Google gives up on renewables

[Xist]

This article talks about two Google PhDs that spent four years analyzing different renewable energy sources and determined that none of them were viable:

At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope ...

Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.

Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineers

On page 2:

What’s needed are zero-carbon energy sources so cheap that the operators of power plants and industrial facilities alike have an economic rationale for switching over within the next 40 years ...

Incremental improvements to existing technologies aren't enough; we need something truly disruptive.

The author writes that the PhDs do not know what will work, but explains that nuclear power will, and states that a grand total of fifty-six people have died in nuclear accidents, which is less than any other energy technology, including renewables.

[Nigel_S]

As far as the UK is concerned, practice appears to be proving them wrong.

RenewableUK says a record high of 22% of the UKs electricity was generated by wind on Sunday 17th August,

22% is the highest proportion of the UKs electricity needs ever generated from wind over a 24-hour period (5,797MW average over the 24-hour period on Sunday 17th Aug).

The highest ever average amount of electricity generated from wind over a 24-hour period stands at 7,234MW - a record set on 3rd January 2014.

RenewableUK | RenewableUK News - New record high: 22% of UK electricity from wind

That's only electricity generation and also the best rather than average 24 hour period but the technology keeps developing and costs keep reducing.

[P-hack]

Looking at one location doesn't really prove them wrong. And the UK is hardly running all electric now is it? Plus a lot of homes use non-electric to heat, so you need the infrastructure to run ALL the cars and heat/cool ALL the homes and businesses, and it needs to cover varying degrees of population density over large areas. Plus you need renewable for everything else, i.e. stuff from the store.

"Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms - and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.

In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive - "

It seems like it would be a lot cheaper to simply have the places affected move to slightly higher ground to me.

[Nigel_S]

Originally Posted by P-hack

Looking at one location doesn't really prove them wrong. And the UK is hardly running all electric now is it? Plus a lot of homes use non-electric to heat, so you need the infrastructure to run ALL the cars and heat/cool ALL the homes and businesses, and it needs to cover varying degrees of population density over large areas. Plus you need renewable for everything else, i.e. stuff from the store.

At one time the UK ran on steam power using coal for everything, the change to diesel required completely new infrastructure but was remarkably quick when it suddenly became both feasible and cost effective. We are not far from seeing the same happening with wind power. Electricity is one of the easiest power sources to transport and to install the necessary infrastructure, we already have a system in place, just need to increase the capacity and with the latest generation of wind turbines generating twice the power of two years ago we don't even need to double the current number to achieve 100% of current consumption on windy days and by then electricity from wind will be cheaper than that from coal.

[P-hack]

yup, that doesn't scale very well. You live on a relatively small island next to a lot of wind (for now). If wind patterns change you will be out of luck.



It should come as no surprise that migratory birds take advantage of wind patterns too.

[Nigel_S]

Originally Posted by P-hack

yup, that doesn't scale very well. You live on a relatively small island next to a lot of wind (for now). If wind patterns change you will be out of luck.

Not sure what living on a small island, part falling off the edge of the world at zero degrees has got to do with it, apart from that it is a little more cost effective for us than others. Maybe some of the others would like to import some from us, just as we currently import gas and coal from Australia. Although the even smaller island of Anglesey has been a net exporter of wind generated electricity for about 15 years now so maybe size does matter.

[P-hack]

re: Anglesey, geographic size isn't really deterministic, it is the consumption, which is more closely related to the population size.

[sendler]

Basically the report says no matter what we do, when the fossil fuel runs out, civilzation will collapse in a series of starvation and pandemics.

[Nigel_S]

Originally Posted by P-hack

re: Anglesey, geographic size isn't really deterministic, it is the consumption, which is more closely related to the population size.

Not sure what you mean, it has a population density of 253/sq mi compared to the USA having 88.6/sq mi so it should be a lot easier for the USA to generate enough power from the available wind...

[P-hack]

Originally Posted by sendler

Basically the report says no matter what we do, when the fossil fuel runs out, civilzation will collapse in a series of starvation and pandemics.

AKA population bubble self correction.

In case you are in denial:
http://dailyreckoning.com/human-popu...n-to-the-mean/