MatthewToad43

@mr_washee_washee Delaying the technologies that we know work, continuing to dig up more fossil fuels, and giving it a veneer of credibility by funding more research is a classic delayer tactic. Delay being a stage of denial.

@mr_washee_washee Either way, the technologies already exist and need to be deployed rapidly.

The alternative is burning more fossil fuels.

Which is both more expensive and *vastly* more dangerous. We need rapid progress towards sustainability, because it’s the *total* carbon emitted that matters.

Emissions must peak by 2025 at the latest (in fact they must peak as soon as possible). The UK, for instance, has agreed to reduce its emissions by 68% by 2030 (compared to 1990), a target that it will almost certainly miss according to the last CCC report.

@mr_washee_washee I’ve seen people argue that nuclear actually has the lowest material requirement overall. I’m not entirely convinced by that argument though!

By all means reduce the number of cars, but some of the things we will need to do to achieve that will take significant time - especially fixing housing and building more rail.

However there will still be vehicles, even if they are only buses.

@mr_washee_washee How do you propose to balance the grid without wind?

Solar panels are indeed mostly silicon, but they’re not entirely made of silicon. They also use “minor metals” (indium, gallium etc) in smaller quantities. They certainly use copper, steel and aluminium.

The inverter for a solar panel might contain rare earths. The big ones for long range HVDC interconnectors very likely do.

Whatever we build will involve some amount of mining.

However given the enormous cost of the status quo, renewables are a step forward.

@mr_washee_washee @suodrazah So do wind farms. Are you opposed to them too?

@rm_dash_r_star @notapantsday Unfortunately batteries with nickel are still pretty widely used. However it’s definitely going in the right direction.

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/trends-in-batteries

In any case digging up fossil fuels is also pretty dirty, and has been known to pollute indigenous people’s drinking water, steal their land, and on occasion pay for private militias and government troops to put down protests.

Obviously electric buses are preferable to electric cars. Public transport is worth investing in.

Also on batteries, iron-air is promising for grid storage, but not likely to be used for vehicles.

@rm_dash_r_star @notapantsday Is LMFP actually available in quantity? Wikipedia suggests not.

The problem with sodium ion batteries, apart from lower density, is that they have a shorter lifespan. On the upside they’re easier to recycle. IIRC there was some recent research that might fix the lifespan problem.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis I’m not 100% sold on either view of agriculture, as I hint at above. Certainly organic farming goes too far - yields matter, because increased land use ultimately means more deforestation. However if yields are achieved through ecosystem destroying pollution and soil degradation that ultimately reduces yields, there’s a problem.

Short term, hydrogen isn’t a means of storing energy, it’s a vital industrial ingredient, including for fertilisers, which mostly comes from fossil gas.

Cover crops could be introduced with a net increase in yields, while storing vast amounts of carbon, but generally cannot be afforded without a specific subsidy because our agricultural system is broken.

Not to mention the immense waste caused by biofuels. And by meat and dairy.

So there’s lots to discuss there as well. (But not today)

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis It’s also in opposition to the wider political picture of an alliance between fossil fuels, fascists, religion, the old right wing parties and so on, of course. 😀

That also makes it political.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis There are aspects of it that I disagree with.

More to the point there are implications that I disagree with. Clearly there is a need for growth in large parts of the world, and even amongst the poor in my own country.

On the other hand, there are many areas where demand reduction makes sense to speed up the transition. It is going to be many years before we have clean aviation, for instance. And a world with say 70% fewer cars in would be highly desirable for many good reasons.

Both the transition and the climate crisis will cause much suffering, requiring redistribution. Much of the work that needs to be done on efficiency can only be practically funded by the state.

And so you get degrowth: a reframing of politics and economics around a fair transition to sustainability.

Though perhaps the term isn’t the ideal messaging.

I posted a relatively popular rant about how primitivism and degrowth are two very different things a while back. Can’t find it right now.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. I hope that you’re right on a few things. 😀

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis There is also the near-absolute worst case scenario where outdoor agriculture becomes untenable due to wildly inconsistent post-climate weather and the “land sharing vs land sparing” debate is forced down the land sparing route, i.e. if most food can only be grown in heated greenhouses, we’ll need vast amounts of energy. In that scenario we may well need more nuclear. But if it’s that bad that fast I have my doubts that civilisation can survive the transition; that sort of agriculture is very capital intensive as well as energy intensive, although it is higher yield and makes space for rewilding, and potentially could be our only option if things get really bad.

PS I am not endorsing climate controlled indoor agriculture here. I don’t have a clear view on the land sharing vs land sparing thing. I know which side most “degrowth” people would take though.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Also I expect demand to drop somewhat in the long term. Unfortunately the more serious degrowth measures will take decades, and the peak demand from heating and EVs means we will need a lot more electricity in 2040 than we have today.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Fortunately we will have time to work on that. There is plenty of existing renewable plant coming to the end of its service life for us to work on recycling.

Also, hopefully longer term we move towards more rooftop solar rather than farm scale, though of course the amount of land used by solar is insignificant. Short term, farm scale is easy to install; long term, rooftop could be a requirement of construction.

Just as important, once we reach 95%+ renewable electricity, the ecological cost of building new stuff, whether recycled or not, drops dramatically.

Do we want to move towards more nuclear in the long run? Maybe so. On the other hand, the cost of renewables will continue to come down, and it’s reasonable to expect the same is true of storage.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Well if we’re ruling out long term storage (iron-air batteries and hydrogen), maybe 30-40% nuclear, 80% renewables (intentionally over 100%), and a fair bit of lithium storage?

Ultimately this is determined by how much we can build of each technology by the deadline (which ideally is 2030 or 2035). If we can scale up iron-air fast, that’d be great, but there’s a lot of uncertainty there. But this also applies to nuclear: How much new nuclear we can build by 2035 is probably quite limited. Whether hydrogen can be significant on that timescale, and whether leaks can be managed, is another big question.

It’s worth trying all the plausible technologies (i.e. other than biofuels and fossil+CCS).

PS “volatiles” *already* make up over 30% of the UK’s generated kWh. 😀 So I expect a higher figure.

IMHO the only thing that matters more than the ecological impact of the transition is the *speed* of the transition. Because that determines total carbon emitted. And it determines the carbon intensity of the rest of the transition.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Sadly it is much easier to build an extra 10GW of peak gas plant than it is to build an extra 10GW of nuclear plant. The tradeoff is of course that the gas plant is inefficient and therefore extremely expensive per unit generated (but not used very often). Not to mention destroying the planet.

But that is how we largely managed it in the past.

In the future, and even the present, fortunately we have better options.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis The fossil fuel grid we had 20 years ago relied on gas peak plants and hydro for peaks.

Nowadays we have diesel farms (eeek!), and increasingly (thankfully!) batteries.

The actual UK grid today is only 45% fossil fuel (and some nations and states are better than that). We also have more interconnectors than we had in the past.

UK nuclear has generally been used as baseload for many decades.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis What do you mean it doesn’t scale linearly?

If you need to over-build by 3x, then it costs £150/MWh.

If you need to use £170/MWh storage for 10% of demand (plausible for hydrogen), you still get a very reasonable figure.

There’s no obvious non-linearity here. Switching off renewables is trivial, unlike thermal plant.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Do you have figures for a modern PWR? Any modern PWR, and specifically EPR1000, since we’re likely stuck with that?

In any case, you still need storage, because you won’t be able to build capacity to peak demand.

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Nuclear does not avoid the need for short-term storage to cover the peaks, unless you can build vast amounts of it (equal to peak).

Nuclear *does* avoid the need for long-term storage, if you can build enough of it (equal to average).

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Farm scale solar, onshore and offshore (non-floating) wind cost approximately £50 per MWh in the last CfD auction. That’s half the CFD agreed for Hinkley C.

Mature renewables are already cheaper than nuclear. By a factor of two, compared to first-of-a-kind over-budget new nuclear.