Comment by tcbawo
1 year ago
This is nice to see. However, one aspect of the green energy push that puzzles/irks me is the tendency to outsource carbon pollution. Citizens of Hawaii might be carbon neutral for energy production, but they are importing goods and services produced by carbon emitting countries/states. We are lucky that economics of green energy vs fossil fuel-based energy are continuing to look better and better. A climate change win is a climate change win. But I guess we just can’t let ourselves become complacent and say that we’ve already done our part because we let other countries do our polluting for us.
Edit: to clarify, I was not referring specifically about the provenance of the battery with my comment about exporting pollution. For example, Hawaii imports cars, electronics, building materials, and has a large tourism industry that relies on airlines.
This is true and important - but subtle and easily misunderstood as simply outsourcing emissons .
There is a fundamental pollution that occurs in a coal plant: its purpose is to combine carbon and oxygen to produce heat and CO2.
There is no such fundamentals in producing a lithium cell or a solar module.
We are bootstrapping this carbon free energy system from our existing energy system - so of course, emissions abound - but once bootstrapped, it perpetuates without fossil fuels.
Carbon emission is a poor and (purposefully) misleading idea of pollution. Lithium batteries may produce less carbon emissions over their lifetimes, but mining that lithium and producing the batteries is still incredibly ecologically damaging.[0]
Companies, in particular, adore the carbon-centric pollution angle because it allows them to ignore the physical pollution they cause every day, while profiting off of ESG. Microsoft alone will have caused an estimated 240,000,000 PCs to have been junked.[1]
[0] - https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-env... [1] - https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/microsofts-dra...
My mind goes to the question of what chemical byproducts come out of the manufacture of batteries or PVs. Maybe it’s not CO2, but something else. Maybe it’s easier to deal with. And maybe it’s a good tradeoff, or just in certain quantities, but if so what is that tipping point? I don’t know where to look for this kind of information.
One way to measure this is energy stored on energy invested (ESOEI). It answers how much energy is stored over the lifetime of the device compared to the energy required to build it. Lithium batteries come in at around 32.
This isn't bad, but pumped hydro is way better (704). And both options are way better than the ongoing drilling and mining and combusting required for fossil fuels.
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If you burned the oil in a wind turbine you would get enough electric to make up for not having that wind turbine for about 10 hours. Similar for the blades, if you burned the inputs you have days of power. The turbine is expected to last for 20 years and so while it isn't zero environmental cost compared to alternatives it is so much better we may as well call it zero.
While I'm sure some chemical byproducts come out of that, it's important to note that hydrocarbons assuredly make some really nasty stuff along the way [1]. I also wish there was a way to more easily compare these things, but the misinformation around environmental data is really next level. General, consider thinking about renewable infrastructure as more of a stock that accumulates vs fossil fuel usage which is a flow.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
If it makes people happy, it must be destroying the planet!
I have no idea what kind of destruction it does. But it's an alternative for making people miserable to the point where it's an stochastic genocide, so it must be bad somehow.
Yeah, I see lots of people saying exactly the same, completely seriously, both online and live. What goes on those people head is beyond my capacity to comprehend.
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Not really: batteries and solar need to be replaced more often that coal plant. The current and foreseen material sourcing, production and logistics for solar and batteries rely on a ton of steel which needs… coal! Coal-free steel already exist but is much more expensive, and will very probably remain expensive for a long time.
> Not really: batteries and solar need to be replaced more often that coal plant.
The design lifetimes are on the same order of magnitude, and the components of the coal plant need overhauls/replacement as well. It's not that different.
And notice that the coal plant needs a continuous supply of fuel, whereas battery/solar are one-time costs. That's a big difference anywhere, and any even bigger one in Hawaii where you have to ship the coal in.
>production and logistics for solar and batteries rely on a ton of steel
Totally unlike coal plants, coal mines, and coal shipping.
> Coal-free steel already exist but is much more expensive
If we can't do everything, perfectly, right now, then we should definitely do nothing at all. That's much better, and totally how all technology development works. /sarc
What the "production and logistics for" for coal need? I used to live near a coal power plant, there were several long trains per hour of coal going to that plant. Now I live near a wind farm, and while in construction it had a few semis per hour - maybe as much as trains to the coal plant - but that wind farm is complete and will run for a few more decades with very little traffic, while the coal power plant had that many trains per day every day for all the time it was in operation. (it is now shut down)
The quantity of carbon emitted here matters
It would be nice if the whole world would transition away from fossil fuels all in lockstep, but that's just not realistic. The energy transition is going to be/already is very uneven. It's going to happen first in the places that have a strong desire to lead and the financial and the natural resources (e.g. abundant sun) to enable that. Hawaii happens to fit all those criteria.
The country leading the renewables transition right now is China. Since they’re also the country that (not coincidentally) builds everything, outsourcing goods manufacturing to them seems like an okay bet, for the climate at least. (And yes, I know they’re building coal, but their emissions are still set to peak because they’re building more renewables than industry can consume while paying to idle coal plants.)
Why are they building coal plants if they are not going to increase their coal fired output?
My guess is that their motive for moving to renewables is more to reduce their reliance on imported oil and gas (vulnerable to blockade in the event of war). Maybe they will reduce oil and gas and increase both coal and renewables use?
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Something I see so much in local politics is that things don't all happen in a nicely coordinated fashion like one might want. Say, building some denser housing with more transit. But people telling you to wait until everything lines up 'just so' most likely want neither. Things happen in fits and starts in the real world.
I find it interesting that places like Iowa, Texas, and Kansas are leading the transition in the US despite none being places anything thinks associated with environmentalism. While states you might expect to care are way behind. Hawaii has had expensive energy all along and was an early installer of wind, but somehow is still way behind.
Easier to build in places like Texas, I suspect.
True but we should also celebrate successes like this. If we wait acknowledging progress until all emissions are replaced we miss the good deeds that happen.
I assume the batteries came from China. In 2023 China installed more solar energy capacity than the rest of the world combined.
Unless Hawaii was mining their own coal beforehand, I doubt they're losing anything here.