Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Vicious cycles are accelerating climate change. One is happening at the north pole, where rising temperatures caused by record levels of fossil fuel combustion are melting more and more sea ice.
Indeed, the extent of Arctic winter sea ice in March 2025 was the lowest ever recorded. This decline in sea ice means the Earth reflects less of the sun's energy back into space. So, more climate change leads to less sea ice—and more climate change.
Human behavior is not immune to this dynamic either, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). It identified another troubling feedback loop: demand for coal rose 1% globally in 2024 off the back of intense heat waves in China and India, which spurred a frenzy for air-conditioners and excess fuel to power them.
The need to cool ourselves, and briefly escape the consequences of climate change, is driving more climate change. Thankfully, there are ways to break these cycles and form greener habits. Today, we'll look at one in particular.
[...] If wealthy countries paid the enormous climate finance debt they owe the developing world, it could help finance the closing of this gap. And thankfully, advancements in renewable energy technology mean no one should need to contribute to a spike in fossil fuel use just to keep cool.
"The absurdity of resorting to coal to power air conditioners … is difficult to miss," say a team of engineers and energy experts at Nottingham Trent University and Coventry University, led by Tom Rogers. They recommend rooftop solar panels instead, which can soak up sunshine during heat waves and turn it into electricity for air-conditioning units.
"Rooftop solar can also reduce demand for cooling by keeping buildings in the shade," the team say. "A study conducted by Arizona State University found that even a modest group of solar panels that shade about half a roof can lead to anything from 2% to 13% reduction in cooling demand, depending on factors such as location, roof type and insulation levels."
[...] There is huge untapped potential for generating electricity from rooftop solar—even in the dreary UK. It could ensure that future heat waves are a boon for solar energy, not coal power.
[...] Installing solar panels on top of buildings worldwide will need massive investment in equipment and training. It will require new means of incentivizing the uptake of this technology and, as mentioned earlier, the redistribution of wealth to allow low-emitting but highly vulnerable nations to make the switch.
But there are likely to be virtuous cycles as well as vicious ones. Once a certain threshold has been crossed, like the price and capacity of batteries or the number of homes with heat pumps installed, "a domino effect of rapid changes" takes effect such that green alternatives swiftly become the established norm.
However, the prospect of harmonizing these efforts across borders butts against a trend moving in the opposite direction. As the world warms, relations between nations are becoming more fraught and war, trade tensions and internal strife are obscuring the universal threat of climate change.
[...] However, Laybourn and Dyke are not wholly pessimistic. History shows that periods of instability and crisis like the one we are living through also provide fertile ground for positive change, they argue, and the chance to accelerate virtuous circles.
"For example, out of the crises of the interwar period and the devastation of the second world war came legal protections for human rights, universal welfare systems and decolonization."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday April 12, @07:13AM
"Doom loops" and "vicious cycles". There's a scientific name for this "positive feedback", but I guess it doesn't have the right journalistic drama. The problem with the narrative is that there are substantial negative feedbacks too that increase significantly with either temperature or CO2/methane concentration: EM radiation to space (enhanced by modest extreme weather) and greenhouse gases sinks. These are decelerating climate change. End result is that you merely get shifts. And these shifts are often located where climate change isn't particularly harmful too. Melting polar sea ice might be a bad feedback for polar bears, but it's not where most people live.
What a line of bullshit. Even if there was such a debt, globalization and modern economies pay that off in real time. As I've noted before, the world is moving rapidly towards becoming entirely developed world with everyone seeing improvement - and a vast portion of that activity is trade between the wealthy and poor parts of the world. And what of the "climate finance debt" that the developing world accumulates? Who will "pay" that off?
Like a world with negative population growth, and wealthy enough to fix problems like climate change without requiring contrived and one-sided "climate finance debt" accounting?
More fraught than when? It's not more fraught than before the Second World War - with the climate supposedly getting worse since. A lot of problems have gotten better since with the same warming of Earth's climate. Something wrong with the narrative.
I think here the real instability is merely the developing world taking some time to catch up to the developed world - creating a great deal of change in both. Once that completes, I think we'll see another significant drop off in conflict and societal problems. Things like climate change are bike shed effect. They are moderate problems that have a compelling, simple narrative and we can do something about - even if the doing something about is worse than doing nothing at all. Otherwise, there just isn't that much to do: just wait out (or if you are so inclined, benefit heavily from) the effects of the global catchup and figure out the combination of policy that's good for the situation.
My take is that within a few decades, say by 2050 or 2060, we'll have a new list of problems to care about. A big one will be people of regions complaining why their region isn't doing as well as other regions. But there will still be some list of environmental problems, maybe even some we see today.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday April 12, @12:28PM (15 children)
Calling it "Climate Finance Debt" is a complete non-starter. You're going to need a lot better marketing than that.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12, @01:51PM (14 children)
Thank you.
I don't have the time, energy, nor motivation to write much, but IMHO this article is typical of the style that actually weakens the stance for better environmental stewardship.
A couple of points: TFA uses "we". Who are "we"? "We" USAians?: "We" western world? "We" "wealthy nations"? None of those "we"s have the moral or legal right to force other countries to cut emissions. The "developing nations" are following in our footsteps- using fossil fuels to build and heat and energize. To be fair, they are using renewables more than we (wealthy / developed) did.
I 100% agree that far more rooftop solar is needed. One huge hurdle that just makes no sense: if you install rooftop solar (PV) (and I've installed a few dozen systems), you don't get paid for the extra energy you contribute to the grid. Your production offsets your use, but if you have a large roof and the $ to install a system that generates more than you use, you get paid a minuscule percentage of what the electric companies charge.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Saturday April 12, @04:13PM (12 children)
In France there are several solutions to the problem.
The first is to buy a system that includes a large battery. Of course, it is more expensive in the initial purchase, but all the electricity that you produce during the sunshine hours which is not needed immediately is used to charge the storage battery. When the PV [photo-voltaic] panels stop producing power then the system reverses and the battery power is converted into useful power again. There are affordable systems that will give you a ROI after 15 years - and which come with a 30-year guarantee. An alternative is to use surplus power to heat water which is used around the home before switching to any water that is heated directly from the grid.
The second is a system where a private company provide a 'online battery' in which you store any excess power that your PV panels generate. When necessary or when you choose, you can have your power returned from the 'online battery'. It is in quotes because I do not know the technology that is actually used to store the energy. It could be heat, a genuine battery or something entirely different. The providers require a subscription (a recent quote is €15 per month).
I have 6 x 2kWh panels. I live in N France which has its fair mix of rain, cloud and bright sunny days. So far I am getting about 35% of my daily power on average from the panels (calculated for a mix of good and bad days). That is directly reflected in my bills as I am using that much less power from the grid on average. The ROI on that is about 9 years - and again it all comes with a 30 year guarantee. I may have additional panels installed at a later date.
All PV installations that are installed by government approved contractors are also eligible to significant home improvement grants. I have received a healthy contribution to my installation costs from the government scheme, which currently only covers the first installation of PV panels on any given property.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12, @04:43PM (11 children)
Thank you, very informative.
Sorry, I wasn't clear: in the US, you typically size a PV system so that it produces, on average, what you use, on average. So it will produce extra during the day, pushing that extra into the grid, and at night you use from the grid. But it's all balanced out, called "net metering".
You could do a battery system, but there's no incentive, unless you wish to be "off grid" and/or just want/need a backup for times of utility power outage.
My main point is: if someone wanted to size a system larger than what they use, there's no incentive, and that's just stupid and reeks of some kind of cronyism. People who are able to push extra power into the grid should be paid what electricity generating companies are paid. It would give some people incentive to build bigger systems and help offset emissions.
Yes, in the US there are several tax breaks and state and local grants for PV and wind systems. It varies from state to state. I'm pretty confident that EU generally has better programs / incentives for such things.
There are large companies who will install PV systems on people's roofs and do like you said- store power. There are systems that pump water up into a reservoir during the day, and use the water for hydroelectric power at night. Not sure how efficient it is, but worth doing if there's excess power during daylight. Also I've heard of centrifugal storage, air pressure- including underground (that worries me), of course batteries, and many other technologies.
Personally, I have lots of trees, and my house's roofline is north-south. So I can't justify the cost of an entire system install, and due to the shading and roof orientation I do not qualify for any grants. But I'm considering buying used but very cheap PV modules and installing them myself. My feeling is that anything is better than nothing, but only if I can buy them cheaply enough.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 12, @08:06PM (10 children)
It reeks of power companies not wanting to deal with lots of small, low or even negative value electricity transactions per day. There are large costs and complexity associated with this scheme. Meanwhile the old way means that you might have to deal a few large electricity generators.
You need to have smart metering capable of measuring electricity flow both ways, a pricing system that doesn't suck badly, and a sophisticated system for dealing with the instability of so much solar power hooked up to the grid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12, @11:26PM (9 children)
I'm not ever one of your detractors here, but I need to disagree and enlighten you:
Power demand (loads) vary wildly all day and night, all over the place geographically.
Power generating companies don't worry about who's doing what.
They just do what they're told by the major grid operators like PJM Interconnection [wikipedia.org].
PJM and other grid operators tell the power companies how much to vary their output, keeping the grid amazingly stable. Tiny bits of KW, in or out, here and there, are nothing to them. So says me, an EE, and I'm pretty sure other EEs here will agree with me.
As I mentioned, I've installed a few dozen PV systems. In some localities we installed a bidirectional meter. One customer was flipping out (happy) when he saw his electric meter going backwards. It was a good old mechanical one, and worked perfectly well either way.
Some local power line operating companies required us to install 2 power meters because their approved meters only worked one way. A bit more work for me, in some cases a PITA, but we did it.
My meter, and most urban and suburban power meters are already "smart" and remote readable. The monitoring systems already handle millions of customers' meters, and can easily handle adding more, including ones for generation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 13, @01:20AM (8 children)
Does it become an easier problem when power supply vary wildly all over the place too? Your story is about the grid operator being able to dictate supply and being more or less promptly obeyed. When they have a bunch of point sources dumping power into the grid by contract or law mandate, they no longer have that authority.
Keep in mind that a one-way power meter can only be fraudulently run that one way. In the situation of the past, those companies could ignore a class of customer fraud simply because the worst the customer could do to tweak the meters was increase their bill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 14, @03:37AM (7 children)
I'll flat out discredit your power meter writings: you can't tweak the digital electronic meters. Surely not easily, and I seriously doubt people would because it's known how large a PV array is and how many hours of sunlight it receives. Because they're remotely read, power company knows if they're taken offline.
You're still not getting it: the power "dumped" into the grid by PV systems is negligible. You need to go study some math, then get the numbers. Big power generators are hundreds of KW, many are 1-4 GW. PV systems are 3-8 KW.
Oh, and the thing you're really not getting: the PV inverter is very smart. It does not "dump" power into the grid. If the grid is full, meaning volts are already high, the PV inverter backs down. Simplistically it's a voltage regulator, and if the grid isn't demanding much, then the inverter doesn't push much. Same goes for electric utility generation and grid operators. It's all controlled.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 14, @04:54AM (4 children)
There's fraud even with properly operating meters. For example, laundering electricity theft. Consider a simple example. A neighbor leaves for the week, but leaves the power on. Run a line to an exterior outlet. In the good old days, you would just be getting free electricity at their expense and there wouldn't be a point to stealing more than you could use. Unless you're running something like a secret marijuana farm, you just couldn't use much more than a normal family. And from the point of view of the electricity provider, it's a simple legal matter: someone is stealing stuff and legally the homeowner is on the hook.
Now, there's a way to turn that into money by pumping power through your intertie. I am not claiming that this is an easy or highly profitable way, but merely that it is possible - and wouldn't be possible in the past before net metering and such. My view on such things is that if I can come up with ways to commit fraud that don't suck terribly, then someone with better brains and experience can probably do pretty well before they get caught.
If that were true, then there would be no point to the exercise of using excess PV power. Negligible power source with non-negligible infrastructure cost can be addressed by simply not building the infrastructure and giving it no further thought. It's significant by initial premises.
I grant that this would be a mechanism by which the grid operator could dictate to PV owners.
But what's in it for the PV owner? Do they still get compensated for the power they generated even if the grid can't or won't use it? Large power variance still happens, and it's still someone's problem even if it gets unloaded onto the PV owner rather than the grid operator. This becomes a lot like the complaints about ride hailing services. If you're an Uber driver in a market with high demand and low supply, then you can make decent money. If you're in a highly competitive market with people who are poor at math, then your profit margin will be much lower and maybe even negative.
Seems to me that the same holds in this case. If you're one of the few on the block with net metering and a productive solar power system, then you might be able to pay for the system (particularly, the intertie part). But if that excess power is just not used (and of course, you not paid for it) because everyone on the grid does the same as you, then what's the point of the exercise?
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Monday April 14, @06:43AM
In France the grid is contractually obliged to take the excess power the the owner does not use. This is reducing the running costs to the taxpayer of the grid system, as well as recompensing the PV owner for their investment.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15, @04:21AM (2 children)
I wish I understood people like you. You waste so much brainpower disputing things, but you're not grasping reality. You look at things far too black or white; on or off; hot or cold.
If you put up a PV system, you'll offset your own power bill. You may even end up paying zero to the power generation company.
You made statements about how PV systems could destabilize the grid, and I'm telling you, you are wrong. You are confusing remote and scant possibilities with reality. You're considering negligible things as being the majority.
I'm trying to tell you that PV (and other) grid-feed inverters are smart. They sense the grid voltage and only "push" power into the grid if there's room, mostly based on the voltage.
There is no reason for a power generation company to worry about it, or to try to control inverters. Power generation systems already vary their output based on need. If lots of PV systems could inject enough power, then the generation company would reduce their output proportionately.
There may be times when a PV / inverter system's output isn't needed, or maybe not all of it needed, but much of the time most if not all of it will be needed and useful by the grid.
The silliest thing about your arguments is that you're arguing about whether or not PV systems should exist. Go back in time 50 years and argue with those people. We here now are using PV systems and they just. plain. work.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 15, @05:18AM (1 child)
Let's start with what this thread was about.
It started with someone who didn't look at PV systems from the point of view of the grid operator who has to support them. You do the same with your quote above. The party putting up the PV system isn't the grid operator who has to deal with yet another unreliable node on the grid.
The missing ingredient here is ignorance of the costs and benefits for the grid operator (not a power generation company), especially one that isn't using the latest metering infrastructure. Couple that with forced action (for example, janrinok's observation about French customers who get guaranteed offset for their net generation) and you can have a very dangerous situation for a grid operator who isn't ready (or who merely can't get out from behind the eight ball).
Even in a good market, it isn't that hard to make transactions that threaten the survival of a business. Just make a few gambles that are sufficiently bad. But when you are required to make mandatory transactions, you are in a special class of risk. For example, if you are required to buy electricity from beefed up PV systems that are generating substantial net power, and every customer has one of these systems. Then you have a very large, very guaranteed loss that happens every time it gets sunny. You're required to pay for all this power, but have no one to sell it to - because everyone has an oversized PV system and is a net generator at the same time! That happens even with those smart inverters. My variance isn't due only to electrical instability of the grid (though I wouldn't be surprised to find some enhancement still exists despite those inverters), but financial instability as well.
As to the complaints about the reluctance of the grid operator to play that game? It's like being puzzled why you're balking at giving me $100 when it's so great for me. I could do so much with that $100. So why don't I have it already?
To cast this as me seeing "black and white" is to completely miss the point. One-sided market mandates are the real black and white here. Similarly, being mystified by rational parties acting in their own interests is pretty stilted as well.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday April 15, @06:02AM
I think that you are being intentionally obstructive or stupid. How much electricity do PV systems generate at night when heating is more likely to be required? How much during the cooler months when it rains more frequently?
The grid companies are already adept at balancing power consumption. They have ways of converting the energy so that it can be available when it is required. The grid companies are very happy with the system that we have adopted. You seem to be talking about some amateurish grid company that cannot manage the task that they are being paid to do. You may have one, most other modern countries have solved these problems many years ago.
If we ever reach the unlikely situation that all of our power needs can be met by solar energy and people investing in PV panels then we, here in Europe, think that would be a good thing. Free energy. What's not to like? You don't seem to like that idea. Is that because you cannot personally profit from such a situation?
In those countries where AC is considered essential, if each AC can be powered by solar during the days when the AC cooling is required that would significantly relieve the pressure on the grid system. It seems like some states (er, cough, Texas) might actually benefit from such a situation.
Power consumption is changing throughout any 24 hour period. Any company that cannot manage this ought not to be in business.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by sfm on Tuesday April 15, @06:57PM (1 child)
In your post:
"I'll flat out discredit your power meter writings...."
I'll agree that tweaking digital meters is darn near impossible, but strongly disagree that
power sent to the grid from hundreds/thousands of homes is negligible. A medium size
city, in say California, could easily push megawatts onto the grid.
If the grid voltage is high, then something is wrong in the distribution network. The grid
capacity cannot be determined by voltage alone. The grid doesn't "demand" power from
the inverter...it is the other way around... the inverter pushed any excess solar power out
to the grid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 16, @03:38AM
You're welcome to disagree, but I doubt you're an EE or technician or someone who deals with actual numbers. Right now in the US PV contributes about 3.9% of electricity generation. If you think that's significant, well, go get educated.
Since you know so much about inverters, how does the inverter determine when to back off?
Are you aware that grid voltage fluctuates?
What? Re-read that and try to re-write it to make some sense.
Your wording is awkward at best, but that's what I said. Where did I write that the grid demands power from the inverter?
The inverter monitors grid voltage, output current, and phase.
Sadly you're one of those too many people on the 'net who somehow misreads something, then disputes that thing that you imagined. Not a psychologist, but it appears to me that somehow computers, cell phones, and probably too much Internet usage is causing people to live in a fantasy world.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Monday April 14, @01:48AM
I don't have strong feelings vis-a-vis small scale or large scale generation or distributed power generally. I didn't get that far into TFA. As a taxpayer in a first world nation, I stopped at climate debt. It tells me that this isn't about climate; It's a money grab. Fuck that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday April 12, @06:26PM (1 child)
Ah found the scammer. Behind every loud claim of only caring about the planet and the environment there's always a financial scammer lurking.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 13, @01:14PM
Found the Trumptard. Do you also believe the Earth is flat?
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Tuesday April 15, @02:38PM
"If wealthy countries paid the enormous climate finance debt they owe the developing world"
As determined by who? The globalist elite who want so desperately to bankrupt the West? Isn't this really what the "climate change" crusade has been about all along?
It's been tried over and over. The coming ice age, pollution, the population explosion, global warming and the latest crisis, climate change, all designed to do the same thing - create a pretext for imposing a Marxist new world order to "solve the problem" before we reach a "tipping point" and IT IS TOO LATE TO SAVE THE PLANET!!!
What the professional hand wringers fail to acknowledge, is without the lockstep control these phonies have had over science funding, media and other information channels for so long, the lack of clothing on the emperor is becoming ever more awkward to explain. It's almost comical to see the editors here still dutifully preaching their gospel.