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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the some-good-news dept.

2016 was the third year in a row that global carbon emissions remained stable, even as the overall economy grew. Although 32.1 Gigatonnes of emissions is certainly not good news for future climates, there is some cause for optimism within the numbers, as some major economies saw their emissions drop. And controlling emissions didn't come at the expense of the world's finances, as preliminary estimates show that the global economy grew by over three percent.

[...] China was one of those countries, starting up five new reactors to increase its nuclear capacity by 25 percent. Nuclear combined with renewables to handle two-thirds of the country's rising demand. China also shifted some of its fossil fuel use from coal to natural gas. The net result was a drop in emissions of about one percent, even as demand grew by over five percent (and the economy grew by nearly seven percent). Gas still represents a small fraction of China's energy economy, so there's the potential for further displacement of coal.

In the US, the process of shifting from coal to natural gas is already well advanced. Coal use was down by 11 percent last year, the IEA estimates, allowing natural gas to displace it as the US' largest single source of energy. This, along with booming renewables, allowed the US to drop its carbon emissions by three percent in 2016. That takes emissions to levels not seen since 1992, even though the economy is now 80 percent larger than it was then.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/global-carbon-emissions-continue-to-stabilize-us-has-3-drop/


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:16PM (24 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:16PM (#482863)

    Nuclear is, of all options, the most desirable for the current fossil fuel entities. It entails a continued centralization of energy with enormous barriers to entry for competition. In english that translates to, "You pay us however much we want, whenever we want." The article completely ignored for instance that China added a whopping 34.2GW [pv-magazine.com] of new solar power in 2016 alone. To give some scale to that number the entire US energy production potential is 1068GW. Solar suffers from that whole daystar problem, but there are possibilities there. Batteries along with high voltage direct current [wikipedia.org] can mitigate, if not outright solve, the issues there. HVDC for reference is capable of transmitting power with about a 3.5% energy loss per 1000km.

    And of course I think one of the biggest benefits of solar is that it can be decentralized (which is of course also one of the big reasons the energy giants aren't so fond of it). And the technology there is also rapidly improving. The price is also right. Most people can't afford the up front cost, but solar panels have a lifetime negative cost in that they tend to pay for themselves and then some before needing to be replaced. We're also speaking of things in terms of replacing present day energy usage. I think that's thinking way too small. Imagine the things we could do if we bumped up our energy production exponentially. The reason we don't do these things or consider these things is because we don't have that production. Nuclear has enormous barriers to expansion. Solar has basically zero. There are just so many perks. Oh, and did I mention that the technology there is also rapidly improving (with solar)? If I didn't, the technology behind solar is rapidly improving. It's becoming better, cheaper, and longer lasting by the day.

    Anyhow, something to consider when reading these articles from media that has ties to various other corporations. Completely ignoring China's massive spike in solar is disingenuous to the point of bordering on fake news.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:20PM (14 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:20PM (#482866) Journal

    Solar works fine as baseload too, IF you do thermal storage rather than all this silly PV stuff. If you have enough heliostats and a big enough salt tank, you could theoretically keep the thing generating power through even a week straight of overcast.

    The problem is more one of politics than technology; decentralization, as you rightfully pointed out, would mean a lot of greedheads lose a lot of money, and Cthulhu forbid *that* ever happens, right? -_-

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:27PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:27PM (#482873)

      And a bunch of heliostats combined with a big salt tank don't count as centralized?

      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 24 2017, @02:44AM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday March 24 2017, @02:44AM (#483482) Journal

        Oh, they do. Sorry, I should have written in the other half of what I was thinking there, which is along the lines of "politics is the art of the possible." The greedheads own the grid, so the grid isn't going anywhere. So we, for now at least, have to work within the system. Maybe we can all go totally decentralized someday, but if we want a chance at all in the future, we need to make sure there *is* a future...

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 2) by Sulla on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:28PM (6 children)

      by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:28PM (#482874) Journal

      If the problem of politics is solved we can use Nuclear+Breeder reactors and the problem of waste is 99% solved. Or we could just do fussion.

      Or hell then we just build a space elevator and power the US fully on solar.

      --
      Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 22 2017, @10:46PM (3 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 22 2017, @10:46PM (#482977) Journal

        Or hell then we just build a space elevator and power the US fully on solar.

        I'm intrigued! Pray tell how a stick stuck in the ground, rotating together with Earth, get's to "US fully on solar"

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 2) by Sulla on Wednesday March 22 2017, @11:43PM (2 children)

          by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @11:43PM (#482993) Journal

          http://www.space.com/25120-pillar-to-the-sky-book-william-forstchen.html [space.com]

          Space elevators are magick 100 billion dollar sticks that make energy rain. Getting closer and closer to the carbon nanofiber threads that would be needed.

          --
          Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 23 2017, @01:30AM (1 child)

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 23 2017, @01:30AM (#483040) Journal

            Mmmm... I see: not only the nanofibers are missing, but also superconductivity. Missing the latter, one may try to beam the energy down by microwaves. Umm.. Die another day?

            Speaking of Die another day... The stick's not gonna happen soon. Letting aside the materials (we'll get there eventually, will be harder with religious nuts cutting R&D budgets), the international tension nowadays is high enough** and a $100B is quite a hard structure to defend. Especially if its distal end gets militarized, which I reckon is very likely to happen to a US-controlled stick.

            ** China grumbles at the deployment of a THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea. Also China was banned from space collaboration with US.
            Russia is testing NATO-s periphery: remember Ukraine? (even now I wonder who was the moron who decided stirring/arming Syrian rebels would be a good idea? Of course Russia wasn't going to like its strategic military bases there being dismantled).

            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
            • (Score: 2) by Sulla on Thursday March 23 2017, @05:48AM

              by Sulla (5173) on Thursday March 23 2017, @05:48AM (#483098) Journal

              Not going to disagree with you on any of that. Stipulation a few points up was about our options if politics were not hindering progress.

              I guess regardles of anything, ITER is moving forward quite well, and the developments of that German Wendelstein-7 reactor are quite cool too.

              --
              Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
      • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday March 24 2017, @11:09PM (1 child)

        by Aiwendil (531) on Friday March 24 2017, @11:09PM (#483910) Journal

        Or hell then we just build a space elevator and power the US fully on solar.

        Skip the space elevator and build a launch loop [wikipedia.org] instead. It is viable with decades old technology technology and still cheap enough (10bn to 30bn usd to build, and 3usd to 300usd per kg per launch when operating at full capacity) to make SPS affordable

        • (Score: 2) by Sulla on Friday March 24 2017, @11:27PM

          by Sulla (5173) on Friday March 24 2017, @11:27PM (#483916) Journal

          Why not both? The launch loop would be good for resource transfer between here and the moon and for building a space elevator.

          Space elevator is nice because of all the power that can be provided by bolting on solar panals.

          --
          Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:28PM (3 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:28PM (#482903)

      rather than all this silly PV stuff

      It can't be *that* silly, if it was a major factor in cutting CO2 emissions by 3%. I mean, we're not even close to maxing out the capacity for PV, and it's having a significant positive impact, and we know exactly how to keep doing that for quite a while. Maybe that ultimately only solves 10% of the problem or something, but that's better than not, and there aren't any "theoretically" parts involved here.

      And yes, there is definitely some pro-nuclear astroturfing going on. Nuclear power companies have been trying to be seen as part of the solution to climate change since at least the 2015 Paris climate summit, even though there's little to no evidence in their favor.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday March 22 2017, @09:11PM (2 children)

        by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @09:11PM (#482944)

        I don't quite get why all new projects are still light-water reactors with solid fuel though. Those have crappy efficiency.

        • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 22 2017, @09:34PM (1 child)

          by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @09:34PM (#482957)

          Because companies made more equipment for those reactors than was actually needed, and they're trying to unload it? That's my guess, anyways.

          --
          The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @04:21AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @04:21AM (#483079)

            Its not equipment, its industry infrastructure.
            We have tons of manufacturing experience, tons of domain knowledge, tons of testing, tons of operations, etc with those kinds of designs.
            We have basically none of that for any other kind of design. That's a huge sunk cost that would have to be replaced if we started building new designs.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @06:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @06:21AM (#483106)

      Solar works fine in overcast. You can find various videos of people debunking this with practical experiments you can carry out. It's not optimal, but it's also not like you're suddenly on life support because a cloud moves in. A study a few years back from NASA on the best energy source for Mars (keeping in mind the important balance of energy:mass and energy:volume) ended up being solar, even after accounting for the massive dust storms on Mars which dwarf overcast days on Earth in terms of ostensible impact.

      In any case I think you're missing the big picture of the idea. It's not about having sparse large groupings of solar farms, but rather ubiquitous small groupings of solar. As the obvious example every single sky facing roof there is should have solar panels on it, every road should have cells underlying it, etc. These could in turn would be supplemented by farms but the whole system would be more of a reciprocating than dependent nature. The idea of using high voltage direct current is to transmit power through areas with surplus to those with a deficit. The reason I mentioned the numbers was to let people realize by themselves something. The circumference of the Earth is about 40k km so that's 20km for an arc from one side of the planet to the other. HVDC has a loss rate of about 3.5% per 1k km. That means, even with present technology, we can actually send electricity all the way around the earth with a 70% loss. That's a huge and unacceptable loss in present day terms - in a world where solar can be scaled up practically to no end with minimal overhead, that ratio works fine. And again these are things that we can expect technology to help us improve. Batteries, or other forms of local storage, can work as a fail-safe (as they already do today) in cases where for some reason their is a disruption in the power. For instance after California experienced numerous black outs as a result of a natural gas leak upsetting their energy production, they turned to batteries to ensure they have an emergency backup.

  • (Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:38PM (2 children)

    by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:38PM (#482880)

    When solar reaches Grid parity [wikipedia.org], the price of nuclear power drops to zero.

    Molten salt reactors have the potential to do high-temperature chemistry, possibly producing electricity as by-product.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:53PM (1 child)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:53PM (#482891)

      Molten salt reactors have the potential to do high-temperature chemistry

      When I was a little kid, before the EPA, or before the EPA cared, we had a garbage incinerator.

      I've often considered that some day instead of a landfill and a sewage treatment plant, we'll have a community MSR and thermal depolymerization plant. MSRs run hot enough to make a pipeline theoretically workable, its not like you'd need clearance to tip each garbage truck directly into a reactor, you can secure the reactor on one side of a road and run the TDP plant on the other side of the road or something like that.

      Anyway I just think it interesting that for most of my life garbage got stockpiled but both before and after it'll get vaporized. Who knows that the archeologists will think of that.

      Another weird thought is around here landfills get turned into ski hills once filled up. So.... dig up the ski hill, vaporize it, and turn it into valuable industrial materials again? I would imagine for some obscure rare earths the best ores on the planet are, or in the future, will be landfills. Someday something like indium or nickel might be so valuable people dig up landfills just for those two.

      If you don't want to use a nuke, assuming you have really big tanks and warehouses, you can Solar TDP garbage when the sun's up. Just make sure you can process like twice as much as bare necessity to ease catching up and maintenance windows. This becomes a problem for MSR technology because you can build an unimaginably immense solar array for the cost of a MSR.

      • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday March 22 2017, @09:22PM

        by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @09:22PM (#482949)

        The solar version takes a lot more land area. You can just about fit the thorium version on an Aircarft [wikipedia.org].

        But I agree, landfills are potential targets for mining in the future.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:43PM (5 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:43PM (#482883)

    I think that's thinking way too small. Imagine the things we could do if we bumped up our energy production exponentially. The reason we don't do these things or consider these things is because we don't have that production.

    Something that makes the environmental folks very angry is pointing out that if, supposedly, solar drops in price by X every Y making it now cheaper than coal and soon to be a tenth the cost of anything, and if, supposedly, electricity as currently used is useless unless 24x7, then the logical result is an enormous explosion in resource utilization and capitalism and jobs (none of which their political group wants) because entire new industries will spring up around "energy is intermittent but when its there, its free".

    So cars with solar powered liq O2 plants that hybrid-like can lean burn pure cold O2 and five times as much gas to get five times the power for a very short amount of time, resulting in the replacement of my 100 HP engine with a 20 HP lawnmower engine that none the less has higher performance.

    I'm pretty much at the point of putting some panels in and wiring them to large power resistors buried in a ton of cement block in my basement, basically stealing a nordic stove design and using power resistors instead of burning wood. A large water tank would work just as well. I mean, I can pay for natgas, and sometimes at night I'll need it, but most of the time, why bother? I can have a nice insulated box with out windows called my basement, and a quarter acre of solar collectors if I want, and combined that will be a hot as hell basement.

    So... I can be a cheap bastard and only run my air conditioner off solar power. In my climate that is not a serious problem (down south you'd die from the humidity). Never again will I burn coal to cool my house. You can insist on it not being possible and not being acceptable to the market until you're blue in the face, but I can and will do it with a bit of electrician wiring.

    If hot tubs store a ridiculous amount of heat, and they require a ridiculous amount of power even with decent insulation, its not going to take too many panels and then every freaking house in my subdivision will probably have a hot tub. The enviros will go nuts, but I'll be relaxing in my zero carbon hot tub so F them.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:00PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:00PM (#482893)

      Better: you can get three times as much heat by replacing the resistors with a heat pump (as long as you operate both ends at reasonable temperatures).
      You probably didn't want to bury those resistors in the concrete anyway. Above a certain amount of power you will melt and/or crack things.

      Even better: I heard that you can get free passive heating for life if you go get some used stuff at a nice plant on the quiet coast of Japan. It will keep your house warm until the last of your descendants dies.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:06PM (2 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:06PM (#482894) Journal

      Something that makes the environmental folks very angry is pointing out that if, supposedly, solar drops in price by X every Y making it now cheaper than coal and soon to be a tenth the cost of anything, and if, supposedly, electricity as currently used is useless unless 24x7, then the logical result is an enormous explosion in resource utilization and capitalism and jobs (none of which their political group wants) because entire new industries will spring up around "energy is intermittent but when its there, its free".

      Why would environmentalists be angry about a burgeoning, green-energy-storage market? Oh wait, they wouldn't.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:30PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:30PM (#482905)

        Did you know if you printed out every page of Wikipedia, and stacked them one on top of the other, the environmentalists would go nuts?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @04:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @04:17AM (#483076)

        Why would environmentalists be angry about a burgeoning, green-energy-storage market?

        Because environmentalists are stupid. If you were as smart as VirginLoserMan you would know that already.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:06PM (#482915)

      > cars with solar powered liq O2 plants that hybrid-like can lean burn pure cold O2 and five times as much gas to get five times the power for a very short amount of time, resulting in the replacement of my 100 HP engine with a 20 HP lawnmower engine that none the less has higher performance.

      Conceptually a nice idea, but remember that pure O2 plus a fuel makes for a cutting torch -- intense heat. Common fuels used in cutting torches are acetylene and now gasoline. I watched a guy using one of these, cutting up an old 6-inch-thick (150mm) industrial pressure tank with gasoline and a dewar of liquid O2 on a trailer.

      Even the modest amount of O2 enrichment from nitrous oxide injection has been known to melt engine pistons.

      So that will not be an ordinary 20HP lawnmower engine, it might need ceramic parts for the piston crown and cylinder head.