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Vericeon t1_j7ursfn wrote

Reply to comment by Semifreak in Renewables are on track to satiate the world's appetite for electricity by ForHidingSquirrels

> At the same time, global electricity generation from both natural gas and coal is expected to remain flat over the next three years.

Wouldn’t we want to see these declining steeply to have much optimism for 2050?

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94746382926 t1_j7v4gre wrote

The IEA has long history of greatly underestimating the adoption of renewables. To the point where I question if the Oil lobby influences their reports. Every single year they revise their estimates and they're always an underestimate. We are currently way above their best case predictions from 5 or 10 years ago. For some reason they always try to model the growth as a linear graph when it has clearly been following an S curve for quite some time now.

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goodsam2 t1_j7vltou wrote

Today we are past their best scenarios in like 50 years. The report is honestly baffling. it's also been like that for a decade.

https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/

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dontpet t1_j7vt028 wrote

The article includes this quote.

>“For many years the IEA earned the reputation of vastly underestimating renewable energy growth,” he said, “so there might be a tendency to bend over backwards and err on the side of exuberant optimism.”

Did they give inflated electrons this time? The report itself says

>Our outlook for 2023 to 2025 shows that renewable power generation is set to increase more than all other sources combined, with an annualised growth of over 9%.

I get confused at that point not knowing if they mean any of three things.

9% growth in energy output annually

9% growth of installation of equipment compared to the previous year

9% growth of equipment from the previous accumulated

Anyway, hope they have vastly underestimated as usual. Every time I look into their assumptions they did a significant bias toward minimal growth.

Yesterday I looked at their projections for our mining and minerals needs for example and they were so pessimistic and already demonstrably wrong.

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Semifreak t1_j7veuip wrote

That's just 3 years. I'm wondering about what will happen in 30 years. And even 30 years is not really that long.

The speed of progress is astonishing. So much will change and happen in 2050 it is ridiculous...ridiculously awesome, that is!

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stevey_frac t1_j7yrqu9 wrote

I'm hoping we get inexpensive A SMB reactors, or supercritical geothermal borehole tech going.

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Semifreak t1_j7yt9rr wrote

Now we're talking!

Maybe even break the fusion power challenges. Re0designing much more efficient experimental tools for research from medicine to space studies. Way better batteries, too.

The sky's the limit!

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Rofel_Wodring t1_j7zlah5 wrote

Expect commercially viable fusion at the end of this decade. Maybe not an actual plant that provides your home power (though there will definitely be viable near-term plans to do so) but unless I've been the wrongest I've been about anything in my life this decade will be the last decade of that stupid nuclear fusion joke.

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Semifreak t1_j818tqo wrote

Things are certainly looking up. MIT will run a test in 2025 with their 'mini' sized reactor (tiny magnets). ITER in 2035. And there is a third company using plasma instead of magnets I read about but I forget when their test run will be.

Of course it will be decades till actual homes run on actual fusion plants power after a successful 'proof of concept' from at least ITER or maybe MIT, but at least we can know for sure if fusion is doable or not in just a decade or so.

Also, 'decades' is not a long time, really. Nuclear power plants were first suggested in 1941 and the first commercial one started in 1957. I think even skeptics don't have a problem imagining fusion power would be real by 2100. The question is how soon can we get it working- if we can, just to keep an open mind. After all, everything is vaporware till it happens.

Let's just hope governments can streamline the paperwork and fix the crazy, crazy, 'over head' and 'manager' costs to speed things up.There is a SINGLE public toilet in San Fran that is costing 1.7 million USD to build. California's high speed rail costs as much as the International Space Station (which costs its weight in gold due to the cost of delivering something to space).

Today, building a nuclear power plant to take up to 7 years or more and that is because all of the red tapes and permits...

But maybe the public will get excited for fusion once it is proven commercially feasible and pressure lawmakers to get it rolled out faster. After all, it seems the talk about favoring clean energy is growing by the year.

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ChargersPalkia t1_j7v5wp7 wrote

the IEA and any other energy outlook has historically always underestimated renewables, I would confidently bet you that by 2025 we'd be in a much better state than that

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goodsam2 t1_j7vmqrq wrote

I mean growth stopped, renewables are cheaper than starting new plants.

Then renewables replace retiring Fossil fuel plants.

Then renewables accelerate retirement plans for fossil fuels.

Also natural gas and renewables work well together in a brief period because if the sun and wind stop you can add natural gas easily.

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DGrey10 t1_j7uyurj wrote

The problem is that total use is increasing. So flat gas and coal absolute use is a reduction in the percent of the electric generation mix. But it means the C emissions haven't changed, they just aren't getting worse.

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dontpet t1_j7vt9uc wrote

This is what a tipping point looks like at the top. If renewables continue in their growth pattern we will be pushing down fossil fuel growth very soon if not already.

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netz_pirat t1_j7ywddc wrote

Three years is pretty short though. For Germany, I expect the energy consumption to rise due to heat pumps replacing gas /oil heating and electric cars replacing ice engines.

I don't think we can increase renewable energy generation fast enough to cover those as well as the existing generation in the next few years, but it's still a overall emissions reduction.

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Rofel_Wodring t1_j7zlts4 wrote

Electricity consumption, yes. Energy consumption?

I think people would be appalled to learn how much energy gets wasted on things like legacy HVAC and cheap housing. Let me put it this way: energy efficiently management is sort of a scam in the area I live, but the legacy HVAC is so wasteful and suboptimized that even a charlatan can bring results.

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[deleted] t1_j7v7ytt wrote

Personally I don't think any level of just emissions reduction will dodge catostrophic climate change at this point. It's just not plausible that at this level of rapid change, warming and ice melt that reducing emissions by 2050 or such would be really anywhere near enough.

At best you have to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and at worst you will have to employ some level of solar blocking to reduce heat build-up. It's a long term Co2 build-up and the CO2 doesn't go away quickly, so emissions reductions are just bets that we can limit warming. They aren't guarantees of anything and that's kind of the problem. The upside is solar blocking would lower heat immediately so it would be a good way to combat the core problem, which is heat, vs trying to only attack it from the insulating gas angle.

To me ice melt and changing climate happening well before models predicted means it's already too late for just emissions reduction. You certain still need emissions reduction, but betting the planets future on such a passive plan with no proof our modeling is accurate enough to make such a bet AND when we have other options to limit warming just seems dumb.

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StateChemist t1_j7w213a wrote

Too late for what? It’s only too late if humanity stops working on the solve.

Is it going to get worse before it gets better? Yeah I’m with you there, it probably will.

So what can we do? Work harder at turning it around and not let up or just give up and die?

You think people are passively saying ‘well this one band aid is obviously enough, good job’ there are tons of sectors looking for ways to forestall disaster and we need all of the fixes in the toolbox.

Emission reduction is a requirement because you can’t clean up the mess if the hose is still spraying everywhere while you are trying to mop it up. There are also lots of ideas for cleaning up the mess as well which are all great, and we can work on all phases of the project at the same time!

It may take centuries to undo what we’ve done in the last 100 years but we are actually starting to believe we can turn things around, and with constant applied pressure to a large enough lever you can move the world.

But would you kindly get off the wrong side of the lever? It works better with us all pushing over here instead of undermining those who are attacking the problem from all sides.

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