true cost is mostly the materials and what it takes to source them.
As for batteries, not every dollar application needs metal or chemical batteries. There are other options as low tech as pumping water uphill, heating water, compressing air, etc.
with enough infrastructure, particularly batteries and interconnected smart grids, you could average out solar power generation across the globe and fuel the whole world on solar many times over.
10% of our energy needs come from 440 nuclear power plants worldwide. for comparison, the sun is a nuclear plant 1.3 million times the size of the earth. all life on earth basically runs on solar energy (or a derivative of it).
Yes. Nuclear energy proponents sometime seem to forget that solar energy is effectively thermonuclear energy from a big free source reactor - the question isn't in having that reactor, or running it, the question is just in catching energy it radiates. Solar guys become increasingly good at that - together with wind guys, who employ that energy after another free conversion into moving air.
Until there exists 100% clean options for the entire pipeline of resource extraction, transport, assembly, distribution, etc., there will still be fossil fuel involvement in 'clean energy generation'. Can't really make clean energy cleanly unless we have clean energy to make it in the first place.
Resource extraction / recycling is a whole other issue of course.
We have that technology for decades - for example, Tu-155 flew on hydrogen in 1988 - and we gradually replace existing usage with more and more clean options. Don't worry - we won't turn off pollutions overnight, but will gradually drive them to zero. And then to net negative values, restoring some losses in the environment.
I’m reminded here a bit of Ted Chiang’s short story, Exhalation, where the people devise clever ways to try to put air back in the ground without using more than they’re sequestering. I hope our situation is better than that.