What does it take to succesfully transition to a green energy economy?

[Blumlein 88]

I'd say that humans need to significantly decrees car dependency/addiction. Using a 2000kg+ machine to move a 70kg person to get back and forth from work, the gym, simple groceries or whatever is so extremely inefficient in more than one way. Walking, biking or public transport is a so much better way of getting somewhere (apart for the very few times a year when you actually need to move something big) since they doesn't waste the vast majority of it's energy just to propel the vehicle itself.
This is also good for your health and the community around you since cars is responsible for injuries, pollution, death and - something that not to many people think about - noise. If we'd remove all cars they sound levels in our environment, both cities and countryside, will SIGNIFICALLY reduce. Also walking and biking will bring down obesity which some places in the world have some extreme problems with (yup looking at you North America). It'll also look way better when half the cities ain't filled with big bulky parked cars.
Sure some places in the world (looking at the same place again) are heavily built around cars cars cars, so this kind of change ain't easy at all, but reducing car dependency really is a MUST to have any kind of green planet, but even then we still have a loooong way to go. I could also rant about big houses, our love for things, light pollution, cities, rich people, big corporations, war and humans in general. Buut I'll just leave it with cars for now

Good luck with that. Don't see it happening. People with cars don't want to give them up and people who don't have them want to get them one day.

 

[Willem]

In this discussion I notice some things. First, the American interest in cars, as if they are the biggest part of the story. They are an important part, but other sectors play a bigger role. In the Netherlands the biggest CO2 polluter by far is a large Tata steel plant, and carbon neutral steel making is still in its infancy. I hear nobody about heating and cooling. Second, much of Western Europe is geographically quite distinct from much of the US. We are so much further north that our winter days are much shorter and our summer days much longer. So using batteries to even out the 24 hour cycle may help a bit, but not to deal with the simple fact that for a few months every winter our PV panels do not produce remotely enough, even the very best ones. Therefore, for us wind power is more important, because the wind is mostly strongest at night and in the winter. The challenge is that it requires a much beefier grid, and ugly power lines that people do not want to have in their area. In the Netherlands big investments are being made to upgrade the grid - the challenge is not really the money but a shortage of engineers on a overheated labour market. In the end, to deal with the imbalance between summer and winter we shall have to increase efforts and tighten mandatory standards to insulate homes and reduce their energy consumption in the winter. In much of the US it would probably be building houses in a more Mediteranean style to deal with the summer heat. I once lived in Jerusalem and did not need air conditioning. Reducing energy consumption is in some ways the easiest bit of the solution, and it is happening.
If the challenge is indeed to flatten the peaks we will also have to use dynamic pricing for energy. As an economic historian I like markets and the price mechanism, and this can flatten demand appreciably. Domestically, it would mean smart home chargers for your EV to use the surplus production of your your solar panels, and smart appliances that wash the dishes etc when the energy price is lowest. Right now we try to do this manually, but getting this done automaticaly is more effective and less of a hassle. It does require that authorities set mandatory standards for the communication between the various systems. These are being developed, but more slowly than I would like.

 

[Tell]

Good luck with that. Don't see it happening. People with cars don't want to give them up and people who don't have them want to get them one day.

Yeah I know, humans are quite selfish and way to comfortable even though it's not particularly good for them in the long run. And when the society and culture is so heavily invested in something it's really hard and will take a very long time to change that, so unfortunately car dependency ain't going nowhere - and I hate it

 

[Willem]

Good luck with that. Don't see it happening. People with cars don't want to give them up and people who don't have them want to get them one day.

This is happening, however. I see more and more people going to work by bicycle, because it is cheaper, healthier and in many cases quicker. Of course, it presupposes a more densely built environment than is typical for the US, but in such a compact city using the car to get to work takes a lot longer than the ten minutes bicycle ride that we need to get from our house at the edge of a 250k town to the university in the city centre. I very occasionally have to drive and that demands that I plan for a 45 minute trip because of the unpredictability of traffic congestion. Also, the university does not provide parking space for more than a few cars, and you have to book in advance, and only for special occasions. When we moved here we opted for a car free life and to spend a lot more to get a large house in the city designed and built for us. Our children have been very pleased that we did, so they could go out on their own on their bicycles.
In fact, the one and only old ICE car that we subsequently bought broke down some time ago, and we are still contemplating whether to get it repaired, move to an EV, or abandon car driving altogether. We have now lived once again without a car for a couple of months, and it really worked out quite well. In July we wanted to do a city trip to northern Italy (Verona, Venice, Triest), and we decided to do this like we did when we were young (we are now in our late sixties and early seventies), with backpacks and a light tent. We took the train, and apart from the challenges of the German train system, it was a delightful journey. For such distances trains are far more comfortable than driving, and with modern camping gear the load is now so much lighter (I had 9kg in total). A few weeks ago I went on a bicycle camping tour in the Eifel. I took a four hour train ride to the south of the Netherlands, and rode my bicycle from there, first into Belgium and then gravel biking in Germany. We are not alone in this. I see more and more people going on cycling holidays, or ditching at least their second car. I also see that many young people prefer to live in the city, and not have a car. The countryside in our province is more and more depopulated, and the city is growing. You waste so much less time, and there is so much more to do, from concerts, museums and libraties to nice shops and restaurants where you can have a drink without having to worry about how to get home.

 

[DSJR]

This is happening, however. I see more and more people going to work by bicycle, because it is cheaper, healthier and in many cases quicker. Of course, it presupposes a more densely built environment than is typical for the US, but in such a compact city using the car to get to work takes a lot longer than the ten minutes bicycle ride that we need to get from our house at the edge of a 250k town to the university in the city centre. I very occasionally have to drive and that demands that I plan for a 45 minute trip because of the unpredictability of traffic congestion. Also, the university does not provide parking space for more than a few cars, and you have to book in advance, and only for special occasions. When we moved here we opted for a car free life and to spend a lot more to get a large house in the city designed and built for us. Our children have been very pleased that we did, so they could go out on their own on their bicycles.
In fact, the one and only old ICE car that we subsequently bought broke down some time ago, and we are still contemplating whether to get it repaired, move to an EV, or abandon car driving altogether. We have now lived once again without a car for a couple of months, and it really worked out quite well. In July we wanted to do a city trip to northern Italy (Verona, Venice, Triest), and we decided to do this like we did when we were young (we are now in our late sixties and early seventies), with backpacks and a light tent. We took the train, and apart from the challenges of the German train system, it was a delightful journey. For such distances trains are far more comfortable than driving, and with modern camping gear the load is now so much lighter (I had 9kg in total). A few weeks ago I went on a bicycle camping tour in the Eifel. I took a four hour train ride to the south of the Netherlands, and rode my bicycle from there, first into Belgium and then gravel biking in Germany. We are not alone in this. I see more and more people going on cycling holidays, or ditching at least their second car. I also see that many young people prefer to live in the city, and not have a car. The countryside in our province is more and more depopulated, and the city is growing. You waste so much less time, and there is so much more to do, from concerts, museums and libraties to nice shops and restaurants where you can have a drink without having to worry about how to get home.

In the overcrowded southern UK, using a bike is dangerous a lot of the time and cyclists here where I live, are un-trained and simply wander down the road, oblivious to other road users. Our rail service is too often patchy to poor at best and the current fad for vans-masquerading-as-large-cars (oh sorry, they're inefficient SUV's) in our narrow streets and car park spaces) is becoming obscene, at least here.

For various health and related reasons, we don't travel more than 2000 miles by car per year and for us, our old Ford jalopy will do fine, as parts, servicing, tax and insurance are all very cheap indeed compared to newer larger vehicles. I do envy the wide open spaces in the US I have to say, compared to our tighly packed environment, where the one dual-carriageway in and out of this town is accident prone every day it seems.

Another thing is that despite the UK only appearing to contribute a tiny amount of pollution in the global scheme of things, our desire to fast-track net-zero policies is going to cost us taxpayers dearly here...

 

[Willem]

I would suggest to improve your cycling infrastructure. Cycling infrastructure in most UK cities is a disgrace. I have lived there long enough to know, and to also know that car drivers are pretty delinquent as well. Just get your act together. Dutch cities are known for good cycling infrastucture, and that is based on decades of accident research, observational data and extensive research on what constitutes good road design, and implementing those results into mandatory design standards rather than just using some white paint and calling it a cycling lane.
I don't really want to get into a political discussion, but there are two factual points to make. First the UK is one of the largest contributors of current CO2 in the atmosphere, given its earlier industrial history and the halftime of CO2. Second, recent IMF research has argued that the cost of reducing emissions will be far lower than the cost of coping with a warmer and more volatile climate.
Now please back to how to make the transition.

 

[somebodyelse]

On 'using some white paint and calling it a cycle lane', a conversation with a council road planner was illuminating. Many 'cycle lanes' painted onto a road aren't there primarily for the cyclists. When they want to narrow the lane to counter driver behaviours like excessive speed, it's easier to get a cycle lane authorised than it is for other lane narrowing options. As a bonus it counts towards the council's target for adding cycling infrastructure, so it's a double win for the planner. Any benefit to cyclists is purely incidental. If you find a bit of 'cycling provision' that doesn't seem to make any sense, ask yourself what else they might have been trying to achieve with it.

 

[EJ3]

I'd say that humans need to significantly decrees car dependency/addiction. Using a 2000kg+ machine to move a 70kg person to get back and forth from work, the gym, simple groceries or whatever is so extremely inefficient in more than one way. Walking, biking or public transport is a so much better way of getting somewhere (apart for the very few times a year when you actually need to move something big) since they doesn't waste the vast majority of it's energy just to propel the vehicle itself.

Several times a day I am moving things that are big.
I'd say that I have lived in city's (Charleston, SC; New Orleans; Washington, DC, Pusan, S. Korea; Chongqing, China; Singapore; Freemantle, Australia and a few others).
I have also lived on many Islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific.
From 600,000 people to 38 million people. My living in any city of a size of more that 200,000 will not again happen in my lifetime.
So you won't have to worry about the vehicles that my family needs to work and live, living on the land, being in your city.
Do what you want in your cities. But don't force everyone else to do like you. Your cities is what does the most environmental damage to the world.
Not cars.
It's the mega concentration of every waste there is.
I need a vehicle to get work done on my property.
Who built my home? My family and friends.
Does it sit in idling traffic? Doing nothing. NO!
What causes many vehicles to sit in traffic? Cities.
Where are the major pollution centers? Cities.
I feel that you folks are trying to treat a symptom (and force everyone else in the world to live like you do, eating mostly pre-packaged food full of unhealthy things, giving your selves cancer, heart disease & many other health problems) instead of treating the root cause of the problem. It's being in a 15 minute city (or really any major city) that is the problem.
Do you want to eliminate cars? Please do so in your area then. If you don't need them and have another way to get around, IF I come there, I will use it.
But not everyone lives like you do (or would ever want to). I think that they way people live in cities is SAD. And I feel sorry for you folks. But, if that is what you like, OK.
Why ban them (cars and other things from doing what they are doing) when you haven't cleaned up your own back yard? Oh, I'm sorry, most of you probably don't have a back yard. Or any yard at all.
When I see people on horses visiting neighbors or just riding because they can, or families on bicycles riding paths & trails, more than I see cars on my dirt road, I am in my type of area. But a family car & a truck are necessary items to live like this. By the fact that they are not used that much, their minute amount of pollution is not concentrated.
I am much more worried about things like this:

A bag of Cheetos created a huge impact on a national park ecosystem​

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This undated photo provided by Carlsbad Caverns National Park shows a bag of Cheetos that was dropped off trail by a visitor in the Big Room at the national park near Carlsbad, N.M.(Carlsbad Caverns National Park via AP)

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FILE - Hundreds of cave formations are shown decorating the Big Room at Carlsbad Caverns National Park near Carlsbad, N.M., Dec. 18, 2010. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)

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This undated photo provided by Carlsbad Caverns National Park shows mold growing where a bag of Cheetos was dropped off trail in the Big Room at the national park near Carlsbad, N.M. (Carlsbad Caverns National Park via AP)

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This undated photo provided by Carlsbad Caverns National Park shows a bag of Cheetos that was dropped off trail by a visitor in the Big Room at the national park near Carlsbad, N.M.(Carlsbad Caverns National Park via AP)

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN
Updated 12:43 PM EDT, September 12, 2024
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A bag of Cheetos gets dropped and left on the floor. Seems inconsequential, right?
Hardly.
Rangers at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico describe it as a “world-changing” event for the tiny microbes and insects that call this specialized subterranean environment home. The bag could have been there a day or two or maybe just hours, but those salty morsels of processed corn made soft by thick humidity triggered the growth of mold on the cavern floor and on nearby cave formations.
“To the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge impact,” the park noted in a social media post, explaining that cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organized to eat and disperse the foreign mess, essentially spreading the contamination.
The bright orange bag was spotted off trail by a ranger during one of the regular sweeps that park staff make through the Big Room, the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America, at the end of each day. They are looking for straggling visitors and any litter or other waste that might have been left behind on the paved trail.
The Big Room is a popular spot at Carlsbad Caverns. It is a magical expanse filled with towering stalagmites, dainty stalactites and clusters of cave popcorn.
RELATED COVERAGE

From this underground wonderland in New Mexico to lake shores in Nevada, tributaries along the Grand Canyon and lagoons in Florida, park rangers and volunteers collect tons of trash left behind by visitors each year as part of an ongoing battle to keep unique ecosystems from being compromised while still allowing visitors access.

According to the National Park Service, more than 300 million people visit the national parks each year, bringing in and generating nearly 70 million tons of trash — most of which ends up where it belongs in garbage bins and recycling containers.
But for the rest of the discarded snack bags and other debris, it often takes work to round up the waste, and organizations like Leave No Trace have been pushing their message at trailheads and online.
At Carlsbad Caverns, volunteers comb the caverns collecting lint. One five-day effort netted as much as 50 pounds (22.68 kilograms). Rangers also have sweep packs and spill kits for the more delicate and sometimes nasty work that can include cleaning up human waste along the trail.
“It’s such a dark area, sometimes people don’t notice that it’s there. So they walk through it and it tracks it throughout the entire cave,” said Joseph Ward, a park guide who is working specifically on getting the “leave no trace” message out to park visitors and classrooms.
The rangers’ kits can include gloves, trash bags, water, bleach mixtures for decontamination, vacuums and even bamboo toothbrushes and tweezers for those hard-to-reach spots.
As for the spilled Cheetos, Ward told The Associated Press that could have been avoided because the park doesn’t allow food beyond the confines of the historic underground lunchroom.
After the bag was discovered in July, cave specialists at the park settled on the best way to clean it up. Most of the mess was scooped up, and a toothbrush was used to remove rings of mold and fungi that had spread to nearby cave formations. It was a 20-minute job.
Some jobs can take hours and involve several park employees, Ward said.
Robert Melnick, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon, has been studying the cultural landscape of Carlsbad Caverns, including features like a historic wooden staircase that has become another breeding ground for exotic mold and fungi. He and his team submitted a report to the park this week that details those resources and makes recommendations for how the park can manage them into the future.
The balancing act for park managers at Carlsbad and elsewhere, Melnick said, is meeting the dual mandate of preserving and protecting landscapes while also making them accessible.
“I don’t quite know how you would monitor it except to constantly remind people that the underground, the caves are a very, very sensitive natural environment,” he said.
Pleas to treat the caverns with respect are plastered on signs throughout the park, rangers give orientations to visitors before they go underground, and reminders of the do’s and don’ts are printed on the back of each ticket stub.
But sometimes there is a disconnect between awareness and personal responsibility, said JD Tanner, director of education and training at Leave No Trace.
Many people may be aware of the need to “keep it pristine,” but Tanner said the message doesn’t always translate into action or there is a lack of understanding that small actions — even leaving a piece of trash — can have irreversible damage in a fragile ecosystem.
“If someone doesn’t feel a personal stake in the preservation of these environments, they may not take the rules seriously,” Tanner said.
Diana Northup, a microbiologist who has spent years studying cave environments around the world, once crawled up the main corridor at Carlsbad Caverns to log everything that humans left behind.
“So this is just one thing of very many,” she said of the Cheetos.
As many as 2,000 people cruise through the caverns on any given day during the busy season. With them come hair and skin fragments, and those fragments can have their own microbes on board.
“So it can be really, really bad or it can just be us and all the stuff we’re shedding,” Northup said of human contamination within cave environments. “But here’s the other side of the coin: The only way you can protect caves is for people to be able to see them and experience them.”

“The biggest thing,” she said, “is you have to get people to value and want to preserve the caves and let them know what they can do to have that happen.”

So I guess that we will never agree. And just have to agree to dis-agree.
Instead of trying to force others into a city life.
Maybe we can actually co-operate on things that make a big difference NOW.

 

[monkeyboy]

This is the conclusion of the chapter on SMR (small modular reactors) in World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2024. Suffice to say, the various development programs of SMR are facing "some challenges".

View attachment 397954

Terrapower..the bill gates fiasco..is a dual loop molten salt cycle with what is mostly a conventional reactor design...it's on the order of 2 billion for about 350 MW...beyond a stupid waste of money...but not as bad as Southern Companies carbon capture epic a few years ago...someone is making money, just not the taxpayer or rate payer...

 

[Willem]

Of course nobody wants to destroy national parks, and nobody wants to force you into a city life. All we probably have to do is change the way we do the things that we like to do, and perhaps stop doing some really bad things. To take the example of builders, our building contractor drives an EV and his next van/truck will be an electric one, he tells me. He does it because of upcoming local rules about inner city access, but also because he feels a responsibility for the environment. Big building contractors are now transitioning to battery and hydrogen machines to stay within EU nitrogen emission limits, and because customers demand it. The same mixed motivation applies to our personal ventures into the energy transition. Some of those are government mandated, but thus far most of them are a mixture of financial arguments and concerns about the environment and climate change in particular. Protection of the environment needs both laws and private responsibility.

 

[paulcc]

A huge problem with all of this is getting China and India to reduce their CO2 emissions.

 

[D2013]

if they get salt water in them they will EXPLODE! They also wear the tires out very quickly.

Its a 2 part problem. First, saltwater is a good conduct of electricity because of what's in it (electrolytes). As you would expect that bad news for a battery(any battery), as you can short circuit it and cause thermal runaway. Second, Lithium and water generate an exothermic reaction. The more surface area the lithium has per unit of mass the more violent the reaction will be.

 

[Willem]

A huge problem with all of this is getting China and India to reduce their CO2 emissions.

Sure, but they are also working on it. Just watch the Chinese drive into the EV market. At the same time, let us not forget that of the historically accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere a large proportion is from our western economies, given the long CO2 half time.

 

[D2013]

I'm sure the following will anger a few people, but some times the truth isn't pretty.

In a way electric cars are a lie.

Mining lithium and then using it to produce batteries for cars has a huge carbon footprint. In fact, when they roll of the assembly line, electric cars have a large carbon footprint than a regular car. Manufactures and members of the various governments like to say but but over the life of the car, the electric car the carbon footprint will be lower. However they don't tell you that requires you to be nice to the battery pack, lots of fast charging or discharging will drastically degrade the life of the pack. What type of plant is generating power in your area also plays a large part. solar, wind, hydro electric, & nuclear(fission) are far better than coal, natural gas, oil.




Imo, if you want Greener energy, than people need to push for fusion reactors. They don't/won't produce toxic waste, they don't generate greenhouse gases, and the fuel is widely available, and its more efficient than fission. Withy enough electric power, we could switch cars over to hydrogen combustion (generating the hydrogen via electrolysis), as it is also a very clean process.

 

[Robin L]

I'm sure the following will anger a few people, but some times the truth isn't pretty.

In a way electric cars are a lie.

Mining lithium and then using it to produce batteries for cars has a huge carbon footprint. In fact, when they roll of the assembly line, electric cars have a large carbon footprint than a regular car. Manufactures and members of the various governments like to say but but over the life of the car, the electric car the carbon footprint will be lower. However they don't tell you that requires you to be nice to the battery pack, lots of fast charging or discharging will drastically degrade the life of the pack. What type of plant is generating power in your area also plays a large part. solar, wind, hydro electric, & nuclear(fission) are far better than coal, natural gas, oil.




Imo, if you want Greener energy, than people need to push for fusion reactors. They don't/won't produce toxic waste, they don't generate greenhouse gases, and the fuel is widely available, and its more efficient than fission. Withy enough electric power, we could switch cars over to hydrogen combustion (generating the hydrogen via electrolysis), as it is also a very clean process.

Agree with everything but the Fusion Nuclear power. That's still a pipe dream and might never happen.

 

[D2013]

Agree with everything but the Fusion Nuclear power. That's still a pipe dream and might never happen.

It's for sure harder than fission, but we have never put the resources into it, like we did fission. The Manhattan project, research into ever smaller and more powerful reactors for warships ships, and plutonium enrichment cost an astronomical amount of money. If we approached fusion like we did fission, I think it would become a reality in a decade or so.

 

[pablolie]

I'd say that humans need to significantly decrees car dependency/addiction. Using a 2000kg+ machine to move a 70kg person to get back and forth from work, the gym, simple groceries or whatever is so extremely inefficient in more than one way. Walking, biking or public transport is a so much better way of getting somewhere ...
Sure some places in the world (looking at the same place again) are heavily built around cars cars cars, so this kind of change ain't easy at all, but reducing car dependency really is a MUST to have any kind of green planet, but even then we still have a loooong way to go. I could also rant about big houses, our love for things, light pollution, cities, rich people, big corporations, war and humans in general. Buut I'll just leave it with cars for now

Wise message. I feel the exact same.

I do think we are headed that way - between EVs and self-driving technologies, cars will be silly things to "own" - there'll be very little pride of ownership when something drives you around autonomously. We'll basically Uber around in a Transport-as-a-Service model. My main worry is what the limitations and taxes will be for "historical vehicles" that actually are fun to drive/ride.

In the meantime, my everyday means of transport clocks in at 57mpg last I measured and is Euro5 compliant. And is fun. :-D

 

[pablolie]

Good luck with that. Don't see it happening. People with cars don't want to give them up and people who don't have them want to get them one day.

That's already changing. A rapidly increasing number of young people these days don't even have a car license. They'd rather scoot/one-wheel/uber etc around.

Gen Z doesn't want cars

Olivia Rodrigo may have been excited to get her driver's license, but many young people are less enthused by car culture

theweek.com

https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/4119244-american-teens-are-driving-less/

 

[p.trianon]

Speaking of green some Gen 4 demonstration reactors using Triso fuel particles were finally approved in the US. I mean we invented molten salt reactors in the 50s but I guess late is better than never

 

[p.trianon]

It's for sure harder than fission, but we have never put the resources into it, like we did fission. The Manhattan project, research into ever smaller and more powerful reactors for warships ships, and plutonium enrichment cost an astronomical amount of money. If we approached fusion like we did fission, I think it would become a reality in a decade or so.

Not sure that I agree with that. There is so much VC money in fusion projects right now not to mention state sponsored projects like Iter. Not just Tokamak designs but many other approaches. I am very doubtful there will be any commercially viable designs in my lifetime. Its just a much more difficult problem to solve on so many levels. Fission is the way for the foreseeable future IMO.