i think you're missing something key - adam tooze is using the work of fressoz, barak, not to say that we will use what is most efficient but instead to argue that somethign deeply radical and new is required if we want to break with this historical pattern - and that if something deeply radical or new is to happen it must primarily take place in china. if you read tooze on the energy transition and think that what he is advocating for throwing your hands up then you misunderstand both him and the scale of the planetary emergency
Let me reinforce what I already said…...Its clear that electrical energy systems will move very slowly from coal to natural gas and eventually to nuclear. Its also clear that so called renewables just wont scale and they have unhelpful supply chains to be useful and will remain unreliable and a foolish approach in the long term once the investment feeding frenzy dries up.
Nuclear once focused upon offers the only solution that has on grid merit.
Mobile power sources will be fossil fuels for a long time with the long future chance to localize the use of green hydrogen...... But a long way off.
All of this journey is predicated on lowest cost economics as prosperity will always come first and the notion of a climate emergency is fast subsiding as scientists start to convince each other that they have been subjugated by dangerous panic politics.
Its very clear already that we don’t have a climate emergency, but we need to better manage and adapt to weather patterns and a slowly naturally warming climate.
No idea what you've been reading but solar PV scales very well. That's why there's the whole debate about China 'dumping' cheap capacity on the world market - solar cell manufacturing can achieve massive economies of scale. Even with batteries further behind on the Great Cheapening than cells, the combined cost of PV + storage is already within striking distance of coal, gas and nuclear in multiple regions and expected to keep dropping.
So many other things wrong with the whole renewables plan... anyway its not going to continue with the new western leaderships.... The last thing we need is to be dependent on China.... We need to spend our wealth on far better things.
The IEA one is better as adopts the "substitution method".
Correctly adjusting for primary energy losses revises non-fossil generation up by 2.5x. This shows the US and China both growing solar + wind from 0-1% in 2010 to 7-8% of total energy consumption in 2023. That's clearly not enough but more than "barely made a dent".
As described in many previous chartbooks, China will hit 1TW installed solar this year and should scale to multiple TWs in the next few decades using their even faster expanding solar manuacturing capacity. Then we'll see the real dent!
It’s pretty easy to draw the conclusion from this that Western climate policy simply doesn’t matter, we can stick to fossil fuels and let Asia, ie China, do the transitioning. As somebody who believes in climate action in my country (Canada), I would love an explanation of why that view is wrong
I would think that on the basis of the oil tar sands alone Canada is a huge carbon contributor; add in the forests and destruction of the boreal forests, and Naomi Klein notwithstanding, and I admire her, Canada is a hugely destructive climate disruptor, salved only by its moderate scale compared to China/India/Indonesia.
perhaps the transition will come some day, 10-20 years down the road, China leading the way, but in terms of climate disruption if not worse, we're far too late to fend off perhaps catastrophic costs of the disruptions, the bill in just the us for the hurricanes and calif fires so far this year over 450 billion.
Stick with facts.... the cost per GDP of weather related costs continue to fall and its very clear that poor infrastructure management is more to blame than anything to do with climate that drives any need to change the energy supply.
ok, cost of climate disasters to current federal budgets, leaving out money allocated for them...how many prisoners or illegal immigrants does it take to clear the "undergrowth" (infrastructure!) from just LA County? Whole state of CA? Western fire prone West? 100,000 200,000, how many work days? Tools, equipment, food and lodging? OK, it is clear politically that the rising severity and therefore cost of climate disruption will not so far alter the economic regime in any significant way: business leaders and investors are in charge, and they have been since Dr. James Hansen testified in Congress in 1988-89, and had his testimony censored. "All Power to the Private Sector" to be followed by "All Liability" as well?
Important view which are not popular on the ecological left - which is where I am - but it means that the transition in time - and we are already way too late given this year's "butcher's bill" in just the us of $450 billion and mounting - is going to depend on energy patterns in China, Russia, India, Iran and the Middle East. I'm sorry to say: "we're cooked."
Thanks for clarifying how complex the energy transition will be. We have such a great distance to go for renewables to greatly reduce CO2 emissions.
Not to be picayune, but as a physicist I must point out that energy is not a universal force but can produce the ability to do work. Energy can produce a force that by acting through a distance can accomplish work.
Heat energy can cause a gas pressure to increase to produce a force that can do work if it pushes a piston. Etc.
E = F x d = W
Energy need not produce a force, however. The chemical energy in coal only produces a force when combusted to expand a gas or boil water in closed container. And so on.
You could argue that China has reached "peak" manufacturing as export driven growth is being punished (or will be punished) by world tariff restructuring. The surplus production being exported will need to be transitioned to domestic consumption to avoid a manufacturing slump. The financing of this shift to domestic will affect currency values in China further adding pressure on the Chinese to consume more.
Can the Chinese consumer earn enough to replicate the US consumer economy? So has the peak has been reached in manufacturing and energy use?
The US was able to shift from coal due to huge natural gas supply from fracking but the Chinese cannot do this (I think) as exported LNG is prohibitively expensive vis-a-vis coal and I don't think the Chinese have huge energy resources (it imports huge amounts of coal from Australia).
So will there be a transition to renewables and storage in China and hope for climate action?
High coal prices mean that most coal plants in China are operating at a loss. In 2018, almost 50% had a net financial loss.² Things have only gotten worse: data from the China Electricity Council suggests that more than half of its large coal firms made a loss in the first half of 2022.
The economics of coal plants are only set to get harder. China is building huge quantities of solar and wind, which are essentially free to run once they’re installed. As renewables push down the cost of energy, coal will become less and less profitable.
China is offering ‘capacity payments’ to power plants to keep them online. This provides plants with a source of income even when they’re not being used. Some project that by the end of the decade many coal plants will be making more money from not running than actually producing power. This seems credible if we look at the tumbling capacity factors expected from S&P over the next few decades.
we're cooked
Bottom line.... we will use what is most effective and least cost without much constraints.
i think you're missing something key - adam tooze is using the work of fressoz, barak, not to say that we will use what is most efficient but instead to argue that somethign deeply radical and new is required if we want to break with this historical pattern - and that if something deeply radical or new is to happen it must primarily take place in china. if you read tooze on the energy transition and think that what he is advocating for throwing your hands up then you misunderstand both him and the scale of the planetary emergency
Let me reinforce what I already said…...Its clear that electrical energy systems will move very slowly from coal to natural gas and eventually to nuclear. Its also clear that so called renewables just wont scale and they have unhelpful supply chains to be useful and will remain unreliable and a foolish approach in the long term once the investment feeding frenzy dries up.
Nuclear once focused upon offers the only solution that has on grid merit.
Mobile power sources will be fossil fuels for a long time with the long future chance to localize the use of green hydrogen...... But a long way off.
All of this journey is predicated on lowest cost economics as prosperity will always come first and the notion of a climate emergency is fast subsiding as scientists start to convince each other that they have been subjugated by dangerous panic politics.
Its very clear already that we don’t have a climate emergency, but we need to better manage and adapt to weather patterns and a slowly naturally warming climate.
why do you even read tooze? lol
for a good laugh at the unreality.
No idea what you've been reading but solar PV scales very well. That's why there's the whole debate about China 'dumping' cheap capacity on the world market - solar cell manufacturing can achieve massive economies of scale. Even with batteries further behind on the Great Cheapening than cells, the combined cost of PV + storage is already within striking distance of coal, gas and nuclear in multiple regions and expected to keep dropping.
Nonsense.. you are in dream land.. the mining supply chain along will not scale... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrNdJAZ75h4
So many other things wrong with the whole renewables plan... anyway its not going to continue with the new western leaderships.... The last thing we need is to be dependent on China.... We need to spend our wealth on far better things.
I think some of this is "transitions can be seen on a country level but not global".
Unfortunately the US graphs from Suits, Matteson, Moyer 2020 aren't helpful as they show primary energy, which falls for the "primary energy fallacy" (https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-net-zero-will-be-harder-than-you-think-and-easier-part-ii-easier/).
The IEA one is better as adopts the "substitution method".
Correctly adjusting for primary energy losses revises non-fossil generation up by 2.5x. This shows the US and China both growing solar + wind from 0-1% in 2010 to 7-8% of total energy consumption in 2023. That's clearly not enough but more than "barely made a dent".
As described in many previous chartbooks, China will hit 1TW installed solar this year and should scale to multiple TWs in the next few decades using their even faster expanding solar manuacturing capacity. Then we'll see the real dent!
It’s pretty easy to draw the conclusion from this that Western climate policy simply doesn’t matter, we can stick to fossil fuels and let Asia, ie China, do the transitioning. As somebody who believes in climate action in my country (Canada), I would love an explanation of why that view is wrong
I would think that on the basis of the oil tar sands alone Canada is a huge carbon contributor; add in the forests and destruction of the boreal forests, and Naomi Klein notwithstanding, and I admire her, Canada is a hugely destructive climate disruptor, salved only by its moderate scale compared to China/India/Indonesia.
perhaps the transition will come some day, 10-20 years down the road, China leading the way, but in terms of climate disruption if not worse, we're far too late to fend off perhaps catastrophic costs of the disruptions, the bill in just the us for the hurricanes and calif fires so far this year over 450 billion.
Stick with facts.... the cost per GDP of weather related costs continue to fall and its very clear that poor infrastructure management is more to blame than anything to do with climate that drives any need to change the energy supply.
ok, cost of climate disasters to current federal budgets, leaving out money allocated for them...how many prisoners or illegal immigrants does it take to clear the "undergrowth" (infrastructure!) from just LA County? Whole state of CA? Western fire prone West? 100,000 200,000, how many work days? Tools, equipment, food and lodging? OK, it is clear politically that the rising severity and therefore cost of climate disruption will not so far alter the economic regime in any significant way: business leaders and investors are in charge, and they have been since Dr. James Hansen testified in Congress in 1988-89, and had his testimony censored. "All Power to the Private Sector" to be followed by "All Liability" as well?
Forget it. There are way too many human beings. It’s not going to work out.
Important view which are not popular on the ecological left - which is where I am - but it means that the transition in time - and we are already way too late given this year's "butcher's bill" in just the us of $450 billion and mounting - is going to depend on energy patterns in China, Russia, India, Iran and the Middle East. I'm sorry to say: "we're cooked."
Thanks for clarifying how complex the energy transition will be. We have such a great distance to go for renewables to greatly reduce CO2 emissions.
Not to be picayune, but as a physicist I must point out that energy is not a universal force but can produce the ability to do work. Energy can produce a force that by acting through a distance can accomplish work.
Heat energy can cause a gas pressure to increase to produce a force that can do work if it pushes a piston. Etc.
E = F x d = W
Energy need not produce a force, however. The chemical energy in coal only produces a force when combusted to expand a gas or boil water in closed container. And so on.
You could argue that China has reached "peak" manufacturing as export driven growth is being punished (or will be punished) by world tariff restructuring. The surplus production being exported will need to be transitioned to domestic consumption to avoid a manufacturing slump. The financing of this shift to domestic will affect currency values in China further adding pressure on the Chinese to consume more.
Can the Chinese consumer earn enough to replicate the US consumer economy? So has the peak has been reached in manufacturing and energy use?
The US was able to shift from coal due to huge natural gas supply from fracking but the Chinese cannot do this (I think) as exported LNG is prohibitively expensive vis-a-vis coal and I don't think the Chinese have huge energy resources (it imports huge amounts of coal from Australia).
So will there be a transition to renewables and storage in China and hope for climate action?
Russian and Mongolian natural gas are a thing. Might take a while, but the pipelines to China will be built.
From Hannah Ritchie:
High coal prices mean that most coal plants in China are operating at a loss. In 2018, almost 50% had a net financial loss.² Things have only gotten worse: data from the China Electricity Council suggests that more than half of its large coal firms made a loss in the first half of 2022.
The economics of coal plants are only set to get harder. China is building huge quantities of solar and wind, which are essentially free to run once they’re installed. As renewables push down the cost of energy, coal will become less and less profitable.
China is offering ‘capacity payments’ to power plants to keep them online. This provides plants with a source of income even when they’re not being used. Some project that by the end of the decade many coal plants will be making more money from not running than actually producing power. This seems credible if we look at the tumbling capacity factors expected from S&P over the next few decades.