You must log in or # to comment.
China is winning the race whilst the US is going back to beautiful coal and stolen oil.
Faster, please.
You can support it by using electricity, for water heating, laundry, dishwasher, when there is a surplus of solar power. Don’t give money to power companies that kill us, give it to producers of clean, safe, and peaceful energy.
“You never change anything by fighting it; you change things by making them obsolete through superior technology. …" (Buckminster Fuller)
Electricity for heat pumps and moving vehicles is far more efficient than burning stuff. You need to look up the difference between energy and exergy. Electricity is 100% exergy, and can power heat pumps. Fossil fuels not.
Do you know a heat pump which operates at 1400-1600 deg C?
Electric motors and heat pumps are far more energy efficient than their combustion counterparts. Solar and wind electricity can be generated in situ or transported via cable. No need to power ships and trucks for fossil delivery to refineries or fuel stations. Thus we will end up with less primary energy.
How does a heat pump helps you firing Portland cement, ceramics, melting glass and metal, fixating air nitrogen? And these are all 24/7 industrial processes.
These are still big challenges, but very bright people already work on them. For example, Germany’s Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, a top climate scientist, is working on climate-friendly buildings. Other research groups have worked on recycling concrete into more climate-friendly cement as a co-product of electrical steel processes.
As you say, these are industrial processes and need to be addressed by industrial solutions. There are new processes for steel, cement and fertiliser being developed and tested. They will move to mainstream as we electrify everything.
Looking at glass, or cement. Do you know a heat pump that runs at up to 1600 C? So it’s just plain ohmic heating. And it’s a 24/7 process, so it needs electrochemical backup. Do you know what that does to your EROEI?
It’s not the first cab off the rank. Processes that are energy intensive may need careful consideration and I’m sure smart minds will work it out. We need to move forward and economics of energy production are shifting rapidly which will initiate change. It’s always been the case.
Careful consideration doesn’t work around thermodynamical limits very much, I’m afraid. When we move forward, we do not energy transition but rather add new atop the old: we never stopped burning classical biomass, coal or natural gas. Renewable energy is just a new thin layer on top. Depletion of mineral resources necessary for renewable infrastructure buildout and maintenance indeed does a number on the overall economics and energetics, but unfortunately in the wrong drection.
I tend to be more optimistic than that. If you take the view that there won’t be a shift from fossil and chemical processes that are destroying our environment then there is most likely no future for our kids. Either we find a way or billions will die. I’m heartened that we have alternative processes for steel, concrete and fertiliser as well as new battery technology but when evil swans like AI and satellite mega constellations appear, it is a downer.
In cement production particularly: Pumps + co 2 capture = 5x efficiency in the process + negative carbon footprint
Add renewables and voila, best cement factory in the world
The race is about new energy. An old gas plant is still cheap to operate. But when faced with the decision of building new capacity, solar is cheaper and its not close. New gas energy is grinding to a halt.
Old plants aren’t cheap enough to operate. The cost of gas and coal is expensive and ongoing. The plants are old and need increasing maintenance and costs are rising. Unless they can charge a premium they are money pits. Solar beats them hands down as once the capex is paid then the opex is trivial by comparison. It’s the preferred financial model.
And as oil reserves are shrinking, extraction becomes ever more expensive. This will turn into a negative feedback loop.
At some point, fossil power will not generate any more enough money to sustain itself. Especially since the oil economy has truly horrendous costs in terms of economic development, political independence, military expenses, wars, aircraft carriers threathening whole regions, human rights, authoritarianism, denied democracy, and so on. It could collapse just like Stalinism in 1989.
