The Green Transition will not work as planned, what might we do instead? - Professor Simon Michaux
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- čas přidán 1. 11. 2023
- In this JKMRC Friday Seminar Professor Simon Michaux discusses how current thinking will not help us, and if we change that thinking, there are solution vectors if we chose to see them.
See more webinar information: smi.uq.edu.au/event/session/1...
Excellent. Somebody who has the spine to look at inconvenient truths.
Politicians are in a no-win situation when it comes to inconvenient truths. Look what happened to Al Gore.
Maybe not. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/michaux/
The real inconvenient truths, not the made up ones that the so called elites are blaming everyone else for! 😮
And the real life qualifications, actually worked in mining!
Unlike all of the hot air politicians!
More like someone who has the spine to present incomplete data, misinformation and half-truths to come to the wrong conclusions. Not sure if it's intentional or not but generally it's an intentional effort to prop up some sector of our psychotic profit culture. We'll see when my comment gets deleted. It's not that we don't have the technology not to need the things he says we need. It's just that we don't have the political will to implement the technologies due to the previously mentioned psychotic profit culture. People are either trying to hold on to their money invested in current technologies or paraliyzed because they are afraid that a new technology will be outdated too quickly and they'll lose their money invested in the new tech.
Brilliant! Very impressive presentation. Well Done to Simon Michaux and to all scientists with the same 'attitude'!
First of all no more wars.
You’re allowed to use bows and arrows only
This point is key. It's unfortunate that to make it happen we can't/don't talk about it... maybe we should find a way.
What a great presentation. The mathematical approach, combined with numbers and empiric is simply impressive. This presentation makes a difference. Thanks!!!
I was ambivalent about nuclear energy, but turned into an advocate when I did some research and realised that it is by far the most environmentally friendly way to decarbonise the electricity sector.
Fossil will still be needed, as well, for the next 100 years, at least.
The cons of needing a stable global system to use it is the biggest con along with not having the engineering talent needed to scale out quickly. Lots of western nations have let the industry stagnate so investment is needed just to maintain the level we have now. Modular reactors could solve some of this in theory but the efficiency loss in small reactors makes it even more expensive. Finally if the world switched to nuclear energy to run the system as it is now no growth, we use all reasonable obtainable uranium in 100-150 years. Thorium expands this further if it is figured out but it puts a hard deadline on fusion power or equivalent because someday we have no nuclear power and the need to decommission a plant and manage nuclear waste with no power.
@@Jeremy-WC The world has 10 billion years' worth of usable uranium, replacing all fuels.
The grid is the killer costs.
The heat source is a very small part of electricity costs, and national expansion of 5 times is needed.
The national grid is fragile.
Fragile because it is extremely expensive, no country over builds.
5times bigger is an insane cost.
20million buildings connected to the grid in Australia.
A small 6.6kw rooftop on every roof will unload the grid, and an EV big battery plugged into the grid easily supplies massive storage.
20million vehicles in Australia.
Nuclear is stupendously expensive because of the additional grid and EV features with rooftop PV.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 "A small 6.6kw rooftop on every roof..."
If grid-tied, would cause permanent-blackout.
Great study and long overdue. I would like to see more people think with down to earth logic and facts, unfortunately that’s not always how the reward system works.
This is stark ...glad I'm old and still able to do a half marathon..seems a lot of walking is in the future
Thank you for what you do!
The other option is to reduce consumption. The only option eventually
Simon does mention this at 47:20 mark.
Only if we don't come up with solutions.
My thinking is we will have to go through some very painful social changes before we have something that comes close to the luxury we have had.
Given the current industrial era has created the sixth mass extinction and pervasive catastrophic pollution of the entire planet, I don't see how another industrial era could avoid making that worse. Our perceived need for industry and energy must not outweigh the importance of life on planet Earth. How about a scenario focused on restoring ecosystems worldwide so that forests, prairies, rivers, wildlife, etc. are all growing back towards historical fecundity before this industrial era destroyed them, and pollution is being reduced simultaneously? Thank you.
The only issue is convincing the people in charge. They listen a lot more intently to industry than to environmentalists or even scientists.
We had civilization for thousands of years before electricity and cars and so on.... Today there are 600 Million people that consume less energy than one fridge.
Let go of luxury...
Great presentation as always, I think it would be sensible to add/involve seed saving in your section on food-systems also.
47:20 this is the vibe
I feel this was a very informative lecture, but I wish I could absorb more of its content though. There is so much material to get through and so many aspects of his ideas it's hard to keep up. Simon's knowledge is so deep that he presents his ideas very fast. I'm glad he said the upcoming research students are taking up these ideas. We need those people to help in the transition.
You might like to listen to one of his interviews, e.g. on the Planet: Critical podcast.
I was still there Simon 😉Fantastic work ! 🙏🏻
Greetings from Belgium 🙋♀️
Me too, this is the third time I've listened to this. I want to give myself a pat on the back because I could see a lot of these problems years ago, and I'm just a nobody, how the hell did the governments miss this? 😮
@@Ln-cq8zu I think many people have seen it, like you. Unfortunately, nobody has been able to say it with the numbers until Simon. That is until now. The thing about these numbers is they are so far in excess, even if they are not so accurate, it is clear *The Green Transition will not go as planned*.
One of the many tool's to come out of the studies by Simon that concisely informs, In my opinion, is the input calculating data that can render out puts as to how effective outcomes are by spread sheet analysis.
This could mean the existing can be added or extracted to hypothetically imposed projections. Speeding up the missing pieces to the puzzle. Comprehensive mapping of the intricate maze to decern a more efficient path foward I engineering blue prints rather than build expenses not germane to cause.
Inventors can and therefore investors can taylor specific redress. Knowing the limitations constricts in order to concentrate resource.
Consulting apps on energy 10x from now incorporated spans out the level to overcompensate, a well measured approach to any good engineering in practice. A scaling mindset for big challenges ahead.
Personally decentralization is self sufficiency and sustainable. Bar some exceptions.
Doesn't even take into account politics, border disputes, war, trade barriers, corruption and so on which make any significant changes impossible.The world is a set of complex, interlocking, dissipative structures that can't be transitioned from one phase to another without drastic shocks to the system.
That is why Simon has hooked up with the Venus Project to create an environment outside of these legacy systems, which represent barriers to real change.
With GHG `s rising at there fastest ever rate what `green `transition ? We left that boat over 30 years ago . The only thing that matters is CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere and now with tipping points breached in polar ice and methane releases its out of our control , not that we had any after 30 years of dire warnings and fine pledges and the opposite happening .
so refreshing to hear a sensible analysis well presented, thanks Mr Michaux. You do not mention fast breeder reactors using spent fuel from LWR - is this a useful technology? Now more facepalm - fossil fuels are in short supply, they are needed, we don't like the emissions from burning them, but they need to be cherished, and the amount consumed and destroyed in Ukraine over the past years is phenomonal for no societal benefit. ditto other conflicts.
I don't know about Oakridge power having been anywhere near as successful as he indicates... My research indicated that it had multiple down-time and never produced more that 5mw at best, often only 3-4. When the liquid salt plumbing components were examined after decommissioning, much corrosion and some cracking was found after that short time in use.... I understand much effort has been devoted to solving this problem, and only time will tell if it has been successful after real usage.
This makes it sound like the astronomical amount of materials needed is largely just to make up for the long term energy storage in places with cold dark winters and little sun and wind. What would be the material requirements if there were still a 10-20% buffer of fossil fuel electricity production to make up for this instead of long term storage? Along with some nuclear still being in the mix of course. 100% might not be feasible for all areas, but can we still solve the majority of the problem and then hope carbon capture advances enough to take care of the rest?
If the world's population was smaller we would have more time to adjust. 😮
I think smaller world populations only recently began using wheels on their ox cart. Why would they aspire to better or more with less rilvary or without observing other communities ' advancements?
Start with you bro… do your part
Sorry to say this, and being negative, but the first part is misleading as hell. I wanted to congratulate him at the beginning for finally realising batteries are a terrible idea for seasonal storage (which he had in last years presentation) and then he adds a material count that lacks common sense.
- 32000 years to mine Germanium, because solid state batteries will replace Li-on and they need it. Seriously? I assure you if solid state needs materials we don't have then they won' t be replacing anything. How about we use the way more reliable LFP for storage that doesn´t need it at all? No need for cobalt and nickel as well. How about we use sodium ion and get around the lithium shortage while we are at it? Graphite can be slowly replaced (or at least reduced) by silicon. Oh and solid state batteries can use lithium metal and don't need any graphite. Who in his right mind predicts the use of a mineral that he knows we won´t have in tech that is not developed, instead of using available technology with common minerals.
- "We don't have technology to store so much power over such a long time (6+ months)" YES WE DO. I´m using it right now. Underground gas storage, used in dozens of countries with combined capacity of several thousand TWh. Long term gas storage is a solved problem. What we don´t have is the renewable generation of the gas. Also the roundtrip efficiency for power to gas is over 50 percent if we use the waste heat, not 28 percent. And if 80 percent is what you are looking for, try charging a battery in April and using it 6 months later.
But he wants to put hydrogen in 700 bar tanks. Sigh. I honestly don´t know what to think here. On one hand his research seems like a solid effort to point out the problems switching to renewable energy will have and on the other he keeps using assuptions that lack practical approach. Didn´t he ask around during his research what is actually being used for energy storage at scale?
Instead of cherry picking technologies that are doomed to fail exactly because they need materials we don´t have, we should use the existing/emerging ones that don´t create the same shortages. This is somewhat addressed in the second half of the video, but once again brushed over as if alternative cell chemistries are not researched. They are, it just turned out it's a lot more complicated to make a practical product. For stationary storage weight and size is also not important. What matters is reliability and cost. So the graph showing energy density is the less relevant way to look at the problem.
I appologize for the rant I just hoped this new version of the research will focus on the practical methods/tech we can deploy, not a scare tactic showing what we already know won't work.
Rediscovering technologies proposed in the 1970s that were not advanced need to be reconsidered while applying modern new materials fuel and components to determine practicality.
Nature has a solution and that one is most likely to play out. Forced total degrowth. No worries.
The topic makes sense, I will trust that the math is correct as the massive retooling of energy production and distribution will consume a lot of materials.
I'm not a fan of the proposed solution to restrict the comfort of people. You can't operate a democratic society with the sort of totalitarian management needed to force people out of private transport and to 'degrow" the economy. The push-back on government control over people's home heating, for example, is already causing the government of Canada to crater in popularity and run scared back to fossil fuels (but only for their preferred constituency). My predictions is the "do nothing and cope with it" camp will win elections over the "economic & weather control" camp.
“So you have chosen…death”
The problem is that the people who say restrict comfort always mean restrict your comfort while they live in luxury that you could never dreram of even if people didn't resist your comfort.
59:39 U238 is not the "nasty" part of spent fuel.
The old economic saying,
"It's the grid costs stupid."
3 things.
Generation
Grid transmission
Dispersed customers
The grid is incredibly expensive and a little expensive electric energy, plus the rest of our energy as cheap fossil energy, then we are ok.
The grid transmits to millions and millions of dispersed customers from the central generator
No fossil fueled future means 5 times bigger national grid to deliver 5 times more electricity.
The national grid is incredibly expensive.
The first national grid has been built over 100years and costs as much as the national GDP.
Now central electricity generation needs a 5 times bigger grid capacity to transmit all the extra energy to the dispersed customers.
A little electricity energy over the expensive national grid, a fragile lightweight grid that was limited in capacity because of its $/klm construction costs, then became expensive energy in the electricity bills.
But because it is fragile it can be broken like when the AC is turned up in the middle of the day.
Forest fires started when the transmission lines heat and sag too low and close to the ground vegetation.
Transmission lines blown over in stormy weather.
Now 5 times bigger grid, a robust grid, is economically horrendous financially.
Also horrendous in CO2 from the resources to finished giant grid, and raw materials.
All centralised electricity generation has this major problem and nobody is talking about it.
EV talk, all day long.
Nuclear electricity talk, all day long.
Distant renewables talk, all day long.
Time frames, we don't have 100years.
The energy transition will not be televised.
The transition will be live
Most grids can get to at least 75% wind and solar power with close to zero battery storage
Already this year 2023 the Uk grid is 65.3% non fossil fuels and we have much less than 1 hours battery storage on our grid
The UK grid will be 80% non fossil within 5 years and with very little battery storage (less than 2 hours)
Humanity wont get rid of all fossil fuels if its too expensive to do
There isn’t a pathway to zero fossil fuels (at least for now) but there is a pathway to at least -80%
And if the UK can achieve the numbers you state it will be all thanks to fossil fuels anyway, how do you think its all made??
@VK4VO Sure yes it takes fossil fuels to make wind turbines but what exactly is your point?
The main reason the world will do solar and wind is because most countries are net importers of fossil fuels so it'll help their balance of trade to do domestic wind/solar rather than improved coal gas oil
End futile expensive subsidies, embrace free markets and increase fossil fuel production. The threat across the planet is poverty not warming. Poverty kills millions, while warming hasn't killed anything. It is wealth creation and the modern world that mitigates and neutralizes threats from warming. Threats from everything.
Compare to Tony Seba's models of abundance as cost curves decline? His models show solar so cheap that you build overcapacity which means you need much less storage. ?
Michaux's argument is on finite resource availability, not cost. It doesn't matter how much it costs if the resources aren't there.
Scenario N at 28,29 was designed around RethinkX. IMO this will struggle to work.
I never knew that the "Green Transition" was planned.
The final Indonesian local government MOU between ThorCon and the Regency of Bangka, (the location of Indonesia's first of eight ThorCon's 500MWe TMSR), was signed last week, (2023-11-20).
So what you are saying is we can just build a crap ton of next generation nuclear plants and solve all the issues you mentioned above? To be formal, I have some questions
1. Does the calculations about solar deficiency include improvements in solar efficiency? If so, how much?
2. The battery scenario excludes sodium battery which are in production right now. What happens if we add sodium to the equation?
3. Like in the Q&A, nuclear seems to be the best solution. But nuclear is very bad at handling fluctuating loads. The batteries won't absolve it too given the numbers you shared. Any solutions?
It's interesting to note that there are plenty of metals available in the asteroid belt but no reasonable way to get those metals refined and sent down to Earth. If we wanted to do this, we should have started a project back in the 60s instead of going to the Moon. As it is now, it would take a half century to even get a pilot refining plant operational.
Getting any meaningful amount of mass from the interplanetary space down to the surface of the Earth is practically impossible. The mass would hit the atmosphere at the escape velocity of the Earth, at minimum. That's at least 11 km/s and likely much faster.
Everything would just vaporize, explode in the lower atmosphere like a nuclear bomb, or create a big crater on the surface.
We can just stay home burn sewer gas and ride bikes to work. No need to waste energy traveling to the asteroid belt to get materials to power vehicles.
@@Pasandeeros Yes - the way crew space capsules explode in the lower atmosphere like nuclear bombs and make big craters on the surface... Impossible. Right.
@@tomcraver9659 Space capsules are lightweight and require a hitech heat shield and a shallow re-entry glide angle in order to survive the re-entry. We are talking about roughly 10 metric tonnes per re-entry a few times a year.
With space minerals, the "meaningful" mass would be in thousands to millions of metric tonnes a year. The mass from deep space would also be approaching the Earth at much higher velocity than re-entry from the Low Earth Orbit.
Braking stuff from the Main Belt Asteroids down to the Low Earth Orbit requires delta-v of roughly 10 km/s (median), not an easy task with large masses. I guess we could use huge solar sails for that but it would take forever to lower the mass deeper into the Sun's and the Earth's gravity wells.
So, while technically possible, it is practically impossible to space mine any "meaningful" amount of minerals for the Earth.
@@Pasandeeros If you've got the tech to mine asteroids, making and applying high tech heat shields is a reasonable expectation. But you don't need 'high tech' heat shields - just something you're willing to sacrifice through ablation but which won't shatter - steel or aluminum might work just fine. And then there's potential advanced methods, such as magnetoshell aerobraking. If necessary, you could deliver the metal in small units, but mainly it's an issue of density, not size.
It will be practical to deliver payloads to closely match Earth's orbital velocity as they get close - so they would NOT enter the atmosphere at much over escape velocity. Controlled atmospheric entry can be used at least twice to shed energy - the first time in a 'skip' that sheds enough energy to get well below escape velocity, the second time to get sub-sonic, after which an entry vehicle could glide with enough lift to do a controlled flight to splash down for recovery without breaking up.
And we're not likely to be shipping steel or aluminum to Earth, except as vehicle structure - incidental to delivering more valuable and rarer (on Earth) metals like palladium and iridium.
Can we use reflectors to increase the effective area of light hitting solar panels during winter?
I've seen this done, I also use mirrors in my garden to reflect on dark areas.
Having said that, there will be a point where reflection just stops due to the same cloud cover that stops the solar. So question is, would it be worth it?
"IF" solid state batteries take over (if - there are no commercially viable examples yet) we "might" have a shortfall in germanium production.
How many scenarios which might happen as an outside chance should be considered?
I was kind of thinking that this is a strong man argument too to say that we're going to have solid state batteries and then say that the materials to make them are not readily available. We'll go with whatever is available and doable if solid state batteries aren't then they won't become popular. Lithium is pretty common and iron phosphate instead of cobalt is doable and being done. A lot of the stuff he says is true but not all
How can this be work by ONE! (1!) man?! Massive, massive backup battery storage shaped kudos to YOU sir 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Seems like what can be done can not be said openly. Regarding the rapid downsizing of humanity needed. When people say that this won't work for 8 billion then they are being very careful in avoiding what that actually means.
Trouble with that is, we reduce our population by having less babies, emigration etc, but this is seen as a problem. And their solution is to boost numbers with immigraton.
Which puts us back to square one, so to speak.
Humans are unlike most other life forms in their extremely variable resource consumption. The majority of humans especially those in growing populations are not a problem. It's the shrinking populations that are the problem. The developed countries are shrinking but more than compensate that by using ever more resources.
After Africa reaches it's peak in 2080, humanity will slowly die out.
It is not only seen as a priblen, it IS a problem, at least for the next 20 to 30 years when all the boomers will be gone me included. Immigration is not a long term solution. It is a temporary stopgap at best.
The issue with wanting less people in the shortest period of time is the age old fight for recources. We have been living in a suspended time slot. An anomaly.
@@MrBallynally2 We don't need a long term solution. In the long term we are all dead.
In 30 years the human population will start to decline. But just because the population is declining doesn't mean we use less resources as consumption of those resources per capita is seemingly limitless.
Have a look at resource usage in declining populations over the last 50 years. We more than make up for less people.
How much energy would be needed to divert to manufacture fertilizers from scratch when gas/oil sources become rare and is there sufficient base mineral supplies to produce them at demand and reasonable cost?
Fascinating listening to a man' s ideas how to reorganize society who doesn't care what other people think.
Agree, Because he knows what he's talking about.
@@Ln-cq8zu If he proposes a solution without caring what people think, he doesn't know enough of what he is talking about. Ultimately this is a political and not a technical or scientific problem.
@@guidobolke5618 Would you rather have politicians who have absolutely no idea how these numbers stack up! It needs all those you mentioned plus chemists and systems engineers at the minimum. Ooh and also maths. And, absolutely brilliant schoolteachers… please add your own additional critical specialities.
@@guidobolke5618 not sure how far you listened. ~55 he shows that 4 dimensional matrix with energy/ economics/ minerals /technology ‘all joined at the hip’. We all have to begin to understand the concept of complex systems!
@@user-nx6ji9tk8i I think it's fundamentally not a scientific, technical or economical problem anymore. It's a political problem. And you don't solve that if you shy away from politics. You are just taking the easy way out.
Indonesia's Government has now approved their PPA with ThorCon (see 57:00) for 8×500MWe Liquid metal Thorium ion molten sodium-Berilium fluoride salt "energy converters" (TMSR) at a capital construction cost cost between $800 - $1000 per kWatt (to ThorCon) and an expected pre-profit levelised cost of less than $30/Megawatt.hour (
On line to Bangka Island within 4 years
A Korean double hulled tanker shipyard could supply at least 10× 500MWe fully fitted ThorCon (TMSR-500) per year..
@@MrVaticanRag
What could go wrong.
A country of islands.
@@stephenbrickwood1602
What could go wrong Stephen?
Indonesia could lose it's Pragmatic avoidance of the futility of Mickey Mouse anti nuclear Sierra Club folly and destroy it's strategic tropical rain forests for ubiquitous unrecyclable and unreliable solar farms that can't sustain an average of 6 producive hours due to usual afternoon cloud cover so would have to revert to coal fired power; natural gas, diesel or increasing the solar farm four fold (2GW instead of 500MW); plus adding 9000MegaWatt.hours of ridiculously expensive batteries to provide the same steady supply of 12GigaWatt.hours per day that one ThorCon 500MWe TMSR could provide 24/7 to an Aluminium smelter... Incomparable.
The final Indonesian local government MOU between ThorCon and the Regency of Bangka, (the location of Indonesia's first of eight ThorCon's 500MWe TMSR), was signed last week, (2023-11-20).
Could we get a copy of the slides attached to the video?
"Energy, like time, flows from past to future" (2017).
Thank God we’re expecting a fall in population in Europe over the rest of the Century! Even so, it doesn’t make up the difference, but it helps.
You do not mention the grid capacity increase, 5 times bigger.
That is a huge resource need and financing and CO2 emissions.
With the rapid downsizing needed and the i dont care attitudes of people appears to be stearing us to the greatest disaster since since ww2 but an order of magnitude or more likely then not bigger. And well within my liftime
It is not necessary to compress hydrogen to 700 psi if it is not being shipped anywhere, and if you use the latest 95% efficiency electrolyzes and burn the hydrogen to run a steam turbine, you can get round trip efficiencies close to pumped water.
If you base your research on IEA predictions, you might as well throw it away. Ten years ago IEA predicted BEV sales for 2040 at 10%. That number was surpassed in 2022.
Thank you for your great work.
What is the solution?
Only nuclear can replace coal over time.
Forget about solar and wind, especially wind is complete non-sense,
except for very few niche application in the private sector.
For the industry, especially regarding baseload power, simply forget wind and solar.
Assume they dont work here, assume they dont exist.
Beside a massive build up of nuclear energy on a worldwide scale (min. 14.000 GW),
we should make existing industry and power plants (!) emissionsfree.
If CO2 and water vapor is created, we should turn that with some hydrogen into methanol.
Methanol is the best seasonal storage, methanol is the high density battery, which we are missing.
(5400 Wh per kg or 4300 Wh per liter compared to lithium-battery about 160 Wh/kg)
Electric cars are not feasible, let alone electric trucks.
Just forget about that, does not work, and wont ever work for sure.
Heatpumps to be used for heating are the dumpest idea ever considered.
Heatpumps are fine only for cooling if powered by solar or nuclear, basically near CO2 free.
8:06 8:14 30 TWe of new power-plant capacity needed (all fuels, globally).
The only problem with green transition it is if we will have enough materials to do the transition , specially rare earths and recycling them .
quick question. How will we able to handle all this planning and not loose efficiency or massive bureaucracies?
We can't. That is why the size of the task we are faced with is so significant. It is not just about improving efficiency or eliminating bureaucracies; it is about consuming less, changing expectations, and doing things differently.
@casey2806 I mean starting with common sense shipping and manufacturing is a start. When I learned what idiocy was allowed..like fish from by backyard being shipped all over before coming back or computers where each stop inserts one part into it, I nearly fell through the floor. There should be one factor/ location for all items, no matter how complex.
Uranium 233 is a fast fissile material, so unfortunately as great as LMS reactors are, there use is controlled and restricted by the Nuclear Proliferation Treaties. Basically you'd be handing every state in the world the ability to make nuclear bombs... given the potential resource wars coming, this is not a good idea.
There is absolutely no reason at all to think that UAP's are anything other than ordinary things that are blurry. Funny isn't it how all the sharp pictures are easy to identify isn't it?
Maybe people should undertake yearly migrations by trains north and south to better climates that need less heating and cooling. Maybe the trains could be powered with large sails or kites above in the sky to take people back and forth north and south. Or if that's a stupid idea, people can go in sailing ships on the ocean old fashioned style.
An hour to say we can't do 28 days of storage in batteries: Probably correct
But you don't need 28 days of storage in Batteries. Just 6 hours is enough to get you to a very low fossil grid. 6 hours vs 28 days = more than a 100x error
You don't need to go to zero fossil grid. 10% fossil is probably acceptable. If necessary you can carbon capture it
go to 28,29 and look at Scenario N. A 6 hour buffer + 3 x overbuild for wind and solar. Did it work? Question: how will you balance the difference between summer and winter with just 6 hours?
@simonp.michaux1638 No one is suggesting fossil fuels have to be 100% absent
Fossil fuels will continue to be used
We aren't going to do a 3x overbuild and a 1 month chemical battery to go from 90% non fossil to 100% non fossil
The 10% that will be fossil can be, if necessary (and it might not be necessary) carbon captured and stored
@@kaya051285 This is exactly what has been proposed by my critics. My work was shaped by EXACTLY what the European Commission senior civil servants (the ones in charge) thought they were going to do.
@simonp.michaux1638 For regions with good solar resources, you'll do the following
1GW grid link
1GW DC to AC inverters
5GWp of solar panels ($1 billion for the panels at current price)
12GWh battery storage (~$4.5B currently)
Measured at the grid link the capacity factor would be approximately
Jan 66%
Feb 85%
Mar 100%
Apr 100%
May 100%
Jun 100%
Jul 100%
Aug 100%
Sep 100%
Oct 100%
Nov 87%
Dec 63%
Total 91.8% annual capacity factor as measured at the grid
The other 8.2% can be Nat Gas
No seasonal storage is necessary
You can increase this to 95.8% Solar 4.2% Gas by going form 5GW panels to 6GW panels at an additional $200 million cost for the panels, but that's probably not worth it
For what it's worth 6GW of panels with no curtailment in a sunny location would be 27% CF x 6 = 162% but you get 95.8%
162 / 95.8 = 1.7x overbuild but you are only overbuilding the solar panels and structure to hold them. The inverters the grid connection is at 1x
And the panels are material and cost cheap at around 20 cents a watt atm
@simonp.michaux1638 Obviously we aren't going to do the impossible economically or material limits wise
Well before any proposal to 3x over build generation and batteies the size of mountains, the public will vote out the clowns that make their energy too expensive or try to change their lives in a material way
Europe will get to a 80-90% non fossil grid we aren't then going to try bankrupt ourselves with ideology to go from 90% to 100% despite what some person in Europe told you
Perhaps carbon based fuels can be economically made from capturing and fractioning the flue gases of a coal-fired steam plant using the Fischer-Tropsch process, captured CO2, waste heat, and waste gaseous water. Why not base the process at the coal plant where there are all the basic materials, electricity, heat, rail and manpower?
How about artificial fuel with air carbon capture such as terraform industries ones for a power buffer or even use in cars/heating ect..
Don't Ruhnau and Qvist base their estimate on German consumption and renewable generation data? Germany would be a peak load in winter market, and is notorious for its Dunkelflaute. Therefore their storage estimates are likely to be excessive for warmer, sunnier climates (e.g. Australia and most of the world).
I was also wondering that. However I am intrigued by the fact that Michaux states that the storage requirements are likely an understatement.
I wonder why he is saying that. Maybe some huge industries like steel melting? Requirements for peakloads due to extra strain because of A.I. + heatpumps + peakload + Dunkelflaute?
@@Rimlin Dowling, Jacqueline A., et al. ("Role of long-duration energy storage in variable renewable electricity systems." Joule 4.9 (2020): 1907-1928) find that up to 33 days long term storage would be required in the least cost 100% renewables case for the US. This targets 99.97% reliability and uses a mostly wind mix. That would be a better paper to rely on than Ruhnau I think.
Thnk you!@@TimJBenham !
@@jeffsim3327 I haven't seen any relevant papers. Feel free to do your own lit search.
80% of the world's population is in warm latitudes fortunately.
And sunny latitudes. 😊😊
And the latitudes are warming.
And more energy in the atmosphere, that is handy. 😊
That means 80% of the world's population lives in an area that will be unlivable without power generation like we've never seen before. Which really means the problem gets worse or mass migration the likes of which this world hasn't seen in thousands of years, possibly ever.
So, the rich countries move to sustainable economy with the available resources. As all the mineral resources are exhausted, remaining countries can stay on fossil fuel. Then as innovations are gradually available, more and more countries join the sustainable or net zero club until the whole world is net zero. This will have the benefit of large carbon emissions to be eliminated first and then gradually smaller chunks of c arbon emissions are cut. This process needs to be managed in a way that rich countries do not benefit from the liberties poor countries have by virtue of being poor.
So why not nuclear power?
It's called the Canadian oil sands, not tar sands. Get it right.
EVs also present a chicken and egg problem. If all cars were EVs it would make sense to electrify the high speed Roads (Motorways & A Roads)
So you would no longer need a 300 mile EV a 50 mile EV would work perfectly fine as you only use the battery for the slow roads
That would make EVs some 25% more efficient but importantly it would make EVs cheaper than ICEs
A 60KWh battery EV becomes a 10KWh battery EV saving 330kg of materials and making the vwhicle far more efficient and at least $10,000 cheaper
The impact for trucks and semis would be even greater. You wouldnt need a ridiculous 1,000 KWh battery truck youd have 100KWh or 10x less and just oull power from the top or side of the road directly. Saving 6000kg of batteries and $200,000 of cost
UK gent on CZcams says there are not enough raw materials to make EVs for the world, not even the UK alone.
what are we doing raise co2, which is 2/3 too low.
What are the realistic reserves of fossil fuels, more importantly how many years of current level production?
We are finding them everywhere. There has never been a greater ratio of known reserves against consumption. The availability of fossil fuels is in the market price and right now OPEC keeps reducing production to stem a falling price.
@@anthonymorris5084 You obviously have not done any data analysis. Your statment is utter hopium. Global oil production is following the projected path predicted by King Hubbert the head research geologist for Shell research in the 1960s. Global production has declined since 2018. While coal will last well into the second half of this century oil will not and methane (natural gas) has some unknown life expectancy, it has the property of reserves just running out without much warning.
@@dan2304 In 1956 Hubbert predicted peak oil for the US by 1970. In 1973 I lived through the energy "crisis". (I've lived through so many crises that never materialized it's hard to keep track.) Governments shelled out cash to homeowners so they could insulate their homes. Carter mandated all highway speed limits to 55MPH. Government TV commercials begged us to turn our thermostats down to 68F. The automobile went through its greatest transition in history. All because of the energy "crisis".
My statement is accurate. Today the US is the largest producer in the world. Iran just discovered 2.6 billion barrel reserves recently. In 2006 Brazil discovered offshore reserves. In July Brazil broke production records. Canadian oil sands and offshore reserves is a story of rising production. There are numerous examples.
Most importantly, seeking new energy sources should be an ongoing, never ending process, but it should be the free market leading the way, not bureaucrats, activists and fear mongering climate zealots.
@@anthonymorris5084 Anthony, you have obviously done no research or data analysis. You statement is utter hopium. Global oil reserves and production is following the path projected by King Hubbert, the head research geologist for Shell research, in the 1960s. US lower 48 peak in 1970 global conventional peak in early 2000s, actually 2005, and global oil production has declined since 2018. While coal will last into the second half of this century oil will face depletion sooner. Natural gas life expectancy is difficult, wells decline rapidly just after peak production. In economics there is only one fact: "Supply will meet the demand that has the ability to pay." Economic depletion of commodities will hit long before actual depletion, when the cost of supply of commodities is more than the ability to pay. That includes food, and it is already happening in many countries. According to the World bank and the IMF some 120 countries are facing bankruptcy.
:45 mins. Please rephrase ‘the final solution’ !! I know, out of context, but there will still be strife.
Sam, who been contemplatively puffing his pipe, turned to Frodo; "Mr Baggins, no doubt about it, we're in a fine pickle! Even the Gaffer wouldn't be able to think his way out of this one."
Frodo thought for a minute; "Sam, the Elves are quite advanced with their nuclear fusion projects and the dwarfs, it is rumoured, have already employed thorium reactors. Let's not be too pessimistic about the future."
Sam pondered and thought to himself, "But will they share all these wonders with the Shire?"
Frodo, as if reading Sam's mind, rejoined; "You know Sam, we don't need all that, we've got our own, self reliant, self sufficient ways, our little cornucopia, constantly renewed by Mother Earth through the cycles of Nature."
"Ah, like this here pint of proper 1420," said Sam, and drained his glass.
We may be looking at a zero sum game here, being played on the international scale.
I believe that the poorer nations, which have the most to lose must develop alternative stratagems quickly, but if Cuba serves as an example, it can't be done alone.
39:20 39:29 "Nov 10, 2022 - Ammonia is predicted to become the leading fuel source for the world's giant cargo ships by 2050."
A 28 day buffer is utterly absurd.
If you have a limited amount of solar generation you DO need to capture as much as you possibly can when generation exceeds demand, but when you have an excess amount of generation potential, the requirement to capture ALL excess energy is not present.
A six hour buffer is ample for any locations in the tropics and subtropics, more would indeed be required in other areas but still nowhere near a month or more, except perhaps at the poles.
now balance the difference between summer and winter.
@@simonp.michaux1638 No. There is no need to store the excess in summer, only to have sufficient storage for some of the excess produced during midday, during winter. Certainly for regions towards the poles there will be longer periods of insufficient solar power production, but for the bulk of the population of the world, the sun will not be obscured for more than a day or two at a time. With a reasonably well interconnected grid, 6 hours would probably be the absolute minimum, but more than 12 would be unnecessary.
Some very basic numbers show that solar radiance in winter is much less than summer. We don't have the tech to transport power long distances either. @@rohansprenger6902
@simonp.michaux1638
I like your work, but a couple of matters.
80%of the world's population is in warm latitudes.
80%of the world's population is in dictatorships,
Dictatorships with nuclear industries can do what they want.
Cold latitudes solutions are not needed for warm latitudes.
The climate is warming, and more energy for dispersed generation.
Central generation needs massive dispersion costs. National Electricity Grid expansion of capacity.
Central generations biggest difficulty.
@@rohansprenger6902 czcams.com/video/AdJH3tKjvzM/video.html Grid interconnects relies on global and or regional cooperation.
Does any of this take into account technological advancements? Cost curves for EVs,solar and battery are declining very quickly. Robotaxis will make car ownership much less (5x perhaps?l?) as you can order rides for "pennies" in todays money. So fewer vehicles will need to be built so must reduce the amount of metals needed. And have any of his models been compared to what Tesla put out as a comprehensive viable roadmap?
Musk's claims are hyperbole, as usual. He's been claiming "robotaxis" next year since 2018, and he's now farther from that than ever, as he decided to remove LIDAR from his cars to save money. His numbers on robotaxis and car ownership are not credible either, as he doesn't take into account the fact that if a Tesla is running 24 hours a day, you'll probably have to replace tires, brakes and the battery pack once a year. Also assumes 100% reliability, which is not exactly Tesla's strong suit. And the car's interior will be trashed in less than 3 years. It is simply not a realistic scenario, just hyperbole to sell cars and to keep the stock price high, but his hour of reckoning is coming soon.
Plus, lowering the cost of car ownership is not exactly a positive on the environment as it will hurt the necessary move to mass transportation and actually increase the need for minerals.
You are not hearing what you do not want to hear?
@@SylvainDuford Based on existing taxi use, robo-taxis will probably do more like 5x-6x of private car use, not 10x. So tires yearly, brakes 2 years (regen braking reduces wear), battery and interior 4-5 years.
At a guess, with those and other replacements, the car could last 20 years, similar to other highly maintained cars. So it's not how many cars, but how many replacement parts where Musk's estimates miss the mark.
Lidar removal is old news - that will hurt self-driving in heavy rain, snow or fog - but mainly in conditions so bad a human should not be driving either. It doesn't really impact self-driving in normal weather. The current limit on Tesla self-driving is 'edge cases' - unusual circumstances it hasn't trained on, not how well the car is seeing things. Tesla is just now going to end-to-end neural networks. At a guess, they'll have to do one more iteration that boosts the cars' ability to adapt to new situations better, to get adequate self-driving with no human paying attention. Call it 2-3 more years maybe, given the current pace of AI improvement plus some time to integrate that into Teslas.
Maybe in the mean time, Tesla will decide to start a taxi service where the passengers have to provide a registered human safety driver, and the cars just drive in a 'super-cautious mode' when there's no passengers aboard.
Huh.@10:00 he's still assuming a huge number of batteries to provide his "buffer", rather than the obvious rational assumption that we'll keep around existing gas turbines and retrofit them to use synthetic fuel produced from renewables. Which is part of the IEA plan, if I'm reading it right - I don't know why he's showing that if he's going to ignore it.
Yes, making and burning fuel is horribly energy inefficient (produce hydrogen, convert to a storable fuel, store it, transport it, burn it in a turbine to turn a generator) but it is really the only realistic way to store energy for the long term (like 28 days - batteries are OK for 6-12 hours of storage for daily use.)
A one month supply at maybe 25% round trip efficiency requires an over-build of about 33%, whether that's wind, solar, nuclear or other non-fossil fueled generation. That, perhaps occasionally combined with some curtailment of high energy consumers during extreme consumption days, should meet our needs.
As a bonus, you can ship fuels from sunny/windy regions to dark and still regions, meaning you can do the over-build in areas where it will have the highest capacity factor even when other areas are getting less sun and wind - which is how we can get by with a ~1 month fuel supply instead of 12 weeks.
Later he considers storing hydrogen (not the best, but simpler to consider than syn-fuels), but then @34:00 he misleadingly suggests a 5x-6x multiplier of the overbuild of wind and solar to use hydrogen for the daily power shifting.
That would be idiotic - you'd use batteries for daily power shifting which would be the bulk of total energy shifting. Hydrogen fuel production would be used only for long term energy storage, which requires a multiplier of daily energy production of about 1.5x.
And he doesn't mention that the net overbuild (which should be around 7x to 8x, not 15x) is of "peak" power production - most of that is simply due to the sun not shining at night and wind being intermittant. So it's not 'real' overbuild, it's mostly just 'building enough'. The real overbuild is the 1.5x factor to produce and store fuel for long term shortfalls.
OMG - and then @35:10 he starts multiplying DAYS times the overbuild! NO. Simply wrong.
The increase for one day's storage is closer to 1/364 of each day's production, because you've got the rest of the year to store energy for that one day. Obviously!
The actual multiplier for N days of storage should be 1+(N / (365-N) ).
So for 60 days of storage, 1+(60/(365-60)) = 1+(60/305) = 1.2x average daily energy needs.
So even using his excessive 15x overbuild (of peak production) from before, 60 days of long term storage would require just 18x overbuild, NOT 900x.
I wish Michaux would look into mining uranium from seawater. The Department of Energy has made a lot of progress towards this. At present the estimated cost of fuel would be twice of that using the current methods; however, this is economical instead of technical.
Why do this when there is plenty of Uranium on land?
I agree that there should be enough uranium on land if using breed & burn fast reactors. However, in your papers and videos you claim nuclear is not a long-term solution, with the possible exception of thorium, due to supplies being limited. However, by acquiring uranium from seawater a technical back-stop has been created due to the supplies being effectively unlimited. The US Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has done significant work on this to prove that it's technically feasible, with an EROI of around 16 for once-through PWR reactors. Between uranium from seawater and thorium, it appears that the solution to both climate and dwindling fossil fuels is available. What am I missing here?
If you want papers from the DOE to save you time, I have plenty. Let me help.
@@simonp.michaux1638
And much thanks for replying! @@simonp.michaux1638
Also we only fission between five and seven grams of uranium per kilogram mined and we don't even touch thorium.
Land acknowledgements... What a joke
80 minutes devoted to only one idea to reduce global warming - reducing greenhouse gases by various and convoluted methods. How about considering some alternatives?
I'm sure there are lots of other commentators - Simon doesn't need to cover those bases when others are also doing it.
The Green Transition will not make money as things currently stand for investors and grubby CEOs, but here’s what will!!
Simon is clever, but distracted by this. He would be better suited to apply his considerable expertise to the matter of the survival of humanity, specifically the calamity that will befall Earth not in 26 years time, but in the next fifteen to twenty two years. No point in looking to construct a new paradigm or shift in direction for 2050, events before then will assuredly render that as naught.
I'm so sorry you wasted so much time. The whole presentation is refuted by numerous examples of villages, regions and even countries that run on 100% renewables already.
Electricity? Are they producing all their own food, fuel and textiles with renewables? How about production, commerce, transportation and taxes? Perhaps an island? Have we discovered Klaus Schwab's "isolated pockets of self-sustaining community" that could opt out of the friendly authoritarianism aka. Degrowth? Thanks!
Give examples of regions,countries that run all their energy needs on renewables including the industry and transport to maintain those societies thanks.
Stop ordering people around and do something useful for a change.@@TheTigerQuoll