I haven’t even begun to process all of this information, but it’s good stuff (once you get past the scary slides about how hot temps are and how much glacier ice we’ve lost – YIKES! – but power through that!) David Roberts @drvolts Let me join literally everyone else from #energytwitter in strongly encouraging you …
Climate Solutions: Lots of DataPost + Comments (105)
Dr Volts continues: I’m going to pull out a few slides and make a few points. These are not necessarily the most important slides, just my personal triggers.
First: “team transitory” turned out to be correct, yes? That’s settled?
What technology is going to be most commonly used to firm up renewable energy? This slide suggests a pretty clear answer.
Remember when US conservatives threw a big tantrum about the shift away from incandescent light bulbs? It didn’t matter. Didn’t slow things down a bit.
Their bitching about gas stoves & ICE vehicles won’t matter either. Our media makes them loud, but they just don’t matter.
One underdiscussed development was the *huge* dropoff in hydropower production in 2023, thanks to some droughts. It heavily distorted the macro energy numbers (almost wiped out wind+solar growth!). Hydro is, somewhat contrary to its branding, more variable than we’d like.
Is minerals/metals supply going to be a meaningful constraint on the clean-energy transition? I’m looking at this graph and I’m thinking, no.
Grid congestion is rapidly rising to the top of clean energy’s problem list. We need: reconductoring; grid-enhancing technologies; new transmission; more & better coordinated DERs.
FERC & state PUCs need to get on top of this.
Nat’s slides show costs plunging for one clean energy technology after another. But not this one.
And this is the one oil & gas companies are pinning all their decarbonization hopes on! It’s a farce.
There is a ton of other good information in the presentation – it’s 200 slides, so just be prepared.
Some other fun info that popped up while I was reading Dr. Volts:
Every day I see stories about how badly EVs are suffering and how the market is ‘cooling’
I’ve ‘never’ read a piece about the fact ICE sales peaked and have *declined 7 straight years*
Weird 😏 pic.twitter.com/iv071TNTj0
— Justin Guay (@Guay_JG) February 1, 2024
Also, I know we’ve had some discussions about excessive EV battery fires – turns out – more myth than fact – link here (this is a good primer to a lot of info I’ve read over the past few months – due to my concerns about a recall on my vehicle, which has thankfully been repaired, phew!)
There is some interesting info on recycling batteries here – I’ve only just skimmed it, but I’ll pass on the link now.
David Roberts
We are just now entering the S-curve of exponential electric vehicle (EV) adoption, which — given that EV batteries tend to last 10 to 15 years — means we have not yet experienced a huge wave of retired lithium-ion batteries. Analysts expect that wave to show up in earnest around 2030, which leaves us just enough time to scale up, drive down the cost, and perhaps most importantly, decarbonize the technologies needed to recycle all those batteries.
I have bunch climate stuff set aside, and it’s going to be my “good news” focus for a while, I just need to figure out the best way to present it and how often. I may just jump in next week and we’ll take it one post at a time.
I want to tell you about the Kia EV9 – but I’ll wait for another thread, where I can explain why it’s exciting, if way out of my price range. The reviews are amazing and the video reviews are a hoot (to quote my Gram).
Hope the info, as much as it may be overload, gives you hope on the future of climate solutions.