Green Energy Revolution Megathread

[viper37]

Does anyone know if carbon tax proposals impose the tax at point of extraction or point of combustion?

In Canada, kinda both, bar exceptions.
Well, technically, the point of combustion, but since it requires combustion to extract oil&gaz, big corporations are subject to this.

[mongers]

Interesting graph, not unsurprising:



One thing to note, the total international flight impact figures for the USA and the UK are quite similar, this backs up what I head a recently, that UK travellers, make up the largest group* of international flyers, something like 85 million flights a year.

Source for graphic and article here:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/06/more-airlines-are-offering-carbon-offsets-but-is-it-a-real-solution/



*The disparity between the UK and USA in the above graph is probably down to Americans taking on average significantly longer flights, so whilst the total is greater than the UKs international impact, the UK travellers are taking more, but on average noticably shorter trips.

[Tonitrus]

There is no doubt we US Americans would benefit from a better nation-wide rail system...and I think this chart reflects that dichotomy very well.  Though in general it looks like larger nations bias out the top end (and it shows that Britons travel abroad quite a bit), including China.

But I think it is far more likely that we'll make electric air travel viable than we'll ever invest enough for a nation-wide high speed rail network.  And the former would probably be cheaper anyway.

[Legbiter]

Whining about air travel is pointless and counterproductive. The major wins regarding CO2 reductions will be won in China, India and Africa switching to nuclear and renewables in this century. Global air travel isn't even a rounding error in these calculations. Get the easy wins in first before screeching at harried folks just trying to make it to next month for enjoying their every other year weekend to Tenerife. 

[mongers]

Whining about air travel is pointless and counterproductive. The major wins regarding CO2 reductions will be won in China, India and Africa switching to nuclear and renewables in this century. Global air travel isn't even a rounding error in these calculations. Get the easy wins in first before screeching at harried folks just trying to make it to next month for enjoying their every other year weekend to Tenerife. 

Where to start with this?   

[Legbiter]

Where to start with this?   

Not pointed at you at all mongers. I know you're a good lad.

[Admiral Yi]

That checks out.  Only 2.5 percent.

[Tonitrus]

As they don't have the regulatory burdens that we have, it does kind of surprise me that China isn't overflowing with nuclear reactors. But that also might be a good thing.

[Monoriu]

As they don't have the regulatory burdens that we have, it does kind of surprise me that China isn't overflowing with nuclear reactors. But that also might be a good thing.

They are certainly building some, but the number is no where near overflowing.  I hear they are expensive. 

[Valmy]

As they don't have the regulatory burdens that we have, it does kind of surprise me that China isn't overflowing with nuclear reactors. But that also might be a good thing.

They are certainly building some, but the number is no where near overflowing.  I hear they are expensive. 

They have an unfortunate tendency to run over budget as well. Once you get them up and running though...

[Valmy]

Whining about air travel is pointless and counterproductive. The major wins regarding CO2 reductions will be won in China, India and Africa switching to nuclear and renewables in this century. Global air travel isn't even a rounding error in these calculations. Get the easy wins in first before screeching at harried folks just trying to make it to next month for enjoying their every other year weekend to Tenerife. 

I mean there is no reason we can not work on many different things at once with regards to CO2 reductions, but yeah air travel is a pretty low priority. The big problems are ground transport and energy, not air travel.

But no reason we cannot get that fixed, especially as the US has a much larger ability to do that.

[mongers]

Whining about air travel is pointless and counterproductive. The major wins regarding CO2 reductions will be won in China, India and Africa switching to nuclear and renewables in this century. Global air travel isn't even a rounding error in these calculations. Get the easy wins in first before screeching at harried folks just trying to make it to next month for enjoying their every other year weekend to Tenerife. 

I mean there is no reason we can not work on many different things at once with regards to CO2 reductions, but yeah air travel is a pretty low priority. The big problems are ground transport and energy, not air travel.

But no reason we cannot get that fixed, especially as the US has a much larger ability to do that.

But a significantly higher growth rate than all other categories, something like 5.7% per annum, which is over 30% growth in the last five years alone.

Crucially I think the figure is a crude measure and ignores the radiative forcing caused by the other pollutants released into the upper atmosphere by air travel.

[Tamas]

Whining about air travel is pointless and counterproductive. The major wins regarding CO2 reductions will be won in China, India and Africa switching to nuclear and renewables in this century. Global air travel isn't even a rounding error in these calculations. Get the easy wins in first before screeching at harried folks just trying to make it to next month for enjoying their every other year weekend to Tenerife. 

I mean there is no reason we can not work on many different things at once with regards to CO2 reductions, but yeah air travel is a pretty low priority. The big problems are ground transport and energy, not air travel.

But no reason we cannot get that fixed, especially as the US has a much larger ability to do that.

But a significantly higher growth rate than all other categories, something like 5.7% per annum, which is over 30% growth in the last five years alone.

Crucially I think the figure is a crude measure and ignores the radiative forcing caused by the other pollutants released into the upper atmosphere by air travel.

It is telling of the profoundly middle class nature of this "climate revolution" that the most popular action item seems to be removing poor people's ability to clog flights.

As Wizz Air pointed out, let's ban first class flying instead. That, surprisingly (not) has not been on the public agenda when it comes to restricting flying options, despite its very inefficient use of aircraft space.

[Malthus]

As they don't have the regulatory burdens that we have, it does kind of surprise me that China isn't overflowing with nuclear reactors. But that also might be a good thing.

They are certainly building some, but the number is no where near overflowing.  I hear they are expensive. 

They have an unfortunate tendency to run over budget as well. Once you get them up and running though...

The problems with modern nuclear tend to be regulatory and financial, and the financial ones are much harder to solve - it's an enormous up-front bet that the price of other forms of electricity generation will not go down over a the (long) time horizon of the particular nuclear instillation.

Increasingly, this seems to be a bad bet. Which is the major reason we don't see more nuclear plants being built - even moreso that the fear of more Chernobyls/Fukishimas.

[crazy canuck]

Fusion power prototype being built by a Vancouver area based co.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-vancouvers-general-fusion-raises-us65-million-to-build-carbon-free/

General Fusion Inc., a B.C. company backed by Jeff Bezos, has raised US$65-million to build a prototype plant in its quest to prove that nuclear fusion energy can be a commercially viable, carbon-free source of power.

Singapore-based sovereign wealth fund Temasek led the financing, announced Monday, which brings the amount the Burnaby, B.C.-based General Fusion has raised since 2002 to more than US$200-million from investors including Mr. Bezos, the billionaire who founded Amazon.com Inc. The funding is tied to $50-million the federal government committed to the project a year ago.

Traditional nuclear reactors rely on fission – splitting the nucleus of atoms in elements such as uranium or plutonium – to generate energy. Fusion does the opposite; in General Fusion's case, it wants to fuse heavy hydrogen atoms into helium, as happens in the middle of a sun, a process that can reach tens of millions of degrees Celsius. Oddly, that gives Burnaby the unusual distinction of hosting one of the hottest places in the solar system and one of the coldest: the city is also home to quantum-computer developer D-Wave Systems Inc., which supercools its chips to a fraction above absolute zero.

Fusion research is costly and time-consuming; scientists have spent decades trying to build systems that safely create more energy than they consume. Even the plant General Fusion plans to build will take five-plus years to design, build and test, chief executive Christofer Mowry said. He said the new funding will only finance the start of its commercialization plan; the company will need to at least double that to reach the finish line, "but it's plenty to get us started and take us a long way down the program."

Roughly two-dozen startups are now developing fusion energy projects "which means more and more people believe this is a viable option for carbon-free energy," said General Fusion board observer Geoff Catherwood, a partner with Business Development Bank of Canada's industrial, clean and energy technology venture fund, an early investor. "They're still five years away from proving the technology – but if proven, it's a trillion-dollar market and could literally save the planet."

General Fusion's approach involves injecting hydrogen fuel into a molten lead-lithium sphere. Pressure on the sphere can force fusion reactions within the fuel, releasing heat into the liquid metal that can be converted into electricity.

"We're not trying to prove that fusion works," said Mr. Mowry, a global energy-industry veteran who previously oversaw hydro and nuclear power projects. "Fusion does work. We're trying to prove our approach is something that is practical and can be translated into an economically competitive power plant with a machine that is durable, can last for decades and have economics that can compete with coal for power production."

He said the company has proven the various components of its system work by drawing on recent advances unavailable to the field's pioneers, including powerful computers and 3-D printing. "What we need to do now is scale it up and build an integrated version of this thing at power-plant-relevant scale."

"Fusion was a hard sell within investment circles as short as two years ago," said Zoltan Tompa, director of BDC's clean technology practice. "Hopefully this ushers in a new trend" of mainstream investors funding fusion, he said.

"They're moving faster than some of the other fusion companies ... and making more strides toward actual mass production," Bryan Vogus, senior director with General Electric Co.'s "additive sales" division and a supplier for the test plant project, said in a recent interview.

General Fusion's hydrogen fuel comes from separating hydrogen from water through electrolysis and further separating out the heavier hydrogen, which contains an extra neutron. One litre of this fuel, Mr. Mowry said, could generate as much as 50,000 barrels of oil, enough to heat 10,000 homes for a year.

General Fusion is one of several high-profile startups in the Vancouver area tapping not just software, but physical science, to try to achieve monumental advances and create commercial success – all heavily financed by deep-pocketed global investors including Mr. Bezos and Bill Gates. Others include D-Wave, agriculture clean-tech firm Terramera Inc. and Squamish's carbon-dioxide-capturing Carbon Engineering Ltd.