biofuel costs are about as expensive as CNG. CNG for power generation is already more expensive than solar, and it’s historical price has flattened modulo commodity prices. Solar on the other hand is dropping every year, as is wind. wind grid reliability is also improving as we cover more geographical areas. i am far more optimistic at grid level battery solutions, eg molten metal batteries, than most, but even if ignore those, heated water or liquid air stores are already deployable. pumped hydro has the feel of gigantic project like lake powell. it would take a long public discourse to vet out.
i am far more confident in solar and wind plus batteries (plus trees), than in trees to biofuel (plus co2 sequestration).
Just because you are confident, doesnt make it right. You should either read more or listen more.
Batteries are really expensive now and are crazy orders of magnitude off vs the scale needed right now.
People are building them now because they serve a very useful purpose for grid stabilization, not because they do a good job of firming up renewables.
Grid interconnection is great for wind stability at low levels. As wind penetration increases you need massive investment in HVDC connections. Which is expensive.
Again, interconnection is an AND not an or. We need that AND we need a massive scale up of storage and or renewable generation to firm.
Solar being “cheaper” than CNG is (yet another) concept that requires nuance.
LCOE (levelized cost of energy) is the typical way people compare energy costs between generation types. What’s the cost per MWH over the lifetime of the plant, time adjusted?
It’s a great first pass. But it completely ignores the time aspect. Solar being cheaper than gas in the middle of the day means a lot less when you need power at night for example.
And apologies for being short, but you need to do more to seek to understand, rather than offering incomplete and/or incorrect views with high confidence.
no, i mean installed solar projects is already cheaper than gas per MWH produced over the whole day and lifetime of the project.
it doesn’t include battery costing because very few exist, but at the very least it’s already true that texas and california already shut down gas turbines when solar and wind is outputting in the middle of the day. because it’s cheaper, and the industry continues making them cheaper.
this is not an uninformed opinion, i read plenty about the climate and incidentally forestry. i am a big proponent of it, i donate and follow reforestation efforts. i have not seen any biochar mention from them in the context of energy extraction, only in terms of composting. or anywhere except on this site, probably from you both times.
I constantly refer back to this example. Because it shows so clearly that understanding the limits of your knowledge is much more important than how much you know.
Kushner is a smart guy, and reading 25 books makes him very well informed on Israel Palestine. Why its hilarious is that he thinks it is enough for the job he was given.
EDIT. Some context for my posting by way of an apology. I think I’m in the middle of a hypomanic BP episode. Which makes for interesting if sub optimal posting
i feel like i gave you plenty of nuance and a good argument, although i didn’t go through the paper napkin math, still to me it’s fairly obvious because we can use estimates from the timber industry. you are probably invested into your technology (it’s your thesis or something?), so go ahead and defend it.
the only essential theme in solving climate change is that we will need a variety of tools, not that there is a single technology.
It will get there in a year or two. I agree with you about batteries though and there probably can’t be enough of them made fast enough. I also think pumped storage hydro has a ton of potential. And you don’t need huge elevation differences. The biggest pumped storage hydro facility in the world is in Virginia and is only 380m elevation difference. And there are other low tech things that can be huge (storing air pressure or heat).
eta: People in the rich part of the world should also use about half as much energy per capita, but good luck with that.
Could be. I just looked at a list of the biggest and it was on top…probably not up to date since July 1st. There’s some project I was looking for in the Sacramento delta that doesn’t have much altitude gain at all, but it might not count as one project.
eta: Nope. The one in Virginia is a lot bigger. It’s 3000MW and the Swiss one there is 150MW.
eta eta: correction, the Swiss one is 150MW x 6, but still less than Virginia.
eta eta eta: The plant in Virginia was built in 1985. There has been pumped storage hydro for a long time and used in the opposite direction than it would be for solar. There’s more demand for power during the day so they pump at night.
Few days ago I read an article that said using the trees to build housing would also do the trick for keeping the carbon stored. How long lasts a house build by solid tree logs? It could also substitute for housing build with cement.
This is the biggest problem with climate change. It’s very complicated involving significant trade offs and people treat it as having an obvious solution.