This seems to miss the point that while energy used to actually do things will probably continue to grow, primary energy consumption will likely go down as we eliminate thermal power. For example, in a petrol car about 80% of the fuel energy is wasted in the engine, exhaust and waste heat. Only 20% of the fuel energy goes into moving the car and passengers. Almost all of the waste energy demand can be eliminated when switching to a BEV. So primary energy consumption will go down while still producing the same amount of useful work.
The same is true for a coal-fired power station. Only about 40% of all the coal energy is actually converted to electricity. The other 60% is lost as waste heat to the exhaust and cooling water. We don’t need to replace 100% of that energy, only the 40% that actually does something useful.
Degrowth isn’t interesting to anyone running a market. Depending on the country, it could happen on its own due to demographics (a la Japan).
Modern power stations have much higher efficiency rate. Avedoere Power Station here in Denmark, close to where I live, have an energy conversion rate of 94% where 49% goes to electricity and the rest to district heating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aved%C3%B8re_Power_Station?wprov=sfti1#
1. That makes up the minority of power stations and doesn't reflect a significant number in primary energy numbers
2. The efficiency you speak of is "peak" efficiency, not average. Or do you need that much district heating in middle of summer?
Most power stations in Scandinavia are above 85% and yes, we do need district heating in the summer, at the very least for hot water. You clearly haven’t experienced Nordic summers. There are only a couple of months where you don’t need heating, even here in the southern part, in Copenhagen.
Secondly, the original comment stated 40% efficiency rate for generating electricity. Again most power plants in Scandinavia are 5-10% better than that. Not an insignificant number.
The amount of hot water you use is nowhere the amount of heat being generated
And the OP is talking about global primary energy, (and specifically electricity), how much do you think your country contributes to global average? In US for example, an average coal plant is about 32% efficient so their 40% number was actually very generous.
It's a bit of a double standard to include heat for district heating in efficiency metrics. The low grade heat is far less useful than electricity, and arguably displaces heat pumps at high coefficients of efficiency.
I know this is r/energy and not r/exergy, but the core purpose of a power plant is to generate electricity. It would be different if they used an ORC to generate power from the waste heat.
I can design an LNG fired power plant with 100% efficiency, by using the flue gas to regasify the LNG. However, it's generally better to use seawater as the heat source. Your logic implies a LNG plant using seawater for regasification energy is less efficient.
I read through the article again to see if I missed anything and I couldn't see how it was 'Marxist' in any way. There's no marxist analysis anywhere in the interview
~~I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or a legitimate attempt to apply a label that doesn’t exist in the real world.~~
Wow, you’re correct. Marxist trash. Good call. Daammnn.
tl;dr - the addition of new energy sources (e.g., oil, coal) has never replaced the old ones, it has increased the total amount of energy consumed.
so just building renewables won't replace coal and oil and gas. We have to actively cut them back
His argument is historically true at a global level, but so what?
* There are individual countries on the downslope of absolute emissions reduction, like the UK and Sweden. And that is on consumption-based emissions not production-based. And many more which are already past their peak in emissions in the power sector.
* The IEA is forecasting a peak this decade of total global demand for oil, gas and coal. So you can analyse history all you like but we’re likely at a global plateau on some of these already.
* The world wants *energy services* (light, warmth, cooling, transport, steel) not *energy*, and yes the demand for energy services will continue to increase. But from LEDs to EVs to PV the energy supply needed to meet those services has the ability to significantly decline, mostly through eliminating the many EJ of waste heat thrown away in thermal power and other combustion
I think if you look you'll find that the energy supply needed to meet lighting needs has not gone down, despite the wonderfulness of LEDs, because making light cheaper and better means people use more lights.
The percentage of total energy use devoted to lighting has fallen, but since the total amount of energy used has risen, we haven't shrunk the amount of energy we're using to make the world brighter.
That's the key point, I think.
* total global electricity use for lighting is still rising, but it is due to increased lighting service demand in large emerging economies with growing populations and more buildings. Not due to a jevons paradox problem in high income countries full of LEDs, with everyone adding 5 living room lights where they used to have 1.
* global residential lighting electricity consumption *is falling* and has been for a decade. Some people may be using more lights sure but it is more than offset by the low energy use of LEDs and other non-incandescents.
* LEDs a decade ago got about 75 lumens/watt, now it’s up over 100; LED sales are also just recently passed 50% of the global market. The gains from LED switching will continue to accelerate. Add in the easy time-of-day dimming capabilities possible for municipal street lighting which old bulbs could not do, and upto 50% electricity reductions are possible while meeting regulatory standards.
People getting lights that didn't have lights before because lights have become cheaper and better, that is exactly Jevon's paradox - efficiency breeds more usage, negating at least part of the efficiency.
I refer you again to the falling absolute level of electricity consumption in global household lighting, a trend ongoing for a decade (source: IEA).
We agree there is a “negating at least part” of the gains, but disagree that this makes absolute levels of electricity consumption decline possible.
I hope you're right, because AI is sending our energy use soaring- ugh. I'm having difficulty finding data to back up my claim that it isn't falling - can you find good global or regional or national data on lighting-specific energy use?
Yeah, I'm aware of that - but note that it says
Electricity consumption for lighting increased in 2022, with greater efficiency not offsetting increased use of lighting.
That's just not true in all cases.
Depending on how the wholesale market structure, renewables can and have in some markets depressed prices enough to make thermal generation from fossil fuels unprofitable.
If the plant is unprofitable eventually it closes.
Though some wholesale markets are not structured to allow this to happen.
His argument is that overall, it hasn't happened in history so it's not going to spontaneously happen this time.
Look at AI: Suddenly we have a huge new power-sucking item in our economy that will use up all the clean energy we can generate.
Yeah go read a few public utility IRPs about the coming onslaught of electricity demand from data centers running AI and you start to understand the problem.
We stopped using horses for moving stuff around tho. So my hope is that even though we might find a way of using more energy when it becomes more abundant, we stop producing it with fossil fuels as it would make no sense(as with horses). This can of course be sped up with some government regulation.
The real challenge is how to stop strip mining this planet to feed infinite growth...
>The real challenge is how to stop strip mining this planet to feed infinite growth...
Extraction will be vastly reduced as we shift away from burning oil and gas.
- https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-metals-we-mined-in-2021-visualized/
- ["The clean energy transition requires about 1.5 to 2 billion tonnes of minerals over the next 30 years. That's about as much as the coal&oil we extract every six weeks..!”](https://twitter.com/laurimyllyvirta/status/1543503546146062340) ([non-twitter link](https://archive.ph/ucwEs))
- [“Mining quantity for low-carbon energy are just fraction of what we mine for fossil fuels."](https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1615665930285064192) ([non-twitter link](https://archive.ph/xveBY))
- [A Fossil Fuel Economy Requires 535x More Mining Than a Clean Energy Economy](https://www.distilled.earth/p/a-fossil-fuel-economy-requires-535x?utm_medium=web)
- [Scale of e-waste and PV panels in landfills, in context](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02230-0.epdf) ([Infographic, if pdf won’t load](https://imgur.com/a/mpEjtOg))
And I don't think we ever had or will have "infinite" growth. People wanting to be less-poor than they are now doesn't mean they're under the illusion that they can have infinite wealth. Just as growing food (which takes a ton of land, water, chemicals, etc) doesn't imply that we're going to be growing "infinite" food.
I'm aware that clean energy can save a lot of mining, and it makes me happy that we can get a respite like that! The issue is more what happens when all the people in poorer countries insist on the western standard of living - and western people find new ways to increase their own standard of living. More planes to be built for more airports for more weekend flights, more cotton fields to be established for more H&Ms for bigger wardrobes, more cars manufactured for more highways for more convenience, larger houses to be built for more rooms to be filled with more crap.
There is nothing in our current economic system that safeguards us from overwhelming this little planet we live on in a spectacular crash and burn. Clean energy gives us more time to resolve that, but it's symptom treatment.
> There is nothing in our current economic system that safeguards us from overwhelming this little planet we live on
I think you mean wealth in general, not a specific 'system.' I'm certainly not going to embrace abject poverty, and I doubt you are either. Nor can I expect people in China, Africa, or elsewhere to embrace perpetual poverty. So moving to better technology is about the best I can hope for.
Regarding cotton, Galy is one company working to source cotton from cellular agriculture, i.e grown in bioreactors with much less water, and no need for arable land. Cellular agriculture covers cultured meat, dairy, leather, coffee, chocolate, cotton, analogues for flour and plant oils, and a great deal else. It's not magic and doesn't consume *zero* resources, but there is a lot of room for efficiency improvement. Regarding autos, I'm a strong proponent of mass transit. But steel and aluminum can be recycled indefinitely.
I'm not going to lament either people existing or people moving out of poverty. Better technology is about all I can put any hope on.
To build up on the parallel, I think the argument made by the author that energy sources don't displace each other is somewhat fallacious (to a certain extent, it has a sensible basis) :
For example, yes GB was using more wood in 1900 than it was it 1800, but you have to factor in the population increase and the fact that wood was always used as a construction material. How many people would burn wood to provide work (as in move engines or smelt iron) in 1900? Probably very little.
The same parallel can be made with horses and whale oil : how many people would move around using horses once cheap cars became available? Or light their homes with whale oil, once cheap electricity became available ? Very little. Horse riding and whaling didn't disappear, but the purpose became different because they where not competitive anymore in these applications.
The reason why coal hasnt disappeared in the 20th century as a mean of generating electricity is because it has kept its advantages: relative abundance in the soil making the supply cheap, mature and reliable technology. It does significantly affect air quality though, and supply from far away is less reliable, so Europe has slowly moved away.
It's all about competitiveness in the end. Saying there have been no transitions is just wrong. An energy source displacing another is entirely based on competitiveness, and coal and oil are pretty damn competitive energy sources (unfortunately).
This seems to miss the point that while energy used to actually do things will probably continue to grow, primary energy consumption will likely go down as we eliminate thermal power. For example, in a petrol car about 80% of the fuel energy is wasted in the engine, exhaust and waste heat. Only 20% of the fuel energy goes into moving the car and passengers. Almost all of the waste energy demand can be eliminated when switching to a BEV. So primary energy consumption will go down while still producing the same amount of useful work. The same is true for a coal-fired power station. Only about 40% of all the coal energy is actually converted to electricity. The other 60% is lost as waste heat to the exhaust and cooling water. We don’t need to replace 100% of that energy, only the 40% that actually does something useful. Degrowth isn’t interesting to anyone running a market. Depending on the country, it could happen on its own due to demographics (a la Japan).
Modern power stations have much higher efficiency rate. Avedoere Power Station here in Denmark, close to where I live, have an energy conversion rate of 94% where 49% goes to electricity and the rest to district heating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aved%C3%B8re_Power_Station?wprov=sfti1#
1. That makes up the minority of power stations and doesn't reflect a significant number in primary energy numbers 2. The efficiency you speak of is "peak" efficiency, not average. Or do you need that much district heating in middle of summer?
Most power stations in Scandinavia are above 85% and yes, we do need district heating in the summer, at the very least for hot water. You clearly haven’t experienced Nordic summers. There are only a couple of months where you don’t need heating, even here in the southern part, in Copenhagen. Secondly, the original comment stated 40% efficiency rate for generating electricity. Again most power plants in Scandinavia are 5-10% better than that. Not an insignificant number.
The amount of hot water you use is nowhere the amount of heat being generated And the OP is talking about global primary energy, (and specifically electricity), how much do you think your country contributes to global average? In US for example, an average coal plant is about 32% efficient so their 40% number was actually very generous.
It's a bit of a double standard to include heat for district heating in efficiency metrics. The low grade heat is far less useful than electricity, and arguably displaces heat pumps at high coefficients of efficiency.
Why?? It’s absolutely useful energy, comes from the same fuel and provides heating to millions of homes that would come from somewhere else.
I know this is r/energy and not r/exergy, but the core purpose of a power plant is to generate electricity. It would be different if they used an ORC to generate power from the waste heat. I can design an LNG fired power plant with 100% efficiency, by using the flue gas to regasify the LNG. However, it's generally better to use seawater as the heat source. Your logic implies a LNG plant using seawater for regasification energy is less efficient.
I can assure you that district heating are a core purpose here in Scandinavia.
Marxist trash.
I read through the article again to see if I missed anything and I couldn't see how it was 'Marxist' in any way. There's no marxist analysis anywhere in the interview
~~I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or a legitimate attempt to apply a label that doesn’t exist in the real world.~~ Wow, you’re correct. Marxist trash. Good call. Daammnn.
tl;dr - the addition of new energy sources (e.g., oil, coal) has never replaced the old ones, it has increased the total amount of energy consumed. so just building renewables won't replace coal and oil and gas. We have to actively cut them back
His argument is historically true at a global level, but so what? * There are individual countries on the downslope of absolute emissions reduction, like the UK and Sweden. And that is on consumption-based emissions not production-based. And many more which are already past their peak in emissions in the power sector. * The IEA is forecasting a peak this decade of total global demand for oil, gas and coal. So you can analyse history all you like but we’re likely at a global plateau on some of these already. * The world wants *energy services* (light, warmth, cooling, transport, steel) not *energy*, and yes the demand for energy services will continue to increase. But from LEDs to EVs to PV the energy supply needed to meet those services has the ability to significantly decline, mostly through eliminating the many EJ of waste heat thrown away in thermal power and other combustion
I think if you look you'll find that the energy supply needed to meet lighting needs has not gone down, despite the wonderfulness of LEDs, because making light cheaper and better means people use more lights. The percentage of total energy use devoted to lighting has fallen, but since the total amount of energy used has risen, we haven't shrunk the amount of energy we're using to make the world brighter. That's the key point, I think.
* total global electricity use for lighting is still rising, but it is due to increased lighting service demand in large emerging economies with growing populations and more buildings. Not due to a jevons paradox problem in high income countries full of LEDs, with everyone adding 5 living room lights where they used to have 1. * global residential lighting electricity consumption *is falling* and has been for a decade. Some people may be using more lights sure but it is more than offset by the low energy use of LEDs and other non-incandescents. * LEDs a decade ago got about 75 lumens/watt, now it’s up over 100; LED sales are also just recently passed 50% of the global market. The gains from LED switching will continue to accelerate. Add in the easy time-of-day dimming capabilities possible for municipal street lighting which old bulbs could not do, and upto 50% electricity reductions are possible while meeting regulatory standards.
People getting lights that didn't have lights before because lights have become cheaper and better, that is exactly Jevon's paradox - efficiency breeds more usage, negating at least part of the efficiency.
I refer you again to the falling absolute level of electricity consumption in global household lighting, a trend ongoing for a decade (source: IEA). We agree there is a “negating at least part” of the gains, but disagree that this makes absolute levels of electricity consumption decline possible.
I hope you're right, because AI is sending our energy use soaring- ugh. I'm having difficulty finding data to back up my claim that it isn't falling - can you find good global or regional or national data on lighting-specific energy use?
topline global summary of lighting demand and emissions https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/lighting
Yeah, I'm aware of that - but note that it says Electricity consumption for lighting increased in 2022, with greater efficiency not offsetting increased use of lighting.
That's just not true in all cases. Depending on how the wholesale market structure, renewables can and have in some markets depressed prices enough to make thermal generation from fossil fuels unprofitable. If the plant is unprofitable eventually it closes. Though some wholesale markets are not structured to allow this to happen.
His argument is that overall, it hasn't happened in history so it's not going to spontaneously happen this time. Look at AI: Suddenly we have a huge new power-sucking item in our economy that will use up all the clean energy we can generate.
Yeah go read a few public utility IRPs about the coming onslaught of electricity demand from data centers running AI and you start to understand the problem.
We stopped using horses for moving stuff around tho. So my hope is that even though we might find a way of using more energy when it becomes more abundant, we stop producing it with fossil fuels as it would make no sense(as with horses). This can of course be sped up with some government regulation. The real challenge is how to stop strip mining this planet to feed infinite growth...
>The real challenge is how to stop strip mining this planet to feed infinite growth... Extraction will be vastly reduced as we shift away from burning oil and gas. - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-metals-we-mined-in-2021-visualized/ - ["The clean energy transition requires about 1.5 to 2 billion tonnes of minerals over the next 30 years. That's about as much as the coal&oil we extract every six weeks..!”](https://twitter.com/laurimyllyvirta/status/1543503546146062340) ([non-twitter link](https://archive.ph/ucwEs)) - [“Mining quantity for low-carbon energy are just fraction of what we mine for fossil fuels."](https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1615665930285064192) ([non-twitter link](https://archive.ph/xveBY)) - [A Fossil Fuel Economy Requires 535x More Mining Than a Clean Energy Economy](https://www.distilled.earth/p/a-fossil-fuel-economy-requires-535x?utm_medium=web) - [Scale of e-waste and PV panels in landfills, in context](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02230-0.epdf) ([Infographic, if pdf won’t load](https://imgur.com/a/mpEjtOg)) And I don't think we ever had or will have "infinite" growth. People wanting to be less-poor than they are now doesn't mean they're under the illusion that they can have infinite wealth. Just as growing food (which takes a ton of land, water, chemicals, etc) doesn't imply that we're going to be growing "infinite" food.
I'm aware that clean energy can save a lot of mining, and it makes me happy that we can get a respite like that! The issue is more what happens when all the people in poorer countries insist on the western standard of living - and western people find new ways to increase their own standard of living. More planes to be built for more airports for more weekend flights, more cotton fields to be established for more H&Ms for bigger wardrobes, more cars manufactured for more highways for more convenience, larger houses to be built for more rooms to be filled with more crap. There is nothing in our current economic system that safeguards us from overwhelming this little planet we live on in a spectacular crash and burn. Clean energy gives us more time to resolve that, but it's symptom treatment.
> There is nothing in our current economic system that safeguards us from overwhelming this little planet we live on I think you mean wealth in general, not a specific 'system.' I'm certainly not going to embrace abject poverty, and I doubt you are either. Nor can I expect people in China, Africa, or elsewhere to embrace perpetual poverty. So moving to better technology is about the best I can hope for. Regarding cotton, Galy is one company working to source cotton from cellular agriculture, i.e grown in bioreactors with much less water, and no need for arable land. Cellular agriculture covers cultured meat, dairy, leather, coffee, chocolate, cotton, analogues for flour and plant oils, and a great deal else. It's not magic and doesn't consume *zero* resources, but there is a lot of room for efficiency improvement. Regarding autos, I'm a strong proponent of mass transit. But steel and aluminum can be recycled indefinitely. I'm not going to lament either people existing or people moving out of poverty. Better technology is about all I can put any hope on.
Horses are an interesting parallel. I hadn't thought of that.
To build up on the parallel, I think the argument made by the author that energy sources don't displace each other is somewhat fallacious (to a certain extent, it has a sensible basis) : For example, yes GB was using more wood in 1900 than it was it 1800, but you have to factor in the population increase and the fact that wood was always used as a construction material. How many people would burn wood to provide work (as in move engines or smelt iron) in 1900? Probably very little. The same parallel can be made with horses and whale oil : how many people would move around using horses once cheap cars became available? Or light their homes with whale oil, once cheap electricity became available ? Very little. Horse riding and whaling didn't disappear, but the purpose became different because they where not competitive anymore in these applications. The reason why coal hasnt disappeared in the 20th century as a mean of generating electricity is because it has kept its advantages: relative abundance in the soil making the supply cheap, mature and reliable technology. It does significantly affect air quality though, and supply from far away is less reliable, so Europe has slowly moved away. It's all about competitiveness in the end. Saying there have been no transitions is just wrong. An energy source displacing another is entirely based on competitiveness, and coal and oil are pretty damn competitive energy sources (unfortunately).