Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathgod
If the timeline of the transition had begun 10-15 years sooner than it did, the undertaking would have been much more manageable. Instead it's going to be perhaps the hardest challenge humanity has ever taken on, yet it must be taken on.
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It's highly simple. Money and CapEX. You can twist this to corporate greed, but I think it's actually a bit more complex than that. Most consumer are still not ready for the transition. They'll do it, but only if it's not inconvenient to them and doesn't cost them a bunch of money. It's not as simple as you're making it.
I got curious about the geothermal aspect of the debate, so I asked around. Yeah, we can build them, but the cost to build the transmission lines to locations favorable to geothermal is supposedly many, many, many times higher than the cost of the geothermal system itself.
Residential geothermal units have break even rates of something like 20-30 years as of today. Sure, costs are dropping and savings perhaps increasing, but this doesn't even begin to address the CapEX break even/profit requirements of companies. I can totally see how they'd refuse to put major money in a project that would require an optimistic break even of 20+ years.
IIRC, a few years ago, wind turbine break evens were in the 15-25 year range. Solar around 10-15 years. Hydro I think is 5-10. Nuclear is around 5-10 years.
Hydrogen although touted by many, IIRC is its own special level of barriers. It needs external energy to produce the hydrogen "stored energy" that can be transported. But I don't believe it can produce enough energy on its own to repeat the cycle like O&G. The main current method of hydrogen production uses natural gas (Blue hydrogen via steam methane method). In the long run, you'd have to pair it up with another renewable tech to separate the hydrogen (Green hydrogen via electrolysis). You can also use O&G to create hydrogen. This is considered "grey hydrogen" and the cost of production for grey hydrogen is something like 1/6 to 1/16th of green hydrogen. This basically means that there's just very little reason to do in major CapEX in hydrogen until we sort out other forms of energy first. Otherwise, it's just straight up tied to the O&G that you're trying to migrate from, or it's so damn expensive that the break even/ROI is pointless to pursue.
Basically, an overly simplistic summary of the restrictions could be explained as...
- Geothermal (Location dependent, poor infrastructure, ultra long break even duration)
- Wind (Location dependent, noise and visual complaints, long break even)
- Solar (Location dependent, large space usage, silicon materials shortage increasing break even duration from a few years ago)
- Hydro (Location dependent, infrastructure poor for most proposed new locations, potentially changes geography)
- Nuclear (Catastrophic risk potential, political and social barriers, probably a dirty reputation on par with O&G)
- Hydrogen (Seemingly best storage of the methods, but needs external energy to produce the hydrogen/waiting on other tech break throughs, little to no infrastructure/tech being developed, hydrogen can partner with other types of energy but could also displace those energy forms rather than parallel etc.)
IMO, expecting the changes in trend to be spearheaded by haphazard government subsidies and large corporations is why we will continue to fail. Some of those beating the renewable energy drum seriously have no idea that we've known of and have had prototypes of these energy productions and consumer products for decades and in some instances over a century. The problem has always typically been some form of commercial viability. Consumer/social input is highly important.
But then you have a chicken vs egg scenario. A typical consumer literally has no idea the major science and business hurdles required to bring something to market. Tesla's success (for instance) came with major failures of other companies and teams to bring EVs to market.
IMO, the issue is similar to many other things. The solution is not complete replacement, but a balanced approach. We should look to reduce and parallel usage of non-renewables with renewables, not aggressively phase out non-renewables. That way, we don't waste energy (pun not intended) fighting each other about which direction to go with in the future and instead we all can focus on the different desired methods for a better balanced energy future. A combination of old and new methods is what I would consider the best approach rather than haphazard application of multiple approaches. Think about it, if you try and parallel O&G with a specific green energy target, they're more likely to work along side green energy rather than secretly railroad it.
If I'm a fantasy rich genius mad man who wants to create a viable long term energy production method using existing technology, I dig a hole that's 1-2 KM into the ground and create a power plant that uses 2-4 different methods to create different combinations of on site used energy and transportable energy. Perhaps nuclear/geothermal (converted to electricity and require transmission lines to get out and Hydrogen (more easily transportable).
Hell, I've also joked that if I won the lottery, I'd love to buy a piece of rural but scenic land or island somewhere and build a self sustaining compound using multiple methods of energy production (geothermal, hydro, solar etc.). I would then market it as an off grid apocalypse training acreage getaway sort of thing and either sell it or rent it out.