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The global cost of securing a clean energy future is rising by the year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned Monday, estimating that an additional $44 trillion of investment was needed to meet 2050 carbon reduction targets. Releasing its biennial "Energy Technology Perspectives" report in Seoul, the agency said electricity would increasingly power the world's economies in the decades to come, rivalling oil as the dominant energy carrier. Surging electricity demand posed serious challenges, said IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven.
"We must get it right, but we're on the wrong path at the moment," Van der Hoeven told reporters in the South Korean capital.
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$44 Trillion Needed for Clean Energy Future
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Please help keep the world clean: others may wish to use it.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:52PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:21PM
The market won't take care if this.
Markets don't care much about potential 30-year returns, where most of the actual profit is reduced government expenses in unrelated sectors like population health, trade deficits, military...
Inversely, a long-term investment into a new plant is negatively affected by the improvements in alternative sources, meaning that richest players in the market actively battle changing their profitable status quo.
Say, is the gas price going up or down today? I need to forecast next quarter...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:34PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:48PM
Yep, I'm doing fracking in my own backyard to help sustain the current model another 50 years or so.
After that, it won't be my problem.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 16 2014, @02:59AM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Friday May 16 2014, @09:54AM
But "averting catastrophe is eminently affordable [theguardian.com]".
That refers to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (i.e. the stuff they're publishing this year), specifically the Working Group 3 [www.ipcc.ch] publication (which has a Summary For Policymakers here [mitigation2014.org]).
If there's even a small chance that they are right about that, and not your prediction of the "United States [in] third-world-level abject poverty", I think we should start by spending the amount of money they are suggesting.
If we spend that much, and then they say, "ah ... yeah ... about that ... it turns out we actually need to spend a lot more ... which will mean third-world-level abject poverty", then we can start to question whether we are really willing to undergo that hardship for the sake of our grandchildren.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:10PM
Governments don't either. The only difference is that markets are really good at what they do. Well, that and that there actually are 30-year returns in a market.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:26PM
Tell that to Mr Deng, Mr Yoshida and Mr Kohl.
On your way to wikipedia, don't forget to check the French Nuclear power development too.
And if that's not enough to counter dumb ideological parroting, ask yourself why public schools and colleges are free or cheap.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:51PM
Those are people not governments. And while Singapore is still relatively future-oriented, the same can't be said for Japan and Germany, the countries of the other two politicians you mentioned.
They aren't. Other people pay for that. As to "dumb ideological parroting" who is claiming something is "free or cheap" merely because the consumers of the good or service aren't the ones paying for the good or service?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:29PM
You've got the wrong Deng. I was referring to a more populous country, and how its successive governments since Deng have been doing really well in their planning of metaphorically kicking our asses.
If you think Japan and Germany are no longer future-oriented, you really haven't been paying attention.
Nice try, but 0 for 3: The whole point of free/cheap schools is that you pay for them with your massively higher future income. Considering that most governments finance themselves with debt, the cost of your school is actually repaid when you start paying taxes. Even if your government doesn't print debt, it's not stealing cash from your parents to pay for your school, it's investing with a pretty massive return, which will finance their old-age healthcare and their retirement.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:50PM
I wonder how you can reconcile your claim with your post here [soylentnews.org].
I guess evidence that they aren't so prescient can be ignored when it is inconvenient.
The obvious counterexamples to that assertion are Japan's current debt load (and its recent looting of the Japanese Postal Savings system) and Germany's suicidal energy policy.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 16 2014, @12:23AM
> I guess evidence that they aren't so prescient can be ignored when it is inconvenient.
You're right, they should have gotten out of third-world status by building excess renewable power using 80s tech and a worthless Renminbi, so that they'd be more ready to absorb the onslaught of Westerners ready to sell their grandma for a $5 labor cut and access to 1.3B poor people.
Since this thread started at "governments don't either [care much about potential 30-year returns]", I'm pretty sure that Mr Deng is sitting in his corner of afterlife, wondering if they would have sent him to the nuthouse, had he used the actual 2014 numbers as a prediction of the impact of his reforms.
Being so wildly successful that you get major ecological growing pains is not antithetic to caring about and planning to kick Capitalist ass on the world market while bringing almost a billion persons out of poverty.
China has a big problem. They could throw their massive trade surpluses at fixing their ecological issues and get results quickly, but they actually have to use that cash first to prop up the value of the US dollar and therefore their growth. So they have to tolerate pollution for a bit longer to protect their most sacred thing: stability.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:52PM
Tried it, dint work.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 16 2014, @02:46AM
Have we? Seems to me like we're just now starting to try it and it's the market doing pretty much all of the moving and creating. Government aid? Yeah, plenty of companies took government aid for greening up energy and they appear to mostly be bankrupt or at best no closer than they were before they took the money.
Just saying, you want forward momentum look at what has and is working and look at what has failed dismally and make an intelligent decision instead of an ideological one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday May 16 2014, @03:08AM
Yes and it goes back a lot further than Solyndra. I'll give you a hint: We didn't just magically appear on this planet 2 years ago in the state it's in.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 16 2014, @03:30AM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:56PM
OK, so the cost of meeting the world's energy needs entirely with clean energy would be $44 trillion in infrastructure. But, that statement is seriously misleading. There is an obscure little one-line note way down at the bottom of TFA that says those costs would be more than offset by "an estimated $115 trillion in estimated fuel savings." So a better headline would be, "clean energy would save $71 trillion by 2050."
But I have another point. By 2050 there will be exploding demand for electricity in China, India, and probably many other countries. Much of the generating capacity hasn't been built yet. The cost I think we should care about is the marginal cost of cleanliness -- how much more would it cost to build and operate all those future generators with carbon-neutral sources rather than fossil fuels? And can the projected future fuel savings persuade them to pay that extra up-front cost?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1, Troll) by emg on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:02PM
Back in the real world, you can be pretty sure the cost will be underestimated by a factor of five to ten, and the benefits overestimated by a factor of five to ten. But the whole thing was a fantasy from the start, anyway; no sane country is going to trash its economy just to make the Greenists happy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:13PM
On the other hand, even the Chinese are starting to realize that they need ways to produce energy which won't prevent them from seeing across the street or breathing...
All renewables can't happen before then end of the century, but the healthcare savings from replacing Coal are also in the trillions. Nukes will help bridge the gap.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rts008 on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:48PM
Well said, and I'll add this:
The longer we put it off, the more it will cost us when the switch is forced on us by necessity...Quadrillions by then, the way costs are rising.(hyperbole warning!)
At that time 44 trillion will seem like a bargain.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:01PM
What's the basis for that claim? Are we spending all that money just to research vastly more expensive ways to switch? I know, if I have to "switch", I'm not going to employ the most expensive approach possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:57PM
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:12PM
The question can easily be turned around. Do you?
Pollution is also dispersed and rendered neutral. There is no example of constantly accumulating pollution. CO2 both has well known "carbon sinks" and a very weak pollution effect for the quantity emitted. And given that the proposed solutions to this "pollution" are supposedly getting cheaper all the time, what is the point of claiming "extra expense"?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:53PM
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday May 16 2014, @12:54AM
No, not at all. Keep polluting at a controlled level until we have more economic alternatives. I think it'll get a lot cheaper. And there's always time value and discount rates. Putting off a fixed cost really does make it cheaper.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16 2014, @02:16AM
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday May 16 2014, @08:12AM
There are other, bigger priorities for humanity than slightly cheaper renewable energy. I see no reason not to wait, just on that basis.
This is a false dilemma. Wait and see is not "cover-your-eyes-and-hope-it-goes-away". You really do need to show that doing something actually is better than the powerful economic advantages of doing nothing.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Saturday May 17 2014, @03:59PM
Are you daft, trolling, or just being willfully obtuse?
Costs go up over time for infrastructure, and always will under the current way of doing things.
I bought my first new car and my first house for a total of $30,000.00(USD) back when.
(Gasoline was $0.35(USD) per gallon around that time.)
According to your reasoning, I should still be able to do either just as cheaply nowadays.
Not a snowballs chance in hell, for that to happen this day and age.
Stupid git.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:13PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday May 16 2014, @08:50AM
Now, I know there's a lot of gab about the short-sightness of the business world. But if this huge payoff really does exist, then it'll be worth someone's while to do it. Maybe not today (the alleged return is currently 2.5% per year (after inflation, I assume) which is a little weak for the business world), but well before 2050.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:38PM
anyone have an estimate of the value of scrap lead, steel, aluminium,copper, depleted uranium and other metals the various military's have left lying around in places like Afghanistan/Iraq? :)
when I was unemployed it was easy to get drinking money just cleaning up a bit of bush area of rubbish. Trillions are just drinking money to governments
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:03PM
Well, $44 trillion is not exactly petty cash for any government. I think that may be most of the gross domestic product for the entire world economy. Maybe $44 billion for the U.S. government is petty cash, considering that the Federal Reserve can create it out of thin air as they have been doing regularly lately in buying U.S. government bonds to stimulate the economy.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:17PM
it's a 'global cost' so there would be more than just one government involved, if they all chip in for a round if drinkys they can probably do this :) of course I am trolling...slightly.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:17PM
My guess is tens of millions of dollars at best. The locals know how to salvage and most of the stuff you mention would have negative value to actually extract it from the landscape.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EvilJim on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:42PM
good answer, I've often wondered how long a place would have to be a warzone before it was worth mining... same for old garbage dumps in the west, there must be tonnes of metals and other usable resources down there.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 16 2014, @01:12AM
Why go back to a war zone and piss them off all over again.
Just send your miners out to your local garbage dump / land fill / junk yard, etc.
There is more metal laying around than you might realize. There is a US steel company (Nucor) who's whole business model revolves around metal recovery rather than mining.
There is scrap steal laying all over this country (any country, actually).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Friday May 16 2014, @02:18AM
I was thinking along the lines of specific metal requirements like high concentrations of lead when mentioning war zones, absolutely there would be political problems with foreigners coming in to do it..
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 16 2014, @02:45AM
Pretty dispersed though I imagine. Unless you happen on one of those caches live of mortar rounds the terrorists use to make truck bombs. There seem to be an endless supply of these cached around the country. [google.com]
Maybe we can make them a deal. You keep the HE, just sell us the lead.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Friday May 16 2014, @03:00AM
haha, yeah, I've heard they cook with the explosives... :)I just did some mental gymnastics and leaps of logic and it would only take 50g of metallic lead in 500g dirt to be equivalent to typical lead ore (wiki actually says less than 10%) but then you also have the benefit of not having to convert it to metal and separate the other metals from it that are usually in lead ore, so dunno, there might be some deposits in heavily fought over areas worth something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead#Occurrence [wikipedia.org]