
Things I Learned from Five Years in Climate Tech - luu
https://evanm.website/2020/02/five-years-in-energy/
======
layoric
This is a great piece and resonates with me a lot. I was an early employee at
a climate tech startup ~3 years ago. I moved into climate tech intentionally
from local gov contracting, it’s a great field for someone like a Data
Engineer or Data Science kind of role, lots of opportunity to work on many
different things.

I agree with the post that the utility scale space is a hard slog but I
honestly believe the only way to scale renewables is to make it economically
attractive for investment and any tech that can reduce operational cost of
these assets to increase margins and attract more investment into utility
scale renewable generation. A carbon price would be a huge boost to this
space, things are still progressing without it but I think it would seriously
accelerate our energy transition as well as spur innovation for non energy
related carbon intensive industries. The current state of low interest rates
world wide and funds having a harder time finding good returns means a lot of
groups building solar utility scale assets are banks/funds with little
knowledge/interest in energy generation, pulling together those with the how
to knowledge to materialize their return on investment.

I highly recommend working in this space, its technically challenging and I
think it has a bright future. It’s not as big and flashy as a lot of software
startup worlds but small teams can still have a big impact. I also sure prefer
working on these problems than working on platforms trying to sell more ads.

~~~
ryanmercer
>and I think it has a bright future.

That's highly debatable. While you might sell software/solar
panels/magicwidgets to a small subset of people, for the most part no
technology is going to have a meaningful impact on current greenhouse gas
emissions.

As I said to Wren (I really tear into them in this post, I feel I was fair
though)[1] after they post their introduction thread here:

> We're going to make changes by convincing people they really don't need to
> take their 4th international vacation in as many years, nor do they need
> their 3rd iPhone in 5 years, that their year and a half old MacBook is
> perfectly fine. They don't need the newest model just because it now has
> ultra holographic flurm instead of super holographic flurm because all they
> do is watch YouTube and write emails with the damn thing.

Sure you might sell a regional power provider on using some software that does
something a little better to improve efficiency 1/2 % which will absolutely
make a difference but while you're doing that, a few new coal plants went
online in India/China/a developing country. Also the power company that you
sold it to is losing obscene amounts of electricity, generated by fossil
fuels, via transmission loss

So you develop something for ICE cars that cuts out cylinders when lower
demand is required, turns off the engine at stops, uses a solar panel to
recharge a battery specifically for defrosting the windows instead of relying
on the ICE charged lead-acid battery, etc but while you are designing that for
a specific line of cars over the course of 2 years China alone added tens of
millions of new drivers to the road driving ICE vehicles that aren't burning
fuel optimally.

While you are writing software, or developing a widget, to shave a few grams
of CO2 emissions off of each customer a day websites/apps like
YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram are generating tens to hundreds of grams of
CO2 per gigabyte of data transferred.

While you're trying to reduce the footprint of people with 6-figure salaries
that can afford to spend money on reducing their footprint, you have hundreds
of millions to billions of up and lower middle-class consumers consuming more
and more as their greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at staggering
rates.

While you're developing software to plan the best optimized routes for a UPS
driver or commercial flight, you have people watching vidieos on YT trying to
figure out where they want to take their 4th exotic vacation to (by plane, at
a couple of tons of CO2 roundtrip per passenger) where they'll eat out the
entirety of the time probably generating a bunch of petrochemical derived
single-use packaging.

You even have Y Combinator doing contradictory stuff in this field, as I said
in an open letter to them [2]

>Another example of something that wholly puzzles me is, YC has recently asked
for solutions to global warming, chiefly carbon sequestration solutions. We're
going to produce close to 40 gigatons of carbon this year that will enter the
system, that's insanity. If you filled the 10 most massive bodies of
freshwater in the world with Azolla (see the Azolla event) you'd only pull
roughly 10% of that amount out of the atmosphere annually, and you would only
sequester a fraction of that. Yet YC, for the interviews for companies that
get an invite, they want the founders to fly to the Bay Area for a 10-minute
interview. FOLKS! One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or San
Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide
per person.

People can make immediate and real impacts on their greenhouse gas emissions
by cutting 1 day of meat consumption out a week. Then 2 days. Then get meat
down to being a special occasion, or never, consumption.

People can make immediate and real impacts by opting to watch a documentary
instead of flying to Antarctica to take pictures with penguins.

People can make immediate and real impacts by reading a book from a library
instead of having Netflix streaming in the background why they play Candy
Crush or Angry Birds on their phone with the air conditioning blasting 70F air
at them while they're wrapped up in a blanket with a hoodie on when it's 75F
out.

Even if someone cracks cold fusion TODAY, replacing the tens of thousands of
power plants around the world... the concrete alone required would release a
mind boggling amount of CO2 to produce and replacing them would take decades.

Developing software or a widget to optimize one's impact is just selling
people hopium. Getting people to radically change their habits (stop
travelling, stop ordering from Amazon five times a week for one item each
time, stop ordering Uber eats and cook something, reduce meat consumption,
shop with a minimal waste mindset, don't buy food if you're going to throw
half of it out, make tv a treat not a daily necessity etc).

Sure, there is investor money to be pilfered in this field but ehhhh.

[1] [https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2019/7/18/wren-
medi...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2019/7/18/wren-medieval-
indulgence-and-your-carbon-footprint)

[2] [https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2018/10/30/an-
open-...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2018/10/30/an-open-letter-
to-yc)

~~~
Retric
Renewables have already made a significant difference in CO2 emissions. It’s
rather shocking how much wind + solar are dominating new generation simple due
to cost savings.

~~~
ryanmercer
Renewables are also extremely limited in practical use.

\- The sun only shines so many hours a day and only certain latitudes are good
candidates.

\- Wind is quite noisy (sorry but it is, we've got a lot of wind here in
Indiana that I've driven by going from Indy to Chicago. Absolutely not
something I'd want near me. Much smaller scale vertical wind turbines are also
quite loud and just plain annoying at higher speeds) and is ineffective at
slow and high wind speeds, the wind also only blows at certain times.

\- Hydroelectric generally requires dams, constructing dams often floods large
areas of land which completely destroys ecosystems in that flooded land and
often poses a considerable risk to downstream human settlements in the event
of a catastrophic failure. They also rely heavily on obscene amounts of
concrete which will build in a large amount of CO2 production into the
construction.

\- Hydroelectric relying on waves has varying level of impact on coastal
ecosystems.

With sun and wind you can only implement it so far before you hit a wall, the
wall being the need for huge amounts of grid storage to serve dark/not windy
times.

Without drastic developments in battery technology, and PV efficiency,
renewable aren't going to be a singular solution. They're going to remain a
small percentage of the solution.

Renewables are also something that aren't really an option at a consumer
level. You often have one power company that serves your home/apartment, if
you do have a home and you live in an area where PV makes sense from a light
availability then it is often more expensive than most people can afford and
can take decades to be break even. Tesla announced something like $21.85 per
square foot for their solar roof which comes to $43,700 for a 2,000 square
foot home while in large parts of the country you can get a decent 2,000
square foot home for $100-200k and the median household income in the United
States is only $63,688.

However adjusting your thermostat 1F warmer in the summer and 1F cooler in the
winter, going to a local museum instead of taking that roadtrip or flight,
eating hamburger once every other week instead of a few times a week etc are
all far more practical changes people can implement in their lives than say
installing PV and battery systems at their home or instead of buying an EV
that costs thousands (if not tens of thousands) more than the ICE vehicle
they'd otherwise purchase.

It's awesome, legitimately awesome, to pursue technology to help us solve the
problem but thinking technology will be our savior is foolish at best. We have
to radically change our lives if we want to even significantly slow those
annual CO2 emissions. Food, clothing, recreation, convenience all needs to
change.

It's not even that difficult. In the past year or so I've:

\- Gone 90-95% whole food plant based with my eating

\- Stopped going to the movies every other week and now only go for big films
like the most recent Star Wars

\- Stopped buying printed books if a digital copy is available for purchase

\- Buy in bulk, with as little packaging as possible, when I can.

\- Stopped driving 25-40 miles roundtrip every weekend to go sit in the living
rooms of friends when we're just going to have the same conversations we do
via text messages and instead only go see them once every couple of months
each to eat together and actually have quality conversation

\- Stopped driving to the fancy grocery 10 miles away and use the one a block
from my apartment complex entrance, doing my groceries on the way home from
work when I'm passing it anyway

\- I pretty much only drive to work and church now instead of getting in my
car on the weekend and driving around looking for something to do

\- Video content I stream, I stream at lower quality now. Every gigabyte of
data transfer saved is potentially several hundred of grams less CO2
generated. Podcasts, where available, I stream via their lower bitrate feed
(unfortunately of the podcasts I listen to, only Mysterious Universe has a
lower/higher quality feed).

If even 10% of the population adapted similar practices, you'd create much
more of an impact than selling a few solar roofs to the wealthy or designing a
piece of software for a regional power plant to use to make some process a
fraction of a percent more efficient.

~~~
layoric
> Renewables are also extremely limited in practical use.

From my experience, they are a lot less limited than people realize. The UK's
use of wind is a good example [0], studies have been done in Australia where
we previously thought the upper limit of renewables would be 20% of power
generation only 10 years ago, each yeah they are revising this number upwards
thanks to technology developments. South Australia is a good example here too
[1].

Just because we can't easily foresee a solution that is 100% renewable/carbon
free energy generation _right now_, doesn't mean we shouldn't head in that
direction. Waiting around for a perfect solution and sitting on our hands is
exactly what we shouldn't be doing.

Also in regards to your comments for individual behaviors impacting the
planet, turns out people can walk and chew gum at the same time. I'm vegan,
avoid flying (haven't flown in >5 years), work remote and have solar panels on
my house. Making personal changes like you and I (and many others and growing)
have done absolutely makes a difference, but so does the technology
development. For example

> With sun and wind you can only implement it so far before you hit a wall,
> the wall being the need for huge amounts of grid storage to serve dark/not
> windy times.

I work mainly in the solar radiation forecasting area, basically thickness of
clouds forecasts. Something that the _tech_ we've developed performs really
well at is forecasting the next 4 hours, updating every 5-15 minutes thanks to
the amazing tech that is the latest generation of geostationary weather
satellites. As you likely know, one of the important properties of an
electricity grid is stability which the intermittent nature of renewables like
solar don't excel (as you've pointed out) at especially if you live anywhere
there are commonly clouds. One way to improve stability is to smooth out the
variability and to know ahead of time how much the power output is going to
change. You might think this is just a 1-2% improvement but actually this is
impacts _how much_ solar power generation to can add to an electricity grid by
a lot and it also GREATLY reduces the size of battery required to get that
smoothing of power generation. Does it get us to 100% renewable energy
generation? No, but it lets us rush for higher penetration whilst maintaining
stability in electricity networks, which helps generators make money, which
makes investment look more attractive, which builds more solar, you see the
cycle.

So yes, you can only implement them so far, but how far this can be taken is
generally rising in many countries, and getting there quickly is important.

Yes, if everyone made the individual choices today, the world could drop our
CO2 emissions very quickly in a short period of time. Social problems are hard
and sadly we have leaders without the political will to go against their own
personal self interest and that of their large emitter donors [2]. So while
some lobby to try and change this, others try to encourage those with money
from their large emissions to put their money somewhere else that will reduce
emissions by making it more profitable. A carrot AND a stick as it were. It
isn't just "hopeium", people in these fields are working their butts off and
the inertia is building, it's not going to be easy so yes I think the future
is bright _for the climate tech industry_ as there are positive contributions
to be made. As for the general future re climate change, no, it is not looking
bright but working to make it less shit is something I'd encourage others to
do.

[0]
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/14/renewable-e...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/14/renewable-
electricity-overtakes-fossil-fuels-in-uk-for-first-time)

[1] [https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/](https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sitPeRlTdNs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sitPeRlTdNs)

~~~
ryanmercer
> The UK's use of wind is a good example

Wind varies wildly between locations. England being an island probably helps a
ton as coastal areas tend to generally be windy. If we look at a wiki entry
[1] on the coastline of the UK:

>the coastline as measured by the standard method at Mean High Water Mark
rises to about 19,491 miles (31,368 km).

With the general coasltine of the United States being 12,383 miles.

The UK also has nearly 1/5 the population, has virtually no air conditioning
while 16% of residential electricit consumption and 6% of total electrical
consumption in the United States is from air conditioning [2].

So there is limited carryover here with something like wind. Same goes for
solar, solar is great at certain latitudes and in certain regions (think
weather) but other latitudes and regions is just not practical.

The UK is also much smaller than something like the United States, that means
a much more efficient grid can be constructed. You will also just have less
transmission loss because you have much fewer units of measure of power lines.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_of_the_United_Kingdo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_of_the_United_Kingdom)

[2] -
[https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=1174&t=1](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=1174&t=1)

~~~
layoric
Granted regarding wind, but there are a lot of coastal areas in the world and
other windy non coastal regions as well. As for solar and latitudes, this is
primarily an economic choice, so while yes some areas of the world will
produce more watts/m^2 (see global maps of Global Horizontal Irradience),
solar utility generation can still make economic sense |in or near a lot of
populated places around the globe. Sure, high density islands would be a silly
use of space for solar but being islands, wind would likely make more sense|.

And yes, transmission of power is also a problem for places like Australia
being so large, but even with this people are genuinely looking into building
large _international_ electricity connections under sea between north of
Australia and Singapore [0] backed by 10GW of solar generation capacity [1], a
$20B investment that they are willing to bet will _make_ money, not heavily
gov funded.

A lot of people are also looking at hydrogen generation from excess renewable
power as another way to recoup some profit when grid generation prices go to 0
or negative. Deciding _when_ to do these kinds of activities is largely where
_climate tech_ can help out. Again, even relatively small improvements allow
for larger shifts if what we do and can have a large impact of investment
including how attractive the scaling of these technologies can be. Because
energy generation and consumption are such fundamental parts of modern life,
being clever with how you do both of these things can lead to whole different
approaches. As clean energy generation costs drop there will be other carbon
net negative (maybe negative) activities that become economical, creating a
space where money can be mode is the fastest way to accelerate change in the
modern world.

Some of these choices will no doubt cause their own problems that will need to
be solved, but at this stage world needs to look towards harm minimization,
and quickly when it comes to the climate crises. With hindsight I'm sure we'll
be able to look back and highlight ways it could have been done better, hell
we can do that now but those with the power to make that change seem unwilling
to show leadership.

If you are a programmer/technical minded person, climate tech is still a
positive contribution and I think is an industry that will be growing. If you
are a politician, yes, you'll likely have the _chance_ to make a far larger
impact and all power to you, but I'll be doing what I can with the skills and
knowledge I have.

[0] [https://www.suncable.sg/](https://www.suncable.sg/)

[1] [https://reneweconomy.com.au/nt-government-backs-10gw-
solar-a...](https://reneweconomy.com.au/nt-government-backs-10gw-solar-and-
storage-plant-biggest-in-world-71012/)

| EDIT added for clarity

------
perfunctory
> As far as bending the warming curve towards 1.5° C is concerned, I think
> policy and regulatory reform is currently a larger source of leverage than
> technology.

Refreshing to hear this from someone working in climate _tech_.

~~~
bernardlunn
Keep it simple: unless Trump is kicked out of power any meaningful change is
unlikely

~~~
lazyjones
Under Trump, the US implemented record / word-leading carbon reductions.

[https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/25/donald-
trum...](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/25/donald-trump-denied-
credit-us-emissions-decline/)

~~~
jayd16
Isn't this from the continued steady decline of coal power in the US and not
any new policy? The current administration hasn't made good on their policy to
boost coal power (imo that failure being a good thing).

What recent policies have been passed that you think should be lauded?

~~~
lazyjones
The point is that "Trump has to go for anything to happen" contradicts facts.
If anything, the virtue signalling by other politicians has been less
effective than whatever happened under Trump.

~~~
jayd16
>The point is that "Trump has to go for anything to happen" contradicts facts.

Unless we can point to a policy change then "Trump has to go for anything to
happen" seems reasonable, doesn't it? If the gains are from coal's decline, it
seems reasonable to be worried that won't be enough.

------
rfeather
I work in a company in the climate tech space, and this all rings very true.
Our customer is utilities and I have stayed from fairly early stage through
acquisition. It's frustratingly slow moving at times, but we've also been able
to have a meaningful impact. Each person in the company can honestly say that
they've contributed to emissions reductions to the point that really nothing
they do could ever make them carbon positive again. Most of this is due to the
scalability of software.

It's also been really interesting to see how regulations play into this.
Getting utilities to value reducing their topline revenue through user energy
efficiency requires regulation, and our customer base mostly reflects which
utilities are under such regulations, though we also have a customer
experience play for when that's not a primary driver.

Like layoric, I would also recommend working in this space for similar
reasons. I would also add my experience is that the people are great. It's not
get rich quick, so the people here are driven mostly by mission and
interesting problems, which leads to a generally high level of positivity.

~~~
layoric
> I would also add my experience is that the people are great. It's not get
> rich quick, so the people here are driven mostly by mission and interesting
> problems, which leads to a generally high level of positivity.

This is a great point and I've found this as well, even if the mission drive
is not there, others are just glad to be working on something that isn't one
way or another selling ads and grounded in the real world (sun/wind/energy) so
makes for a great group of people.

------
rb808
> Consumers don't care about energy

Smart metering should be compulsory in all households with a display showing
the current spot price. I should be able to see that right now electricity is
expensive or cheap to decide if I should wash my clothes or run the AC.

Its crazy the electrical utility industry ties itself in knots to guarantee
supply and meet demand peaks when consumers blindly use electricity when they
feel like it. Changing demand behaviour should be a priority if we want wind
and solar to become more widely used.

~~~
papreclip
It's not so crazy to me that we try to maintain the same quality of life.
Watching the meter and waiting until 9 PM to wash your clothes is a pretty sad
state of affairs. Sweating through your clothes in a heat wave because
everyone else wants AC is even worse.

Are we really ready to admit that the late 20th century was peak civilization?
It seems to me we have solved all the wrong problems with technology (nitrogen
fixation, disease, etc) that put natural checks on population several hundred
years before we were ready to actively plan and manage population. As a
result, all the problems introduced by overpopulation that are fundamentally
unsolvable are getting worse and worse.

~~~
hodgesrm
I would not be ready to admit anything of the sort, seeing as the solutions
included things like decent sanitation and protection against childhood
disease. The late 20th/early 21st century raised billions of people out of
abject poverty. I can't imagine any viable solution to climate change (or
other problems for that matter) that takes these things away.

------
dd36
> Buying EVs and solar panels make us feel good, but only represents marginal
> progress while oil subsidies artificially prop up the internal combustion
> engine and campaign finance laws give incumbent fossil fuel companies undue
> influence to hamstring the deployment of clean technologies.

Yaaaaass!

~~~
mariushn
What exactly could individuals do to stop fossil fuel subsidies? Petitions or
writing to politicians doesn't work.

FYI [https://www.iisd.org/gsi/](https://www.iisd.org/gsi/)
[https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=e1210](https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=e1210)

~~~
maliker
Become Jeff Bezos and put $10 billion [1] towards lobbying...

Last Christmas I was looking for a good climate charity to donate to. I was
disappointed to find that GiveWell [2], which does great reviews of charity
effectiveness, found a lot effective charities in public health and one in
poverty reduction, but nothing in the area of climate. It's very frustrating.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/technology/jeff-bezos-
cli...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/technology/jeff-bezos-climate-
change-earth-fund.html) [2] [https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-
charities](https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)

~~~
lkbm
Giving What We Can has a section on climate charities[0]. One listed is Cool
Earth, which I _thought_ Givewell had recommended in the past, but I'm not
seeing it in any of their archived recommendations.

(It's also worth noting that addressing global poverty is a pro-climate
activity, in addition to be a moral imperative. Its climate-effects may be
more long-term than is relevant, though.)

[0] [https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/research/other-
causes/climat...](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/research/other-
causes/climate-change/)

------
witten
A bunch of this resonates with me, having spent many years in climate tech as
well. I laughed at the part about selling a pilot to a utility in three months
though. That's like super lightning speed in this industry.

------
thepangolino
Point 6. Policy is more important than technology

Should have been on top, front and center of the article.

~~~
maliker
I work in climate tech, and it's funny to hear the US democrat candidates for
president talking about investing huge amounts in energy research. I think,
well yes we could grow our research efforts, but taxing carbon emissions and
changing the tax advantages for fossil fuel extraction would be a lot easier
than trying to wring another 1% efficiency out of air source heat pumps or
doing more grid integration studies...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Energy research is changing the whole landscape of renewables. Any progress
there can easily tip the balance in favor. Some luddite tax on old technology
is missing the point/the opportunity we have at this juncture, to make
batteries/renewables the obvious/cheap choice for energy in the future.

~~~
maliker
I think it's fair to say both research funding and tax reform should both be
pursued. A nice benefit of the "luddite tax" is that it would make renewables
and energy storage relatively more attractive, which would drive revenue that
could fund product development.

------
mattygh
I have been in this industry for about the same amount of time, and I
absolutely could not have said it better. People entering the space can either
try to learn from this article or learn these lessons themselves over 2-3
years, I hope they can do the former to avoid spinning their wheels.

------
rlewkov
Having worked for a company that built and sold software to utility companies,
#s 1 and 5 resonate with me. Consumers don’t care about energy and it's brutal
selling to utilities.

------
jaakl
Brutal truth is that not only consumers/customers, but also the climate does
not care about saving on energy use. Consuming of energy is not a problem,
only producing it is. Wasting energy does not generate any greenhouse gases or
pollution. We just need to produce 100% clean electric energy from certain
renewables or nuclear, and it should be so cheap and competitive that all the
industries (including e.g. cement producing) would just move over to it.

------
teslabox
Good analysis of the entrepreneurship in the energy sector. I might email him
about this contradiction:

 _1\. Consumers don’t care about energy_

versus:

 _I don’t believe that we’ll get where we need to go without a global price on
carbon. This is why I volunteer with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby to build
political will for a national carbon fee and dividend policy in the US_

Someone pointed out to me around 15 years ago that "green" is terrible
branding for environmentalism.

Taxing carbon makes living more expensive for people. Most people on the
margin will reject anything that makes energy more expensive for them.
Dyslexic philosopher George W. Bush once said, "Fool me once, shame on...shame
on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again."

People don't trust scientists, they trust engineers, because engineers own up
to their mistakes and usually make a second-generation product that's better
than the first edition, whereas 'science advances one funeral at a time' (the
standard paraphrase of Max Planck).

The vast majority of people absolutely 100% _do not care_ about their carbon
output. They care about their wallets and quality of life. Advocating for
carbon taxes is an exercise in futility, encouraged by artificial fear. IMHO,
climate alarmism is propagated by people with good intentions and incomplete
analysis of reconstructed data. Scientists have only recently put temperature
sensors on the Juan de Fuca volcanic ridge, there's no sensors on the vast
majority of the ocean ridges, and only in the last... ~40 years have they
started to put fleets of automated temperature buoys into the oceans... We've
had a mild winter where I live, but Baghdad Iraq had atypical snowfall this
month [0].

[0]
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/02/11/baghdad...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/02/11/baghdad-
iraq-snow-winter-storm/4722838002/)

 _But I feel more and more that we’re approaching the point at which
technology has gone about as far as it can within the confines of a 20th
century policy regime._

The 20th century brought us the electric utility model, which encouraged the
economy to develop to use as much energy as possible.

Humanity's best hope is not figuring out how to de-carbonize the economy, but
to finish the Book of Physics and figure out where all the energy is hiding.
Nikola Tesla promised us it's out there. 21st Century physics is tiptoeing
towards an answer.

~~~
marcus_holmes
> The vast majority of people absolutely 100% do not care about their carbon
> output. They care about their wallets and quality of life.

This. The abject failure of airlines' "pay an extra $XX on your ticket to
offset the carbon emissions of your flight" showed that the vast majority of
people are virtue-signalling about climate change but not prepared to make any
actual changes to their lifestyle for it.

I've had arguments with "green" friends about their use of cars (I haven't
owned a car for >10 years - I prefer walking/cycling). They care desperately
about the planet, but they care more about not losing the convenience of their
personal car.

I notice the emphasis has shifted recently onto regulation of polluting
industries, such as oil companies. I think this is in part because of the
complete failure to change people's lifestyles. It's easier to regulate 100
large companies than get 1 billion people to accept responsibility for their
lifestyle. But it'll be interesting to see what happens when those companies
pass the cost of that regulation onto their customers.

~~~
sokoloff
I wonder how much of the failure to sell carbon credits is from the
positioning (in x-y screen space and in t) alongside “pay extra for a seat
near the front?”, “pay extra to check a bag?”, “pay extra to sit near your
family?”, “pay extra for trip insurance?”, “pay extra for WiFi?” and other
nibbles at the wallet while you have it out?

I’m also skeptical that these sold carbon offsets actually result in any
actual marginal change in the world, but I think it’s more the choice fatigue
and feeling of being one more way to be nickel and dimed...

~~~
travisporter
This is exactly what gives me pause when paying these credits offered by the
airline. I wonder if we could charge by total weight of passengers and luggage
as that directly correlates to fuel usage.

~~~
sokoloff
It correlates but the weight to fuel usage is highly non-linear. The airplane
I fly goes only 2-3% faster when it’s 10% lighter (at a constant cruise power
setting, meaning the through the air economy only increases by 1/5 to 1/3 the
change in mass).

------
jansan
What has climate tech achieved so far? Would the world be worse off if there
were no climate tech companies?

~~~
maliker
Climate tech has driven solar and wind generation from the most expensive
generation assets to the cheapest over the last 20 years. Energy storage has
gone from a product for cordless consumer devices to something that's cheap
enough to replace fossil fuel peaking and reliability units. Nest built an
energy efficiency product that's a household name. So, yes, the world would be
way worse off.

~~~
jillesvangurp
Exactly, we owe a lot to those pioneers that started innovating half a century
ago. About five years ago is when non subsidized renewables caught up with
just about everything else in terms of unsubsidized cost/kwh. By now, coal
plants are going bankrupt and people have all but stopped building new ones.
Gas plants are not far behind. I'd say another five years of price drops will
push that over the point where that becomes equally uneconomic. Most plants
under construction right now are extremely likely to be retired long before
their projected end of lives.

To preempt the inevitable "but ... we need unspecified amounts of reserve
capacity for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't come out" croqs.
This is a real problem that is easily addressed with 1) batteries, cables, and
excess capacity (name your safety factor; 10x is feasible and probably still
cheaper if needed). Batteries give you local energy buffers. We've used cables
to move power around since electricity became commercially available. Multiple
interconnected production sites distributed across every country (as well as
off shore) can absorb any amount of clouds, or other weather phenomena that
might temporarily cause a continent lack of wind & sun. And of course there's
no rule that says we can only cover 100$ of our energy needs. A few extra
panels, wind mills, etc. can push this to 200, 300, or more percent. Also the
excess is actually useful for doing stuff like generating synthesized fuels,
desalinating water (or condensing it from thin air), etc.

My main argument here is that clean energy is about to create an economic boom
that is similar in size to what happened when we discovered fire, coal, and
oil (in that order). Historically every time we reduce the cost of energy,
we've had a massive economic boom. IMHO we're on the edge of the next one
which will be powered by dirt cheap and plentiful clean energy that we can
consume by the twh completely guilt free. The main problem in this space is
that people don't see the big picture. Too many tree huggers (no offense) and
not enough people with vision.

------
Beltiras
Three most important things for 1.5C are:

1\. Stop burning coal 2\. Get shipping off oil and onto renewables 3\. DAC
efforts need to be stepped up, both biological and technological

All of those are achieved by turning to Gen 4 nuclear reactors. MSRs are now
entering trial phases [1] where nuclear energy generation is not as strictly
regulated as in the States. Miniaturization efforts have found solutions where
such a power plant [2] could be cost effective for shipping.

DAC efforts are a bit strange. I've looked a bit into tree planting and
haven't found anything that looks like it scales with investment. I can't
purchase a product knowing it will result in _extra_ efforts, or put another
way, if a billionaire would pour in a billion dollars, it wouldn't scale up
the operation proportionately to the increased funds. Technological DAC is a
solved problem that would scale but needs a power source.

4th gen reactors are the only thing that tackles these points on all fronts.

[1] [http://thorconpower.com/project/](http://thorconpower.com/project/) [2]
[https://www.seaborg.co/](https://www.seaborg.co/)

~~~
L_Rahman
Would not be a hacker news climate thread without someone jumping in
immediately with nuclear.

I am not opposed to the technology in a meaningful way but the problem is that
the conditions in which nuclear can thrive - regulatory scheme, public
perception of climate change risk, long time horizon infrastructure
development, $$$ - non nuclear renewables easily outcompete.

I wonder how the nuclear folks think about this. The tech doesn’t exist in a
numerical vacuum of efficiency and dollars per watt. It lived inside a complex
ecosystem within which it doesn’t really seem competitive.

~~~
Recurecur
Right now wind+solar account for less than 1% of global electric generation.

I'm highly skeptical that prices can remain low as that scales out to 10-40%
of electric generation, given constraints on things like rare earth metals.
There is also the issue of equipment wearing out relatively quickly compared
to conventional/nuclear plants.

SMRs, built using mass production rather than one-off construction, and
possessing safety qualities far beyond current reactors, will be necessary to
provide safe, reliable, clean and cheap energy alongside "renewables", IMNSHO.

~~~
Robotbeat
Less than 1%? Not true in the slightest.

In the US alone, wind and solar (including rooftop) produce approximately 11%
(about 53GW average) of electrical energy given the very latest data (last 12
months rolling) from:
[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01)
(and this should be updated today)

The US consumes about 485GW average electricity, compared to the world total
of 2485GW average. So approximately 1/5th.

So US solar + wind ALONE is at least 2% of global electric generation
(50GW/2485GW > 2%), twice your claim (again, this is _just the solar and wind
in the US_ compared to world total electricity). I suspect your figures are
far outdated (not uncommon in this field...).

EDIT: This is still using old data (2018), but it shows that 7.5% of global
electricity energy (again, energy, not mere nameplate power) comes from
solar+wind: [https://yearbook.enerdata.net/renewables/wind-solar-share-
el...](https://yearbook.enerdata.net/renewables/wind-solar-share-electricity-
production.html)

