Did Putin’s war on Ukraine and the ensuing energy crisis lead to a retreat from the energy transition in Europe? Did Russian aggression expose the vanity of green ideology? Was a war what we needed to relearn the “basic math” that modern societies cannot do without some combination of fossil fuels and nuclear? This was the contention of pieces in
One of the best Tooze commentaries. Yes, authoritarian regimes can maneuver policy more quickly and powerfully than democracies, for better or worse. Even when employed for the good, China's resource allocations are behind the curve in a most worrisome fashion, and the rest of us are mostly sidelined by our preoccupation with present concerns and political stalemates. We did not evolve to be concerned with survival of the species, rather the reproduction of ourselves. Sublimation of those drives has its limits, and we are constantly coming up against them...
To put the following in perspective let us start with the generally agreed fact that China’s GDP in current dollar terms is roughly the same size as that of the EU and considerably smaller than that of the US.
How meaningful is China's GDP in dollar terms? Are the solar panels and windmills installed in China bought and paid in dollars? With de-dollarization of critical energy and materials supply chains, soon enough not even the energy (almost exclusively from fossil fuels) or materials (extracted using energy from fossil fuels) that go into them will be paid by USD. Looking at PPP, Chinese economy is already quite bigger than US:
I lived...and now that it's open again...will live again in China. Folks on this side of the pond need to go there and see. Let all the snipers and ideologues argue the reasons cuz I don't care. People here need to go there and see it. Then, once they are sobered up by the realities of China, maybe there can be a realistic discussion.
Where do you suppose the electric power to run all those EVs and heat pumps will come from? And the copper, rare earths, concrete, steel, and other basic inputs required to build several times the capacity in the hope that at least some of it will be working when you need it, like at night or in a low-wind heat wave?
California, the US's furthest-green state, had to ask people last summer not to charge their EVs to avoid (more) rolling blackouts. I agree with the contention that fission nuclear ought to be a high priority, because (a) we know how to do it; (b) it is dispatchable and 24/7 available; (c) it takes little arable land and has something like a 97% capacity factor; and (d) such hazard as exists only bothers the species that wants the power, as the rebound of wildlife in the vicinity of Chernobyl after all the pesky humans were scared away clearly shows, so there is a certain karmic balance to be had.
Both the time to build and the cost are a function of political opposition, not technology. The green activists have become adept at using the legal system to throw sand in the gears. This is not unique to nuclear power. The head of Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg Co., explained to his shareholders that it is 3 to 5 times more expensive and takes twice as long to build a fab in the US as in Taiwan, mostly due to red tape, most of it environmental.
It takes much less time to start up existing nuclear plants, like those shut down in Germany and north of NYC. With respect to the energy to build, it is of course much less than for the equivalent energy capacity of wind turbines, if you allow both for the poor relative capacity factor, the massive distribution network needed for a distributed power source, and the energy storage capacity and/or the duplicate generation capacity required to make an all-renewable electric grid workable for a modern society.
The future of nuclear power is in so-called small modular reactors, built to a standard configuration and much smaller that the 1 GWe that's more or less the standard for custom site-built reactors. The way we do it now is equivalent to hand-building cars with all unique parts. That Henry Ford guy was pretty smart to figure out a better way.
But the real problem is irrational fear, which has been brilliantly cultivated and harnessed by opponents for decades. I say "irrational" because radiation is less dangerous than most people think. We evolved in a radioactive environment. Each of us has about 8000 nuclear decays per second going off in our own bodies, from Carbon-14 and Potassium-40. The by-products of our oxygen metabolism cause far more chromosome breaks than that radioactivity does, but we've evolved a common cellular repair mechanism for both. Search for Neumaier et. al., “Evidence for formation of DNA repair centers and dose-response nonlinearity in human cells”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 108. The notion that radiation carries risk all the way down to zero dose, called the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis, is convenient for regulatory purposes but incorrect for low doses and dose rates.
Once again, as always, the "elite" that force citizens into EVs at the expense of their freedom of movement are not at all impacted by their choosing economic winners and losers. A not small number of DC 'quick chargers' are at any point in time not working. EV range...as noted by the OEMs...seldom is achieved (simply using the heater in cold weather can slash as much as 30% off of range). Don't get me wrong; EVs certainly have applications where they're a useful alternative...provided their high cost, despite taxpayer subsidies, is doable for the user.
The likes of John Kerry travel around the world in private jets, to luxury resorts to virtue signal, driven around in ICE powered SUVs (I wonder why these so called 'climate' conferences are never held in, say, Allentown PA, or the Ruhr Valley, or Liverpool? Or, better yet, via teleconference? I thought these folks loved technology). "Elites" still live in fear of Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas tut-tutting them about nuclear power, the cleanest, and today safest, energy source there is. So we force thousands of acres to house windmills that kill birds and on occasion catch fire, scam homeowners into installing solar panels on the roof, and tell them how cheap and clean EVs are (they're neither). Then, the governor of California, as has been noted, tells EV owners not to charge their prized possessions due to lack of grid capacity. How about a hearty 'you first!!' to these self important blowhards?
Adam, isn’t the fact of the much larger Chinese investment in clean energy (per capita in GDP terms) largely a result of China having much bigger energy growth needs?
Quite the blizzard of data. Since any bobble-head can nod mindlessly in agreement, thereby, contributing nothing to any process of discovery, I'll just throw-up/out one thing I found ponderable early on: "Renewable investment surged to record levels. In solar Europe is now installing twice its previous record set a decade ago." The sentence followed a brief admission/recognition that coal use in Europe did spike when the shrapnel started flying (i.e., when it was perceived the current System was existentially threatened). Obviously, I won't be the only one questioning the energy used to create the products made under the heading of "renewable investment." Nor will I be alone in wondering what exactly Macron and Xi's "business" minions signed ( in relative secrecy?) a few spews-cycles ago. I have little better chance of separating out Truth from the white-out of 'information' blowing about the feeds these daze than anybody else at the retail-level. So, I've been told many times now that China and the largest 'democracy' are burning coal and building new coal furnaces at "record" setting paces. I suppose, if I didn't have complete faith in my navy to dominate and protect my energy supply lines, and I were planning for war against an adversary with 'relatively' safe O&G supply lines, and I only had an abundance of coal, I guess I'd be building coal plants as fast as I could too. ... And on and on it goes from just one ponderable sentence! Thanks.
I love the phrase 'the narcissism of small differences'. It says so much about the posturing that goes on in official and academic circles. The phrase aptly defines the distinction without a difference.
Why would anybody in the "US circles" give a FF/RA about what EU thinks? After all, with a few minor exceptions here and there they are just vassals that will in the end just do exactly as the their overlords across the Atlantic require. There was hardly a peep from them when US went on rampage in the ME causing massive migration and resulting socio-political crisis in Europe, or when their critical energy infrastructure is destroyed in state-sponsored terrorist attack.
One of the best Tooze commentaries. Yes, authoritarian regimes can maneuver policy more quickly and powerfully than democracies, for better or worse. Even when employed for the good, China's resource allocations are behind the curve in a most worrisome fashion, and the rest of us are mostly sidelined by our preoccupation with present concerns and political stalemates. We did not evolve to be concerned with survival of the species, rather the reproduction of ourselves. Sublimation of those drives has its limits, and we are constantly coming up against them...
To put the following in perspective let us start with the generally agreed fact that China’s GDP in current dollar terms is roughly the same size as that of the EU and considerably smaller than that of the US.
How meaningful is China's GDP in dollar terms? Are the solar panels and windmills installed in China bought and paid in dollars? With de-dollarization of critical energy and materials supply chains, soon enough not even the energy (almost exclusively from fossil fuels) or materials (extracted using energy from fossil fuels) that go into them will be paid by USD. Looking at PPP, Chinese economy is already quite bigger than US:
https://www.worldeconomics.com/Indicator-Data/Economic-Size/Revaluation-of-GDP.aspx
Solid analysis based on PPP premises also explains why Russia's economy is not anywhere near the much predicted collapse:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-russias-economic
I lived...and now that it's open again...will live again in China. Folks on this side of the pond need to go there and see. Let all the snipers and ideologues argue the reasons cuz I don't care. People here need to go there and see it. Then, once they are sobered up by the realities of China, maybe there can be a realistic discussion.
Where do you suppose the electric power to run all those EVs and heat pumps will come from? And the copper, rare earths, concrete, steel, and other basic inputs required to build several times the capacity in the hope that at least some of it will be working when you need it, like at night or in a low-wind heat wave?
California, the US's furthest-green state, had to ask people last summer not to charge their EVs to avoid (more) rolling blackouts. I agree with the contention that fission nuclear ought to be a high priority, because (a) we know how to do it; (b) it is dispatchable and 24/7 available; (c) it takes little arable land and has something like a 97% capacity factor; and (d) such hazard as exists only bothers the species that wants the power, as the rebound of wildlife in the vicinity of Chernobyl after all the pesky humans were scared away clearly shows, so there is a certain karmic balance to be had.
You mention Chernobyl. Three other problems with nuclear energy:
1. It takes a long time to build nuclear power plants. Until we have the nuclear energy source, should we then abandon use of energy?
2. Building a nuclear power plant requires a lot of energy. Where will that energy come from — wind, solar, fossil, or other nuclear power plants?
3. Nuclear energy is expensive compared to wind and solar energy production
Both the time to build and the cost are a function of political opposition, not technology. The green activists have become adept at using the legal system to throw sand in the gears. This is not unique to nuclear power. The head of Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg Co., explained to his shareholders that it is 3 to 5 times more expensive and takes twice as long to build a fab in the US as in Taiwan, mostly due to red tape, most of it environmental.
It takes much less time to start up existing nuclear plants, like those shut down in Germany and north of NYC. With respect to the energy to build, it is of course much less than for the equivalent energy capacity of wind turbines, if you allow both for the poor relative capacity factor, the massive distribution network needed for a distributed power source, and the energy storage capacity and/or the duplicate generation capacity required to make an all-renewable electric grid workable for a modern society.
The future of nuclear power is in so-called small modular reactors, built to a standard configuration and much smaller that the 1 GWe that's more or less the standard for custom site-built reactors. The way we do it now is equivalent to hand-building cars with all unique parts. That Henry Ford guy was pretty smart to figure out a better way.
But the real problem is irrational fear, which has been brilliantly cultivated and harnessed by opponents for decades. I say "irrational" because radiation is less dangerous than most people think. We evolved in a radioactive environment. Each of us has about 8000 nuclear decays per second going off in our own bodies, from Carbon-14 and Potassium-40. The by-products of our oxygen metabolism cause far more chromosome breaks than that radioactivity does, but we've evolved a common cellular repair mechanism for both. Search for Neumaier et. al., “Evidence for formation of DNA repair centers and dose-response nonlinearity in human cells”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 108. The notion that radiation carries risk all the way down to zero dose, called the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis, is convenient for regulatory purposes but incorrect for low doses and dose rates.
Given that pre-construction licensing takes c. 4yrs, vs a construction time of 4 years maybe we should think about smarter regulation?
Ya think???
Great Article.
Once again, as always, the "elite" that force citizens into EVs at the expense of their freedom of movement are not at all impacted by their choosing economic winners and losers. A not small number of DC 'quick chargers' are at any point in time not working. EV range...as noted by the OEMs...seldom is achieved (simply using the heater in cold weather can slash as much as 30% off of range). Don't get me wrong; EVs certainly have applications where they're a useful alternative...provided their high cost, despite taxpayer subsidies, is doable for the user.
The likes of John Kerry travel around the world in private jets, to luxury resorts to virtue signal, driven around in ICE powered SUVs (I wonder why these so called 'climate' conferences are never held in, say, Allentown PA, or the Ruhr Valley, or Liverpool? Or, better yet, via teleconference? I thought these folks loved technology). "Elites" still live in fear of Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas tut-tutting them about nuclear power, the cleanest, and today safest, energy source there is. So we force thousands of acres to house windmills that kill birds and on occasion catch fire, scam homeowners into installing solar panels on the roof, and tell them how cheap and clean EVs are (they're neither). Then, the governor of California, as has been noted, tells EV owners not to charge their prized possessions due to lack of grid capacity. How about a hearty 'you first!!' to these self important blowhards?
Adam, isn’t the fact of the much larger Chinese investment in clean energy (per capita in GDP terms) largely a result of China having much bigger energy growth needs?
Quite the blizzard of data. Since any bobble-head can nod mindlessly in agreement, thereby, contributing nothing to any process of discovery, I'll just throw-up/out one thing I found ponderable early on: "Renewable investment surged to record levels. In solar Europe is now installing twice its previous record set a decade ago." The sentence followed a brief admission/recognition that coal use in Europe did spike when the shrapnel started flying (i.e., when it was perceived the current System was existentially threatened). Obviously, I won't be the only one questioning the energy used to create the products made under the heading of "renewable investment." Nor will I be alone in wondering what exactly Macron and Xi's "business" minions signed ( in relative secrecy?) a few spews-cycles ago. I have little better chance of separating out Truth from the white-out of 'information' blowing about the feeds these daze than anybody else at the retail-level. So, I've been told many times now that China and the largest 'democracy' are burning coal and building new coal furnaces at "record" setting paces. I suppose, if I didn't have complete faith in my navy to dominate and protect my energy supply lines, and I were planning for war against an adversary with 'relatively' safe O&G supply lines, and I only had an abundance of coal, I guess I'd be building coal plants as fast as I could too. ... And on and on it goes from just one ponderable sentence! Thanks.
I love the phrase 'the narcissism of small differences'. It says so much about the posturing that goes on in official and academic circles. The phrase aptly defines the distinction without a difference.
Classic Sigmund Freud right there :-)
Its seems to be ongoing theme that the EU is widely misunderstood in the US circles -some at least- for whatever reasons, but what to do about it?
Why would anybody in the "US circles" give a FF/RA about what EU thinks? After all, with a few minor exceptions here and there they are just vassals that will in the end just do exactly as the their overlords across the Atlantic require. There was hardly a peep from them when US went on rampage in the ME causing massive migration and resulting socio-political crisis in Europe, or when their critical energy infrastructure is destroyed in state-sponsored terrorist attack.
Much heat, little light.