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A group of scientists have called for a "moonshot" renewable energy research program called the "Global Apollo":
They say they have generated interest from major nations in their plan for an investment of 0.02% of their GDP [about $150 billion over 10 years, and about the cost of the Apollo program in 2015 dollars] into research, development and demonstration (RD&D) of clean electricity. Their report, launched at London's Royal Society, says on current projections the world will exceed the 2C danger threshold of climate change by 2035.
The academics are led by the UK's former chief scientist Professor Sir David King. He told BBC News: "We have already discovered enough fossil fuels to wreck the climate many times over. There's only one thing that's going to stop us burning it – and that's if renewables become cheaper than fossil fuels. "Under our plan, we are aiming to make that happen globally within a decade." Another of the authors, former Cabinet Secretary Lord O'Donnell, told BBC News: "People never believed we could put a man on the Moon - but we did. People don't believe we can solve climate change - but we have no choice."
It complains that renewable energy has been starved of investment to a shocking degree, with publicly funded RD&D on renewable energy only $6bn a year – under 2% of the total of publicly funded research and development. The authors say this compares poorly with the $101bn spent worldwide on production subsidies for renewables and the $550bn "counter-productive" subsidies for fossil fuel energy.
Solar is the most favoured renewable source as the group says it has greatest potential for technology breakthroughs, and most new energy demand will be in sunny countries. The cost of solar has been plummeting and is already approaching competitive prices in places as different as Germany, California and Chile. But the authors believe next-generation plastic photovoltaics can to keep prices tumbling. They believe battery technology is improving fast – but think batteries and other forms of storage need to be massively developed to store intermittent renewable energy. The authors say much smarter software is needed to enable electricity grids to cope with the new sources of power. Some experts believe that energy technology has developed so fast that it simply needs further price support to keep volumes rising and costs falling. Others will complain that the Apollo group has done little to tackle the immense problem of replacing fossil fuels in heating.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:57PM
but think batteries and other forms of storage need to be massively developed to store intermittent renewable energy
This is dumb. tune your demand to your supply, or suffer. The future will be exactly like today is just more "happy motoring" don't worry be happy BS.
The future is intermittent demand to match intermittent supply. All you'll hear is whining about how nothing can be permitted to change other than behind the scenes, but thats just stupid.
Example: Loose power during a run, my clothes dryer halts until human intervention. Thats why I need 3 KW availability 24x7x365. Stupidest thing I've ever heard of. A better designed dryer would shut down when a winter cloud passes over the solar array and 30 seconds later when its bright again, it starts back up like nothing happened other than the drying cycle will now be 30 seconds late. There's already a computer controlled lock so no whining about tearing arms off. There are already internet connected washers and dryers and washers connected to dryers so if the weather forecast doesn't predict enough juice to run the dryer then the washer doesn't start if its too cold/rainy to hang clothes outside.
Ditto my cooking oven. A cloud passes by, don't make the software crash or shut off the oven, just let it average out. If the element is only on 1/10th of the time, the panels only need a break in the clouds 1/10th of the time. My oven is damn near uninsulated, but if it were insulated and had a massive thermal mass in it, you could heat it up to 375 in September and keep it toasty until April or so at minimal energy cost, who cares if the sun isn't up, if the oven is hot as hell anyway?
We can make similar arguments about CNC machine tools and other things.
Walmart needs 300 KW of electric lighting. No actually they need 0 KW and overhead windows. Or smaller buildings that don't have that fabulous windowless prison architecture. The number of people employed is dropping and will only continue to drop as the population increases... only being able to shop while the sun is up isn't going to be a "real" problem soon enough, especially since Amazon is replacing shitty incompetently run and incompetently staffed local brick and mortar anyway and the robots in a robot warehouse don't need much light.
I have a giant window in my office. I only turn on the lights for a couple hours at the start and end of day in the depths of winter. I don't need light. When I'm working most of the time with coworkers in another state I don't need to burn roughly a gallon of gas per day to talk to people somewhere other than home, and my house is pretty well naturally lit too. I'm sure an idiot could find an absolutely unavoidable way to "need" 10 KW of light to work and "need" to burn 6 gallons of gas per day in a giant SUV in a 3 hour commute, but you can't build a world or culture around idiots. The rest of us will be fine and they'll work around it in their usual way (probably whining for our tax dollars as subsidies cause they're dumb).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @01:31PM
This is an important point. A parsimonious mindset can do so very much. Mind you, that's parsimony, as in, "only using what you need," not "going without." In many cases it's not only less wasteful, but flat out better. I use daylight in my office, too. The only window opens onto a well between two buildings, which you would think is terribly dark. When I pull up the blinds, the lumens measured on my light meter is higher than when I turn on all 4 LED lights in the room; it turns out it is harder than you think to equal the brightness of natural sunlight. Another, transportation-related example: my younger brother, an automotive engineer for Ford, and my brother-in-law, one of those guys who LOVES his car, have been petrol heads for years. They would never have imagined giving up the "throaty growl" and "raw power" of their V8's. Yet, now they have both switched to BMW i3 EV's, because the instant they felt that crazy linear acceleration push them way back into their seats, the excellent braking power, and the bliss of the total silence, they dropped their ICE cars like hot rocks. Yeah yeah they don't have to buy gas any more and blah blah blah the environment blah blah, but, "Hey man, feel that acceleration!" My younger brother is also now seriously pursuing putting solar panels on his roof to recharge the car scot-free.
One thing leads to another.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday June 10 2015, @01:48PM
They would never have imagined giving up the "throaty growl" and "raw power" of their V8's.
You mean this [washingtonpost.com] throaty growl? I don't see why an electric car's stereo system can't play back exactly the same sounds. Heck if people like we could probably put in a "stick shaker" and vibrate the steering column/driver's seat to simulate rpm...
Thank god the fate of the world doesn't rest on "petrol heads".
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Wednesday June 10 2015, @02:54PM
For stick shifts (in case anyone remembers those) you would also need that unique sound that occurs when you're not pressing the clutch pedal strong enough while switching gears ;)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:59PM
That's called grinding. Something that you shouldn't be hearing, if you know what you're doing.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 10 2015, @02:58PM
Good news, everybody! They do [washingtonpost.com]
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:00PM
They can. Nissan Leaf implemented a car noise because some people complained they couldn't hear it coming.
I find engine noise irritating because it drowns out conversation with my family in the car and the subtler passages of the classical music I prefer when driving. Also, the traffic noise causes me constant, background stress as a driver, cyclist, pedestrian, and guy sitting in my apartment in the city. For me, silence is golden. Lack of it is the biggest drawback to living in New York City (for everyone, according to statistics from the city's 311 information line which say noise complaints far outnumber all others).
The silence of EVs and the active cruise control they all seem to be coming out with take driving from stressful and aggravating to, dare I say it, almost sublime.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by ScriptCat on Wednesday June 10 2015, @01:46PM
Yes, we don't need to cook the quiche at 350 deg F for one hour. We can cook it at 100 Deg F for six hours.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday June 10 2015, @03:13PM
Yeah well I donno about your sous vide temps listed for food safety reasons, but the general idea is good.
One interesting demand-ish based technological improvement is something vaguely sous vide ish for most cooking, just keep the oven above 160 or so and it'll cook just fine and more or less food safe, but you need some broiling elements or a residential grade salamander (LOL as if) to get the maillard reaction to brown the food.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction [wikipedia.org]
Most pastry baking is done as a compromise cook it quick at 350 and hope the batter in the center of the cake sets before the exterior blackens. Yet with a microscopically more intelligent oven controller you could cook the thing for hours at 200 or until it gets too dry and then zap it with the broiler elements for 5 minutes to brown... Thats interesting. If you use chemical leavening you could manipulate the oven temp curve for fun and profit.
There are some other "pizza crust" like effects of cooking something in an insanely hot oven which are sometimes (in the case of pizza) even good.
Anyway it never fails to amaze me in a world of microcontrollers how so much cooking has not yet gone beyond the mechanical egg timer.
Still my idea of building a super insulated oven that sits at 350 for six months at a time using practically no energy is still valid. Its not crazy, we make "boxes of cold" that stay cold 24x365 for not too much energy cost and if we cared we could make them much more efficient than we currently do. Why does my house have like 16 inches of insulation in my attic but the fridge only has about 1 inch? Clearly its technologically possible to make a fridge that leaks 16 times less energy by making the walls 16 times fatter, well, roughly. I would imagine at some very expensive liquid N2 dewar level of manufacturing quality, you'd only have to plug in a fridge every couple weeks and it would stay icy cold.
In my infinite spare time I'll ask a guy I know at a nearby schools cryo lab if he can give me an old N2 dewar for me to mess around making it into the worlds most delicate, yet efficient, camping cooler. Imagine filling that with icy cold beer and it still being icy months later. There are of course contamination issues with a "used" dewar that I'll have to worry about.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:11PM
Most of the heat (cold?) loss from your fridge is opening the door, letting all the cold air out, and then standing there looking for that missing jar of mayo.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 10 2015, @01:57PM
Why use a clothes dryer at all when you can set up a clothesline or a rack for a fraction of the price and 0 kwh worth of power?
And by far the lowest-cost commute is the one you don't need to make, so we should be pushing telecommuting and remote work as an alternative (this also makes commuting faster for those who really need to do it).
Most homeowners could also accomplish a great deal for the environment by updating their home insulation, because a lot of homes leak both heat and cold like crazy.
Some high-tech solutions will be in order, but let's start with the many things we could be doing with existing technology. It's really easy to geek out over efficient solar panels and electric cars and such, but those more boring changes will have at least as much impact short-term and are much cheaper to implement.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:28PM
I am a huge fan of clotheslines. Homes aren't built with them anymore though and people have no idea what they are until they see it in use. They are also only seasonal.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:29PM
Homes aren't built with them anymore
Worse still, you might find your tennancy or even owner's agreement outright forbids them anywhere they can be seen, such as "outdoors." If you're lucky enough to live somewhere where the mere suggestion that clothes might have once been dirty is offensive.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @10:39PM
You can get one that works indoors, if you have enough space. They only take up about 1-2 square meters.
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Wednesday June 10 2015, @09:19PM
> This is dumb. tune your demand to your supply,
Easy to say effectively impossible to do on aggregate. You are advocating putting the cart before the horse.(and ignoring basic micro economics)
Why: Base load. This load is demanded 24h x 365day.
A large portion of base load is industrial use. Many industrial processes gain large percentages of efficiency when run 24/day. To have industry switching to whenever energy is available is just too costly. A factory going from 24hours/day down to 6hours/day: How much more expensive will their products be? How much less would their workforce be?
Renewables (ignoring hydro) without storage can't supply aggregate base load, which you seem to agree on. Making appliances more energy aware, increasing efficiencies(insulation etc), will help. But that is mostly in the the residential and commercial sectors. This doesn't really touch industrial which by far is the biggest energy(all forms) user.
Demand as always, will drive supply.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 10 2015, @09:41PM
This doesn't really touch industrial which by far is the biggest energy(all forms) user.
Not really. Solar panels can only replace electricity, at least easily. At great effort I guess you could make solar powered cement kilns ...
http://www.eia.gov/beta/aeo/#/?id=2-AEO2015 [eia.gov]
In quad BTU (which is a weird form to measure electrical energy, but whatever) residential this year is 4.8, commercial is 4.6, industrial is 3.3
The amount of economic destruction over the past 20 years or so is amazing, you'd think we're in a war or something. Theres an EIA report somewhere that industrial use has dropped 20% in the last decade alone.
WRT industrial users pouting, they can pay thru the nose for whatever hydro they can get, daydream of batteries that won't get made, or get used to the future...
Basic micro doesn't matter if basic macro says the KWh aren't going to be there... You can solar or work in the dark.