Ben Lockwood (broadly defined)
Ati@benlockwood Yes it is a huge step forward. That said the latter is deeply stucked in chinese supply chain / dependency on rare earth minerals. Making it independent of dictatorships (mainly China) and Dunkelflaute proof at the same time ... would take a lot of time, money and effort ... that nobody really seems to be making at the moment.
@benlockwood I'm not being pedantic as issues I'm referring to are major. Renewables have their own problems, they ain't 1:1 substitute for big oil yet, and wouldn't be for a long time as everyone's busy hyping how cheap chinese solar panels are but almost nobody's busy building biogas plant every second village to survive that Dunkerflaute without that Hormuz stucked tanker really 💁♂️ So great renewable solutions science gave us, pity nobody's building holistic working system really. 🫣
MatthewToadAgain@ati1 @benlockwood Look at the proportion of electricity coming from fossil fuels in various countries.
Over the last year, only 28% of UK electricity came from fossil fuels, and another 7.5% from biomass.
Some other European nations use even less fossil fuels already.
Studies suggest that getting to 95%+ is feasible with only renewables and short term storage.
Sure, there's a problem with the last 5%. There are a number of solutions, all of them have problems.
But biomass isn't a viable answer. You get *hundreds* of times more usable energy from a field of solar panels than from a field of energy crops.
And solar panels don't have to compete with food; they can be put onto buildings, they can be combined with animal shelters, some crops, etc, and they can be put on low grade land. But even if they did, using biofuels will use **WAY** more land.
And, sadly, it already does, thanks to the use of biofuels in transport and (occasionally) electricity.
"Holistic solutions", sure. For electricity that means a mixture of renewable sources, grid interconnectors, dynamic demand, storage etc.
And it means being sensible about demand - gigawatts of datacenters to support a bubble that is bound to burst soon and is already losing money make no sense.
But energy crops are a non-starter. Genuine agricultural waste can only provide a tiny fraction of total energy demand.
That of course means we need to stop flying. It means heat pumps instead of gas boilers for home heating. And so on. Decarbonising electricity is arguably the easy bit.
@ati1 @benlockwood And yes, as far as transport goes, I know there are problems with EVs. In particular, they make up approximately half of the total mining needed for a "green growth" energy transition. And they are heavier so emit more human-hazardous particulate pollution.
And charging costs way more for people who can't charge overnight at home. Replacing every petrol/diesel car with an EV will take longer than we have.
The answer to that is degrowth. Fewer cars and more public transport.
Electric buses weigh the same as hybrid or diesel buses, are quieter, and lower cost to run.
Most shipping could go electric too, depending on the price of batteries.
What isn't practical is flying.
@MatthewToadAgain @ati1 @benlockwood About the EVs: just build small ones for city or short commutes. Most trips are short. A mate has a twizzy. Interesting stupid fact: EV financial support does not apply to the twizzy and other micro cars because they are considered too small.
Yes, in Europe.
Fuck that. All the wrong incentives.
No, personal individual transport is not what we should aim for, but his village is a bit remote and not too many people live there, so bus connections are bad.
@drchaos @MatthewToadAgain @benlockwood Problem is not that we don't know how to do that transition to renewables right. We do know. All electric economy powered by renewables stabilised with biogas run plants plus some batteries/heat accumulators and so on. Problem is nobody's doing that or only doing the easiest part, and still in a wrong, dangerous way. Examples: 1) Instead of building robotised industry 4.0 PV plants producing cheap PV on a scale in EU we outsource it 100% to china 🫣
@drchaos @MatthewToadAgain @benlockwood 2) Instead of stirring debates on where we need to build biogas plants and how to do it fast, and how to connect them with electric grid to survive winter without fossils we have managed to fund putins never ending war multi-houndred-billion $ fund by just throwing his fossil gas at the problem for 30+ years spending money on things like Nord Stream / Nord Stream 2 and fossil gas itself on the way .... Where would we be if we built biogas supply instead?
@drchaos @MatthewToadAgain @benlockwood 3) Instead of educating masses about bicycles / public transport / car sharing or say making them use a Twizzy if one really really needs a car (eldery, or disabled people etc) we take taxpayers money to subsidise 500bhp chinese - made monster EVs for the rich. Making "brap brap" from speakers to satisfy their stupid "needs" and to make sure our cities are still loud after spending all that money 🤣 To add even more insult. And so on and so on....
@ati1 @drchaos @benlockwood I believe we are in agreement about ground transport. More electric buses, ideally trolleybuses and trains, more active travel, and fewer cars. There are lots of problems to solve to make that happen, but mainly funding; buses can be improved quickly fairly cheaply, while new train lines tend to take forever to build in western countries.
But significant amounts of biogas would mean using vast amounts of land for energy crops, just at the point when food costs are increasing due to climate change, and we need to use as much land as possible for rewilding to recover ecosystems and remove carbon. (Which of course also means changing diets, but that's another story)
There are other options for the last 5% of electricity generation. Iron-air batteries are my favourite; cheap, huge energy density, and requires minimal mining. Whether we can scale it up fast enough remains to be seen. Other options include e.g. pumped storage hydropower, hydrogen, other kinds of batteries etc.
Long term heat storage is indeed possible, where you are doing district heating anyway. And so on.
But we're only talking about the last 5% of electricity demand, and electricity is less than 1/5th of carbon emissions.
Biogas is not a viable option for ground transport or air transport.
In fact, in general, biofuels are greenwash. We can produce a tiny amount of genuinely sustainable biofuels, but not enough to make a real difference.
Solar panels can provide hundreds of times more usable energy per hectare than biofuels. Even when you consider the need to store the energy produced, it is a horrifically bad use of land. And it would lead to more imports of food.
Even if you are proposing a largely agrarian society that uses vastly less energy, we will *STILL* need the excess land for rewilding. We cannot afford to grow energy crops, period.