[HN Gopher] US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds
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US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds
Author : epistasis
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-11-18 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago)
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| gregwebs wrote:
| We can have 100% clean energy by 2035 if we assume the US is
| China and the state can build whatever it wants despite any local
| objections. And assume we increase battery supply by 40x (even
| though lithium price is going up dramatically now). And assume
| that clean power is actually 100% clean.
|
| It's good to have a vision for clean energy though that is shared
| with the country that we start working towards. I can see the
| benefit of not letting reality weight down an initial brainstorm
| of that. Hopefully we can come up with a realistic vision as a
| next step.
| epistasis wrote:
| A clean power grid means cheaper power. And the faster we push
| towards that future, the more money we save.
|
| Every day of delay, every bit of FUD about renewables, only
| serves to keep our energy costs higher, and make our future CO2
| cleanup problem harder.
|
| The future for energy is cheap and clean, and the major
| roadblock are the people who profit from expensive and dirty
| electricity.
| davidw wrote:
| > local objections
|
| That's a big component of all this. NIMBYism in this country is
| becoming a big problem in a lot of ways.
|
| Want to build a dense, mixed use development that is less
| carbon-intensive than single family suburbia? NIMBYs oppose it.
|
| Build a transmission line from your green energy source?
| NIMBYs, again!
|
| Build a solar farm? NIMBYs will try and block it.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Our local library wanted to put in an automated drop-off bin
| that patrons could drive up to and return books into. It was
| bitterly contested because the adjacent home owners
| association was worried about the increased noise and
| traffic. Keep in mind they were already living next to this
| library and it already had a parking lot. The city paid to
| construct a high wall as a compromise. It wasn't terribly
| expensive, but it wasn't cheap either.
|
| I really do think there is such a thing as "over
| democratizing" our development process. Sometimes you really
| do just need to tell someone "this is getting built" and they
| can get bent if they don't like it.
| epistasis wrote:
| Agreed 100%. You may like this article, that has academic
| research to back up your thoughts-- Not Everyone Should
| Have a Say; To speed up permitting for energy projects,
| we'll need to rethink community input:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/environme
| n...
|
| This sort of "participatory democracy," where the most
| motivated can dominate those with less time, can be traced
| back to the New Left, which was criticized by social
| democrats at the time.
|
| https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-day-in-the-life-
| of...
|
| And it goes back further to the 30-40s where communists
| would drag out meetings late into the night in order to
| thin out the crowd, and then wait until they had a majority
| for a vote.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| And if they don't exist, they can be manufactured quite
| cheaply.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| If by NIMBYs you mean paid actors attending council meetings
| and incredibly loud reactionaries from other places, then
| yeah.
|
| There aren't that many actual NIMBYs for this shit.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > If by NIMBYs you mean paid actors attending council
| meetings
|
| Exactly, most anti-renewable objections are outright fraud
| by the oil companies, it is groups like 'Citizens for
| responsible solar' that are recieve fossil fuel donations
| through shell companies. Theu go and complain that a solar
| farm will spoint the veiw on somw derelic wasteland and
| robbing locals of job opportunities ities. There isnt a
| single local person in those groups.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Lithium price declined recently due to over supply.
|
| The US can do this without objection by declaring a state of
| emergency. We've done it before and we can do it again
| milsorgen wrote:
| That's a huge problem, you think that's a viable way to get
| things done and I don't fault you as I am sure you truly
| believe it's an emergency. However ,I don't see things as
| being that dire and instead I see your state of emergency
| being an act of authoritarianism.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Much is easier is to simply ban anything not labeled clean.
| Redefine things to clean when power grids fail.
|
| Or just let millions suffer insane prices.
|
| Helping people rarely a priority.
| kornhole wrote:
| And if Americans simplify their lives and stop using so much
| energy.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| don't forget where the vast majority of the solar, wind, and
| battery tech is currently built... and we're going to trust the
| source completely as we transition? I don't see that happening.
| Also storage simply isn't ready. Until they can all store 2-5
| days of power at a generating facility you're living in a pipe
| dream to claim "reliable power". Over 200 people in Texas died
| because of a shitty design during the 2021 arctic blast.
| Imagine 10x of that because of unreliable sources on a regular
| basis if we just assume everything will just be okay.
| roenxi wrote:
| You left out an important step - assuming that all the planning
| and modelling has been done correctly in and doesn't turn out
| to be politically motivated, have mistakes or miss unknown
| unknowns.
|
| Reconstituting all of society's energy consumption is a large
| project with a lot of technical uncertainties that will be
| discovered along the way. These sort of forecasts routinely
| turns out to be very wrong. Centrally planned economies often
| look like they are about to power ahead when the plans are
| still on paper. It is only when people start starving that
| there is the "oh, the plan wasn't actually very good" moment
| and/or crackdown to cover up the disaster depending on how
| authoritarian the government has gotten.
| epistasis wrote:
| There is clear political motivation in those who oppose the
| energy transition. Despite hundreds upon hundreds of papers
| on 100% clean energy electricity grids, they are produced by
| scientists that tend to follow the data rather than use data
| to justify their politics. There are a few counter examples
| (perhaps Marc Jacobs?) but there are so many other modelers
| coming to the same conclusion as DOE here, and nobody has
| seriously refuted these models in any way.
| verdverm wrote:
| What is the plan for revamping all the residential units that
| have non-electrical heating in the parts of the country which
| have winter?
| acdha wrote:
| We switched to a heat pump a couple years ago. It soaks up all
| but the coldest (5-15deg) days in winter (when the resistive
| heater kicks in as well) and uses only a little more energy
| than our old gas system's fans did. It's way more efficient in
| the summer than our old AC was so our annual usage actually
| went down and we have less maintenance.
|
| Over the course of the year, our entire HVAC load is roughly
| what our modest solar setup produces. Obviously there are
| distribution issues, which is why we buy wind-generated
| electricity, but this is something we can do now and I'm quite
| confident the thousands of engineers working in the space will
| improve as it becomes our generation's Apollo project.
| epistasis wrote:
| Heat pumps!
|
| They work great on cold weather now, as long as you can find a
| competent HVAC contractor. HVAC folks tend to not like new
| tech, though, so it's hard to find one.
| mionhe wrote:
| At the beginning of the article is says:
|
| "But it does not explain how adequate land to reach a 90% clean
| electricity penetration can be acquired or how reliability will
| be protected beyond that 90% penetration, stakeholders
| acknowledged."
|
| I'm confused that they can put a time frame on a problem they
| have no idea how to solve yet.
| epistasis wrote:
| These are roadmaps about how to get somewhere, but the map is
| not the terrain, and there are a few parts that are known to
| only be 90% mapped. That doesn't say that the 10% unmapped
| contains an impassable cliff or easily crossable plains, but we
| will likely find out.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _confused that they can put a time frame on a problem they
| have no idea how to solve yet_
|
| The purpose of the study [1] was to explore what a realistic
| solution would look like. Then you can work backwards and
| identify roadblocks. For example, if land acquisition is really
| the sole bottleneck, there are a myriad of legislative
| solutions that could address it.
|
| [1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/nrel-study-
| identifies-o...
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| You'd think what they want is a solution to switch over to
| renewable energy sources that can meet or exceed current
| demands at comparative costs.
|
| No, they just want to get rid of fossil fuels. It doesn't
| matter if the new system can meet the demand at all, or how
| much it will cost.
|
| Look at California. Banning lawn mowers and ICE cars. Their
| power grid can't even support EV charging, and they're sending
| out notices asking people to charge their cars at off hours.
|
| It doesn't have to work. It just has to disrupt oil at any
| cost, even if the cost is human suffering.
| epistasis wrote:
| That does not represent anything in the article.
|
| > Their power grid can't even support EV charging,
|
| This is categorically false, and a ridiculous thing to say.
| infamouscow wrote:
| > The California Independent System Operator, which manages
| the state's power grid, sent a Flex Alert asking all
| residents to voluntarily reduce their electricity use
| between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday and
| warned that more alerts were possible through the Labor Day
| weekend.
|
| > A spokeswoman for the governor, Erin Mellon, said that
| the request to avoid charging electrical vehicles has been
| misrepresented by critics of California's efforts to curb
| emissions.
|
| > "We're not saying don't charge them," she said. "We're
| just saying don't charge them between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/california-heat-
| wave-f...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Air conditioners were the problem, not EV's.
| epistasis wrote:
| > We're not saying don't charge them," she said. "We're
| just saying don't charge them between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m."
|
| Exactly. During the worst, off the charts weather event
| ever experienced, with statewide heat never seen before,
| there were a few hours where people were asked to not use
| much energy, but they still had plenty of energy to
| charge cars.
| acdha wrote:
| That's peak air conditioning load, and it nicely
| disproves the claim you're defending: most cars charge
| aren't plugged in at peak commuting time but they'll
| charge just fine in the middle of the day when solar
| production is maximized or at night when the grid has
| plenty of excess capacity after AC demand has dropped
| significantly.
| rllearneratwork wrote:
| "Nuclear is likely to be 9% to 12% of generation in 2035" - this
| is absurd. We should have much more aggressive targets for
| nuclear. Because it is the cleanest, safest and most reliable
| source of 0-emission power.
|
| France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear now.
| carabiner wrote:
| China started building 6 new nuclear plants this year:
| https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-greenlights-6-...
|
| I guess just like high speed rail, China will leave the US in
| the dust.
| rllearneratwork wrote:
| China is also where most of the solar panels are built
| epistasis wrote:
| If we were to start that now, it would add only 1% generation
| capacity, and that's assuming that all projects finish within
| 13 years (unlikely) and that none of the construction
| projects are abandoned as unfinishable in any way that makes
| financial sense (which happened to 50% of the reactors
| started in the US in the 2000s).
|
| There's an assumption that we can simply rebuild what we
| built in the past, but technology has changed quite a bit,
| construction costs have risen quite a bit, and the lessons we
| have learned from prior reactors means that we dont want to
| build the prior designs.
|
| Nuclear is a technology without a solid track record, and
| which has failed in the US, and in France, and in Finland. In
| these latter examples, we can't blame regulations or public
| support. Personally, my hypothesis is that construction
| productivity has been so stagnant compared to manufacturing
| productivity growth, that nuclear no longer makes sense for
| advanced economies. Economies at earlier stages of
| development with lower labor productivity and therefore lower
| labor costs, may be able to build nuclear cost-effectively.
| roenxi wrote:
| > ... and in France, and in Finland ...
|
| We might be about to discover that every power policy in
| Europe has failed, there are a lot of people hoping for a
| warm winter. I'd be very nervous if their fossil fuel,
| nuclear, renewable or gas policies were being adopted where
| I live. There is a serial problem in the west where people
| aren't taking energy security seriously. If we were, we'd
| have been building nuclear reactors 13 years ago and we'd
| be building them now for 13 years in the future.
|
| For this comment, I also looked up the Texas thing [0] from
| last year to see if there was a solid consensus on what
| happened yet RE wind energy's contribution. I imagine there
| must be some Wikipedia edit wars happening over whether to
| show the 7th on this graph [1] because it makes it look
| like Wind was pretty useless at stopping people from
| freezing to death in winter.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Texas_power_crisis.png
| plasticchris wrote:
| I think the wind turbines froze up:
| https://www.newsweek.com/texas-wind-turbines-frozen-
| power-wh...
| zardo wrote:
| And it comes down to, utilities didn't spring for the
| cold weather package on their turbines. Effectively
| deciding that during extreme cold snaps they would rely
| on natural gas power plants. Which were also brought down
| by the cold snap.
| epistasis wrote:
| The plan for Texas was never to rely on wind, and how
| could they, wind is not reliable!
|
| The plan was to rely on natural gas and nuclear, which
| are supposed to be reliable, but which were not in Texas.
|
| Therefore, more solar and storage is probably the best
| way for Texans to gain reliability. Texas had the same
| problem with frozen gas and nuclear plants a decade
| earlier, knew it was a problem, and refused to fix it.
|
| Decentralization is the only way for people to protect
| themselves with grid mismanagement like that, which means
| home solar and storage.
| melling wrote:
| China is planning on building 150 reactors in the next 15
| years
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-
| cli...
|
| So yes, once again we have to listen to Americans say "it
| won't work here"
| melling wrote:
| That's less than the 20% we get now.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_...
|
| " for 20% of the nation's total electric energy generation.[3]
| In 2018, nuclear comprised nearly 50 percent of US emission-
| free energy generation."
|
| Didn't the United States build 100 nuclear power plants in
| about 25 years?
| epistasis wrote:
| Yes, and the problem was that way too many of them were over
| budget and delayed. Even before Three Mile Island, orders for
| new nuclear had slowed massively because utilities realized
| that ther massive risk for financial boondoggles.
|
| Those nuclear reactors are now reaching their end of life,
| and will need to be phased out. France is realizing what
| happens when you don't replace your aging fleet fast enough:
| massive unreliability and extended shutdowns for maintenance
| and fixing things.
|
| France also started to build new nuclear in the 2000s, at
| Flamanville, but it has been an utter debacle, that's ongoing
| to this day. It's to the point that even though the president
| has said he's going to order more reactors, it seems unlikely
| that many of them will ever complete.
| kieranmaine wrote:
| The full paragraph is:
|
| "Nuclear is likely to be 9% to 12% of generation in 2035 under
| three of NREL's scenarios but could more than double to 27%
| with siting and permitting constraints on generation and
| transmission, models found. But that is unlikely because the
| cost-effectiveness of investments in wind, solar, storage and
| transmission is "clearly" better than that of new nuclear,
| NREL's Denholm said."
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| From reactors built 40 years ago.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/france-nuclear-edf-idINKBN2A...
| sgu999 wrote:
| It apparently took about a decade or so to go from planning
| to running most of these power plants...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| What does the cost of nuclear vs renewables and storage
| look like in a decade? The cost curve is what will define
| success. Nuclear never gets cheaper.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The US can't build a nuclear plant in 13 years.
| newsclues wrote:
| The US can build a plant in 13 years. It's a matter of
| dedication and willingness. And pissing off a minority of
| vocal opponents.
|
| It takes longer because of the crazy regulations driven in
| part by environmentalists who complained about nuclear for
| decades while fossil fuels were the only other option.
|
| But the USA has the resources, skills, technology and money
| to do so in a short period of time.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The USA hasn't built a sizable number of reactors for 40
| years. We haven't completely lost the skills, but they've
| sure atrophied.
|
| It takes China 10 years to build a reactor, and they've
| built lots of them in the past 20 years and don't have the
| regulations you decry. There's no way that the US can do it
| in anywhere close to the same time frame that China can.
|
| It's not just the rules and attitudes about nuclear making
| things slow. We can't build a subway station in any sort of
| reasonable timeframe or budget.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Aren't NuScale, Rolls Royce, etc planning to deploy
| several Gigawatts per year of mini reactors within 5
| years?
|
| That could be close to 1% of energy usage per year...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They should build it then, and be willing to suffer
| financial penalties if they can't. Otherwise they're
| making empty promises. Watch what someone does, not what
| they say.
| epistasis wrote:
| None of this is correct, the projects have not been stopped
| due to environmentalists, or regulations, or even
| willingness. It's just been construction incompetence that
| caused billions of dollars to be abandoned on a half-
| finished project at VC Summer. And it's the same
| construction incompetence that caused Vogtle to be so far
| behind schedule and so far over budget.
|
| If somebody has regulations to change, it's time to propose
| them.
| sgu999 wrote:
| Define now, because there's a now in which we'd really like to
| be able to make that much...
| zukzuk wrote:
| More than half of France's nuclear reactors are out of
| commission right now, so for the foreseeable future that "70%"
| is more aspirational than anything.
|
| We are obviously not going to meet all of our energy needs --
| especially for certain high-demand applications -- from solar
| and wind alone, but there are some significant advantages to a
| decentralized power grid that the pro-nuclear folks don't seem
| to factor into their arguments. Assuming we can build it out, a
| decentralized grid ought to be much more resilient to the sort
| of problems France is facing right now.
| S201 wrote:
| This is fairly liberal use of the term "decentralized."
| Building many more nuclear plants is still "decentralized" in
| that some of them can be offline and the system still works.
|
| Major solar and wind installations are typically concentrated
| in similar generating stations as nuclear plants are. Many
| more people will likely have solar on their homes, but it's
| not like wind and solar is going to lead to a purely
| decentralized grid where every small community is generating
| their own electricity. There will always be large scale
| generating stations for the bulk of grid electricity.
| S201 wrote:
| Before the typical "nuclear is too expensive/takes too long to
| build" comments start:
| https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html. Understand why this
| is the case and how it's entirely reasonable to fix those
| problems with sufficient will & funding.
| epistasis wrote:
| That page doesn't really describe how to fix the problems.
| Nobody really knows, and there's lots of speculations, but if
| there was an answer it's easily a trillion dollar reward.
| S201 wrote:
| > That page doesn't really describe how to fix the
| problems.
|
| Clearly you didn't actually read it because there's a large
| section describing exactly how to improve the economics of
| nuclear construction:
| https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html#improving-modern-
| nu...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| From the conclusion:
|
| - Multiple hypothetical approaches to reduce nuclear
| costs are ongoing. No one knows for sure if any of them
| will work, or which one will work best
|
| And it didn't address the time scale issue at all.
|
| OTOH, solar power has a 5 decade history of 90% cost
| reductions per decade.
| 988747 wrote:
| Solar power also has a decades long history of only
| working during a day.
| S201 wrote:
| What's your point? The guy doesn't have a few billion to
| single handedly throw at the problem to test them out.
| There are feasible solutions to make it less expensive,
| whether or not they get put into practice is a different
| topic. The point is that nuclear is not inherently and
| permanently as expensive as it has been for the past few
| decades.
|
| > And it didn't address the time scale issue at all.
|
| The time scale issue is directly related to the cost
| issue. Costs are so high not due to material costs, but
| because of the engineering and construction overheads.
| Standardize the designs, streamline the approval
| processes and both construction time & costs will
| decrease.
|
| And to your solar point, until there's a viable way to
| store the energy that solar produces it's not a solution
| on its own regardless of how cheap it is. Same goes for
| any renewable that doesn't have the on-demand
| characteristic of nuclear.
|
| To be clear: I'm not saying to not use solar. I'm saying
| to build solar, wind, nuclear, and whatever else. I
| honestly don't really care how expensive any of them are
| anymore because the costs of not stopping carbon
| emissions will be far higher than the cost of building
| these renewable/nuclear generating stations.
| asien wrote:
| Appreciate the graph in the article , this time the numbers
| actually are calculated by engineers from DoE , not by
| Journalists...
|
| Even if the plan is there , without an "economy of war" and the
| implication of basically every single American it's nearly
| impossible to reach those types of deployment.
|
| Money is not the answer to everything , as pointed we are also
| going to reach "civilization" types of limits with land and
| ressource exhaust...
|
| My humble opinion is we should simply consume far less energy and
| accept a much simpler lifestyle, that would be much easier ...
| megaman821 wrote:
| Did we read the same article? The land usage for wind and solar
| is about that of golf courses and coal. Getting permits to use
| the land is the main obstacle.
|
| As for resource constraints, the limiting factor is the speed
| on which a lithium mines can come online. The bulk of the that
| being environment reviews and lawsuits.
|
| Americans are just going to have to come to terms with building
| or mining stuff causes localized environmental damage and other
| externalities for the communities that live close by. We should
| weight the pros and cons and move swiftly with whatever the
| decision is.
| RadixDLT wrote:
| does that mean nuclear power?
| acdha wrote:
| Maybe, but that's the slow option so we should be doing
| renewables now, which can come online in just months, while the
| much slower process of adding nuclear capacity unfolds. If we
| shift the large amount of power generation which renewables can
| provide over that buys us enough time to build nuclear.
| Krasnol wrote:
| No it doesn't since nuclear waste is not clean and as the
| article says: renewables are cheaper already.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Oh, nice! Didn't know battery tech and PV panel production
| were clean now. That's a great leap.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| OK, fine, but to what extent will it impoverish working people or
| reduce their wealth? It's more important to consider human
| happiness and wealth, rather than sacrificing the poor on the
| altar of carbon emissions.
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