Renewable energy

[semipro]

The bigger issue here with renewable energy is the SCOPE of the problem. We don't need to JUST (1) switch our (let's say North American) energy systems over to renewable electricity, we ALSO (2) need to come up with a system that the rest of the world can duplicate to match our lifestyle!

The first thing (1) will require roughly DOUBLING the output of the US electrical grid, while decarbonizing it. I've said before that that growth is actually helpful to the transition....it brings in new investment and jobs and a more dynamic and innovative mindset. Allowing 'clean sheet' designs and projects.

But the bigger issue is (2). Roughly a billion people currently use 'energy services' at a level comparable (within a factor of 2) to the US, and another 7 billion get by on far less. I'm not saying they are in abject poverty, merely that as they become wealthier, they will use their money to purchase more energy, just like we did 50-100 year ago.

So we don't need to just replace the current global energy system with renewables, we have increase its output 5-10 fold to account for that demand increase before 2100!

(And when they get wealthy, they will want to eat like us too. There isn't enough acres to run the feedlots to increase global beef production by 5-10x what it is currently, let alone switch all those animals to 'free range' diets, which takes even more land).

So, nukes. Right now, nukes provide 20% of US power with 94 plants. We would need to increase that by 10x to decarbonize the US energy needs (incl heating and transportation) without renewables; 1000 nuke plants. And by 50-100X !! to give the current world population our access to energy services, 5000-10,000 plants. At that scale, we don't have nearly enough uranium (without breeders or thorium).

Conversely, we DO have enough agriculture to feed all those people today. If we want to scale global meat production 5-10x, we will need to scale plant based substitutes instead.

And the engineers tell us that there IS enough land and minerals and metals to build out THAT MUCH wind and solar and batteries to meet THAT global need.

Hmm. Sounds like the earth has too many people to support.

I don't know why so many find the discussion of human population reduction so onerous.
The amount of related ignorance also astounds me. I've met very educated people who believed that the earth's population was decreasing (confusing this with a decrease in growth rate).

 

[SpaceBus]

The earth is more than capable of supporting all the humans without totally destroying it, that's just not as profitable.

 

[woodgeek]

Hmm. Sounds like the earth has too many people to support.

I don't know why so many find the discussion of human population reduction so onerous.
The amount of related ignorance also astounds me. I've met very educated people who believed that the earth's population was decreasing (confusing this with a decrease in growth rate).

That is exactly the problem. The issue with dealing with overpopulation is that the horse has already left the barn. The reproductive rate has fallen massively around the world, but the large population through 2100 is basically baked in already. I am not interested in telling people that they, their children and grandchildren can't do or have what I and my family have access to. So scalable solutions for energy (and food) need to be found. And they have been.

I looked up some population density numbers:
US: 36 people/km^2
Maine: 17 people/km^2
Global: 25 people/km^2
China: 148 people/km^2
India: 445 people/km^2
(I assume these numbers are skewed by non-arable land area)

An agricultural solution for Maine might not scale to China or India.

I'll be honest: while it is unpopular, I have no problem with modern monoculture agriculture, which is striving for maximum productivity per acre. All the predictions were that we would run out of food before we got to a billion people, let alone 8. Those projections were based on earlier agricultural productivity, which people assumed couldn't be improved upon. The 'Green Revolution' did that, and here we are now relying on it.

Until organic and more local farming methods can demonstrate equivalent productivity, I will be skeptical that they are part of the solution.

 

[stoveliker]

Not sure that artificial fertilizer was such a "green" revolution.
It did prevent a lot of suffering tho.

 

[sloeffle]

I'm a little surprised by the ruminant angle above; it is quite well known that the energy losses to produce meat (using warm-blooded animals) are humongous. Wheat gives quite more calories per acre than beef... (i.e. comparing human-intake calories per acre).

Yes, ruminants can convert useless (to us) grass and clover etc into useful (to us) calories. But saying it's more efficient per acre is, I believe, not true, when measured in human-consumable calories per acre?
(And no, I'm certainly not a vegetarian...)

I googled "calories per acre beef", and don't know the background of this website (pushing an agenda or not) - but the table here is consistent in what I've read before. I can't vouch for the accuracy of these numbers (at this time - and I'm unlikely to try to find out; see earlier notion elsewhere about confirmation bias...).

Calories per acre for various foods

we could feed many more people with the same amount of land if we all became vegetarians, but only if we stuck to potatoes and corn.

www.waldeneffect.org

View attachment 289529

Disclaimer: I raise and sell beef as supplementary income. Take my comments for what they are worth. I've also raised meat and egg chickens, pigs, and sheep.

I live in corn, soybean, and very little wheat country. What the above chart doesn't tell you is how many lbs or gallons of synthetic fertilizer ( man made fertilizer ) it takes to produce that acre of food. I have a friend that raises corn and beans, the amount of fertilizer that they need to apply per acre of ground is astonishing. After you add all of the fertiizer that's needs put on to get those calories and the diesel it takes to put on that fertilizer. I'd bet more calories are spent ( if you can convert fertilizer, diesel, trucking of goods etc ) to produce an acre of these crops that what we get out of them. Add all of the glyphosphate that gets sprayed and I'd say you are even deeping the hole.

The grass and legumes that my cows eat requires zero fertilizer, zero glyphosphate year after year due the recycling of nutrients via manure. Roughly eighty-five percent of what a ruminant eats comes out the back side. The grass lands that my cows graze are also a CO2 sink. I'll agree with you all day that long that cows are not the best at converting a lb of food into a lb of beef but I also don't think they should have the bad rap that they get also. I'm talking about cows eating pasture, not the cows stuck in a feed lot.

If you want to eat meat, meat chickens are by far the best are turning a lb of food into a lb of gain. On the red meat side, pigs are the best. Yes, pork is a red meat.

Last but not least, support your local farmer. They will appreciate the dollar that you give them more than the grocery store does.

 

[EbS-P]

Sustainable agriculture and agricultural products needs to be subsidized to gain market traction . A combine is now 1/2 of a million dollars. Tractors drive themselves, no operator in the cab needed. Profit is in the scale for most farmers (and real estate).

 

[stoveliker]

Last but not least, support your local farmer. They will appreciate the dollar that you give them more than the grocery store does.

I appreciate your insight. And I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.

 

[SpaceBus]

That is exactly the problem. The issue with dealing with overpopulation is that the horse has already left the barn. The reproductive rate has fallen massively around the world, but the large population through 2100 is basically baked in already. I am not interested in telling people that they, their children and grandchildren can't do or have what I and my family have access to. So scalable solutions for energy (and food) need to be found. And they have been.

I looked up some population density numbers:
US: 36 people/km^2
Maine: 17 people/km^2
Global: 25 people/km^2
China: 148 people/km^2
India: 445 people/km^2
(I assume these numbers are skewed by non-arable land area)

An agricultural solution for Maine might not scale to China or India.

I'll be honest: while it is unpopular, I have no problem with modern monoculture agriculture, which is striving for maximum productivity per acre. All the predictions were that we would run out of food before we got to a billion people, let alone 8. Those projections were based on earlier agricultural productivity, which people assumed couldn't be improved upon. The 'Green Revolution' did that, and here we are now relying on it.

Until organic and more local farming methods can demonstrate equivalent productivity, I will be skeptical that they are part of the solution.

Those population densities were created by arbitrary lines created by old dynasties, colonizers, and empires. There is plenty of space to put people to help them spread out, then you could use sustainable agricultural techniques to feed large amounts of people.

Aggressive monoculture just isn't sustainable one way or another. The chemicals required to sustain the fields are destroying habitats and creating a lot of toxic waste. The "green revolution" is not really such if all of the pollinators are killed off by glyphosate and habitat loss.

 

[woodgeek]

I'm sure your neighbors won't mind when we move 10 million Indian people to backwoods Maine and sell them each 40 acres and a mule.

I think that the productivity of the biosphere without artificial (Haber) or fossil (guano) nitrogen fertilizer is way too low to support current populations. We are in 'overshoot' and need those 'astonishing' levels of fertilizer to get the needed yields, and lots of fossil calories to make each food calorie as well.

Food and Fossil Fuels - Earth Overshoot Day

Fossil fuels make up a significant part of the food Footprint. We show how much fossil fuel it takes to provide the food on our plates.

www.overshootday.org

Until a few billion people volunteer to starve, I think we're stuck on the current treadmill.

And even worse, any solution that reduces yield per acre of land threatens to destroy what little non-cultivated habitat still remains, as farms necessarily expand. Do we want to cut down forests OR get rid of National parks to grow crops using less productive methods?

I want to see productivity numbers (cal/acre) for sustainable agriculture before I sign on. As it is, I think such agriculture survives on the margins of the food system, and can't be scaled to serve the whole (overshot) population.

An interesting commentary:

Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?

A new meta-analysis suggests farmers should take a hybrid approach to producing enough food for humans while preserving the environment

www.scientificamerican.com

Suggests that organic methods are equivalently (or more) productive for many crops except grains, and for those nitrogen is the limiting factor.

 

[SpaceBus]

10 million people moving to Maine is exactly what this state needs. It's mostly uninhabited with empty houses everywhere, dying towns, no children, empty schools, etc.

 

[EbS-P]

10 million people moving to Maine is exactly what this state needs. It's mostly uninhabited with empty houses everywhere, dying towns, no children, empty schools, etc.

And 7.5 million decent jobs! I am always struck by how much more land is in agriculture production just across the border in Canada.

 

[peakbagger]

Sad to say but Maine is destined to be a population poor state, large entities are buying up productive woodlands and locking them up for sequestered carbon. The woodlands are effectively out of production for next 100 years so few jobs for locals. Sure there will still be the strip along the coast for the rich out of staters and some of the larger lakes but they will be seasonal places so there will be caretaker jobs. The rural farmland is slowly being bought up by Amish and Mennonite families. Only 4 counties are prosperous and are net contributors, the rest are all just scraping along. The government costs still are there and that means higher taxes for those who stay.

 

[semipro]

Where'd the OP go?
Great discussion though I think one based on baiting from a brand new forum member -- trolling with a great outcome.

 

[EbS-P]

Sad to say but Maine is destined to be a population poor state, large entities are buying up productive woodlands and locking them up for sequestered carbon. The woodlands are effectively out of production for next 100 years so few jobs for locals. Sure there will still be the strip along the coast for the rich out of staters and some of the larger lakes but they will be seasonal places so there will be caretaker jobs. The rural farmland is slowly being bought up by Amish and Mennonite families. Only 4 counties are prosperous and are net contributors, the rest are all just scraping along. The government costs still are there and that means higher taxes for those who stay.

I had a dream about sugar beet and potatoe farm and distillery once. Woke up before I got to my still running. I’m glad I’m not a farmer.

 

[semipro]

I still can't bring myself to support nuclear as part of our energy mix. I just came across this article which describes pretty well why.

COLUMN: On Cape Cod, a nuclear nightmare arrives

Holtec recently announced, almost off-handedly, that it was considering dumping a million gallons of radioactive waste in our Cape Cod Bay.

news.yahoo.com

 

[stoveliker]

Fair enough. But I prefer to have one cubic mile of toxic waste over the whole atmosphere being polluted, with major consequences everywhere.

Now, if we could get away from burning anything, and do everything with renewables, great. No nuclear energy for me. But until then, I'll offset your vote

 

[ABMax24]

Those population densities were created by arbitrary lines created by old dynasties, colonizers, and empires. There is plenty of space to put people to help them spread out, then you could use sustainable agricultural techniques to feed large amounts of people.

While I do agree with this statement to some extent, I think it has to be made with caveats. For instance there is a pretty big push in Canada right now to keep bringing more and more foreigners into the country, which is fine, we have jobs we can't fill and lack skilled professions, especially in healthcare.

In terms of CO2 per capita though this is a poor choice. We move people from countries like India where a temperate/tropical climate significantly reduces energy demand for heating and basic human survival. Move those people to Canada where using copious amounts of energy for heating in the winter, and large amounts of fuel for transportation over long distances becomes the norm.

Would it be better to keep people closer to the tropics and ship food en masse to them, or is it better to have these people live here and consume some local food, while importing the rest because we simply can't grow things like apples or celery in this climate? I guess we could in a greenhouse at the cost of more energy consumption.

The area around here is some of the most northern farmland on the continent, we produce very large quantities of wheat, barley and canola, many orders of magnitude above what can be consumed locally. It is shipped west via train to the ports on the coast destined for Asian markets. The trains that haul this grain to the coast consume a lot of diesel fuel, but the amount of energy consumed in the locomotives is miniscule in comparison to keeping our city of 75,000 running. It probably makes the most sense to move these new people to Canada and settle them near the coast, say around Vancouver, and ship food to them from here.

 

[woodgeek]

I guess I disagree with @SpaceBus about small scale agriculture and local production. In a world of overshoot, with most fo the worlds arable land (and potential natural habitat) already under the plow, we need to maximize production per acre to minimize acres.

I personally am skeptical of minimizing 'food miles' and locavorism. If you like local food, great, but don't pretend its green.

I have read a few studies about this, but can't find them. But I did find an old column:

Locavorism: Fad of unscientific greens

The best use we can make of our limited land, water is for each area to specialise in what it produces best, and then transport it to consumers.

economictimes.indiatimes.com

The energy associated with shipping food (by rail or ocean especially) is minimal compared that producing it. All that Canadian production is better than forcing production closer to the consumers on a much larger area of less than ideal land (or on land that doesn't exist).

Ofc, in the same fossil powered large scale agricultural model required by the overshoot world, taking that grain and feeding it to animals is still a completely avoidable and negative GW and habitat/extinction choice, esp as generational changes and great alternatives become available.

 

[EbS-P]

I still can't bring myself to support nuclear as part of our energy mix. I just came across this article which describes pretty well why.

COLUMN: On Cape Cod, a nuclear nightmare arrives

Holtec recently announced, almost off-handedly, that it was considering dumping a million gallons of radioactive waste in our Cape Cod Bay.

news.yahoo.com

Had to do a quick google and click a couple time to find out how “hot” the discharge could be. 100 mil rem. Article states it 5x greater than soils background before dilution at the discharge pipe. Half live of tritium is 12 years.

My thoughts on this discharge should it occur. Drinking any amount of alcohol is a greater risk than this to an individual. Waste disposal is an issue that needs addressing. Radon is a much larger nuclear risk than a controllable discharge to people.

Economics of new nuclear plants are not favorable. Unless we have large change in policy I don’t see that changing. We do need to address base load power generation. Europe really needs to give energy independence a fresh look and see how that might be possible. Germany closing all their nuc plants while publicly popular has the. Much more reliant on Russia. France is in a much better position. I don’t see nuclear power won’t be expanded in the next 2 decades (unless large scale carbon sequestration technology is implemented)

Edit… forgot the link

Keating: Holtec has decided to dump radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay

The company decommissioning Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station told the NRC it will start dumping radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay in early 2022.

amp.capecodtimes.com

 

[woodgeek]

Ah, our old friend, tritium. Yeah, the cooling water gets bombarded by neutrons, and some of the hydrogens get transmuted to tritium, which decays to stable, non-toxic Helium-3 after a decade or so. The beta ray that gets emitted is not penetrating, and has low energy.

The main reason tritium is not a concern is that the element can't be bioconcentrated to cause danger to a target organ, the way many radioactive metals can. You have a lot of hydrogen in your body, but its not all in one organ.

Moreover, dilution is available (an ocean), and geological/hydrological/biological cycles can't undilute (concentrate it). So you can compute the dose to any organism swimming in that water (or drinking) and show that it is orders of magnitude lower than the background radiation we get all the time from things OTHER than tritium. Done.

The article worried about tritium dumping is alarmist and absurd.

Ofc, I might be biased, I carry around a microgram of tritium on my keychain as a nightlight. Its a little dimmer than when I got it a decade ago. I'll have to buy another.

Amazon product ASIN B09MJPLQFR

 

[stoveliker]

The article worried about tritium dumping is alarmist and absurd.

^^nail on the head.

 

[peakbagger]

I remember years ago when Maine Yankee got dismantled. The contractor proposed breaking up the containment dome and filling the holes in the site with the crushed concrete. The dome was built with crushed rock aggregate from Maine. Maine has a fair share of granite and its got low levels or radioactive elements including Radon. The contractor argued unsuccessfully that if they bought freshly crushed rock from a local quarry that it would be more radioactive than the crushed concrete from the containment dome. I think the utility tearing it down was getting cost-lus, so they shipped it all out of state to some legal disposal site.

There are several nuclear power plants being torn down by Holtec. The utilities that owned the plant had set aside money to dismantle the plants after they were shut down but oversight was lax and the final owners underfunded the plans. In the case of Vt Yankee and Pilgrim the proposed soltution by the owners was to let them sit for decades mothballed in hopes that the investments set aside would eventually pay for the plant to be disassembled for less cost as some of the radioactive components would have decayed. It was joke, Entergy the owner of both plants tried to spin off toxic assets like these to get away from the liability and no doubt they figured at some point they would be able to get out from under the liability. Holtech came along and proposed that they would take the money set aside and using their experience and fixed priced contracts that they could tear the plants down quicker for less money and keep the difference in their costs and the amount set aside. The issue with Holtec is they have not inherent assets, if they run into trouble and go bankrupt there are no assets to seize, unlike Entergy. So far it seems to be working at VT Yankee. Pilgrim is a tarball, SW mass is valuable real estate and politically no one wants to handle a closed down nuke plant. If the state and fed say no, Holtec no doubt is set up as a LLC for the Pilgrim site so they can walk away. Let them finish their work and there is lot of prime ocean front real estate and big block of undeveloped land that gets freed up.

 

[CreoSophist]

Hmm. Sounds like the earth has too many people to support.

I don't know why so many find the discussion of human population reduction so onerous.
The amount of related ignorance also astounds me. I've met very educated people who believed that the earth's population was decreasing (confusing this with a decrease in growth rate).

The population of people responsible for creating and capable of maintaining the modern world is, in fact, decreasing rapidly. The growth is currently occurring in populations that are not capable of supporting themselves.

Fewer producers & more eaters=slow collapse

10 million people moving to Maine is exactly what this state needs. It's mostly uninhabited with empty houses everywhere, dying towns, no children, empty schools, etc.

That did not work out too great for California. You don't need resource consumers coming from across the globe to move to your state. What is actually needed is for competent and intelligent people to reproduce much faster than the current extinction-level fertility rate.

 

[EbS-P]

The population of people responsible for creating and capable of maintaining the modern world is, in fact, decreasing rapidly. The growth is currently occurring in populations that are not capable of supporting themselves.
View attachment 291766
Fewer producers & more eaters=slow collapse

That did not work out too great for California. You don't need resource consumers coming from across the globe to move to your state. What is actually needed is for competent and intelligent people to reproduce much faster than the current extinction-level fertility rate.

5 th baby on the way! You are welcome.

 

[EbS-P]

I remember years ago when Maine Yankee got dismantled. The contractor proposed breaking up the containment dome and filling the holes in the site with the crushed concrete. The dome was built with crushed rock aggregate from Maine. Maine has a fair share of granite and its got low levels or radioactive elements including Radon. The contractor argued unsuccessfully that if they bought freshly crushed rock from a local quarry that it would be more radioactive than the crushed concrete from the containment dome. I think the utility tearing it down was getting cost-lus, so they shipped it all out of state to some legal disposal site.

There are several nuclear power plants being torn down by Holtec. The utilities that owned the plant had set aside money to dismantle the plants after they were shut down but oversight was lax and the final owners underfunded the plans. In the case of Vt Yankee and Pilgrim the proposed soltution by the owners was to let them sit for decades mothballed in hopes that the investments set aside would eventually pay for the plant to be disassembled for less cost as some of the radioactive components would have decayed. It was joke, Entergy the owner of both plants tried to spin off toxic assets like these to get away from the liability and no doubt they figured at some point they would be able to get out from under the liability. Holtech came along and proposed that they would take the money set aside and using their experience and fixed priced contracts that they could tear the plants down quicker for less money and keep the difference in their costs and the amount set aside. The issue with Holtec is they have not inherent assets, if they run into trouble and go bankrupt there are no assets to seize, unlike Entergy. So far it seems to be working at VT Yankee. Pilgrim is a tarball, SW mass is valuable real estate and politically no one wants to handle a closed down nuke plant. If the state and fed say no, Holtec no doubt is set up as a LLC for the Pilgrim site so they can walk away. Let them finish their work and there is lot of prime ocean front real estate and big block of undeveloped land that gets freed up.

I spent some time at Umaine listening to Dr Hess. He would joke that some home water filters from certain areas should be considered radioactive waist. Samples bottles had so much radon that they hissed when you opened them.