> The smallest distance in relation to the target set for SDG 7 can be observed for Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, and Austria. By far the greatest progress in period 2010–2021 has been achieved by Malta, and significant for Cyprus, Latvia, Belgium, Ireland, and Poland.
Surprised not to see France on this list with all their nuclear power, though from glancing at this they seem to be using some aggregated measure instead of just CO2 which probably makes it much more complicated.
These last years, France has been burning a lot more natural gas than before because a lot of our nuclear reactors are in maintenance, because so of them should have gone down for maintenance during COVID but couldn't, and then we had double the amount of reactors to turn off for maintenance. This is irregular, of course, but it still means we're not quite where we should be in terms of carbon.
Seeing that list makes me deeply doubt the metrics or methodology here. As an Estonian, we use a lot of green energy, but the vast majority of it is imported, we're very much struggling with getting local production to where it needs to be.
Is there a problem with it being imported? The excess power from Finland's latest nuclear generator to come online (while already having ample low carbon energy) combined with Estonia's plans for increasing existing interconnector capacity with Finland seems like a fine solution, if only in the short term.
> The output of Finland's newest nuclear power facility, Olkiluoto 3, has been significantly cut back because electricity has become too cheap, according to the plant's owner, Teollisuuden Voima (TVO).
> "Electricity production must also be profitable for nuclear power plants, and when the price is particularly low, there may be situations where output is limited," TVO communications manager, Johanna Aho, said.
> Early on Wednesday the market price for electricity dropped below zero cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and for hours after that the price was only 0.3 cents per kWh at its highest, according to the country's grid operator, Fingrid.
> The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor in Eurajoki, southwest Finland, started regular electricity production in mid-April, about 14 years behind schedule.
> Generally, the amount of electricity generated in Finland is regulated by increasing or decreasing the amount of hydroelectric power that is used. However, due to flood conditions in northern Finland, reducing hydroelectric-generated electricity is challenging at the moment.
I think you misread the quote, which is understandable as it's awkwardly phased. Estonia is on the "not doing well" list, at least compared with some other EU nations.
> The smallest distance in relation to the target set for SDG 7 can be observed for Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, and Austria
To me, that says Estonia is among the closest to reaching the targets. How do you read it?
Another quote in the paper says something similar:
> the group of countries that came closest to the 2030 target in 2021, apart from the three Scandinavian countries, includes Estonia, Austria, and Slovenia
I interpreted it as the smallest distance travelled towards the goals in comparison the the countries in the following sentence which have made most progress.
Now I'm not sure what it means. If other countries have made more progress over the last decade, how can the countries listed with Estonia be closer to their goals?
The metric isn't that everyone should improve by some amount, but rather that everyone should reach a certain threshold. If you were closer to the threshold to begin with you can make less progress and still be closer to achieving it.
If you put enough solar into an electricity grid you will eventually have coal generators shutting down because the variable pricing will drive them out of business. Watch the wholesale price dashboard for Australia for a while and compare it to local weather if you don't believe me [1]. The other effect will be that 24 hour power becomes prodigiously expensive or not available, which is why the Australian government is funding coal generators to the tune of 1.1 billion this year [2]. Even they are not stupid enough to think an industrialised society can manage without it.
As the cost of renewables get close to zero (but never reaching that), the predominant cost will be batteries and transmission. How quickly this occurs is a function of battery cost decline curve and manufacturing capacity ramp.
Coal is already dead based on current trajectories, the body just hasn’t hit the floor yet.
So why is electricity so expensive in places with lots of renewables? A few of these countries have absolutely absurd pricing of electricity per kwh especially compared to places that just burn coal and natural gas, but your sources say it should be significantly cheaper. Even in the US the only cheap electricity we can get is hydroelectric, but even that is not pushed very much due to ecological concerns.
At least in the US, the difference in cost is mostly taxation and fees, along with profit margins due to utility monopolies and price inelasticity. The reason California has more expensive electricity than Texas is almost entirely tied to the monopoly held by PG&E and high taxes and fees.
> Spanish power prices have tumbled in February to a fraction of the price in neighboring France as record wind and solar power generation in Spain has triggered an extreme slump in prices.
> Day-ahead electricity prices for Thursday settled at just $5.20 (4.80 euros) per megawatt-hour (MWh) in Spain, compared to as much as $68.86 (63.59 euros) per MWh for France, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
France relies mostly on its vast domestic nuclear power generation for most of its electricity needs and is typically a net exporter of electricity to neighboring countries.
> But as Spain’s wind and solar power generation hit new records early this year, Spain has been exporting electricity since February 21, according to grid data cited by Bloomberg. Spain is currently selling electricity even to France.
> Solar and wind power generation in Spain is expected to have hit a record high this month and high output is set to continue into March, per Bloomberg models.
> Cheap power prices have hurt the profits of Spanish utilities but they have been a boon to consumers as retail prices have reflected lower wholesale electricity prices.
In a free market, assuming constant demand, the price is the same as the highest production cost necessary to meet demand. In other words, if 90% of demand can be met by cheap renewables, 10% by expensive natgas and 10% by even more expensive coal, then the price is expensive. The consumer doesn't see the benefit of cheap renewables until they can meet the entire demand.
Obviously electricity isn't anywhere close to a free market, but it sometimes pretends to be one.
Also transmission costs are significantly larger than production costs in most markets.
Most places sensible enough to deploy lots of renewables also tax electricity to encourage efficiency since historically it involved burning nasty polluting coal and/or importing fuels.
Coal is not really very suitable for replacing renewables, natgas is much better suited.
The UK is building/planning a lot of natgas peaker plants at the moment, seemingly without anyone realising. One I read about is limited (for emissions reasons) to 240hours/10 days operation per year, which suggests that the price of power when renewables aren't going is going to be extremely high to make it profitable to build a plant that only runs 3% of the time.
> is going to be extremely high to make it profitable to build a plant that only runs 3% of the time.
It's probably fine, as the cost of renewable electricity is now lower than the fuel cost (aka the variable cost) of these plants.
In a lot of places, it's now cheaper to run a gas plant with renewables than without, as the build costs of the renewables is lower than the cost of the fuel they prevent to get burned.
Like France, often cited as the the world leader, with around 70% of its generated electricity coming from nuclear. Or Belgium, with around 50%, or Bulgaria around 30%, or Czechia around 40%, Finland around 35%, Hungary around 50%, Slovakia around 60%, Slovenia around 40%, Sweden around 30%, Switzerland around 35%...
Compared to Australia's one nuclear power, which isn't even being used to generate power, or the US' 18%, or UK's 14%, or Canada's 13%.
and look for 1 year as the time period then the places with low emissions from electricity either have lots of hydro, import power or are nuclear powered.
As yet there does not yet appear to be a single place in the world that uses solar and wind and has low emissions for electricity.
Germany's emissions given the Energiewende and the huge cost of that are particularly noteworthy.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-to-reach-100-pct... ("South Australia, the state with a world-leading average share of renewable energy of more than 71.5 per cent in its grid, is expected to reach “net” 100 per cent renewables within four years, according to the state’s transmission company.")
And in four years, they’ll be close to zero. How long will it take France to replace all of its end of life reactors? Decades. France is coasting on fifty year old capital investments and labor.
> The first and only EPR under construction in France is Flamanville-3, a project led by EDF as developer, constructor, owner and operator. This project is an industrial failure with endless delays and substantial cost overruns observed. When the construction of this reactor started in 2007, its commissioning was scheduled for 2012 at a cost of around €4 billion. In 2022, Flamanville-3 is still not operational and it will not be before 2023 – at least an 11-year delay on a five-year project. Its cost has spiraled to more than €20 billion, a multiplication by a factor five compared to the cost estimate when decision was taken. As a result, the generation cost of Flamanville-3 is now estimated at €115-125/MWh. Explanations provided blame for unpreparedness, incorrect technical references and insufficient detailed studies as well as the loss of competences in the French nuclear industry. The absence of skills maintenance, or “learning by doing”, has proven particularly problematic for the quality of welds – requiring repairs, notably.
conventional fixed nuclear is even less dispatchable than coal; you need totally different plant designs to make it dispatchable. those designs do exist (all naval reactors are highly dispatchable) but they diverged from commercial nuclear power over half a century ago
The OP's point about renewables fast fluctuations driving coal broke applies twice as much to nuclear. The problem coal has is it takes a few hours to ramp down, and during that time the electricity price is often negative. With nuclear, it isn't 1 or 2 hours, it takes 1/2 a day to ramp down. Worse, while a major cost of running coal generation (digging up the coal) does eventually ramp down, with nuclear the major cost is interest payments. They never stop, so they are paying interest while getting a negative price for the power they are generating (at the most expensive price per kWh of all generation methods).
It's all over bar the shouting for nuclear at this point. But granted, the shouting level seems to be going up not down. You would think NuScale going broke would damper the enthusiasm but no, Dutton's response to that seems to be to shout louder.
As for the OP claim Australia needs coal - South Australia has no coal. It's one of the few places in Australia that isn't build on coal seams. Consequently South Australia is now at 70% renewables, higher than any other OECD place on the planet with a substantial population (including other Australia states). That's 70% average over a year, not peak. Without coal. So much for "needing it".
Canada would likely be more than 13% except there was an abundance of easy hydro electric projects.
As the population of Canada grows past the point that the hydro projects provide nearly all electricity, I expect them to start burning more and more natural gas.
Initially this will show as New York state using more natural gas since Canada produces a huge amount of the total power there.
> had to shut them down in summer the last few years
Yep. It's sad-funny — they had to shut down reactors because the cooling water was getting too hot. To be fair this seems to be environmental regulations and not the reactors themselves, but then again the water is from rivers and at some point you really grill the river.
The only thing more expensive than nuclear — in these stats at least — is small-scale solar installations.
Btw, this widespread (but wrong) belief that nuclear is cheap stems from the fact that a lot of countries heavily subsidized their nuclear industry in order to gain know-how and/or materials for atomic weapon production. It's not even cost-covering at current energy prices without those subsidies.
Nuclear power is just too expensive. Look at France - the have 80% or so nuclear and all of their power companies run at a loss and have to be subsidized.
Meanwhile in Germany wind and solar make a pretty good complement and are cheaper, even with storage included, which is mostly provided by Switzerland and Austria.
And fund the plants from budget, not commercial debt.
> "Governments can borrow much more cheaply that private companies and that lower cost of borrowing can drastically reduce the ultimate cost. Hinkley Point C would have been roughly half the cost if the government had been borrowing the money to build it at 2%, rather than EDF's cost of capital, which was 9%."
You've now bought 20 years for the countries with an existing fleet.
Having governments finance the plants does not reduce the cost, it is a subsidy transferring the risk to the government with the taxpayers being on the hook instead of the banks.
The cost stemming from the project risk will not be realized until the construction goes over budget or fails, at which time the difference between the market rate and the government rate is realized by the tax payers.
What all this means is that the project's risk and cost is constant. You only transfer who pays for it. The public or the owner.
With Hinkley Point C looking to cost even more than €160/MWh over 35 years strike price they got that territory is being entered with bitter negotiations at the highest political level.
> You've now bought 20 years for the countries with an existing fleet.
40, most were build for 40.
>Having governments finance the plants does not reduce the cost, it is a subsidy transferring the risk to the government with the taxpayers being on the hook instead of the banks.
There's no "transferring the risk", energy safety is as much responsibility of the government as everyone else. Taxpayers are on the hook for everything government does, it makes as much sense as buying police cars from a budget.
If the power plant fails, everyone loses due to lack of power. The magical idea that some kind of failure of power plant does not affect every citizen, but only shareholders is just not true.
>With Hinkley Point C looking to cost even more than €160/MWh over 35 years that territory is being entered with bitter negotiations at the highest political level.
Now you are changing the subject. You are inventing the term energy safety to try to have my eyes glaze over by having something in your view of the world only nuclear can solve.
This is not true, the alternative to nuclear power is being built today without subsidies or government involvement.
There is a transferring of the risk. For the alternative the government is not on the hook. I.e. there is no unrealized cost.
We can put it into concrete terms:
Who pays when something like Nukegate [1] or Hanhikivi [2] happens if the government finances the plant?
The taxpayers.
Who pays when Ørsted realizes that the contracts signed during ZIRP [3] no longer make business sense to pursue?
Ørsted.
If Ørsted were to go bankrupt due to the project, like Areva and Olkiluoto 3, who pays?
The banks.
The difference between the market rate and the government rate is who pays when the project goes belly up. Trying to fudge the numbers like you are doing is only a ploy to politically sell a project which does not economically make sense.
Why would you consider this _a business_ in a first place?
I'll distill all those questions into one: who pays to make sure that despite all potential and real failures the venture is profitable? Taxpayers. That's why those rates are so high, you're paying upfront for that possibility. Getting all the downsides and zero upsides.
It's like getting extended warranty on a toaster or any item you can easily buy ten of. The expected value is strictly negative.
Dealing with insurance is not something government should be doing anytime; it's way too big for that.
Home battery systems are getting absurdly cheap. Grid scale will follow, but before then it would be cheaper to incentivize rooftop solar and home battery installations in places where there’s plenty of sunlight (e.g., most of Australia)
you may be interested to know that the price of solar panels has dropped by half in the last year and a factor of 24 over the last 15; see my summary at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39544358
Holy shite. I had been putting this off cause 45k (when I initially looked) was a pretty tough pill to swallow. We’re down to 15k installed around here (which I suspect is pretty close to the floor, everything else will be profits for installation as years go on).
it's close to the floor because the installers are structured for the economic structure they had when it was 45k. you'll see new approaches that make different tradeoffs to reflect the new, lower panel prices
for example, inverters: if your solar installation costs 2 dollars a watt all told, it makes sense to spend an extra hundred bucks on a more efficient inverter if it squeezes 300 more watts out of the panels, but not if the solar installation costs 20 cents a watt. (and maybe you can run some 24-volt dc wiring instead of stepping it up to 120—or put together a constant-current system instead of a constant-voltage one, so the voltage drop in the wires doesn't have to stay within a narrow tolerance.)
or packaging: the glass now costs significantly more than the cells do, and the frames are expensive too—could you make do by gluing the cells to thin polycarbonate, like a compact disc, instead of to glass? even if it cut into longevity
and maybe you can do a rooftop installation of a lightweight installation with a long pole with a hook on the end, or something, instead of having a guy climb up on the roof with a ladder—potentially falling off and dying, which is both a human tragedy and an insurance cost
or hang the cells vertically under the eaves on the east or west side of the house, like wind chimes: no midday sun, and a significantly diminished capacity factor when you do get sun, but also no holes drilled in the roof, no rigid frames, no rain, and no hailstones
wow, that's a 29% annual return on investment. that's unbelievably huge! not in the literal sense, i mean, i believe you, it's just astounding. are you comfortable sharing your calculation?
I think home batteries are still absurdly expensive for their capacity. The most efficient storage would be for you to buy an electric vehicle and use its battery.
Australia is not a great example as no matter how cheap wholesale prices are, the consumer still gets destroyed by high electricity prices. It's a scam like most things in Australia.
Actually they are cutting you out. Some solar and all battery installations require a backdoor that allows the government to switch your network off at any time.
I'm sure they'll never use it for wrongdoings... but also they probably will.
It's a way to leverage the loads in certain areas but it's dreadful.
But yep. Solar is great for Australian homes. I still think it's weird that we had to solve electricity at the home level though..
The parent comment you're replying to draws the wrong conclusions from the data. Australia already obtains the majority of its power from coal, altogether fossil fuels represent 91% of Australia's consumed energy, with coal as the majority [2021-22 period, ref 1]. The subsidies provided by the state and federal government represent a -decrease- of 5% year on year. The parent comment seemingly skimmed over that point in their reference materials - they also misread the figure it's 11.1Bn, not 1.1Bn
The subsidies for coal generation are necessary and not a reflection of Australia having a growing need for greater coal production (it does not, consumption is trending lower year on year)[1], despite the lower coal-power generation over the 21-22 period[2], energy output has risen by 1% (primarily to service exports).[2]
Currently Australia is no where near the point of having that wonderful luxury problem of solar/renewable inputs tipping the balance to shut down coal production. Stating as such is merely regurgitating coal-industry propaganda. Rather, Australia is adequately planning for such a transition by significantly investing in battery technology. In the meantime current battery technology already allows Australia to burn less coal while simultaneously resolving coal's supply issues.
The reason why you don't see noteworthy subsidies against battery technology is two fold: they are a fraction of the cost and they pay themselves off relatively quickly. Coal doesn't feature either of these benefits, and must be propped up by tax payers. Due to the small cost, Australian states are implementing large battery schemes without federal subsidies, then growing these when they generate a profit.
To use an example: The South Australian "Big Battery" cost $200M, in a single year alone (2019) it saved consumers $116 million.
Alternative style batteries also exist (technically they're batteries too but not the kind you'd imagine). Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia has an attached hydroelectric plant and they'll pump water into the lake during off peak hours and run the turbines at peak demand.
zerocalories asks, 'Why bother? This is like paying off a debt with low interest early. A poor financial decision.'
this presupposes that the energy mix is changing because of costly government subsidies, and if that presupposition were correct, it would be a very reasonable comment
but that's not what's happening. countries aren't hitting their targets because the local government subsidies are more successful than expected; they're doing it because renewable energy (and, in some cases, energy efficiency improvements) is cheaper than fossil fuel in most of europe now, and has been for several years now, so companies and individuals invest in renewable energy instead of fossil-fuel production capacity, even without local government incentives
this is primarily because of capitalism in the people's republic of china, strongly supported, of course, by the so-called communist party of china. past subsidies in some european countries and the usa are of course also historically important
it would be easy to misunderstand that the chinese government is subsidizing the european energy transition, so that as europe switches over to renewables, it will cost the chinese government larger and larger amounts of money until finally they take measures to stem the flood. but that is not the case; the chinese renewable energy producers are profitable on their own terms. there was a price-fixing cartel announced at davos in 02019, which kept the price of solar panels at about €0.20 per peak watt of low-cost panels from the end of 02018 to the end of 02022 (or €0.29 for mainstream higher-efficiency panels). if we believe https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... that price has now fallen to €0.09 per peak watt for low-cost panel modules, €0.14 per peak watt for mainstream, so the cartel has evidently fallen apart; i infer that government support was helpful for holding it together for so long, but presumably at the end the panel producers' gross profit margins were close to 50%, like copyright-mafiaa rentiers. such high profit margins create enormous temptations to undercut other cartel members to win market share, so cartels in markets rapidly climbing up the experience curve tend to be very unstable
(wind turbine prices have also been falling, but the available wind resource is much smaller, and exploiting it is more often politically infeasible.)
suppose you can borrow money at 4% apr to build solar farms, and you somehow manage to keep the total cost of building a plant (inverters, cables, installation, etc.) to twice the panel costs, which has been roughly the historical average (https://ratedpower.com/blog/solar-farm-costs/), and you manage to site the plant somewhere with a capacity factor of 16%—not the 29% california gets, nor the 10% maine and germany get (china too for some reason!), but somewhere in between. €0.09 per peak watt becomes €0.18 per peak watt and €1.13 per average watt, and at that 4% apr, each average watt costs you €0.045 per year in interest. but an average watt is 8.77 kilowatt hours, because a year is about 8770 hours
so that's €0.0051 per kilowatt hour
fossil-fuel power usually costs around €0.03 per kilowatt hour, 500% more. it costs even more when it's being burned in an inefficient mobile internal-combustion engine. it can't compete, except where it's the only option. it can't even compete in germany, much less in india, perú, tunisia, and indonesia
unlike wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels scale down very well; you can get a 200-watt-peak panel. this greatly limits the options incumbent utility companies have to protect themselves from competition from this radical threat; if they try to keep their prices high to pay off the debt they owe on their coal and oil plants, many of their customers will install local generation capacity, reducing their customer base to one even less able to pay off the large fixed costs—the much-feared 'utility death spiral', a phenomenon which so far has not materialized
this is also why african, asian, and american countries with no emissions targets won't just replace european consumption of fossil fuels
it is difficult to overstate the importance of this change for human economic development. the last time the price of energy dropped so much was sometime in the early 19th century, and energy is still profoundly important to the economy, despite the migration of heavy industry away from rich countries. how will this near-order-of-magnitude reduction in the cost of energy affect the relative prices of goods and the possibilities for human development? how will it alter geopolitics?
and given that the price has been falling like this for 15 years (solarserver listed a price of €2.17 per peak watt in may 02009, 24× higher than today, an average halving time of about 3.2 years—the cartel bubble merely paused progress along the trajectory to which the price has now returned) it's likely that it's not done falling yet
> unlike wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels scale down very well; you can get a 200-watt-peak panel.
That's why in UK we have banned construction of Wind Turbines on land, we have banned construction of solar panels on land of 'potential agricultural value', which is basically anything except mountainous terrain.
We have blocked construction of a win farm in South England due to 'potential noise pollution and congestion'. And we give subsidies to the DRAX power plant that 'sustainably' burns the amazon rainforest that was turned into woodchips and shipping 9000 miles to get there.
I have entirely lost faith in the anglo-speaking west as a force for good and progress in this matter.
> That's why in UK we have banned construction of Wind Turbines on land, we have banned construction of solar panels on land of 'potential agricultural value', which is basically anything except mountainous terrain.
I think that ban has more to do with the current party of government being the Conservative Party, who like to imagine the natural state of the whole UK being just like the gardens of a Victorian era country house. For the sake of everyone not from the UK, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harlaxton_Manor_-_Univers...
> I have entirely lost faith in the anglo-speaking west as a force for good and progress in this matter.
You're not alone. Weirdly, even it seems that even Conservative MPs don't have much faith in the Conservative Party right now.
> Conservative Party, who like to imagine the natural state of the whole UK being just like the gardens of a Victorian era country house
I would be happy if that’s what they said, but they campaign on economic growth and investment and then block every attempt to build anything with investment.
Yeah but they have a mix of 80%, with Oceania the not-even-close second of 40%. South America are doing so well it seems like an anomaly on that graph. And it’s fair to say it’s trending up again after a long slow decline
If the costs of carbon and climate change were fully internalized with appropriately set carbon taxes, I would agree with you. In the absence of that, it's entirely possible that these top down efforts are doing too much, too fast (although they could also be doing too little too slowly). But it's absolutely certain that in the absence of such taxes, the market itself will do it far too slowly.
Now, as for what the "appropriately set carbon taxes are" (and therefore how fast is fast enough), that's an entirely political question that depends on the preferences and values of the society enacting the taxes.
Right, we should hold the current government accountable for the Soviet Union's lack of foresight in reaching climate goals for a crisis most didn't even know about in 1980.
> Why bother? This is like paying off a debt with low interest early.
Quite the contrary. Once a solar panel is built, you never need to invest into fuel for it, only a tiny bit for maintenance during its lifetime. The energy is provided virtually for free by the sun, gravity or by the aftereffects of Earth's creation many billions of years ago.
A fossil plant, even a nuclear plant, in contrast will require continuous purchases of fuel, of which quite a lot comes from countries that ... aren't really aligned with our Western values.
Reducing CO2 emissions is just a nice side effect.
> Quite the contrary. Once a solar panel is built, you never need to invest into fuel for it, only a tiny bit for maintenance during its lifetime. The energy is provided virtually for free by the sun, gravity or by the aftereffects of Earth's creation many billions of years ago
You still need to maintain a relationship with the largest solar panel producer, which most certainly doesn't align with your Western values.:)
On the other hand, going nuclear will only have you deal with Tokayev and Trudeau.
When I think of the implications of solar panels I think possession is 9 tenths of the law. Defaulting on loans used to buy solar panels means you still have the panels and the energy they produce. If you can't afford to import oil and gas you're at the IMF's mercy.
One other thing if you can use electricity to produce hydrogen for fertilizer you're also more firewalled when the world banking industry mucks up again and the vultures come out.
I'm sure uranium mining releases some CO2 - unless someone invents electric mining trucks (those things are just mammoth and drive slowly, maybe it can be made to work).
But a little bit of spicy rocks give off such a ridiculous bounty of 24/7 energy that it's just a no-brainer.
We should do solar, wind, and nuclear; in the meantime we can replace a lot of coal and oil with the much cleaner natural gas.
That part's fine; some even charge just from regenerative braking because the ore is at the top of a hill.
As for "nuclear?", energy density only matters in a few specific ways like making it easier to tidy away the waste, what most people care about is cost. Good luck to all the teams trying to make nuclear cheaper, but for now that means PV and wind.
Wind and PV are usually good hedges against each other.
A 1Ω global power grid is a political rather than technical or economic problem.
Batteries are cheaper than you think, and their production is being scaled up rapidly (cars need more than all fixed electricity users).
Nuclear isn't too terrible compared to batteries a few years ago, but the current price and forecasts for future prices of each are currently biased towards renewables being cheaper.
Mine trucks seem to be among the easier kinds of vehicles to convert to fully electric drive, since they already use a power transmission system where the engine drives a generator which in turn drives electric motors that drive the wheels, like the Lohner–Porsche of the early 1900s[1]. This can lead to misunderstandings like of the phrase "The Cat® 794 AC electric drive truck"[2] -- where the "electric drive" means the transmission, AIUI.
But since the electric drivetrain is already there, "all you need to do" is swap the engine and generator out for a battery. May 29, 2023: Australia’s largest miner, BHP, is about to test run heavy-haul trucks with electric motors charged by renewable power"[3]. (Seems to be a Caterpillar.)
A company called Anglo American seems to be doing the same. Feb 13, 2020: "This Mining Truck Will Be the World's Largest Electric Vehicle"[4], and 6th May 2022: "Anglo American has launched its nuGen™ hydrogen-battery hybrid 290 t class mining truck at the Mogalakwena open pit platinum mine" (in South Africa)[5]
Komatsu also talks about their "electric drive tech"[6], but that's also serial-hybrid IIUC. But their distributor in Switzerland,[7], apparently converts them to battery power: "Kuhn Schweiz AG ... Batterien der Lithium Storage GmbH..."[8].
Liebherr also use the diesel-electric drive concept[9]. But they're also being converted by Australian iron ore firm Fortescue Metals (June 16, 2022)[10]. Jan 13 2023: "WAE Technologies, which was acquired by Fortescue in March 2022, completed and delivered the battery system to Fortescue’s workshop in Perth"[11]. January 16, 2023: "Fortescue has taken delivery of a 1.4-MWh prototype battery that's heading for a 240-tonne electric mining haul truck developed in partnership with Liebherr"[12]. The first trucks were apparently delivered in the week of 21st October 2023, to be converted to "Fortescue’s proprietary-owned battery electric and battery electric-fuel cell electric power systems". Seems they're buying a fleet of a whopping 120 units[13]!
Just over a month ago, 2024-01-24: Apparently threre is a "collaboration between Hitachi Construction Machinery and ABB’s Traction division to create a fully electric dump truck for heavy duty mining operations"[14].
For underground use, where the emissions from a diesel-electric system are as bad as those of a mechanical drive combustion-engined one, Sandvik of Sweden already manufactures two models[15]. And Epiroc -- until recently, Atlas Copco, also (at least originally?) Swedish -- one truck and a slew of drills and loaders[16].
So, yeah... The electric mining truck seems to be pretty well invented already.
> We should do solar, wind, and nuclear; in the meantime we can replace a lot of coal and oil with the much cleaner natural gas.
Agree on using nat-gas as a bridge to take down coal (especially as peaker plants to cover for low-wind+low-solar conditions) - oil plants are rare anyway and mostly are used as emergency units or to provide district heating.
Hard disagree on nuclear though. All major projects for central power plants have massively ran over time and financial budgets - a NPP needs >>20 years of planning and construction, and an additional 20-30 years of decomission/teardown (more if it ends up fucked over like Fukushima or Chernobyl). So, even if we start new projects now, they're politically untenable outside of the US and Australia who have enough place to just dump NPPs hours away from civilization, and by the time they're done we will either have working nuclear fusion or geothermal+chemical storage of renewable power generated during daytime. Decentralized/small modular NPPs are a complete dream at the moment, there hasn't been even a technology demonstrator yet that shows that it is possible to contain high temperature molten salts.
> But a little bit of spicy rocks give off such a ridiculous bounty of 24/7 energy that it's just a no-brainer.
The discard from mining said spicy rocks is another very problematic issue. While Canada and Australia at least pay lip service to regulations, that cannot be said at all about countries like Kazakhstan [1], Uzbekistan [2], Russia [3] or even Eastern Germany [4]. Reprocessing fuel has also been fraught with contamination issues like in Sellafield [5] or La Hague [6].
The sooner we get rid of nuclear power, the better.
Pretty sure most solar panels are also sourced from countries that are not aligned with western values, while Australia is one of the largest producers of Uranium ore and nuclear powerplants are built locally.
Ironically despite Australia being a major producer of uranium, its current Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, constantly denigrates nuclear power [1]. But that's par for the course in Australian politics ("Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck").
> Pretty sure most solar panels are also sourced from countries that are not aligned with western values
That's purely a pricing reason, and a bit of a "let's outsource the environmental pollution to China" as well (anything involving silicon tends to use quite nasty chemicals, there's a reason like half the Silicon Valley is a Superfund site). Germany for example used to be the worldwide leader in manufacturing solar panels thanks to a massive subsidy program that kickstarted the industry.
Should China decide to cut us off, it's trivial to establish domestic production again - essentially, a solar panel is a bunch of decently purified sand. That stuff is available everywhere on the planet, unlike gas, oil or uranium.
> while Australia is one of the largest producers of Uranium ore and nuclear powerplants are built locally.
It took the US almost two years to ban the import of Russian uranium [1] despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Besides, Australia and Canada are the only two stable, clearly Western-allied democracies out of the 10 top uranium producers and only account for ~18% of worldwide production. The rest is either too neutral for my taste (Namibia, India), failed states (Niger), an active warzone (Ukraine) or some sort of autocracy (the rest). With these circumstances alone, it's beyond foolish to rely on nuclear.
We should all strive to do what we can, regardless of what others do.
Setting an example and making investments eventually trickles down abroad with technologies being cheaper, with foreign companies being pushed by genuine or PR reasons to make investments on being greener in those countries etc.
Setting an example is a minor point - but that second bit "making technologies cheaper" that's where you'll really find compelling reasons for non-western nations to switch. If the world is producing so many tons to solar cells so that western nations can convert over and the demand starts to slow as their conversion processes near their end then those production lines can find new customers.
The idea that foreign countries will be influenced or pushed by Western countries "setting a good example" into making investments that would benefit their countries from an environmental standpoint is absurd. Do you really think that Chad, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. (who are all at the top of that list for countries with the worst air pollution) give a damn about their air quality? Or PR reasons for bettering their countries? Not even slightly. The leaders of those countries couldn't care less about "their people" because their goal is to keep them poor, uneducated and scared so they can stay rich and in power. This is painfully obvious and pretending it's not real won't help any advancements.
You're on your own mission so reasoning with you seems pointless.
You made up your mind and didn't even bother checking.
But I'll leave you with that. Solar gives 14'000 Iraqis job nowadays and villages fully solar powered are more and more common [1].
Chad too, which you mention, has multiple solar projects[2].
None of this would've happened without the rest of the world making important investments and making the technology cheap.
Setting examples and doing the right thing is morally important regardless of what others do. That still stands. And as an European I much hope for cleaner air, less smog, less gas heaters, etc.
It doesn't make sense to go the other way and have tens of thousands die each year because "it's cheaper if we use fossils".
As a society we have to move forwards and stop thinking it's all about the individual and economical stats.
Economical stats go up and we're as miserable and lonely and mentally unstable as we've ever been. We may at least leave a slightly cleaner and healthier world.
I'd hardly call it a 'mission' to truthfully say that third world countries are struggling with much bigger issues than emissions...and that they are also the worst offenders when it comes to pollution.
These countries may have some small successful projects, but as a whole, most of their citizens are burning whatever they can get their hands on to stay alive, and living in garbage piles. They're not doing higher-level thinking about large-scale green energy projects because they're still in basic human survival mode, and they're being kept there by oppressive dictators and regimes.
It is a crutch of Western society, and a saccharine statement of moral superiority, that we feel we must make the world a better place for everyone. We should demand the same effort from every other country on the planet.
If we keep hand-holding these countries, giving them access to cheaper infrastructure and technology while turning a blind eye to their subversion of Western society, their oppressive regimes and refusing to hold them accountable for their impact on the planet, then we will condemn them to the pitiful state they're in by assuming they can't do any better - while we prostrate ourselves doing everything we possibly can, and yet never reaching the goals we set.
Per capita western countries by far lead pollution in the world.
Even if you ignore per capita, just North America/Europe/Japan/Australia/NZ combined it represents 40% of pollution in the world, despite, combined, not even being 20% of the population.
>And as an European I much hope for cleaner air, less smog, less gas heaters, etc.
And everyone will be poorer. It's already happening in Europe. Coming from the tech world you probably don't notice because you are relatively wealthy. But your neighbors might.
And we have much bigger moral issues than energy...
The entire country of Portugal runs on renewables for extended time, with renewables being 60% of their energy mix.
I don't think they are any poorer because of that.
You need solid numbers and facts.
Don't forget Europe imports fossils at a high price and it makes us weak and dependent on geopolitics (see Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects on our bills).
>We should all strive to do what we can, regardless of what others do
We will go broke trying to slash emissions while the rest of the world uses cheap energy to fuel their economic growth. The days of the US being a positive example of, well, anything are rapidly diminishing.
Looking at the data, Africa and Asia have been steadily increasing their renewables and currently have higher percentage than the US, though the US are catching up very fast thanks to the IRA
Literally exactly what I'm predicting will happen is what's happening today.
North American and European CO2 emissions are decreasing, but world wide emissions are constant. The rest of the world doesn't care, we're only bankrupting ourselves in a futile struggle.
If you really want to reduce atmospheric CO2 the only solution is massive sequestration or military force to stop the third world from burning fossil fuels.
The graph show emissions going down in Africa, slow but steady. In fact they are going down everywhere (even globally) except for Asia. China right now is growing its coal stations alongside renewables capacity as ‘peakers’, but it doesn’t have as much access to sunlight as do much of the rest of the developing world. As it’s renewable capacity grows it will need its peakers less. India is scaling up renewables rapidly too, and will have a similar short term bump as its emerging middle class consume per capita something closer to what the west already does. The main issue may be island nations that don’t have the land for solar and will have to rely on more expensive options for renewable energy
> Simply put they're getting poorer and using fewer resources as a result.
Or energy efficiency is also now cost effective. LEDs are the laziest and most obvious example that come to mind. But even any appliance you buy today has less power consumption due to inexorable march of technological progress.
Compared to Africa or equatorial nations in Asia. But it’s not cope, because China is building plenty of solar. 216 GW last year alone according to a cursory googling
Indeed. While this requires them to do more with long distance power transmission, they are, in fact, in the process of doing more with long distance power transmission.
In the meantime, they're building more of everything else, too.
So… a mixed bag, really. There's good stuff and bad there, on the energy front.
Someone should tell those silly Chinese to look out the window and check if they actually have access to the sun before installing solar panels, because they are installing them at every increasing rates: https://www.statista.com/statistics/673444/china-solar-power... /s
Or like, affordable renewables and reforestation. Also we need to cool the oceans ASAP so they can recover their carbon sequestration capacity. Maybe we could use the negative spot price of renewables to cool the coastal waters as a form of geo engineering.
Reforestation is a scam, the total biomass of all plants on earth is about 450 billion tons.[1] Global CO2 emissions are on the order of 55 billion tons a year.
The only way reforestation is going to matter is if we cut down all the trees globally and regrow them completely every 10 years, which uh seems unlikely.
When people in richer countries buy a lot of solar panels and heat pumps and whatnot, that brings down the manufacturing cost of these items, so that they also become the rational choice in poorer countries.
Once everyone in America started driving cars, that didn't drive a resurgence in the use of horses for transportation in Africa.
I’d argue that the rich nations have an obligation to find a way to structure a less carbon intensive economy. The global south can benefit from the R&D that the west does. It’s not a forgone conclusion that the only way to grow is by burning fossil fuels, but the global south will certainly go that way if there is no known alternative.
This is so hypocritical it is breathtaking! Tiny UK alone has, historically, produced more CO2 that all of Africa has done so far!
Furthermore, USA & West perceives themselves to be leaders in technology and innovation. Cleantech was a perfect opportunity to sell world-leading products to the rest of the world, and make bank. Instead we dithered and delayed, missed the opportunity, and now African leaders are making fun of us, "Why do you come to our country only to complain about China? That's all we hear from you!'
Renewable production is still rapidly increasing, and prices falling. At some point, you saturate the most profitable markets relative to production, and get a race to the bottom.
Worse off nations should benefit from the glut of cheaper panels from companies fighting to stay afloat, that are far cheaper than continuing to buy oil.
Let’s just hope China doesn’t collapse then. We need to produce more panels in more places, however high startup and supply chain setup costs with falling market prices means it’s leading to only established players or national strategic investing.
The premise is false. Renewables are the cheapest form of new energy, which is why they're also the dominant form of new energy and why the targets are being met ahead of schedule.
Renewables are absolutely not the cheapest form of new energy.
Show me a solar + batteries facility that operates 24x365 at sub 0.05 USD/kWh and I'll concede they're cheaper, but you can't because no such facility exists.
If you average the low and high estimate, onshore wind is almost exactly 50USD/MWh, and nothing else is that cheap.
(Yes, you said batteries and 24×365. But the "24×365 capable" fossil sources are nowhere near 50USD/MWh either. And power consumption is not flat across days, the week, and seasons. Particularly solar can be predicted and worked with in adjusting load to match availability.)
First, you already moved the goal posts given how many poor countries (which you were talking about in the comment I responded to) do not have 24/365 electricity. Also: where does the magic number of 0.05 USD/kWh come from? That number is lower than the LCOE for all the items on this graph except wind which is almost exactly that number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_costs_in_doll...
Second, natural gas plants don't operate 24x365; the figures I see say 27%(!) to 71%. Even nuclear varies between low 70s and low 80s percentages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor
Third, even if batteries were as expensive as you think, PV is cheaper than the running cost of a fossil fuel plant, so all the poor countries would still want to install them even if they also used natural gas at night, and that's still a win-win over using natural gas 24/7.
Fourth, given I can't use the statista.com link without an account:
> Today the LCOE of hybrid PV-battery systems ranges from 5.24 to 19.72 €Cent /kWh. This wide cost range is due to the large price difference of the various battery systems.
Which is US$ 56/MWh to US$ 197.2/MWh at current exchange rates.
For comparison, €500/MWh would be the cost of building a storage system from the kinds of battery packs supermarkets around here sell for use in off-grid caravans, and then assuming they last exactly 1000 cycles before being discarded entirely.
> Second, natural gas plants don't operate 24x365; the figures I see say 27%(!) to 71%. Even nuclear varies between low 70s and low 80s percentages:
This is because gas plants are commonly used as peaking power plants because they can respond to load changes very quickly; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant "Peaker plants are generally gas turbines or gas engines that burn natural gas. A few burn biogas or petroleum-derived liquids, […]"
A nuclear power plant is the diametral opposite, it's slow as a behemoth to change output power — it's essentially required to run at those high capacity factors.
(That said, gas power plants designed and built as peaker plants may not in fact even be able to run 24×365 since they're not engineered for that; planning for frequent idle or shutdown cycles certainly eases some constraints.)
Either way discussing a "$50/MWh 24x365" requirement is not even wrong, just 無.
No household can buy electricity at USD$0.05. If the generators are selling it at USD$0.05, the households are buying it at maybe USD$0.15.
In Australia I can right now install a home solar battery system that supplies power at about USD$0.13 when amortised over 10 years. I hear the USA isn't efficient at solar installations as Australia, but you will get there.
Well, even if the former were true, the answer is that capital isn’t easy to come by in poor countries so distributed generation starts coming out ahead.
But the former isn’t true. Renewables are really cheap.
I think there are some stories about how developing nations didn’t have to setup copper wiring all over the back country for the rural development of communication network and could just set up using cellular towers. Sometime using 10 or 15 year old tech is greener than what the west was doing at the same economic development point.
You don’t. You help them electrify with renewables as much as possible. And the car they will buy will be more efficient and burn cleaner than the car the West developed with. And the stove they will use will be more efficient. Until it becomes electric.
They are in extreme poverty because they can’t afford the fossil fuel to burn for economic development. As they develop, they might pick renewable because its cost is falling to the point it might become cheaper than burning fuel, at least for certain use cases.
> Pretty sure none of these countries have emissions targets
That's wrong. I'm not sure why I'm replying as truth seems be to first casualty in culture wars, but the only two that matter in that list are China and India due to their population.
Air pollution is not the same thing as what you’re discussing. Generally speaking, yes, we should probably expect them to use renewables because renewables are gradually cheaper than fuels.
The LCOE of utility solar is cheaper than the LCOE of most if not all fossil fuel based alternatives for the developed US. This does of course vary by region and infrastructure. One would expect that to become more and more favorable over time.
Surprised not to see France on this list with all their nuclear power, though from glancing at this they seem to be using some aggregated measure instead of just CO2 which probably makes it much more complicated.