I read one of the pieces cited in this one...but there are a few important things overlooked in all this cheer. First, the notion that ramped-up renewables is good for the climate is false--producing, transporting and deploying those windmill and solar arrays takes a great deal of fossil fuel energy and hence emissions. Such deployment only leads to reduced emissions if the renewable power is REPLACING fossil fuels--so far that is not the case, it is just added on. We're using more fossil fuel energy than ever, and exporting a great deal.
Secondly, the IRA is full of handouts to the fossil fuel industries, such as the one I'm fighting now, one of seven hydrogen hubs--boondoggles in which taxpayers funds, in combination with private investment likely to never materialize, pays for highly dubious schemes to produce and use hydrogen. Nuclear power is also being promoted. If Congress does cut parts of the IRA, isn't it likely that they'll chop out the good parts, subsidies for efficiency and solar and heat pumps, while leaving the drilling mandates and subsidies in place?
Thirdly, even if the efficiency of and deployment of wind and solar were still ramping up--not sure that's the case--and the cost going down, there's a limit to how much can be used without storage capability. I understand batteries have also gotten cheaper and more efficient, but this is the crux of the question of how much progress can be expected.
This is a matter of carbon payback time. For rooftop solar, 1-4 years, so 87-97% carbon free. For utility scale solar in good locations, 0.5-2 years. For wind, wind, 2 years.
So by far most of the decades-long lifetime of a solar panel or wind turbine, renewables ARE good for the climate. There is no reason with the replacement of fossil fuels on the grid and electrification of equipment wind and solar production cannot be made fully carbon free.
Yes, we are using more fossil fuels than ever. This is a lot about China. I’ll be writing about this. Yes, we are producing record amounts in the U.S. I’ve written about this and refer to it in this piece. My point is that now that wind and solar have become the cheapest new source of electricity we have built a foundation to turn this around. They are a real solution already. Let’s acknowledge this. Battery storage has also plummeted in price and as noted is rapidly increasing. And yes there’s a lot of hairballs in the IRA sausage, hydrogen, carbon capture, easier fossil leasing on federal lands. I’ve written about that too. On balance, the IRA provides carbon benefits. Is it far short of what needs to be done? Certainly. Can the better parts of it be repealed? As the sources I quoted point out, to some extent yes, but in larger ways, no. I can be plenty dark about the climate situation. Just scroll back on my site and that’s clear. I also want to bring a balance. Like I said, there’s plenty of bad, but not all of it.
agree with most of this but think the payback time cited at the top may be unrealistic. There is also a question of both the existence of adequate materials for a massive buildout of renewables and electric vehicles, and the degree of damage all that mining will cause--statements such as "It must be done in an environmentally safe and socially just way" do nothing to make mining less destructive. I think it's inherently, unavoidably destructive and most of the remaining resources are on indigenous land. See the work of Simon Michaux on the availability question. Many are pushing for seabed mining, which reduces the availability problem at unacceptable environmental cost.
The crux of the question is, What is the goal? Is it to maintain The American Way of Life in the rich world, substituting wind and solar for fossil fuels? I think that IS the current goal of governments and it isn't doable, especially if you really want to extend that wealth to the currently impoverished. Or is the goal to bring a good life to all humans while healing ecological damage--with "the good life" defined to mean not wealth but adequate basic necessities in a context of a harmonious and cooperative world? This I think would be technically doable--but would require such drastic changes politically, and in terms of how we organize cities, how we farm, how we move ourselves and freight, that it would require a radical revolution. It would require that we ditch capitalism and war, for example, that we actually tell the billionaires they aren't billionaires anymore, that they are not entitled to hoard so much wealth. Since they own the media that control public opinion, this can't happen prior to collapse.
First, the payback calculations are from the major renewable energy research lab in the US and one of the leading authorities in the world, and one of the two most prominent peer-reviewed science journals in the world (the other one being Nature). They are by no means outliers, but in a line of similar studies that you will see in some of the links below.
I am quite familiar with Michaux. He’s gotten a lot of play, especially among people who tend toward the inevitable collapse position. They serve a kind of confirmation bias. But his work has been extensively deconstructed by experts who unlike Michaud have extensive knowledge of energy systems transformation One is Nafeez Ahmed, who states, “I was disappointed to find that Michaux’s new report was replete with false assumptions, outmoded generalisations and incorrect data. But I wasn’t entirely surprised. Michaux’s expertise is in studying incumbent energy and extractive systems – not in the fundamentally different dynamics of the disruptive exponential technologies that characterise the clean energy transformation.” His review is here: https://ageoftransformation.org/energy-transformation-wont-be-derailed-by-lack-of-raw-materials/
In my post I acknowledge the need for a different economic approach and link to my earlier piece: “To begin to build local and bioregional economies not dependent on growth. We need economies to be propelled by clean energy, of course, but we also need to change our economic assumptions to bring our societies back within ecological limits.” https://open.substack.com/pub/theraven/p/political-and-climate-storms-rolling?r=36q38&utm_medium=ios. Ahmed makes similar acknowledgements in his piece. He also sees the need for systemic transformation.
I try to strike a middle path. The body of what I write here certainly doesn’t downplay the challenges or dangers we face. We definitely are in an ecological overshoot situation. And I also try to Illuminate practical pathways to navigate through this. Which is why the theme of The Raven is building the future in place. I don’t see that believing in inevitable collapse or doom is helpful, and in fact struggle against it because it discourages the actions we need to undertake as people. It can become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, we need to build a society and system along the lines you state. The failures of the system we have, which will mount over time, will discredit the system and open the way to these kind of profound changes if we build the movements and models that push them forward. That is most practical in specific places. Communities and bioregions, cities and states. That is why I write this substack, and what I hope to increasingly focus.
I read one of the pieces cited in this one...but there are a few important things overlooked in all this cheer. First, the notion that ramped-up renewables is good for the climate is false--producing, transporting and deploying those windmill and solar arrays takes a great deal of fossil fuel energy and hence emissions. Such deployment only leads to reduced emissions if the renewable power is REPLACING fossil fuels--so far that is not the case, it is just added on. We're using more fossil fuel energy than ever, and exporting a great deal.
Secondly, the IRA is full of handouts to the fossil fuel industries, such as the one I'm fighting now, one of seven hydrogen hubs--boondoggles in which taxpayers funds, in combination with private investment likely to never materialize, pays for highly dubious schemes to produce and use hydrogen. Nuclear power is also being promoted. If Congress does cut parts of the IRA, isn't it likely that they'll chop out the good parts, subsidies for efficiency and solar and heat pumps, while leaving the drilling mandates and subsidies in place?
Thirdly, even if the efficiency of and deployment of wind and solar were still ramping up--not sure that's the case--and the cost going down, there's a limit to how much can be used without storage capability. I understand batteries have also gotten cheaper and more efficient, but this is the crux of the question of how much progress can be expected.
This is a matter of carbon payback time. For rooftop solar, 1-4 years, so 87-97% carbon free. For utility scale solar in good locations, 0.5-2 years. For wind, wind, 2 years.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/88653.pdf
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/05/240516122608.htm
So by far most of the decades-long lifetime of a solar panel or wind turbine, renewables ARE good for the climate. There is no reason with the replacement of fossil fuels on the grid and electrification of equipment wind and solar production cannot be made fully carbon free.
Yes, we are using more fossil fuels than ever. This is a lot about China. I’ll be writing about this. Yes, we are producing record amounts in the U.S. I’ve written about this and refer to it in this piece. My point is that now that wind and solar have become the cheapest new source of electricity we have built a foundation to turn this around. They are a real solution already. Let’s acknowledge this. Battery storage has also plummeted in price and as noted is rapidly increasing. And yes there’s a lot of hairballs in the IRA sausage, hydrogen, carbon capture, easier fossil leasing on federal lands. I’ve written about that too. On balance, the IRA provides carbon benefits. Is it far short of what needs to be done? Certainly. Can the better parts of it be repealed? As the sources I quoted point out, to some extent yes, but in larger ways, no. I can be plenty dark about the climate situation. Just scroll back on my site and that’s clear. I also want to bring a balance. Like I said, there’s plenty of bad, but not all of it.
agree with most of this but think the payback time cited at the top may be unrealistic. There is also a question of both the existence of adequate materials for a massive buildout of renewables and electric vehicles, and the degree of damage all that mining will cause--statements such as "It must be done in an environmentally safe and socially just way" do nothing to make mining less destructive. I think it's inherently, unavoidably destructive and most of the remaining resources are on indigenous land. See the work of Simon Michaux on the availability question. Many are pushing for seabed mining, which reduces the availability problem at unacceptable environmental cost.
The crux of the question is, What is the goal? Is it to maintain The American Way of Life in the rich world, substituting wind and solar for fossil fuels? I think that IS the current goal of governments and it isn't doable, especially if you really want to extend that wealth to the currently impoverished. Or is the goal to bring a good life to all humans while healing ecological damage--with "the good life" defined to mean not wealth but adequate basic necessities in a context of a harmonious and cooperative world? This I think would be technically doable--but would require such drastic changes politically, and in terms of how we organize cities, how we farm, how we move ourselves and freight, that it would require a radical revolution. It would require that we ditch capitalism and war, for example, that we actually tell the billionaires they aren't billionaires anymore, that they are not entitled to hoard so much wealth. Since they own the media that control public opinion, this can't happen prior to collapse.
First, the payback calculations are from the major renewable energy research lab in the US and one of the leading authorities in the world, and one of the two most prominent peer-reviewed science journals in the world (the other one being Nature). They are by no means outliers, but in a line of similar studies that you will see in some of the links below.
I am quite familiar with Michaux. He’s gotten a lot of play, especially among people who tend toward the inevitable collapse position. They serve a kind of confirmation bias. But his work has been extensively deconstructed by experts who unlike Michaud have extensive knowledge of energy systems transformation One is Nafeez Ahmed, who states, “I was disappointed to find that Michaux’s new report was replete with false assumptions, outmoded generalisations and incorrect data. But I wasn’t entirely surprised. Michaux’s expertise is in studying incumbent energy and extractive systems – not in the fundamentally different dynamics of the disruptive exponential technologies that characterise the clean energy transformation.” His review is here: https://ageoftransformation.org/energy-transformation-wont-be-derailed-by-lack-of-raw-materials/
Another piece is here: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/04/how-many-things-must-one-analyst-get-wrong-in-order-to-proclaim-a-convenient-decarbonization-minerals-shortage/. This one also contains a video by Dave Borlace and a link to a Twitter/X string. If you go down the latter, your will find a chart showing the demand for materials used in energy transition versus fossil fuels. They are orders of magnitude less in terms of land disruption. Moving to clean energy will significantly diminish impacts on land.
In my post I acknowledge the need for a different economic approach and link to my earlier piece: “To begin to build local and bioregional economies not dependent on growth. We need economies to be propelled by clean energy, of course, but we also need to change our economic assumptions to bring our societies back within ecological limits.” https://open.substack.com/pub/theraven/p/political-and-climate-storms-rolling?r=36q38&utm_medium=ios. Ahmed makes similar acknowledgements in his piece. He also sees the need for systemic transformation.
I try to strike a middle path. The body of what I write here certainly doesn’t downplay the challenges or dangers we face. We definitely are in an ecological overshoot situation. And I also try to Illuminate practical pathways to navigate through this. Which is why the theme of The Raven is building the future in place. I don’t see that believing in inevitable collapse or doom is helpful, and in fact struggle against it because it discourages the actions we need to undertake as people. It can become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, we need to build a society and system along the lines you state. The failures of the system we have, which will mount over time, will discredit the system and open the way to these kind of profound changes if we build the movements and models that push them forward. That is most practical in specific places. Communities and bioregions, cities and states. That is why I write this substack, and what I hope to increasingly focus.