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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @11:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the brains-unite! dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:42PM (#194624)

    the global warming drum doesn't really work for the man on the street.
    it is more a drum for the nuclear fission industry because .. tada... nuclear doesn't emit any of those .. uhm ..ahh ... poisons.

    go to a 3rd world country and see for yourself the trash problem and pollution of rivers that run thru cities. you can find this even in developed japan countries.

    furthermore since the phony threat of "global warming" (it might or might not be real, but nobody cares, see garbage above) has thus been debunked we are left with the real hurdle: money.

    energy generation cannot be free. it would disrupt the global economy too much.

    since a exponential growth economy has been implemented and there just isn't enough gold to tie money to, the next best thing is energy generation.
    we are actually keeping tabs on how much natural resources are "missing" and the tab is called economic growth ... wealth .. money .. whatever.
    thus it is not possible to meaningful have free -aka- renewable energy. something has to give ... or go missing.
    thus we will never have unlimited fusion power energy because of the same reason. well maybe but just one fusion reactor would need to be made insanely expensive.
    by logic (i think?) stuff/products manufactured in germany (with unlimited free renewable energy) should progressively become more and more cheap until they become the only financially viable products on the global market.
    this of course leads to another problem of enormous money inflow into germany / euro-zone making the euro so strong and expensive that the cheapness of "made 100% with renewable energy" products become .. expensive again : )

    FYI to top-up a 80Kwh tesla car with 4 hours of average sunshine one would need to install 20 kW of solar panels .. which is about 130 square meters (~ 11m x 11m)? times one million cars? absolutely doable ... but that's alot of not-sold oil/gas in somebodies pocket. one time investment -vs- continues drain.

    least somebody comes up with the great idea of selling free energy to you *oops*

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:56PM (#194630)

    so by your logic, every time a liter of gasoline is pumped out of the ground the money press prints some money (to keep tabs) and adds a figure to some bank account for a "one way and that's it" (meaningful) return trip to walmart and thus every solar panel is a wedge in the money printing press?

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by redneckmother on Wednesday June 10 2015, @07:41PM

    by redneckmother (3597) on Wednesday June 10 2015, @07:41PM (#194642)

    I address only a small part of your many points:

    it is more a drum for the nuclear fission industry because .. tada... nuclear doesn't emit any of those .. uhm ..ahh ... poisons.

    go to a 3rd world country and see for yourself the trash problem and pollution of rivers that run thru cities. you can find this even in developed japan countries.

    Go to Japan, and witness the areas that are now unsafe because of the Fukushima meltdown? And yes, I know, it wasn't a "fission" plant. Still, one wonders "what are the by-products, construction and operational energy requirements, and safety concerns" of preparing and using fission reactors? Fusion reactors have a limited lifetime and toxic waste products. Fusion structures and wastes remain dangerous for thousands of years.

    --
    Mas cerveza por favor.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 10 2015, @08:52PM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday June 10 2015, @08:52PM (#194672) Journal

      the areas that are now unsafe because of the Fukushima meltdown? And yes, I know, it wasn't a "fission" plant.

      I do not think you know what you think you know. Fusion nuclear energy plants? I find that when I am uncertain about what I am going to say here on SoylentNews, I will just do a quick google, just to make sure I am using words right. Just a suggestion.

      • (Score: 1) by redneckmother on Thursday June 11 2015, @05:43PM

        by redneckmother (3597) on Thursday June 11 2015, @05:43PM (#195058)

        DOH!

        Chalk one up to Alzheimer's disease. Obviously, I transposed the terms. Thanks for the corrections, and I apologize for muddying the waters.

        --
        Mas cerveza por favor.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @09:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @09:05PM (#194679)

      oh crap nearly replied thru tor *phew*

      anyways thanks for reply.

      i don't know .. i'm too stupid to get subtle hints to interpret it as ..joke?

      people in fukushima had a great 1973 - 2011 run.
      much money and lobbying was done to get the locals to host that now-accident disaster?

      as far as wikipedia is concerned there are multiple different fusion reactions. some emit neutrons (the modern alchemists phlogiston) and some don't. thus the "nasty" fusion w/ alchemists salt makes the stuff around transmute and thus become radioactif.
      these fusion reactions unfortunately also seem to be the most "easy" to attain ... go figure.
      there are some reactions that don't emit neutrons. good fusion!

      else i don't know what to say, but i stand by my initial theory that energy consumption needs to be destructive for a working capitalist-exponential economy to ..uhm ...ah... work.

      p.s. i don't know how i should feel about the fact that i own a japanese car.
      the company that made it went thru alot of tooling and manufacturing process iterations all the while probably being mostly nuclear powered.
      so how much does my cars existence depend on the now non-existent fukushima nuclear reactor?
      i think it's a bad omen ...