It was really nice to hear some of the big questions and concepts simplified in the first half of discussion - I forget the details of it all sometimes.
Would have loved if Noah didn't interrupt you every time you were saying something interesting. Would also have loved for him to not be the epitome of center left white dudes sitting on their asses spouting false claims to critique progressives on things they're not even doing. I appreciate you pushing back on all that.
Sunrise was integral to forming Biden's presidential climate agenda that Noah says he likes so much, and we were actually at the White House and confronting Manchin in his Maserati, fighting for it to get passed. Where exactly were Noah and his expert journalistic sources then?
Like you said, there's a reason he doesn't know, but it's just so fucking frustrating to hear bros spout this center left bullshit like it's a well-informed, enlightened opinion.
As far as the "left opposing industrial solar/wind" stuff. While some left/enviro types are certainly part of that sometimes somewhere, now that is often far right rural locals.
A lot of these talking points, apparently now circulating on FB groups, come from sources funded by old industrialists and fossil fuel folks. Sadly the journalists do a good job of repeating some w/o debunking. (E.g. Comparing area of solar field to area of a gas power plant w/o upstream area of gas well field.)
Right in my backyard in CO, some county commissioners overruled their own P&Z on a 80 MW PV project for their own rural electric co-op, one stating "...solar is nice, but it is not sustainable..."
If I have a beef with my local Sierra Club, 350, etc., they can seem to have a much greater focus on Fuck Fossil Fuels, instead of More Renewables (Efficiency, Electrification, etc.) Faster, Sooner.
It might be a Colorado thing, since we went from a renewable leader 20 years ago to a huge gas and oil producer. There are also distractions, sometimes warranted, with "justice," equity" and "resilience" instead of the core need to promote rapid emissions reductions.
But sometimes not warranted. A great example can be seen in this article on wind farm opposition in Idaho. Concluding that "Emotional Impact Studies" are needed. OY!
Regarding the very last question from Noah, as well as your (too short) discussion of long-term storage, I had the privilege of installing a small PV system on our house last year. By small, I mean that it is sized to 'only' save money on our electric bill. The company gave me a nice dashboard that lets me watch my electrons reduce my coal usage and I love it. It cheers me up to go to the web page and see it working. It would have helped if I could have had a similar dashboard (more immediate than my monthly energy bills) to report on the progress that I pursued for years putting in windows, insulation, and so on. These things all helped to make me feel a little bit better amidst all the crappy news of politics and climate change during the the aughts and teens, but my solar really changed the game. The other big addition that our solar project brought to me was the excuse to explore the details of sizing and battery storage. I discovered that our little 4 kW system actually powers all our home's needs except for wintertime heating (adding a 2-3 kWh battery would cover nighttime needs). A theoretical expansion of the system, with about 6-8 kW of PV would provide that. But a battery, sized at about 20-40 kWh, would store enough energy to cover winter night heating. This finally reinforced what I have been reading for years about how storage would really work in concert with overbuilding renewables and adding electric transmission. My local 'system' and economy helped me understand how to exploit renewable energy on any scale.
One of the best attributes of solar energy is scale. I suggest building yourself any tiny system to learn more about it as well as improving your outlook on the world.
"Halfway there by 2030, all the way there by 2050." What does that mean for the U.S. All the way there by 2030? 2035? We're in serious danger territory. So dangerous that insurance doesn't make much sense -- once society collapse, what happens? Tony Seba's model says 29 hours of storage will keep electricity stable in CA.
This comment appears in the Carbon Brief overview at https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-react-what-are-the-key-new-insights-from-the-ipccs-wg3-report: "The report shows that the benefits of staying well below 2C clearly outweigh the costs, even in economic terms". I'd like to hear a lot more about the costs and benefits from Noah and other economists and what they're doing to make a persuasive case for the need to do more sooner.
Toyota and Ford are actively developing hydrogen burning internal combustion engines for automobiles; this is a thing that is happening in the year 2022. We can (correctly) suggest this was a failed concept from 20 years ago, but we must accept the contemporary empirical evidence that we didn't all learn that lesson and move on from that failed idea. More likely, the involved parties have different goals for all the effort encouraging present interest in Hydrogen right now.
I was in fuel cells for the last Hydrogen push, the physics hasn't changed. Hydrogen is still a very small highly reactive material that doesn't obey your belief that this or that container should be able to store it for any length of time. It isn't cheap to produce in a green way, it doesn't have high volumetric power density, it doesn't have ease of containment. As a specialty fuel for high energy chemical reactions... yeah sure, same as it always was. There are some super slick approaches to its production that we didn't have 20 years ago (many of which have their costs driven down by China's manufacturing capacity - something we externalize from our economic activity in conversations on global fossil fuel emitters) - but these real advances are all still running against both entropy and breaking that highly stable chemical bond the hydrogen got itself into before you tried to split it back out as a fuel for future use. Essential for circular fuels, just massive waste when applied to fossil methane as makes up the bulk of the hydrogen production anyone is talking about building out capacity for. Hydrogen combustion cars only become a thing to subsidize a national distribution infrastructure - not on its own merits. Consumers purchase from the options presented to them, if we want individual choice to matter they need better choices, otherwise we're just ducking our responsibility for system wide decision making.
We just get more system benefit out of spending that proposed lump of energy displacing other fossil fuel combustion rather than spending it in hydrolysis until there is no more fossil combustion to displace (and then build out an overabundance of additional green energy that can make the high cost of electrolysis or carbon removal a non-issue, thus opening up those pathways). Hydrogen may have a valuable place in the portfolio in the future, but the focus now slows overall progress towards what should be our shared goal - elimination of fossil extraction and combustion. The problem isn't that we burn methane, the problem is that the methane we are burning hasn't been in circulation for 100M years and now it is right here with all the other methane that is normally in circulation (repeat for all the GHGs). This version of the hydrogen push doesn't address the core failure in burning things to create power - that we're burning fossil fuels instead of circular fuels (even setting aside the electrical vs. combustion efficiency problem - which should be enough to kill any non-specialized use case). There is a rainbow of hydrogen kinds and flavors specifically to hide this ball. 20 years ago, we put in enough money to say we tried without changing anything, now we are putting in enough money to say it is the one-true-future we can all prosper through. It isn't an accident; it is actively and deliberately messaged as a green option to provide cover for a few more years of extraction. This isn't a hypothetical risk, courts are already ruling that these efforts are insufficient to the task (particularly with respect to Royal Dutch Shell, a/the world leader in electrolysis) and it is clear from the CapEx.
By all means have faith that we will prevail, but we have to keep our vision clear about what we're up against and how the incumbent defends its rent. The latest IPCC report would have stated that in the summary for policy makers if (presumably) the lobbying they were warning about hadn't removed any mention of lobbying (https://twitter.com/NiranjanAjit/status/1511016054138576897).
It was really nice to hear some of the big questions and concepts simplified in the first half of discussion - I forget the details of it all sometimes.
Would have loved if Noah didn't interrupt you every time you were saying something interesting. Would also have loved for him to not be the epitome of center left white dudes sitting on their asses spouting false claims to critique progressives on things they're not even doing. I appreciate you pushing back on all that.
Sunrise was integral to forming Biden's presidential climate agenda that Noah says he likes so much, and we were actually at the White House and confronting Manchin in his Maserati, fighting for it to get passed. Where exactly were Noah and his expert journalistic sources then?
Like you said, there's a reason he doesn't know, but it's just so fucking frustrating to hear bros spout this center left bullshit like it's a well-informed, enlightened opinion.
Noah picks up on the spin we are all hearing. David has deep understanding of his topics. Makes for an enlightening discussion.
So much of the discussion here felt like re-hashed conversations I've had with my brothers, but in a more productive way.
As far as the "left opposing industrial solar/wind" stuff. While some left/enviro types are certainly part of that sometimes somewhere, now that is often far right rural locals.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-solar-expansion-stalled-by-rural-land-use-protests-2022-04-07/
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1086790531/renewable-energy-projects-wind-energy-solar-energy-climate-change-misinformation
A lot of these talking points, apparently now circulating on FB groups, come from sources funded by old industrialists and fossil fuel folks. Sadly the journalists do a good job of repeating some w/o debunking. (E.g. Comparing area of solar field to area of a gas power plant w/o upstream area of gas well field.)
Right in my backyard in CO, some county commissioners overruled their own P&Z on a 80 MW PV project for their own rural electric co-op, one stating "...solar is nice, but it is not sustainable..."
https://bigpivots.com/delta-countys-strange-case-of-no/
If I have a beef with my local Sierra Club, 350, etc., they can seem to have a much greater focus on Fuck Fossil Fuels, instead of More Renewables (Efficiency, Electrification, etc.) Faster, Sooner.
It might be a Colorado thing, since we went from a renewable leader 20 years ago to a huge gas and oil producer. There are also distractions, sometimes warranted, with "justice," equity" and "resilience" instead of the core need to promote rapid emissions reductions.
But sometimes not warranted. A great example can be seen in this article on wind farm opposition in Idaho. Concluding that "Emotional Impact Studies" are needed. OY!
https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.12/north-wind-energy-wind-turbines-proposed-near-a-japanese-american-incarceration-camp-prompt-outrage
Note "near" seems like eight miles from said camp to closest turbine.
Over and out.
Great show--thanks again.
Regarding the very last question from Noah, as well as your (too short) discussion of long-term storage, I had the privilege of installing a small PV system on our house last year. By small, I mean that it is sized to 'only' save money on our electric bill. The company gave me a nice dashboard that lets me watch my electrons reduce my coal usage and I love it. It cheers me up to go to the web page and see it working. It would have helped if I could have had a similar dashboard (more immediate than my monthly energy bills) to report on the progress that I pursued for years putting in windows, insulation, and so on. These things all helped to make me feel a little bit better amidst all the crappy news of politics and climate change during the the aughts and teens, but my solar really changed the game. The other big addition that our solar project brought to me was the excuse to explore the details of sizing and battery storage. I discovered that our little 4 kW system actually powers all our home's needs except for wintertime heating (adding a 2-3 kWh battery would cover nighttime needs). A theoretical expansion of the system, with about 6-8 kW of PV would provide that. But a battery, sized at about 20-40 kWh, would store enough energy to cover winter night heating. This finally reinforced what I have been reading for years about how storage would really work in concert with overbuilding renewables and adding electric transmission. My local 'system' and economy helped me understand how to exploit renewable energy on any scale.
One of the best attributes of solar energy is scale. I suggest building yourself any tiny system to learn more about it as well as improving your outlook on the world.
You guys were vibin’! Very informative and entertaining. 👏
"Halfway there by 2030, all the way there by 2050." What does that mean for the U.S. All the way there by 2030? 2035? We're in serious danger territory. So dangerous that insurance doesn't make much sense -- once society collapse, what happens? Tony Seba's model says 29 hours of storage will keep electricity stable in CA.
This comment appears in the Carbon Brief overview at https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-react-what-are-the-key-new-insights-from-the-ipccs-wg3-report: "The report shows that the benefits of staying well below 2C clearly outweigh the costs, even in economic terms". I'd like to hear a lot more about the costs and benefits from Noah and other economists and what they're doing to make a persuasive case for the need to do more sooner.
Good job David.
To personify the annoying shouting class:
Toyota and Ford are actively developing hydrogen burning internal combustion engines for automobiles; this is a thing that is happening in the year 2022. We can (correctly) suggest this was a failed concept from 20 years ago, but we must accept the contemporary empirical evidence that we didn't all learn that lesson and move on from that failed idea. More likely, the involved parties have different goals for all the effort encouraging present interest in Hydrogen right now.
I was in fuel cells for the last Hydrogen push, the physics hasn't changed. Hydrogen is still a very small highly reactive material that doesn't obey your belief that this or that container should be able to store it for any length of time. It isn't cheap to produce in a green way, it doesn't have high volumetric power density, it doesn't have ease of containment. As a specialty fuel for high energy chemical reactions... yeah sure, same as it always was. There are some super slick approaches to its production that we didn't have 20 years ago (many of which have their costs driven down by China's manufacturing capacity - something we externalize from our economic activity in conversations on global fossil fuel emitters) - but these real advances are all still running against both entropy and breaking that highly stable chemical bond the hydrogen got itself into before you tried to split it back out as a fuel for future use. Essential for circular fuels, just massive waste when applied to fossil methane as makes up the bulk of the hydrogen production anyone is talking about building out capacity for. Hydrogen combustion cars only become a thing to subsidize a national distribution infrastructure - not on its own merits. Consumers purchase from the options presented to them, if we want individual choice to matter they need better choices, otherwise we're just ducking our responsibility for system wide decision making.
We just get more system benefit out of spending that proposed lump of energy displacing other fossil fuel combustion rather than spending it in hydrolysis until there is no more fossil combustion to displace (and then build out an overabundance of additional green energy that can make the high cost of electrolysis or carbon removal a non-issue, thus opening up those pathways). Hydrogen may have a valuable place in the portfolio in the future, but the focus now slows overall progress towards what should be our shared goal - elimination of fossil extraction and combustion. The problem isn't that we burn methane, the problem is that the methane we are burning hasn't been in circulation for 100M years and now it is right here with all the other methane that is normally in circulation (repeat for all the GHGs). This version of the hydrogen push doesn't address the core failure in burning things to create power - that we're burning fossil fuels instead of circular fuels (even setting aside the electrical vs. combustion efficiency problem - which should be enough to kill any non-specialized use case). There is a rainbow of hydrogen kinds and flavors specifically to hide this ball. 20 years ago, we put in enough money to say we tried without changing anything, now we are putting in enough money to say it is the one-true-future we can all prosper through. It isn't an accident; it is actively and deliberately messaged as a green option to provide cover for a few more years of extraction. This isn't a hypothetical risk, courts are already ruling that these efforts are insufficient to the task (particularly with respect to Royal Dutch Shell, a/the world leader in electrolysis) and it is clear from the CapEx.
By all means have faith that we will prevail, but we have to keep our vision clear about what we're up against and how the incumbent defends its rent. The latest IPCC report would have stated that in the summary for policy makers if (presumably) the lobbying they were warning about hadn't removed any mention of lobbying (https://twitter.com/NiranjanAjit/status/1511016054138576897).