LOOOOL. You killed me. You know that Just Have To Think push for vaporware and stuff that will not work in 3000 years right? He wish to pump start up for fast cash.
As a full time residential solar company, I'm still waiting for a call from the local authorities around here saying "we are really getting serious about encouraging solar - What can you suggest to make going solar easier..." I have a long list for them.
You're clearly not on the town council and don't represent enough money in their pockets to warrant them paying attention. Bribing the right people in the right ways will guarantee your success, it always works with the larger businesses around here.
Thanks Dave! As an engineer, I think it’s important to Understand the key metrics in the problem we are trying to solve. We need to minimize carbon intensity, meet demand, minimize cost, understand trade-offs, and understand the time domain for implementation. I always hated marketing telling us engineers how to solve the problem, rather than just telling us the objective.
"As an engineer, I think it’s important to Understand the key metrics in the problem we are trying to solve. We need to minimize carbon intensity, meet demand, minimize cost, understand trade-offs, and understand the time domain for implementation." Well, we ALSO must shrink humanity's total ecological footprints by about 45+% to prevent worsening ecological and societal collapse, including getting our impacts within limits on all nine major planetary boundaries. Unless we do this, we could solve the climate crisis and still be headed toward collapse. There, I just stated the overarching ecological objective.
@@afreire239 "We need lots of energy to establish a foothold outside this planet." That's physically impossible for more than a tiny handful of people and the space travel involved would further damage the planet for the billions of people left here. All our hopes lie on protecting the planet we have here.
My oldest brother is a senior engineer and he became fed up decades ago with accountants and marketing types telling him and engineers in general how to solve problems etc.
Yes, please continue your education and support into a greener world. I hear your frustration with the algorithms and with the provider but the cause is much more important! I continue to be frustrated by the people rejecting a better future by embracing past methods of energy production due to the money that is currently being made by these existing methods. It's up to us to recognize and promote the future. Thank you! 👍
By far the best UA-cam channel out there on the topic of global energy. Down to Earth and calling out the bad actors. Essential viewing! (I use some of your topics in my podcast show, because they're important, and backed by real data). 🤟❤️
Really appreciate the links Dave. As a layperson it's a monumental task trying to keep up with current research, even with academic access, which not all of us have. Disinformation (and COP Presidents) rely on a lack of information and understanding to maintain their influence. Knowledge is indeed power. Knowledge about power is power.
No "research" is necessary to solve this, only engineering. The solutions have been around now for over half a fucking century. Build it. The Oil Will End
Dear Dave, I find it absolutely outrageous that your reports were algo-censored by youtube. Thank you for your sustained efforts. Your work is extremely important, measured, balanced, objective and factual. Is this what alphabet aims to censor?
Over the last 3 months I've seen censorship increasing on every channel and every subject. I think they're automated censoring routine is taking anything reported for any reason as material to be censored as a result. It doesn't feel like UA-cam has a human in the loop. Or maybe they just have two or three humans
Thank you for the informative video. I do have some thoughts on this subject but it’s more than I can put in a comment. I have a blogpost that I’d like people to see at: thoughtsonclimate.blogspot.com/2023/12/thoughts-concerning-climate-change.html
1) Ground all planes 2) Park all ICE cars, you have to wait for ev delivery 3) Switch the meat production genetic meats. 4) recruit one billion people to plant 10 trillion trees 5) 1/3 of the land is used for feed for meat production.....otherwise straight to 3.0c.
Can we lobby the UK govt to consider these steps? Like, spam Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer's PO boxes. An old fashioned letter-writing campaign? I would love to see an end of fossil fuel subsidies etc. but it won't come easy without pressure from voters.
I did a quick calculation on the Tesla semi gets equivalent to about 19 miles to the gallon. I don't think people appreciate the efficiency gains of electrification.
Loaded or unloaded? If loaded, that's an impressive increase over a peak-performing conventional diesel, but not so much unloaded (still significant, though). The BIG payoff is if charging is mostly or all-sustainable sourcing, because then the fuel supply-chain costs are essentially as low as possible
Maybe the way to get those extra gigawatts is to develop underused renewable sources. Best example is wave or tidal energy. Another way would be to encourage renewables at the micro level. Small solar and wind installations and micro hydro.
I agree about encouraging small scale wind and solar. I would especially like to see government subsidies go to homeowners and possibly commercial and/or industrial properties instead of oil companies. Just imagine all the flat roofs out there in commercial malls and industrial parks with solar or wind installations and on site storage. Much less stress to the outdated grid as well.
Another underused smaller scale renewable is biogas, which is simply methane made by throwing waste organic matter into an anaerobic digester to create a fuel inherently compatible with existing infrastructure. (And fortunately natural gas power plants are relatively efficient for a thermal power plant.) It won't completely makeup for existing demand, but it would also reclaim what would have been fugitive emissions from landfills, waste treatment plants, and farms into usuable power with carbon that was already destined for the atmosphere. What the grid really needs is storage, and lithium ion batteries are not the correct technology for it. They need rare materials that are environmentally damaging to extract, and have useless properties for the grid like lightweight, high flammability, and lose capacity with every cycle. (Good for phones, not for sticking in a warehouse to cycle daily for the next 50 years)
@@bobmeister4495Yes. Another point to add to the capacity factor is that on site consumption of micro generators avoids about 8% of transmission losses from electrical resistance.
10:48 I am not sure if point 6 "strong competition" will really help the adoption and expansion of green energy. Competition, and especially strong competition, usually result in poor execution performance because projects were undervalued and then quickly run over budget which increases the risk of project failure or bankruptcy a lot. Even if quality markers like economical sustainability, sensibility and accountability were enforced, competition will subvert these efforts. Instead of strong competition, communities and governments should focus on project developers that have a proven track record of sustainable financial and economical performance, ie. financing their projects without too much questionable or highly risky money schemes that could go bust at the slightest breeze blowing into their faces.
I agree with your assessment, but I think competition does have a place. If government procurement was done on the basis of what you said, i.e. quality, proven efficiency, best technology, and price, then competition among providers would be fine and work well. Unfortunately, in many areas this process seems to fail. One of the big reasons seems to be the role of mega-corporations who end up controlling or directly running most of the companies that are able to bid. When that happens, healthy competition turns into a sick masquerade which totally fails to deliver what is required.
I am 100% off-grid with solar powering my house and 2 EVs. One of my EVs has V2L and I have it hooked up to my home solar to provide the equivalent of 6 Tesla PowerWalls of backup power (Videos on my channel for the doubters) I very rarely hear people talk about the role EVs with V2L/V2H/V2G will play in the energy transition, but the potential is massive. What I paid for my EV is less than the cost of buying and installing 6 Tesla PowerWalls!
@@johnlocke_1 The thing about Lithium Batteries is they are like the Lead Acid batteries you have in your ice vehicle, they can be recycled. Did you know 99% of lead acid batteries are recycled? Lead is only worth $2,000/ton while Lithium is worth $29,000/ton basic economics explains why they will be recycled. 2 Vehicles is necessary for us as we live in the countryside. We have rainwater harvesting and process all our grey and black water onsite. We grow much of our own fruit and vegetables. People who live in cities always complain about our cars, to which I reply ok you make all your own power for your home and your your transport needs, collect all your own water and process all your waste (we don’t have refuse collection) grow much of your own food, then you can complain about my cars. “energy storage is what, exactly” - Solar power stored in a battery to use when the sun doesn’t shine.
@EcoHouseThailand how many emissions to create a lithium battery? How many emissions to recycle a lithium battery? I'm sure nobody complains about your cars. It seems you just want to brag.
@@johnlocke_1 You complained about my cars just a minute ago! Did you actually read my original post? I was asking why bi-directional charging on EVs is not being discussed as a solution. As for CO2 my batteries are warranted for 8 years 70%. I expect their useful life will be a lot longer than 8 years by which the time the CO2 compared to however you are powering your home and transport will be negligible. So sort your own carbon footprint out before you start complaining about other people
@EcoHouseThailand you said, "people who live in cities complain about our cars", son. I see you ignored everything else i said. 😏 Oooo, warranty for batteries. That means....you get a new one? You said a lot in your OP. Most of what you said was inflating your own ego over your property. Note: no one cares.
Hey Dave, as a Canadian living in Ontario, I would say that one of our lowest hanging fruits in terms of renewable energy production is unpowered dams. The dams are there, the flow would be massive by European standards but there is no power being made there. It doesn't require the expensive and time consuming part of permitting and building the dam, it may require more wires but otherwise, this looks like such a massive amount of ignored potential that gets far too little attention
@@DrSmooth2000 1 Dams also create significant disruption of the environment. Here is the Pacific Northwest of the US, we are taking down some dams because they seriously impede salmon runs. Salmon are a key species that many other animals and indigenous people depend on. Other methods short of dam removal have proven ineffective. 2 How do dams generate methane?
@@bjb7587 1) that is very unfortunate. Water management is key. PNW may dry out. I get salmon are a keystone species, but... 2) vegetal matter especially when first flooding an area is decomposed under colder stagnant water. As is debris that floods in. That's how amazon went to net GHG producer and not a sink
@@DrSmooth2000 "vegetal matter especially when first flooding an area is decomposed under colder stagnant water." That is a one time price to pay and comapred to how useful dams are in terms of stable energy source it is worth it. "As is debris that floods in." Does it make a difference if said debris gets to the open sea or ocean? The vast majority of debris that gets in rivers (especially samller ones) never reach any sea or ocean. Also, most biodegradable debris gets decomposed one way or another.
Something is better than nothing, but at this point 30 years ago would have been so much better for everyone. Now we have to pay the feedback loop costs and that's not going to be on the cheap. When you talk to many of the more conservative or skeptical people I recall that often they do understand the value of compound interest so that is how I try to get them to understand that by going cheap all those years ago we've made sure of a rather expensive payments stream that will be coming due. How much infrastructure that will have to be shored up or moved or damaged... We'll see. But even more tragically to me is that those future generations will see us as having really dropped the ball. I just want to go down as one of the few who did try to make a difference from a long time ago and I've not given up yet either. ;)
Charles Eisenstein says we need to fall in love with the planet again. Seeing it as the community we belong to. This is the kind of radical change required to turn this around
You are so true. It's always me me me and let the next generation resolve the issues. I've been environmentally active for 30 years. We are few. The current young generation is not tree hugging hippies, they are used to very high living standards. Traveling, expensive clothes, spending in general and 'virtual living'. I think that only technology could save us greedy humans. But I don't believe that, although I'm an engineer. We are doomed 🥳
You are right. 30 years ago we should have taken steps such that Monster Trucks wouldn't be the preferred commuting vehicle in North America. Wind and solar existed 30 years ago, but it was very expensive.
While beating solar and wind renewables records, China is also putting online NEW coal energy facilities at record speeds, negating all the efforts made in renewable AROUND THE WORLD.
China is definitely NOT negating all the efforts made in renewables around the world. Not by a long shot. China doesn't want dirty coal any more than we do, but they need electricity to make all the crap that the world buys from them. The coal plants that they are building today are not run full tilt. I hear that they are used significantly less than maximally. Focusing on them is counter productive.
The lack of visibility might also have to do with the denial we're all in: we really do not want to know how bad things are. That the UA-cam algorithm should actively be scuttling videos critical of COP is not surprising, but it is disheartening. Better climate science communication is the biggest challenge we face. We need to do better.
The level of censorship in Corporate Media/ Big Social is as opaque as it is stunning. Trying to uncover Who and Why and for What speech people have been "shadow banned" is difficult, but proving it is far more so. Just as these Mega-Corporation billionaires with their delusional warped versions of Reality like it.
maybe your over reacting duhhhh! maybe climates change duhhhh, (say this like your a cave man>) maybe ice age come kill all humans duhhhhhh..... god u ppl are unbearable crybabies....
Thanks for covering the latest convergence of global leaders on the subject of climate. And, thanks for introducing me to the term of Capacity Factor. That's the one which really matters when comparing renewables to more consistent electricity generation such as coal/gas. I learn something from every video on this channel!
Thanks Dave. I think you mention how a mixture of battery and wind/solar is much more doable than wind/solar focus alone. Here’s hoping battery technology and production steps up!
Personally i think regular hydro dams could be used as a bridge technology for grid storage. Basically instead of managing the reservoir height solely for flood control and baseload power generation, scale back hydro production while wind and solar operate and then run the dam normally while solar and wind are offline. The only changes to the plants would be operational/regulatory, just make sure to compensate the hydro dams for the money they would have made by operating while the solar plant was operating. In some places like upstate NY we get nearly 35% of our electricity from hydro, using some of this capacity as batteries for windfarms would greatly reduce the need for chemical batteries. (Lithium ion is a technology optimized around being in a small phone, not as a warehouse full of operating batteries cycling for ideally decades without replacement. We also have no guarantee their replacement for grid storage would be any more environmentally friendly to make.)
@@jasonreed7522 true on what we call lithium ion I think, on hydro do you mean reverse as well as forward? I’ve seen schemes like this but it seemed to kill all life in both ponds. Maybe there is a way around that. There are many “heavy” battery technologies under development.
Ban private jets both small and large. All new housing should be designed for radioactive fall out. Vehicles should be simple, last at least 30 years and be EMP hard. Flush toilets should restricted. The keeping of chickens and other farm animals should be mandated in cities. Women should be drafted into a pregnancy army to yield replacement or greater numbers. And the mutant chipped serfs should live isolated breeding communities in which they can walk to work within 15 minutes i.e. they should live in the factory basement. Just helping :-) WEF style.
I still don't see healthy addressing of the growth model. Tech ramp-up should NOT be to keep the price of fossil energy down. That just makes us grow more. The primary objective needs to ALWAYS be efficiency and tech advance alone, letting price pressure alone drive production, and NEVER subsidy. Any extra money we have should be going into social-safety-nets, because in any crash, when those break down, lack of these will result in the biggest degenerative problems.
I respectfully disagree. You cannot even use a banking model of economic management without maintaining a growth mechanism. It only works when there are external resources to be exploited. The only way to achieve sustainability is to convert the largest entirety of exchange specie to become information and ability to share and communicate. As long as there are banks, piles, or reserves that are beyond the point of tiered community management, there will be degenerating incentives for growth.
Respectfully, LLCs of any kind only exist, and are only reasonably to survive, under a growth situation. That's why I think we need to convert all LLCs, including banks, to be public utilities with cost models and active public oversight.
You can't just look at current electricity use as a goal, you have to look at total energy consumption. As fossil-fuel users electrify, the capacity requirement increases.
Would be great to see a deep dive into solar generation split between decentralised (e.g. rooftop solar) and centralised, how differing mix of these adds to or reduces the level of distribution/transmission grid investment. With the ease and cost of solar generation generally would be interesting to know if more decentralised generation makes the transformation required for the grid more achievable. Keep up the great videos, always enjoy watching.
I've been looking into solar a lot lately, and am struck by how much more expensive it is to have it distributed on everyone's roof compared to central solar farms. Perhaps a neighborhood scale solar installation would be a better choice?
@@incognitotorpedo42 There are the obvious economics of scale, but are the increased costs of distribution factored in to your calculations? I suspect that it wouldn't make a huge difference, but for the sake of accuracy it would be interesting to know.
The thing that is missed is that all of the fosisil fuels dug up will be burned. Increasing the supply of renewable energy will simply lower the cost of energy. What is needed is the comittment to digging up less coal, oil and gas. Its only then that alternatives will be found.
Without eliminating industrial animal exploitation, which causes almost as much environmental destruction as the fossil fuel industry, there is NO WAY to avoid catastrophic climate change.
It's a shame these fantastic and important to hear videos you're producing aren't getting the views they deserve. Hope this comment helps the algorithm
Great work as always Dave. A significant part of the problem that isn't being mentioned enough is the dramatically increased global demand on energy grids that conversion of vehicles from ICE to EV.
Thank you so much for all your hard work and wisdom! I am disgusted that the UA-cam algorithm blocked you for speaking truth to oil (aka power). What about Conservation? This does not seem to come up in any of the equations? We little people are ready to do our part! But so can businesses and governments in terms of conservation. Thanks again!
Great video Dave. Always informative. Very frustrating the algorithm suppresses vital information like this, whilst endorsing misinformation and scams!
Thank you so much for your detailed analysis of our challenges. Have you covered the commitment of countries to increase their regenerative agriculture practices yet and how these efforts can support the drawdown of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Looking at the massive amount of work needed to be done it such a short time, we need to do everything we can, to phase out fossil fuels and still meet energy demands! That is why new nuclear would be an ideal solution to shoulder some of the huge weight from solar, wind and grid storage and also provide a key base load power generation that will be essential as the energy grid moves more away from fossil fuel.
I agree. And my hot take: the world would be much better off if Greenpeace didn't push for anti-nuclear. The last thing we need is removal of a perfectly working low carbon emissions energy. Even if LCOE is hight
New nuclear would take at least 10 years before it's available, while at least doubling both the project schedule and budget. It's already the most expensive way of generating power, and the 'promise' of carbonfree nuclear somewhere in the future will just mean ppl will continue to use fossiel fuels.
@@MPostma72 That is not a valid reason. We never said not to reduce fossil fuel or not building renewable. Just this is the engineeringly easy and stable solution. No dealing with variable power output and know ways to from the grid. Nor managing demand. Also, I'd say although renewable LCOE is really low. The overall cost when storage gets includes, let it be pumped hydro or batteries, is not low at all.
@@clehaxze Last sentence - it is still lower than Nuclear. Keep in mind there is no need to have armed security for wind or solar, no waste that only one country has come up with a safe storage solution for, no risk of mass destruction due to redirecting nuclear fuel to weapons, no risk to those living within at least a 100 mile radius due to accident or sabotage. With the money that is needed to build "safe" nuclear we could produce at least triple the renewable resources in a fifth the time. The savings in time alone would result in a massive reduction in fossil fuel demand which would help put a significant number of fossil fuel providers out of business. Nuclear is not renewable and for the reasons given it is a bad idea...we gave it a try 30/40 years ago...let's learn and move on.
Another great video....thanks! The elephant in the room with any of these types of discussions is energy wastage. We could reduce a huge amount of demand and therefore emissions if we reduced the horrific waste we still tolerate and do not address. I'm quite militant, so if I was in charge of the world I would do many things to address this.....eg: 1. Ban outdoor heating. If someone in a cold climate wishes to stand outside a bar and smoke then fine....we should not heat the world to allow them to do this in relative comfort. We would also then save the energy being used to make the units in the first place. Limit their use to specific use cases such as healthcare. 2. Improve insulation. Much has been said on this subject, pretty obvious and a big win. 3. Ban all powered non-critical advertising. Shops should not be wasting energy advertising their services in the dark. We allow companies to burn through energy with 24/7 lit signage which scandalous. Fair enough for critical services such as pharmacies.....but we really don't need this for sweet shops. There are so many ways we can reduce demand if we have the appetite for it. Aside from reducing emissions it then frees up grid capacity and likely a host of other side benefits.
We just need the money we currently spend on oil subsidies to all go to wind, wave and solar. Electric car subsidies also have to require grid use of the cars battery for load management.
Just tax the buggers, put a carbon tax an anything spewing carbon in the atmosphere. To keep out cheaply produced stuff using fossil, a hefty import tax can be imposed. Then use the proceeds to lower prices of all that's made without using fossil, help folks to isolate their homes and buy second hand E Ecars
When renewables _overproduce_ prices go negative and the grid can become destabilized . So wind and solar are shut down (just when they are at their best) Production is "curtailed" because there is not enough storage on the grid to absorb overproduction.
Hey, if you don't mind. Would you look into the effect of all the nuclear tests we have done and the actual effect they had on the atmospheric pollution? I have been researching (at an academic level, not Google level) and I have become quite concerned with the effects of what we have put into our atmosphere and the lasting effects of these heavy isotopes up there.
Yes. Very coincidental that Bloombergs "Tripling" report came out just before COP28, and roughly matched COP28's recommendations. And it's not too surprising that the Bloomberg list of what needs to be done amounts to fast-laning business past issue like environmental impact studies or landrights issues and local permits.
BNEF based their analysis on GW, a tripling of renewables is absolutely nothing plus the tripling of metals mining is not accounted for, it takes up to 14 year to open a copper mines. BNEF of course has no responsibility to fund education, health, welfare, crime, defence, overseas aid, climate adaptation. Ember is also not responsible for funding the rest of society, they’re not living in a real world. Excellent video. PS I’m a former environmental consultant and energy forecast modeller, and worked for an IEA Technology Collaboration Programme. Thank you.
@@thevanthatrocked The grid has to go green AND support the EXTRA EVs that replaces the gas cars. So its replace the non renewable AND support the extra demand from EVs.
@@thevanthatrockedThey said that all the electricity we need, now and in the future, plus replacing processes which aren’t currently electrified - can and will come from renewable sources. Solar on every domestic home, warehouse and viable piece of land. Wind, hydro, tidal etc. wherever possible. Why not? Apart from fossil fuel funded profits obviously ….
As Nate Hages said there are no renewables, only rebuildables. The entire infrastructure has to be maintained and changed every 20-30 years and you need oil-powered machines to dig the rare earths from the ground. Solar, wind etc. can certainly power a civilization, but not this one. The other question is, what about the more than 5000 products for which we rely on oil (plastic, asphalt, medicaments etc.) not to mention things like the Haber-Bosch process in food production... things are far more complex than installing a couple of wind turbines or solar panels. As much as I hope for a calm and step-by-step transition, it's, for me at least, currently hard to see.
"things are far more complex than installing a couple of wind turbies or solar panels. " Right. Basically, a large industrialized civilization is unsustainable on a planet with finite resources.
Hagens, but he also says 20% of our energy is electricity, we could add 5% for those growing food, 5% for emergency round up another 10% and with degrowth, only concentrating on need and most of us quitting our jobs, we could lower emissions 60% and if we are just evolved primates, then telling everybody to stay in their caves, homes, or near them and stop working and with the world consuming 3000 food calories last year with obesity etc, we could provide every single person food, shelter, medical care for free, raise general wellbeing, making people happy at the same time. Wouldn't think it would be a hard sell if explained the right way.
@@antonyjh1234 I hope you are right with the selling the story part, because I lean more towards the pessimistic side of things when it comes to this. I think it won't happen voluntarily until we hit the wall
We got our little 6.7 kWp system installed recently (south-ish Germany). Seeing the abysmal energy production during cloudy winter days makes that point of making sure that the grind will be up to the task VERY obvious. If we want (and we should) eventually switch to all green energy sources, we will need to be able to transport electricity on a completely different level than what we can do today. And that is something that takes very long to do. It will also require a lot more political and socially stability for countries further up north to be able to rely on their (far) southern neighbors to provide large part of their electricity especially during the winter.
I don't think there would be a shortage in winter. E.g. Iceland has geothermal, Scandinavia has hydro, Denmark and UK have wind. The North Sea has tidal flow being researched...
@@chrisdaniels3929 Honestly, I am not sure - at least not from the current perspective. Of course it will be a combination of different sources, but large scale energy transport will still be necessary I think - and the current grids were not really designed for that. Also - the situation will be quite difficult for different countries. At least that is my naive expectation. In particular land locked countries are going to have a hard time in winter.
Note that Germany announced they were supplied by an average 55% renewables throughout 2023, using, as you highlight here, a portfolio of wind, solar, hydro and a smattering of biomass. It IS possible to run your power grids on majority RE, and it is only going to get better with grid improvements and addition of storage. Notoriously fossil-centric Texas in the US had numerous days in 2023 where it was majority supplied by RE, and that US state is seeing battery storage additions over the next 18 months of 40GW!! The revolution is happening already, even without organization. Imagine what could be done if the policies and procedures were working in concert.
Ethiopia Bhutan Albania South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Nepal Paraguay Iceland Costa Rica all on 100% renewables Lesotho Eswatini Norway DR Congo all over 99% Uganda Central African Republic Andorra Belize Tajikistan Zambia Tokelau Namibia all over 90% - source: Wikipedia.
Yesterday was a somewhat overcast day. Nonetheless, I still exported 21KWH to the grid during the day and then last night I purchased 6.5KWH from the grid. That 6.5 kWh cost me about 20% more than I was paid for the 21KWH I sold to the grid. If governments are really serious about reducing emissions, they should incentivise the installation of batteries or offer rebates to make them more affordable. With just a 13.5kw battery I’d be almost 100% self sufficient for all my household energy needs and still be able to feed excess solar into the grid and reduce other people’s needs for coal fueled energy
Electricity is 20% of our energy, we could be 100% net zero, lived in our caves, stayed home, and if we still drove etc and everything else was normal that would leave 80% of our energy that needs to be fixed. We could de-grow, stay home with solar, and global warming is fixed but even if you had batteries it would take a long time to get to anywhere replacing that 80%
Uncle Mike's list should include "Better financial environment for renewable investments". Giving better interest rates and financial solutions eliminating up-front expense by consumer side would be a mighty push for small PV installations, typically private rooftop PV.
Thanks Dave, so frustrating that solutions are within our grasp, but our politicians are too feeble to seize the opportunities. I hope this comment doesn’t get you delisted again.
“I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.” - Sultan Al Jaber, President of COP 28, also CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company Mukhtar Babayev will be the president for COP 29; he is also a former executive of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijian Republic. Seems more and more likely, scenario SSP5-8.5 of the IPCC assessment may come to fruition (or at least the higher end of the spectrum). I say enjoy what you can, while you still can; pity the generations to come.
The grid battery capacity we need is obvious to me. Its all EV's that get plugged in once home from work. Use that with VTG in the evening and replenish overnight - tackle that big peak with a swarm of house and EV batteries working together to balance the grid. That and a shift in energy use, to think more about when we use power as much as how much we use. When you live off grid like I do, you are very aware of weather forecasts and how much power is in the batteries, apply that to a national scale and the grid cleans up much faster.
I agree that renewables need to be a huge part of our energy industry in the coming years, but you shouldn't forget about nuclear either. The nuclear industry holds great potential to share the load of energy demand, but it also needs some modifications: modernising old power plants, using thorium energy, standardising parts and bolstering supply chains etc. There's also more modifications that could be brought to hydro and geothermal. Particularly hydro, considering you don't need to build dams to set up small and medium-sized hydro (I think this channel featured an example of this a while back for small-sized community energy generation).
We really should be careful about relying upon reports from Bloomberg given his own heavy investments and rent seeking behavior in the renewables space.
A great analysis of the whole problem. The renewable mix must depend on the local efficiencies of each technology. Plus we should not assume storage is just batteries, pumped storage, mass winding storage and batteries (bulk and car based) all have a place. We just need to get governments to set the right legislative frameworks in place to incentivise and mandate this path. In the UK we are doing an 'OK' job , but need to mandate more strict house building codes for energy efficiency and storage/charging. And to stop blocking wind turbine installation by Nimby areas.
Brilliantly laid out! I'd like to add to the books you mentioned one written by Paul Hawken called Drawdown. Great treatise on how we can use a combination of a wide variety actions to reclaim what we've done to our atmosphere over time.
Protectionist taxes on solar panels can be over 200% in the USA. Import taxes on EVs is 27%. If you remove those, you will see an explosion of solar installations and EV usage in the USA, the world's worst per capita polluter by far.
People seem to think, or perhaps hope, that transitioning nearly the entire energy system on the planet, is going to happen organically simply as a result of the new, cleaner tech (wind, solar and batteries) being cheaper than what it replaces. They're stuck in a mindset of the past 20 years with respect to grids, for instance, rather than thinking about the transition being a challenge akin to the electrificaton boom that took place in North America and Europe between 1950 and 1975. This isn't a transition, but a revolution- and it'll take huge motivation on the part of governments worldwide to make it happen quickly enough to stave off the worst of permanent climate change.
That's a choice we made in 1979 & '80 by voting for Thatcher & Reagan with their neoliberal "small government" & "sell everything" policies, the political parties prefer it because they don't have to find competent politicians to stand for elections.
Thank you so much for the great work you are doing. Not only are your videos incredibly pleasant to watch - despite the difficult topic - they are well researched and easy to understand.
A needed voice of clarity and reason in an insane, corrupt world. Thanks so much.
Thanks Margaret. You're welcome :-)
LOOOOL. You killed me. You know that Just Have To Think push for vaporware and stuff that will not work in 3000 years right? He wish to pump start up for fast cash.
As a full time residential solar company, I'm still waiting for a call from the local authorities around here saying "we are really getting serious about encouraging solar - What can you suggest to make going solar easier..." I have a long list for them.
I wish you luck!
You're clearly not on the town council and don't represent enough money in their pockets to warrant them paying attention. Bribing the right people in the right ways will guarantee your success, it always works with the larger businesses around here.
stop the rip off instal prices, allow fence/ground mount, recommend the proper size system for people.
Thanks Dave! As an engineer, I think it’s important to Understand the key metrics in the problem we are trying to solve. We need to minimize carbon intensity, meet demand, minimize cost, understand trade-offs, and understand the time domain for implementation. I always hated marketing telling us engineers how to solve the problem, rather than just telling us the objective.
"As an engineer, I think it’s important to Understand the key metrics in the problem we are trying to solve. We need to minimize carbon intensity, meet demand, minimize cost, understand trade-offs, and understand the time domain for implementation." Well, we ALSO must shrink humanity's total ecological footprints by about 45+% to prevent worsening ecological and societal collapse, including getting our impacts within limits on all nine major planetary boundaries.
Unless we do this, we could solve the climate crisis and still be headed toward collapse.
There, I just stated the overarching ecological objective.
@@karlwheatley1244 We need lots of energy to establish a foothold outside this planet.
@@afreire239 "We need lots of energy to establish a foothold outside this planet." That's physically impossible for more than a tiny handful of people and the space travel involved would further damage the planet for the billions of people left here. All our hopes lie on protecting the planet we have here.
Welcome to neoliberalism, where everything ever will be informed on the basis of markets and profitability.
My oldest brother is a senior engineer and he became fed up decades ago with accountants and marketing types telling him and engineers in general how to solve problems etc.
Yes, please continue your education and support into a greener world. I hear your frustration with the algorithms and with the provider but the cause is much more important! I continue to be frustrated by the people rejecting a better future by embracing past methods of energy production due to the money that is currently being made by these existing methods. It's up to us to recognize and promote the future. Thank you! 👍
Thanks Rico :-)
By far the best UA-cam channel out there on the topic of global energy. Down to Earth and calling out the bad actors. Essential viewing! (I use some of your topics in my podcast show, because they're important, and backed by real data). 🤟❤️
Thanks for your support, and good luck with your Podcast :-)
Really appreciate the links Dave. As a layperson it's a monumental task trying to keep up with current research, even with academic access, which not all of us have. Disinformation (and COP Presidents) rely on a lack of information and understanding to maintain their influence. Knowledge is indeed power. Knowledge about power is power.
What? The phase out of fossil fuels WILL send us back to the stone age. it simply can not be allowed to happen, by whatever means!
Also love the transparency and robust references. Says a lot about the channel
No "research" is necessary to solve this, only engineering. The solutions have been around now for over half a fucking century. Build it.
The Oil Will End
Dear Dave, I find it absolutely outrageous that your reports were algo-censored by youtube. Thank you for your sustained efforts. Your work is extremely important, measured, balanced, objective and factual. Is this what alphabet aims to censor?
Over the last 3 months I've seen censorship increasing on every channel and every subject. I think they're automated censoring routine is taking anything reported for any reason as material to be censored as a result.
It doesn't feel like UA-cam has a human in the loop. Or maybe they just have two or three humans
Im subbed with ALL notifications on. Still I haven't seen any from this channel in quite a while. This has happened to multiple channels now..
Thank you for the informative video. I do have some thoughts on this subject but it’s more than I can put in a comment. I have a blogpost that I’d like people to see at: thoughtsonclimate.blogspot.com/2023/12/thoughts-concerning-climate-change.html
@@DeltaNovum I'm still getting notifications from this channel. For what it's worth. And I'm still subscribed.
@@macmcleod1188 Me too.
1) Ground all planes 2) Park all ICE cars, you have to wait for ev delivery 3) Switch the meat production genetic meats. 4) recruit one billion people to plant 10 trillion trees 5) 1/3 of the land is used for feed for meat production.....otherwise straight to 3.0c.
Not popular
Can we lobby the UK govt to consider these steps? Like, spam Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer's PO boxes. An old fashioned letter-writing campaign? I would love to see an end of fossil fuel subsidies etc. but it won't come easy without pressure from voters.
I did a quick calculation on the Tesla semi gets equivalent to about 19 miles to the gallon. I don't think people appreciate the efficiency gains of electrification.
Loaded or unloaded? If loaded, that's an impressive increase over a peak-performing conventional diesel, but not so much unloaded (still significant, though). The BIG payoff is if charging is mostly or all-sustainable sourcing, because then the fuel supply-chain costs are essentially as low as possible
Maybe the way to get those extra gigawatts is to develop underused renewable sources. Best example is wave or tidal energy. Another way would be to encourage renewables at the micro level. Small solar and wind installations and micro hydro.
I agree about encouraging small scale wind and solar. I would especially like to see government subsidies go to homeowners and possibly commercial and/or industrial properties instead of oil companies. Just imagine all the flat roofs out there in commercial malls and industrial parks with solar or wind installations and on site storage. Much less stress to the outdated grid as well.
Another underused smaller scale renewable is biogas, which is simply methane made by throwing waste organic matter into an anaerobic digester to create a fuel inherently compatible with existing infrastructure. (And fortunately natural gas power plants are relatively efficient for a thermal power plant.)
It won't completely makeup for existing demand, but it would also reclaim what would have been fugitive emissions from landfills, waste treatment plants, and farms into usuable power with carbon that was already destined for the atmosphere.
What the grid really needs is storage, and lithium ion batteries are not the correct technology for it. They need rare materials that are environmentally damaging to extract, and have useless properties for the grid like lightweight, high flammability, and lose capacity with every cycle. (Good for phones, not for sticking in a warehouse to cycle daily for the next 50 years)
I liked that one (recently) on pumped hydro storage too
@@bobmeister4495Yes. Another point to add to the capacity factor is that on site consumption of micro generators avoids about 8% of transmission losses from electrical resistance.
you can put magnets on your dic* , coils on your hand... and generate electricity all day on micro level
10:48 I am not sure if point 6 "strong competition" will really help the adoption and expansion of green energy. Competition, and especially strong competition, usually result in poor execution performance because projects were undervalued and then quickly run over budget which increases the risk of project failure or bankruptcy a lot. Even if quality markers like economical sustainability, sensibility and accountability were enforced, competition will subvert these efforts. Instead of strong competition, communities and governments should focus on project developers that have a proven track record of sustainable financial and economical performance, ie. financing their projects without too much questionable or highly risky money schemes that could go bust at the slightest breeze blowing into their faces.
I agree with your assessment, but I think competition does have a place. If government procurement was done on the basis of what you said, i.e. quality, proven efficiency, best technology, and price, then competition among providers would be fine and work well. Unfortunately, in many areas this process seems to fail. One of the big reasons seems to be the role of mega-corporations who end up controlling or directly running most of the companies that are able to bid. When that happens, healthy competition turns into a sick masquerade which totally fails to deliver what is required.
Even if they are not fully get it done in time to start taking steps in the direction and commit to the goal would already a huge step forward.
Love your channel EVERY week!! You always get a 'thumbs up' from me! Stay healthy in this crazy world!! Jim in Phoenix.
Cheers Jim. Much appreciated :-)
I am 100% off-grid with solar powering my house and 2 EVs. One of my EVs has V2L and I have it hooked up to my home solar to provide the equivalent of 6 Tesla PowerWalls of backup power (Videos on my channel for the doubters) I very rarely hear people talk about the role EVs with V2L/V2H/V2G will play in the energy transition, but the potential is massive. What I paid for my EV is less than the cost of buying and installing 6 Tesla PowerWalls!
And yet, the carbon footprint of all that lithium in your vehicles (2 vehicles for 1 family? Is that necessary?) and energy storage is what, exactly?
@@johnlocke_1 The thing about Lithium Batteries is they are like the Lead Acid batteries you have in your ice vehicle, they can be recycled. Did you know 99% of lead acid batteries are recycled? Lead is only worth $2,000/ton while Lithium is worth $29,000/ton basic economics explains why they will be recycled. 2 Vehicles is necessary for us as we live in the countryside. We have rainwater harvesting and process all our grey and black water onsite. We grow much of our own fruit and vegetables. People who live in cities always complain about our cars, to which I reply ok you make all your own power for your home and your your transport needs, collect all your own water and process all your waste (we don’t have refuse collection) grow much of your own food, then you can complain about my cars. “energy storage is what, exactly” - Solar power stored in a battery to use when the sun doesn’t shine.
@EcoHouseThailand how many emissions to create a lithium battery?
How many emissions to recycle a lithium battery?
I'm sure nobody complains about your cars. It seems you just want to brag.
@@johnlocke_1 You complained about my cars just a minute ago! Did you actually read my original post? I was asking why bi-directional charging on EVs is not being discussed as a solution. As for CO2 my batteries are warranted for 8 years 70%. I expect their useful life will be a lot longer than 8 years by which the time the CO2 compared to however you are powering your home and transport will be negligible. So sort your own carbon footprint out before you start complaining about other people
@EcoHouseThailand you said, "people who live in cities complain about our cars", son.
I see you ignored everything else i said. 😏
Oooo, warranty for batteries. That means....you get a new one?
You said a lot in your OP. Most of what you said was inflating your own ego over your property. Note: no one cares.
Another fantastic episode Dave! Kudos and wishing you an awesome 2024🙏🌎🙏
Cheers Tyler. Same to you! :-)
Hey Dave, as a Canadian living in Ontario, I would say that one of our lowest hanging fruits in terms of renewable energy production is unpowered dams. The dams are there, the flow would be massive by European standards but there is no power being made there. It doesn't require the expensive and time consuming part of permitting and building the dam, it may require more wires but otherwise, this looks like such a massive amount of ignored potential that gets far too little attention
Vested interests?
Big fan of hydropower and water management is the frontier of tech going into Hothouse Climate state. Ironically all dams do generate methane ofc.
@@DrSmooth2000
1 Dams also create significant disruption of the environment. Here is the Pacific Northwest of the US, we are taking down some dams because they seriously impede salmon runs. Salmon are a key species that many other animals and indigenous people depend on. Other methods short of dam removal have proven ineffective.
2 How do dams generate methane?
@@bjb7587 1) that is very unfortunate. Water management is key. PNW may dry out. I get salmon are a keystone species, but...
2) vegetal matter especially when first flooding an area is decomposed under colder stagnant water. As is debris that floods in.
That's how amazon went to net GHG producer and not a sink
@@DrSmooth2000 "vegetal matter especially when first flooding an area is decomposed under colder stagnant water."
That is a one time price to pay and comapred to how useful dams are in terms of stable energy source it is worth it.
"As is debris that floods in."
Does it make a difference if said debris gets to the open sea or ocean? The vast majority of debris that gets in rivers (especially samller ones) never reach any sea or ocean.
Also, most biodegradable debris gets decomposed one way or another.
Something is better than nothing, but at this point 30 years ago would have been so much better for everyone. Now we have to pay the feedback loop costs and that's not going to be on the cheap. When you talk to many of the more conservative or skeptical people I recall that often they do understand the value of compound interest so that is how I try to get them to understand that by going cheap all those years ago we've made sure of a rather expensive payments stream that will be coming due. How much infrastructure that will have to be shored up or moved or damaged... We'll see. But even more tragically to me is that those future generations will see us as having really dropped the ball.
I just want to go down as one of the few who did try to make a difference from a long time ago and I've not given up yet either. ;)
Charles Eisenstein says we need to fall in love with the planet again. Seeing it as the community we belong to. This is the kind of radical change required to turn this around
You are so true. It's always me me me and let the next generation resolve the issues. I've been environmentally active for 30 years. We are few. The current young generation is not tree hugging hippies, they are used to very high living standards. Traveling, expensive clothes, spending in general and 'virtual living'. I think that only technology could save us greedy humans. But I don't believe that, although I'm an engineer. We are doomed 🥳
You are right. 30 years ago we should have taken steps such that Monster Trucks wouldn't be the preferred commuting vehicle in North America. Wind and solar existed 30 years ago, but it was very expensive.
@@matti934well home and family and retirement are exotic ideas so more consumerism meantime makes sense
Thank you great post. I look forward every week for a new post from you.
While beating solar and wind renewables records, China is also putting online NEW coal energy facilities at record speeds, negating all the efforts made in renewable AROUND THE WORLD.
Well not quite I think we can call them out but only when we’ve scrubbed up and got all our oil and gas extraction eliminated. DB UK
China is definitely NOT negating all the efforts made in renewables around the world. Not by a long shot. China doesn't want dirty coal any more than we do, but they need electricity to make all the crap that the world buys from them. The coal plants that they are building today are not run full tilt. I hear that they are used significantly less than maximally. Focusing on them is counter productive.
Thanks for doing the work to keep us calmly informed of facts.
Thanks for your support. Much appreciated!
The lack of visibility might also have to do with the denial we're all in: we really do not want to know how bad things are. That the UA-cam algorithm should actively be scuttling videos critical of COP is not surprising, but it is disheartening. Better climate science communication is the biggest challenge we face. We need to do better.
The level of censorship in Corporate Media/ Big Social is as opaque as it is stunning. Trying to uncover Who and Why and for What speech people have been "shadow banned" is difficult, but proving it is far more so. Just as these Mega-Corporation billionaires with their delusional warped versions of Reality like it.
"climate science" is sociological nonsense. Social engineering and statistics, manipulation of the masses. Green tyranny.
eff
yew
maybe your over reacting duhhhh! maybe climates change duhhhh, (say this like your a cave man>) maybe ice age come kill all humans duhhhhhh..... god u ppl are unbearable crybabies....
Thanks for covering the latest convergence of global leaders on the subject of climate. And, thanks for introducing me to the term of Capacity Factor. That's the one which really matters when comparing renewables to more consistent electricity generation such as coal/gas. I learn something from every video on this channel!
If the removal of bottlenecks can replace every NIMBY with a YIMBY, that would also be helpful.
Thanks Dave. I think you mention how a mixture of battery and wind/solar is much more doable than wind/solar focus alone. Here’s hoping battery technology and production steps up!
Personally i think regular hydro dams could be used as a bridge technology for grid storage. Basically instead of managing the reservoir height solely for flood control and baseload power generation, scale back hydro production while wind and solar operate and then run the dam normally while solar and wind are offline. The only changes to the plants would be operational/regulatory, just make sure to compensate the hydro dams for the money they would have made by operating while the solar plant was operating.
In some places like upstate NY we get nearly 35% of our electricity from hydro, using some of this capacity as batteries for windfarms would greatly reduce the need for chemical batteries. (Lithium ion is a technology optimized around being in a small phone, not as a warehouse full of operating batteries cycling for ideally decades without replacement. We also have no guarantee their replacement for grid storage would be any more environmentally friendly to make.)
This is being done and has been done for many years here in California. When the reservoirs are empty it’s not much use.
@@jasonreed7522 true on what we call lithium ion I think, on hydro do you mean reverse as well as forward? I’ve seen schemes like this but it seemed to kill all life in both ponds. Maybe there is a way around that. There are many “heavy” battery technologies under development.
Ban private jets both small and large. All new housing should be designed for radioactive fall out. Vehicles should be simple, last at least 30 years and be EMP hard. Flush toilets should restricted. The keeping of chickens and other farm animals should be mandated in cities. Women should be drafted into a pregnancy army to yield replacement or greater numbers. And the mutant chipped serfs should live isolated breeding communities in which they can walk to work within 15 minutes i.e. they should live in the factory basement. Just helping :-) WEF style.
@@man_at_the_end_of_time we need revival
I still don't see healthy addressing of the growth model. Tech ramp-up should NOT be to keep the price of fossil energy down. That just makes us grow more. The primary objective needs to ALWAYS be efficiency and tech advance alone, letting price pressure alone drive production, and NEVER subsidy. Any extra money we have should be going into social-safety-nets, because in any crash, when those break down, lack of these will result in the biggest degenerative problems.
The growth problem can be addressed by giving central bank accounts to citizens and eliminating safety-nets for commercial banks.
I respectfully disagree. You cannot even use a banking model of economic management without maintaining a growth mechanism. It only works when there are external resources to be exploited. The only way to achieve sustainability is to convert the largest entirety of exchange specie to become information and ability to share and communicate. As long as there are banks, piles, or reserves that are beyond the point of tiered community management, there will be degenerating incentives for growth.
Respectfully, LLCs of any kind only exist, and are only reasonably to survive, under a growth situation. That's why I think we need to convert all LLCs, including banks, to be public utilities with cost models and active public oversight.
Thank you for regularly making such informative content!
Thanks as always for the hard work, Dave. And I hope the almighty algorithm starts treating you more kindly soon!
Cheers Mike :-)
Thanks Dave the answers are straight forward we just need to solve the hard part of educating the politicians
Indeed.
Always a good listen, thanks to you and the team. 👍✌🖖🥃
Much appreciated!
Hi Dave Thanks for your analysis with a sprinkling of optimism. 👏👏
Thanks Mike
You can't just look at current electricity use as a goal, you have to look at total energy consumption. As fossil-fuel users electrify, the capacity requirement increases.
Would be great to see a deep dive into solar generation split between decentralised (e.g. rooftop solar) and centralised, how differing mix of these adds to or reduces the level of distribution/transmission grid investment. With the ease and cost of solar generation generally would be interesting to know if more decentralised generation makes the transformation required for the grid more achievable. Keep up the great videos, always enjoy watching.
Yes indeed. (a pointless comment, but all comments boost the algorithm rating ;) )
I've been looking into solar a lot lately, and am struck by how much more expensive it is to have it distributed on everyone's roof compared to central solar farms. Perhaps a neighborhood scale solar installation would be a better choice?
Generally roof top installation is more expensive than compare to a large solar farm on an installed kw basis.
@@incognitotorpedo42 There are the obvious economics of scale, but are the increased costs of distribution factored in to your calculations? I suspect that it wouldn't make a huge difference, but for the sake of accuracy it would be interesting to know.
If you have references to studies that you could share that would be much appreciated. Many thanks.@@adblocker276
The thing that is missed is that all of the fosisil fuels dug up will be burned.
Increasing the supply of renewable energy will simply lower the cost of energy.
What is needed is the comittment to digging up less coal, oil and gas.
Its only then that alternatives will be found.
Thank you for your Thee clear vision for a cleaner future; thanks Dave.
Very welcome :-)
Thanks Dave. Commenting for better reach.
Love the video, and the forward projections. I pray policy makers will realize it's in their own interests. (breathing and all that)
Without eliminating industrial animal exploitation, which causes almost as much environmental destruction as the fossil fuel industry, there is NO WAY to avoid catastrophic climate change.
It's a shame these fantastic and important to hear videos you're producing aren't getting the views they deserve.
Hope this comment helps the algorithm
Thank you :-)
Great work as always Dave. A significant part of the problem that isn't being mentioned enough is the dramatically increased global demand on energy grids that conversion of vehicles from ICE to EV.
Thank you so much for all your hard work and wisdom! I am disgusted that the UA-cam algorithm blocked you for speaking truth to oil (aka power). What about Conservation? This does not seem to come up in any of the equations? We little people are ready to do our part! But so can businesses and governments in terms of conservation. Thanks again!
Great video Dave. Always informative. Very frustrating the algorithm suppresses vital information like this, whilst endorsing misinformation and scams!
Thank you so much for your detailed analysis of our challenges. Have you covered the commitment of countries to increase their regenerative agriculture practices yet and how these efforts can support the drawdown of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Not yet!
Thanks for posting this. I find myself in agreement with large parts of a Bloomberg report - shoot me now!
Great as always
boosting user engagement
Looking at the massive amount of work needed to be done it such a short time, we need to do everything we can, to phase out fossil fuels and still meet energy demands! That is why new nuclear would be an ideal solution to shoulder some of the huge weight from solar, wind and grid storage and also provide a key base load power generation that will be essential as the energy grid moves more away from fossil fuel.
Hinckley point C will more than double nuclear TwHours in the UK.
I think it's due to start some production this year.
I agree. And my hot take: the world would be much better off if Greenpeace didn't push for anti-nuclear. The last thing we need is removal of a perfectly working low carbon emissions energy. Even if LCOE is hight
New nuclear would take at least 10 years before it's available, while at least doubling both the project schedule and budget. It's already the most expensive way of generating power, and the 'promise' of carbonfree nuclear somewhere in the future will just mean ppl will continue to use fossiel fuels.
@@MPostma72 That is not a valid reason. We never said not to reduce fossil fuel or not building renewable. Just this is the engineeringly easy and stable solution. No dealing with variable power output and know ways to from the grid. Nor managing demand.
Also, I'd say although renewable LCOE is really low. The overall cost when storage gets includes, let it be pumped hydro or batteries, is not low at all.
@@clehaxze Last sentence - it is still lower than Nuclear. Keep in mind there is no need to have armed security for wind or solar, no waste that only one country has come up with a safe storage solution for, no risk of mass destruction due to redirecting nuclear fuel to weapons, no risk to those living within at least a 100 mile radius due to accident or sabotage. With the money that is needed to build "safe" nuclear we could produce at least triple the renewable resources in a fifth the time. The savings in time alone would result in a massive reduction in fossil fuel demand which would help put a significant number of fossil fuel providers out of business. Nuclear is not renewable and for the reasons given it is a bad idea...we gave it a try 30/40 years ago...let's learn and move on.
Another great video....thanks! The elephant in the room with any of these types of discussions is energy wastage. We could reduce a huge amount of demand and therefore emissions if we reduced the horrific waste we still tolerate and do not address. I'm quite militant, so if I was in charge of the world I would do many things to address this.....eg:
1. Ban outdoor heating. If someone in a cold climate wishes to stand outside a bar and smoke then fine....we should not heat the world to allow them to do this in relative comfort. We would also then save the energy being used to make the units in the first place. Limit their use to specific use cases such as healthcare.
2. Improve insulation. Much has been said on this subject, pretty obvious and a big win.
3. Ban all powered non-critical advertising. Shops should not be wasting energy advertising their services in the dark. We allow companies to burn through energy with 24/7 lit signage which scandalous. Fair enough for critical services such as pharmacies.....but we really don't need this for sweet shops.
There are so many ways we can reduce demand if we have the appetite for it. Aside from reducing emissions it then frees up grid capacity and likely a host of other side benefits.
Yep, exactly my thoughts.
i love this channel
Well, let's get moving. Thursday's coming up quick.
We just need the money we currently spend on oil subsidies to all go to wind, wave and solar.
Electric car subsidies also have to require grid use of the cars battery for load management.
Just tax the buggers, put a carbon tax an anything spewing carbon in the atmosphere.
To keep out cheaply produced stuff using fossil, a hefty import tax can be imposed. Then use the proceeds to lower prices of all that's made without using fossil, help folks to isolate their homes and buy second hand E Ecars
We're all doooomed
Really insightful as always. Thank you 🙏🏻. Just didn’t understand No.8 on your list of “Minimise curtailment”.
When renewables _overproduce_ prices go negative and the grid can become destabilized .
So wind and solar are shut down (just when they are at their best)
Production is "curtailed" because there is not enough storage on the grid to absorb overproduction.
Very detailed information. Thank You very much.
Hey, if you don't mind. Would you look into the effect of all the nuclear tests we have done and the actual effect they had on the atmospheric pollution? I have been researching (at an academic level, not Google level) and I have become quite concerned with the effects of what we have put into our atmosphere and the lasting effects of these heavy isotopes up there.
Great information, thank you for the content and concern on our future needs.
Yes. Very coincidental that Bloombergs "Tripling" report came out just before COP28, and roughly matched COP28's recommendations. And it's not too surprising that the Bloomberg list of what needs to be done amounts to fast-laning business past issue like environmental impact studies or landrights issues and local permits.
BNEF based their analysis on GW, a tripling of renewables is absolutely nothing plus the tripling of metals mining is not accounted for, it takes up to 14 year to open a copper mines. BNEF of course has no responsibility to fund education, health, welfare, crime, defence, overseas aid, climate adaptation. Ember is also not responsible for funding the rest of society, they’re not living in a real world. Excellent video. PS I’m a former environmental consultant and energy forecast modeller, and worked for an IEA Technology Collaboration Programme. Thank you.
Build nuclear?
Only way to go.
Has anyone considered where all the power is coming from to run all the electric cars?
@@thevanthatrockedquite many have.
@@thevanthatrocked The grid has to go green AND support the EXTRA EVs that replaces the gas cars.
So its replace the non renewable AND support the extra demand from EVs.
@@vorpalinferno9711 Sorry, no idea what you have just written
@@thevanthatrockedThey said that all the electricity we need, now and in the future, plus replacing processes which aren’t currently electrified - can and will come from renewable sources. Solar on every domestic home, warehouse and viable piece of land. Wind, hydro, tidal etc. wherever possible. Why not? Apart from fossil fuel funded profits obviously ….
The premise is obtuse. The climate doesn’t need “fixing.”
Thanks Dave!
Go get em Dave
As Nate Hages said there are no renewables, only rebuildables. The entire infrastructure has to be maintained and changed every 20-30 years and you need oil-powered machines to dig the rare earths from the ground. Solar, wind etc. can certainly power a civilization, but not this one. The other question is, what about the more than 5000 products for which we rely on oil (plastic, asphalt, medicaments etc.) not to mention things like the Haber-Bosch process in food production... things are far more complex than installing a couple of wind turbines or solar panels. As much as I hope for a calm and step-by-step transition, it's, for me at least, currently hard to see.
"things are far more complex than installing a couple of wind turbies or solar panels. " Right. Basically, a large industrialized civilization is unsustainable on a planet with finite resources.
Reality doesn't care about your eye sight.
@@Apjooz ... tell me more
Hagens, but he also says 20% of our energy is electricity, we could add 5% for those growing food, 5% for emergency round up another 10% and with degrowth, only concentrating on need and most of us quitting our jobs, we could lower emissions 60% and if we are just evolved primates, then telling everybody to stay in their caves, homes, or near them and stop working and with the world consuming 3000 food calories last year with obesity etc, we could provide every single person food, shelter, medical care for free, raise general wellbeing, making people happy at the same time. Wouldn't think it would be a hard sell if explained the right way.
@@antonyjh1234 I hope you are right with the selling the story part, because I lean more towards the pessimistic side of things when it comes to this. I think it won't happen voluntarily until we hit the wall
We got our little 6.7 kWp system installed recently (south-ish Germany). Seeing the abysmal energy production during cloudy winter days makes that point of making sure that the grind will be up to the task VERY obvious. If we want (and we should) eventually switch to all green energy sources, we will need to be able to transport electricity on a completely different level than what we can do today. And that is something that takes very long to do. It will also require a lot more political and socially stability for countries further up north to be able to rely on their (far) southern neighbors to provide large part of their electricity especially during the winter.
I don't think there would be a shortage in winter.
E.g. Iceland has geothermal, Scandinavia has hydro, Denmark and UK have wind.
The North Sea has tidal flow being researched...
@@chrisdaniels3929 Honestly, I am not sure - at least not from the current perspective. Of course it will be a combination of different sources, but large scale energy transport will still be necessary I think - and the current grids were not really designed for that. Also - the situation will be quite difficult for different countries. At least that is my naive expectation. In particular land locked countries are going to have a hard time in winter.
Note that Germany announced they were supplied by an average 55% renewables throughout 2023, using, as you highlight here, a portfolio of wind, solar, hydro and a smattering of biomass. It IS possible to run your power grids on majority RE, and it is only going to get better with grid improvements and addition of storage. Notoriously fossil-centric Texas in the US had numerous days in 2023 where it was majority supplied by RE, and that US state is seeing battery storage additions over the next 18 months of 40GW!! The revolution is happening already, even without organization. Imagine what could be done if the policies and procedures were working in concert.
Ethiopia
Bhutan
Albania
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
Nepal
Paraguay
Iceland
Costa Rica
all on 100% renewables
Lesotho
Eswatini
Norway
DR Congo
all over 99%
Uganda
Central African Republic Andorra
Belize
Tajikistan
Zambia
Tokelau
Namibia
all over 90%
- source: Wikipedia.
Yesterday was a somewhat overcast day. Nonetheless, I still exported 21KWH to the grid during the day and then last night I purchased 6.5KWH from the grid. That 6.5 kWh cost me about 20% more than I was paid for the 21KWH I sold to the grid. If governments are really serious about reducing emissions, they should incentivise the installation of batteries or offer rebates to make them more affordable. With just a 13.5kw battery I’d be almost 100% self sufficient for all my household energy needs and still be able to feed excess solar into the grid and reduce other people’s needs for coal fueled energy
Electricity is 20% of our energy, we could be 100% net zero, lived in our caves, stayed home, and if we still drove etc and everything else was normal that would leave 80% of our energy that needs to be fixed.
We could de-grow, stay home with solar, and global warming is fixed but even if you had batteries it would take a long time to get to anywhere replacing that 80%
Thanks!
Thanks for your support. Much appreciated :-)
A very upbeat analysis to start the year 😀👍
Well said.
Already subbed, but liking and commenting.
Great coverage, as always!
Uncle Mike's list should include "Better financial environment for renewable investments". Giving better interest rates and financial solutions eliminating up-front expense by consumer side would be a mighty push for small PV installations, typically private rooftop PV.
Thanks Dave, so frustrating that solutions are within our grasp, but our politicians are too feeble to seize the opportunities. I hope this comment doesn’t get you delisted again.
“I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.”
- Sultan Al Jaber, President of COP 28, also CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
Mukhtar Babayev will be the president for COP 29; he is also a former executive of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijian Republic.
Seems more and more likely, scenario SSP5-8.5 of the IPCC assessment may come to fruition (or at least the higher end of the spectrum). I say enjoy what you can, while you still can; pity the generations to come.
Excellent video as always
Another helpful video. Thanks.
you chose the perfect COP clip with that one, it's a sad game, if only it weren't being played over such important stakes. thanks for your efforts
Great show.
It can’t be achieved as long as Charles Koch is alive and Fox exists.
Tx
We just couldn't set the Bar any lower i'm afraid.
Exactly.
I love this content, removing subsidies gets my vote easily!
Also
Some governments think that battery capacity is equal to generation capacity,
It’s not
The grid battery capacity we need is obvious to me. Its all EV's that get plugged in once home from work. Use that with VTG in the evening and replenish overnight - tackle that big peak with a swarm of house and EV batteries working together to balance the grid. That and a shift in energy use, to think more about when we use power as much as how much we use. When you live off grid like I do, you are very aware of weather forecasts and how much power is in the batteries, apply that to a national scale and the grid cleans up much faster.
I agree that renewables need to be a huge part of our energy industry in the coming years, but you shouldn't forget about nuclear either. The nuclear industry holds great potential to share the load of energy demand, but it also needs some modifications: modernising old power plants, using thorium energy, standardising parts and bolstering supply chains etc.
There's also more modifications that could be brought to hydro and geothermal. Particularly hydro, considering you don't need to build dams to set up small and medium-sized hydro (I think this channel featured an example of this a while back for small-sized community energy generation).
nuclear also needs some way of squeezing the 30-year planning & building timeframe into the 6 years we have before the deadline.
there are many off-the-shelf solutions for small & medium in-channel hydro already, just waiting for people to buy them
We really should be careful about relying upon reports from Bloomberg given his own heavy investments and rent seeking behavior in the renewables space.
Thx Dave
A great analysis of the whole problem. The renewable mix must depend on the local efficiencies of each technology. Plus we should not assume storage is just batteries, pumped storage, mass winding storage and batteries (bulk and car based) all have a place. We just need to get governments to set the right legislative frameworks in place to incentivise and mandate this path. In the UK we are doing an 'OK' job , but need to mandate more strict house building codes for energy efficiency and storage/charging. And to stop blocking wind turbine installation by Nimby areas.
Brilliantly laid out! I'd like to add to the books you mentioned one written by Paul Hawken called Drawdown. Great treatise on how we can use a combination of a wide variety actions to reclaim what we've done to our atmosphere over time.
The largest wind farm project in SEA began recently in Laos, one of the poorest countries in the region. Seems like a positive step to me.
11:35 Thursday? Well,. sorry. Got an appointment with the dentist. He needs to pull that tooth😂
Protectionist taxes on solar panels can be over 200% in the USA. Import taxes on EVs is 27%. If you remove those, you will see an explosion of solar installations and EV usage in the USA, the world's worst per capita polluter by far.
Keep up the good work
People seem to think, or perhaps hope, that transitioning nearly the entire energy system on the planet, is going to happen organically simply as a result of the new, cleaner tech (wind, solar and batteries) being cheaper than what it replaces. They're stuck in a mindset of the past 20 years with respect to grids, for instance, rather than thinking about the transition being a challenge akin to the electrificaton boom that took place in North America and Europe between 1950 and 1975. This isn't a transition, but a revolution- and it'll take huge motivation on the part of governments worldwide to make it happen quickly enough to stave off the worst of permanent climate change.
That's a choice we made in 1979 & '80 by voting for Thatcher & Reagan with their neoliberal "small government" & "sell everything" policies, the political parties prefer it because they don't have to find competent politicians to stand for elections.
I have serious concerns about the recent drought in the Amazon
I love your videos, informative and entertaining👏
Thanks Vanessa. Glad you like them!
This channel is proof positive that people will believe anything.
Thank you so much for the great work you are doing. Not only are your videos incredibly pleasant to watch - despite the difficult topic - they are well researched and easy to understand.
Keep goig please !
I will! :-)
Gracias