Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.

[eevee-fan]

autoevolution: MIT's "Thinner Than a Human Hair" Solar Cells Are Now Scalable and Nearly Limitless.
MIT's "Thinner Than a Human Hair" Solar Cells Are Now Scalable and Nearly Limitless

 

[ggies07]

There goes another argument against anti wind turbine talking point!

A Danish wind turbine giant just discovered how to recycle all blades

Danish wind turbine maker Vestas says it’s figured out how to recycle all wind turbine blades – even ones already sitting in landfills.

electrek.co

Changed my rating to a "love" because I can't wait to shove this in my right-wing, Trump loving in-laws. They find wind turbines ugly, but not all the pollution, etc from fossil fuels....leaves me with a blank stare on my face.

 

[DrGriz]

autoevolution: MIT's "Thinner Than a Human Hair" Solar Cells Are Now Scalable and Nearly Limitless.
MIT's "Thinner Than a Human Hair" Solar Cells Are Now Scalable and Nearly Limitless

Really need to know how much power it produces per square foot rather than per pound, but otherwise sounds exciting. After all, my roof may not be large enough to meet my needs if the per square foot production is tiny. It's interesting that the article failed to mention that.

 

[David_Cary]

I wonder if CA energy prices are also partly high because RE and labor are also high. I mean just maybe...
Long Island electricity prices are high - and I am pretty sure there isn't much in the way of RE there.
Not saying this explains all of CA electricity rates at all but it is a relevant factor.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

There goes another argument against anti wind turbine talking point!

A Danish wind turbine giant just discovered how to recycle all blades

Danish wind turbine maker Vestas says it’s figured out how to recycle all wind turbine blades – even ones already sitting in landfills.

electrek.co

Well, they haven't scaled it yet. Once they do that should stop their FUD.

All it needed was legislators in a number of countries banning blade landfill.

Next up is mandatory recycling of PV panels..

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Really need to know how much power it produces per square foot rather than per pound, but otherwise sounds exciting. After all, my roof may not be large enough to meet my needs if the per square foot production is tiny. It's interesting that the article failed to mention that.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90825579/mit-engineers-designed-ultra-thin-solar-cells-for-any-surface

By comparison, MIT’s cells require very little infrastructure. As a result, they are one-hundredth the weight of conventional solar panels.

This means that if a ship were transporting a certain number of pounds worth of solar panels to a disaster relief zone, it could deliver 18 times more power per weight.

So 18/100 = 0.18 output of an equivalent traditional panel. So, what would be a typical 300W would only be 54W. Not going to do anything radical.

In the long-run, Bulovic says the team will be able to match the efficiency of silicon panels by switching to another kind of cell known as a perovskite solar cell. But for now, the point isn’t to replace traditional panels. The point is to make solar energy more accessible and portable, so it can be used in scenarios where traditional panels can’t.

(A thin film panel is maybe 1/5 the weight of a standard PV panel, so this is much lighter than that).

54W not to be sniffed at, but not something that'd make your EV solar. But could keep your 12V topped up and maybe run a fan.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

I wonder if CA energy prices are also partly high because RE and labor are also high. I mean just maybe...
Long Island electricity prices are high - and I am pretty sure there isn't much in the way of RE there.
Not saying this explains all of CA electricity rates at all but it is a relevant factor.

ALL costs are factors in the price of energy. But to single out RE and labor as the prime factors into why CA energy prices are higher than the rest of the nation is trying to look for a scapegoat. Especially when you consider that it wouldn't explain the huge discrepancy in rates between PG&E, SDG&E, and SCE - all of which are CA utilities.

 

[mspohr]

ALL costs are factors in the price of energy. But to single out RE and labor as the prime factors into why CA energy prices are higher than the rest of the nation is trying to look for a scapegoat. Especially when you consider that it wouldn't explain the huge discrepancy in rates between PG&E, SDG&E, and SCE - all of which are CA utilities.

I have electricity in California from a small utility which has solar farms. Price is much lower than PGE, etc.

 

[DanCar]

Japan decides to restart its nuclear program.

原発政策転換を閣議決定　運転６０年超、次世代型の開発も

政府は１０日、次世代型原発への建て替えや、運転期間６０年超への延長を盛り込んだ脱炭素化に向けた基本方針を閣議決定した。再生可能エネルギーに加え、原発の「最大限…

www.sankei.com

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Japan decides to restart its nuclear program.

原発政策転換を閣議決定　運転６０年超、次世代型の開発も

政府は１０日、次世代型原発への建て替えや、運転期間６０年超への延長を盛り込んだ脱炭素化に向けた基本方針を閣議決定した。再生可能エネルギーに加え、原発の「最大限…

www.sankei.com

That's probably not going to end well. Not so much the nuclear, but "next-generation". So far, next generation has been a financial disaster in China, France, Finland, the UK, and the USA.
They probably mean _current_ generation, but want to appease people who are concerned about safety.

 

[DanCar]

... So far, next generation has been a financial disaster in China, France, Finland, the UK, and the USA. ...

I think it is like nuclear fusion. No matter how much it costs, people are going to push the tech because they see it as a holy grail of unlimited power and other uses such as heat generation.

 

[eevee-fan]

Small scale solar+storage for $1.5/W or $1 per Wh, if you want to evaluate it purely as solar system or battery system.

Portable Power Station & Solar Panel Bundle - $156.99 - Free shipping for Prime members - $156.99

On-the-go Generator: It offers 155Wh 42000mAh of power capacity, provides power for laptops, camera batteries, TVs, fans, CPAP machines working time depends on its output power and other small appli ...

slickdeals.net

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I think it is like nuclear fusion. No matter how much it costs, people are going to push the tech because they see it as a holy grail of unlimited power and other uses such as heat generation.

It's generally a known as well.

Japan doesn't have good natural resources, and for renewables really needs floating wind, which although looks like it will be solved, isn't yet solved.

So they can start building nukes and when floating wind is solved start building and scale back on the nukes.

 

[mspohr]

Diablo Canyon license extension unlawful, nuclear commission told

The U.S. nuclear safety regulator has no legal basis to give PG&E Corp an exemption that could allow California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to keep running with expired federal licenses, according to a petition filed by environmental groups.

www.reuters.com

The U.S. nuclear safety regulator has no legal basis to give PG&E Corp an exemption that could allow California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to keep running with expired federal licenses, according to a petition filed by environmental groups.

Friends of the Earth, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace and the Environmental Working Group told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC) Monday that the two nuclear units at the plant, once slated for closure, pose potentially severe environmental and safety risks, making them ineligible for an exemption to agency rules requiring renewal applications be received at least five years before licenses expire.

 

[mspohr]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/opinion/europe-energy-crisis-natural-gas-russia.html

In 2022, for the first time, wind and solar generated more electricity in Europe than did gas and coal, according to a comprehensive review by the European think tank Ember published in January. For all the talk of a coal rebound in Europe, by the fall the continent as a whole was generating less power from coal than it had the previous fall, before the invasion — and the 26 coal plants which were reactivated to deal with the crisis have been operating at only 18 percent capacity on average.

When climate advocates raise the prospect of voluntary conservation measures — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change devoted a whole section of its recent report to “demand-side measures,” which it proposed could alone reduce global emissions by between 40 and 70 percent — they are often dismissed as naïve about human behavior. But while the project of decarbonization may not look the same to everyday citizens as an imminent energy crisis precipitated by an imperial war of conquest, I think European energy conservation nevertheless offers an encouraging lesson there, too: We shouldn’t assume that patterns of consumption must continue untransformed into the future, or that efforts to remodel them will all produce armies of gilets jaunes, or Yellow Vests.

 

[mspohr]

Georgia nuclear plant again delayed at cost of $200M more

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Power Co. has again delayed the projected startup for two new units at its Vogtle nuclear power plant near Augusta, saying its share of the costs will rise by an additional $200 million.

apnews.com

Georgia Power Co. has again delayed the projected startup for two new units at its Vogtle nuclear power plant near Augusta, saying its share of the costs will rise by an additional $200 million. Southern Co., the utility’s Atlanta-based parent, announced the delays and higher costs on Thursday as it announced its yearly corporate earnings for 2022.The total cost of the project to build a third and fourth reactor at Vogtle will cost all its owners more than $30 bi

 

[dgpcolorado]

I found this opinion piece by Paul Krugman interesting: Wonking out: Why growth can be green. I think you have to have a NY Times subscription to read it. The text can be found on other sites with a search but without the graphs it loses some impact.

...

Strange to say, however, at this precise moment — the most hopeful moment for the environment, as far as I can tell, in decades — my inbox has been filling up with woeful claims that environmental protection is incompatible with economic growth. These claims are oddly bipartisan. Some of them come from people on the left who insist that the planet can’t be saved unless we give up on the notion of perpetual economic growth. Others come from people on the right who insist that we must give up on all this environmentalism if we want to preserve prosperity.​

So let’s talk about why such claims are all wrong ...​

​

 

[mspohr]

Part of the problem is that many people don’t understand what economic growth means, imagining that it necessarily involves producing the same things you were producing before, in the same ways, but just at a larger scale.
But at higher levels of development, delinking growth from environmental impact isn’t just possible in principle but something that happens a lot in practice.

 

[iPlug]

Krugman link in the article shows UK is rapidly doing this:

 

[mspohr]

Krugman link in the article shows UK is rapidly doing this:

View attachment 908383

CO2 emissions back to what they were in 1850!