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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.
They are firing carbon based life form workers and are installing silicon based robots.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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!!!
Gasoline still has an order of magnitude more energy per unit weight than batteries.
Gasoline engines are an order of magnitude less efficient than battery powered cars.
I have an electric car and range is not a problem. My daily commute uses less than 20% of the capacity. Once or twice a year I need to drive beyond the range of the car, so I either recharge enroute (usually while eating lunch or dinner) or I drive a different car.
That only ever sounded reasonable to the very few people who live in Canada, Siberia and Alaska. It never sounded reasonable to the billion people who've build their cities at sea level, who would much rather deal with the lowering sea levels of an ice age (which is an economic problem to be sure but one they can expand the city to adapt to) than rising sea level (a much much bigger economic problem).
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You would only need a lamp post per address, if the *average* requirement was that every address needs to charge an EV every night. That is just nowhere near the truth:
1. Only about 50% of London households have a car
2. About 25% of London households have off-street parking
3. Given average British mileage of 150 miles per week, most EVs will only need recharging once per week (today, a Zoe, Leaf, Tesla can all manage that). That's a substantial over-estimate, given London driving distances are much shorter than average British which includes rural drivers covering much longer distances
So the average percentage of EVs that would need charging overnight on any one night is: 50% * 75% * 14% = about 5%. If you could get 1 lamp post per 10 households done with Ubitricity, you'd be more than fine with a hefty margin of error built in.