Tony Seba is coming for your cheese, and says 100% solar is easy.

[woodgeek]

Tony Seba is up to it again. He has a new talk, which is a pretty quick watch, that he gave to a bunch of bored-looking sheiks in Saudi:

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If you don't know, Tony made a bunch of predictions around 2010-2014 saying that solar, batteries and EVs were all going to get super cheap and take over the world in the 2020s. A lot of folks thought he was crazy then, but many of his numbers were accurate, viewed from 2023. Like $100/kWh lithium batteries, and utility solar PV costing <4 cents per kWh. He also predicted that 200 mile BEVs would cost $11k in 2023, which is just what (ultracompact) BEVs cost in China now.

Notably, he was also predicting that autonomous vehicles would make ridesharing super cheap (robo-ubers), and that used ICE car prices would go to effectively zero, both by around now. Last time I checked, those prediction were both pretty wrong.

What is he predicting now?

-- that making a 100% Solar+wind+battery grid is pretty easy anywhere on earth, requiring just 2-5 days of battery storage, and 2-3X overproduction, depending on the local climate. And NO seasonal storage problem, or intercontinental transmission or hydrogen storage megaprojects. And that that production cost will continue fall until such 100% RE will be cheaper than fossils almost everywhere.

-- as a corollary to the above, there will be a LOT of electrical power around that will cost very little because it is stranded over-production. He calls that 'super power' and says it will enable new energy demanding industries that we don't think about now (with dispatchable demand). Conversely, doubling the local grid power generation only adds about 10% to the construction cost, due to the non-linearities in the curve.

--he predicts that growing animal proteins such as casein or whey protein in microbial fermenters will be cheaper than the dairy stuff by 2025. This is not 'cultured meat' which needs animal cells, but proteins made by bacteria. I have already sampled the 'non-dairy' cream cheese from my local grocer that uses bacterial casein. It was, no surprise, just like regular cream cheese. Several vegan ice creams based on microbial dairy are also for sale already.

He has a big finish where he says that all the pillars of the economy (energy-materials-transportation-food-IT) are being disrupted over the next 15 years. He thinks that after we green energy production and transportation (transition which we can see as underway) microbial protein will overtake dairy and animal agriculture (?), while we will still grow plants to feed to the microbes (corn to make glucose, I assume). He predicts that an amount of grazing/agricultural land bigger than US+China combined will be freed up. And just letting that land lie fallow or regrow natural habitats could help push the global system to carbon negativity by 2050.

Kinda like we all make a transition to super cheap 'vegan junk food'.

We shall see I suppose.

 

[begreen]

Thanks for posting. It's nice to start end up the year and start the new on a positive note. These are exciting times. It's too bad he used the Cruise autonomous drive program as an example. The plug was pulled on that one soon afterward. The current cheap EV cost in China was surprising. If BYD starts selling cars here, GM is toast.

His talk was encouraging, but lacks the overlay of other transistions and disruptions that are occuring due to accelerating climate change. These disruptions foster social and political change. Does he examine these parallel disruptions in other talks or books? I'd like to say that we are ready to embrace these positive changes, but indications are weak particularly when today's communications are run in large part by those with deeply invested interests in maintaining the status quo. I hope he is right and humanity is ready for the changes. I was 40 yrs ago.

Was the audience bored, concerned, or in denial? The path predicted dramaticly reduces the importance of their country's source of wealth.

 

[woodgeek]

Thanks for posting. It's nice to start end up the year and start the new on a positive note. These are exciting times. If BYD starts selling cars here, GM is toast. It's too bad he used the Cruise autonomous drive program as an example. The plug was pulled on that one soon afterward. His talk was encouraging, but lacks the overlay of other transistions and disruptions that are occuring due to accelerating climate change. These disruptions foster social and political change. Does he examine these parallel disruptions in other talks or books? I'd like to say that we are ready to embrace these positive changes, but indications are weak particularly when today's communications are run in large part by those with deeply invested interests in maintaining the status quo. I hope he is right and humanity is ready for the changes. I was 40 yrs ago.

Hmmm. His Youtube channel has several longer talks from 2023 on the 'Great Transformation' but I honestly wasn't interested enoguh yet to sit through them all. I think this one is a summary/overview.

Was the audience bored, concerned, or in denial? The path predicted dramaticly reduces the importance of their country's source of wealth.

I think the Saudis and other Middle East countries are trying hard to rapidly diversify their economy, build huge solar projects, etc. But they will struggle like all incumbents.

I too cringed/laughed at the GM autonomous taxi example. What a fiasco that was! They had human operators online 'minding' them to make sure they didn't do anything too stupid, something like 1 human operator for every 4 taxis. I think Nvidia has to work a bit harder to get some more processing on those cars. And maybe some AI to read the faces of adjacent human drivers....

 

[woodgeek]

I was most intrigued by the fermented protein content of this talk.

I am skeptical of 'cultured meat' (bc I doubt it will get cheap enough) and an avid eater of 'plant based meat'.

Since looking at enough vegan propaganda to choke a dozen horses, I am convinced that animal ag is coming into head to head conflict with climate change. It is clear that veganism (as an animal welfare philosophy) is not going to move the needle on that issue. It is also clear that the usual climate change advisors are afraid to take on animal ag, and will sideline discussions about animal food production at things like the COPs.

So, if reducing the amount of animal products needs to happen for climate reasons, and that fact is SO unpopular as the be unspeakable in 2023, how will the ice eventually break?

Seba is saying that as soon as cheap bacterial/yeast-derived whey and casein proteins are available, food companies will switch their product lines away from traditional dairy as a simple cost saving measure. And at a (capitalist) stroke, wipe out a chunk of the animal ag industry that has a disproportionately large climate impact, a very large lobbying effort and a LOT of govt subsidies.

Politician like to subsidize dairy because voters get mad if milk or cheese gets too expensive. But what if 'real' dairy products can be made cheaply without cows and dairy farmers? It will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

Impossible burger is already the king of the 'plant based' meat products, and relies on fermenter generated heme protein.

So maybe we get a 'vegan world' filled with plant based food products made with the (fermented) animal protein that people want for taste or nutritional preferences.

Tony's Food disruption video:

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[EbS-P]

The effects of the diary and corn sugar being replaced by fermentation would be huge and coupled with reduced demand for ethanol catastrophic. Realistically, when taking into account increased traditional production by foreign countries, it would lead to an entire collapse of the the US farm economy. What happens then? I predict huge government subsidies. Payments not to farm. That’s been done before.

One needs to be thinking too what can not be fermented. I don’t know the answer but those products will look stupid expensive next to others.

The idea of super energy is interesting and I think will probably spawn lots of misguided ventures. If electricity is basically free or has a negative cost 11-3 June - august what does that enable?

 

[woodgeek]

The effects of the diary and corn sugar being replaced by fermentation would be huge and coupled with reduced demand for ethanol catastrophic. Realistically, when taking into account increased traditional production by foreign countries, it would lead to an entire collapse of the the US farm economy. What happens then? I predict huge government subsidies. Payments not to farm. That’s been done before.

One needs to be thinking too what can not be fermented. I don’t know the answer but those products will look stupid expensive next to others.

I did a bit more reading, and it looks like most of the fermentations are done with engineered yeasts, which are eating glucose as a substrate. Not unlike ethanol production honestly. So there will still be plenty of need for, I assume, cheap glucose from HFCS.

Since the whole system is so efficient, however, it could run on 90% fewer calories than currently used for animal feed, and that stream could be just glucose, and wouldn't need much/any protein input from things like soy or alfalfa.

So yeah, you would reduce the amount of ranching and dairy farms significantly, along with the land currently used to grow feed.

Seba is saying that there are a LOT of current products that use whey protein as a protein booster, which would happily switch to a bio-identical cheaper whey protein. No consumer selection or change required.

As for where the tech can go...

Single proteins would be 'phase 1' if you will... heme, whey, casein. These three are already in grocery stores, and prices are just now crossing the dairy level and still falling. The idea is that you can make a plant based product but the taste will never be perfect, because it is lacking some key protein. So add 2% weight fermented heme to a plant burger, and you get an impossible burger.

Phase 2 is cultured meats... which I have been skeptical of. My issue is the array of $$$ proteins and growth factors that need to be added to grow animal cells. Folks are arguing that these can be made by fermentation as well, so the rise of cheap fermented proteins will enable the development of cultured meats.

So to answer your question, phase 1 can already take a big bite out of animal ag, and phase 2 means there are few or no limits to what can be grown in the longer term (if it materializes). I personally think most folks will be happy with cheap, delicious phase 1 products that are based on plant based inputs with key fermented proteins for taste/macros.

The idea of super energy is interesting and I think will probably spawn lots of misguided ventures. If electricity is basically free or has a negative cost 11-3 June - august what does that enable?

Electrochemistry will be the new 'plastics'. My chem-E buddies are currently all into developing electrochemical ways of doing every endothermic reaction. So a LOT of these ventures will be chemical and material productions that run on a partial duty cycle. And of course, process heat (again for chemistry) can be stored for a few days, so super power could be used to feed that.

Looks like Texas will be a good super-power state, in that it could be an early adopter, needing only a couple days storage (cheap), a large solar fraction (cheap) and not too much overcapacity required (cheap). It also hosts most of the US chemical industry currently.

And then there is also 'zero carbon crypto' mining.

 

[begreen]

With all this fermentation proposed I hope that they are capturing and sequestering the gases produced, especially the CO2.

 

[woodgeek]

Turning from the food factor back to the energy transformation, a provocative video from Seba's outfit RethinkX:

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The punchline is that as incumbent energy producers are disrupted, the costs of their energy go up, due to reductions in capacity factor. This analysis (from 2021) says that correctly priced kWh from new conventional plants is >2-3X as expensive as assumed when those projects are built today.

IOW, we are building large but uneconomic projects today.

We talk about how solar and wind (and 4 hour batteries) have gotten cheaper than conventional generation, but Seba is saying that the current pricing of conventional generation is already low-balled by assumptions that it will operate as it did in the year 2000 for decades into the future. An assumption that was historically correct (in the 20th century), and now clearly incorrect.

I like to beat up on the EIA, but Rethink is saying that the bad data from the EIA is motivating current large scale malinvestments. They draw an analogy with the Housing Bubble, where risk was badly underestimated, assumed prices were incorrect, and the losses passed onto millions of little guys. Here a utility can build a new conventional generation plant, and if they lose money, all the cost can be passed onto ratepayers when the 'bubble bursts' and the (still new) plant becomes a white elephant.

So, solar + wind +batteries (SWB) power will be cheap and abundant in the future, but how much bad debt will be slammed onto ratepayers when it arrives? It depends on the management of your local utilities in the next few years, and the last 15.

To be critical of the analysis, I would say they are playing it a little loose, talking in the beginning about SWB power leading to shuttering existing plants due to undercutting their fuel and maintenance costs. And then they segue to the cost/kWh of new conventional plants, and come up with eye-popping figured/curves.

Optimistically, we can assume that construction of new conventional plants will be scaled back asap, to avoid more malinvestment, and that seems to be what they are calling for.

The stranding of existing conventional assets will take more time, spreading out the pain, allowing some debt to be paid off and simplifying the transition. It will probably proceed according to fuel and maintenance costs. Coal is already disrupted. Gas next. Nuclear last.

Thoughts?

 

[woodgeek]

With all this fermentation proposed I hope that they are capturing and sequestering the gases produced, especially the CO2.

Since the CO2 comes from corn, the whole process is low to zero net carbon. It would be easier/cheaper to sequester than direct air capture (DAC), however, and provides a route to being carbon negative.

It still seems likely that carbon sequestration of the fallow lands, and the reduction in cattle methane production would provide a HUGE negative forcing in the 2030-2050 timeframe, even ignoring the CO2 stream from PF.

After the Black Death went through Europe, the farms regrew forests. Global CO2 levels in the atmosphere dropped, measurable in ice cores.

 

[EbS-P]

The political nature of public utility commissions, I have zero faith that North Carolina puts the rate payers interest above Dukes. We absolute past statute that at least requires equal investment from stockholders and rate payers They will prove any generation Duke wants. We have a 25% increase by 2025 coming.

 

[peakbagger]

Take a look at the suburbs of Kenansville NC. You will find a shut down biomass power plant next to a textile mill. (broken link removed) NC funded a program about 15 years ago to put more renewable power plants online. This was supposed to be a long term program. Kenansville was an old coal plant and the area had a lot of waste wood that was being dumped (including a lot of old railroad ties). A firm bought the plant and converted it to waste biomass and it was running quite well for a year or so. Then Duke went to the state and convinced them that if natural gas plants were able to access the renewable tariff (effectively declaring natural gas as "renewable") Duke would shut down some old coal plants. The deal was made and that plant in Kenansville shut down as they could not compete with "renewable" power generated by a natural gas plant. I think the people who did the Kenansville plant also bought a similar plant n Greensboro ? and one other town and was getting ready to convert them.

Tennessee recently pulled the same con listing natural gas plant as qualifying for renewable incentives. Its the golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules.

 

[begreen]

Sounds very similar to what happened in West Virginia when a major stakeholder of Enersystems Inc. became governor, then a US Senator.

 

[woodgeek]

In other news, Solar+wind in the US passed Coal in 2023 in total electrical energy produced.

Wind & Solar Power Now Provide More Electricity Than Coal In USA — Charts - CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! There’s a funny misconception hanging around that coal provides almost all of the electricity for the USA, or at least most of it. Those who love to hate on electric vehicles are fond of ... [continued]

cleantechnica.com

Both are about 16% of the total, heading in different directions. Nukes are about the same share, and ofc, are flat.

Next milestone is solar+wind makes 2X what coal makes... based on current trends, that should come in about 2 years or less.

 

[begreen]

3D printed meat is getting popular in the Netherlands.
A factory in The Netherlands 3D prints 500 tons of steaks a month. Redefine Meat company will supply German restaurants with printed fillets.
Approximately 110 German restaurants are already buying "meat" from Redefine Meat.
"To begin the 3D-printed meat process, scientists biopsy a batch sample of animal stem cells depending on the desired type of meat — beef, pork, poultry, or even fish. These cells then undergo an in vitro proliferation process, bathing in a nourishing, nutrient-dense serum within a climate-controlled bioreactor.
Over the course of several weeks, these cells multiply, interact, and differentiate into the fat and muscle cells that make up bio-ink. Then, a robotic arm uses a nozzle to dispense this paste-like, cultured meat filament in fine layers atop one another. The arm follows the instructions of an uploaded digital file using computer-aided design, or CAD, software in order to replicate the correct shape and structure of the intended meat. 3D-printed meat material must be viscous yet firm enough to reproduce a structural model complete with accurate tissue vascularization, depending on the type and cut of meat." - Brooke Becher

What Is 3D-Printed Meat? | Built In

3D-printed meat is made from cultured meat (which means it is lab-grown, cell-based or cultivated), and does not require slaughtering livestock.

builtin.com

 

[peakbagger]

Reminds me of hot dogs, they may taste great but I really dont want to know the details

If on the other hand, if its affordable and consistent I would give it try.

 

[woodgeek]

Nice article. As with all things, it will come down to cost. When its more expensive than conventional, it will be a niche early adopter thing. When I can get it at my grocery store for half of the cost of conventional meat, that will be another story.

Lots of innovation on the printing side left to make, and lots of these little startups will go belly up.

And it still seems that I will need to have yeast based precision fermentation off the ground at scale FIRST, to make all the sera and growth factors these animal cells will require, to bring the cost down. But that first step seems to be in the offing now and in the next few years.

 

[begreen]

500 tons a month of printed meat is not small production. It sounds like the process is widely received and accepted there. I'd be willing to buy and try it, especially if it reduces the impact on natural systems and the planet, even if it cost a bit more.

 

[woodgeek]

500 tons a month of printed meat is not small production. It sounds like the process is widely received and accepted there. I'd be willing to buy and try it, especially if it reduces the impact on natural systems and the planet, even if it cost a bit more.

From the article:

REDEFINE MEAT’S TENDERLOINS​

Purely plant-based, Redefine Meat’s product line offers a lean and smooth cut of its faux-beef tenderloin. Taking note of color gradations and texture, this butchered-meat alternative makes roast and filet mignon accessible for both meatless and carnivorous palates. The entirety of Redefine Meat’s 12-item portfolio is strictly vegan, meaning that none of their 3D-printed meat products are sourced from cultured meat or utilize any animal byproducts. Instead, the company's ingredient list consists of soy and pea proteins, chickpeas, beetroot, nutritional yeasts and coconut fat used to create their brand of “new meat.”

It seems that that 3d printed meat product is actually plant based, rather than consisting of cultured meat. This is consistent with scaled production in 2023, since cultured meat is still quite spendy.

Basically, a 3-d printed Impossible Foods product.

Sales figures are not easy to find, but plant based meat retail sales are at $1.4B and flat in the US. If you assume $10/lb and that Impossible is one third of the total, that would be 50 million lbs per year, or 22,000 tonnes/year.

Were the Impossible and Beyond burgers a fad, or is plant-based meat here to stay?

Alternative meat products have gotten a lot better. They’re not nearly good enough.

www.vox.com

 

[peakbagger]

I have been buying various meat substitutes for years to give them a try. Mostly Morningstar Farms which is readily available at most stores (made by Kellogg's). The only thing I that I keep in the freezer is the grillers (soy based fake hamburgers) which if dressed up with various hamburger fixings are a passable burger that seems to have an indefinite freezer life. I have tried the various "Impossible brand" pea protein based products and with the exception of the Impossible Whooper at Burger King, I havent had anything that would want me to pay a premium for it. The impossible whooper is cooked on the same grille as the regular burgers so my guess is they are getting some beef fat mixed in making it more beefy. The grocery stores were selling these products like fresh meat rather than frozen and I found the shelf life was not great.

The majority of the meat I eat is chicken and turkey. It is pretty rare to have beef and on occasion I will buy pork. I would like to find a chicken substitute but to date I have not found anything close.

One thing I did notice is that many of the commercial substitutes have very high sodium content.

 

[begreen]

Thanks for catching that. I didn't scroll down to the bottom of the examples. The article mostly focuses on products that start with meat cells. That's impressive sales for purely vegan products.

I don't eat beef, so that is of less interest except for addressing the large environmental impacts. I'm mostly hopeful for a dramatic reduction of the millions of tons of fishing via these products. It looks like the Singapore-based Shiok Meats is reported in the article as addressing this concern but I then read that during the pandemic they switch to beef production. Their website does not indicate this.

My concern for any of these product, vegan or meat based, is what additives are used to make the final product. Better living through chemistry is not always true.

 

[woodgeek]

I have tried the various "Impossible brand" pea protein based products and with the exception of the Impossible Whooper at Burger King, I havent had anything that would want me to pay a premium for it. The impossible whooper is cooked on the same grille as the regular burgers so my guess is they are getting some beef fat mixed in making it more beefy. The grocery stores were selling these products like fresh meat rather than frozen and I found the shelf life was not great.

My local grocer sells 12 oz packs of Impossible 'burger' fresh or frozen, and they last forever in my freezer. I make some killer (vegan) meatballs with that stuff that I bring to potlucks and such.

I too was disappointed by the grilled burger outcome, and then read some food science articles re fake meat. One issue is that under high heat grilling, the fat runs out more quickly than with real burger, leading to more flaring and a less appetizing final burger. With meatballs/meatloaf, breadcrumbs prevent that problem. On the grill, I found reducing temps to medium (low and slow) resulted in a very yummy final burger. I doctor the patty itself with (vegan) Worcestershire sauce, crushed fresh garlic and chopped capers (the latter as suggested by Ernest Hemingway). I don't do this often, but it is handy for when I get invited to a grill party.

 

[EbS-P]

Tony Seba is up to it again. He has a new talk, which is a pretty quick watch, that he gave to a bunch of bored-looking sheiks in Saudi:

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If you don't know, Tony made a bunch of predictions around 2010-2014 saying that solar, batteries and EVs were all going to get super cheap and take over the world in the 2020s. A lot of folks thought he was crazy then, but many of his numbers were accurate, viewed from 2023. Like $100/kWh lithium batteries, and utility solar PV costing <4 cents per kWh. He also predicted that 200 mile BEVs would cost $11k in 2023, which is just what (ultracompact) BEVs cost in China now.

Notably, he was also predicting that autonomous vehicles would make ridesharing super cheap (robo-ubers), and that used ICE car prices would go to effectively zero, both by around now. Last time I checked, those prediction were both pretty wrong.

What is he predicting now?

-- that making a 100% Solar+wind+battery grid is pretty easy anywhere on earth, requiring just 2-5 days of battery storage, and 2-3X overproduction, depending on the local climate. And NO seasonal storage problem, or intercontinental transmission or hydrogen storage megaprojects. And that that production cost will continue fall until such 100% RE will be cheaper than fossils almost everywhere.

-- as a corollary to the above, there will be a LOT of electrical power around that will cost very little because it is stranded over-production. He calls that 'super power' and says it will enable new energy demanding industries that we don't think about now (with dispatchable demand). Conversely, doubling the local grid power generation only adds about 10% to the construction cost, due to the non-linearities in the curve.

--he predicts that growing animal proteins such as casein or whey protein in microbial fermenters will be cheaper than the dairy stuff by 2025. This is not 'cultured meat' which needs animal cells, but proteins made by bacteria. I have already sampled the 'non-dairy' cream cheese from my local grocer that uses bacterial casein. It was, no surprise, just like regular cream cheese. Several vegan ice creams based on microbial dairy are also for sale already.

He has a big finish where he says that all the pillars of the economy (energy-materials-transportation-food-IT) are being disrupted over the next 15 years. He thinks that after we green energy production and transportation (transition which we can see as underway) microbial protein will overtake dairy and animal agriculture (?), while we will still grow plants to feed to the microbes (corn to make glucose, I assume). He predicts that an amount of grazing/agricultural land bigger than US+China combined will be freed up. And just letting that land lie fallow or regrow natural habitats could help push the global system to carbon negativity by 2050.

Kinda like we all make a transition to super cheap 'vegan junk food'.

We shall see I suppose.

So I have watched several of Tony’s presentations. When it comes to food and agriculture, who had a counter/different point point to of view?

My parents’ portfolio is roughly 50% western Kansas farm ground. I’m the 4th generation and trying to understand if the historical thinking that, farm ground is a good long term investment, is a position I support.

 

[peakbagger]

Farm ground may be great long term investment as long as its in an area that will not impacted by climate change. Most predictions are large some farming areas that are dependent on irrigation from afar will need to be abandoned as the climate warms up. Those green round circles growing in arid areas seen when flying across the country will shift north.

 

[EbS-P]

Farm ground may be great long term investment as long as it’s in an area that will not impacted by climate change. Most predictions are large some farming areas that are dependent on irrigation from afar will need to be abandoned as the climate warms up. Those green round circles growing in arid areas seen when flying across the country will shift north.

Well if the dairy market collapses (this is real possibility as I don’t think we will keep the levels of subsidies when the alternative is so much cheaper) and meat shifts to cultured production and ethanol shifts to bio diesel (with what feedstock), and in the US I don’t really see any more major efficiencies that will allow us to keep competitive on the international producers??

Land values have quadrupled in 40 years outpacing inflation average return we calculate 5-7%. Global warming will have impacts. Would you want half your portfolio in a single asset that will be impacted by global warming. I’m skeptical that it is a good long term investment 20-30 year timeframe.

 

[stoveliker]

On the other hand, population will keep increasing in the US. Demand for land (for one use or the other) will thus too.