Hi, can't agree on nuclear fission, you claim that it "nearly never wins over other technology options" so i just wonder what would be the basis of the energy mix, which could provide carbon-free energy at all times, regardless of the weather, time of day and time of year if not nuclear fission, lets say in 2050? And what are those technology options which wins over nuclear fission ?
By using batteries (both at an industrial level and home batteries like in electric vehicles) you can create a flexible grid that in a sense breaths. It produces a lot of energy when it's not needed and stores that in batteries (not just Li-ion batteries, but things like pumped hydro, compressed gases, heat storage), and then when we need more energy than we can produce the energy is released from these battery sources. My problem with this is that it would take an incredible amount of extra energy generation and storage solutions. And currently battery storage options on such a scale are incredibly expensive. I have not previously worked out the numbers and the following was done after nearly zero research, so view the following calculations with heavy skepticism. According to the battery storage company Alsym, to be solely reliant on typical renewable energy sources like wind and solar we would need 6.5 hours of energy storage. We currently use about 4.24 trillion kwh per year. We have about .772 trillion kwh produced from nuclear per year and 0.913 trillion kwh produced from renewable sources per year. This leaves 2.56 trillion kwh being produced from other sources. I'm going to analyze two scenarios, both keeping the current nuclear and renewable infrastructure. The first scenario uses renewables to fill that remaining 2.56 trillion kwh, and increasing the energy storage to match it's needs. This results in 3.47 trillion kwh per year from renewable. We don't need to worry about energy storage for nuclear, so we just need to find 6.5 hours worth of that 3.47 trillion kwh. This comes out to about 2.5 billion kwh (this is after factoring in the existing energy storage which is relatively minimal). According to the National Renewable Energy Labs, the average cost of energy storage today at the utility level is about $326/kwh. This means that the cost of this energy storage is about $838 billion. For more energy production I'm just going to use the cost of solar energy to keep the numbers simple. It makes the numbers less accurate, but I think it will still be fairly reflective of the overall cost. Solar panels at the utility level cost about $0.07/kwh. Multiplying that with the remaining power needs of 2.56 trillion kwh comes to $179 billion. This brings the total cost of filling the remaining energy needs with renewable to about $1.01 trillion. For scenario #2, I am looking at filling the remaining energy with nuclear is both a simpler and more complicated answer because cost of construction inflates the energy cost. The best number I could find factoring that in brings the average kwh cost to about $0.16. Filling the 2.56 trillion kwh with this comes to about $396 Billion dollars. This puts the difference in cost to about $613 billion dollars. There are several caveats. #1: energy costs for solar and energy storage will continue to decline. I suspect the same could be said for nuclear if we actually invested in it. #2: Nuclear energy takes a long time to get up and going. However, as many of our energy goals often project out to 2050, I think the timeframe of nuclear construction is small enough to be considered viable, if we start moving in that direction now. #3: moving towards renewables and energy storage, as well as home batteries and home generation (through solar) will require some changes in our grid. I do not think those changes are major enough to cause any real roadblocks to the project of moving towards renewables, so I didn't consider those factors here. #4 I do not believe that we should place the entirety of that 2.56 trillion kwh on nuclear, I advocate for a mixture of both renewable and nuclear, and then a transition to 100% renewables over a period of time. #5: the numbers I'm using are numbers from today. Our energy needs will increase over time, especially as people move from ICE vehicles to EV vehicles and away from natural gas fuel in their homes to electric. #6: reminder, these are quick calculations using numbers I found online relatively quickly. I have not verified any of them, so my confidence in the numbers is low. But... I suspect that while the accuracy of the numbers may be off, I think the general story I painted here of how much it costs is likely similar enough to what it really is. My understanding going into this is that while it's cheaper to produce energy through renewable energy than nuclear energy, the renewable energy requires energy storage which brings the price above that of nuclear. I did not try to cherry pick numbers, and my calculations show that this initial belief seems accurate. Edit: cleaned this up a bit, throwing in a few paragraphs, to make this easier to read. Also there are several other caveats that I didn't mention either because I felt like I needed to end the list or because I did not (or have not) thought of them. This includes a reminder that I may have misunderstood the data, and the cost of waste storage for nuclear. I'm also just some guy on the Internet as far as anyone is concerned. Any education, experience, or expertise I might claim are just claims as far as anyone reading this should be concerned. The arguments I make should be based on the soundness and validity of those arguments rather than my relation to them.
I want to make a quick reply to my own comment as I've had to think about it. I believe that I have a major flaw in my analysis. When looking at the cost of solar and nuclear as far as cost for energy, I am pretty sure the numbers I am looking are average costs that factor in lifetime of the generation sources, the initial construction costs of the generation sources, and the maintenance and operation of the sources. In other words, the $179 billion for solar and $396 billion for nuclear are annual costs for the energy that are largely covered in your utility bill. The battery costs listed I'm pretty sure are just the upfront cost, and does not include lifespan, or maintenance and operation. In other words, while it might be $830 billion to set up the batteries, that's not what the annual cost of them would be. In summary, I'm pretty sure I screwed up my maths, and a more detailed analysis could accurately show the difference in start up costs and long term costs of either project. I still feel the appropriate solution involves a combination of nuclear with several other renewable sources
@@Merdock19 Based on the studies I have read, transitioning to renewable energy combined with energy storage appears to be more economically feasible than constructing nuclear power plants. The latest study I read was from Blekinge Technical University that looked at building future power generation in Sweden with nuclear power or with renewables combined with energy storage and found that the renewable energy route would cost 100 billion euros less for the next 30 years.
Convert everything that burns coal or gasoline to natural gas. The technology is well established for both, would be relatively simple for gasoline and readily doable for coal, and would reduce CO2. Invest all the initial efforts into China and India. Everything else taken as one doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Honolulu of doing anything measurable by 2050.
@@ThisIsToolman And where do you get natural gas? Russia. Qatar, USA. You just move your dependency from one source to another and stay dependent and subservient to those energy providers.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 If you want to make a measurable difference in CO2 now, stop China and India from burning coal. The obvious choice is natural gas.
@@ThisIsToolman This argument made some sort of sense in 2000. A lot has changed since then, including much cheaper PV & wind, viable non-fossil options for transport (EVs), heating (heat pumps), massive renewable and electrification investment in China and India, the underperformance of fracking technology outside the US, the greater understanding of the huge impact on the climate of gas leakage, and worst of all the complete disaster that is the current natural gas global supply chain.
I agree. I think technologies that conserve energy are pretty mature and can be implemented immediately and pretty much across the board. There are lots of homes and buildings that can be upgraded with insulation and more efficient HVAC. And new buildings can be built to be much more efficient.
as far as carbon capture goes, that's like taking your fish aquarium's water filter, connecting it to the side of a pier on one of the great lakes, and then sitting back and waiting for it to purify that lake.
@@nibiru2012ification That is one of our biggest problems: Humans in general have absolutely no sense of scale and feasibility. We prefer flashy promises of quick fixes to actual solutions.
_"Nuclear is very expensive"_ feels like a pretty dumb argument for not building new nuclear plants. It's like if the director's board of a hospital said "you know? 24/7 support services are very expensive, why should we use them... They are expensive! Ok if we have ongoing contacts it's ok but stop signing them" Except for the fact that patients don't stop coming to the ER at night. They'll probably come less frequently... But they'll definitely come. And you need to supply them the whole service even if it's night. It will cost more? Of course it will, but there's no alternative Renewables are great, but there no sun at night and wind is unpredictable. Most academic scenarios agree on more or less 20% nuclear basis, which is not much and it costs a little bit more but it grants that you can provide the inelastic energy demand that there still is at night without the hassle of sci-fi level accumulators.
@danielmeyers5078 for unpredictable I didn't mean it isn't "forecastable". The point is that you can even forecast if it will be blowing or not. But if it is not blowing... It is not blowing and there's nothing you can do about it. While it's night. and you *really need* the energy for the hundreds of hospitals in your country. What's your solution? Diesel generators?
I can see what you mean, but they take too long to build and have a couple of serious downsides. The nuclear waste is awkward and the accidental contamination worrying, but the fuel is limited and it is very expensive to build. My choice is solar and wind because while they may be intermittent they average out. It's usually sunny or windy somewhere, can be harvested locally and battery storage smooths the supply. Further into the future I still hope for tidal and fusion, but we're going to have to move faster than that.
Guys... I don't know If you are _specifically_ talking about the _specific_ energetic situation of a _specific_ country *or* if you don't really know what you are talking about. If we are in the second case then, it's your ideology which is talking, not facts and reality. In Italy many scenarios have been computed about the energy mixes we will need to adopt if we want to go 100%carbon free (for example one by prof Zollino of the Univerity of Padua). I'm talking about scenarios "all considered": costs of accumulation, a wide array of technology being considered, management of nuclear waste, mortgaging of the construction of the plants needed (for hydrogen production, accumulation...) etc. There are scenarios where all the energy comes from renewables, which will have a LCOTE (Levelized Cost of Timely Electricity) of just a little bit more than 100 €/MWh Scenarios where a little bit of Nuclear energy is provided have a LCOTE like 20% *LESS* than that. In Italy we would like to have a lot of wind. But we don't. And despite being a sunny country, you can be in the litteral Sahara and you won't have sun at night. We have exploited _ALL_ the possible Hydroelectric power we had available (which also caused massive amount of death: look for the "Vajont disaster") so we don't have many choiches. SO you either specify if you are talking about a specific country situation, OR you really have no idea what you are talking about. Nuclear is expansive, of course (no one is deniying that) but _ALL CONSIDERED_ there are other technologies you _NEED_ in a 100%renewables scenario which are even more expansive than that. And this without even considering the massive ecological disasters that are linked to the extraction of the materials you need for 100%renewable (Lithium, Coltan, Nedymium, other rare earths...)
this is exactly what I was getting at when I said we needed to reach 100% and renewables can't do this by themselves. but the ER analogy falls down, because we don't have alternatives to emergency rooms, but we do have alternatives to nuclear fission - such as more reliable tidal power, geothermal, battery storage, pumped hydro, etc, etc. so the question - again - is whether nuclear fission is quicker and cheaper to build than these technologies, and remains so as they develop. I think that's an open question, hence why I remain pretty fission ambivalent!
@@ClimateAdam Damn 🤦♂🤦♂🤦♂ Why do I have to do this...? _" the ER analogy falls down, because we don't have alternatives to emergency rooms, but we do have alternatives to nuclear fission"_ It falls down when you don't even remotely understand it. The terms of comparison of the analogy are not ER _and_ nuclear power, but instead ER and countries. I'm not taking ERs into accounts but _the services that an ER needs to run_ instead. You know, electricity, water, internet connections, techincal supports for the machinery and the IT infrastructure, cleaning services... They _all_ have a cost. Some of them also provide 24/7 service, and all [most?] of them have _alternatives._ And here comes the _second_ misunderstanding of the analogy. The presence of alternatives has never been denied. The whole point from the very beginning has always been the _COSTS._ You and a few people here say nuclear costs a lot providing no context for it. But it costs a lot providing _solutions_ to the energy problem. 100% renewables approaches only generate _other problems_ to be solved in term of reliability, accumulation, resiliency of the distribution grid ... and the solution to those problems mean that the overall _cost_ of that approach will rise. As I told, for Italy many scenarios have been computed and those which take into account a little bit of Nuclear to cover the inelastic energy demand are _cheaper_ than those which don't. [I can't hide the fact that I'm pretty disappointed with the approach this channel has to deal with enviromnmental issues and I find it a little bit ideological, so I don't think it's worth to keep the subscription]
It's important truly, but in the scale of global greenhouse gas emissions the general public have any control over, it's not the big problem. It's mainly PR from oil and gas companies shifting blame to the public to cause people to become resistant to change. It's like the plastics debate all over again. Billions of dollars have been put into the effort to blame the public for demanding plastics and for not recycling as well as they should. Yet, we now know that most plastic recycling is a scam created by the plastics industry to placate the public. Now countries are starting to ban plastics. Here in Canada bans on single use plastics like bags, utensils, straws, etc have already taken place. It was a minor annoyance for the public, but we transition fairly easily. The entire effort has proven just how much of a lie it was that we were to blame. It's really the industry that wanted plastics to cut their costs the whole time. The same goes for climate change. We do need changes, liem switching from cars to more public transit and biking. Still, city design isn't controlled by most people. Same goes for quality transit service or bike paths. Same goes for installations of green energy production. We also have a very difficult time competing with the billions in PR and bribes the oil and gas industries have been putting out every year. While unplugging unused appliances can save power, the reality is it is w drop in a very large bucket compared to industrial power usage.
I recommend the book "Less is more" by Jason Hickel. The last third actually made me hopeful. He details why growth and happiness decoupled a long time ago in the rich parts of the world. We obviously need growth in poor countries, but while degrowth in rich countries is necessary, it doesn't need to be bad. Who will miss a 40 hour workweek when we can get by with 25 hours/week?
@@michalpech4683 Thats why all climate deals, carbon credits and most of renevable energy also is worthless. 100 or 1000 x 0 still is nothing. We wasted 30 years on trying to reverse entropy, trying to denie human nature and the law of big numbers. We got to quit that now. We need ultra compettetive cheap nuclear power. Not easy but what we are trying now is damn near impossible.
"Nuclear fission is expensive" is a weird flex because the other green techs are fine even if expensive, too. Same with complexity (as if we couldn't handle complexity, and as if delays weren't normal). It seems more like a rationalization than a reason (=risks, long-term handling of waste).
Nuclear is the most expensive form of mass generation at the moment per GWh produced. But many other "green" generation projects like wind and solar are actually getting lower cost than coal/gas fossil fuel power. Hard to "S" tier the generation method that is substantially more expensive than fossil fuels when there are others that are less expensive, faster to build, less NIMBY problems and more modular capital requirements.
Conservation of tropical rainforests is something I definitely want to say would help combat climate change the most. Conservation in general is super important to combatting anthropogenic climate change since nature is so good at sequestering carbon. Tropical rainforests are where the Earth really pops-off with this by having so much biodiversity! Also I think I read somewhere that geothermal vents could be a great tool for generating energy and I would love for research to be done in the mid-ocean ridge because being the zipper of the world truly has to come with some perks!
Temperate forests are ALSO huge carbon sinks, in fact, New England forests in the US are among the worlds best carbon sinks. Which almost no one knows. They must be protected.
My favorite energy source that you didn't include would have to be geothermal. You could break it down into electrical generation (small scale and, like hydro, unlikely to grow, so B) and for heating (requires much less intense heat, so edging up into A).
oh geothermal! love it - I'd probably say B, since it's quite site specific. but then speaking of heat... heat pumps, insulation... maybe I just need to have a thermal solutions tier list..!
Electrical generation using the closed loop geothermal, being piloted by Eavor & others, seems especially promising. It does not require specific geological formations for successful deployment and does not use fracking. Pilot sites have already been successful but the first commercial sites are just underway now in Germany and western US.
@@ClimateAdam Enhanced geothermal is not site specific because it goes down such a very long way beyond conventional drilling limits using millimetre waves - frickin' lasers!
The rating for nuclear fission as C was justified on the basis of cost and length of time to build. But those concerns are mainly about Europe and the U.S., and much of the world that already has nuclear capability is able to build new plants much more cheaply and quickly than Europe and the U.S. South Korea not too long ago did a quick round of nuclear plants, and only hit the pause button because of Fukushima and political concerns. India and China still use massive amounts of coal, and nuclear seems a practical, cost-effective and timely solution for them. Even Canada might be in a position to bring new nuclear fission online in time to impact the current energy transition. I am not so sure how to rank nuclear solutions in developing countries, which don't have any indigenous ability to build it, develop related technologies for it or even regulate it.
Great to get a shout out for veganism 💚✌ although what i suspect you meant was plant based diets as veganism is an animal rights movement so only has environmental advantages as bonuses to the lifestyle. Although I guess its hard to suggest one is valueing the rights of an animal whilst simultaniously actively destroying climate. I guess what I'm saying is you can be vegan and consider the environmental benefits a usefull side effect but it's hard to say you care about the environment without being at least plant based. I would also like to have seen your thoughts on reforestation/rewilding, which could of course be rolled into the vegan perspective again as without being at least plant based rewilding is a non-starter.
Do not look only at energy production; reducing usage is even more important. We must curtail air travel, stop international vacations, buy locally, insulate homes better, reduce excessive shipping, etc.
Yeah they should redo the 3-Rs to the 4-Rs and really emphasize they are lined up first to last in order of importance/impact. Reduce RE-ENGINEER Reuse Recycle Most of the solutions we are talking about lately are in the RE-ENGINEER category, but the other 3 are also valuable.
Restricting or stopping foreign holidays, gas central heating and affordable motoring will alienate voters. But they may well have those policies forced on them.
We love what you do, but you defenetly forgot swamps in our opinion. They are very powerful CO² storages. The second one missing on the list is USE LESS ENERGY, which counts for every person, company and design idea.
@@drillerdev4624 As for event lights: the use less power, but we use way more, and for households we know a lot of people going like this: "Don't u turn off the light?" - "Relax, it's LED." City Lights, perhaps yes, but commercials are now screens, which were posters and most of them dark at night ...
Swamps are also great potential methane generators…….and locations of insects and parasites that carry infectious diseases. They may be great carbon sinks but, as someone who worked in swampy areas for many years, I can assure you that you don’t want to put them close to centers of populations. Of course, if you’ve never had malaria or dengue or amoebic dysentery or many of the other wetland diseases it’s probably not an issue. If you have the misfortune to live in tropical swamps, human mortality rates are still very high.
I'm glad you mentioned bikes but I would have liked to see public transport and regenerative agriculture mentioned, also land conservation/restoration. These things need to become a larger part of the solution.
Regenerative agriculture is such a vague term at those point it may as well trashed. If what you mean is using grazing cattle which you then eat to somehow restore the land then it should be a solid F as it has no potential at all unless the population was about 1/100th of what it currently is. It's just green washing and usually refers to a tiny fraction of farming practices but yet gets mentioned all the time by 'practitioners'.
@klang180 I didn't just mean grazing cattle, I meant practices that store carbon in the soil like no-till and cover cropping. Also, practices that reduce herbicide usage, like rotating nitrogen-fixing plants. Rotational grazing can have benefits, but won't scale to meet our current meat consumption. We would still need to eat significantly less meat.
@@mathieuhillyard8410 Small-scale, low-meat, organic permaculture, centered in most places on edible forest gardens (See the book by that name! but actually more like savannas) & perennials. Look up Bill Mollison’s permaculture principles.
@@mathieuhillyard8410 That’s fantastic. I’d love to hear about it if you’re blogging or anything. Just in case I was too subtle, the book is amazing, going from science-based inspiration to incredibly detailed how-to & information about plants & their interactions in ecosystems. What kind of climate do you live in?
A LOT less stuff yes. But 95% less !? Doesn't seem easy to sell the idea. Also not everyone has the same impact. The % of what has to be cut off has to depend on the overconsumption and overall impact of each of us.
I disagree. The idea, is to make all the energy we want, with no cost to the environment. Any sunlight that isn't growing plants is just being wasted, so we may as well harvest it, for useful energy. (Much like running the heater in a car doesn't cost gas mileage, because the heat that normally goes to waste, is being utilized) Wind is another example. Rather than blowing leaves off trees, and kicking up dust, why not let it spin wind turbines?
@@vincentrobinette1507 I understand your point. Except that : 1. our production plants, logistic means and personal vehicules do not use wind and sun directly. So to convert wind and sun in usable energy and to transfer it to place of use we need equipments. Those equipments also need to be made, which also costs energy and other goods that needs energy to be produced and transported etc .... and all that does emit carbon. Also other ressources aren't unlimitted and cost other things like CO2 emissions and other pollutions, social, ethics and human rights problems ,... 2. Every material thing we use, consume, buy,... comes with an environnemental cost (CO2 but not only) and is part of the problem. Without changing our society, infrastructures, habits and way of life we cannot reach the goal. And if we don't physics will explain to us why it was a mistake not to try and adjust .... but it will be too late .
Hey Adam and Rosie! Great video! My Twitch chatters are requesting a part two. :) Here are some solutions they'd like to see: Moon power (tidal power) High altitude wind power (kites) Wave power Eating the rich 🤣 (jk sort of) Public transport Biofuels (current and next gen) Bug protein Hempcreat instead of concrete
Adam, kudos for collaborating with Rosie, one of _very_ few UA-camrs who actually know that they are talking about when they cover renewable energy and related topics, such as decarbonizing steel and cement production.
actually this is our second collab (the first was the hydrogen vid we mentioned in passing)! but I completely agree - so many people who talk about energy tech are just on youtube to overhype what's out there, with click-baity videos. Rosie is a breath of fresh air in this environment!
I'm going to make a thread of comments to boost engagement... *Nuclear Fission* - Capital investment preferring fossil fuel infrastructure + over-regulation are two unnecessary roadblocks preventing increased implementation of nuclear plants. We should be using these more. I will say, as sea levels rise, a plurality of nuclear plants will become inoperable so new plants should be made with near-future unstable climate conditions in mind.
*Wind/ Solar* - It's good. Too location dependent. We need to increase storage capacity. The total energy wind provides will probably never come anywhere close to where we need. *Hydroelectric* - Good from an energy perspective, horrible from an ecosystem dynamics perspective. Sure, you'll have energy, but that cost may outweigh the benefit if you're extirpating 99% of species along a given river. We cannot survive without resilient ecosystems (of which we are a part), especially, again, in the face of unstable climate conditions creating massive evolutionary pressure.
*Veganism* - In the imperial core, where meat production is most unsustainable, consumption is highest this is key. I'll add veganism will never gain popularity in the imperial core so long as culinary culture centres around imitating meat dishes. A vegan steak will never be beef, BUT a vegan dish can be much better than steak if you highlight the vegetable's characteristics. We all know crackers can't cook, but there are countless cuisines to import to the imperial core, say from the 1/7th of the global population in India alone who are vegetarian. I would go as far as to say that spreading some kind of disease in cows in the US, Brazil to cripple the industry would be justifiable :)
*EVs* - There are not enough material resources on the planet to create enough cars. EVs are causing a drastic *increase* in emissions at a time where tipping points are breathing down our necks. EVs keep us complacent, forcing us to continue using the inherently unsustainable transport and housing infrastructure (two of the largest emissions sectors). We already have a serious scarcity of raw material required for electronic components. They should not be wasted on cars. Cars are best when used for racing, not mass transportation. *Biking* - Again, reorientation of infrastructure towards biking only happens after EVs or personal automobiles in general are eliminated.
*Solar blocking* - "Ministry for the Future's" prediction on this is probably, sadly, going to end up playing out. There will be a mass dying event, countries will become desperate, and they'll do this at the disapproval of other (likely imperial core who caused this massive genocide) nations despite not fully understanding the science. If the suffering nation has nukes there's no stopping them from dumping sulfur or whatever in the atmosphere either.
When we think of climate transition, we often assume the amount of energy we use, especially in the imperial core, is the global norm, or even necessary. Every little trinket we use shouldn't be over-engineered to the point that it requires electricity. Even things like heating and cooling can easily be achieved with passive infrastructure which engineers of the past already provided us the blueprint for.
Great video... for nuclear: I'm a nuclear engineer with 20 years experience. I really don't like when people say it takes too long, because they've been saying that for 30 years now, and if we just DID IT 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in this predicament. It's a little bit like the old saying, "the best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago, the second best time is today". Also, we need to understand that this "we need this power now" statement is always going to be there. We're never going to be saying "we need less power". Renewables are great and we should be building 3x as many as we are now, but we should NEVER be saying "nuclear takes too long" because the people a decade from now will be incredibly grateful that we actually did have long term vision and created a clean power source that lasts so long. Also, I mentioned this in another comment, but the EV transition actually has massive implications on load matching. The predicted peak energy demand curves are going to shift from daytime to night time as we electrify transportation. This means that wind and solar of the future will require much more batteries than they do today, because most of the load will be at night. This is only going to exacerbate all the resource challenges of solar (cobalt, lithium, copper, nickel) and it is all the more reason why we need more nuclear power for baseload generation at night. So throw that "it takes too long" rhetoric away, and lets do something forward-looking. We WILL be late on the energy transition. We will NOT be able to go 90% renewables like the IEA wants by 2050. Many many reasons for that, namely resource shortages, skilled labour and long-lead parts. We absolutely cannot afford to ignore any clean energy options, and nuclear is incredibly important for the future for this and many other reasons (such as providing baseload demand, production of incredibly important medical isotopes, etc). This is a time of humanity where we really need to "do all the things", and nuclear is a huge part of it.
Based on the studies I have read, transitioning to renewable energy combined with energy storage appears to be more economically feasible than constructing nuclear power plants. The latest study I read was from Blekinge Technical University that looked at building future power generation in Sweden with nuclear power or with renewables combined with energy storage and found that the renewable energy route would cost 100 billion euros less for the next 30 years.
Nobody speaks about just saving energy, avoiding flights and transportation, consume local goods, avoiding pets and many children, build with wood rather than cement, build smaller homes, work from home if possible, reuse, share and repair things/tools.
Yup. While having greener energy sources should play a role in climate action, more importantly, we fundamentally need to reduce our energy demand both on the production end, and on the community/individual end. This would mean, among other things, walkable/bikeable cities, trains over airplanes for domestic travel, modular tech, and having a library econ.
Do not look only at energy production; reducing usage is even more important. We must curtail air travel and shipping, stop international vacations, buy locally, insulate buildings , etc.
Sounds like you are a 15 minute neighborhood man? If they block the end of your street with a 5 ton planter box and put the turn-back lanes, checkpoint lights and surveillance cameras in first, you know that it's about control and not convenient, healthy urban living.
Your placement of wind and solar in the same tier is spot on, but, combining the two could move them UP one notch. Very often, wind and solar don't hit at the same time, and wind can happen when solar can't. There are more days that will have both, than days where you have neither. If you can pair wind, solar, or both with electrical energy storage, those three things form a "trifecta" worthy of the top tier. Nuclear Fusion would completely solve our energy needs, IF it ever happens. Hopefully, one of us will live long enough, to see Fusion come to fruition.
Compressed Earth Block housing is a very overlooked Climate solution. I think it's better than most other Earthen housing because most people live in cities and many cities already have these grandfathered into their building code. So built in scalability. Also dirt is every and cheap. It's like Adobe 2.0
I think agrovoltaics deserves to be regarded as a separate solution. Putting solar panels on top of growing plants does make the energy more expensive, but this can be more than compensated by - lower temperatures underneath, advantageous for both the panels and the crops if done properly; - better usage of agricultural land; - extra protection of crops against drought, hail and heavy rain. By the way, wouldn’t it be nice to cover bycicle paths (like we have in the Netherlands) by Solar panels? Apart from extra space for panels, it would also serve as a cover against wind and rain for cyclists, attracting more people using a bycicle instead of a car. And regarding the ‘geo engineering’ type of solutions: marine cloud brightning seems attractive, if it turns out to have real effects.
I'm surprised by two things. 1) The problem of increasing drought with nuclear fission. France had a few problems with that last year and this year might become even worse. So while closing everything might not be the right call for everyone, there are reasons why fission will at least decrease in places. 2) In the light of the amount of energy needed and the speed at which this capacity has to be created, I would have thought that at least the "solar everywhere" solution would have gotten a better grade. There is a problem with storage capacity, but I got the impression that every explanation was cut a little too too short. Especially on this one. Secret 3) This covered mostly electric energy. Anything and everything heating and cooling related is going to have to be part of our eventual mixed solution. Be it geothermal (heat pumps) and their associated isolation and circulation systems or heat repositories with water, sand, salt or whatever. Because lowering the amount of energy needed is another big big way to "solve" our climate conundrum. Why include going vegan but exclude such a crucial part?
good job guys, I'm just surprised how cycling wouldn't get a straight S! specially in dense communities, cycling can have huge impact on the community transportation carbon footprint. Also, I understand Energy Storage was introduced in the comparison as a part of Solar Power to balance the production-load, however, it also plays a significant role in fast transitioning by preventing any increase of fossil fuel power generation capacity in areas where renewables aren't very visible Again, kudos to Adam and Rosie, their channels are cool and deserve way more views as they are spreading fair and honest ideas of such a critical topic
@kmFouda As someone who has spent the past 12 months trying to bicycle to replace my car, I can tell you unequivocally of the problems with cycling. The first is that you have to be in strong physical condition. Of course that’s one of the advantages too, but many people are not in enough physical shape to do that. The second is that it is often impractical, especially in the strong winds, rain, snow, ice, and other harsh conditions, but also for large distances or large loads. The third obvious reason, and there are many more, is that it is logistically complicated. Think about how you need helmets and servicing on your bicycle. If you only had a bicycle, how do you take it in when it needs servicing? How do you keep it from being stolen? You need locks and places to lock it. And I haven’t even mentioned issues around clothing, hygiene, and socializing.
I live in Illinois, USA. We get over 50% of our power from Nuclear, and we’re increasing our renewable energy production. As of January our coal burning has dropped so much that our renewable energy production has almost surpassed it! Illinois is very dedicated to its promise to reach Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050. We’ve also been installing charging stations for EV’s, and hopefully soon will implement a carbon tax for fuel inefficient vehicles to incentivize switching to EV’s. As technology catches up with our needs, I know that everything will become more efficient
Love this take on infotainment! This could be shared with people who care about the environment but have not learnt of everything in the debates surrounding actions taken to fight cliate change!
Thanks for this. It is good to see folks sharing their opinions. That’s how debate is created. It wold be nice if you define what you really believe “green” energy is, because there is no single technology that has a life cycle zero carbon footprint. You might have considered geothermal……..and it would be great to do a separate video of your living environment on a “green index” scale because there seems to be a big carbon footprint surrounding you! I think it is time to create a public awareness of every individuals real carbon footprint, because shedding a lot of what we don’t NEED would go a long way to complementing lower carbon energy generation.
My climate change solution is "globally, every country should intentionally set itself to achieve -GDP growth. In this case, collectively, we can cut down on the demand for developments, collaborations, and large scale events. This will significantly cut down on the demand for energy and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases". Do note that we are already at a point of half-way no return, meaning that flash floods will continue forever. This is due to rising ambient temperatures on earth, which cause sea levels to rise. Unless we are able to freeze trillions of tons of seawater back to solid ice and put them on land, I think this is impossible. The earth's temperature should not rise further, so we should ignore the Paris Agreement. We (the world) did not tackle the climate problem at its root-cause. That's why climate programs like COPxx have been ongoing for a long time. The world still strives for +GDP growth. The money earned is used to compensate for climate disasters. We have many scientists who can understand the technical causes of climate change. But we don't have wise leaders to solve climate problems using their objective mindset. Humanity will eventually fail and surrender to its own creation: money. It's sad to see this, and our last tipping point is "We have no time to wait".
Love this focus on climate solutions!! Such a cool way to make a tier list! Solid work both of you 🎉 Maybe for a future video, including indigenous rights protection and women’s education especially in developing countries as climate solutions would be great!
@@ClimateAdam Yes! Please more of it! Especially solutions that SMEs can implement. For example, farmers can implement precision agriculture, no-till farming, and regenerative agriculture in agribusiness to improve soil and crop health for carbon sequestering and biodiversity.
@@ClimateAdam If you got a PhD from Oxford, explain this to me: Why should the UK switch off from fossil fuels so completely when it is a dwarf in comparison to China, the US, India and Russia ???
@@ClimateAdam You surely realise the extremely swift transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy which people like you promote will inevitably hurt agriculture and the most socially vulnerable (poor) ? Don't you realise that the cost of hunan existence is consumption ??
@@Ball7399 1st comment: Leading by example. Why should the countries consuming the most change if nobody else is? The UK is not a developing country, so it has a much greater capacity to decarbonise compared to India. Hopefully international social pressure from countries who make the transition will motivate countries like the US to take steps towards net zero. 2nd comment: Nobody said the road to decarbonisation won't be hard, affecting everybody, but certainly those least privileged the most. Do our government make a big effort to look after the most socially vulnerable at present? Do you think it will become easier for them support people most vulnerable once we begin to experience major societal and economic hardship due to climate change? Transitioning to net zero will be difficult and your concern isn't invalid, but I doubt it'll be anywhere near as difficult as surviving in a future where we don't.
You forgot trains of all types (high speed, commuter rail, trams, metros,...). I'd put that easily in S tier, but I wonder where you would have put it.
I laughed when Rosie said something like "Since we have to take out 90% of emissions from our electrical grid by 2030 ..." Her point was that since speedy action is important, nuclear power is not that helpful, which I get, but the gap here between what everyone understands is desirable, and what is actually being done, is grotesque.
Overall the list seems fine. Being a very quick video I know there wasn't much time to go into details but I am a bit perturbed about Fissions placement/explanation. Saying it's not a good solution (C-tier) because it's too expensive and too costly is the exact same excuse that climate deniers say about even bothering to do anything towards making things more sustainable. Not an expert but from what I have researched this is the one technology we have today that could actually solve most of our issues, and provide the cheapest long term cost. Solar and Wind technology require huge amount of space and land which long term will never be viable options. These technologies are great for a short term transitionary period to what an actually solution might be because they can be implemented in smaller, cheaper scales, but realistically we need something better. Not to mention the huge amount of issues you get by connecting these "turbulent" energy sources to the grid.
I really liked this discussion, thank you both! Personally, I feel that we should give more weight to the problem of inconsistent generation for wind & solar (and the cost in both batteries and extra coal plants this has and will continue to cause). I like the quick and simple format, as it's a great way to inform a broad audience. However, as an engineer myself, I sometimes crave a more objective discussion. Something like "Technology X could give us A GW/d in B years at a cost of $C, has a complication of D, and would stop being useful after this amount because of factor E". Each of these values would be ranges and best guesses, of course, which is why it's a complex topic! Lastly, I would have liked a few extra seconds showing the full tier list at the end (with text labels), rather than having to hunt for it. :)
"...the problem of inconsistent generation for wind & solar...." One thing to keep in mind is that the _combination_ of wind plus solar is more consistent than either alone. That's because days that are not sunny tend to be windy, and days that are not windy tend to be sunny. "...the cost in both batteries and extra coal plants...." Batteries are great for energy storage on timescales of minutes to days, and a lot of very smart people are working hard on creating new types of less expensive batteries. Other ways to store energy are also possible. The US Naval Research Laboratory is working on a process of synthesizing carbon-neutral jet fuel by extracting dissolved CO2 from seawater & combining it with hydrogen from the water itself. Existing coal or natural gas burning power plants could be "remodeled" to burn this jet fuel instead, which would be piped to them from the seashore and stored in big tanks to use when the combination of all other renewable power sources aren't enough. The synthetic jet fuel could sit in tanks for months or even years until it was needed.
To restore the climate system we need to - reduce GHG emissions - use energy efficiently - enhance GHG drawdown out of the atmosphere Energy is required for / to - agriculture & food production - transport - generate electricity - buildings - industry & manufacturing How best to accomplish reduction, efficiency & drawdown depends on the sector involved - agriculture (use of alternatives for herbicides, pesticides & fertilizers, awa restorative agri processes, urban agri closer to consumers) - transport (focus on e-public transport, alt mobility & lastly EVs) - electricity gen (distributed & community energy, on & off-shore wind, solar, energy storage) - buildings (energy efficiency, rooftop solar, energy storage, alt sources eg bioluminescence or solar lighting that does not require electricity) - industry & manufacturing (using alternatives ie moving away from fossil fuel use in goods & services) - reduce waste, esp food waste re methane emissions)
You don't seem to take into account the resource limitations in metal, like copper, in the developpment of renewable, nor their impact on biodiversity, for instance the space required to develop solar energy or the impact on water cycle and nutrient cycle of hydropower dams. This would lead to favor one important solution that you don't mention, which is sufficiency.
I don't get logic - nuclear power to expensive and long to develop so let's risk our future on not yet existing storage technologies... I think this is gamble we should not aim for.
How can someone make a video about climate change solutions without mentioning burning less fossil fuel? That is the cheapest and easiest. Also, there needs to be a discussion about electricity on demand. Many devices in an industrial economy operate automatically (air compressors, elevators, garage doors - that is only a tiny sample). They need electricity on demand, not when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. That's the serious advantage of nuclear, which provides a base load of electricity. Both wind and solar need geneeration that will fill in the gaps. Right now, that is mostly natural gas, oil, or coal. Batteries are an option, but batteries are not green, and the amount of battery storage required is enormous.
Even if we would stop all emissions today, Carbon Dioxide Removal is and will be necessary. Both natural and technological methods. Everything from tree planting and biochar to enhanced rock weathering and Direct Air Capture.
Passive houses is my favorite way to work on reducing our emissions. Instead of energy production, it works on reducing our consumption. In Quebec where I live, most residential energy use is in heating/cooling. Passive houses would help greatly in reducing our energy demands
If all cars had V2H or V2G, would they bump up a little? combined with Solar PV, they would help to mitigate the drawbacks of Solar (not available at night) but without so much extra cost...so many people have cars anyway, and they will be EV's in the future
I pretty much agree with this ranking. I think the arguments around 'putting PV everywhere' are quite application specific though - solar roadways are obviously silly, but sometimes the benefit of bringing the generation closer to point of use might outweigh the higher capital cost, e.g. integrated into vehicles or buildings. Also there can be benefits from shading, e.g. 'floatovoltaics' on reservoirs, which cut down evaporation in addition to generating energy.
Don't cut forests for PV - you lose 50% of the carbon cost savings when you do. its very dumb to cut down carbon sinks to build solar, but there they go...
It seems to me that the reasons given for nuclear fission (and so forth) being C-tier are based more on politics than energy-like considerations. Just because it's expensive and it takes time doesn't mean we shouldn't build more nuclear plants, indeed, I would argue we should start building ASAP given the climate crisis we're living in. As of now, they're the most efficient and clean way to produce energy, it's kind of a shame to see it under (even) windpower, which quite frankly is such a scam
Based on the studies I have read, transitioning to renewable energy combined with energy storage appears to be more economically feasible than constructing nuclear power plants. The latest study I read was from Blekinge Technical University that looked at building future power generation in Sweden with nuclear power or with renewables combined with energy storage and found that the renewable energy route would cost 100 billion euros less for the next 30 years. (also quicker to build)
given the contribution of CO2 due to transportation I do not agree with giving Evs a "c". I think they should be considered a must have part of the solution.
Solar PV on rooftops isn't high maintenance, and combined with battery storage, enables the homeowner to use the generated electricity at night. One thing you didn't include is simplification as in the way we live our lives. Until we recognise that we can't continue living like we do in the wealthy West and we need to slash our energy consumption, nothing will work and we will have to deal with the consequences.
With solar panels on rooftops, this attitude with "well, if we ran out of space to put these on..." may be an argument in a country like the USA, where you got tons of empty, windy and sunny land, but here in Germany, the use of land has become a really tense political issue, because we are a densely populated, sun starved and in many places mountainous, or hilly country, where the wind doesn't blow that much. So, naturally, rooftop pv is a really relevant energy solution here. Btw, a country like Britain has the luxury of having virtually endless shallow sea nearby, that can provide almost endless clean energy. Germany doesn't have as much shallow sea space either.
Fossil fuel companies love wind and solar because they provide the power for the 70% of the time that wind and solar are offline. To be economically viable, wind and solar need a storage technology that does not exist (not even close), yet nuclear, which already has been proven, will "take too long". The one remaining nuclear plant in California produces about 10% of the state's electric power and has about the footprint of a big box store. How much mining and land footprint would wind and solar take to supply that energy?
I enjoyed video. You did not include the benefits of increasing organic content in the soil by maximizing vegetative cover as a carbon sink. In addition to the CO2 removed from the atmosphere, the improved infiltration and water retention, transpiration has a cooling impact on the local climate. To me this is motivating because the benefit can go to the local implementers. Simply sequestering CO2 without other benefits will never be perceived by the implementers. Nurturing life through feeding microbes with vegetative cover is for me an S on your chart.
Given that there are no working fusion systems and the enormous engineering and capital expenditure that will almost certainly be required (if a solution is ever found) this should be an F- for anytime in the 21st century.
What do you think of bioenergy? In Sweden we have quite a lot of power stations mainly for local district heating. Some also produce some electricity. These power stations used to use different sources of fuel including coal and oil but they changed to using bioenergy and garbage and like in my home town they actually built an additional power furnace for sole use of biomass. I asked my local power producer where they source their additional bioenergy but they wouldn’t give me an answer. Although sweden have a huge forest industry we import garbage and other kinds of material to burn so there doesn’t seem to be self sufficiency even with our forest industry that also needs to cut back for environmental and climate concern. The power company and also the municipality don’t have to declare the biogenic carbon in their emissions statistics because of the accounting rules. So at the municipal and corporate level it’s looks like there aren’t any carbon emissions. Instead these emissions is combined with the national reporting for land use and land change. I think a consequence of this it’s these emissions is almost hidden at municipalities and power companies. But the same amount of power is generated. There is an experiment to add CCS of one of these plants. I wonder if that investment would increase the need for production? But it’s also a good possibility?
The meh on electric cars, has led me to thinking about a thing you left out of your solutions , social change. I infer that electric cars got a meh, because really we should not be using cars as a primary means of transport. But to do that we need decent public transport, ( not just bikes ) to convince lawmakers to build or allow the building of decent public transport we need people who want public transport, that is we need social change. I survived until I was 30 without knowing how to drive because I lived in an old section of town, built before cars that was public transport and walking friendly. But when I bought a house in the suburbs all that changed, public transport still existed but it became much worse in the end it was more the double my travel time by public transport to work then it was by car. Those suburbs were and are a product of public policy, that need change. Likewise the immense resistance to work from home. Or the madness of shipping raw materials across thousands of miles of ocean to be refined, when until quiet recently the materials were refined just about at the pit head.
Love the list and would like to know where you stand on Solar Thermal systems? As an amateur, I like how they can be a baseload power supply with integrated storage. They have room for improvement, especially with materials sciences that will allow for less carbon intensive parts to replace steel. They would seem to have a larger area of installation since you can just add more mirrors to reach the proper temperatures.
Was interesting. However, I missed geothermal to be mentioned. I think that could be a solid B or even A - where available, even can be used at industrial scale, but geothermal energy use is available individually for most people with relatively good cost, low maintenance.
My favorite solution is seasonal heat storage. Maybe not so important for you in Australia, but here in Germany if we want to produce all of our heat with heat pumps we need more additional electricity in January (winter here!) than we are currently producing. Short calculation: We need 793 TWh heat each year, 17% of heat in January, makes 135 TWh, heat pump COP in January (when it is cold outside) 2.5: 135 TWh / 2.5: 54 TWh electricity in January for heating. This January we did produce 44 TWh electricity this year (of which 50% is renewable!). So we would need to more than double the installed electrical power generation, because of the winter months. So in the summer we would produce heat with solar collectors and pump the hot water through boreholes in a borehole field. In winter we would use the heat directly or via a (then very efficient) heat pump in a district heating system. Energy loss would be about 20%. I would love to see a video about that. I made one for my neighborhood, but it is in German.
This is great as a community solution, but sadly due to that it is only going to happen in a more "socialist" political/economic system meaning a small number of nations. Most nations of the world are too beholden to the Grid oligopoly who will not allow these awesome community projects.
Awesome conversation. Thank you! These conversations shouldn't be about feelings. Solar everywhere is more about including energy generation in things we're already doing for other reasons. If windows, roads and buildings generated power simply because we added a few safe ingredients, that could generate all the power we need. Solar Geoengineering isn't a solution but it's a critical part of the overall plan for saving the planet from global warming. If we fix the yearly CO2 imbalance we still warm for decades and still have an ocean acidity problem that is far more serious than people seem to understand. Injecting SO2 is very safe and could very possibly be the only way to keep the global ocean circulation going while we wait for temps to peak and eventually cool. It is also the only way to stabilize the glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. Not running the numbers to compare the "deaths" from SO2 in the stratosphere with the deaths from an extra degree or two added to the global temp is simply irresponsible. Not running the numbers and only mentioning death from SO2 is literally propaganda. There is no single solution and pretending any of them are free or feel wrong is a mistake. Every "bad" solution has to be judged in an equation that compares it with the options that exist today. Not with the perfect option. This is why dams and desal get a bad rap. Hearing that brine is as dangerous as oil industry pollution when you can simply mix it with seawater or that a dam is bad for the environment without any calculation of the pollution caused by the power generation it replaces makes me crazy. This is an emergency and it's way too late to fool around or pay games. I would add a system to your list that includes the ocean. Wave power as part of a large coastal infrastructure project that creates transmission capacity for offshore wind, wave and solar power as well as to producing fresh water and creating large scale habitat for ocean life is what I view as ideal geoengineering. The west coast of the US for example could build a continuous floating reef miles offshore that was designed to support a kelp forest and upwelled enough water to assure the temp and nutrient balance was maintained at an ideal level. Having that reef also provide fresh water pipelines and electrical lines would allow desal out in the ocean where brine is easily mixed and transmission infrastructure to allow business of any size to invest in building green energy infrastructure. At the same time it helps fix the growing hypoxic zones & plants a create a "factory" that will convert untold gigatons of CO2 into fish, and other ocean life that will in turn create a bunch of waste that will fall to the ocean floor, before we eat them. Electricity is one avenue but ideally we should be looking at how we can help the carbon cycle add as many lanes as possible. Investing a supertanker of oil into building a kelp forest is far better than replacing the energy from that tanker with solar panels. Not just because it's nature but because you create something that not only performs the task but that also continuously creates other "things" that will perform the same task while also creating other things that perform the task. Every kelp forest is a runaway solution that will grow like a virus to solve your problem. Solutions that self replicate are obviously better. Fish are obviously better than rocks. Helping nature clean things up is easier than cleaning things up ourselves.
Quote from Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ - and readers’ - attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty."
@Daniel Meyers Exxon and the oil companies are the ones that came up with carbon taxes. They are not going to lose money, but make way more. It's a hoax
The only thing that can be done fast enough is solar geoengineering. It does not have to be aerosols in the stratosphere. It can be reflection of some of the sunlight back into space. Cloud brightening, highly reflective white paint, etc.
I'd say one of the solutions that should get more attention especially in the west like Europe and the US which are major energy consumers but also China is doing more with what we have, being more efficient and wasting less. Better insulation on buildings means you don't need to heat or cool it as much. Lowering the speed limit on roads will reduce pollution from driving, reduce risk/injuries from accidents, save on fuel at the cost of things take longer. Wasting less food and clothes, I was brought up to wear clothes that fit me until they don't and to finish my plate clean and have a day where we eat leftover scraps before they go bad. I don't have no waste but old clothes become cleaning rags or pillow filling until they just fall apart and are thrown out. And China ohhh maybe don't build things you don't need, and when you do build things make sure they are build to last. I hope that if highways would be limited to 100km/h or 60miles/h maybe more people will take a train, on that same not planes should just not be a thing, not for the cost they are flying at, flying should be expensive especially for how polluting it is.
Bikes should be an S because they not only reduce carbon directly they also create a better environment for people to live in and foster more local engagement. The car is so destructive especially in cities. Just look at Not Just Bikes videos for illustrations of this.
I think I'd lump public transport in there too. Not only more energy efficient(especially rail) but helps to drastically reduce congestion, and potentially free up space for more, and denser, urban residential development.
I think it was an oversight to have grid scale solar, as good, solar roadways as bad (sure) but not mention rooftop solar. rooftop solar wins where rooftop wind looses. low maintainance, silent, reliable.
@@ClimateAdam I live on a sailboat, and I've considered a small wind turbine, but it's very noisy (not as bad as a generator, but you'd know it anchored next to a boat with wind turbines) so I have solar. Sometimes I can't generate power, fine. I've found it to be easier and cheaper to reduce my needs than to increase capacity. But of course I use wind power for propulsion -- sails! (with a small electric motor to manoeuvrer if there is no wind) currently only using fossil fuel for cooking but looking to replace that.
Does a heat pump provide A/C? I'm currently trying to educate myself and seriously asking. How would this work in less temperate climates? Off topic, but I am moving soon to DFW area and one home had evaporative cooling system. I looked it up. I think it's a swamp cooler. I know this works in arid climates like new mexico, but it says it isn't great for more humid climates. Thanks in advance to anyone who answers
I'm looking up the answer without waiting. The only thing that scares me is that it says they don't typically work for very hot climates where it's more than 20 degrees hotter outside. This is frequent in texas. We have about 3 months that it's over 100 most days. Yesterday 105. Ugh. I also sleep during the day and I just can't do it above about 74.
I saw a paper recently that highlighted a new superconductor has been found with kind of space age properties. How could that impact potential technologies???
*solar power* - the big drawback here is low efficiency panels when they should be pushed for higher efficiences reducing the area of land needed for a given capacity. *Windpower* - battery storage or heat storage in water for district heating. Windpower > electricity > industrial processes > heat > district heating would probably be the best use. *Electric cars* - we should start from the position of reducing energy consumption for transport by 80%. For cars that would mean taking the vast majority off the road and replacing them with active transport and public transport. In the UK 75% of car owners also own a bicycle, half the population lives in major urban envrinments, 75% of commutes are within active transport or public transport range, we have 40,000 buses and 30,000,000 cars. *Buses* - didn't even get a look in. Taking 80% to 90% of cars off the road, especially in major towns and cities, would provide a load of steel for making new buses. Compressed air buses allow the extracted heat to be put on district heating systems. Compressed air buses already exist. *Electric Trains* - this should be an obvious one, the tracks are already in place though some routes would need the track bed lowering due to tunnels. Electric trains are much quiter than diesel electrics allowing more freight transport to occur at night when wind power is cheaper reducing the number of HGV / trucks. *Shipping* - since much of the energy involved in shipping is transportation of fossil fuels the above actions would reduce shipping. Fossils account for around 40% of international shipping. *Energy efficient homes* - where was this one? *Reduced consumption* - and this one? I have purposefully minimised the use of lithium here as it is likely energy intensive and most of the solutions are based more on technology that is fundamentally based on late 19 th century physics and engineering. In other words it can provide solutions on a global scale that allows developing countries to use / develop them without patent infringements and disproportionate import costs.
I have personally reduced my usage of Alakaline batteries and replaced it with Ni-MH batteries. Their current historical reputation does not really apply anymore. Most are the LSD (Low Self Discharge) types that can keep a charge for a few years. Way more cost effective too, using them like three to five times is enough for the cost to be level. It is both more wallet and enviromentally friendly to purchase and utilize items that last longer and over multiple uses. Going with the very cheapest upfront is pennywise, but dollardumb. For people arguing that not everyone can afford the upfront cost of such items, one can just get it cheaper pre-owned.
well solar on walls dosnt look to be too bad, sure its less efficent but depending on where you put it could generate some extra with the sun being lower in the morning or evening. and for hydropower there are also options for smaller turbines or the hole thing with the tidel forces.
how about forth generation nuclear fission, which is much closer to be realized than fusion, and already has the potential of changing the game by potentially improve by a factor 100 the energy production per kilogram of combustible?
Reflecting sun light off the earth's surface is a good way to buy time to reduce the production of greenhouse emissions. How about you look into the practicality of an existing method. Painting roofs of houses with highly reflective white paint. It is available now and very inexpensive compared to other methods. It has 2 benefits, reducing longwave radiation going into the atmosphere and reducing the load on the AC system thereby reducing the need for energy generation.
I remember in my astronomy class from 1st year college that reflecting light/heat under the atmosphere is a key factor of the cycle of global warming. So I don't believe your solution actually fixes anything.
Solutions: S: radical economic & political equality; healing the complex psychological condition causing all our problems-Wetiko disease [1] A: efficiency; wiser lives; electrification of primary energy [2]; solar PV; solar water heating/cooling [3]; offshore wind, especially floating; walkable/bikeable landscapes; small-scale, low-meat organic permaculture & regenerative forestry & grasslandery [4]; B: onshore wind; geothermal; CSP; hydro, micro-hydro, run-of-river hydro; vegetarianism; C: clothesline paradox/geothermalish energy; tidal; veganism; D: small amounts of bioenergy; The levels of some are pretty arbitrary but I don’t think we can succeed without good to excellent progress on all the “S” & “A” solutions. Others are lower either because their contribution is likely to be numerically less OR because they’re not as crucial, not necessarily both. Certain assumptions determine their placement, too, which may turn out to be unwarranted. Geothermal could supply all the energy humanity needs, eg. 10,000 times over. But will it in the next 7 years? Tidal can be very important locally, including in places other sources are difficult; half of Scotland’s grid could be supplied by the tides in Pentland Firth, but it may take either more storage or more transmission or both to integrate into grids. [1] ”Seeing Wetiko: on Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition” Alnoor Ladha, Martin Kirk [2] Electrification of primary energy includes an RE leccy-powered state-of-the-art international high speed rail network to replace long distance driving, & continental (& some other?) flying, & electrifying everything that moves, & a lot that doesn’t-heat pumps, induction cookers, steel-making, industrial heating, etc. [3] Some interesting ideas for heating, cooling, refrigeration in Drawdown & vox-David Roberts & others [4] Edible Forest Gardens, 2 vol. Dave Jacke & Eric Toensmeier. Mind blowing!
@@ClimateAdam Cob, adobe, straw bale. I’m guessing you know there are 800 year old cob buildings still standing in Wales, 600 in the SW US. Roman concrete, coal ash concrete for a while...
A lightning round right after Rosie says we're running out of time, nice transition Also, the veganism is a bit surprising being an A, as Rosie pointed out it's individual action, but considering livestock (especially cows) and the resources needed for them I can see it making a big impact. But what about reducing food waste? Tons of food is wasted and turns into methane, so couldn't that also have a significant impact even if not as much and more short term?
You should talk to power companies who actually have to do feasibility studies on how to implement and maintain sreliable energy grid and also have to conduct a true budget of cost to produce power to get a more honest and less naive and over simplified ranking.
I think one of our great failures at the moment is a failure to expand our perspective on the situation. When we discovered electricity, it was like learning magic. When we learned it's potential to be a force that could be controlled to do so much, we as a society became obsessed with it. To the point that by the 80s, if something wasn't powered by electricity, it was viewed as backward or medieval. We need to not only do what we can to replace fossil fuels out of the energy grid, we need to rethink technology completely and remove our electricity first bias. Solar electrical generation is garbage compared to solar heat capture. Electrical storage is extremely expensive and typically requires massive amounts of rare and usually toxic materials. Also, it typically comes with significant environmental impact. On the flip side, heat storage is cheap and easy. Sand and carbon, in the form of graphite are extremely good heat storage mediums and are amongst the most abundant elements on earth. Also, heat generation is one of the biggest contributors to green house gases there is. We could make for more progress by using the smaller solar footprints required for heat capture to offset heat generation and take a huge load off the energy and fossil fuel grids quickly. Abundant summer solar heat could be captured even out towards the higher latitudes, than heat could be stored for months, and then tapped for use in the cold months. Industry could use a combination of heat capture/storage as well as use of heat pumps to ramp up temps to offset their heat generation requirements. We could even take it further. Use it to run greenhouses. Organic waste is a big contributor of methane and such. If we put organic waste in chambers hot air flowed through on it's way to greenhouses, thay warm air would absorb the moisture from the waste. It would dry the waste out, cutting short it's rotting cycle, reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. The warm air going into the greenhouse will also be quite humid as a byproduct. This could make greenhouses in even relatively colder climates quite conducive to growing traditionally tropical plants. Further, the warm air could be cooled, which would cause it to release its excess moisture, so water could be reclaimed from the organic waste to be used in the greenhouse. Beyond that, the inorganic material left from the drying of the organic waste will be nutrient nutrient rich and could be used as fertilizer for the plants. All of this, if tropical plants could be grown readily in non-tropical environments could offset so many other problems as well. Not as much food will need to be shipped nearly as far. So it could also offset fossil fuel use in transporting food. All while reducing energy use, water use, gas emissions, etc. We need to stop this notion that electricity will be our savior. We handicap ourselves by limiting our solutions to it. We need to explore every way we use energy as question if we could power something another way more efficiently
Thanks for pointing out the time it takes to get new nuclear fission plants built vs the urgency of our situation. Another bad thing is that they enable the production of ingredients for nuclear weapons. To me that's a really really big red flag.
The biggest problem with new Nuclear Fission, is its cost. The return on investment can take as long as 40 years, owing to the high initial cost. Many investors won't live long enough, to receive their dividends, so they don't want to make that long term investment. According to the EIA (Energy Information Agency) Nuclear is the most expensive energy, just under off shore wind. Wind (on shore) and solar have ROI's of just a couple of years, therefore, they're more likely to get the investment dollars. Off shore wind is the most expensive right now, but the cost per installed megawatt is coming down. It will soon become less expensive than nuclear, making the "nuclear option" a last resort. While nuclear is largely carbon free, it is not a renewable energy source. It is finite. Wind and solar will be there "as sure as the sun shines".
Great Video - as usual! Climate topics are more an more depressing - and in my opinion - you feel the disinformational pressure on society and politics by fossil fool industry the nearer we get to the point of phase out of fossil fuels. Even a simple objective rating of climate solutions goes direct into politics and personal taste. I don't get it. And people don't get, that the common discussed techologies, as in this video, are just based on rational analysis (cost, market potential, market cycle, technology cycle, enviromental impact, time, ressources, etc. ) wildly discussed in scientifc literature and not an green agenda or something. Anyway, thanks for your work.
Solar water heating? I know someone with a very cheap installation. It has no control electronics, so no problems sourcing coltron, but it really only provides hot water late afternoon and early evening. They organise showers and laundry around that. Most people have posher ones that provide hot water about 20 hours a day, and warm water for the other 4
I've heard that the aerosol effect from burning fossil fuels could be slowing how quickly we warm, so if we stopped burning, we'd get a sudden warming. Geoengineering could be a way to stop that from happening, if we mimicked it then we already would know the effects. Of course that would be a colossal effort.
this effect would only take place if we stopped emitting aerosols suddenly. if we gradually phased them out (which is much more realistic) this spike wouldn't take place. the heating that aerosols are 'masking' is explicitly taken into account by climate scientists when they estimate e.g. how much more fossil fuel we can burn before reaching particular limits
don't miss our in depth look at solar geoengineering over on Rosie's channel! ua-cam.com/video/SCcqc-he0-M/v-deo.html
is there any way to add it in the little bubble from the video?
Soviet microdistrict vs USA Suburbia
High speed train is S tier
What about gravity battery that gets lifted by prisoners walking on a man sized hamster wheel.
Thoughts.
@ClimateAdam I concur. I think of it as geoengimagicalism.
Hi, can't agree on nuclear fission, you claim that it "nearly never wins over other technology options" so i just wonder what would be the basis of the energy mix, which could provide carbon-free energy at all times, regardless of the weather, time of day and time of year if not nuclear fission, lets say in 2050? And what are those technology options which wins over nuclear fission ?
Probably in their minds: veganism, activism, feelgoods, wishful thinking
By using batteries (both at an industrial level and home batteries like in electric vehicles) you can create a flexible grid that in a sense breaths. It produces a lot of energy when it's not needed and stores that in batteries (not just Li-ion batteries, but things like pumped hydro, compressed gases, heat storage), and then when we need more energy than we can produce the energy is released from these battery sources.
My problem with this is that it would take an incredible amount of extra energy generation and storage solutions. And currently battery storage options on such a scale are incredibly expensive.
I have not previously worked out the numbers and the following was done after nearly zero research, so view the following calculations with heavy skepticism.
According to the battery storage company Alsym, to be solely reliant on typical renewable energy sources like wind and solar we would need 6.5 hours of energy storage.
We currently use about 4.24 trillion kwh per year. We have about .772 trillion kwh produced from nuclear per year and 0.913 trillion kwh produced from renewable sources per year. This leaves 2.56 trillion kwh being produced from other sources. I'm going to analyze two scenarios, both keeping the current nuclear and renewable infrastructure.
The first scenario uses renewables to fill that remaining 2.56 trillion kwh, and increasing the energy storage to match it's needs. This results in 3.47 trillion kwh per year from renewable. We don't need to worry about energy storage for nuclear, so we just need to find 6.5 hours worth of that 3.47 trillion kwh. This comes out to about 2.5 billion kwh (this is after factoring in the existing energy storage which is relatively minimal). According to the National Renewable Energy Labs, the average cost of energy storage today at the utility level is about $326/kwh. This means that the cost of this energy storage is about $838 billion. For more energy production I'm just going to use the cost of solar energy to keep the numbers simple. It makes the numbers less accurate, but I think it will still be fairly reflective of the overall cost. Solar panels at the utility level cost about $0.07/kwh. Multiplying that with the remaining power needs of 2.56 trillion kwh comes to $179 billion. This brings the total cost of filling the remaining energy needs with renewable to about $1.01 trillion.
For scenario #2, I am looking at filling the remaining energy with nuclear is both a simpler and more complicated answer because cost of construction inflates the energy cost. The best number I could find factoring that in brings the average kwh cost to about $0.16. Filling the 2.56 trillion kwh with this comes to about $396 Billion dollars.
This puts the difference in cost to about $613 billion dollars.
There are several caveats.
#1: energy costs for solar and energy storage will continue to decline. I suspect the same could be said for nuclear if we actually invested in it.
#2: Nuclear energy takes a long time to get up and going. However, as many of our energy goals often project out to 2050, I think the timeframe of nuclear construction is small enough to be considered viable, if we start moving in that direction now.
#3: moving towards renewables and energy storage, as well as home batteries and home generation (through solar) will require some changes in our grid. I do not think those changes are major enough to cause any real roadblocks to the project of moving towards renewables, so I didn't consider those factors here.
#4 I do not believe that we should place the entirety of that 2.56 trillion kwh on nuclear, I advocate for a mixture of both renewable and nuclear, and then a transition to 100% renewables over a period of time.
#5: the numbers I'm using are numbers from today. Our energy needs will increase over time, especially as people move from ICE vehicles to EV vehicles and away from natural gas fuel in their homes to electric.
#6: reminder, these are quick calculations using numbers I found online relatively quickly. I have not verified any of them, so my confidence in the numbers is low. But... I suspect that while the accuracy of the numbers may be off, I think the general story I painted here of how much it costs is likely similar enough to what it really is.
My understanding going into this is that while it's cheaper to produce energy through renewable energy than nuclear energy, the renewable energy requires energy storage which brings the price above that of nuclear. I did not try to cherry pick numbers, and my calculations show that this initial belief seems accurate.
Edit: cleaned this up a bit, throwing in a few paragraphs, to make this easier to read. Also there are several other caveats that I didn't mention either because I felt like I needed to end the list or because I did not (or have not) thought of them. This includes a reminder that I may have misunderstood the data, and the cost of waste storage for nuclear. I'm also just some guy on the Internet as far as anyone is concerned. Any education, experience, or expertise I might claim are just claims as far as anyone reading this should be concerned. The arguments I make should be based on the soundness and validity of those arguments rather than my relation to them.
I want to make a quick reply to my own comment as I've had to think about it. I believe that I have a major flaw in my analysis. When looking at the cost of solar and nuclear as far as cost for energy, I am pretty sure the numbers I am looking are average costs that factor in lifetime of the generation sources, the initial construction costs of the generation sources, and the maintenance and operation of the sources. In other words, the $179 billion for solar and $396 billion for nuclear are annual costs for the energy that are largely covered in your utility bill. The battery costs listed I'm pretty sure are just the upfront cost, and does not include lifespan, or maintenance and operation. In other words, while it might be $830 billion to set up the batteries, that's not what the annual cost of them would be.
In summary, I'm pretty sure I screwed up my maths, and a more detailed analysis could accurately show the difference in start up costs and long term costs of either project. I still feel the appropriate solution involves a combination of nuclear with several other renewable sources
@@Merdock19 Based on the studies I have read, transitioning to renewable energy combined with energy storage appears to be more economically feasible than constructing nuclear power plants. The latest study I read was from Blekinge Technical University that looked at building future power generation in Sweden with nuclear power or with renewables combined with energy storage and found that the renewable energy route would cost 100 billion euros less for the next 30 years.
Would've been nice to include other energy reduction methods like heat pumps, insulation, transit, etc.
Convert everything that burns coal or gasoline to natural gas. The technology is well established for both, would be relatively simple for gasoline and readily doable for coal, and would reduce CO2. Invest all the initial efforts into China and India. Everything else taken as one doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Honolulu of doing anything measurable by 2050.
@@ThisIsToolman And where do you get natural gas? Russia. Qatar, USA. You just move your dependency from one source to another and stay dependent and subservient to those energy providers.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 If you want to make a measurable difference in CO2 now, stop China and India from burning coal. The obvious choice is natural gas.
@@ThisIsToolman This argument made some sort of sense in 2000. A lot has changed since then, including much cheaper PV & wind, viable non-fossil options for transport (EVs), heating (heat pumps), massive renewable and electrification investment in China and India, the underperformance of fracking technology outside the US, the greater understanding of the huge impact on the climate of gas leakage, and worst of all the complete disaster that is the current natural gas global supply chain.
I agree. I think technologies that conserve energy are pretty mature and can be implemented immediately and pretty much across the board. There are lots of homes and buildings that can be upgraded with insulation and more efficient HVAC. And new buildings can be built to be much more efficient.
I would have liked you to include carbon capture or clean coal just so that you could give it the biggest F.
Same for E-fules.
god don't remind me about "clean" coal!
as far as carbon capture goes, that's like taking your fish aquarium's water filter, connecting it to the side of a pier on one of the great lakes, and then sitting back and waiting for it to purify that lake.
@@nibiru2012ification
That is one of our biggest problems: Humans in general have absolutely no sense of scale and feasibility.
We prefer flashy promises of quick fixes to actual solutions.
@@ClimateAdam the best coal is no coal
Best analogy yet!
_"Nuclear is very expensive"_ feels like a pretty dumb argument for not building new nuclear plants.
It's like if the director's board of a hospital said "you know? 24/7 support services are very expensive, why should we use them... They are expensive! Ok if we have ongoing contacts it's ok but stop signing them"
Except for the fact that patients don't stop coming to the ER at night. They'll probably come less frequently... But they'll definitely come.
And you need to supply them the whole service even if it's night. It will cost more? Of course it will, but there's no alternative
Renewables are great, but there no sun at night and wind is unpredictable. Most academic scenarios agree on more or less 20% nuclear basis, which is not much and it costs a little bit more but it grants that you can provide the inelastic energy demand that there still is at night without the hassle of sci-fi level accumulators.
@danielmeyers5078 for unpredictable I didn't mean it isn't "forecastable". The point is that you can even forecast if it will be blowing or not.
But if it is not blowing... It is not blowing and there's nothing you can do about it.
While it's night. and you *really need* the energy for the hundreds of hospitals in your country.
What's your solution? Diesel generators?
I can see what you mean, but they take too long to build and have a couple of serious downsides. The nuclear waste is awkward and the accidental contamination worrying, but the fuel is limited and it is very expensive to build. My choice is solar and wind because while they may be intermittent they average out. It's usually sunny or windy somewhere, can be harvested locally and battery storage smooths the supply. Further into the future I still hope for tidal and fusion, but we're going to have to move faster than that.
Guys... I don't know If you are _specifically_ talking about the _specific_ energetic situation of a _specific_ country *or* if you don't really know what you are talking about.
If we are in the second case then, it's your ideology which is talking, not facts and reality.
In Italy many scenarios have been computed about the energy mixes we will need to adopt if we want to go 100%carbon free (for example one by prof Zollino of the Univerity of Padua). I'm talking about scenarios "all considered": costs of accumulation, a wide array of technology being considered, management of nuclear waste, mortgaging of the construction of the plants needed (for hydrogen production, accumulation...) etc.
There are scenarios where all the energy comes from renewables, which will have a LCOTE (Levelized Cost of Timely Electricity) of just a little bit more than 100 €/MWh
Scenarios where a little bit of Nuclear energy is provided have a LCOTE like 20% *LESS* than that.
In Italy we would like to have a lot of wind. But we don't. And despite being a sunny country, you can be in the litteral Sahara and you won't have sun at night. We have exploited _ALL_ the possible Hydroelectric power we had available (which also caused massive amount of death: look for the "Vajont disaster") so we don't have many choiches.
SO you either specify if you are talking about a specific country situation, OR you really have no idea what you are talking about. Nuclear is expansive, of course (no one is deniying that) but _ALL CONSIDERED_ there are other technologies you _NEED_ in a 100%renewables scenario which are even more expansive than that.
And this without even considering the massive ecological disasters that are linked to the extraction of the materials you need for 100%renewable (Lithium, Coltan, Nedymium, other rare earths...)
this is exactly what I was getting at when I said we needed to reach 100% and renewables can't do this by themselves. but the ER analogy falls down, because we don't have alternatives to emergency rooms, but we do have alternatives to nuclear fission - such as more reliable tidal power, geothermal, battery storage, pumped hydro, etc, etc. so the question - again - is whether nuclear fission is quicker and cheaper to build than these technologies, and remains so as they develop. I think that's an open question, hence why I remain pretty fission ambivalent!
@@ClimateAdam Damn 🤦♂🤦♂🤦♂ Why do I have to do this...?
_" the ER analogy falls down, because we don't have alternatives to emergency rooms, but we do have alternatives to nuclear fission"_
It falls down when you don't even remotely understand it.
The terms of comparison of the analogy are not ER _and_ nuclear power, but instead ER and countries. I'm not taking ERs into accounts but _the services that an ER needs to run_ instead.
You know, electricity, water, internet connections, techincal supports for the machinery and the IT infrastructure, cleaning services...
They _all_ have a cost. Some of them also provide 24/7 service, and all [most?] of them have _alternatives._
And here comes the _second_ misunderstanding of the analogy. The presence of alternatives has never been denied. The whole point from the very beginning has always been the _COSTS._
You and a few people here say nuclear costs a lot providing no context for it. But it costs a lot providing _solutions_ to the energy problem. 100% renewables approaches only generate _other problems_ to be solved in term of reliability, accumulation, resiliency of the distribution grid ... and the solution to those problems mean that the overall _cost_ of that approach will rise.
As I told, for Italy many scenarios have been computed and those which take into account a little bit of Nuclear to cover the inelastic energy demand are _cheaper_ than those which don't.
[I can't hide the fact that I'm pretty disappointed with the approach this channel has to deal with enviromnmental issues and I find it a little bit ideological, so I don't think it's worth to keep the subscription]
Social Paradigm Shift, the real S tier of effect... but an F in getting it done.
It gets an A for doing F. Sweet F A
It's a pity Adam missed that one. The others are worthless if we don't make it.
It's important truly, but in the scale of global greenhouse gas emissions the general public have any control over, it's not the big problem. It's mainly PR from oil and gas companies shifting blame to the public to cause people to become resistant to change.
It's like the plastics debate all over again. Billions of dollars have been put into the effort to blame the public for demanding plastics and for not recycling as well as they should. Yet, we now know that most plastic recycling is a scam created by the plastics industry to placate the public. Now countries are starting to ban plastics.
Here in Canada bans on single use plastics like bags, utensils, straws, etc have already taken place. It was a minor annoyance for the public, but we transition fairly easily. The entire effort has proven just how much of a lie it was that we were to blame. It's really the industry that wanted plastics to cut their costs the whole time.
The same goes for climate change. We do need changes, liem switching from cars to more public transit and biking. Still, city design isn't controlled by most people. Same goes for quality transit service or bike paths. Same goes for installations of green energy production. We also have a very difficult time competing with the billions in PR and bribes the oil and gas industries have been putting out every year.
While unplugging unused appliances can save power, the reality is it is w drop in a very large bucket compared to industrial power usage.
I recommend the book "Less is more" by Jason Hickel.
The last third actually made me hopeful.
He details why growth and happiness decoupled a long time ago in the rich parts of the world.
We obviously need growth in poor countries, but while degrowth in rich countries is necessary, it doesn't need to be bad.
Who will miss a 40 hour workweek when we can get by with 25 hours/week?
@@michalpech4683 Thats why all climate deals, carbon credits and most of renevable energy also is worthless. 100 or 1000 x 0 still is nothing. We wasted 30 years on trying to reverse entropy, trying to denie human nature and the law of big numbers. We got to quit that now. We need ultra compettetive cheap nuclear power. Not easy but what we are trying now is damn near impossible.
"Nuclear fission is expensive" is a weird flex because the other green techs are fine even if expensive, too. Same with complexity (as if we couldn't handle complexity, and as if delays weren't normal). It seems more like a rationalization than a reason (=risks, long-term handling of waste).
Nuclear is the most expensive form of mass generation at the moment per GWh produced.
But many other "green" generation projects like wind and solar are actually getting lower cost than coal/gas fossil fuel power.
Hard to "S" tier the generation method that is substantially more expensive than fossil fuels when there are others that are less expensive, faster to build, less NIMBY problems and more modular capital requirements.
Conservation of tropical rainforests is something I definitely want to say would help combat climate change the most. Conservation in general is super important to combatting anthropogenic climate change since nature is so good at sequestering carbon. Tropical rainforests are where the Earth really pops-off with this by having so much biodiversity! Also I think I read somewhere that geothermal vents could be a great tool for generating energy and I would love for research to be done in the mid-ocean ridge because being the zipper of the world truly has to come with some perks!
Temperate forests are ALSO huge carbon sinks, in fact, New England forests in the US are among the worlds best carbon sinks. Which almost no one knows. They must be protected.
And growing more of both, can be done.
My favorite energy source that you didn't include would have to be geothermal. You could break it down into electrical generation (small scale and, like hydro, unlikely to grow, so B) and for heating (requires much less intense heat, so edging up into A).
oh geothermal! love it - I'd probably say B, since it's quite site specific. but then speaking of heat... heat pumps, insulation... maybe I just need to have a thermal solutions tier list..!
@@ClimateAdam you could do one for transportation solutions too! Love to see that as well.
Electrical generation using the closed loop geothermal, being piloted by Eavor & others, seems especially promising. It does not require specific geological formations for successful deployment and does not use fracking. Pilot sites have already been successful but the first commercial sites are just underway now in Germany and western US.
@@ClimateAdam Enhanced geothermal is not site specific because it goes down such a very long way beyond conventional drilling limits using millimetre waves - frickin' lasers!
Does not work. Only very few places on earth can use geothermal power sources sustainably without having to invest more than a flight to the moon.
The rating for nuclear fission as C was justified on the basis of cost and length of time to build. But those concerns are mainly about Europe and the U.S., and much of the world that already has nuclear capability is able to build new plants much more cheaply and quickly than Europe and the U.S. South Korea not too long ago did a quick round of nuclear plants, and only hit the pause button because of Fukushima and political concerns. India and China still use massive amounts of coal, and nuclear seems a practical, cost-effective and timely solution for them. Even Canada might be in a position to bring new nuclear fission online in time to impact the current energy transition. I am not so sure how to rank nuclear solutions in developing countries, which don't have any indigenous ability to build it, develop related technologies for it or even regulate it.
Great to get a shout out for veganism 💚✌ although what i suspect you meant was plant based diets as veganism is an animal rights movement so only has environmental advantages as bonuses to the lifestyle. Although I guess its hard to suggest one is valueing the rights of an animal whilst simultaniously actively destroying climate. I guess what I'm saying is you can be vegan and consider the environmental benefits a usefull side effect but it's hard to say you care about the environment without being at least plant based.
I would also like to have seen your thoughts on reforestation/rewilding, which could of course be rolled into the vegan perspective again as without being at least plant based rewilding is a non-starter.
Do not look only at energy production; reducing usage is even more important. We must curtail air travel, stop international vacations, buy locally, insulate homes better, reduce excessive shipping, etc.
Yeah they should redo the 3-Rs to the 4-Rs and really emphasize they are lined up first to last in order of importance/impact.
Reduce
RE-ENGINEER
Reuse
Recycle
Most of the solutions we are talking about lately are in the RE-ENGINEER category, but the other 3 are also valuable.
Restricting or stopping foreign holidays, gas central heating and affordable motoring will alienate voters. But they may well have those policies forced on them.
We love what you do, but you defenetly forgot swamps in our opinion. They are very powerful CO² storages. The second one missing on the list is USE LESS ENERGY, which counts for every person, company and design idea.
Well, there were bikes in there...
I'm curious about the energy consumption repercussions of led lights turning into the standard nowadays.
@@drillerdev4624 As for event lights: the use less power, but we use way more, and for households we know a lot of people going like this: "Don't u turn off the light?" - "Relax, it's LED." City Lights, perhaps yes, but commercials are now screens, which were posters and most of them dark at night ...
Swamps are also great potential methane generators…….and locations of insects and parasites that carry infectious diseases. They may be great carbon sinks but, as someone who worked in swampy areas for many years, I can assure you that you don’t want to put them close to centers of populations. Of course, if you’ve never had malaria or dengue or amoebic dysentery or many of the other wetland diseases it’s probably not an issue. If you have the misfortune to live in tropical swamps, human mortality rates are still very high.
I'm glad you mentioned bikes but I would have liked to see public transport and regenerative agriculture mentioned, also land conservation/restoration. These things need to become a larger part of the solution.
Regenerative agriculture is such a vague term at those point it may as well trashed. If what you mean is using grazing cattle which you then eat to somehow restore the land then it should be a solid F as it has no potential at all unless the population was about 1/100th of what it currently is. It's just green washing and usually refers to a tiny fraction of farming practices but yet gets mentioned all the time by 'practitioners'.
@klang180 I didn't just mean grazing cattle, I meant practices that store carbon in the soil like no-till and cover cropping. Also, practices that reduce herbicide usage, like rotating nitrogen-fixing plants. Rotational grazing can have benefits, but won't scale to meet our current meat consumption. We would still need to eat significantly less meat.
@@mathieuhillyard8410 Small-scale, low-meat, organic permaculture, centered in most places on edible forest gardens (See the book by that name! but actually more like savannas) & perennials.
Look up Bill Mollison’s permaculture principles.
@J I wholeheartedly agree and intend to grow an urban food forest myself. Thanks for the book recommendation!
@@mathieuhillyard8410 That’s fantastic. I’d love to hear about it if you’re blogging or anything. Just in case I was too subtle, the book is amazing, going from science-based inspiration to incredibly detailed how-to & information about plants & their interactions in ecosystems. What kind of climate do you live in?
S tier is: We all need to learn how to make do with 95% less stuff.
A LOT less stuff yes. But 95% less !? Doesn't seem easy to sell the idea.
Also not everyone has the same impact. The % of what has to be cut off has to depend on the overconsumption and overall impact of each of us.
I disagree. The idea, is to make all the energy we want, with no cost to the environment. Any sunlight that isn't growing plants is just being wasted, so we may as well harvest it, for useful energy. (Much like running the heater in a car doesn't cost gas mileage, because the heat that normally goes to waste, is being utilized) Wind is another example. Rather than blowing leaves off trees, and kicking up dust, why not let it spin wind turbines?
@@vincentrobinette1507 I understand your point. Except that :
1. our production plants, logistic means and personal vehicules do not use wind and sun directly. So to convert wind and sun in usable energy and to transfer it to place of use we need equipments. Those equipments also need to be made, which also costs energy and other goods that needs energy to be produced and transported etc .... and all that does emit carbon. Also other ressources aren't unlimitted and cost other things like CO2 emissions and other pollutions, social, ethics and human rights problems ,...
2. Every material thing we use, consume, buy,... comes with an environnemental cost (CO2 but not only) and is part of the problem.
Without changing our society, infrastructures, habits and way of life we cannot reach the goal. And if we don't physics will explain to us why it was a mistake not to try and adjust .... but it will be too late .
Hey Adam and Rosie! Great video! My Twitch chatters are requesting a part two. :) Here are some solutions they'd like to see:
Moon power (tidal power)
High altitude wind power (kites)
Wave power
Eating the rich 🤣 (jk sort of)
Public transport
Biofuels (current and next gen)
Bug protein
Hempcreat instead of concrete
Based.
Solar satellites are a great option too. Just need more development.
Hemp can be used for a zillion things and hemp fabrics are superior to cotton (apparently) and use less water.
Also lab-grown meats are supposedly coming along
Why no Trains? i love trains. in particular night trains
I also love trains. I was just on one last weekend, which went by countless wind turbines, and I truly felt I was living the dream
Adam, kudos for collaborating with Rosie, one of _very_ few UA-camrs who actually know that they are talking about when they cover renewable energy and related topics, such as decarbonizing steel and cement production.
actually this is our second collab (the first was the hydrogen vid we mentioned in passing)! but I completely agree - so many people who talk about energy tech are just on youtube to overhype what's out there, with click-baity videos. Rosie is a breath of fresh air in this environment!
Wind and solar are great as long as you have some type of backup. When you include the cost of backup it becomes very expensive.
My view is that no highly intermittent solution without cost effective very large scale storage deserves an A.
Never seen an S-Tier list on this kind of thing. Very clever lol, watching with suspense
The list is illogical and unrealistic.
I'm going to make a thread of comments to boost engagement...
*Nuclear Fission* - Capital investment preferring fossil fuel infrastructure + over-regulation are two unnecessary roadblocks preventing increased implementation of nuclear plants. We should be using these more. I will say, as sea levels rise, a plurality of nuclear plants will become inoperable so new plants should be made with near-future unstable climate conditions in mind.
*Wind/ Solar* - It's good. Too location dependent. We need to increase storage capacity. The total energy wind provides will probably never come anywhere close to where we need.
*Hydroelectric* - Good from an energy perspective, horrible from an ecosystem dynamics perspective. Sure, you'll have energy, but that cost may outweigh the benefit if you're extirpating 99% of species along a given river. We cannot survive without resilient ecosystems (of which we are a part), especially, again, in the face of unstable climate conditions creating massive evolutionary pressure.
*Veganism* - In the imperial core, where meat production is most unsustainable, consumption is highest this is key. I'll add veganism will never gain popularity in the imperial core so long as culinary culture centres around imitating meat dishes. A vegan steak will never be beef, BUT a vegan dish can be much better than steak if you highlight the vegetable's characteristics. We all know crackers can't cook, but there are countless cuisines to import to the imperial core, say from the 1/7th of the global population in India alone who are vegetarian. I would go as far as to say that spreading some kind of disease in cows in the US, Brazil to cripple the industry would be justifiable :)
*EVs* - There are not enough material resources on the planet to create enough cars. EVs are causing a drastic *increase* in emissions at a time where tipping points are breathing down our necks. EVs keep us complacent, forcing us to continue using the inherently unsustainable transport and housing infrastructure (two of the largest emissions sectors). We already have a serious scarcity of raw material required for electronic components. They should not be wasted on cars. Cars are best when used for racing, not mass transportation.
*Biking* - Again, reorientation of infrastructure towards biking only happens after EVs or personal automobiles in general are eliminated.
*Solar blocking* - "Ministry for the Future's" prediction on this is probably, sadly, going to end up playing out. There will be a mass dying event, countries will become desperate, and they'll do this at the disapproval of other (likely imperial core who caused this massive genocide) nations despite not fully understanding the science. If the suffering nation has nukes there's no stopping them from dumping sulfur or whatever in the atmosphere either.
When we think of climate transition, we often assume the amount of energy we use, especially in the imperial core, is the global norm, or even necessary. Every little trinket we use shouldn't be over-engineered to the point that it requires electricity. Even things like heating and cooling can easily be achieved with passive infrastructure which engineers of the past already provided us the blueprint for.
Great video... for nuclear: I'm a nuclear engineer with 20 years experience. I really don't like when people say it takes too long, because they've been saying that for 30 years now, and if we just DID IT 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in this predicament. It's a little bit like the old saying, "the best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago, the second best time is today". Also, we need to understand that this "we need this power now" statement is always going to be there. We're never going to be saying "we need less power". Renewables are great and we should be building 3x as many as we are now, but we should NEVER be saying "nuclear takes too long" because the people a decade from now will be incredibly grateful that we actually did have long term vision and created a clean power source that lasts so long.
Also, I mentioned this in another comment, but the EV transition actually has massive implications on load matching. The predicted peak energy demand curves are going to shift from daytime to night time as we electrify transportation. This means that wind and solar of the future will require much more batteries than they do today, because most of the load will be at night. This is only going to exacerbate all the resource challenges of solar (cobalt, lithium, copper, nickel) and it is all the more reason why we need more nuclear power for baseload generation at night.
So throw that "it takes too long" rhetoric away, and lets do something forward-looking. We WILL be late on the energy transition. We will NOT be able to go 90% renewables like the IEA wants by 2050. Many many reasons for that, namely resource shortages, skilled labour and long-lead parts. We absolutely cannot afford to ignore any clean energy options, and nuclear is incredibly important for the future for this and many other reasons (such as providing baseload demand, production of incredibly important medical isotopes, etc). This is a time of humanity where we really need to "do all the things", and nuclear is a huge part of it.
PREACH! It's what I've been thinking all along, we gotta build ASAP
Based on the studies I have read, transitioning to renewable energy combined with energy storage appears to be more economically feasible than constructing nuclear power plants. The latest study I read was from Blekinge Technical University that looked at building future power generation in Sweden with nuclear power or with renewables combined with energy storage and found that the renewable energy route would cost 100 billion euros less for the next 30 years.
@@Joel-LindstromThere are no energy storage systems with sufficiently high capacity and low environmental impact
Nuclear energy: takes too long and too expensive? That’s on us to decide upon. Hope one day XR Will demonstrate pro nuclear energy.
Nobody speaks about just saving energy, avoiding flights and transportation, consume local goods, avoiding pets and many children, build with wood rather than cement, build smaller homes, work from home if possible, reuse, share and repair things/tools.
Yup.
While having greener energy sources should play a role in climate action, more importantly, we fundamentally need to reduce our energy demand both on the production end, and on the community/individual end. This would mean, among other things, walkable/bikeable cities, trains over airplanes for domestic travel, modular tech, and having a library econ.
Do not look only at energy production; reducing usage is even more important. We must curtail air travel and shipping, stop international vacations, buy locally, insulate buildings , etc.
all great points discussed on this channel before (well... except buying locally, which I hope to come to soon)!
Sounds like you are a 15 minute neighborhood man? If they block the end of your street with a 5 ton planter box and put the turn-back lanes, checkpoint lights and surveillance cameras in first, you know that it's about control and not convenient, healthy urban living.
Your placement of wind and solar in the same tier is spot on, but, combining the two could move them UP one notch. Very often, wind and solar don't hit at the same time, and wind can happen when solar can't. There are more days that will have both, than days where you have neither. If you can pair wind, solar, or both with electrical energy storage, those three things form a "trifecta" worthy of the top tier. Nuclear Fusion would completely solve our energy needs, IF it ever happens. Hopefully, one of us will live long enough, to see Fusion come to fruition.
Rosie is great! Thanks Adam, finding comedy in these existential issues is a fabulous talent.
Compressed Earth Block housing is a very overlooked Climate solution. I think it's better than most other Earthen housing because most people live in cities and many cities already have these grandfathered into their building code. So built in scalability. Also dirt is every and cheap. It's like Adobe 2.0
I think agrovoltaics deserves to be regarded as a separate solution. Putting solar panels on top of growing plants does make the energy more expensive, but this can be more than compensated by
- lower temperatures underneath, advantageous for both the panels and the crops if done properly;
- better usage of agricultural land;
- extra protection of crops against drought, hail and heavy rain.
By the way, wouldn’t it be nice to cover bycicle paths (like we have in the Netherlands) by Solar panels? Apart from extra space for panels, it would also serve as a cover against wind and rain for cyclists, attracting more people using a bycicle instead of a car.
And regarding the ‘geo engineering’ type of solutions: marine cloud brightning seems attractive, if it turns out to have real effects.
Great list and thanks for both giving a great well thought out presentation
I'm surprised by two things. 1) The problem of increasing drought with nuclear fission. France had a few problems with that last year and this year might become even worse. So while closing everything might not be the right call for everyone, there are reasons why fission will at least decrease in places. 2) In the light of the amount of energy needed and the speed at which this capacity has to be created, I would have thought that at least the "solar everywhere" solution would have gotten a better grade. There is a problem with storage capacity, but I got the impression that every explanation was cut a little too too short. Especially on this one.
Secret 3) This covered mostly electric energy. Anything and everything heating and cooling related is going to have to be part of our eventual mixed solution. Be it geothermal (heat pumps) and their associated isolation and circulation systems or heat repositories with water, sand, salt or whatever. Because lowering the amount of energy needed is another big big way to "solve" our climate conundrum. Why include going vegan but exclude such a crucial part?
good job guys, I'm just surprised how cycling wouldn't get a straight S!
specially in dense communities, cycling can have huge impact on the community transportation carbon footprint.
Also, I understand Energy Storage was introduced in the comparison as a part of Solar Power to balance the production-load, however, it also plays a significant role in fast transitioning by preventing any increase of fossil fuel power generation capacity in areas where renewables aren't very visible
Again, kudos to Adam and Rosie, their channels are cool and deserve way more views as they are spreading fair and honest ideas of such a critical topic
@kmFouda
As someone who has spent the past 12 months trying to bicycle to replace my car, I can tell you unequivocally of the problems with cycling. The first is that you have to be in strong physical condition. Of course that’s one of the advantages too, but many people are not in enough physical shape to do that. The second is that it is often impractical, especially in the strong winds, rain, snow, ice, and other harsh conditions, but also for large distances or large loads. The third obvious reason, and there are many more, is that it is logistically complicated. Think about how you need helmets and servicing on your bicycle. If you only had a bicycle, how do you take it in when it needs servicing? How do you keep it from being stolen? You need locks and places to lock it. And I haven’t even mentioned issues around clothing, hygiene, and socializing.
Shock there was no mention of Tidal.
I live in Illinois, USA. We get over 50% of our power from Nuclear, and we’re increasing our renewable energy production. As of January our coal burning has dropped so much that our renewable energy production has almost surpassed it! Illinois is very dedicated to its promise to reach Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050.
We’ve also been installing charging stations for EV’s, and hopefully soon will implement a carbon tax for fuel inefficient vehicles to incentivize switching to EV’s. As technology catches up with our needs, I know that everything will become more efficient
Love this take on infotainment! This could be shared with people who care about the environment but have not learnt of everything in the debates surrounding actions taken to fight cliate change!
Thanks for this. It is good to see folks sharing their opinions. That’s how debate is created. It wold be nice if you define what you really believe “green” energy is, because there is no single technology that has a life cycle zero carbon footprint. You might have considered geothermal……..and it would be great to do a separate video of your living environment on a “green index” scale because there seems to be a big carbon footprint surrounding you! I think it is time to create a public awareness of every individuals real carbon footprint, because shedding a lot of what we don’t NEED would go a long way to complementing lower carbon energy generation.
My climate change solution is
"globally, every country should intentionally set itself to achieve -GDP growth. In this case, collectively, we can cut down on the demand for developments, collaborations, and large scale events. This will significantly cut down on the demand for energy and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases".
Do note that we are already at a point of half-way no return, meaning that flash floods will continue forever. This is due to rising ambient temperatures on earth, which cause sea levels to rise. Unless we are able to freeze trillions of tons of seawater back to solid ice and put them on land, I think this is impossible.
The earth's temperature should not rise further, so we should ignore the Paris Agreement. We (the world) did not tackle the climate problem at its root-cause. That's why climate programs like COPxx have been ongoing for a long time. The world still strives for +GDP growth. The money earned is used to compensate for climate disasters. We have many scientists who can understand the technical causes of climate change. But we don't have wise leaders to solve climate problems using their objective mindset. Humanity will eventually fail and surrender to its own creation: money. It's sad to see this, and our last tipping point is "We have no time to wait".
Love this focus on climate solutions!! Such a cool way to make a tier list! Solid work both of you 🎉
Maybe for a future video, including indigenous rights protection and women’s education especially in developing countries as climate solutions would be great!
huge solutions that we missed out! there could be a whole tier list specifically on the social solutions
@@ClimateAdam Yes! Please more of it! Especially solutions that SMEs can implement. For example, farmers can implement precision agriculture, no-till farming, and regenerative agriculture in agribusiness to improve soil and crop health for carbon sequestering and biodiversity.
@@ClimateAdam If you got a PhD from Oxford, explain this to me:
Why should the UK switch off from fossil fuels so completely when it is a dwarf in comparison to China, the US, India and Russia ???
@@ClimateAdam You surely realise the extremely swift transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy which people like you promote will inevitably hurt agriculture and the most socially vulnerable (poor) ? Don't you realise that the cost of hunan existence is consumption ??
@@Ball7399 1st comment: Leading by example. Why should the countries consuming the most change if nobody else is? The UK is not a developing country, so it has a much greater capacity to decarbonise compared to India. Hopefully international social pressure from countries who make the transition will motivate countries like the US to take steps towards net zero.
2nd comment: Nobody said the road to decarbonisation won't be hard, affecting everybody, but certainly those least privileged the most. Do our government make a big effort to look after the most socially vulnerable at present? Do you think it will become easier for them support people most vulnerable once we begin to experience major societal and economic hardship due to climate change? Transitioning to net zero will be difficult and your concern isn't invalid, but I doubt it'll be anywhere near as difficult as surviving in a future where we don't.
You forgot trains of all types (high speed, commuter rail, trams, metros,...). I'd put that easily in S tier, but I wonder where you would have put it.
I laughed when Rosie said something like "Since we have to take out 90% of emissions from our electrical grid by 2030 ..." Her point was that since speedy action is important, nuclear power is not that helpful, which I get, but the gap here between what everyone understands is desirable, and what is actually being done, is grotesque.
Overall the list seems fine. Being a very quick video I know there wasn't much time to go into details but I am a bit perturbed about Fissions placement/explanation. Saying it's not a good solution (C-tier) because it's too expensive and too costly is the exact same excuse that climate deniers say about even bothering to do anything towards making things more sustainable.
Not an expert but from what I have researched this is the one technology we have today that could actually solve most of our issues, and provide the cheapest long term cost. Solar and Wind technology require huge amount of space and land which long term will never be viable options. These technologies are great for a short term transitionary period to what an actually solution might be because they can be implemented in smaller, cheaper scales, but realistically we need something better. Not to mention the huge amount of issues you get by connecting these "turbulent" energy sources to the grid.
I really liked this discussion, thank you both!
Personally, I feel that we should give more weight to the problem of inconsistent generation for wind & solar (and the cost in both batteries and extra coal plants this has and will continue to cause).
I like the quick and simple format, as it's a great way to inform a broad audience. However, as an engineer myself, I sometimes crave a more objective discussion. Something like "Technology X could give us A GW/d in B years at a cost of $C, has a complication of D, and would stop being useful after this amount because of factor E". Each of these values would be ranges and best guesses, of course, which is why it's a complex topic!
Lastly, I would have liked a few extra seconds showing the full tier list at the end (with text labels), rather than having to hunt for it. :)
"...the problem of inconsistent generation for wind & solar...."
One thing to keep in mind is that the _combination_ of wind plus solar is more consistent than either alone. That's because days that are not sunny tend to be windy, and days that are not windy tend to be sunny.
"...the cost in both batteries and extra coal plants...."
Batteries are great for energy storage on timescales of minutes to days, and a lot of very smart people are working hard on creating new types of less expensive batteries.
Other ways to store energy are also possible. The US Naval Research Laboratory is working on a process of synthesizing carbon-neutral jet fuel by extracting dissolved CO2 from seawater & combining it with hydrogen from the water itself. Existing coal or natural gas burning power plants could be "remodeled" to burn this jet fuel instead, which would be piped to them from the seashore and stored in big tanks to use when the combination of all other renewable power sources aren't enough. The synthetic jet fuel could sit in tanks for months or even years until it was needed.
To restore the climate system we need to
- reduce GHG emissions
- use energy efficiently
- enhance GHG drawdown out of the atmosphere
Energy is required for / to
- agriculture & food production
- transport
- generate electricity
- buildings
- industry & manufacturing
How best to accomplish reduction, efficiency & drawdown depends on the sector involved
- agriculture (use of alternatives for herbicides, pesticides & fertilizers, awa restorative agri processes, urban agri closer to consumers)
- transport (focus on e-public transport, alt mobility & lastly EVs)
- electricity gen (distributed & community energy, on & off-shore wind, solar, energy storage)
- buildings (energy efficiency, rooftop solar, energy storage, alt sources eg bioluminescence or solar lighting that does not require electricity)
- industry & manufacturing (using alternatives ie moving away from fossil fuel use in goods & services)
- reduce waste, esp food waste re methane emissions)
You don't seem to take into account the resource limitations in metal, like copper, in the developpment of renewable, nor their impact on biodiversity, for instance the space required to develop solar energy or the impact on water cycle and nutrient cycle of hydropower dams. This would lead to favor one important solution that you don't mention, which is sufficiency.
I don't get logic - nuclear power to expensive and long to develop so let's risk our future on not yet existing storage technologies... I think this is gamble we should not aim for.
How can someone make a video about climate change solutions without mentioning burning less fossil fuel? That is the cheapest and easiest. Also, there needs to be a discussion about electricity on demand. Many devices in an industrial economy operate automatically (air compressors, elevators, garage doors - that is only a tiny sample). They need electricity on demand, not when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. That's the serious advantage of nuclear, which provides a base load of electricity. Both wind and solar need geneeration that will fill in the gaps. Right now, that is mostly natural gas, oil, or coal. Batteries are an option, but batteries are not green, and the amount of battery storage required is enormous.
Even if we would stop all emissions today, Carbon Dioxide Removal is and will be necessary. Both natural and technological methods. Everything from tree planting and biochar to enhanced rock weathering and Direct Air Capture.
Passive houses is my favorite way to work on reducing our emissions. Instead of energy production, it works on reducing our consumption.
In Quebec where I live, most residential energy use is in heating/cooling. Passive houses would help greatly in reducing our energy demands
Wind turbines are also big hazards for birds and neighbors. Absurdly noisy, at least the most common models
If all cars had V2H or V2G, would they bump up a little? combined with Solar PV, they would help to mitigate the drawbacks of Solar (not available at night) but without so much extra cost...so many people have cars anyway, and they will be EV's in the future
I pretty much agree with this ranking.
I think the arguments around 'putting PV everywhere' are quite application specific though - solar roadways are obviously silly, but sometimes the benefit of bringing the generation closer to point of use might outweigh the higher capital cost, e.g. integrated into vehicles or buildings. Also there can be benefits from shading, e.g. 'floatovoltaics' on reservoirs, which cut down evaporation in addition to generating energy.
Don't cut forests for PV - you lose 50% of the carbon cost savings when you do. its very dumb to cut down carbon sinks to build solar, but there they go...
You didn’t mention insulation! Low cost, low maintenance, potential carbon capture if the right materials are used.
It seems to me that the reasons given for nuclear fission (and so forth) being C-tier are based more on politics than energy-like considerations. Just because it's expensive and it takes time doesn't mean we shouldn't build more nuclear plants, indeed, I would argue we should start building ASAP given the climate crisis we're living in. As of now, they're the most efficient and clean way to produce energy, it's kind of a shame to see it under (even) windpower, which quite frankly is such a scam
Based on the studies I have read, transitioning to renewable energy combined with energy storage appears to be more economically feasible than constructing nuclear power plants. The latest study I read was from Blekinge Technical University that looked at building future power generation in Sweden with nuclear power or with renewables combined with energy storage and found that the renewable energy route would cost 100 billion euros less for the next 30 years. (also quicker to build)
given the contribution of CO2 due to transportation I do not agree with giving Evs a "c". I think they should be considered a must have part of the solution.
To prevent food waste should have number one priority
Solar PV on rooftops isn't high maintenance, and combined with battery storage, enables the homeowner to use the generated electricity at night.
One thing you didn't include is simplification as in the way we live our lives. Until we recognise that we can't continue living like we do in the wealthy West and we need to slash our energy consumption, nothing will work and we will have to deal with the consequences.
With solar panels on rooftops, this attitude with "well, if we ran out of space to put these on..." may be an argument in a country like the USA, where you got tons of empty, windy and sunny land, but here in Germany, the use of land has become a really tense political issue, because we are a densely populated, sun starved and in many places mountainous, or hilly country, where the wind doesn't blow that much. So, naturally, rooftop pv is a really relevant energy solution here.
Btw, a country like Britain has the luxury of having virtually endless shallow sea nearby, that can provide almost endless clean energy. Germany doesn't have as much shallow sea space either.
Wish you added electric public transportation, like trams, commuter trains, and high-speed rail.
Fossil fuel companies love wind and solar because they provide the power for the 70% of the time that wind and solar are offline. To be economically viable, wind and solar need a storage technology that does not exist (not even close), yet nuclear, which already has been proven, will "take too long". The one remaining nuclear plant in California produces about 10% of the state's electric power and has about the footprint of a big box store. How much mining and land footprint would wind and solar take to supply that energy?
I enjoyed video. You did not include the benefits of increasing organic content in the soil by maximizing vegetative cover as a carbon sink. In addition to the CO2 removed from the atmosphere, the improved infiltration and water retention, transpiration has a cooling impact on the local climate. To me this is motivating because the benefit can go to the local implementers. Simply sequestering CO2 without other benefits will never be perceived by the implementers. Nurturing life through feeding microbes with vegetative cover is for me an S on your chart.
Given that there are no working fusion systems and the enormous engineering and capital expenditure that will almost certainly be required (if a solution is ever found) this should be an F- for anytime in the 21st century.
What do you think of bioenergy? In Sweden we have quite a lot of power stations mainly for local district heating. Some also produce some electricity.
These power stations used to use different sources of fuel including coal and oil but they changed to using bioenergy and garbage and like in my home town they actually built an additional power furnace for sole use of biomass. I asked my local power producer where they source their additional bioenergy but they wouldn’t give me an answer. Although sweden have a huge forest industry we import garbage and other kinds of material to burn so there doesn’t seem to be self sufficiency even with our forest industry that also needs to cut back for environmental and climate concern.
The power company and also the municipality don’t have to declare the biogenic carbon in their emissions statistics because of the accounting rules.
So at the municipal and corporate level it’s looks like there aren’t any carbon emissions. Instead these emissions is combined with the national reporting for land use and land change.
I think a consequence of this it’s these emissions is almost hidden at municipalities and power companies. But the same amount of power is generated.
There is an experiment to add CCS of one of these plants. I wonder if that investment would increase the need for production? But it’s also a good possibility?
The meh on electric cars, has led me to thinking about a thing you left out of your solutions , social change. I infer that electric cars got a meh, because really we should not be using cars as a primary means of transport. But to do that we need decent public transport, ( not just bikes ) to convince lawmakers to build or allow the building of decent public transport we need people who want public transport, that is we need social change. I survived until I was 30 without knowing how to drive because I lived in an old section of town, built before cars that was public transport and walking friendly. But when I bought a house in the suburbs all that changed, public transport still existed but it became much worse in the end it was more the double my travel time by public transport to work then it was by car. Those suburbs were and are a product of public policy, that need change. Likewise the immense resistance to work from home. Or the madness of shipping raw materials across thousands of miles of ocean to be refined, when until quiet recently the materials were refined just about at the pit head.
Love the list and would like to know where you stand on Solar Thermal systems? As an amateur, I like how they can be a baseload power supply with integrated storage. They have room for improvement, especially with materials sciences that will allow for less carbon intensive parts to replace steel. They would seem to have a larger area of installation since you can just add more mirrors to reach the proper temperatures.
Was interesting. However, I missed geothermal to be mentioned. I think that could be a solid B or even A - where available, even can be used at industrial scale, but geothermal energy use is available individually for most people with relatively good cost, low maintenance.
My favorite solution is seasonal heat storage. Maybe not so important for you in Australia, but here in Germany if we want to produce all of our heat with heat pumps we need more additional electricity in January (winter here!) than we are currently producing. Short calculation: We need 793 TWh heat each year, 17% of heat in January, makes 135 TWh, heat pump COP in January (when it is cold outside) 2.5: 135 TWh / 2.5: 54 TWh electricity in January for heating. This January we did produce 44 TWh electricity this year (of which 50% is renewable!). So we would need to more than double the installed electrical power generation, because of the winter months.
So in the summer we would produce heat with solar collectors and pump the hot water through boreholes in a borehole field. In winter we would use the heat directly or via a (then very efficient) heat pump in a district heating system. Energy loss would be about 20%. I would love to see a video about that. I made one for my neighborhood, but it is in German.
This is great as a community solution, but sadly due to that it is only going to happen in a more "socialist" political/economic system meaning a small number of nations. Most nations of the world are too beholden to the Grid oligopoly who will not allow these awesome community projects.
Awesome conversation. Thank you!
These conversations shouldn't be about feelings. Solar everywhere is more about including energy generation in things we're already doing for other reasons. If windows, roads and buildings generated power simply because we added a few safe ingredients, that could generate all the power we need. Solar Geoengineering isn't a solution but it's a critical part of the overall plan for saving the planet from global warming. If we fix the yearly CO2 imbalance we still warm for decades and still have an ocean acidity problem that is far more serious than people seem to understand. Injecting SO2 is very safe and could very possibly be the only way to keep the global ocean circulation going while we wait for temps to peak and eventually cool. It is also the only way to stabilize the glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.
Not running the numbers to compare the "deaths" from SO2 in the stratosphere with the deaths from an extra degree or two added to the global temp is simply irresponsible. Not running the numbers and only mentioning death from SO2 is literally propaganda. There is no single solution and pretending any of them are free or feel wrong is a mistake. Every "bad" solution has to be judged in an equation that compares it with the options that exist today. Not with the perfect option. This is why dams and desal get a bad rap. Hearing that brine is as dangerous as oil industry pollution when you can simply mix it with seawater or that a dam is bad for the environment without any calculation of the pollution caused by the power generation it replaces makes me crazy. This is an emergency and it's way too late to fool around or pay games.
I would add a system to your list that includes the ocean. Wave power as part of a large coastal infrastructure project that creates transmission capacity for offshore wind, wave and solar power as well as to producing fresh water and creating large scale habitat for ocean life is what I view as ideal geoengineering. The west coast of the US for example could build a continuous floating reef miles offshore that was designed to support a kelp forest and upwelled enough water to assure the temp and nutrient balance was maintained at an ideal level. Having that reef also provide fresh water pipelines and electrical lines would allow desal out in the ocean where brine is easily mixed and transmission infrastructure to allow business of any size to invest in building green energy infrastructure. At the same time it helps fix the growing hypoxic zones & plants a create a "factory" that will convert untold gigatons of CO2 into fish, and other ocean life that will in turn create a bunch of waste that will fall to the ocean floor, before we eat them. Electricity is one avenue but ideally we should be looking at how we can help the carbon cycle add as many lanes as possible.
Investing a supertanker of oil into building a kelp forest is far better than replacing the energy from that tanker with solar panels. Not just because it's nature but because you create something that not only performs the task but that also continuously creates other "things" that will perform the same task while also creating other things that perform the task. Every kelp forest is a runaway solution that will grow like a virus to solve your problem. Solutions that self replicate are obviously better. Fish are obviously better than rocks. Helping nature clean things up is easier than cleaning things up ourselves.
Bikes in B ? If someone switchs from a Car to an electric bike to go to work that's an S !
Great video! Surely the total S tier that was missed out is energy demand reduction? Via various methods
Quote from Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ - and readers’ - attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty."
problem is politicians again have to fit any response into economic value.
@Daniel Meyers Exxon and the oil companies are the ones that came up with carbon taxes. They are not going to lose money, but make way more. It's a hoax
The only thing that can be done fast enough is solar geoengineering. It does not have to be aerosols in the stratosphere. It can be reflection of some of the sunlight back into space. Cloud brightening, highly reflective white paint, etc.
I was surprised that you didn't talk about Solar Thermal. Or thermal energy storage in general.
No geothermal? Both shallow for heat transfer and deep for power generation.
I'd say one of the solutions that should get more attention especially in the west like Europe and the US which are major energy consumers but also China is doing more with what we have, being more efficient and wasting less.
Better insulation on buildings means you don't need to heat or cool it as much.
Lowering the speed limit on roads will reduce pollution from driving, reduce risk/injuries from accidents, save on fuel at the cost of things take longer.
Wasting less food and clothes, I was brought up to wear clothes that fit me until they don't and to finish my plate clean and have a day where we eat leftover scraps before they go bad. I don't have no waste but old clothes become cleaning rags or pillow filling until they just fall apart and are thrown out.
And China ohhh maybe don't build things you don't need, and when you do build things make sure they are build to last.
I hope that if highways would be limited to 100km/h or 60miles/h maybe more people will take a train, on that same not planes should just not be a thing, not for the cost they are flying at, flying should be expensive especially for how polluting it is.
Bikes should be an S because they not only reduce carbon directly they also create a better environment for people to live in and foster more local engagement. The car is so destructive especially in cities. Just look at Not Just Bikes videos for illustrations of this.
I think I'd lump public transport in there too. Not only more energy efficient(especially rail) but helps to drastically reduce congestion, and potentially free up space for more, and denser, urban residential development.
Trains, rail in general, both for cargo and for passengers. They're a solid B.
Wind and solar have, so far, only added to the amount of energy we use. How can we actually make a switch?
Tidal?/Wave?/Geothermal?
Hydropower is very disruptive to local ecology here, as well as to indigenous nations. It changes water temperatures and creates methane.
100% - me and Rosie definitely don't see eye to eye on the tier of hydro!
I think it was an oversight to have grid scale solar, as good, solar roadways as bad (sure) but not mention rooftop solar. rooftop solar wins where rooftop wind looses. low maintainance, silent, reliable.
I'm definitely a fan of rooftop solar! there's a reason it's seen everywhere and rooftop wind isn't!
@@ClimateAdam I live on a sailboat, and I've considered a small wind turbine, but it's very noisy (not as bad as a generator, but you'd know it anchored next to a boat with wind turbines) so I have solar. Sometimes I can't generate power, fine. I've found it to be easier and cheaper to reduce my needs than to increase capacity. But of course I use wind power for propulsion -- sails! (with a small electric motor to manoeuvrer if there is no wind) currently only using fossil fuel for cooking but looking to replace that.
What about replacing a gas furnace and electric A/C with a Heat Pump?
Does a heat pump provide A/C? I'm currently trying to educate myself and seriously asking. How would this work in less temperate climates? Off topic, but I am moving soon to DFW area and one home had evaporative cooling system. I looked it up. I think it's a swamp cooler. I know this works in arid climates like new mexico, but it says it isn't great for more humid climates. Thanks in advance to anyone who answers
I'm looking up the answer without waiting. The only thing that scares me is that it says they don't typically work for very hot climates where it's more than 20 degrees hotter outside. This is frequent in texas. We have about 3 months that it's over 100 most days. Yesterday 105. Ugh. I also sleep during the day and I just can't do it above about 74.
I saw a paper recently that highlighted a new superconductor has been found with kind of space age properties. How could that impact potential technologies???
Lime decarbonisation: Saltx Technology: Cement industry and carbon capture Calix
*solar power* - the big drawback here is low efficiency panels when they should be pushed for higher efficiences reducing the area of land needed for a given capacity.
*Windpower* - battery storage or heat storage in water for district heating. Windpower > electricity > industrial processes > heat > district heating would probably be the best use.
*Electric cars* - we should start from the position of reducing energy consumption for transport by 80%. For cars that would mean taking the vast majority off the road and replacing them with active transport and public transport. In the UK 75% of car owners also own a bicycle, half the population lives in major urban envrinments, 75% of commutes are within active transport or public transport range, we have 40,000 buses and 30,000,000 cars.
*Buses* - didn't even get a look in. Taking 80% to 90% of cars off the road, especially in major towns and cities, would provide a load of steel for making new buses. Compressed air buses allow the extracted heat to be put on district heating systems. Compressed air buses already exist.
*Electric Trains* - this should be an obvious one, the tracks are already in place though some routes would need the track bed lowering due to tunnels. Electric trains are much quiter than diesel electrics allowing more freight transport to occur at night when wind power is cheaper reducing the number of HGV / trucks.
*Shipping* - since much of the energy involved in shipping is transportation of fossil fuels the above actions would reduce shipping. Fossils account for around 40% of international shipping.
*Energy efficient homes* - where was this one?
*Reduced consumption* - and this one?
I have purposefully minimised the use of lithium here as it is likely energy intensive and most of the solutions are based more on technology that is fundamentally based on late 19 th century physics and engineering. In other words it can provide solutions on a global scale that allows developing countries to use / develop them without patent infringements and disproportionate import costs.
I have personally reduced my usage of Alakaline batteries and replaced it with Ni-MH batteries.
Their current historical reputation does not really apply anymore. Most are the LSD (Low Self Discharge) types that can keep a charge for a few years.
Way more cost effective too, using them like three to five times is enough for the cost to be level.
It is both more wallet and enviromentally friendly to purchase and utilize items that last longer and over multiple uses.
Going with the very cheapest upfront is pennywise, but dollardumb.
For people arguing that not everyone can afford the upfront cost of such items, one can just get it cheaper pre-owned.
well solar on walls dosnt look to be too bad, sure its less efficent but depending on where you put it could generate some extra with the sun being lower in the morning or evening. and for hydropower there are also options for smaller turbines or the hole thing with the tidel forces.
how about forth generation nuclear fission, which is much closer to be realized than fusion, and already has the potential of changing the game by potentially improve by a factor 100 the energy production per kilogram of combustible?
Reflecting sun light off the earth's surface is a good way to buy time to reduce the production of greenhouse emissions. How about you look into the practicality of an existing method. Painting roofs of houses with highly reflective white paint. It is available now and very inexpensive compared to other methods. It has 2 benefits, reducing longwave radiation going into the atmosphere and reducing the load on the AC system thereby reducing the need for energy generation.
I remember in my astronomy class from 1st year college that reflecting light/heat under the atmosphere is a key factor of the cycle of global warming. So I don't believe your solution actually fixes anything.
Solutions:
S: radical economic & political equality;
healing the complex psychological condition causing all our problems-Wetiko disease [1]
A: efficiency; wiser lives; electrification of primary energy [2]; solar PV; solar water heating/cooling [3]; offshore wind, especially floating; walkable/bikeable landscapes; small-scale, low-meat organic permaculture & regenerative forestry & grasslandery [4];
B: onshore wind; geothermal; CSP; hydro, micro-hydro, run-of-river hydro; vegetarianism;
C: clothesline paradox/geothermalish energy; tidal; veganism;
D: small amounts of bioenergy;
The levels of some are pretty arbitrary but I don’t think we can succeed without good to excellent progress on all the “S” & “A” solutions. Others are lower either because their contribution is likely to be numerically less OR because they’re not as crucial, not necessarily both. Certain assumptions determine their placement, too, which may turn out to be unwarranted. Geothermal could supply all the energy humanity needs, eg. 10,000 times over. But will it in the next 7 years? Tidal can be very important locally, including in places other sources are difficult; half of Scotland’s grid could be supplied by the tides in Pentland Firth, but it may take either more storage or more transmission or both to integrate into grids.
[1] ”Seeing Wetiko: on Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition” Alnoor Ladha, Martin Kirk
[2] Electrification of primary energy includes an RE leccy-powered state-of-the-art international high speed rail network to replace long distance driving, & continental (& some other?) flying, & electrifying everything that moves, & a lot that doesn’t-heat pumps, induction cookers, steel-making, industrial heating, etc.
[3] Some interesting ideas for heating, cooling, refrigeration in Drawdown & vox-David Roberts & others
[4] Edible Forest Gardens, 2 vol. Dave Jacke & Eric Toensmeier. Mind blowing!
What about the technologies related to low CO2 concrete manufacturing?
tech for low carbon industry (concrete, cement, steel) are all super important, yes!
@@ClimateAdam Cob, adobe, straw bale. I’m guessing you know there are 800 year old cob buildings still standing in Wales, 600 in the SW US.
Roman concrete, coal ash concrete for a while...
A lightning round right after Rosie says we're running out of time, nice transition
Also, the veganism is a bit surprising being an A, as Rosie pointed out it's individual action, but considering livestock (especially cows) and the resources needed for them I can see it making a big impact. But what about reducing food waste? Tons of food is wasted and turns into methane, so couldn't that also have a significant impact even if not as much and more short term?
ah cutting down on food waste (or waste in general) is a huge win - not just for climate, but for people's wallets as well. I'm gunna say... S tier!
You should talk to power companies who actually have to do feasibility studies on how to implement and maintain sreliable energy grid and also have to conduct a true budget of cost to produce power to get a more honest and less naive and over simplified ranking.
I think one of our great failures at the moment is a failure to expand our perspective on the situation. When we discovered electricity, it was like learning magic. When we learned it's potential to be a force that could be controlled to do so much, we as a society became obsessed with it. To the point that by the 80s, if something wasn't powered by electricity, it was viewed as backward or medieval.
We need to not only do what we can to replace fossil fuels out of the energy grid, we need to rethink technology completely and remove our electricity first bias.
Solar electrical generation is garbage compared to solar heat capture. Electrical storage is extremely expensive and typically requires massive amounts of rare and usually toxic materials. Also, it typically comes with significant environmental impact. On the flip side, heat storage is cheap and easy. Sand and carbon, in the form of graphite are extremely good heat storage mediums and are amongst the most abundant elements on earth.
Also, heat generation is one of the biggest contributors to green house gases there is. We could make for more progress by using the smaller solar footprints required for heat capture to offset heat generation and take a huge load off the energy and fossil fuel grids quickly. Abundant summer solar heat could be captured even out towards the higher latitudes, than heat could be stored for months, and then tapped for use in the cold months.
Industry could use a combination of heat capture/storage as well as use of heat pumps to ramp up temps to offset their heat generation requirements.
We could even take it further. Use it to run greenhouses. Organic waste is a big contributor of methane and such. If we put organic waste in chambers hot air flowed through on it's way to greenhouses, thay warm air would absorb the moisture from the waste. It would dry the waste out, cutting short it's rotting cycle, reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. The warm air going into the greenhouse will also be quite humid as a byproduct. This could make greenhouses in even relatively colder climates quite conducive to growing traditionally tropical plants. Further, the warm air could be cooled, which would cause it to release its excess moisture, so water could be reclaimed from the organic waste to be used in the greenhouse. Beyond that, the inorganic material left from the drying of the organic waste will be nutrient nutrient rich and could be used as fertilizer for the plants. All of this, if tropical plants could be grown readily in non-tropical environments could offset so many other problems as well. Not as much food will need to be shipped nearly as far. So it could also offset fossil fuel use in transporting food.
All while reducing energy use, water use, gas emissions, etc.
We need to stop this notion that electricity will be our savior. We handicap ourselves by limiting our solutions to it. We need to explore every way we use energy as question if we could power something another way more efficiently
Thanks for pointing out the time it takes to get new nuclear fission plants built vs the urgency of our situation. Another bad thing is that they enable the production of ingredients for nuclear weapons. To me that's a really really big red flag.
The biggest problem with new Nuclear Fission, is its cost. The return on investment can take as long as 40 years, owing to the high initial cost. Many investors won't live long enough, to receive their dividends, so they don't want to make that long term investment. According to the EIA (Energy Information Agency) Nuclear is the most expensive energy, just under off shore wind. Wind (on shore) and solar have ROI's of just a couple of years, therefore, they're more likely to get the investment dollars. Off shore wind is the most expensive right now, but the cost per installed megawatt is coming down. It will soon become less expensive than nuclear, making the "nuclear option" a last resort. While nuclear is largely carbon free, it is not a renewable energy source. It is finite. Wind and solar will be there "as sure as the sun shines".
Agroforestry C
Forrestgardenning A
Great Video - as usual!
Climate topics are more an more depressing - and in my opinion - you feel the disinformational pressure on society and politics by fossil fool industry the nearer we get to the point of phase out of fossil fuels.
Even a simple objective rating of climate solutions goes direct into politics and personal taste. I don't get it. And people don't get, that the common discussed techologies, as in this video, are just based on rational analysis (cost, market potential, market cycle, technology cycle, enviromental impact, time, ressources, etc. ) wildly discussed in scientifc literature and not an green agenda or something.
Anyway, thanks for your work.
Do you not think that nuclear microreactors, or more generally SMRs, can be deployed in time to help address climate change?
Solar water heating? I know someone with a very cheap installation. It has no control electronics, so no problems sourcing coltron, but it really only provides hot water late afternoon and early evening. They organise showers and laundry around that.
Most people have posher ones that provide hot water about 20 hours a day, and warm water for the other 4
great informative video
I've heard that the aerosol effect from burning fossil fuels could be slowing how quickly we warm, so if we stopped burning, we'd get a sudden warming. Geoengineering could be a way to stop that from happening, if we mimicked it then we already would know the effects. Of course that would be a colossal effort.
this effect would only take place if we stopped emitting aerosols suddenly. if we gradually phased them out (which is much more realistic) this spike wouldn't take place. the heating that aerosols are 'masking' is explicitly taken into account by climate scientists when they estimate e.g. how much more fossil fuel we can burn before reaching particular limits