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We need to stop thinking carbon chemical fuels are the problem. FOSSIL fuels are the problem, not carbon fuels itself. We should be blanketing every inch of d

We need to stop thinking carbon chemical fuels are the problem. FOSSIL fuels are the problem, not carbon fuels itself. We should be blanketing every inch of desert with solar. And pair it to use excess energy for carbon fuels synthesis. Reuse all the existing natural gas power plants to run on synthetic carbon fuel. Batteries are not the solution for this. It only fixes the day/night imbalance, but not the seasonal summer/winter imbalance for solar production. But most importantly, we don't have time. We don't have time to wait for the beautiful, elegant solution of all cars EV, all power storage in batteries, all planes flying on electricity. Perfect is the enemy of good. Look at the arctic and ocean temps, we do not have time. The developing countries will not wait for the perfect nice solar and battery solution. We need to reuse as much of what we have now in a way that will make a difference for carbon output. Again, we do don't have time for the most efficient solution. What is industry good at? Mass producing a lot of stuff. We can do that now with solar. Stop worrying about matching it to daily power usage. Just pump out those panels and get it installed everywhere. Get the excess into synthetic carbon fuel and we can quickly make a difference in carbon output.

titzer 3y ago
I agree with most of your comment, but this: > We should be blanketing every inch of desert with solar. Please god, no. Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. And I happen to think that maybe humanity should learn how to leave some things alone. Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy.
- walrus01 3y ago
  Long distance transmission of massive amounts of electricity is a solved problem, it just requires funding and political will to do it. Look at the Pacific DC intertie which takes power from the massive hydroelectric dams associated with the Columbia River down to California. There is no serious reason why solar power plants in the UT, CA, NV, NM and AZ deserts can't transmit power 1000 to 1500 km to far-away loads.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    1500km from those deserts doesn't even begin to reach most major population centers. It needs to get much further than that to be impactful on the bulk of the population.
  - Animats 3y ago
    This is what modern long distance transmission looks like.[1] This is a 12 gigawatt line running at 1.2 million volts. China does a lot of this, because the good power sources are in northwest China, and the big loads are in the Southeast. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2KfrP_R3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2KfrP_R3s
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Did they ever get their ultra high voltage grid going? Last I checked, it was still in the planning stages, and they were still running coal in the east because they couldn’t tap renewable power from the west. Looks like they are still building: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-state-grid-invest-22-bln-ultra-high-voltage-power-lines-report-2022-08-03/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-state-grid-in... So one link at least according to your video, I would be curious about actual numbers about how much they can move already.
      - Animats 3y ago
        As of 2020 there was about 400 GW of installed UHV transmission in China now. For comparison, Hoover Dam is about 2 GW.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Source? According to https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/chinas-uhv-transmission-to-more-than-double-by-2025-to-105-gw/ https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/chinas-uhv-transmission..., they will be at 105 GW by 2025 (the article is dated 2022). 50% of the power on these lines will be from renewables by 2025 (right now at 43%). I can't find any .cn estimates of UHV capacity.
- ericpauley 3y ago
  Got numbers to back that up? Intuitively, it is far cheaper to put solar panels on the ground than bespoke micro-installs on every roof.
- WaxProlix 3y ago
  > Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles Citation strongly needed. Especially in a context where turning sun power into carbon-based fuel wouldn't want to be in a parking lot, but could be near or even colocated with a large solar installation.
  - titzer 3y ago
    Ivanpah (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility): $2.2 billion for 392 megawatts, including a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. It'll be profitable (yay!) ..but that'd pay for 100,000 - 200,000 residential solar panel installs that would primarily benefit...residential homeowners. That'd be a ton of jobs, too. And there'd be no power-company profits. We could crunch numbers on how much more efficient a utility-scale plant is, but look at the reality of who ends up with the money and the profits and who has to keep paying the same damn power bills.
    - Analemma_ 3y ago
      Ivanpah is a CSP plant; that technology is a dead end and its cost numbers have nothing to do with PV plants, which are the only kind which get built now. With the benefit of hindsight, Ivanpah should never have been built, but at the time both CSP and PV looked competitive, and so it made sense to invest in both. Now it does not.
    - atourgates 3y ago
      My biggest case against utiliy-scale solar is that it (can) displace important natural ecosystems. Whereas home or commercial solar nearly always is just displacing rooftops, or parking lot covers.
    - Veserv 3y ago
      That is a solar thermal system not a photovoltaic system. You are comparing different technologys. Last I checked, solar thermal is not a price competitive utility scale generation technology; photovoltaic is. That facility was probably funded as a large scale experiment to investigate the viability of solar thermal at increasing scales (or corruption). The gigawatts of new utility scale PV being brought up every year are largely privately funded and cheaper than existing generation sources (in the current context).
- tspike 3y ago
  This quote from Wendell Berry often occurs to me in these contexts: "One possibility is just to tag along with the fantasists in government and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely. This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. This is fantastical because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy."
  - anonuser123456 3y ago
    Someday, when the last red dwarfs are burning out and all the black holes have evaporated, the Malthusians will get their “see we told you so” moment. Thankfully that day isn’t today.
    - tspike 3y ago
      > when the last red dwarfs are burning out and all the black holes have evaporated An odd timeline to consider, given the speed with which this chapter in existence seems to be unfolding.
  - m463 3y ago
    > This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. I think this is like many new technologies - overestimated in the short term, underestimated in the long term. I'm reminded of voice recognition systems. we would be able to talk to our computers! well, that didn't happen, but we did get telephone voice response systems, then you could talk to your car, and now it is ubiquitous.
    - tspike 3y ago
      The idea is less that we can or cannot develop unlimited sources of energy, and more that we have no idea how to use that amount of energy in ways that aren’t destructive.
- baron816 3y ago
  There are better alternatives than rooftops. Covering canals and reservoirs works well because it also prevents evaporation. Farms and grazing land can also be covered with solar since a lot of plants and animals prefer not to be under direct sunlight all day.
  - billythemaniam 3y ago
    Imagine if every big box store parking lot was covered with a solar panel roof? Customers walk to the store in shade and out of rain, cars aren't extremely hot in summer when customer returns, electricity for EVs right there, excess can go to grid or batteries, not disruptive to anyone or ecosystem, large sizes. Obviously someone has to pay for it which is always the tricky bit.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      Here in Santa Fe (and urbanized NM in general), you're seeing this not in big box parking lots (yet), but in public building parking lots (including schools). It is freakin' awesome. I imagine the 2nd graders at school around here, growing up with the idea that you can make electricity from sunlight just as second nature to them as the internet is to all of us freaks here on HN.
      - billythemaniam 3y ago
        Awesome!
    - baron816 3y ago
      Well, I’d prefer there to be much less parking in cities and for those big box parking lots to get filled in with housing or something more useful. But I guess it’s fine to put solar in them for now.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  Utility/grid scale solar isn't just corporate welfare, it's old thinking regarding centralized production. The electrical industry fears becoming a mere 'backup' or network instead of generation and supply. Or people disconnecting from the grid entirely, destroying economic viability of the infrastructure. They're pushing laws in various states that make a structure uninhabitable if it doesn't have a grid connection. The only reason most people need to still be connected to the grid are low solar days and peak usage that the panels alone can't supply. In 10 years you'll probably be able to have an iron flow battery in your basement or backyard that is completely harmless and can meet peak needs, like running an induction stove or a heat pump. At that point, why do you need a grid connection? You don't.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    > At that point, why do you need a grid connection? Because winter happens?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    > At that point, why do you need a grid connection? You don't. I have a 6.7kW ground mount array. It generates 3x our needs in summer, 0.33 of our winter needs (we heat with air-source heat pumps). We'd need a battery as big as our house to deal with that.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Is it fixed angle? If so, is the angle chosen to maximize winter production, or annual production? EDIT: ty!
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        Fixed. Winter.
  - kelnos 3y ago
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  I am an electrical engineer that designs control systems for renewable power production for a living. Curious what makes you think that the overhead and inefficiencies inherent to a million small solar installs is somehow better than a single managed facility benefiting from economy of scale both for maintenance and design. Additionally, curious how you plan to address the problem of adding additional generation to existing way overloaded distribution systems to accomplish this. If this massive hypothetical solar install is all non-grid tied then fine, I guess, but you're losing a substantial amount of the power that's made that way. Distribution systems don't come for free and have many of the same problems as 'last mile' internet. Not terribly complex but expensive en masse, particularly in areas that are not densely populated (which is a lot of the US). There is a reason we spend a lot of money on transmission. Spending a lot of money on distribution helps a very small part of your network. Spending a lot of money on transmission helps a huge part of your network.
  - mycall 3y ago
    What is your opinion of distributed solar having less or more chance of causing forest fires than a few managed facilities?
    - CyberDildonics 3y ago
      Where are you getting the idea that solar panels cause forest fires?
      - mycall 3y ago
        No, the opposite. High power long distance power lines do. Solar panels are much less likely.
        CyberDildonics 3y ago
        What does solar have to do with it at all? Why mention 'forest fires' in the first place?
  - 3y ago
- thinkcontext 3y ago
  > Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. Rooftop residential is 2x+ times as expensive as utility scale. Lazard's well regarded annual Levelized Cost of Energy survey puts the range for utility scale at $24 - $96 MWH vs $117 - $282 for residential rooftop. https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...
  - adventured 3y ago
    And we should actually be doing both. For exactly the same reason we should subsidize the cost of nuclear energy to ensure a sustained ~25-40% nuclear base, we should subsidize solar locally (rooftop et al.) and utility scale. The answer isn't either or, it's all of the above.
    - peter422 3y ago
      Also I’d assume the people who physically install rooftop solar are different than the people doing utility scale projects. We should be doing both!
  - titzer 3y ago
    > Rooftop residential is 2x+ times as expensive as utility scale. This may be true, but a residential install does eventually pay for itself in 5-10 years, and after that, effectively free power. So it's cheaper and better for consumers. How does that work? Oh yeah, it's because they don't have to pay for the maintenance of the entire distribution network plus the profits of utility companies.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      > it's because they don't have to pay for the maintenance of the entire distribution network How is that going to be paid for?
    - olyjohn 3y ago
      Right you just have to pay for maintenance of all of your own equipment.
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  >Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. What is more efficient, a utility with dedicated engineers and technicians who spend their days managing an install or clueless homeowners who can’t even be bothered to clear the leaves off their panels? Installation and management for large scale commercial companies is _much_ cheaper. Bespoke rooftop installs require way more permit, engineer, contractor overhead. Oh year and don’t forget to upgrade your roof framing and hope your installer doesn’t ruin your waterproof membrane of your roof. Have a clay tile roof? There’s another 5k in broken roof tiles. Transmission losses are in the noise by comparison. And when your components go out… a small potato install can basically go pound sand. A friend of mine has been out 18 months b/c LG Chem recalled his battery and hasn’t replaced it! They remotely disabled it, so it can’t be used. Contrast that with a utility. LG chem would probably have a dedicated field agent to manage bad batteries for a utility scale buyer. >Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy. You know what’s worse for desert eco systems than solar installs? Climate change. Gobbling up 25% of the deserts to prevent the other 75% from becoming totally uninhabitable sounds like a bargain to me. We need more solar as soon as possible. Messing up the desert to save the artic and permafrost is a winning bet every time.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    > Installation and management for large scale commercial companies is _much_ cheaper. Even when you need to transport it thousands of miles? Thats where most people are in relation to the deserts in the US.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      The tradeoffs: 1. we already have a grid 2. the US southwest is where the sun is. insolation per unit of area is crazy high compared to elsewhere, meaning you need less panels per unit of generating capacity.
    - anonuser123456 3y ago
- jrockway 3y ago
  > Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed I'm not really worried about this. Humanity has already invented the greatest utility-scale battery. Pump water uphill when it's sunny. Let it flow back down, through a turbine, when it's dark out. No lithium needed! People often talk about the space required for pumped hydro, but it's probably a lot less than all the shopping mall parking lots in America.
  - ebiester 3y ago
    On the coasts, I think that's viable. It's not viable where water is a valuable resource.
    - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
      I wonder how efficiently a similar solar powered lift system would work for a "dirt battery"? The *dirt battery I have in mind would be a vertical pulley system with small dirt scoops spaced at regular intervals. The scoops would pull dirt from the bottom of the pulley system and bring the material to the top were it is dumped into a mechanically locked, very large container. Over time the container would fill up, and when that stored energy is needed the container could be unlocked, at which point it would power a clockwork of turbines on its way down. Thoughts, critiques?
      - Armisael16 3y ago
        It’s less efficient than normal electric batteries and will take up far more space. Gravitational storage only works in the very particular case of water, where moving it is downhill nearly perfectly efficient and free, and where you can also get free energy from things like rivers feeding in.
        dumpsterdiver 3y ago
        Yeah, now that you mention it I suspect that the mechanical stress upon a system that lifts dirt (as opposed to one that pumps water) would result in expensive routine maintenance, and possibly even catastrophe (i.e. the chain breaks).
- imperfect_light 3y ago
  The problem is that it's become so difficult to tie into the grid that projects are being cancelled. There was a NY Times article on this (http://web.archive.org/web/20230226032242/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/climate/renewable-energy-us-electrical-grid.html http://web.archive.org/web/20230226032242/https://www.nytime...) that mentioned that the PJM Interconnection, the biggest US grid, is not even accepting new applications for large projects until 2026.
- bsder 3y ago
  > Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Yes and no. Yes. In places like Southern California, rooftops and parking lot solar would do a great job of providing power for mid-day consumption. No. This is far less effective in, say, Seattle or Pittsburgh. However, HVDC links are really good at moving power over long distances. The US has lots of places that are effectively completely uninhabited and would make really good spots for solar farms if they had an HVDC link.
- specialist 3y ago
  Surely u/bit_logic's enthusiastic phrasing was aspirational vs literal. That said, the bottle neck is now expanding and upgrading the grid. u/bit_logic is advocating we continue to build new generators, do not wait for the grid, and use that excess capacity to create green hydrogen. ASAP. aka known as The Correct Answer™. Here's an interview with Andrew Wang of ETFuels, who is executing this strategy, with paying customers, today. "Making shipping fuel with off-grid renewables" [2023/06/28] https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid https://overcast.fm/+oT_lO0G8Y https://overcast.fm/+oT_lO0G8Y
- m463 3y ago
  s/desert/unused land/ That said, 100 sq miles of desert is 10 miles by 10 miles. also, distribution systems are pretty efficient, and power can be sent from sunny areas to areas with dimmer sun or clouds.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Installing solar on residential and commercial rooftops and parking lots is a fantastically inefficient use of time when compared to building utility-scale solar farms. The per-install fixed costs are a lot larger than you'd expect. Consider that, to reduce my own home's draw on the grid to more or less nothing, I'd have to spend $35k (before government incentives, so more like $23k) on a 4kW solar install plus battery storage. As a part of a utility-scale build-out, that $23k will go a lot farther. We already have a ton of experience transporting electricity over large distances. Losses are not zero, but are not significant enough to matter (2-3%, usually). Damage to desert ecosystems is a very important concern. I'm not sure how to solve that. But if an alternative is we fall further behind on saving our planet, the desert ecosystems will suffer there, as well. Overall, I think we should be doing and encouraging both. Local generation is great, but we still need centralized generation.
- colordrops 3y ago
  My understanding is that you only need to cover a small percentage of available desert to cover all needs.
- pstuart 3y ago
  Air conditioning is a significant chunk of electricity used, and it would make sense to generate power to run it on site if and when possible. We should have a national program to create zero-interest loans to incite homeowners and businesses to invest in on-site solar when possible. Make the loan payments managed by the power companies so they get a cut of the action and are incentivized to play along. That way, you still are paying the power company monthly bills but most of that is paying down a debt that will eventually go away.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  > And I happen to think that maybe humanity should learn how to leave some things alone. Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy. A lot of people are responding to your other point about proximity, but I think this is the much more salient one. Deserts are not dead. They are ecosystems too, and just paving over deserts with solar and wind is going to harm those ecosystems. We spend so much time and effort to elucidate the ecological harm that fossil fuel power generation does but we seem to be content to ignore how much damage solar and wind can do too. No, this is not an argument against using solar and wind. We absolutely should be. Just...we need to stop ignoring the costs of these methods. There's no free lunch in this world.
  - rdevsrex 3y ago
    Unfortunately, I don't think we get out of this without damaging the environment to some degree. Hell, just mining the copper that goes into this stuff damages the environment. So yes deserts are fragile, but what isn't? Something is going to suffer no matter what.
    - genocidicbunny 3y ago
      My point isn't that we need to avoid the damage, it's that we shouldn't ignore it. It's really no better ignoring the negative consequences of renewables than ignoring the consequences of fossil fuels. They may be less, but as you point out they still exist and we need to do more to mitigate them.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Wouldn’t solar benefit desert ecosystems by providing more shade? Most desert animals are nocturnal anyways, I guess you might even see more activity during the day. I don’t think solar means “paving the desert”, most panels aren’t at ground level, and they aren’t even that close to each other.
    - genocidicbunny 3y ago
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> pair it to use excess energy for carbon fuels synthesis Is de novo gasoline or diesel synthesis profitable at proximate prices?
- codingdave 3y ago
  We also need to stop asking if it is profitable to save humanity.
  - xyzzyz 3y ago
    No, this is very wrong. You always need to be asking this, because you want to be using the most effective approach towards your goals, and price signals are irreplaceable tool to determine the effectiveness.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > We also need to stop asking if it is profitable to save humanity Profitability approximates economic sustainability. If this fuel costs $100/gallon, it's cheaper and thus more sustainable to aggressively subsidize EVs before synthesising fuel. If, on the other hand, it costs $6/gallon, funding its production with a tax on fossil fuels makes sense. Rejecting reality "to save humanity" is a false economy.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Absolutely wrong. If it isn't profitable it won't happen, society will just choose to kill itself. We need to make it profitable.
- ant6n 3y ago
  No. And its a huge waste of energy. E-fuels are more likely a fairy tale you tell people so they won't buy electric cars. Where I live, the fossil gas industry has been running ads promoting green hydrogen, and of course fossil gas as a clean "bridge technology" to H2. So just keep running that gas heating system, cuz it'll switchover to H2, for sure, at some decade in the future.
- _hypx 3y ago
FollowingTheDao 3y ago
> What is industry good at? Mass producing a lot of stuff. We can do that now with solar. No, we can't. Because the U.S gets the majority of its goods from China [1]. So we have to get China to install all those panels. [1] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions https://ustr.gov/countries-regions We need to consume less. Please start consuming less, ok?
- FollowingTheDao 3y ago
  :_^(
- deadfoxygrandpa 3y ago
  china is installing all those panels. china's newly installed solar capacity in just 2023 will be twice the entire total solar capacity of the united states. and they operate more offshore wind turbines than the rest of the world combined and are also installing new wind capacity than anyone else by far
xyzzyz 3y ago
> We should be blanketing every inch of desert with solar. And pair it to use excess energy for carbon fuels synthesis. Is there any EROEI analysis for this approach? Direct air capture of carbon is rather energy intensive, because CO2 concentration in the air is really rather low, whereas making solar panel is very energy expensive. If we can’t get enough useful energy from the panels during their expected lifetime, we shouldn’t be blanketing deserts with those. Also, blanketing the deserts with panels is difficult due to environmental regulations, read eg. about desert tortoises at Ivanpah, and the cost of their relocation. If we want to use deserts to generate energy, first we need to solve the problem of environmental regulations blocking it.
- numbsafari 3y ago
  > solve the problem of environmental regulations blocking it Or, like, come up with solutions to the environmental externalities posed by blanketing anything with solar panels.
  - xyzzyz 3y ago
    There is no guarantee that this is possible. For example, if farming didn’t already exist, it would probably be illegal to start it, because of how turning big patches of earth into monoculture completely destroys preexisting ecosystems. There is no known effective way to mitigate this damage, efficient farming at scale requires this, and inefficient methods will require more land and likely cause more damage. Similarly, blanketing deserts with solar panels will very much significantly damage existing fragile desert ecosystems. You can maybe avoid some of the negative aspects by carefully chosen procedures, but in general, there is no way around it. The question is whether the specter of environmental destruction will hold us hostage, and allow other, grandfathered environmental destruction to proceed.
    - anon84873628 3y ago
      Permaculture people would probably argue about the higher productivity of permaculture systems (which theoretically have a better shot at maintaining/mimicking natural ecosystems) versus standard monoculture farming. The problem is that permaculture outputs don't fit neatly into the existing industrialized food supply chain. In theory we could produce more food and fuel while preserving diverse ecosystems, but it would require refactoring our entire conception of what we eat, how it is produced & preserved, distributed, etc...
phkahler 3y ago
>> We should be blanketing every inch of desert with solar. Has anyone solved the water problem? You know, cleaning all those dusty panels.
- ke88y 3y ago
  https://news.mit.edu/2022/solar-panels-dust-magnets-0311 https://news.mit.edu/2022/solar-panels-dust-magnets-0311
oatmeal1 3y ago
Even if we went 100% renewable today we would still be consuming vastly more resources than the earth can handle. The priority should be reducing needless and wasteful consumption. That means getting people out of cars and onto bikes or public transit. That means eliminating land use regulations that create inefficient sprawl. Of course that won't be the priority for the government though, because there aren't any special interests that can benefit from that. Politicians don't really care about the environment. Don't trust them to spend money fixing the environment.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > That means getting people out of cars and onto bikes or public transit. That means eliminating land use regulations that create inefficient sprawl This is a generational project. We don't have time for it. That doesn't mean we can't do both. But we can't only make the long-term massive-upheaval play. While suggested with good intentions, it's the sort of thing a fossil-fuel lobbyist will latch onto as a stalling tactic.
- manzanarama 3y ago
  What resoruces are you talking about? Seems like everything can be solved with enough energy and the earth can surely produce enough energy through nuclear.
- numbers_guy 3y ago
  > The priority should be reducing needless and wasteful consumption. In an utopian world I would agree with you. I find consumerism ugly as well. However, without consumerism there is no economic growth. Without growth no capitalism. Without capitalism no democracy and peace. It would completely upend our civilization. I mean consider how crazy everything goes when we have a small dip in economic markets.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  All sorts of special interests could benefit from that.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tonymet 3y ago
what about natural habitats ? how are we going to maintain them
- pornel 3y ago
  I presume that in the desert environments cool shade is a positive thing. Panels will cover only a small fraction of the land anyway. Even if it's not ideal, we have urgent big problems to solve, and comfort of lizards and thumbleweed is low on the list.
  - tonymet 3y ago
    maybe another biology class? every thing everywhere gets its energy from the sun.
    - pornel 3y ago
      if it was that simple, scorching deserts would have more life than more temperate microclimates that can hold moisture.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  What about them? Climate change prevention should distance itself from the environmental movement in my opinion. Make it clear that we're focused on stopping global warming for the benefit of humanity. Yes, blanketing deserts in solar panels will destroy habitats. Yes, mining lithium is ecologically destructive. And we should cut environmental regulation for both, because the survival of humanity is more important than desert tortises.
sanderjd 3y ago
I'm slightly confused by this so I think I might just be missing a critical piece of the puzzle: Wouldn't natural gas plants burning synthetic carbon fuels still emit some portion of that carbon into the atmosphere?
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  Synthesis of carbon fuels from what's already in the air is theoretically net-neutral if you use clean energy to do it; you're just taking what's there, and putting back what you took. The main issue with fossil fuel is that we are burning embodied carbon from millions of years ago, throwing the present system out of whack.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Ah! I see, you mean carbon capture and utilization as synthetic fuel. Yeah I think that's a good idea to pursue, though I have a lot of skepticism that it will be able to scale faster than other stuff that's going on (like battery storage and enhanced geothermal).
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      We do have applications where batteries don't seem like they can solve fundamental physics issues. Batteries are too heavy for cargo ships to float, and too heavy for planes to fly. The only other real credible alternative is hydrogen, which has been trying to get off the ground for about three decades now. And of course we have all the extant hydrocarbon infrastructure that would need to be duplicated.
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        You'll note that I didn't say we should use batteries for everything :) I think synthetic fuels are a great idea and I look forward to watching how the whole competitive landscape plays out between those and hydrogen-based solutions and (maybe??) really small nuclear.
      - 3y ago
pkulak 3y ago
> use excess energy for carbon fuels synthesis Is that a thing? I know you can turn water and electricity into hydrogen, but that's not a carbon fuel.
- Armisael16 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_fuel
melling 3y ago
“But most importantly, we don't have time” “Look at the arctic and ocean temps, we do not have time.” “Again, we do don't have time for the most efficient solution.” Yes, we squandered 45 years not doing obvious things and waiting for the batteries to improve, etc. However, I sort of take issue with the “it’s too late to do things the right way” We can stop burning coal. We are all time highs globally. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/16/world/coal-use-record-high-climate-intl/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/16/world/coal-use-record-hig...
- kelnos 3y ago
  > We can stop burning coal. This illustrates that a big part of the problem is political, not economic or technological. We have the technology and money to get to nearly 100% renewables (we'd likely keep some non-renewable fallbacks in place) in a fairly short time... hell, we could be there already. But the coal industry is a powerful political lobby -- both the executives and workers who don't want to lose their jobs -- and so coal sticks around.
  - slashdev 3y ago
    Coal is dying fast in the US. It’s international coal use (India and China) that is the problem. The coal lobby has nothing to do with that.
    - teachrdan 3y ago
      The US coal lobby is fighting for more domestic infrastructure for shipping coal internationally. That would lower the price of coal, thus increasing demand and consumption. https://oaklandside.org/2022/02/03/6-year-battle-over-proposed-west-oakland-coal-terminal-could-soon-end/ https://oaklandside.org/2022/02/03/6-year-battle-over-propos...
      - slashdev 3y ago
        After fucking over Canada on the Keystone XL pipeline, I hope the Biden administration sticks to their “principles” and shuts that down too. It will be interesting to see.
ChatGTP 3y ago
It's starting to sound like an insurmountable problem to be honest.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
TradingPlaces 3y ago
There are a range of non-lithium storage technologies that are much more suited to the task. As you say, lithium batteries are only suitable for diurnal mismatch and dealing with curtailment. But there is a lot of investment going into non-lithium batteries, electro-mechanical, etc to solve the bigger issues of seasonal storage and resilience. A lot of people like vanadium flow batteries for their unique properties but that may create a supply chain issue. I also like iron based solutions. But they will take a long time to validate and lithium LFP is ready now.
kaliszad 3y ago
Sorry, no idea why you would undergo the inefficient and complex chemical reactions needed to produce carbon based fuels when there are easier alternatives that you don't have to burn but can use a fuel-cell for. E.g. the sodium cycle. Sodium (Na) can under circumstances outlined in the expired US patent US3730776A react with water (H2O) where there is no flame but instead flow of electrical current. You get a sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution + a lot of energy + oxygen if you do it well, if you do it less well, you also get hydrogen and less energy. The well known Castner Process can be used to split molten salt NaOH and get sodium, hydrogen and oxygen in the process. That does work under lower temperatures than the electrolysis of NaCl which is more efficient if you only look at this part of the cycle to get sodium. If you use sodium as fuel, the cycle as a whole is important for recycling. Sodium has much higher density than e.g. liquid hydrogen and does not require any cooling or pressure for storage. Also, it melts at about 100°C so you can pump it if you can keep it at about the temperature of boiling water. Yes, NaOH is caustic but neutralizes quickly in the nature which cannot be said for oil spills. You can keep NaOH in normal steel containers. For instance, it is common to use NaOH when cleaning clogged toilets. However you wouldn't pour gasoline down the drain. You can read more about the sodium fuel cell and the context here: https://orgpad.com/s/5BfLP-cxj-7 https://orgpad.com/s/5BfLP-cxj-7

titzer 3y ago

I agree with most of your comment, but this: > We should be blanketing every inch of desert with solar. Please god, no. Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. And I happen to think that maybe humanity should learn how to leave some things alone. Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy.

walrus01 3y ago
Long distance transmission of massive amounts of electricity is a solved problem, it just requires funding and political will to do it. Look at the Pacific DC intertie which takes power from the massive hydroelectric dams associated with the Columbia River down to California. There is no serious reason why solar power plants in the UT, CA, NV, NM and AZ deserts can't transmit power 1000 to 1500 km to far-away loads.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  1500km from those deserts doesn't even begin to reach most major population centers. It needs to get much further than that to be impactful on the bulk of the population.
- Animats 3y ago
  This is what modern long distance transmission looks like.[1] This is a 12 gigawatt line running at 1.2 million volts. China does a lot of this, because the good power sources are in northwest China, and the big loads are in the Southeast. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2KfrP_R3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2KfrP_R3s
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Did they ever get their ultra high voltage grid going? Last I checked, it was still in the planning stages, and they were still running coal in the east because they couldn’t tap renewable power from the west. Looks like they are still building: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-state-grid-invest-22-bln-ultra-high-voltage-power-lines-report-2022-08-03/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-state-grid-in... So one link at least according to your video, I would be curious about actual numbers about how much they can move already.
    - Animats 3y ago
      As of 2020 there was about 400 GW of installed UHV transmission in China now. For comparison, Hoover Dam is about 2 GW.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Source? According to https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/chinas-uhv-transmission-to-more-than-double-by-2025-to-105-gw/ https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/chinas-uhv-transmission..., they will be at 105 GW by 2025 (the article is dated 2022). 50% of the power on these lines will be from renewables by 2025 (right now at 43%). I can't find any .cn estimates of UHV capacity.
ericpauley 3y ago
Got numbers to back that up? Intuitively, it is far cheaper to put solar panels on the ground than bespoke micro-installs on every roof.
WaxProlix 3y ago
> Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles Citation strongly needed. Especially in a context where turning sun power into carbon-based fuel wouldn't want to be in a parking lot, but could be near or even colocated with a large solar installation.
- titzer 3y ago
  Ivanpah (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility): $2.2 billion for 392 megawatts, including a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. It'll be profitable (yay!) ..but that'd pay for 100,000 - 200,000 residential solar panel installs that would primarily benefit...residential homeowners. That'd be a ton of jobs, too. And there'd be no power-company profits. We could crunch numbers on how much more efficient a utility-scale plant is, but look at the reality of who ends up with the money and the profits and who has to keep paying the same damn power bills.
  - Analemma_ 3y ago
    Ivanpah is a CSP plant; that technology is a dead end and its cost numbers have nothing to do with PV plants, which are the only kind which get built now. With the benefit of hindsight, Ivanpah should never have been built, but at the time both CSP and PV looked competitive, and so it made sense to invest in both. Now it does not.
  - atourgates 3y ago
    My biggest case against utiliy-scale solar is that it (can) displace important natural ecosystems. Whereas home or commercial solar nearly always is just displacing rooftops, or parking lot covers.
  - Veserv 3y ago
    That is a solar thermal system not a photovoltaic system. You are comparing different technologys. Last I checked, solar thermal is not a price competitive utility scale generation technology; photovoltaic is. That facility was probably funded as a large scale experiment to investigate the viability of solar thermal at increasing scales (or corruption). The gigawatts of new utility scale PV being brought up every year are largely privately funded and cheaper than existing generation sources (in the current context).
tspike 3y ago
This quote from Wendell Berry often occurs to me in these contexts: "One possibility is just to tag along with the fantasists in government and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely. This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. This is fantastical because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy."
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  Someday, when the last red dwarfs are burning out and all the black holes have evaporated, the Malthusians will get their “see we told you so” moment. Thankfully that day isn’t today.
  - tspike 3y ago
    > when the last red dwarfs are burning out and all the black holes have evaporated An odd timeline to consider, given the speed with which this chapter in existence seems to be unfolding.
- m463 3y ago
  > This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. I think this is like many new technologies - overestimated in the short term, underestimated in the long term. I'm reminded of voice recognition systems. we would be able to talk to our computers! well, that didn't happen, but we did get telephone voice response systems, then you could talk to your car, and now it is ubiquitous.
  - tspike 3y ago
    The idea is less that we can or cannot develop unlimited sources of energy, and more that we have no idea how to use that amount of energy in ways that aren’t destructive.
baron816 3y ago
There are better alternatives than rooftops. Covering canals and reservoirs works well because it also prevents evaporation. Farms and grazing land can also be covered with solar since a lot of plants and animals prefer not to be under direct sunlight all day.
- billythemaniam 3y ago
  Imagine if every big box store parking lot was covered with a solar panel roof? Customers walk to the store in shade and out of rain, cars aren't extremely hot in summer when customer returns, electricity for EVs right there, excess can go to grid or batteries, not disruptive to anyone or ecosystem, large sizes. Obviously someone has to pay for it which is always the tricky bit.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Here in Santa Fe (and urbanized NM in general), you're seeing this not in big box parking lots (yet), but in public building parking lots (including schools). It is freakin' awesome. I imagine the 2nd graders at school around here, growing up with the idea that you can make electricity from sunlight just as second nature to them as the internet is to all of us freaks here on HN.
    - billythemaniam 3y ago
      Awesome!
  - baron816 3y ago
    Well, I’d prefer there to be much less parking in cities and for those big box parking lots to get filled in with housing or something more useful. But I guess it’s fine to put solar in them for now.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
Utility/grid scale solar isn't just corporate welfare, it's old thinking regarding centralized production. The electrical industry fears becoming a mere 'backup' or network instead of generation and supply. Or people disconnecting from the grid entirely, destroying economic viability of the infrastructure. They're pushing laws in various states that make a structure uninhabitable if it doesn't have a grid connection. The only reason most people need to still be connected to the grid are low solar days and peak usage that the panels alone can't supply. In 10 years you'll probably be able to have an iron flow battery in your basement or backyard that is completely harmless and can meet peak needs, like running an induction stove or a heat pump. At that point, why do you need a grid connection? You don't.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sanderjd 3y ago
  > At that point, why do you need a grid connection? Because winter happens?
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > At that point, why do you need a grid connection? You don't. I have a 6.7kW ground mount array. It generates 3x our needs in summer, 0.33 of our winter needs (we heat with air-source heat pumps). We'd need a battery as big as our house to deal with that.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Is it fixed angle? If so, is the angle chosen to maximize winter production, or annual production? EDIT: ty!
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      Fixed. Winter.
- kelnos 3y ago
idiotsecant 3y ago
I am an electrical engineer that designs control systems for renewable power production for a living. Curious what makes you think that the overhead and inefficiencies inherent to a million small solar installs is somehow better than a single managed facility benefiting from economy of scale both for maintenance and design. Additionally, curious how you plan to address the problem of adding additional generation to existing way overloaded distribution systems to accomplish this. If this massive hypothetical solar install is all non-grid tied then fine, I guess, but you're losing a substantial amount of the power that's made that way. Distribution systems don't come for free and have many of the same problems as 'last mile' internet. Not terribly complex but expensive en masse, particularly in areas that are not densely populated (which is a lot of the US). There is a reason we spend a lot of money on transmission. Spending a lot of money on distribution helps a very small part of your network. Spending a lot of money on transmission helps a huge part of your network.
- mycall 3y ago
  What is your opinion of distributed solar having less or more chance of causing forest fires than a few managed facilities?
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    Where are you getting the idea that solar panels cause forest fires?
    - mycall 3y ago
      No, the opposite. High power long distance power lines do. Solar panels are much less likely.
      - CyberDildonics 3y ago
        What does solar have to do with it at all? Why mention 'forest fires' in the first place?
- 3y ago
thinkcontext 3y ago
> Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. Rooftop residential is 2x+ times as expensive as utility scale. Lazard's well regarded annual Levelized Cost of Energy survey puts the range for utility scale at $24 - $96 MWH vs $117 - $282 for residential rooftop. https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...
- adventured 3y ago
  And we should actually be doing both. For exactly the same reason we should subsidize the cost of nuclear energy to ensure a sustained ~25-40% nuclear base, we should subsidize solar locally (rooftop et al.) and utility scale. The answer isn't either or, it's all of the above.
  - peter422 3y ago
    Also I’d assume the people who physically install rooftop solar are different than the people doing utility scale projects. We should be doing both!
- titzer 3y ago
  > Rooftop residential is 2x+ times as expensive as utility scale. This may be true, but a residential install does eventually pay for itself in 5-10 years, and after that, effectively free power. So it's cheaper and better for consumers. How does that work? Oh yeah, it's because they don't have to pay for the maintenance of the entire distribution network plus the profits of utility companies.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    > it's because they don't have to pay for the maintenance of the entire distribution network How is that going to be paid for?
  - olyjohn 3y ago
    Right you just have to pay for maintenance of all of your own equipment.
anonuser123456 3y ago
>Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Utility-scale solar power projects like this are just more corporate welfare boondoggles. What is more efficient, a utility with dedicated engineers and technicians who spend their days managing an install or clueless homeowners who can’t even be bothered to clear the leaves off their panels? Installation and management for large scale commercial companies is _much_ cheaper. Bespoke rooftop installs require way more permit, engineer, contractor overhead. Oh year and don’t forget to upgrade your roof framing and hope your installer doesn’t ruin your waterproof membrane of your roof. Have a clay tile roof? There’s another 5k in broken roof tiles. Transmission losses are in the noise by comparison. And when your components go out… a small potato install can basically go pound sand. A friend of mine has been out 18 months b/c LG Chem recalled his battery and hasn’t replaced it! They remotely disabled it, so it can’t be used. Contrast that with a utility. LG chem would probably have a dedicated field agent to manage bad batteries for a utility scale buyer. >Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy. You know what’s worse for desert eco systems than solar installs? Climate change. Gobbling up 25% of the deserts to prevent the other 75% from becoming totally uninhabitable sounds like a bargain to me. We need more solar as soon as possible. Messing up the desert to save the artic and permafrost is a winning bet every time.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > Installation and management for large scale commercial companies is _much_ cheaper. Even when you need to transport it thousands of miles? Thats where most people are in relation to the deserts in the US.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    The tradeoffs: 1. we already have a grid 2. the US southwest is where the sun is. insolation per unit of area is crazy high compared to elsewhere, meaning you need less panels per unit of generating capacity.
  - anonuser123456 3y ago
jrockway 3y ago
> Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed I'm not really worried about this. Humanity has already invented the greatest utility-scale battery. Pump water uphill when it's sunny. Let it flow back down, through a turbine, when it's dark out. No lithium needed! People often talk about the space required for pumped hydro, but it's probably a lot less than all the shopping mall parking lots in America.
- ebiester 3y ago
  On the coasts, I think that's viable. It's not viable where water is a valuable resource.
  - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    I wonder how efficiently a similar solar powered lift system would work for a "dirt battery"? The *dirt battery I have in mind would be a vertical pulley system with small dirt scoops spaced at regular intervals. The scoops would pull dirt from the bottom of the pulley system and bring the material to the top were it is dumped into a mechanically locked, very large container. Over time the container would fill up, and when that stored energy is needed the container could be unlocked, at which point it would power a clockwork of turbines on its way down. Thoughts, critiques?
    - Armisael16 3y ago
      It’s less efficient than normal electric batteries and will take up far more space. Gravitational storage only works in the very particular case of water, where moving it is downhill nearly perfectly efficient and free, and where you can also get free energy from things like rivers feeding in.
      - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
        Yeah, now that you mention it I suspect that the mechanical stress upon a system that lifts dirt (as opposed to one that pumps water) would result in expensive routine maintenance, and possibly even catastrophe (i.e. the chain breaks).
imperfect_light 3y ago
The problem is that it's become so difficult to tie into the grid that projects are being cancelled. There was a NY Times article on this (http://web.archive.org/web/20230226032242/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/climate/renewable-energy-us-electrical-grid.html http://web.archive.org/web/20230226032242/https://www.nytime...) that mentioned that the PJM Interconnection, the biggest US grid, is not even accepting new applications for large projects until 2026.
bsder 3y ago
> Solar is so much more useful close to where it's consumed, like rooftops and parking lots. Yes and no. Yes. In places like Southern California, rooftops and parking lot solar would do a great job of providing power for mid-day consumption. No. This is far less effective in, say, Seattle or Pittsburgh. However, HVDC links are really good at moving power over long distances. The US has lots of places that are effectively completely uninhabited and would make really good spots for solar farms if they had an HVDC link.
specialist 3y ago
Surely u/bit_logic's enthusiastic phrasing was aspirational vs literal. That said, the bottle neck is now expanding and upgrading the grid. u/bit_logic is advocating we continue to build new generators, do not wait for the grid, and use that excess capacity to create green hydrogen. ASAP. aka known as The Correct Answer™. Here's an interview with Andrew Wang of ETFuels, who is executing this strategy, with paying customers, today. "Making shipping fuel with off-grid renewables" [2023/06/28] https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid https://overcast.fm/+oT_lO0G8Y https://overcast.fm/+oT_lO0G8Y
m463 3y ago
s/desert/unused land/ That said, 100 sq miles of desert is 10 miles by 10 miles. also, distribution systems are pretty efficient, and power can be sent from sunny areas to areas with dimmer sun or clouds.
kelnos 3y ago
Installing solar on residential and commercial rooftops and parking lots is a fantastically inefficient use of time when compared to building utility-scale solar farms. The per-install fixed costs are a lot larger than you'd expect. Consider that, to reduce my own home's draw on the grid to more or less nothing, I'd have to spend $35k (before government incentives, so more like $23k) on a 4kW solar install plus battery storage. As a part of a utility-scale build-out, that $23k will go a lot farther. We already have a ton of experience transporting electricity over large distances. Losses are not zero, but are not significant enough to matter (2-3%, usually). Damage to desert ecosystems is a very important concern. I'm not sure how to solve that. But if an alternative is we fall further behind on saving our planet, the desert ecosystems will suffer there, as well. Overall, I think we should be doing and encouraging both. Local generation is great, but we still need centralized generation.
colordrops 3y ago
My understanding is that you only need to cover a small percentage of available desert to cover all needs.
pstuart 3y ago
Air conditioning is a significant chunk of electricity used, and it would make sense to generate power to run it on site if and when possible. We should have a national program to create zero-interest loans to incite homeowners and businesses to invest in on-site solar when possible. Make the loan payments managed by the power companies so they get a cut of the action and are incentivized to play along. That way, you still are paying the power company monthly bills but most of that is paying down a debt that will eventually go away.
genocidicbunny 3y ago
> And I happen to think that maybe humanity should learn how to leave some things alone. Deserts have fragile, intricate ecosystems. This fucks them up. We need to learn to stop fucking things up to gobble up more energy. A lot of people are responding to your other point about proximity, but I think this is the much more salient one. Deserts are not dead. They are ecosystems too, and just paving over deserts with solar and wind is going to harm those ecosystems. We spend so much time and effort to elucidate the ecological harm that fossil fuel power generation does but we seem to be content to ignore how much damage solar and wind can do too. No, this is not an argument against using solar and wind. We absolutely should be. Just...we need to stop ignoring the costs of these methods. There's no free lunch in this world.
- rdevsrex 3y ago
  Unfortunately, I don't think we get out of this without damaging the environment to some degree. Hell, just mining the copper that goes into this stuff damages the environment. So yes deserts are fragile, but what isn't? Something is going to suffer no matter what.
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago
    My point isn't that we need to avoid the damage, it's that we shouldn't ignore it. It's really no better ignoring the negative consequences of renewables than ignoring the consequences of fossil fuels. They may be less, but as you point out they still exist and we need to do more to mitigate them.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Wouldn’t solar benefit desert ecosystems by providing more shade? Most desert animals are nocturnal anyways, I guess you might even see more activity during the day. I don’t think solar means “paving the desert”, most panels aren’t at ground level, and they aren’t even that close to each other.
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> pair it to use excess energy for carbon fuels synthesis Is de novo gasoline or diesel synthesis profitable at proximate prices?

codingdave 3y ago
We also need to stop asking if it is profitable to save humanity.
- xyzzyz 3y ago
  No, this is very wrong. You always need to be asking this, because you want to be using the most effective approach towards your goals, and price signals are irreplaceable tool to determine the effectiveness.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > We also need to stop asking if it is profitable to save humanity Profitability approximates economic sustainability. If this fuel costs $100/gallon, it's cheaper and thus more sustainable to aggressively subsidize EVs before synthesising fuel. If, on the other hand, it costs $6/gallon, funding its production with a tax on fossil fuels makes sense. Rejecting reality "to save humanity" is a false economy.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Absolutely wrong. If it isn't profitable it won't happen, society will just choose to kill itself. We need to make it profitable.
ant6n 3y ago
No. And its a huge waste of energy. E-fuels are more likely a fairy tale you tell people so they won't buy electric cars. Where I live, the fossil gas industry has been running ads promoting green hydrogen, and of course fossil gas as a clean "bridge technology" to H2. So just keep running that gas heating system, cuz it'll switchover to H2, for sure, at some decade in the future.
_hypx 3y ago

FollowingTheDao 3y ago

> What is industry good at? Mass producing a lot of stuff. We can do that now with solar. No, we can't. Because the U.S gets the majority of its goods from China [1]. So we have to get China to install all those panels. [1] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions https://ustr.gov/countries-regions We need to consume less. Please start consuming less, ok?

FollowingTheDao 3y ago
:_^(
deadfoxygrandpa 3y ago
china is installing all those panels. china's newly installed solar capacity in just 2023 will be twice the entire total solar capacity of the united states. and they operate more offshore wind turbines than the rest of the world combined and are also installing new wind capacity than anyone else by far

xyzzyz 3y ago

> We should be blanketing every inch of desert with solar. And pair it to use excess energy for carbon fuels synthesis. Is there any EROEI analysis for this approach? Direct air capture of carbon is rather energy intensive, because CO2 concentration in the air is really rather low, whereas making solar panel is very energy expensive. If we can’t get enough useful energy from the panels during their expected lifetime, we shouldn’t be blanketing deserts with those. Also, blanketing the deserts with panels is difficult due to environmental regulations, read eg. about desert tortoises at Ivanpah, and the cost of their relocation. If we want to use deserts to generate energy, first we need to solve the problem of environmental regulations blocking it.

numbsafari 3y ago
> solve the problem of environmental regulations blocking it Or, like, come up with solutions to the environmental externalities posed by blanketing anything with solar panels.
- xyzzyz 3y ago
  There is no guarantee that this is possible. For example, if farming didn’t already exist, it would probably be illegal to start it, because of how turning big patches of earth into monoculture completely destroys preexisting ecosystems. There is no known effective way to mitigate this damage, efficient farming at scale requires this, and inefficient methods will require more land and likely cause more damage. Similarly, blanketing deserts with solar panels will very much significantly damage existing fragile desert ecosystems. You can maybe avoid some of the negative aspects by carefully chosen procedures, but in general, there is no way around it. The question is whether the specter of environmental destruction will hold us hostage, and allow other, grandfathered environmental destruction to proceed.
  - anon84873628 3y ago
    Permaculture people would probably argue about the higher productivity of permaculture systems (which theoretically have a better shot at maintaining/mimicking natural ecosystems) versus standard monoculture farming. The problem is that permaculture outputs don't fit neatly into the existing industrialized food supply chain. In theory we could produce more food and fuel while preserving diverse ecosystems, but it would require refactoring our entire conception of what we eat, how it is produced & preserved, distributed, etc...

phkahler 3y ago

>> We should be blanketing every inch of desert with solar. Has anyone solved the water problem? You know, cleaning all those dusty panels.

ke88y 3y ago
https://news.mit.edu/2022/solar-panels-dust-magnets-0311 https://news.mit.edu/2022/solar-panels-dust-magnets-0311

oatmeal1 3y ago

Even if we went 100% renewable today we would still be consuming vastly more resources than the earth can handle. The priority should be reducing needless and wasteful consumption. That means getting people out of cars and onto bikes or public transit. That means eliminating land use regulations that create inefficient sprawl. Of course that won't be the priority for the government though, because there aren't any special interests that can benefit from that. Politicians don't really care about the environment. Don't trust them to spend money fixing the environment.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> That means getting people out of cars and onto bikes or public transit. That means eliminating land use regulations that create inefficient sprawl This is a generational project. We don't have time for it. That doesn't mean we can't do both. But we can't only make the long-term massive-upheaval play. While suggested with good intentions, it's the sort of thing a fossil-fuel lobbyist will latch onto as a stalling tactic.
manzanarama 3y ago
What resoruces are you talking about? Seems like everything can be solved with enough energy and the earth can surely produce enough energy through nuclear.
numbers_guy 3y ago
> The priority should be reducing needless and wasteful consumption. In an utopian world I would agree with you. I find consumerism ugly as well. However, without consumerism there is no economic growth. Without growth no capitalism. Without capitalism no democracy and peace. It would completely upend our civilization. I mean consider how crazy everything goes when we have a small dip in economic markets.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nonethewiser 3y ago
All sorts of special interests could benefit from that.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tonymet 3y ago

what about natural habitats ? how are we going to maintain them

pornel 3y ago
I presume that in the desert environments cool shade is a positive thing. Panels will cover only a small fraction of the land anyway. Even if it's not ideal, we have urgent big problems to solve, and comfort of lizards and thumbleweed is low on the list.
- tonymet 3y ago
  maybe another biology class? every thing everywhere gets its energy from the sun.
  - pornel 3y ago
    if it was that simple, scorching deserts would have more life than more temperate microclimates that can hold moisture.
Manuel_D 3y ago
What about them? Climate change prevention should distance itself from the environmental movement in my opinion. Make it clear that we're focused on stopping global warming for the benefit of humanity. Yes, blanketing deserts in solar panels will destroy habitats. Yes, mining lithium is ecologically destructive. And we should cut environmental regulation for both, because the survival of humanity is more important than desert tortises.

sanderjd 3y ago

I'm slightly confused by this so I think I might just be missing a critical piece of the puzzle: Wouldn't natural gas plants burning synthetic carbon fuels still emit some portion of that carbon into the atmosphere?

bobthepanda 3y ago
Synthesis of carbon fuels from what's already in the air is theoretically net-neutral if you use clean energy to do it; you're just taking what's there, and putting back what you took. The main issue with fossil fuel is that we are burning embodied carbon from millions of years ago, throwing the present system out of whack.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Ah! I see, you mean carbon capture and utilization as synthetic fuel. Yeah I think that's a good idea to pursue, though I have a lot of skepticism that it will be able to scale faster than other stuff that's going on (like battery storage and enhanced geothermal).
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    We do have applications where batteries don't seem like they can solve fundamental physics issues. Batteries are too heavy for cargo ships to float, and too heavy for planes to fly. The only other real credible alternative is hydrogen, which has been trying to get off the ground for about three decades now. And of course we have all the extant hydrocarbon infrastructure that would need to be duplicated.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      You'll note that I didn't say we should use batteries for everything :) I think synthetic fuels are a great idea and I look forward to watching how the whole competitive landscape plays out between those and hydrogen-based solutions and (maybe??) really small nuclear.
    - 3y ago

pkulak 3y ago

> use excess energy for carbon fuels synthesis Is that a thing? I know you can turn water and electricity into hydrogen, but that's not a carbon fuel.

Armisael16 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_fuel

melling 3y ago

“But most importantly, we don't have time” “Look at the arctic and ocean temps, we do not have time.” “Again, we do don't have time for the most efficient solution.” Yes, we squandered 45 years not doing obvious things and waiting for the batteries to improve, etc. However, I sort of take issue with the “it’s too late to do things the right way” We can stop burning coal. We are all time highs globally. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/16/world/coal-use-record-high-climate-intl/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/16/world/coal-use-record-hig...

kelnos 3y ago
> We can stop burning coal. This illustrates that a big part of the problem is political, not economic or technological. We have the technology and money to get to nearly 100% renewables (we'd likely keep some non-renewable fallbacks in place) in a fairly short time... hell, we could be there already. But the coal industry is a powerful political lobby -- both the executives and workers who don't want to lose their jobs -- and so coal sticks around.
- slashdev 3y ago
  Coal is dying fast in the US. It’s international coal use (India and China) that is the problem. The coal lobby has nothing to do with that.
  - teachrdan 3y ago
    The US coal lobby is fighting for more domestic infrastructure for shipping coal internationally. That would lower the price of coal, thus increasing demand and consumption. https://oaklandside.org/2022/02/03/6-year-battle-over-proposed-west-oakland-coal-terminal-could-soon-end/ https://oaklandside.org/2022/02/03/6-year-battle-over-propos...
    - slashdev 3y ago
      After fucking over Canada on the Keystone XL pipeline, I hope the Biden administration sticks to their “principles” and shuts that down too. It will be interesting to see.

ChatGTP 3y ago

It's starting to sound like an insurmountable problem to be honest.

deleted 3y ago

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TradingPlaces 3y ago

There are a range of non-lithium storage technologies that are much more suited to the task. As you say, lithium batteries are only suitable for diurnal mismatch and dealing with curtailment. But there is a lot of investment going into non-lithium batteries, electro-mechanical, etc to solve the bigger issues of seasonal storage and resilience. A lot of people like vanadium flow batteries for their unique properties but that may create a supply chain issue. I also like iron based solutions. But they will take a long time to validate and lithium LFP is ready now.

kaliszad 3y ago

Sorry, no idea why you would undergo the inefficient and complex chemical reactions needed to produce carbon based fuels when there are easier alternatives that you don't have to burn but can use a fuel-cell for. E.g. the sodium cycle. Sodium (Na) can under circumstances outlined in the expired US patent US3730776A react with water (H2O) where there is no flame but instead flow of electrical current. You get a sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution + a lot of energy + oxygen if you do it well, if you do it less well, you also get hydrogen and less energy. The well known Castner Process can be used to split molten salt NaOH and get sodium, hydrogen and oxygen in the process. That does work under lower temperatures than the electrolysis of NaCl which is more efficient if you only look at this part of the cycle to get sodium. If you use sodium as fuel, the cycle as a whole is important for recycling. Sodium has much higher density than e.g. liquid hydrogen and does not require any cooling or pressure for storage. Also, it melts at about 100°C so you can pump it if you can keep it at about the temperature of boiling water. Yes, NaOH is caustic but neutralizes quickly in the nature which cannot be said for oil spills. You can keep NaOH in normal steel containers. For instance, it is common to use NaOH when cleaning clogged toilets. However you wouldn't pour gasoline down the drain. You can read more about the sodium fuel cell and the context here: https://orgpad.com/s/5BfLP-cxj-7 https://orgpad.com/s/5BfLP-cxj-7