
Exploring strategies to decarbonize electricity - janober
https://www.blog.google/topics/environment/exploring-strategies-decarbonize-electricity/
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markvdb
From the simulations website:

"A megawatt-hour of electricity is about the amount a household uses in a
month."

That is the elephant in the room. Our household of three adults can
comfortably live on about one sixth of that amount.

Who can tell me with a straight face that living comfortably on three times
our electricity consumption is impossible, even in a harsher, less moderate
climate? That alone would reduce US household consumption by 50%!

I applaud Google for coming up with this tool. I also hope it will open its
eyes to the feasibility of changing people's consumption patterns.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
A megawatt-hour is 1.38kW continuous consumption.

It's not hard to imagine how a household could use that. Two long how showers
per day per person, air conditioning / heating, a pool heater, a fridge,
another fridge in the garage, a deep freezer in the back room. Some people
have multiple always-on PCs and screens.

And now we're expecting everyone to recharge their car at home too.

~~~
markvdb
It's not difficult to imagine how a US household could use a MWh of
electricity per month indeed. We know these are the facts.

Point is, it is possible to change those consumption patterns. Quoting from
your example:

* heating: 67°F should be fine in winter. replace by natural gas where possible. invest in appropriate insulation and ventilation. Look at how much of northern Europe does it.

* air conditioning: use less and more recent airco. 76-77°F should be fine in summer.

* pool heater? just switch it off, or at the very least switch to a more efficient source of heating

* cut the second fridge in the garage, or at the very least, replace it with something efficient

* use an efficient freezer

* Check what machines have to be always on. Use something efficient for the things that really have to be always on.

I'm quite sure something along these lines would have cut more than 2/3 of the
electricity consumption of this average American household.

It is physically possible to make these changes. I concede that it would not
be easy to convince the people to actually make changes in this direction, but
it can be done!

~~~
VeejayRampay
Or don't use AC altogether. Continuous AC always all-the-time is a very
American thing.

~~~
TheBeardKing
I'd rather give up meat than AC, and I'm a meat lover. But I'm in the deep
south, sure I'd give up AC in CO.

~~~
VeejayRampay
Makes sense for the South in summer months, sure. But in the USA as a whole,
AC is used and abused even though there are solutions that involve building
materials, behaviour and good habits that could make life livable.
Temperatures get crazy high in Europe as well (40C or 105F is not uncommon in
summer months in Spain or Italy and they do without AC). Using terra cotta,
washing your floors, good use of shade, plants and trees, all that goes
towards managing heat. Though the humidity in the southern US states does make
it way more complicated, I'll give you that.

~~~
emilecantin
Not keeping shopping malls at freezing temps would help, too!

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dietdrb
How do we make renewables more competitive so that we can get our local
utilities to invest in them?

A carbon fee and dividend. Price carbon at its true cost and let the market
decide! There is important work being done by Citizen's Climate Lobby. CCL is
incredibly effective, but we need the help of the creative minds and energies
of HN. Check out citizensclimatelobby.org to get involved in your local
chapter.

~~~
jdavis703
Can you buy clean energy from your utility? If you're in California PG&E has a
program called Solar Choice where it attempts to offset your electrical
consumption by building additional renewable capacity. So far it's only added
about $2 or $3 to my bill. Many other utilities have similar programs.

~~~
mseebach
At the risk of stating the obvious, if it's only added $2-3 to your bill, then
it's only given the energy company $2-3 to build renewable capacity. That's
not nearly enough to make any kind of meaningful impact in your carbon
footprint (assuming you have somewhat average consumption).

~~~
jdavis703
I spend about $20-30/month on electricity, so it's about a 10% change. My
electrical consumption is about as low as I think one can get it without going
without things like refrigerators.

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harwoodleon
There is an important omission here: battery technology. I'm not talking about
tesla power walls - although they would go some way to smoothing the troughs
for solar.

I'm talking about the 7.2 megawatt-hour sodium-sulfur battery systems that
islands like Reunion adopt, or Japan's 34-MW, 245-MWh wind energy stabiliser.

Installing local generation systems and removing the burden on the national
grid systems which lose so much energy to transmission will also have an
impact that I think is not calculated here in the visualisation graph.... it
can make up to 6-9% of a difference! This figure can be up to 20% in
undeveloped countries.

...but I have not read the paper - maybe those effects are mentioned there

~~~
kilroy123
I'm starting to think it's a waste of time even pursuing battery storage on a
large scale. Sometimes going low-tech is the better and cheaper way.

This tech looks _way_ more promising and it's already in use now:

Molten salt storage [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-
concentrating...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-
concentrating-solar-tower-is-worth-its-salt-with-24-7-power/)

I have no idea the costs, but I'm sure if ramped up it could be cheaper.

~~~
zebrafish
Heliostat molten salt looks to be so promising for so many different
applications. There is a looming water crisis that I think heliostat molten
salt could help alleviate by using it for desalination.

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spodek
We'll probably always need electricity, so we need some solutions, but nothing
compares with reducing consumption -- principally each person using less and
having fewer people to use it. As in business, you don't only increase
revenues to increase profitability. Often lowering costs is more effective.

Starting points include getting past the belief that happiness or society
depends on electrical power as much as it does. We need some, but nowhere near
what we're using.

Also accounting for costs that are currently externalized.

~~~
EGreg
How about encouraging each community worldwide to plant more trees, thereby
offsetting their carbon usage? I know the carbon gets released when the trees
die or are burned but the tree biomass overall is what matters.

~~~
emilecantin
It's not enough to plant trees, you have to trap the carbon they gather
somehow. Otherwise when the tree dies, the decomposition process throws all
that carbon back in the atmosphere.

The early plants (billions of years ago) went through a few generations before
other organisms evolved to feed on their carcasses, so they just ended up
buried deep underground, trapping their carbon (and lowering the carbon
concentration in the atmosphere) until we came along and decided to dig them
up and burn them, throwing all that carbon in the air again.

~~~
opo
>...went through a few generations before other organisms evolved to feed on
their carcasses,

You might be understating the time frame here a little bit. Most estimates I
have read said it took about 60 million years before evolved the ability to
break down lignin.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mushroom-
evolutio...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mushroom-evolution-
breaks-down-lignin-slows-coal-formation/)

------
notananthem
Adding more nuclear makes energy cheaper and cleaner. Add more nuclear.

~~~
Reason077
Cleaner, yes (arguably). But not cheaper - nuclear is very expensive!

The Google model suggests $2200/kW is the build price point at which all
carbon emissions will be displaced.

To give an idea of the cost of nuclear, the UK is currently building it's
first new nuclear station since the 1990s (Hinkley Point C), at an expected
cost of £20.3b ($26.3b) for 3200 MWe capacity. That's $8230/kW - almost 4x
more expensive than what's needed!

~~~
DennisP
You're looking at capital cost. The plants last a very long time and have low
operating costs, so the kWh cost is fairly low.

Playing around with Google's tool without changing any defaults, I'm able to
get lower carbon emissions at the same cost by setting the nuclear level to
the minimum demand, compared to using lots of wind/solar and filling up all
the rest with gas.

~~~
Reason077
_" You're looking at capital cost"_

Yes, as is the Google model. They suggest that if a 24/7 carbon-free energy
source could be built at a capital cost of $2200/kW, then it would displace
all carbon emissions within 27 years.

My point is that capital cost of nuclear is currently far above that level,
which is why little nuclear is getting built (in most of the world) today.

Also, the operating cost of nuclear is high compared to most renewables!
Particularly when you account for substantial end-of-life decommissioning
costs, and the cost of secure waste storage far into the future.

(The decommissioning costs for the UK's MOX reactors is close to $100 billion)

~~~
DennisP
Actually it's not, the model optimizes for the minimum overall LCOE (i.e. kWh
cost).

Their paper's abstract does say: "DOSCOE shows that to cost-effectively remove
the last 10-20% of fossil fuels requires a moderate price on carbon and either
low-cost nuclear power or carbon capture and sequestration. Alternatively, a
hypothetical zero-carbon source needs to have a net present cost less than
$2200/kW (with a 100% capacity factor) to displace existing fossil-fuel
plants."

~~~
Reason077
_Actually it 's not, the model optimizes for the minimum overall LCOE (i.e.
kWh cost)._

You're right. I meant that the Google _abstract_ : the $2200/kW figure
referring to capital cost.

Interestingly, the UK has enormous potential for tidal lagoon energy. These
developers claim that it would be the cheapest energy of all new UK power
projects:

[http://www.tidallagoonpower.com/projects/swansea-
bay/](http://www.tidallagoonpower.com/projects/swansea-bay/)

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csours
I'd love to see a tool like this for comparing Internal Combustion Engines to
Battery Electric Vehicles.

By some previous calculations of mine, it looked like BEVs had 10k miles worth
of CO2 baked into the batteries, but I honestly have no idea if that is
correct or not.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
That isn't improbable - half the emissions associated with an IC-engine car
stem from its manufacture[1]. Of course, the battery should be recycled, so
you'd hope that in the long run those numbers will come down.

1: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-
blog/20...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-
blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car)

~~~
aidenn0
Lithium based rechargeables are unlikely to be recycled in the near-term.
Doing so is hard, _and_ there are a variety of chemistries used, so you don't
have the economies of scale like with lead-acid, where recycling one lead-acid
battery is much liker recycling another.

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DrNuke
The study is interesting but actual deployment of any strategy is still out of
Google's control, so I fear this tool will live as little more than an
academic exercise, same as similar tools coming from academia, supernational
organizations and biased lobbies. That said, Google is also actively investing
in electricity generation and that kind of effort may come more useful, if
pursued with determination, so we will see where they actually put their
money, other than their mouth.

~~~
jaggederest
These tools are really compelling to me. I was dubious that a carbon tax would
be sufficient to motivate substantial change, but it looks to me like a
$40/ton carbon tax would drastically improve carbon emissions, and a $100/ton
tax would virtually eliminate it.

I think as a way of exploring regulatory goals they're fascinating - very few
situations does someone set up a simulation of the impact of a law and give
laypeople knobs and buttons to play with to see how it would work.

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hokkos
It's something I thought about creating too, but it seems to miss a lot of
variables, solar and wind is not constant during a year so it should be yearly
not weekly, it seems USA specific it should be able to take solar or wind data
per country there is massive variation of rate depending on the region, also
consumption is geographic dependant.

And it crashes on my iPad after few seconds.

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dboreham
Fundamental problem : Electricity is not sufficiently costly to induce people
to figure out how to consume less.

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carapace
(Oh Googleers and your vast screens. I can't get both the controls and the
readout in the same screen. :-( )

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ethanwillis
One thing that people should look at is MOF or other solutions to do carbon
capture at existing fossil fuel/coal plants. MOFs can be highly efficient at
removing carbon output from these older plants.

Then the flue gases we currently emit can be re-used as reagents in algae
bioreactors to produce biodiesel.

------
iUsedToCode
Google could invest a bit more money in R&D. They sit on awesome pile of money
and yet aren't a significant player in energy. Why? Not smart enough? Don't
think so.

Oh, i forgot. Google is here to make money. They might write some blog posts
about CO2, but will not use their leverage to change things. That would damage
the bottom line.

Why is it that all the big companies are 100% driven by short term profits?
Maybe our understanding of capitalism isn't so great after all. We need more
responsibility.

~~~
concede_pluto
Google has no competitive advantage in energy. No way to evaluate world class
expertise. If I plowed a billion dollars into energy, I'd waste most of it,
and they wouldn't do much better.

~~~
thinkfurther
You'd waste it only in comparison with some hypothetical others spending a
billion dollars in a hypothetical zero sum game where either they or you spend
that, but not compared to not spending it at all or on stuff that makes the
problem worse.

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Boothroid
Now if we could only find a solution to the difficult problem of massively
powerful tech companies prying into our lives and selling what they discover
for profit..

Oh, Hi Google!

------
EGreg
Does nuclear power also add heat to the Earth?

All forms of obtaining energy for use in machines have heat as a byproduct.

How long can we sustain that?

~~~
marcosdumay
Earth's heat is in an equilibrium with the Sun and Space. If you add a heat
generator, you will see that more heat is emitted out into space and the
temperature does not increase much (and stays constant after a short
increase). But if you change the equilibrium point (like by adding greenhouse
gases), you'll see the temperature changing quite quickly.

~~~
EGreg
How do the greenhouse gases change the equilibrium point while other
mechanisms of increasing heat don't?

~~~
drewrv
Greenhouse gases don't simply increase heat. They change the composition of
the atmosphere. It's similar to the way adding salt or alcohol to water will
change the freezing temperature of the water.

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ZeroGravitas
Setting the carbon tax level to the EPA's social cost of carbon seems to work
out.

~~~
briantakita
The carbon tax especially works out for the political class & bankers who
would be entrusted to manage the funds & transfer the wealth. It also benefits
the wealthy Tesla buying consumers at the expense of the poorer gasoline
buying public. In the meantime, Al Gore has multiple houses & uses 34x more
electricity than the average US household...

[http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/02/exclusive-al-gores-home-
de...](http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/02/exclusive-al-gores-home-
devours-34-times-more-electricity-than-average-u-s-household/)

Also, don't plants breathe carbon? Wouldn't this imply that there would be a
biological feedback loop (more carbon means more plant growth)?

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nebabyte
Not to be confused with decarbonating electricity.

 _edit_ aw
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14986447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14986447)

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db48x
Electricity doesn't usually have carbon in it. It's more convenient to push
electrons back and forth in a wire than it is to push carbon atoms back and
forth.

