We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – the physics that demolishes energy policy There is far more heat energy in a swimming pool than in a pan of boiling water. You can boil an egg in the pan. You can’t boil an egg in the pool. And if you doubled the size of the pool, you’d double the energy available — and still have a cold, raw egg.
This is not a riddle. It is the single most important concept in the energy debate, and almost nobody making energy policy understands it.
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The proposal to replace gas and nuclear with wind and solar reverses the direction of every successful energy transition in human history. It moves down the density ladder, deliberately, and hopes for the best.
That is what I mean when I say current energy policy is in a head-on collision with physics.
– Richard Lyon
Read the whole thing.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Yes, the “energy transition” (to wind and solar) is anti science.
P.S. there is no energy transition. Only pouring of tons of money and irons on false pretenses.
The Guardian recently published a heading: “The ban on transition treatments for minors is anti science”. This “transition” is also nonsense.
I do wonder how long a wind turbine or solar panel has to operate before it has repaid the energy used to manufacture and install it. As I understand it biofuels produce less energy than it takes to produce them.
To play the cynic here, you can build renewables within the lifetime of a Parliament, and thus take the credit, but you can’t build a nuclear plant (in Britain) in that time.
Three sayings that ring true:
“If wind turbines / solar panels were economical, they’d be using wind turbines / solar panels to make wind turbines / solar panels.”
“If biofuels were economical, they’d be using biofuels to make biofuels.” And,
“Wind turbines – a fourteenth-century solution to a twenty-first-century (non-) problem.”
Two words: Diffuse and intermittent.
The explanation is so simple, it just cannot be misunderstood. It can only be wifully ignored.
Correct.
Which means that the whole Net Zero agenda can only lead to the destruction of nations that follow it.
What we do NOT know is whether our rulers do not understand this (perhaps they are honestly ignorant) – or whether our destruction is their intention, their conscious objective.
Roue le Jour – as you know Japan is working on small nuclear reactors that will be on stream well within five years.
This is why you, correctly, said “in Britain” it is not possible to do this – because, it appears, that nothing good is possible here.
Japan is working on small nuclear reactors that will be on stream well within five years.
God willing.
We do not know what will be in five years, and whether small reactors (if built) will be any good.
Luckily, we still have our old fossil fuels.
Comrade Commissar Miliband insists that two plus two equals five. Any heretic who refuses to accept this, preferring to believe the evidence of their own eyes, is clearly a saboteur. Room 101 awaits.
The point about energy density is well made. But just about all the underpinnings of Net Zero are feeble or fatuous or just plain wrong. More people, not least the Net Zero zealots that are spread through our institutions, should have a go at finding out what the best atmospheric scientists have to say about CO2 in the atmosphere. Basically they say it is a very minor player in climate dynamics. One might start with an article published 5 years ago in the National Review. Called “Climate ‘Emergency’? Not So Fast.”.
FWIW I think this article is a bit misleading. It shows a confusion between physics and engineering. For example: it is true that a lithium ion battery produces a limited energy gradient (compared to, for example, burning methane), but engineering solves this problem by putting a lot of lithium batteries in parallel or series (depending on whether you want voltage or current.) But, you might respond, that makes it heavy and takes a lot of space. But that is a classic engineering question, balancing the various pros and cons to come up with a solution that optimizes for the actual requirements rather than some theoretical perfection.
For example, it is true that an electric car weighs a lot more than a gasoline car. But so what? We are not trying to optimize for weight, we are optimizing for its ability to get from one place to another. EVs have some pros and some cons regarding this verses a gasoline powered car, but that is engineering: making choices that balance the pros and cons to optimize for what you actually want.
To give another example: in the trucking industry a huge amount of trucking is local, and a small amount is long distance. Local trucking works well with batteries that can be recharged — slower than gas, but much cheaper than gas. Whereas long distance trucking is more optimized for the weight to energy capacity of the “fuel” tank.
Engineering thinks about things differently than physicists. To give an example of something I think is going to transform the power distribution industry in the next five to ten years. Currently in the USA (and similar other places) total generation capacity is twice average usage. This is because power consumption is uneven during the day and night. So the use of batteries to buffer this effectively doubles the average energy available for the power grid without building any new power stations. Power stations run much better when you don’t have to turn them on and off all the time. In fact the transition to this approach offers many other benefits. For example, I can see a power grid where local substations are replaced by battery packs (such as Tesla’s Megapack) which takes HT power from the distribution centers and uses it to charge banks of batteries. This offers a lot of benefits. For example, you get much higher quality power, the system is distributed and thus less at threat from systemic collapse, in disasters it can keep running even without the HT lines, and, in a pinch we can truck in replacement fully charged batteries. Our current power grids are like something from the 1950s. This sort of modernization will be transformative.
Now, I think the concern of the OP is that he hates windmills, which I do too. I think they have destroyed the landscape of America. One thing he talks about is power generation per land area — which again is asking the wrong question. What matters is not so much the land area, but which land? For example, one of the windiest places in the world are the Orkney Islands and so they are using largely unused land to generate a lot more power than they need. Also in many places in the world there are vast tracts of useless desert that nobody visits that are prime candidates for solar power. To give another crazy idea, in the Antarctic they have massively strong katabatic winds. Seems to me that, along with the cold helping with cooling, it would be a great place to build data centers. Though in truth I think ten years from now the vast majority of compute will be in orbit.
So, in summary, let’s not confuse physics which tells us what is possible in a specific narrow set of circumstances, and engineering which fits these limitations into that actual practical needs of the users.
We need several things from the “energy grid”:
1. Reliability. The electricity (and natural gas for many places) needs to be there *at least* “four nines”, and preferably “five nines” of uptime. Meaning it’s not available for around an hour a year TOPS, and preferably closer to 5 minutes a year offline.
2. Reasonable cost. It does us no good to have energy we can’t afford.
3. The Grid needs to–the word is escaping me–fail gradually, and limit those failure geographically as much as possible.
Right now we’ve only got three things that can do this. Natural Gas, Coal, and Nuclear. We all know the plusses and minuses of these. And they’re all *way* better than Windmills and solar panels.
But solar has a place in the energy grid *as an adjunct* and in the right places. Not massive fields of solar panels, but getting the costs to where an average home owner in good locations (probably not anywhere in Great Britain, but certainly in the American South West).
Solar doesn’t make sense in Chicago. Rooftop solar *might* make sense in Florida. Rooftop solar *does* make sense in most of Colorado, New Mexico, West Texas (but maybe not east texas), Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and most of California.
Using wind generation only makes sense in places where the wind “never” stops blowing (4 nines), but windmills have been used to pump water for 100s of years, and might make senses in pumping water to refill hydro-electric dams.
The one thing I’d really like to see someone try to work with is using the heat from the 4th generation SMRs to turn waste organics (lawn waste, food waste etc.) into biofuels. This *might* bring the cost of such things down to where they’re viable.
Oh, I was thinking about one other example: aircraft are very sensitive to weight, and so the energy/weight ratio matters a lot and disfavors batteries. But I would remind you that the VAST majority of aircraft today run on batteries. There are far more little battery powered drones than passenger aircraft. Different circumstances call for different solutions.
The physicist might say “batteries will never achieve the energy to weight ratio of gasoline”. But the engineer responds “that is not the goal, flying is the goal.”
It strikes me that this all comes down to our ability to store the energy being captured.
If you want to run electrics straight from panels or fans, you’ll be charging phones, but not running motors or heaters. It’s a trickle.
But if we could slowly capture that same energy over a long time period, and store it somewhere efficiently, we would then have a pool of energy from which we could draw high amp/high voltage power for bursts. Long bursts if we get enough saved up.
So the complaint really is that we cannot store the energy that we slowly capture.
Buy battery-development stocks. That’s the bottleneck, that’s where the money will be made. The breakthrough in batteries will be what makes solar and wind a reasonable source.
Ah – the difference between heat and temperature. Ask a greenie to explain it and they are almost always unable to.
bobby b,
Or a neat way of turning spare electricity in to liquid hydrocarbons directly?
bobby b, with all due respect, batteries have gotten a lot cheaper and prices will likely continue to fall as performance rises. Even if we cut off the Chinese suppliers which we should for geopolitical reasons.
This all boils down to “is burning fossil fuels a bad idea?” I think the answer is “no”.
Dose matters, in all things. The “dose” of emissions depends on how much energy we need. That depends on 1) how many people there are, 2) their standard of living, and 3) efficiencies. If we can keep the dose down, the planet can absorb it.
Let’s stipulate that the most people we will have on Earth is the UN projection of ~10 billion (I’ll ignore the 1M Elon wants to put on Mars; they are on their own by his own definition!).
That’s 25% more than the current 8 billion.
Let’s further stipulate that the standard of living will rise substantially for the poor and especially for the poorest of the poor. But in the next 50 years, this will only require 50% more productivity (not resources only because efficiencies are rising) because those standards will not all rise to current First World levels.
We are already much more efficient in our burning of fossil fuels than just a few decades ago. And let’s add lots of nuclear: shift electrical needs to nuclear wherever it makes economic sense. I think in the big scheme you could then argue that emissions of the extremely nasty pollutant, CO2, will not rise much above current levels.
So, pursue efficiency because you can make more money. Pursue a higher standard of living in the Third World because you are a good person (whether here watching, or there, making it happen). The prospects are great for “everyone having it all” [aside: an odious line from the movie Interstellar where the clearly Leftist Grandpa laments what got them to their sorry state; scene on the porch with Cooper], we could actually achieve it.
Unless we fail to utterly crush the Greens, the adjacent Greens, the blue-yellows pretending they are not “green” and all their fellow travellers (n.b., spell checker wants me to use one “l” here…but I just can’t do that!).
And by crush I mean crush: remove them from the economy, polite society, gainful employment, etc. Their crimes against humanity to date warrant this.
“For example, it is true that an electric car weighs a lot more than a gasoline car. But so what? We are not trying to optimize for weight, we are optimizing for its ability to get from one place to another. EVs have some pros and some cons regarding this verses a gasoline powered car, but that is engineering: making choices that balance the pros and cons to optimize for what you actually want.”
You’re forgetting cost. Its not just about finding an engineering solution, its what that solution costs. Many things are technically possible, but they are not economic to do. Or they are available at a price point that prices many out of the market.
The bald fact is a society based on renewable energy will be a poorer one than one based on fossil fuels, because the average person will have less energy available to them. Today virtually everyone can afford an ICE vehicle of some sort, in the future the electric car will be only for the wealthiest x% of society, the rest will be forced to use public transport, bicycles and walking. Not an improvement in the human life experience, unless you are an eco-fascist.
@Roué le Jour
Or a neat way of turning spare electricity in to liquid hydrocarbons directly?
There are chemical processes for this though they usually require a carbon feedstock like natural gas or coal. They were actually used by the Germans in the second world war to supplement their poor access to oil. However, they are extremely inconvenient and inefficient.
The best solution is batteries. Not wishing to be too much of a shill for Tesla, the fact is that they produce these massive battery packs called megapacks that are used as the power buffers I mentioned above at power stations. They could for sure put them in wind farms or solar farms too, and they might for all I know. They sold something like ten billion dollars worth of these last year, so it is growing exponentially. It is a huge savings for the power companies and helps them hit their environmental goals. (Not that I especially favor that, but it is the reality of power generation in the west.)
They are an excellent solution for exactly this sort of problem. The most common way to store excess electrical energy is by using dams, pumping water up and down, but they are extraordinarily inefficient and actually environmentally destructive (the real kind where they wipe out whole beautiful valleys rather than the fake kind.) And from a national security point of view they are made here in Nevada, and the batteries are made here too with lithium refined here.
If you aren’t familiar the actual generation of power is only a small part of what power companies do. They spend a great deal of time and energy trying to balance the load by taking stations on and off, and varying things like frequency and actual power transmitted since the load is instantaneously variable. Famously, British power stations used to ramp up power generation just before 6pm to account for everyone putting on the kettle before turning on East Enders. Buffering with batteries dramatically simplifies power generation, and especially so if they are distributed out to local communities they way we do with substations right now. Power grids are horrendous, massively out of date technology. These sorts of technologies dramatically transform and secure the power grid.
FWIW, I have been buying a lot (by my tiny measure) of Tesla stock recently. I am confident they will be the first company in history to hit a market cap of 10 trillion. The only other company that could come close is SpaceX.
Read there, but I’ll comment here.
I suspect that a lot of politicians believe that, if we are to have clean power (or anything else, for that matter), all that is necessary for government to pass a law. After all, how many politicians have a background in engineering or physics?
GregWA: In a normal year, I live 5-6 months powered by my battery bank, fed by solar panels, in the Arizona desert.
For the first five years of this, I relied on on my bank of traditional flooded lead acid batteries – hundreds of pounds of them, fed by many rooftop solar panels. It was a cool system.
The revolution into lithium-based batteries was a game-changer for me, as they can absorb and then put out so much more power in a day than FLA batteries. I can be profligate in my electric use. Heck, I run my welder on my batteries at times. It’s LI tech that enables TESLA right now.
But the NEXT revolution that I look for is going to be an even bigger leap in capability. How? I have no idea, but I trust that we’ll come up with some new tech that will leave my Li batts obsolete. I’m not looking for incremental improvements to existing base tech – I’m anticipating an entirely new battery tech.
I’m an optimist. But humans are amazing.
No I’m not. Cost is just another one of the factors that plays into the engineering decision process. And the price of EVs is dramatically decreasing.
The bald fact is a society based on renewable energy will be a poorer one than one based on fossil fuels, because the average person will have less energy available to them.
Why? I’m not particularly an advocate of renewable energy or an opponent of hydrocarbon energy sources. I think a good mix is the best choice, though I do think over time hydrocarbons will become less and less important, for fuel anyway. As I mentioned above, buffering batteries could double the amount of power available to the grid without building any new power stations, so these sorts of technology make energy more abundant not less.
Today virtually everyone can afford an ICE vehicle of some sort, in the future the electric car will be only for the wealthiest x% of society, the rest will be forced to use public transport, bicycles and walking. Not an improvement in the human life experience, unless you are an eco-fascist.
FWIW, I think the future is quite different than that. I think far less people will own cars because the other options are better. I’m thinking specifically of robotic taxi systems that will take over for most driving since they will be far cheaper and more convenient than owning a car. One major downside of public transportation is that it doesn’t come to your door or drop you off at your destination or come at a time that is convenient for you, things that will not be a problem for these devices.
Of course some people love driving and love cars and no doubt will continue to own them. But some people grow vegetables in their backyard instead of buying them at the grocery store even though it often costs more and offers less choice. Why? Because the enjoy it and want to, or maybe even are trying to make some sort of political point. Me? I buy my groceries at the grocery store and would probably be happy to take a robotic taxi at a quarter of the cost of driving.
I was reading somewhere that on average people who own trucks (this is an American phenomenon obviously) use it as a truck perhaps once or twice a year. If I was using a robotaxi I could order one with a truckbed the few times I needed it, and ride a simpler vehicle the rest of the time.
I don’t want to ban cars, on the contrary I like driving them fast occasionally. But most of my day to day driving I’d rather have it done for me so that I can do something more productive instead. I am in favor of choice and I am a passionate advocate of excellent engineering. These devices are breathtaking in their engineering excellence. The AI the runs the FSD is not much short of sorcery. A future where AI does most of the driving is a future where a lot less people die or are injured on the road.
So, I’m not an advocate of these things because I fear a global CAGW cataclysm, in fact I think most of that stuff is bunk. I favor it because I believe in choice and I think these technologies are often, though not always, superior choices on their merits alone.
We used to have a society based on “renewables”. AKA Pre-industrial.
A future society based on “renewables” will have essentially have the same energy sources with the same issues – the basic physics described above.
It’s possible that some startling new technology will develop which will overcome the physics – being so diffuse and intermittent – and make the “green” fantasies real. I would love that to be the case, but huge lithium-ion – or any other kind of chemistry based battery – is absolutely not it. Without some such breakthrough – and nobody as yet has any idea what that might be (we’re not talking fusion here, which would be an extremely concentrated energy source of the the kind we need) – the future is poverty for the masses, and the privileged lifestyle the “elites believe they are going to have. Well, compared to even the average Joe today, they will also be in for a rather rude awakening.
Witness the insane cost and increasing unreliability of “green” energy in the UK and elsewhere – teetering on the brink of black outs.
I’m sorry, I really don’t get the self driving car fantasy either – not that I don’t believe such technology might not be possible. Far from it.
I just question this whole belief that your personal transportation needs can be handed over to faceless, monopolistic corporates. Or why you would even want this? You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy. I think we all agree that is hardly a mantra for societal harmony and freedom.
YOU will own nothing. Just because the entity that will has shareholders? Sorry, I really can’t see why that should be any better. The “self driving ” vehicles imagined will be what THEY decide are needed, not you. As will the range, availability and rates. You may be able to log on and ask. who knows what might eventually turn up, when and in what condition.
What sort of hoops will you have to jump through. “Sorry Mr Jones, that will exceed your mileage allowance for the month”, “you’re only permitted one journey into zone D and you’ve already had that”
Want “15 minute cities”? Well don’t wish for something too much, you might get it!
To be fair to the politicians – everything they will be shown by officials and “experts” will lead them to the same (FALSE) conclusions.
It takes incredible will power to tell all the officials and “experts” to go-to-Hell – and if a politician does so, they will be reported for “bullying” and removed – as the Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab was.
In the United States Presidents and State Governors are directly elected – it is quite difficult to remove them between elections, in Britain the establishment can remove a Prime Minister who does not obey the establishment line – as was shown by the removal of Prime Minister Liz Truss. And see the removal of other Prime Ministers – including Margaret Thatcher, the only Prime Minister in my life time to actually achieve positive things.
The United Kingdom may be a democracy in theory – but it is not one in practice (see above).
What Mark said. Fraser Orr’s version of the future is utterly dystopian, and why anyone would think that a society controlled by faceless corporate (or governmental) organisations is a good thing I have no idea. What such a person is doing on this site equally escapes me.
bobby b, you might be waiting a while for more than incremental advances in battery tech. Chemistry doesn’t move at Moore’s Law rate.
There’s only been three rechargeable battery technologies that have gained widespread adoption.
Lead acid – good for medium scale, cheap.
Nickel metal hydride variants – worked for small scale, hand held and carry able stuff. Lots of drawbacks.
Li ion variants. Surprisingly, depending on the chemistry and engineering quality control, pretty good at small, medium and large scale.
I don’t expect to see a major advance in my lifetime. Batteries are not computer chips.
bobby b, I’ve been toying with the idea of a home solar project, so I have been following LiFePO4 battery prices. Truly amazing. Recent record is well under $100 for a 12V 1.2kwh battery! And used solar panels (Arizona sellers!) are amazingly cheap! So, now a whole house solar system can be had for $5000 or so (parts only, 10kw/10kwh system). Even with our hydro-nuclear power costs in the PacNW ($0.08/kwh) and our 3 months of clouds every winter, it can be cost effective. The last thing I need to figure out about a whole house system is how to install it as a grid-tie but also be able to unplug from the grid when the Apocalypse happens!
I’ve got a few portable systems, one (5kwh batteries, 3kw inverter on a handtruck) runs as an uninterruptible power supply for my garage fridges (~24 hrs runtime in a power outage). The EG4 off grid inverter is awesome ($700!)
I like your optimism re batteries. Pity all the US’s battery R&D is done by ChiComm grad students in our national labs!
Apologies to all for this comment being a decidedly non-Samizdata.net topic!
Did cavemen have solar panels and battery storage? What you are saying here is self evidently not true. And, FWIW, I am not even advocating for renewable energy. I’d love to see widespread use of nuclear energy but it is practically impossible to do that in the west so we have to pursue other avenues to generate the abundant power we need.
I would love that to be the case, but huge lithium-ion – or any other kind of chemistry based battery – is absolutely not it.
I’m sorry but your information is out of date. Lithium ion batteries are being used successfully precisely for these sorts of things. It is early days, but they will undoubtedly play a huge role in the future.
Witness the insane cost and increasing unreliability of “green” energy in the UK and elsewhere – teetering on the brink of black outs.
But I’m not advocating at all for green energy or energy policies. I think net zero is a suicide pact. However, the use of better battery storage would allow your suicide to take a bit longer.
I’m sorry, I really don’t get the self driving car fantasy either – not that I don’t believe such technology might not be possible. Far from it.
You don’t understand why people would want to be reviled of the chore of driving? I mean have you ever sat in a traffic jam? And you don’t understand why a technology that would dramatically reduce the largest cause of non medical mortality would be a good thing? I really don’t get your perspective at all. As I already said, drive your car if you want to, but allow people to chose differently it they want to also. And just to be clear, self driving is not a fantasy. Waymo taxis have no driver or remote control, and Tesla cars have driven six billion miles on full self drive. It is a technology that already exists and is widely deployed.
I just question this whole belief that your personal transportation needs can be handed over to faceless, monopolistic corporates. Or why you would even want this? You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy. I think we all agree that is hardly a mantra for societal harmony and freedom.
I think you are projecting. I never suggested that we should own nothing, in fact you’ll find few bigger advocates of private property than me. But we hand lots of things over to other service providers, some of which are monopolies. I mean do you generate your own power, or your own internet? How about water? Do you own the roads you drive on? Do you grow your own food, or do you hand that vital task off to some faceless corporate monopoly? And that car you drive? Did you build it yourself or did you hand that task over to some faceless corporation? Those faceless corporations that you seem to dislike so much are the foundation for modern civilization.
I totally understand that the American psyche is bound up with the car as a symbol of freedom. And great. Enjoy your car, I like driving too, though not always. But allow other people to make different choices. And, FWIW, I’m not sure it is clear that robo-taxis have to be monopolistic at all. There are already multiple providers. I personally think Tesla will dominate that market but not by monopolistic manipulation, but by providing a better service, but who knows, there are a lot of those faceless corporations you seem to hate that are innovating in this business too.
Why do you think it impossible? Unless you mean politically, which can easily change.
@Fraser Orr
The idea that batteries – lithium-ion or anything else conceivable – could provide real time power for a grid in the way you suggest on any significant scale is an utterly laughable fantasy. The “large scale” batteries you refer to are simply a monstrous mess that somebody (cough – taxpayers) will get a huge bill for in the – probably – not too distant future. Same with windmills and thousands of acres of solar panels.
“Not wishing to be too much of a shill for Tesla” You could have fooled me!!
The one large scale “renewable” that works – hydro – we’ve had for well over a century”. I did not have to be forced on anybody. We never needed windmills or solar panels for electricity on a large scale before the green fanatics got their influence over governments. Why do we need the now? (We don’t of course. Norway, BTW, has a very stable and efficient grid based on around 95% hydro).
The power grid we had was fine. Because of these damned things, look at it now! (UK at least!)
Had a quick look, and Tesla autopilot is SAE level 2 (of 5):
Level 2 (Partial Automation): The vehicle can control both steering and acceleration simultaneously. Common examples include Tesla Autopilot, GM Super Cruise, and Ford BlueCruise. The driver must keep hands on or near the wheel and eyes on the road – It has a long, LONG way to go to relieve you of the chore of driving.
“The AI the runs the FSD is not much short of sorcery”. No, the marketing is! (or is that just the weird belief people have in Tesla?)
“I’m thinking specifically of robotic taxi systems that will take over for most driving since they will be far cheaper and more convenient than owning a car”. Yes, what I was referring to as well. They really don’t want us to have private cars
I think I am extrapolating rather than projecting. Look at milk floats; subsidies, grants, fines on manufacturers to try and force these on people (to the ruin of many a dealership) and stated intentions to actual ban petrol/diesel cars (which is unwinding at a rate of knots). And who will get the bill for the unsold hundreds of thousands, possibly millions worldwide?
I would have thought that “self driving” could become their next pet and they could look at reserving roads – lanes certainly – for such things. Special grants for “robot” taxi companies etc etc.
Watch this space. I get the distinct feeling that there is little real intention of giving you any choice.
@Alisa
Why do you think it impossible? Unless you mean politically, which can easily change.
Yes I meant political, and no it cannot easily change. For sure, nuclear power stations will take decades to build because of the impossible regulatory environment. (Though there are some places, such as France, where they have done so successfully. Not in Britain or America though.)
Well, I guess you and I differ in our optimism-allocation preferences 🙂
@Mark
The idea that batteries – lithium-ion or anything else conceivable – could provide real time power for a grid in the way you suggest on any significant scale is an utterly laughable fantasy.
Here are the facts. In the past two years Tesla deployed about 90GWHr of megapack capacity. This is enough to buffer the power usage for New York City, and this is in the basically the first two years of having the product available and when they are still experimenting and haven’t fully ramped up yet.
The one large scale “renewable” that works – hydro – we’ve had for well over a century”. I did not have to be forced on anybody.
It was forced on the people whose homes were destroyed and on the people who loved the landscape and beautiful valleys it flooded. It is hard to imagine you’d (justifiably) criticize windmills for being ugly yet allow for these huge ugly projects. Don’t get me wrong, we need them for water reservoirs, but don’t imagine there isn’t a huge downside to hydro.
The power grid we had was fine. Because of these damned things, look at it now! (UK at least!)
The power grid was and is an antiquated, bodged together nightmare that is at constant risk of failure with catastrophic effects. What I am suggesting will not fix that, but will help.
Had a quick look, and Tesla autopilot is SAE level 2 (of 5):…. “The AI the runs the FSD is not much short of sorcery”. No, the marketing is!
Rather than reading baloney on the Internet I suggest you get a friend with a Tesla to take you on a FSD drive. It is just remarkable to watch it in action. I guarantee you it is a better driver than you or me. It is hard to actually get to level 5 for regulatory reasons, but billions of miles have been driven with it with drivers barely paying attention.
I think I am extrapolating rather than projecting. Look at milk floats; subsidies, grants, fines on manufacturers to try and force these on people
You are out of date, or maybe you live in a different country than me. Tesla robo taxies are not subsidized they are just good cars that are cheap to make and run. TBH when you call a sophisticated machine like a modern EV a “milk float” it just shows your ignorance or unwillingness to have a serious discussion. They are engineering marvels. You are letting your politics color your judgement.
As to what the government does? I have no idea, but it has nothing to do with the intrinsic values of this sort of transportation.
@Alisa
Well, I guess you and I differ in our optimism-allocation preferences
It is rare to hear optimism about government actions here on this blog. But I hope you are right!
It’s not about government, but about regular people and physical reality – as a wise man said once: what can’t go on, won’t. But anyway, we’ll see (or our children will).
Fraser and Alisa, if I can add to your nuclear conversation. I work for a DOE national lab, one that is key to the US’s nuclear renaissance (I won’t say which but even a Portlander could probably figure it out from a google search).
Lots of optimism (kool aid?) going around, from Secy Wright on down. Buuut, serious studies have outlined how to cut the time from concept to power-on-the-grid for nuclear in half, at least. And it’s not just technology, although advanced reactor R&D is helping (keeping in mind that “advanced” reactors have been under development for over 10 years!), it’s also regulations. And maybe most importantly, political will.
Check this out: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1974450
Sentiment in congress, academia, and their fellow travellers in the MSM has also shifted in favor of nuclear. Not sure if wide public opinion has followed yet.
But I’m hopeful about nuclear for both technical and political reasons.
@Fraser Orr
Damn, you must be buying a LOT of tesla shares!!
“This is because power consumption is uneven during the day and night. So the use of batteries to buffer this effectively doubles the average energy available for the power grid without building any new power stations” You actually BELIEVE this?!!
Hydro produces reliable power 24/7/365. Windmills are the antithesis of reliable (and incredibly, some people believe lithium-ion batteries can make them produce a stable output!!). Solar panels produce nothing at night (16 hours in December where I am. Also, have a look at an insolation map) so your batteries are irrelevant in respect of these (at least for the use you imagine they have). My objection to windmills (and solar panels) has nothing whatever to do with aesthetics, why do you assume it does?
“billions of miles have been driven with it with drivers barely paying attention”, On what sort of roads? Do you need to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention or not?
“It just shows your ignorance or unwillingness to have a serious discussion”. I’m trying but all you are doing is throwing strawmen at me.
“They are engineering marvels. You are letting your politics color your judgement”. No they are not and yes you are.
That’s the general impression I got. As to public opinion, once the PTB in the US give the actual nod, most of the sane public will follow, in the US and from there the rest. That’s what I meant by ‘easily’ in my original comment.
I’m hopeful for the same reasons. Nuclear is the way to go as the optimal source of power, with storage and transmission being separate issues, to a degree. I am not totally sneering at solar, wind an so on, when that is an individual choice for specific reasons, I just don’t think these can be as widely adopted as “environmentalists” would like to think.
@Mark
You actually BELIEVE this?!!
It isn’t a belief, it is physics. And if you aren’t going to actually make substantive arguments you are wasting everyone’s time.
Hydro produces reliable power 24/7/365.
That’s not always true, hydro is often used as a storage medium. But so what? You seem to be under the impression that I am an advocate of wind turbine power or renewables. I’m not, I think windmills are an abomination. Solar power is a different story and it is often a good thing to add into the mix. Maybe not where you live, but in many places.
You are making the classic mistake of thinking that just because I think EVs are a great technology that somehow means I swallow the whole green agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth.
On what sort of roads? Do you need to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention or not?
So this just tells me you haven’t done even the most basic research on this. On every kind of road and yes with hands off wheel, and you are required by law to “pay attention” but you do not need to — the law has not caught up to these technologies yet. FFS just take ten minutes to watch a video of FSD in action. There are hundreds of them on YT. I found one for you. Watch it or don’t, and just remain ignorant.
“They are engineering marvels. You are letting your politics color your judgement”. No they are not and yes you are.
If you watched that video and are not astounded, you are not being serious, you are just playing out an agenda. My politics are libertarian, they are about freedom to chose, even freedom to chose EVs.
Alisa – correct, and the West includes Japan and other countries which are building nuclear power stations. With modern technology small nuclear reactors are straight forward to build – and to dispose of at the end of their working life.
As for people who put their faith in solar cells and wind turbines – the only polite thing one can say to such people is “you are mistaken”.
Although it should not be forgotten that their is no terrible shortage of hydrocarbons – if people really hate nuclear power, coal is the obvious source of electrical power, and petrol (gasoline) the obvious fuel for for cars and trucks.
The United Kingdom has undermined its hydrocarbon (gas, coal and oil) production – as California has done.
There is nothing inevitable about power shortages in places such as Britain and California – it is an entirely self inflicted problem, and a problem that solar and wind power will NOT solve. Indeed some of the massively subsidized solar power stations of California are being CLOSED.
Batteries are great at creating fires – which burn and burn and burn, but of little use for large scale power demands.
Tens of millions of privately owned cars can not be powered by electricity – it will not work, and even in Western populations return to trains and trolly cars (trams) they would still need electrical power (although less than vast numbers of cars) – and that power would have to come either by a massive return to coal, or by a massive expansion of nuclear power.
By the way – Japan, which is expanding nuclear power, also has the best rail network in the Western world.
In Britain “rail privatization” means a system which (apart from a few steam railways) is 100% government owned.
@GregWA
Sentiment in congress, academia, and their fellow travellers in the MSM has also shifted in favor of nuclear. Not sure if wide public opinion has followed yet.
I hope you are right, I really do. But let me ask you a question — do you want one built in your backyard? What about most people? NIMBY is perhaps the largest problem with nuclear power and even if the public is more in favor of it, they are not in favor of it anywhere near them. Here where I live there is a mini tech corridor with a large number of phone and network companies all co-located. They tried to build a small data center here and the city, which is generally pro business and pro technology, rejected the building permit after a big public campaign. That’s for a data center. I can’t imagine what it would be like trying to build a nuclear power station. What would the environment and regulatory permits on that be like?
I’m sure you are well aware of the story behind Yucca mountain. I mean, built in the middle of the desert deep in the ground in the most stable possible rock, and still they couldn’t get it open.
Like I say I hope I am wrong and you are right, but I do not see us on a nuclear rebirth. I’d be shocked if a new nuclear power plant of any size came online in the next fifteen years. I hear Microsoft is trying to restart Three Mile Island. Good luck with that.
Again, I REALLY hope I am wrong because nuclear power is a great solution.
@Fraser Orr
Yes, it’s assisting driving, and actually no, I’m not astounded.
All I’ve done quote your words back at you to see if you yourself understand what you’ve written (I’m glad to be ignorant by your standards!)
(You actually BELIEVE this?!!)
“It isn’t a belief, it is physics. And if you aren’t going to actually make substantive arguments you are wasting everyone’s time”.
Would you be so good as to explain? (It’s not “buffering” BTW)
NIMBY is a real issue, but it has largely to do with psychology, so very changeable: people are afraid of new things, or older things they were conditioned into being afraid of – and then one day they no longer are (there are many examples of this throughout history). Maybe where you live Fraser, people are more so conditioned, so the change will begin in other areas where the attitudes are more rational or maybe there are greater practical incentives, or both. Reason does prevail after all, although usually not as quickly as we’d like 🙂
“So this just tells me you haven’t done even the most basic research on this. On every kind of road and yes with hands off wheel, and you are required by law to “pay attention” but you do not need to”
Lol. You should see the roads we have in the Uk nowadays. Love to see a Tesla spot and drive around this sort of thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVbeeP7L_DA
” Waymo taxis have no driver or remote control,”
Bollocks. They are monitored remotely by humans, who basically tell them what to do when they don’t meet something they don’t know how to cope with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2VkilenX_M
@Fraser Orr: the simple question you have to ask yourself is this – can a mass population industrial society be sustained entirely by renewable energy or not? And in that I mean it can produce EVERYTHING it currently consumes from renewable sources alone? Not import them from somewhere else that doesn’t care about Net Zero madness, and thus pretend the emissions don’t count (which is what the UK is doing – if we import (for example) artificial fertiliser or steel from outside of the UK the production emissions don’t count towards the UK’s tally, whereas if they were made here the emissions would count). There is absolutely no way the UK could manage to sustain its current (measly) standard of living if everything had to be made via renewable energy. Every ounce of steel, every tonne of concrete, every degree of domestic heating, every mile of distance travelled, every mouthful of food, every kilo transported. We would be back to living standards of 80-100 years ago.
According to a retired French nuclear guy I once met at a Christmas Party (that’s who you bump into in Richland WA!), the French addressed the NIMBY problem for nuclear waste by asking communities if they would like a nuclear R&D center in their area? Lots of good hi tech jobs! Oh, and one of the things being studied was a long term storage facility. “Storage for what?” …well “used fuel” as we now call it! He said it worked. And I read something recently about US efforts that sounded like they had learned that lesson!
Not sure how that works for nukes…because we need a LOT of them.
Oh, and let’s re-apply the “renewables” label to nuclear? Why you say? Because we’ll never run out of Uranium, I says! And if it gets low, we’ll go after the Thorium. I did a very crude calculation of how much uranium is in the Earth crust at accessible depth (<5mi). It's a lot, even by government accounting standards which consider "billions" to be round off error!
Here’s a great write up on why fossil fuels are not just about electrical power or running ICE machines (not the US Feds busting illegals, the internal combustion engine).
https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/chapter-1-the-physics-that-demolishes
@Jim
@Fraser Orr: the simple question you have to ask yourself is this – can a mass population industrial society be sustained entirely by renewable energy or not?
No, certainly not any time soon, but why would you ask? I certainly have never made any such claim.
There is absolutely no way the UK could manage to sustain its current (measly) standard of living if everything had to be made via renewable energy. Every ounce of steel, every tonne of concrete, every degree of domestic heating, every mile of distance travelled, every mouthful of food, every kilo transported. We would be back to living standards of 80-100 years ago.
So yes, Britain is screwed, and not just because of NetZero, but for sure that is a big contributor. But I find it amazing that you are making predictions about the future without factoring in the thing that will actually change the future, namely AI and robotics. They will both create gigantic wealth powered, FWIW by solar energy that runs the orbiting data centers that provide the intelligence for the whole thing. These two technologies totally define the future, everything else, except in the short term, will be a rounding error. Britain, because of its stupid energy policies will play no part in it, and so that best they can hope for is that they can live off the scraps that fall from the American, or, god help us, the Chinese table.
Now depending on your perspective that might be the dystopia you accused me of earlier or perhaps it will be great if you don’t live in Britain. But it doesn’t matter what you think, or what I think. That is what it is going to be. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle.
But I don’t know why I am bothering to tell you and that other guy, Mark of whatever his name is, any of this. It truly is pearls before swine. If one is not astonished by FSD, I guess we’ll all have to wait till robots take all our jobs before the astonishment sets in.
@Fraser Orr
Well it was only a matter of time before you resorted to plain abuse.
Thought it would have taken a bit longer but there you go.
If people, for some bizarre reason, do not like coal, oil and gas – then have nuclear power, fission in the short to medium term – fusion in the long term.
Solar and wind are a bit of a joke – although good business for China which makes much of the solar cells and wind turbines.
“namely AI and robotics. They will both create gigantic wealth powered, FWIW by solar energy that runs the orbiting data centers that provide the intelligence for the whole thing. ”
Lol. You must have been smoking whatever Elon smokes these days. Because when you’re taking some pretty powerful hallucinogenics, basing a society on a power and computing power source thats located in space sounds entirely sensible.
Nuclear has it’s share of unsolved and unsolvable problems. The biggest is that we cannot neutralize radioactive matter. And nuclear energy involves producing ever more highly radioactive matter.
I cannot predict the future, but can say that, for now, I prefer fossil fuel energy over nuclear.
Nuclear IS dangerous, and that is an ungetarroundable fact. Besides, nuclear is dead in the water, has been for some time, and there is no “revival”. Just talk.
Jacob – I respectfully disagree on nuclear power, but I have nothing against hydrocarbons.
As for “orbiting data centers” – a deeply misguided idea.
“There is far more heat energy in a swimming pool than in a pan of boiling water.”
Well duh! There is far more water in a swimming pool so how could that be otherwise? I don’t think the issue is that people don’t understand this. Perhaps they don’t want to understand it?
“The biggest is that we cannot neutralize radioactive matter.”
Yes, actually we can. The problems of storing and/or reusing nuclear waste were solved in the 1950s. Since then, the problem has been getting people to understand that.
“Besides, nuclear is dead in the water”
In many places in the world (e.g. France, Ontario) nuclear is still the number 1 generator of electricity by far. For good reasons.
Nuclear energy is the future (hopefully thorium and/or fusion). If mankind is to have a future that is. Oil gas and hydro do not have the energy density necessary for routine interplanetary travel. Or for massive AI data centers for that matter.
Steve D.
Correct Sir.
And I would add – Japan.