It's super depressing to see the acceleration of coal energy in 2000. Despite the rise of renewables, they haven't even been able to keep up with the rise of coal!
And the vast majority of it comes from energy production! Electric cars don't solve the problem if we are switching from high-efficiency gas engines to coal-fired electric.
While renewables are awesome and we should do everything we can to support their growth, they have a major problem (which is why they currently can't replace fossil fuels). Renewables are not constant energy providers and they cannot scale to demand (either up or down). The best bet with them is batteries. But that means that you have to produce at minimum enough to fulfill a full day's worth of energy demands within the time period they operate (solar: day, wind: windy parts of day, etc). Worse, tomorrow might be rainy, so you have to provide more than a few days. Unfortunately this problem is frequently left out. (And yes, we should also majorly be funding research into new batteries)
This is actually why people argue for nuclear. Not because they (we) want to replace renewables, but we want to replace fossil fuels. They compete in different areas. The more renewables you have (and battery tech) the less nuclear you need. But there still has to be something in the system to load balance and scale to demand. Because renewables currently can't tackle this problem we end up building more coal and natural gas plants (which are cheap! But they get much more expensive than something like nuclear once you price in emissions and health effects).
Don't perpetuate the myth that intermittency of renewables is a dealbreaker. While intermittency of power supply with inflexible demand is a problem when renewables hit 80% penetration, the reality is we're going to see utilities buy up demand and then flexibly shift that demand to when renewables are producing electrons.
This makes economic sense because renewables are FAR FAR cheaper than new-build nuclear, and the big businesses who supply electricity to EVs, heating, cooling, and industry are going to continue to encourage flexibility of demand.
For all the software and tech we have, you think we can't shift our electricity demand? It's laughable in the USA to imagine new-build nuclear coming online anywhere near as fast as the scenario I outlined above. It's simply far easier to shift demand than to build new nuclear.
> Don't perpetuate the myth that intermittency of renewables is a dealbreaker.
I was trying really hard NOT to do this. How can I better rephrase it?
I tried mentioning that we should continue to support battery research. I tried using qualifiers like "yet" and "currently". I tried very hard to stress that the issue is with CURRENT technology. Every time I try to talk about this problem it seems to either be dismissed or pushed off as "we'll get there". Which I do believe we'll get there, but it is an unknown time frame and we need to act 2 decades ago.
How can I better rephrase my message? Because I don't think my message and yours are at odds.
Not to mention the new HVDC tech that allows for very long transmission lines. That means that demand can be shifted by 2 hours in each direction in case of solar, depending on geography.
>Bitcoin’s electricity usage is enormous. In November, the power consumed by the entire bitcoin network was estimated to be higher than that of the Republic of Ireland. Since then, its demands have only grown. It’s now on pace to use just over 42TWh of electricity in a year, placing it ahead of New Zealand and Hungary and just behind Peru, according to estimates from Digiconomist. That’s commensurate with CO2 emissions of 20 megatonnes – or roughly 1m transatlantic flights.
Isn't that kind of what agreements like the Paris accord are supposed to accomplish? Individual nations retain sovereignty and can set their own precise laws, but as long as everyone's above some baseline you can't arbitrage by moving the polluting part of your business to Asia or Africa.
And the vast majority of it comes from energy production! Electric cars don't solve the problem if we are switching from high-efficiency gas engines to coal-fired electric.