> On 24 Nov 2014, at 12:01 pm, link-requ...@mailman.anu.edu.au wrote:
>
> Comment Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying
> and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly
> that renewables will never permit the human race to cut CO2 emissions to the
> levels demanded by climate activists. Whatever the future holds, it is not a
> renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible."
I read the paper with some interest. My reading is they were not saying that
renewables would never work but that existing renewable technology would not
support our energy intensive civilization in its present form and eliminate
fossil fuel usage. They stress the need for a lot more effort into research and
one specific item they mention is better grid control software so that
intermittent sources can be more effectively used.
There seems to be a great deal of optimism the cost of batteries would continue
to drop rapidly (currently ~15%p). Currently electric cars are very expensive
compared to IC cars because of the high cost of batteries. Once batteries are
cheap electric cars will be cheaper than IC cars as they don't need gears, a
complex transmission or a cooling system. This could be within ten years.
The problem with batteries is the possibly low EROEI and further development
needs to be done on that.
If the automative batteries could be shared with the grid when the car is not
in use, which for domestic vehicles is over 90% of the time there will be a lot
of distributed battery capacity to help stabilize the grid. Couple that with
distributed solar and the power generation industries "death spiral" fears have
legs.
Throw into this Googles driverless cars and services like Uber and goCatch and
suddenly public transport and the need for private cars will be disrupted.
The big problem is how do highly energy intensive industries cope. I suspect
there will be a niche for small scale modular nuclear.
Tony
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