The Earth continuously receives 173,000 TWh of energy in one hour, which is roughly the amount of energy that the entire planet uses in a year. If you make a solar farm that will harness energy that will match our usage, you need an area roughly twice the size of AZ to meet our needs. Spread the panels out across the world, add battery systems or other types of storage to allow energy usage when the Sun isn’t shining, and we easily meet our needs for energy.
It’s more complicated than that of course, there will be some special circumstances where you need something else (like above the latitudes where the Sun doesn’t shine continuously for a long time), but then you usually can look at something like wind to take up the slack. Once all this is built out, there will be essentially no need for fossil fuels outside of very specialized circumstances.
So, your contention is flat out wrong, and basically fear mongering to convince people that renewable energy can’t do the job. It can, easily, if only we could get people like you out of the way.
I’m opposed to torture for any reason against any person, even Putin or Hitler. But I would put him in a tiny concrete cubicle without any human contact, just a small opening for food and waste, a metal bed, toilet/sink, temperature kept to 55, thin cotton blanket, bare light bulb out of reach always turned on, no books, no writing materials, no access to a lawyer, family or priest. He’d be dead within a week or permanently catatonic but oh the agony he’d endure.
Wow, I never said I wanted to run the world on fossil fuels. I just pointed out that they’re not inefficient, something that should be evident to anybody. And I’m serious about climate change, I know it’s critical to get it under control, but renewables won’t get us there. Nuclear will.
So imagine this. Renewables advocates are usually antagonistic to nuclear, but since weather systems like the dunkelflaute that have most of Europe becalmed for days or even weeks, you need “backup” for renewables. Batteries won’t cut it, not even close. Nuclear, though, would work fine. But you’d have to build enough of it to basically provide peak demand, since wind and solar sometimes will be providing virtually nothing. So say you build out advanced reactor systems that are safer and cheaper than current nuclear power plants. Very doable. So now you’ve got a nuclear fleet capable of providing peak demand when necessary. But nukes are fine running at full power 24/7, and the cost of fuel is trivial. So in a situation like that, there would be no need for wind and solar. They’d only add expensive instability to the grid. And since peak demand is 2-3 times average demand (depending on the industrial profile of the service area) you’d have vast amounts of essentially free energy to use for desalination, synthetic fuels, etc. Then you could indeed do away with fossil fuels. Hell, you can even make plastics, or any hydrocarbon, out of air and water. It’s all about having abundant, cheap, clean energy to do it. And renewables will never get you there, not even close. Remember, a lot of industrial processes require a lot of heat, in many cases very high temperatures. How are renewables going to provide that? Electricity is only about 20% of total energy use globally.
Don’t get your underwear in a bundle.
Why do people who argue against solar, wind and even hydro invariably forget about or discount these wonderful devices called batteries, which actually predate generated electricity, are used to level out inevitable fluctuations in energy production and use, and do so quite well? I’m not saying that nuclear shouldn’t play a role, but it’s not a panacea either, and quite toxic and dangerous. You also STILL refuse to acknowledge the massive “back door” inefficiency and cost of fossil fuels in their contribution to climate change, the replacement of the ICE with EVs, smart grids and roads, etc. And renewables not being able to produce massive heat? Ok, that’s where you lose any credibility, since you obviously don’t know anything about any of these technologies, thermodynamics or how electricity works.
It’s almost reads like industry propaganda, especially discounting the existence and use of batteries. Fossil fuels are actually solar batteries, in that they store and release energy that was “charged” by the sun millions of years ago, only they release it in a very dirty way. Not so much with modern batteries. Their one big advantage is their energy/weight ration, but any cost and weight savings it ultimately offset by their longer-term environmental cost.
And, there are so many inefficiencies in our use of energy, like ICE cars idling at stop lights and wasting fuel in stop and go traffic just to stay on, not incentivizing carpooling and mass transit and de-incentivizing ICE car ownership and usage, our massive overuse of planes over trains, poorly insulated and energy-inefficient buildings, dumb roads and electric grids, and so on. We could probably cut down on per capita energy use by 30-40% or more if we worked on it.
The report states that fossil fuel prices, particularly for natural gas, have substantially increased throughout the year, causing “a wave” of consumers switching fuels from gas. This has caused an increase in demand for fuel sources with more competitive prices, including coal in certain regions of the world.
But the IEA noted that higher coal prices, the deployment of renewable energy sources and weakening global economic growth are limiting the overall increase in the demand for coal.
So let’s be clear, Putin has been threatening Western Europe, for years, with cutting off natural gas supplies. He’s done it before, and used the original pipelines that pass through Ukraine and the Nordstreams as bargaining tools. Putin invades Ukraine and because the West is supplying Ukraine with aide, Putin cuts off gas supplies. Germany saw what was coming, and refused to allow the start up of Nordstream II. Russia cutoff gas flowing through Nordstream I. Those two pipelines get sabotaged, but in your mind, it was either Biden or with Biden’s blessing? There are multiple countries whose borders include the Baltic Sea, where the pipelines exploded. The Swedes and Danes both have extensive investigations going on and neither them, nor the Russians blame the US. The Germans haven’t blamed us. No one has been blamed. Here’s the ironic part of that sabotage- half of Nordstream II is intact and if Russia wanted to start delivering Gas to the West again, most of it will have to pass through the pipelines it built through Ukraine, and Russia will have to pay Ukraine a monthly fee for that transport.
You mention record coal consumption, yet the article you posted states the following:
The report states that global coal demand will likely plateau from 2022 through 2025, but much of that outlook could rely on China, where coal consumption grew sharply in 2021 but is expected to grow only modestly in the next few years because of an increase in renewable power generation.
It seems Xi and Putin have had an outsized hand in the increase in Coal consumption. There’s no Biden policy that caused either China to increase it’s consumption IN 2021, increase or decrease China’s move to renewables or cause the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The whole Biden and the CIA tricked Russia into invading Ukraine is total bullshit. To believe such horse hockey, you have to ignore the last couple of decades of Russian interference in Ukraine, the invasion and annexation of Crimea and the Russian backing of pro-Russian militias in Eastern Ukraine. Putin has been the cause of all of this. He had a puppet leader in Ukraine to keep Ukraine as a client state of Russia. It failed. He was afraid of Ukraine joining the EU and NATO and his ill-advised invasion not only guaranteed Ukraine will join both, but forced Sweden and Finland to move off their neutral positions and processing their applications to join NATO. That’s Vlad’s doing. He fucked around and found out the Ukrainians were more prepared for a fight than he was. He can only sell so much Oil and Gas to India and China. OPEC- in particular MBS has sided with Putin and has been looking to profit from Russian sanctions.
And yet you chose to post your steaming conspiracy pile here.
Read " The Grand Chessboard’. Our Ukraine/Russia policy was spelled out clear as day back in the late 1990s. We were behind all the " Color Revolutions" in 2004.
In order to dominate Eurasia, the US has drive a wedge between Russia and Ukraine. It’s all spelled out by our best foreign policy guru at the time. He’s still revered in certain circles as is his advice. Biden’s energy policies are at fault for the rise in energy prices, along with his foreign policy. The only reason I’m here today is because I’m bored waiting for the Vikings/Packer game. Not much else going on today. Biden has been an unmitigated disaster from day one. I did vote for him, but I have since left the Democratic party due to his stupidity. I didn’t vote last November and won’t until he’s out of office. Butt Hurt?, not likely, I’ve collected 96 grand in oil company dividends alone in 2022. Biden has been the best thing to happen to me financially.
No one has been as wrong as most the commenters here over the years. I was right on inflation when you were all repeating the administrations “transitory” BS. I’m gone. Good day. .
I am all for using nuclear generated electricity until all the other renewables can take over. Maybe that is 10-20 years, maybe it is longer. But burning our atmosphere and oxygen and converting it into poison is not viable. Whether we are doing it to create electricity, create industrial products, or to create heat…it all has to be converted to electrical processes that do not produce carbon byproducts or eat our air. Other than renewables, nuclear is the only one that doesn’t eat or poison our atmosphere. It is known, mature technology which could be pressed into service and doesn’t require some new invention or Hail Mary discovery.
You do know that 1) you are quoting the Russian position on why client states stopped wanting to be client states (nothing to do with being tired of being a Russian doormat) and 2) Zbigniew Brzezinsk died about five years ago, so he’s not giving us any advice?
If what you say is true, then this foreign policy has been in place for four administrations, and last I checked, Manafort was being paid by the Russians to keep their puppet in place in Ukraine, while trump was withholding military aide to get Ukraine to SAY there was an investigation of Hunter Biden. The Ukrainian people voted Putin’s guy out because they were sick of the Soviet-era corruption that was happening and keeping them from pursuing democratic reforms.
Why don’t you cite those specific policies? Last I checked, refineries were running at or near capacity, Oil Companies still have leases that they are not exploiting, and MBS not only got OPEC to keep production down, but threatened to further stifle production if Biden released more Oil from the strategic reserve. BTW, gas in my area is down $2 from it’s high, and our prices here usually run just over the national average.
So you complain about his stupidity while you profit from it… hmmm.
I guess those dividend checks show that inflation is real and not corporate greed. Your getting fed pretty well, because Oil companies think that giving you a higher dividend is more important than lower prices. You are the reason for inflation, but yeah, you think it’s Biden’s energy policies that are leading to higher gas prices and not your higher dividend checks…
I think someone took too many drugs to celebrate the new year. In case you meant this seriously, you’re deluded, there is absolutely no way Biden approved of blowing up any pipelines. The rest of what you wrote is just as foolish and lacking in facts. But hey, at least you owned the libs by spewing it at us.
Yes they will, they already are a decent backup system and will only get better, as there is huge financial incentive to develop good battery systems. And batteries are not the only option, there are all kind of ways to store electricity, as well as many ways to generate it outside of the hours when wind and solar are active. Nuclear is one, but the politics have undercut it to the point that it’s not going to happen…it would be a great way to replace coal plants and you’d have less toxic waste products, but people don’t get that because they fear radiation. We will just have to bridge with fossils while renewables continue to grow, and while people figure out other energy sources that can be tapped.
Note that you ignored my post, which clearly shows we don’t need anything but solar power (plus a way to store it)…understandable, since it cleanly refutes your argument that there is no way renewable energy can fill the needs of humanity.
Of course anybody knows that you can produce heat with electricity. Duh! So tell me, is there a single big solar or wind farm that could power a single aluminum smelter? And do it 24/7? If not, how many batteries would it take? How about steel mills that use electric-arc smelting tech?Germany has invested about half a trillion dollars in renewables and still has to import electricity and burn coal and gas, and that’s just for their electricity needs, not for process heat for their industries.
Building enough batteries to store 12 hours of electricity for the U.S. would cost about $1.5 trillion, and that scale of storage would still leave the nation regularly third-world dark.
Now you’re just making stuff up and fudging the numbers to fit your argument. And obviously you have no idea how solar or wind work. Power is power, period, makes zero difference where it came from. Solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, fossil, the output is EXACTLY the same. Basic HS physics. And of course there are solar and wind farms that could power aluminum production. Which generally don’t run 24/7. Plus storing surplus power doesn’t just mean conventional batteries. There’s pumped hydro, salt, flywheels, other mechanical solutions, etc. I don’t know what your deal is with renewables but your numbers just don’t add up and sound like industry propaganda.
So, I had to look it up. Utility-scale solar farms have capacities of producing between 1 MW to 2,000 MW of electricity. Producing 1 ton of aluminum requires around 17 mWh of electricity, or 17 MW for one hour. So it’s certainly feasible. Eastern WA, which is or was a major region for the production of aluminum, is mostly desert and gets a lot of sun and wind, certainly enough to produce a decent amount of it. It also has a huge water supply in the Columbia river, as I assume that lots of water is needed in producing aluminum. Aluminum is refined from bauxite, whose largest producer is Australia. Also not lacking in sun and I assume wind, the vast majority of its territory being desert. So, I call bullshit.
