The clean-energy transition will require huge amounts of key minerals like lithium and cobalt, used to make cleantech like batteries & wind turbines. They are often mined under socially & environmentally dubious conditions. Is it a new resource curse?
This is a nice overview and I look forward to more details. It is interesting to me that nickel gets mentioned, but doesn't make it into the discussion like cobalt and lithium seem to always do. In my view, nickel is the worst of these. This is because its increased demand in renewables, especially EVs, accelerates strip-mining highly unique and biodiverse biota in Indonesia and the Philippines - plus the runoff goes onto coral reefs. For reasons I've laid out in my overview (Electric Vehicles: The Dirty Nickel Problem https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/27/electric-vehicles-the-dirty-nickel-problem/), I think nickel should be just plain avoided. Or, if you have only 4 minutes (and like music!), there is this: So You Want An Electric Car? https://youtu.be/4sBN22UnAv8.
Nickel for alloys and batteries is preferentially sourced from sulfide ores because the conversion into high purity nickel compounds is less complex and costly than from laterites.
I don't think it necessary to avoid nickel use in batteries altogether though I do think cobalt should be avoided (and that will happen soon). The EV industry could supply all its nickel needs from sulfide orebodies for many decades to come. There are very large, though low grade, nickel sulfide or nickel/iron alloy orebodies in Viet Nam, Russia, Australia and Canada with production costs likely to be similar to laterite deposits. In Canada, which I am most familiar with having worked here as an exploration geologist, there are 5 deposits with drill defined resources that total about 12 million tonnes of contained nickel with room for further expansion. To put that in perspective total nickel demand for EVs in 2021 was in the order of 100,000 tonnes. These orebodies can be developed with potentially net zero carbon emissions using hydro electric power and by sequestering CO2 in the mine tailings.
Laterites tend to be higher grade but with high cost for metal recovery and as you point out use highly polluting processes. Lateritic nickel is produced mostly in the form of nickel pig iron which ends up as stainless steel. While laterite mines in production are mostly in the tropics there are some very large laterite deposits in arid climates in Australia. Two, Murrin Murrin and Ravensthorpe, are producing mines that have less negative impact than the mines in the tropics.
Why Tesla/Musk chose to pitch in with the mothballed New Caledonia laterite mine is a mystery given the major environmental and social problems that have beset that operation not to mention high costs. But Tesla's involvement so far does not seem to have involved any great commitment.
Europe and the US for decades have been outsourcing their mineral supplies and largely ignoring the negative environmental and social impacts that go with that policy. Poorer countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, New Caledonia, New Guinea and Madagascar, all with large laterite nickel mines, have paid a stiff price both in pollution and corruption of their political/governance systems.
If renewables are to be credible mining's social and environmental impacts have to be minimized. That's possible but it takes commitment, developed governance/regulation and money. I think eventually the car manufacturers will be forced to actively invest in upstream nickel and lithium supply.
These are good points and I agree that it would be better if EV manufacturers would confine their nickel to sulfide sources. However, 1) demand for nickel for EVs is fueling the construction of HPAL plants to provide nickel suitable for batteries (with even worse environmental problems than smelting), 2) China is stepping up the purification of laterite Ni pig-iron for EV use, and 3) EV demand will shift users which might have chosen (but not needed) sulfide nickel to laterite nickel, increasing environmental costs in laterite producing areas. So, that is why I would prefer to see no nickel in EV batteries.
This is a very good summary - I look forward to the next chapters. I'm not clear why the IEA left iron and aluminium out of their comparison of EV and ICE vehicle mineral inputs and not sure what minerals they are talking of when they say: “A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car”. This phrase has been seized upon by, on the one hand, the fossil fuel apologists and on the other the catastrophist greenie wing who paint EV and renewables tech generally as a threat almost on a par with fossil fuels.
A mid range Tesla weighs some 250 Kg. more than a similar sized ICE vehicle (Tesla 3 1750 kg, Toyota Camry 1495 kg) with most of the extra weight, and mineral content, in the battery. Aside from the engine, radiator and the exhaust system most of the other mineral contents are the same in the ICE V as in an EV. An internal combustion engine weighs about 130 kg (4 cyl) to 320 kg (V8, 6 cyl diesel), made up mostly of iron and aluminum with minor chromium, nickel and vanadium.
When looking at the clean energy transition we should also be considering other aspects of the energy and minerals demand spectrum. Vaclav Smil in his book "Growth" points out that the 72 million vehicles sold in 2015 had 180 times the mass but embodied only some 7 times the energy used to produce about 2.2 billion smart phones, tablets and notebooks that year. The phones, etc. have a short life of about 2-3 years so that the embodied energy use per year for portable electronic devices approaches that of vehicles. The recycling rate for consumer electronics, even though they contain many exotic minerals of high value, is abysmally low and for vehicles the recycling rate is quite high.
I have some comments on the 'dirty nickel' problem which I'll attach as a response to Cliff Rice's commentary below.
Excellent podcast, and I was delighted to see the informative graphs that helped explain things I missed. In a follow-up podcast, please let us about the lithium in the Salton Sea area in California, which is generating a lot of discussion now, both its potential and about the pollution and other hazards involved, especially to nearby communities.
I think one very important differences between this and oil is that for oil there isn't a replacement. If a country used a certain amout of oil to operate it would continue to require that amount for years, even decades.
While for these materials there are mostly credible replacements. For batteries, LFP contains only lithium unlike the (for now) more common NMC/NCA that contains more rare and problematic minerals. Sodium batteries aren't here yet, but look promising and contains no lithium.
While rare-earth metals can create some fantastic permanent magnet motors/generators there are other motors/generators that don't use them. These are used widely today, so they are competetive. Similarly some types of design use much less copper than others.
Our ability to move away from problematic minerals are much better than it ever was for oil. Of course that does not mean we will not have short term problems. But still. Much better.
I'm sure David has this on the agenda, but would be interested to learn more about what alternatives exist in non-battery industries to replace potentially expensive/difficult-to-get minerals with more numerous ones (as he already covered this for batteries in much greater detail). For example, SunDrive's recent solar panel made with copper instead of silver.
I just read somewhere that there's a very significant amount of new aluminum required for the frames for all these solar panels. And given aluminum's high energy requirement for new creation that's something that will also increase CO2 a bunch till we green the power grids. How does that factor into the above ?
one fun factoid, it had a quote of 75% of all aluminum every made is still in use today, due to it's ridiculously low cost to recycle.
The shift to green energy would be much more environmentally friendly if we already had shifted to green energy! But every credible life cycle analysis I have seem still have solar and wind still come out as positive contribution.
Oh agreed. Though, I think it's only been recently that a solar panel actually went CO2 positive for it's full lifecycle? or maybe I'm just regurgitating the propaganda of the oil industry...haha even so, putting panels directly on the plants making panels seems like a great 'statement' to me
One comment I’ve heard recently from people on the right is that there is child labor associated with mining and EVs. I assume this criticism is in bad faith, so maybe I shouldn’t even worry about responding, but my thought is, 1) this is already occurring for gas powered vehicles and 2) obviously this is something to address and make sure it doesn’t happen. Are there any other retorts ya’ll can think of that would be important for me to emphasize if I have this discussion with people?
"To [reach net zero by 2050/hold warming beneath 1.5°C], it must radically ramp up production of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles (EVs), electrolyzers for hydrogen, and power lines."
David, it's already impossible hold warming beneath 1.5°C - or even 2.0°C - and there's plenty of evidence that "radically ramp[ing] up production of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles (EVs), electrolyzers for hydrogen, and power lines" will make things even worse.
According to the "Grandfather of Climate Change Awareness", Columbia University climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, it isn't due to lack of minerals but misplaced faith in renewable energy:
"The underlying reason for the great overshoot of the 2°C scenario is failure of the world to develop a clean energy system for electricity. Instead, the West – or at least the liberal West – has adopted the fantasy of 100% renewable energy within decades, in which both nuclear power and fossil fuels are eliminated. Further, the West has instructed the developing world that it, too, must follow this fantasy. Consequently, President Clinton terminated research and development on nuclear power in the United States after his election in 1992. Germany, as the host nation for COP6 in Bonn in 2001, excluded nuclear power as a clean development mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol. Now, financing for fossil fuel or nuclear power plants is being denied to developing countries, even though the West used those energies to raise its own standards of living and continues to use those energies as needed to maintain living standards.
"The 100% renewables vision was spurred mainly by Amory Lovins, who correctly projected in the 1970s that energy efficiency would allow less energy use than predicted by the Energy Information Agency. However, his expectation that all fossil fuels, nuclear power and large hydro could be replaced by soft renewables is debunked by real world data. Real world utility experts conclude that renewable energies must be complemented by reliable baseload electricity generation available 24/7 – either fossil fuels or nuclear. For the sake of climate, the partner of renewables had better by nuclear power, not fossil fuels.
"The Big Climate Short has been handed to young people. They are inheriting an energy and climate system in which large climate change is now unavoidable. The United Nations and government leaders pretend that global warming, now at 1.2°C, can be curtailed with little additional warming. Capable scientists with an understanding of climate and energy know that this is pure, unadulterated bulls**t. Politicians who claim paltry successes while ignoring the elephants in the room must be called out. We have sold our young people short."
Also, comparing LLNL's 2017 Energy Flow Chart with your 2020 update shows that in three years natural gas consumption for electricity had increased by 31%:
So what is your argument? That it shouldn’t happen? That we need nuclear and renewables? If you’re claiming disaster either way, just trying to clarify what your position is on what to do about this.
My argument is to heed the advice of climate experts - not venture capitalists of any persuasion, nor the investment banks that profit from enriching them, nor the multitudinous dot-coms that sell advertising to them, nor their suppliers, promoters, or consultants. They believe "nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change."
That means nuclear power - not solar, wind, wave energy, hydroelectric, nor geothermal - is priority #1, the basis, the ground floor. That's where funding goes to first, not last.
Ok thank you for the clarification. I just trust that Volts (that’s what I call Mr. Roberts bc when I first heard the pod And he said “this is volts” I immediately assumed it was his moniker) has looked into all of this. I’m assuming he is heeding the advice of climate experts.
Jeremy, WADR to Volts: many well-meaning people who are concerned about climate change, I feel, are being deceived about what our prospects are for limiting CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
No one can argue that wind and solar have made gains in the last decade. But no one can argue that both remain inherently limited by the restrictions imposed on them by night and weather, as well. Solar will never generate electricity at night; wind turbines will never generate electricity when the wind isn't blowing. And electrical energy doesn't sit in wires, waiting to be used - it must be generated, in real time, to meet demand.
Those who view batteries as a potential way to overcome these limitations don't understand how much electricity is required to feed the massive appetite of consumers. To power California for one day with batteries would require an investment of over $1 trillion - more than four times California's annual budget. Without that much money to spend on batteries, and re-spend every 7-10 years as they wear out, we need some kind of baseload energy to generate electricity to the grid, in real time, when renewables are unavailable.
Nuclear is the only source that can do it reliably and with no CO2 emissions. If nuclear is too expensive in some locations, we must reduce its cost. Those are really our only options.
Solar and batteries can be deployed now at scale with a lot of unused pathways to make them proliferate and universal. For instance, an Eisenhower Interstate-esque 90% subsidy on installed cost of panels and batteries would cause a massive rapid deployment on commercial and residential installations (with bylaws blocking price gouging on the items and labor, with an inflation allowance, index the costs to 2019). Right now you don't have America's commercial parking lots getting solar canopies, nor big box stores installing batteries, but if the installed cost were 90% subsidized? nearly universal adoption within a year or two.
Nuclear is important and essential but in the United States takes about 35 years from proposal to turning on one nuclear reactors 1GW of power (1 proposal yields 15 years of fighting, 5 years of bid/design, 14 years of construction and 1 year of approvals). The cumulative emissions of delaying renewables while waiting 35 years for that nuclear aren't acceptable--particularly when globally, 160 GW of renewables were installed last year, and likely in less than ten years globally will be installing 2TW or more of renewables per year. if the scale and installation keeps increasing after that, we could have 50TW installed in less than 20 years. if it flatlines at 2TW of renewables every year, we'd still get to 50 TW before the 35 years it takes to build one 1GW nuclear reactor in the united states.
The other downside risk to nuclear is the human factor. it's dangerous. and we have one political party devoted to the ideology that all regulations are evil, no matter what they protect us from. How does the risks of nuclear play out when one political party (and self-interested capitalists) are devoted to stripping away regulations that keep nuclear viable and safe for ideological purity (and short term profits)?
for example, the very human motives of "profit above all else" that lead to
falsifying regulatory x-rays of welds in a reactor, as seen in the movie Silkwood. Nuclear power is pretty amazing and generally safe, but until we change human nature, there will still be innumerable people enthusiastically and elaborately making nuclear dangerous if they think it will increase a dividend by one penny.
And frankly republicans anti-regulatory ideology makes new/more nuclear potentially enacted under their regimes downright terrifying in many
respects than it would have been thirty-five years ago.
"Solar and batteries can be deployed now at scale with a lot of unused pathways to make them proliferate and universal. For instance, an Eisenhower Interstate-esque 90% subsidy on installed cost of panels and batteries would cause a massive rapid deployment on commercial and residential installations..."
Unsupportable conjecture.
"Nuclear is important and essential but in the United States takes about 35 years from proposal to turning on one nuclear reactors 1GW of power (1 proposal yields 15 years of fighting, 5 years of bid/design, 14 years of construction and 1 year of approvals)."
Georgia Power began construction on Units 3-4 at Plant Vogtle in 2013; they will go online in 2023. When they do, the plant will be generating more clean electricity than all renewables east of the Mississippi combined - in any weather, or time of day.
"...likely in less than ten years globally will be installing 2TW or more of renewables per year."
Likely? Basing climate policy on guesswork, in 2022, would be the height of irresponsibility.
"The other downside risk to nuclear is the human factor. it's dangerous. and we have one political party devoted to the ideology that all regulations are evil, no matter what they protect us from."
The dangers of nuclear power are highly exaggerated. Per unit of power, nuclear is the safest way to generate dispatchable electricity on a grid - by far.
You won't get any disagreement from me about the evils of Republicanism, or Fascism, or whatever it's called today. Refreshing, however, that support for nuclear energy is bi-partisan - that means legislation with the potential of becoming law.
"...that lead to falsifying regulatory x-rays of welds in a reactor, as seen in the movie Silkwood."
The Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site featured in the film Silkwood was closed 47 years ago. To compare fuel fabrication and safety of 47 years ago to today's would be equivalent to comparing solar panels manufactured in 1975, to those produced now. No comparison.
The world’s economy & cultures are saturated with fossil fuels. Adverse climate effects are bad enough, but the constantly gyrating instability of energy pricing is in itself a kind of insecurity inducing social poison, exploited by BigOil to make money & justified by the rationale that this is simply how capital free markets work. Energy market-makers & manipulators like Enron & cartels make money from both real and illusory short-term scarcity; for them, scarcity is a permanently exploitable feature, not a bug. It does appear, and we can only hope, that the shift to widely distributed, abundant, safe, reliable, inexpensive renewable energy will at some point, perhaps by 2050, result in a significant reduction in the levels of social & economic disruption & anxiety inherent in our current fossil fuel dependent economy. RE: Minerals, It’s interesting to see that existing energy producing geothermal wells are now being considered as lithium sources.
I have two concerns: 1. Mining is the dirtiest of all industries, and one can include fossil fuel extraction in this since it is actually a form of mining. Currently in the U.S., the environmental pollution resulting from mining appears to be poorly regulated. How is the world going to deal with the environmental impacts resulting from the mining of minerals that are needed for renewable energy? 2. What is the lifetime of renewable energy infrastructure? How long do wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries for electric vehicles last before they must be replaced? Will the supply of minerals crucial for renewable energy infrastructure be sufficient over the long term? I'm not against the transition to renewable energy, but I think we need to analyze in great detail what the environmental costs will be and avoid unpleasant surprises down the road! I think there is too much wishful thinking about renewable energy at the moment.
This is a nice overview and I look forward to more details. It is interesting to me that nickel gets mentioned, but doesn't make it into the discussion like cobalt and lithium seem to always do. In my view, nickel is the worst of these. This is because its increased demand in renewables, especially EVs, accelerates strip-mining highly unique and biodiverse biota in Indonesia and the Philippines - plus the runoff goes onto coral reefs. For reasons I've laid out in my overview (Electric Vehicles: The Dirty Nickel Problem https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/27/electric-vehicles-the-dirty-nickel-problem/), I think nickel should be just plain avoided. Or, if you have only 4 minutes (and like music!), there is this: So You Want An Electric Car? https://youtu.be/4sBN22UnAv8.
Nickel for alloys and batteries is preferentially sourced from sulfide ores because the conversion into high purity nickel compounds is less complex and costly than from laterites.
I don't think it necessary to avoid nickel use in batteries altogether though I do think cobalt should be avoided (and that will happen soon). The EV industry could supply all its nickel needs from sulfide orebodies for many decades to come. There are very large, though low grade, nickel sulfide or nickel/iron alloy orebodies in Viet Nam, Russia, Australia and Canada with production costs likely to be similar to laterite deposits. In Canada, which I am most familiar with having worked here as an exploration geologist, there are 5 deposits with drill defined resources that total about 12 million tonnes of contained nickel with room for further expansion. To put that in perspective total nickel demand for EVs in 2021 was in the order of 100,000 tonnes. These orebodies can be developed with potentially net zero carbon emissions using hydro electric power and by sequestering CO2 in the mine tailings.
Laterites tend to be higher grade but with high cost for metal recovery and as you point out use highly polluting processes. Lateritic nickel is produced mostly in the form of nickel pig iron which ends up as stainless steel. While laterite mines in production are mostly in the tropics there are some very large laterite deposits in arid climates in Australia. Two, Murrin Murrin and Ravensthorpe, are producing mines that have less negative impact than the mines in the tropics.
Why Tesla/Musk chose to pitch in with the mothballed New Caledonia laterite mine is a mystery given the major environmental and social problems that have beset that operation not to mention high costs. But Tesla's involvement so far does not seem to have involved any great commitment.
Europe and the US for decades have been outsourcing their mineral supplies and largely ignoring the negative environmental and social impacts that go with that policy. Poorer countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, New Caledonia, New Guinea and Madagascar, all with large laterite nickel mines, have paid a stiff price both in pollution and corruption of their political/governance systems.
If renewables are to be credible mining's social and environmental impacts have to be minimized. That's possible but it takes commitment, developed governance/regulation and money. I think eventually the car manufacturers will be forced to actively invest in upstream nickel and lithium supply.
These are good points and I agree that it would be better if EV manufacturers would confine their nickel to sulfide sources. However, 1) demand for nickel for EVs is fueling the construction of HPAL plants to provide nickel suitable for batteries (with even worse environmental problems than smelting), 2) China is stepping up the purification of laterite Ni pig-iron for EV use, and 3) EV demand will shift users which might have chosen (but not needed) sulfide nickel to laterite nickel, increasing environmental costs in laterite producing areas. So, that is why I would prefer to see no nickel in EV batteries.
This is a very good summary - I look forward to the next chapters. I'm not clear why the IEA left iron and aluminium out of their comparison of EV and ICE vehicle mineral inputs and not sure what minerals they are talking of when they say: “A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car”. This phrase has been seized upon by, on the one hand, the fossil fuel apologists and on the other the catastrophist greenie wing who paint EV and renewables tech generally as a threat almost on a par with fossil fuels.
A mid range Tesla weighs some 250 Kg. more than a similar sized ICE vehicle (Tesla 3 1750 kg, Toyota Camry 1495 kg) with most of the extra weight, and mineral content, in the battery. Aside from the engine, radiator and the exhaust system most of the other mineral contents are the same in the ICE V as in an EV. An internal combustion engine weighs about 130 kg (4 cyl) to 320 kg (V8, 6 cyl diesel), made up mostly of iron and aluminum with minor chromium, nickel and vanadium.
When looking at the clean energy transition we should also be considering other aspects of the energy and minerals demand spectrum. Vaclav Smil in his book "Growth" points out that the 72 million vehicles sold in 2015 had 180 times the mass but embodied only some 7 times the energy used to produce about 2.2 billion smart phones, tablets and notebooks that year. The phones, etc. have a short life of about 2-3 years so that the embodied energy use per year for portable electronic devices approaches that of vehicles. The recycling rate for consumer electronics, even though they contain many exotic minerals of high value, is abysmally low and for vehicles the recycling rate is quite high.
I have some comments on the 'dirty nickel' problem which I'll attach as a response to Cliff Rice's commentary below.
Excellent podcast, and I was delighted to see the informative graphs that helped explain things I missed. In a follow-up podcast, please let us about the lithium in the Salton Sea area in California, which is generating a lot of discussion now, both its potential and about the pollution and other hazards involved, especially to nearby communities.
I think one very important differences between this and oil is that for oil there isn't a replacement. If a country used a certain amout of oil to operate it would continue to require that amount for years, even decades.
While for these materials there are mostly credible replacements. For batteries, LFP contains only lithium unlike the (for now) more common NMC/NCA that contains more rare and problematic minerals. Sodium batteries aren't here yet, but look promising and contains no lithium.
While rare-earth metals can create some fantastic permanent magnet motors/generators there are other motors/generators that don't use them. These are used widely today, so they are competetive. Similarly some types of design use much less copper than others.
Our ability to move away from problematic minerals are much better than it ever was for oil. Of course that does not mean we will not have short term problems. But still. Much better.
I'm sure David has this on the agenda, but would be interested to learn more about what alternatives exist in non-battery industries to replace potentially expensive/difficult-to-get minerals with more numerous ones (as he already covered this for batteries in much greater detail). For example, SunDrive's recent solar panel made with copper instead of silver.
I' with you on LFP: So You Want An Electric Car? https://youtu.be/4sBN22UnAv8
I just read somewhere that there's a very significant amount of new aluminum required for the frames for all these solar panels. And given aluminum's high energy requirement for new creation that's something that will also increase CO2 a bunch till we green the power grids. How does that factor into the above ?
one fun factoid, it had a quote of 75% of all aluminum every made is still in use today, due to it's ridiculously low cost to recycle.
The shift to green energy would be much more environmentally friendly if we already had shifted to green energy! But every credible life cycle analysis I have seem still have solar and wind still come out as positive contribution.
Oh agreed. Though, I think it's only been recently that a solar panel actually went CO2 positive for it's full lifecycle? or maybe I'm just regurgitating the propaganda of the oil industry...haha even so, putting panels directly on the plants making panels seems like a great 'statement' to me
Extremely helpful. Thx.
One comment I’ve heard recently from people on the right is that there is child labor associated with mining and EVs. I assume this criticism is in bad faith, so maybe I shouldn’t even worry about responding, but my thought is, 1) this is already occurring for gas powered vehicles and 2) obviously this is something to address and make sure it doesn’t happen. Are there any other retorts ya’ll can think of that would be important for me to emphasize if I have this discussion with people?
"To [reach net zero by 2050/hold warming beneath 1.5°C], it must radically ramp up production of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles (EVs), electrolyzers for hydrogen, and power lines."
David, it's already impossible hold warming beneath 1.5°C - or even 2.0°C - and there's plenty of evidence that "radically ramp[ing] up production of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles (EVs), electrolyzers for hydrogen, and power lines" will make things even worse.
According to the "Grandfather of Climate Change Awareness", Columbia University climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, it isn't due to lack of minerals but misplaced faith in renewable energy:
"The underlying reason for the great overshoot of the 2°C scenario is failure of the world to develop a clean energy system for electricity. Instead, the West – or at least the liberal West – has adopted the fantasy of 100% renewable energy within decades, in which both nuclear power and fossil fuels are eliminated. Further, the West has instructed the developing world that it, too, must follow this fantasy. Consequently, President Clinton terminated research and development on nuclear power in the United States after his election in 1992. Germany, as the host nation for COP6 in Bonn in 2001, excluded nuclear power as a clean development mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol. Now, financing for fossil fuel or nuclear power plants is being denied to developing countries, even though the West used those energies to raise its own standards of living and continues to use those energies as needed to maintain living standards.
"The 100% renewables vision was spurred mainly by Amory Lovins, who correctly projected in the 1970s that energy efficiency would allow less energy use than predicted by the Energy Information Agency. However, his expectation that all fossil fuels, nuclear power and large hydro could be replaced by soft renewables is debunked by real world data. Real world utility experts conclude that renewable energies must be complemented by reliable baseload electricity generation available 24/7 – either fossil fuels or nuclear. For the sake of climate, the partner of renewables had better by nuclear power, not fossil fuels.
"The Big Climate Short has been handed to young people. They are inheriting an energy and climate system in which large climate change is now unavoidable. The United Nations and government leaders pretend that global warming, now at 1.2°C, can be curtailed with little additional warming. Capable scientists with an understanding of climate and energy know that this is pure, unadulterated bulls**t. Politicians who claim paltry successes while ignoring the elephants in the room must be called out. We have sold our young people short."
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/NovemberTUpdate+BigClimateShort.23December2021.pdf
Also, comparing LLNL's 2017 Energy Flow Chart with your 2020 update shows that in three years natural gas consumption for electricity had increased by 31%:
https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/charts/Energy/ENERGY_2017_USA.png
An environmental boon? No, the "clean energy transition" is an unfolding environmental disaster.
So what is your argument? That it shouldn’t happen? That we need nuclear and renewables? If you’re claiming disaster either way, just trying to clarify what your position is on what to do about this.
My argument is to heed the advice of climate experts - not venture capitalists of any persuasion, nor the investment banks that profit from enriching them, nor the multitudinous dot-coms that sell advertising to them, nor their suppliers, promoters, or consultants. They believe "nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/nuclear-power-paves-the-only-viable-path-forward-on-climate-change
That means nuclear power - not solar, wind, wave energy, hydroelectric, nor geothermal - is priority #1, the basis, the ground floor. That's where funding goes to first, not last.
Ok thank you for the clarification. I just trust that Volts (that’s what I call Mr. Roberts bc when I first heard the pod And he said “this is volts” I immediately assumed it was his moniker) has looked into all of this. I’m assuming he is heeding the advice of climate experts.
Jeremy, WADR to Volts: many well-meaning people who are concerned about climate change, I feel, are being deceived about what our prospects are for limiting CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
No one can argue that wind and solar have made gains in the last decade. But no one can argue that both remain inherently limited by the restrictions imposed on them by night and weather, as well. Solar will never generate electricity at night; wind turbines will never generate electricity when the wind isn't blowing. And electrical energy doesn't sit in wires, waiting to be used - it must be generated, in real time, to meet demand.
Those who view batteries as a potential way to overcome these limitations don't understand how much electricity is required to feed the massive appetite of consumers. To power California for one day with batteries would require an investment of over $1 trillion - more than four times California's annual budget. Without that much money to spend on batteries, and re-spend every 7-10 years as they wear out, we need some kind of baseload energy to generate electricity to the grid, in real time, when renewables are unavailable.
Nuclear is the only source that can do it reliably and with no CO2 emissions. If nuclear is too expensive in some locations, we must reduce its cost. Those are really our only options.
Solar and batteries can be deployed now at scale with a lot of unused pathways to make them proliferate and universal. For instance, an Eisenhower Interstate-esque 90% subsidy on installed cost of panels and batteries would cause a massive rapid deployment on commercial and residential installations (with bylaws blocking price gouging on the items and labor, with an inflation allowance, index the costs to 2019). Right now you don't have America's commercial parking lots getting solar canopies, nor big box stores installing batteries, but if the installed cost were 90% subsidized? nearly universal adoption within a year or two.
Nuclear is important and essential but in the United States takes about 35 years from proposal to turning on one nuclear reactors 1GW of power (1 proposal yields 15 years of fighting, 5 years of bid/design, 14 years of construction and 1 year of approvals). The cumulative emissions of delaying renewables while waiting 35 years for that nuclear aren't acceptable--particularly when globally, 160 GW of renewables were installed last year, and likely in less than ten years globally will be installing 2TW or more of renewables per year. if the scale and installation keeps increasing after that, we could have 50TW installed in less than 20 years. if it flatlines at 2TW of renewables every year, we'd still get to 50 TW before the 35 years it takes to build one 1GW nuclear reactor in the united states.
The other downside risk to nuclear is the human factor. it's dangerous. and we have one political party devoted to the ideology that all regulations are evil, no matter what they protect us from. How does the risks of nuclear play out when one political party (and self-interested capitalists) are devoted to stripping away regulations that keep nuclear viable and safe for ideological purity (and short term profits)?
for example, the very human motives of "profit above all else" that lead to
falsifying regulatory x-rays of welds in a reactor, as seen in the movie Silkwood. Nuclear power is pretty amazing and generally safe, but until we change human nature, there will still be innumerable people enthusiastically and elaborately making nuclear dangerous if they think it will increase a dividend by one penny.
And frankly republicans anti-regulatory ideology makes new/more nuclear potentially enacted under their regimes downright terrifying in many
respects than it would have been thirty-five years ago.
"Solar and batteries can be deployed now at scale with a lot of unused pathways to make them proliferate and universal. For instance, an Eisenhower Interstate-esque 90% subsidy on installed cost of panels and batteries would cause a massive rapid deployment on commercial and residential installations..."
Unsupportable conjecture.
"Nuclear is important and essential but in the United States takes about 35 years from proposal to turning on one nuclear reactors 1GW of power (1 proposal yields 15 years of fighting, 5 years of bid/design, 14 years of construction and 1 year of approvals)."
Georgia Power began construction on Units 3-4 at Plant Vogtle in 2013; they will go online in 2023. When they do, the plant will be generating more clean electricity than all renewables east of the Mississippi combined - in any weather, or time of day.
"...likely in less than ten years globally will be installing 2TW or more of renewables per year."
Likely? Basing climate policy on guesswork, in 2022, would be the height of irresponsibility.
"The other downside risk to nuclear is the human factor. it's dangerous. and we have one political party devoted to the ideology that all regulations are evil, no matter what they protect us from."
The dangers of nuclear power are highly exaggerated. Per unit of power, nuclear is the safest way to generate dispatchable electricity on a grid - by far.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
You won't get any disagreement from me about the evils of Republicanism, or Fascism, or whatever it's called today. Refreshing, however, that support for nuclear energy is bi-partisan - that means legislation with the potential of becoming law.
"...that lead to falsifying regulatory x-rays of welds in a reactor, as seen in the movie Silkwood."
The Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site featured in the film Silkwood was closed 47 years ago. To compare fuel fabrication and safety of 47 years ago to today's would be equivalent to comparing solar panels manufactured in 1975, to those produced now. No comparison.
The world’s economy & cultures are saturated with fossil fuels. Adverse climate effects are bad enough, but the constantly gyrating instability of energy pricing is in itself a kind of insecurity inducing social poison, exploited by BigOil to make money & justified by the rationale that this is simply how capital free markets work. Energy market-makers & manipulators like Enron & cartels make money from both real and illusory short-term scarcity; for them, scarcity is a permanently exploitable feature, not a bug. It does appear, and we can only hope, that the shift to widely distributed, abundant, safe, reliable, inexpensive renewable energy will at some point, perhaps by 2050, result in a significant reduction in the levels of social & economic disruption & anxiety inherent in our current fossil fuel dependent economy. RE: Minerals, It’s interesting to see that existing energy producing geothermal wells are now being considered as lithium sources.
I have two concerns: 1. Mining is the dirtiest of all industries, and one can include fossil fuel extraction in this since it is actually a form of mining. Currently in the U.S., the environmental pollution resulting from mining appears to be poorly regulated. How is the world going to deal with the environmental impacts resulting from the mining of minerals that are needed for renewable energy? 2. What is the lifetime of renewable energy infrastructure? How long do wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries for electric vehicles last before they must be replaced? Will the supply of minerals crucial for renewable energy infrastructure be sufficient over the long term? I'm not against the transition to renewable energy, but I think we need to analyze in great detail what the environmental costs will be and avoid unpleasant surprises down the road! I think there is too much wishful thinking about renewable energy at the moment.