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The Road to Deep Decarbonization (bnef.com)
Michael Liebreich, writing for Bloomberg New Energy Finance: In the past fifteen years we have witnessed several pivotal points along the route towards clean energy and transport. In 2004, renewables were poised for explosive growth; in 2008, the world's power system started to go digital; in 2012, it became clear that EVs would take over light ground transportation. Today I believe it is the turn of sectors that have resisted change so far -- heavy ground transportation, industry, chemicals, heat, aviation and shipping, agriculture. One after the other, or more likely as a tightly-coupled system, they are all going to go clean during the coming decades.
Astonishing progress is being made on super-efficient industrial processes, connected and shared vehicles, electrification of air transport, precision agriculture, food science, synthetic fuels, industrial biochemistry, new materials like graphene and aerogels, energy and infrastructure blockchain, additive manufacturing, zero-carbon building materials, small nuclear fusion, and so many other areas. These technologies may not be cost-competitive today, but they all benefit from the same fearsome learning curves as we have seen in wind, solar and batteries. In addition, in the same way that ubiquitous sensors, cloud and edge-of-grid computing, big data and machine learning have enabled the transformation of our electrical system, they will unlock sweeping changes to the rest of our energy, transportation and industrial sectors.
Astonishing progress is being made on super-efficient industrial processes, connected and shared vehicles, electrification of air transport, precision agriculture, food science, synthetic fuels, industrial biochemistry, new materials like graphene and aerogels, energy and infrastructure blockchain, additive manufacturing, zero-carbon building materials, small nuclear fusion, and so many other areas. These technologies may not be cost-competitive today, but they all benefit from the same fearsome learning curves as we have seen in wind, solar and batteries. In addition, in the same way that ubiquitous sensors, cloud and edge-of-grid computing, big data and machine learning have enabled the transformation of our electrical system, they will unlock sweeping changes to the rest of our energy, transportation and industrial sectors.
That's when I knew he was full of hot air.
Sorry, they still make up a tiny percentage of total renewable energy.
And the capacity to build the quantities we need for utility-grade applications would basically hijack the markets for an entire year.
You want to decarbonize NUCLEAR POWER. End of discussion. Stable baseline power. Zero carbon emissions.
Add in remaining utility-grade large hydro, geothermal and augment with small hydro to bring up baseline to today's PEAK demand.
You can offset peaks in demand with renewables then.
But the real gains have NOTHING to do with power generation.
40-something percent of all power consumption in this country is from BUILDINGS.
Build better insulated, more efficient buildings, and watch demand on the grid plummet.
Build for longevity and sustainability.
Retrofit less efficient buildings.
HVAC being offset with BTU batteries and careful timing of power use.
Then use any power excesses in the system to do things like desalinate water and carbon capture into hydrocarbon fuels which can be used to stay carbon-neutral or stored to be carbon positive.
Because if you think coating the planet in solar panels and wind turbines is going to fix everything, you're delusional.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!