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from the turning-green-into-greenbacks dept.
New study shows a fast transition to clean energy is cheaper than slow or no transition:
Transitioning to a decarbonised energy system by around 2050 is expected to save the world at least $12 trillion, compared to continuing our current levels of fossil fuel use, according to a peer-reviewed study today by Oxford University researchers, published in the journal Joule.
The research shows a win-win-win scenario, in which rapidly transitioning to clean energy results in lower energy system costs than a fossil fuel system, while providing more energy to the global economy, and expanding energy access to more people internationally.
The study's 'Fast Transition' scenario, shows a realistic possible future for a fossil-free energy system by around 2050, providing 55% more energy services globally than today, by ramping up solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles, and clean fuels such as green hydrogen (made from renewable electricity).
[...] 'There is a pervasive misconception that switching to clean, green energy will be painful, costly and mean sacrifices for us all – but that's just wrong,' says Doyne Farmer, the Professor of Mathematics who leads the team that conducted the study at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. 'Renewable costs have been trending down for decades. They are already cheaper than fossil fuels, in many situations, and our research shows they will become cheaper than fossil fuels across almost all applications in the years to come. And, if we accelerate the transition, they will become cheaper faster. Completely replacing fossil fuels with clean energy by 2050 will save us trillions.'
[...] Professor Farmer continues, 'The world is facing a simultaneous inflation crisis, national security crisis, and climate crisis, all caused by our dependence on high cost, insecure, polluting, fossil fuels with volatile prices. This study shows ambitious policies to accelerate dramatically the transition to a clean energy future, as quickly as possible, are not only urgently needed for climate reasons, but can save the world trillions in future energy costs, giving us a cleaner, cheaper, more energy secure future.'
Journal Reference:
Rupert Way, Matthew C. Ives, Penny Mealy, J. Doyne Farmer, Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition [open], Joule, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2022.08.009
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 19 2022, @09:43PM (18 children)
I believe the trillions they are referring to saving are in-part the costs of moving our coastal metropolises to higher ground...
There's solar, there's wind, there's wave power extraction (which would tie in quite nicely with offshore wind), there's pumped hydro batteries, there's bio-fuels, and there's nuclear: fission and probably soon (just 10 years away now, instead of 20) fusion.
We really don't need to continue to extract and burn coal starting more or less immediately. There will be the occasional price spikes when things like Russia's shutdown of natural gas exports hits the market unexpectedly (our mostly gas fired local power currently has "fuel charges" exceeding the normal usage charges, because: CNG exports are at an all-time high and it seems like the perfect excuse to run up profits on locally sold natural gas... But, gas itself could spin down significantly as a source of energy for electrical generation if we ramped up the alternative sources as replacements for carbon burning rather than just playing with them in "studies" and the occasional extra capacity projects.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2022, @02:09AM
> We really don't need to continue to extract and burn coal starting more or less immediately.
While I wish you were correct, please see China -- new coal fired power plants:
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/chinese-coal-based-power-plants [wilsoncenter.org]
That 2026, "We'll cut back" sounds like fiction to me.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday September 20 2022, @09:06AM (14 children)
Sure it is. Keep in mind that even in the complete absence of any sort of sea level change, coastal metropolises will spend trillions just to stay in place. The marginal cost of moving them is greatly exaggerated.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 20 2022, @10:09AM (7 children)
While it is true that infrastructure is continually rebuilt, a sudden sea level rise of 1/2 meter or more in 20 years or less would be an unprecedented expense at a global scale.
In Miami alone, hurricane Andrew was rated at $30B in insured losses in 1992 dollars, over triple that in real costs plus a virtual shutdown of the city's non essential economic activity for 2 to 6 months. Andrew didn't destroy any roads, rails, ports, or permanently flood any land.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 20 2022, @11:51AM (6 children)
And of course, no evidence that would happen. For those paying attention, we're presently at around 6-7 cm per 20 years.
Sounds like Andrew destroyed plenty of stuff.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 20 2022, @02:34PM (5 children)
>For those paying attention, we're presently at around 6-7 cm per 20 years.
Which is about 10x what we were at 20 years ago.
>Sounds like Andrew destroyed plenty of stuff.
The stuff Andrew destroyed was relatively easily replaced - in-place. All the infrastructure (except aerial lines like electric and power) was restored within days, and even the electric and landline phone was 99% back up within 10 weeks.
Not just rebuilding damaged roads and rails, but building new in a new location? Orders of magnitude more expensive, un-insurable, even more devastating than the flood of the 9th ward in New Orleans, because the flood will continue for millennia.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 20 2022, @10:16PM (4 children)
Looks like from the first graph here [climate.gov] that sea level rose about 4 cm between 1982 and 2002 and 6.5 cm afterward. It's an increase, but not an order of magnitude increase.
Let me guess, they'll continue to build expensive property in ten feet of water? How about we don't assume that humans will do incredibly stupid things for millennia? My take is that once something floods, they won't rebuild, making the flooding irrelevant past the initial harm. Instead, they'll build on higher land and just not get that thousands of years of floods.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 21 2022, @12:53AM (3 children)
>Looks like from the first graph here
Again, the rates vary depending on where you are measuring. East Coast U.S. has been on a tear lately, relative to the not to distant past.
>My take is that once something floods, they won't rebuild, making the flooding irrelevant past the initial harm. Instead, they'll build on higher land and just not get that thousands of years of floods.
My observation is that the government draws a literal line in the sand, they call it the coastal construction control line, and when a part of an island gets wiped out by a hurricane or what have you, that line does indeed move and they do not (usually) build the land back up to restore the property for the past owners.
However, that coastal construction line tends to have a beach view, not only because people want to build near the beach, but also because governments want the tax income from the insanely high property values that constructions on the beach get assessed for.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 21 2022, @02:59AM (2 children)
Global average of course. Why would I cherrypick particular locations? I recall you brought this out before. But let's remember that while these are large at present compared to global sea level rise, they are limited. Even if all ice were to melt and raise global sea level by oh, 50-100 meters, these perturbations would add or subtract no more than they do now.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 21 2022, @10:06AM (1 child)
>Why would I cherrypick particular locations?
Oh, perhaps because the eastern seaboard of the United States has a little more infrastructure constructed on it's coastline than, say, Southern South America or Southern Africa.
The perturbations are (in many cases) persistent for decades. Ask the people in the Florida Keys who have had standing salt water in their driveways for the past 5 years how insignificant the "king tide" is to them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday September 21 2022, @10:21AM
That doesn't have to be the case when your flooding scenarios happen. And it certainly won't be the case after the flooding scenarios happen.
How about I don't waste my time and just don't do that? What should be more important to me? Southern South America or Southern Africa, poor places that desperately need the modern world and its somewhat higher greenhouse gases emissions, or the Florida Keys people who can just move elsewhere, if higher sea level becomes a problem for them?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 20 2022, @05:58PM (5 children)
It's "moving" more like constantly destroying one side of the city while expanding on the other. It's going to be really expensive but it'll be fairly constant so we'll all just get used to it....
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 20 2022, @06:26PM (3 children)
>It's going to be really expensive but it'll be fairly constant so we'll all just get used to it....
London got used to the plagues, filth in the streets and all manner of things, and it's still there (but may well be moving soon...) I have no doubt the survivors will "get used to" whatever happens. What I do doubt is the continued quality of life when infrastructure that used to last 50 to hundreds of years starts being "returned to nature" after 10-20.
If we're good about it, we'll demolish the buildings and roads and clean up the coasts as the sea moves in. Somehow I doubt the political will is going to be there for that additional cost of moving.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 20 2022, @06:45PM (1 child)
Well back up right until we hit the rich people property then seawalls it is!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 20 2022, @09:54PM
IDK about the rest of the world, but in Florida and the US in general, property values increase by a factor of 3 to 20 as you move nearer the coast... the people we've got smack up against the seawalls and beaches today are the richest we've got. And that's not altogether a bad thing, they can afford to fix the damages that come with open ocean exposure and the occasional storm driven flood. (Unfortunately, they're also powerful enough to game the insurance companies such that some of their losses are covered by insurance that poor people pay into as well - not 100% or anything egregious like that, but anything more than 0 is criminal considering their relative risks.)
Anyway... no doubt some will try seawalls, again, but there are plenty of examples where that has been tried and failed. Actually, there was one rich old bastard that lived on the north end of Casey Key who made a hobby of extending his beach into the channel between Casey and Siesta Keys, it used to be called Midnight Pass, near Sarasota Florida and was the only path from the bay to the Gulf for something like 10-15 miles in either direction, until this guy managed with his sandbag work to get the pass to fill in and build up as a beach-connection between the islands, technically the two islands have been merged (and the pass no longer passable) for over 20 years now. But, for every "land building" story like that which actually builds or holds some beach, there are 100 other stories of projects big and small which fail to hold back the sea for more than a few years per dollar per square inch of beach. Dredging projects run quickly into the millions, and frequently have to be repeated every 5-10 years. Seawalls that are battered by ocean waves are VERY expensive to maintain.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday September 21 2022, @10:22AM
Why would that happen? Sounds like that level of stupid will cause a lot bigger problems than 20 year infrastructure.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 20 2022, @10:36PM
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 20 2022, @05:55PM (1 child)
I found the idea for this industrial heat battery pretty interesting:
Basically they heat the crap out of a bunch of bricks when power is cheap and run the factory off the battery. Creating plain old heat is a HUGE power consumer in industry.
The Rondo Heat Battery Is a Big, Brave Toaster [treehugger.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 20 2022, @06:28PM
All kinds of ways to store energy, if we start having a more "pulse" supply of energy where there's basically a surplus available for free at times, but for a cost at others, I'm sure all sorts of storage schemes will be implemented to suck up the excess until it is merely cheap but no longer free...
🌻🌻 [google.com]