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0 pointsgodelski5y ago0 comments

I want to add to this because I think it is also something the gp is missing. Decarbonizing the country/world is about much more than cars and electricity. Currently it is only 60% of the problem[0]. That, and we have NO zero carbon power source, if you include lifetime emissions. None. Zip. Nada. So part of the answer is to get some of the other 40% to be included in electricity. That's things like electric stoves, lab grown meat, or electric heaters (also includes electric cars/vehicles).

So there is no way to even get to zero emissions (unless you use extraction methods like CCS). Then you have to consider that the US is 15% of emissions and the EU is 9% and where global emissions aren't heavily dependent upon electricity and transportation like they are in the modernized countries[1].

Truth is that most people are only looking at a small portion of the problem. So when someone naively says that we need to decrease energy usage to power the world with renewables it is naive because power is a small part of the global problem. Unfortunately, we're all in this together. Sadly, you ask an undeveloped country what they want: Hospitals, new homes, and electricity or a clean environment, well... we've done that experiment for a few hundred years with various populations. I think we have enough evidence to conclude an answer.

[0] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

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3 comments · 2 top-level

imtringued5y ago· 1 in thread

If you look at primary energy you might end up getting the wrong picture because with renewables their primary energy consumption is equal to their output because excess sunlight and excess wind was going to be there regardless of whether you install renewables or not. When you look at transportation many vehicles burn gas but their engines are not 100% efficient. Most of the energy just disappears into waste heat. That waste heat can be useful in winter for heating but during summer it's purely a waste. If you get rid of that waste heat by switching to EVs you need much less energy for an equivalent transportation industry.

godelskiOP5y ago

You realize solar and wind aren't 100% efficient right? They also generate a lot of heat waste when converting mechanical energy into electrical or in the process of radiation into electricity. It is less heat but I'm confused by the argument because I'm reading it as if you are saying there is none.

But more importantly, my comment was about how there are a lot of emission factors outside energy production that matter a lot in the discussion of climate change and ignoring that makes it difficult to solve the problem.

cmehdy5y ago

You're completely right. I replied to the post because it mentioned nuclear but the problem is much bigger and energy consumption is only one aspect of it. We're going to need pretty much every aspect: improvements or changes in how we build and maintain infrastructure, likewise for goods, and changes in consumption patterns for at least some of the things we use and eat. We're going to have to change transportation heavily too (i.e. in Europe we should heavily focus on trains over planes for example). And of course, if we can't do all these things despite having the best research, the biggest and richest universities, the highest quality of life already etc. then why should we expect other countries to be "better" than us? (and they already are better from some angles: China is going from coal to a monstrous nuclear development about 3-4 times faster than any world power in history, and Pakistan is the only country to have exceeded its carbon goals ahead of all schedules when rich European countries like mine have asked for extensions on their failures)

I recently had a Swedish friend mentioning how his parents' country (Bangladesh) is a "mess", from a privileged position. CO2 emissions for Sweden and Bangladesh are within the same order of magnitude, despite one country having about 7 times more people than the other. Because the other one drives its economy on pretty much 7 times more energy&resources consumption. Wind won't offset that anytime soon, and Sweden is already a good player in the world of both renewables and nuclear.

One of the reasons why nuclear should pretty much be a non-debate by now is that we will still very much need oil for things that are not energy-production related until we can do better, and we'd do better than to continuous burn it off to make cars, then make them go vroom on the way to the shop, where we buy our plastic-wrapped fruit delivered from the other side of the world in the middle of winter. Inconvenient truths aren't fun, but if we don't want to have much more inconvenient ones down the road we better get used to the mildly inconvenient ones right now and actually discuss on those terms.