Natural catastrophe review 2018
munichre.com
munichre.com
To start, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"
==So what can you do about it?==
I work in cleantech, and you should, too! Solar and wind are economical, so now the biggest issue is scaling them up. That means tons and tons of problem solving, which means great tech and engineering jobs!
If you think about it, the switch to renewables means we need to deal with situations where the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, yet still keep the lights on. That means you have to build in a ton of storage and load control, which means good communication and analysis, which means software! Something like half of the impact of the energy transition will be done through software optimizing the deployment and operation of clean energy assets.
Anyway, please check out my previous comments on recommendations when looking for climate impact work[1].
Also, working in cleantech can significantly reduce the feelings of hopelessness around disasters. Think of it like exercise. By working at it, your body naturally replaces anxiety with optimism and motivation. Physically doing something to fight your anxiety will make you feel better.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_technology#Cleantech
I appreciate your passion and desire to fix our planet. But am I the only one who thinks this is the biggest distraction to solving the energy problems of today and the next 100 years? It is just very difficult to get solar to produce the type of energy the world needs for the next 100 years. And it’s the 21st century — its embarrassing that we are talking about wind energy!
Simply put, we need nuclear power. We need to spend more time and energy trying to innovate on nuclear energy. That’s what is needed to support the power needs of 10 billion people who will have the energy demands of a modern western nation today. Solar and wind will just not cut it.
See this talk at NeurIPS 2017
I am deeply disappointed you dismiss wind and solar. They're extremely cheap (~2-4 cents/kwh at utility scale), require very little permitting to deploy, and fail safely. You're limited solely by how fast you can churn out PV panels, wind turbines, and get those components installed. Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in 30 minutes to power humanity for a year. The potential is there, and scaling is orders of magnitude more simple with renewables than nuclear. >90% of new generation in the US along each year are renewables. Coal fired plants are decomissioning decades earlier than predicted. Not even natural gas is as profitable as expected in some markets (Texas) due to how much wind power has been generated. 150+ GWac of new solar generation is planned to be online within the next five years in the US [2].
It would take two decades to replace all fossil generation with wind and solar. Faster if we taxed carbon and poured that money into renewables and battery storage. Nothing fancy required. Anyone can be trained to install solar panels, on rooftops or on ground mounts.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-... (China’s losing its taste for nuclear power. That’s bad news.)
* Speaker shows slide showing power demand increasing sharply into the future. This doesn't square with first world historical electrical demand growth data, and future growth is going to be a function of how quickly the third world develops. Aging first world countries will use less power, China's economy is rapidly slowing, India has an enormous effort to move to solar at the moment [1] [2], and Africa is a wildcard.
* Speaker states that renewables can't provide industrial heat. This is false; there are several methods through which you can obtain industrial heat without fossil fuels [3].
* Speaker states that renewables can't compete with paid off fossil fuel plants. This is false; renewables are already cheaper than continuing to run existing sunk cost thermal generators [4] [5].
* Speaker appears to be advocating for fusion as a viable technology to solve climate change when no production commercial fusion generation technology exists.
[1] https://qz.com/india/1519929/india-will-add-a-record-level-o...
[2] https://qz.com/india/1475736/india-is-now-a-world-leader-in-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_heat
[4] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/its-now-cheaper-to-build-a-new-...
[5] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/even-in-indiana-new-renewab...
> * Speaker appears to be advocating for fusion as a viable technology to solve climate change when no production commercial fusion generation technology exists.
You missed the part where he addresses this. This was the point of his talk -- work on fusion.
> * Speaker states that renewables can't compete with paid off fossil fuel plants. This is false; renewables are already cheaper than continuing to run existing sunk cost thermal generators [4] [5].
Did you miss the 40% cutoff point explained in the video?
> Did you miss the 40% cutoff point explained in the video?
I did not miss it [1]. The speaker is incorrect. Solar and wind are already cheaper than fossil fuels beyond that point (I included citations above regarding that point). Renewables have gotten that cheap. This is good, as it strands fossil generators as stranded assets, and forces investment in battery storage (which is necessary not just for energy storage, but also grid services such as frequency response, as demonstrated by the Hornsdale Power Reserve [built by Tesla]).
The arguments presented for dismissing solar were non-quantitative and based on abstract usage-vs-time curves. This is not a sufficient depth of analysis for this problem. It serves to motivate a talk on fusion to a non-specialist audience, but not to decide a societal resource problem.
It's preposterous to say, "we can't solve the solar energy storage problem, so instead let's perform research on using neural networks to control fusion reactions".
The kind of depth I'm after is a National Academies style report. There was a recent one on fusion energy, which is apparently being used to provide guidance for US fusion research. According to the report [1] --
"The four top-tier [new capabilities] identified by the panel were: advanced algorithms, high critical temperature superconductors, advanced materials, and novel technologies for tritium fuel cycle control."
This report does not, however, give tradeoffs among different generation mechanisms.
[1] http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?Rec... and follow to the 250 page pdf.
Tl;dw?
I guess I simply haven't seen any indication that nuclear can catch up and compete on price, so it's hard to see investors or utilities getting behind nuclear anytime soon.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/hawaii-co-op-signs-deal-for...
And they create lots of jobs.
I've heard about promising new, safer nuke tech for decades. So far, no proof in the pudding. Solar and wind tech were deliberately held back, politically, for decades. Too bad, we would be in much less trouble if that hadn't happened.
https://twitter.com/peterzeihan/status/989868124525809664?la...
He initially says that 500 miles is the limit for practical long distance power transmission.
Transmitting power more than about 500 miles means a load loss of ~10%. The dots on the map represents cities. If the dots aren’t close to a red zone, transmission lost kills solar as a useful input.
That's not true. Siemens quotes losses of 9.4% on a 800 km line for high voltage AC systems, but corresponding DC systems lose 6% at 500 kV or only 2.6% at 800 kV [1]. Look at this list of HVDC projects and sort tables by by Total Length:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
There are many projects over 805 km (500 miles). The 1362 km Pacific DC Intertie has connected Northwest hydropower to Los Angeles since 1970.
In the second thread he also says "no generation >1k miles from metro regions" (1600 km). I'm not sure why he doubled this "limit" but it's still too low. Brazil already has 2 HVDC lines longer than that. India has 2 under construction. China has 4, with another under construction.
He's wrong when he says "lithium [battery technology] does not charge or discharge fast enough." Compared to what, magic? It's faster than any other mainstream battery technology. It's far faster than combustion based peaking generators. That's why it got its utility market start in frequency regulation applications.
He's wrong about other things too, but it takes a lot longer to refute a Gish Gallop than to dump one out on Twitter. According to his bio he has a couple of books published, and he makes good-looking graphics, so I'd be trying to muck out the Augean stables with a teaspoon here.
[1] https://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/201...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18795757
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18333727
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17588647
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14883557
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085276
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13962777
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13948427
I stopped looking after the last one, which is almost two years old.