Nikki Haley has some advice for us:
We need to become energy independent and we need to do it now.
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 28, 2022
As it happens, we're already energy independent:
We continue to import about a fifth of our energy for reasons of convenience and geopolitics, but we don't have to. We produce all the energy we need right here at home.
But put that aside for a moment. Does this newfound desire among Republicans mean that they'll start supporting solar and wind? Or merely more nuclear and more drilling in national parks? I've long thought that the only way to get Republicans to go along with subsidizing renewable energy was to somehow make it into a jingoistic national security issue, and this is the first chance we've had to do this.
I don't suppose it will work, but this is the time for a big campaign that emphasizes (a) anti-Russian themes and (b) battery storage to get around the idiotic "solar doesn't work at night/wind doesn't always blow" nonsense. Perhaps the message is that it's not enough for us to be energy independent. We need to help Europe become energy independent too as a way of punishing Putin.
My guess is that this won't work and we'll just be hearing a lot more "Drill Baby Drill" from Haley and her fellow Republicans. But it's worth a try, even if jingoistic appeals aren't your cup of tea.
I see where Manchin supports "energy independence," which means more West Virginia coal.
Feh.
To Chinks
The challenge around the energy independence concept is around time frame.
Yes, on a ten plus time horizon, assuming advancements in things like storage technology, green energy is very appealing. However, if you are asking how the German (Dutch etc) economy can work this year/next year without Russian gas, then all green concept fails as a realistic solution. I am not aware of how, at the scale of Germany, measured year round, solar, wind etc can be ramped up to offset the loss of Russian gas. It seems likely, in the near term, Europe will need fossil fuels to substitute for the loss of Russian gas.
Big picture, Russian military actions hinder the near term, lets go all green, line of argument.
One additional point.
I think green energy supporters, in the US and even in Germany, are making a big mistake by being against nuclear energy: note, I know that not all green energy supporters are against nuclear....
Without nuclear, the challenge of robust electricity generation (24/7 and 365) is much more difficult...
"Nuclear" subsumes a range of technology, not just light water reactors. For instance molten salt reactors, fueled by either waste from light water reactors or thorium.
Yeah. We should wait ten years and overpay for our energy. Good idea.
Ignore the troll.
They aren't against nuclear. Your already outdated.
Bottoms up, Shootie! Only three more shots and you'll have to out your third bottle of tequilla. I know you were saving it for tonight but hey, it's Fat Tuesday! And they deliver liquor now!
You're missing the point that we get to bash idiots like you over the head for not going green earlier. A carbon tax ten or twenty years ago would have made Germany a lot less dependent on Russian gas today.
To a Republican, "energy independence" is code for extracting every last bit of coal, oil, and natural gas from the ground. It has absolutely nothing to do with wind, solar, etc.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^. this
I just bought an all electric car. In the process I learned a bit about solid state batteries. We are improving batteries now.
I have two electric cars and a rooftop solar system with battery storage which powers the entire house and results in a net export to the grid.
There is no "technological reason" to be in favor of expanding coal, natural gas, or oil. They are going to be phased out, the only question is how fast.
Anyone who is "for" any of those three is either completely uninformed or in the bag of those industries.
That's it. We have a chance to inform many more people, but for R's "energy" means fossil fuels, for several ridiculous reasons.
in the bag of those industries
I think you might be on to something.
JHC- 'battery storage to get around the idiotic "solar doesn't work at night/wind doesn't always blow" nonsense'
This is a completely unserious comment. Most likely because, like most times when a Progressive doesn't have a ready answer, mockery is your goto.
Exactly what battery technology are we going to use here, hmmm? Where will the raw materials for said batteries comw from? How toxic will the technology behind them be? How will they be manufactured? Where? By whom? What kind of turnover will they have? Will they be prone to exploding if they aren't managed right? Where will these batteries exist?
Progressives know nothing. You march around like everything can just be done with the snap of a finger and when it isn't or there is pushback, it's always the motives of your adversaries that are questioned, never your idea and whether it's even remotely feasable.
You know nothing. Progressives had their moment and you've been proven to be vicious, unserious children. Sit down and be quiet. Adults need to step up and cleanup your messes, if it's even remotely possible at thia stage.
Please don't feed this troll.
Two thumbs up! These so-called 'Progressives' are all hat and no cattle.
Why do you think the Republicans are anti-Russian? That's like thinking Marjorie Taylor Greene is against killing all the Jews because she compares bad things to the Holocaust.
MTG is in favor of killing Jews because their space lasers cause California forest fires. Amirite?
She saw that in a Pink Panther movie that she misunderstood.
She is a jew
Republicans think that "energy independence" means becoming more dependent on finite sources of energy.
And taking note of the comment above about how battery technology is somehow, sheesh, I don't know, an unworkable solution?
We live in a time where you can't even have discussions with any conservative, troll or otherwise, without two separate heavy lifts.
You know, you take any liberal position, even the stupid "defund the police" and basically you can go right to whether the position would work.
As to most conservative "positions" - I mean, first you have to find out if its even a good faith argument. Because many are simply bad faith. I saw an "argument" once that an EV actually polluted more than a internal combustion engine car. The only way this "argument" was even close to supportable was by assuming that ALL of the electricity used by the car was, get this, coming 100% from coal. A situation which exists nowhere.
Yes. Batteries do not spring out of a Harry Potter spell. They have to be made. Like every other piece of equipment we use to transport ourselves. Yes, a battery pack is more expensive than a gas tank. Its no longer more expensive the (a) the gas tank and (b) the f-ing gas you have to put in to the tank over the life of the car. Next.
Conservative arguments often start with some tiny grain they've spun an incredible clam bone around that they think is truth largely because they can sell it to suckers and they're offended to the core if you're not buying it.
The burden of proof is on you to show that batteries are a feasible solution. Not on anybody else to prove you're wrong. And you can only do so by presenting actual data that includes lots of figues. But you won't do that. That's why I know you're a troll 😉
So step off, you witless fucking cock-splat.
I mean, there are lots of figures, but not that many.
I have three Tesla Powerwalls which are about 13.5kwh each, so 40kwh. that's plenty to power my house over night. For reference, there is a 74 kwh battery in my Tesla Model 3, and a 24 kwh battery in my Volkswagen eGolf. There would need to be tech adjustments to use those batteries to power the house (the soon to be released Ford F150 Lightning is due to be set up with two way charging and a 200kwh battery, so its not like that tech is years off).
Anyway, looking at CAISO, the State of California would need the equivalent of 30 million Tesla Powerwalls to store enough energy to power the entire state for 14 hours, a typical evening. Now, CA also has wind and hydro, so its not batteries or nothing but lets put that aside.
Last year, Tesla sold about a million cars. Each of those car batteries, as I said, was at least 5 Powerwalls worth of battery, so its not pie in the sky - Tesla, one company already sold 5 million of the 30 million battery storage units last year.
The Powerwalls are about 3.5 feet by 2.5 feet by six inches deep. So although the Tesla Mega packs are like the size of a shipping container, you can have individual residences or business have them, they don't have to be in one spot.
This isn't like nuclear fusion or something. Its possible to produce enough battery storage for the entire state of California in six years.
Now, is it more expensive than doing nothing?
Yes, it is, adding a battery, or more accurately, running existing power through a battery adds about 6 cents per kwh over the twenty year life of the battery. The spot price of energy in the western grid is about 3 cents per kwh in daytime and 6 cents at night. The rest of the charges you see on the bill have nothing to do with the cost of the energy, its the cost of the grid, which does not change just because you would have all these batteries. So instead of a nightime price of 20 cents per kwh it would be 26 cents.
I think Kevin was a bit dramatic in calling arguments to the contrary "nonsense."
But most of the arguments I see use the following structure, they chose, say one battery, or one mega pack, then point out how that battery can only power whatever it is for one hour or something.
That's true, but its like saying one oil well can only run the cars in the state of California for three seconds or something. That's also true but just because you need alot of something doesn't mean its not feasible.
You need to cover more than 14 hours. More like a couple days. It can be cloudy for days at a time.
Solar still produces some power even on cloudy day s but it depends a lot on where you live. Looking back at our panels it looks like we had maybe 4 weeks with consecutive bad days that would require more than 14 hours of battery. The thing is though that you are still connected to the grid so if there is sun and wind someplace and that power can be distributed through the grid to you, the batteries can stay charged and the amount of fossil fuel power required is at least minimized.
You're rather light on the figures I -- and a lot of other people -- are asking for. No figures for actual amount of KWH storage needed in the US for this to be a feasible solution, no figures on the price of the batteries needed to store said amount, no figures on how many (billions) of kilos of the various raw materials needed to manufacture those batteries.
Instead, we get weasel-wordings like 'enough to get the entire house through the night'. No actual KWH for what this entails, mind you, which tells me that he doesn't want to say that this means, essentially, 'enough to power a few nightlights and a few appliances.'
The dishonesty is astounding. And profoundly insulting. IOW -- and I am _profoundly_ both justified and vindicated in making this observation -- yet another smug and ludicrous numpty ballbag who thinks they can pull the wool over people's eyes.
I'd say you owe everyone hear a apology. But your kind doesn't do apologies, do they?
It is not nonsense. It is necessary. At least if you want to be able to flip a switch and have the lights come on whenever you want. You can’t design an electrical system around averages, or even the 99th percentile. You’ve got to go out to several nines. And if one is going to rely on wind and solar, you not only must over-build to let one region feed itself and another at the same time, you need storage.
Wind and Solar won't be enough. Don't post like a tard.
When the rubber hits the road, these types are all too willing to lower that figure to 95%. In fact, I've heard some of these 'reasonable' fucktards say that anything over 90% is a win. IOW, not ony do they want us to accept a pig-in-the-solution, they want to impose their acceptable use profiles on other people (For themselves? Meh. Not so much.)
That should be pig-in-a-poke solution, of course.
I don't think "several nines" is required. There are 8,760 hours in a year, unless it's a leap year. That means that 0.1% of a year is 8.76 hours. Obviously, different places will have different experiences, but I would estimate that my electricity is out on average about 0.2 percent of the time (17 or 18 hours a year). If the "green grid" was 99.9% reliable, that would be an improvement for me. If it was 99.99% reliable, service interruptions would amount to about 50 minutes a year. I don't see a case for spending a lot of money trying to add on more nines.
Obviously, critical functions such as hospitals will have backups so they can have power when the grid is down, but 99.9% reliability for the grid is plenty.
My own experience/recollection is less than an hour of outage over each of the last several years. I suspect our respective utility regulators would have accurate statistics.
Fossil fuels are finite and expensive. They are also still the most abundant......until fusion. If the people had control, we can clean and use it with other tech, it can work. Not with Republican globalist cons that just want to sell it to dirty countries. Get rid of the globalist con men.
"I've long thought that the only way to get Republicans to go along with subsidizing renewable energy was to somehow make it into a jingoistic national security issue, and this is the first chance we've had to do this."
The first chance? Um, 2001 perhaps but W said "Go shopping" instead. The 1980s when Amory Lovins and RMI published Brittle Power on national security and energy? And day in between those events and all the way up to now?
Methinks you ain't been paying attention.
Just to put it out there, my best case scenario is Ukraine beats back Russia, the military mutinies, Putin is outsted from office, and the world backs off from any more energy wars, as this war is partially, as the peace and climate movements get together to do positive protests like weatherization and solar barnraisings in order to reduce the influence of Russian fossil foolishness forever.
According to this carbon countdown clock (https://www.mcc-berlin.net/fileadmin/data/clock/carbon_clock.htm), at the current rate, the carbon budget to stay below 1.5ºC will be used up by about June/July 2029. To stay below the 2°C threshold, the carbon budget deadline is April/May 2047.
I'd like to think there are a whole bunch of wise, dedicated people backcasting from those dates and figuring out what we can do daily, weekly, monthly in the next 7 years and a few months so that we don't exceed those limits. If so, I wish there'd be a more public conversation about it.
I agree with Kevin that electricity storage is needed. I'm not as certain as Kevin that battery storage is the answer. There are A LOT of different storage technologies available.
I'm even less certain that lithium ion battery storage is the answer. For mobile applications lithium ion batteries have the advantages of being fairly durable and having higher energy density than any other presently practical battery technology, but they're expensive. For storage applications, energy density is not a significant concern; it doesn't matter if your stationary battery is massive. What counts for storage is cost and durability. To boil it down to one number, over the life of your battery what is the cost per mwh of storage capacity per charge cycle? If the battery has a very long life measured in charge cycles, you can accept high cost per mwh of capacity. A shorter life battery must cost less to be competitive.
I don't know enough about battery technology to make specific suggestions, but my strong impression is that old fashioned lead acid batteries are a cheaper storage solution than lithium ion. Certainly, we're not seeing lithium batteries displacing lead acid in ordinary ICE car batteries; I presume the reason is economic.
We aren't seeing lithium ion batteries displacing lead acid batteries in cars due to expense and the fact that it is unnecessary. The battery in a modern internal combustion car needs to provide enough power up the onboard computers and run the starter motor for about 5 seconds. After that the alternator provides all the power the car needs and then some. That's not the situation in a house; you need to be able to run the refrigerator almost continuously. You need to be able to run the electric burners for at least several minutes, the oven for possibly several hours. You can make lead acid batteries work, and people that live off grid do, but it involves major lifestyle changes.
"... but it involves major lifestyle changes." Which they want to impose on other people. Anything rather than that dreaded nukular power. Which is the tell, innit? These people are considerably more antinuke than green. That dishonesty alone is enough to disqualify them as anyone whose opinion counts in these matters.
I think you missed a point. However many kwh you need to store, you can store in a stack of lithium ion batteries or in a much more massive stack of lead acid batteries. The question is how much it costs to store a given amount of energy, and my impression is that lead acid batteries are considerably cheaper per kwh than lithium ion batteries.
There is nothing in the inherent nature of lead acid batteries that prevents a person from storing as much energy in them as desired, if you have enough, or big enough, batteries.
FWIW, Macron says France is going to build 14 new nuclear plants. They have been experiencing the almost as severe cost overruns as the new Vogtle reactors so it will be interesting to see if building at scale avoids that.
Tell me, I'm curious: So why was France able to build these plants so cheaply before? Tell the truth now.
Honestly, I don't know but I suspect that it was before 3 reactors experienced near meltdowns (in one case, an actual meltdown) and people realized that the old designs weren't as safe as the power companies claimed.
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