Climate Change Thread

[ReluctantSamurai]

Two sort of conflicting issues concerning China's energy situation.

First---will China cave to renewed coal use to solve it's current energy crunch?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...e_iOSApp_Other

The situation is widespread. In recent days, factories in 20 of China’s 31 provinces have suffered a loss of power, forcing many to shut down production, at least for hours at a time. Millions of households in the north-east of the country have also lost power and found that they cannot use electricity to heat or light their homes.

Since the beginning of the year electricity production has increased by about 10% as the economy has bounced back from the pandemic. It’s just that the Chinese energy juggernaut has run out of steam after running down stocks of coal apparently in the hope that either Beijing would lift all environmental restrictions that increase the cost of producing electricity with coal or that world prices would fall. While Beijing has eased some emissions targets, world prices have carried on soaring.

Choyleva says Xi’s centralising zeal means regional governments have come under closer control from Beijing and resulted in a series of crises. A clampdown on bank lending led to the near collapse of several banks and earlier this month, pushed the property giant Evergrande close to insolvency. “It used to be that a crisis came up every couple of years and was dealt with. Now they are coming thick and fast,” she said. Evans-Pritchard said Xi’s determination to hurry through reforms forcing businesses to conform more closely to Beijing’s policy agenda is causing problems. “One broader takeaway is that the current disruption highlights the economic costs inherent in China’s push for self-sufficiency and decoupling with the west,” he said.

So if the energy crunch continues, is China willing to submit to a short-term slowing of economic growth, in return for renewable energy picking up the slack, or do they do what's easy and ramp up domestic coal production?

And this podcast is an interesting listen:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/aud...iction-to-coal

At about the 16 min. mark, the conundrum China is in (and other countries with large coal reserves like India), is what I referenced in an earlier post about how China, the US, Japan, and others respond to trying to jump-start their economies during and after COVID. In this article by CarbonBrief, after the financial crisis of 2008, the following years saw an increase in emissions as countries looked to cheap fossil fuels to help their economies back to growth conditions:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-c...ssions-in-2020

Personally, I expect to see a similar trend now...

I think Greta does too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwD1kG4PI0w

Meanwhile, many deride hydrogen energy hopes for being an illusion of clean or renewable energy.

I suspect this is a market generated opinion. Those with the funding and the means to produce EV's and other electric consumables, have the upper hand, at the moment. "Blue Hydrogen" is definitely not a viable solution to reducing carbon emissions as it obviously creates more emissions than it eliminates. "Green Hydrogen" produced by cracking water, is expensive, at the moment, and therefore at a disadvantage to BEV technology. But that's not to say Fuel Cells are a dead end:

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-hydrogen

And this very overlooked synergy with solar and wind power:

Hydrogen can enable renewables to provide an even greater contribution. It has the potential to help with variable output from renewables, like solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind, whose availability is not always well matched with demand. Hydrogen is one of the leading options for storing energy from renewables and looks promising to be a lowest-cost option for storing electricity over days, weeks or even months. Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels can transport energy from renewables over long distances – from regions with abundant solar and wind resources, such as Australia or Latin America, to energy-hungry cities thousands of kilometres away.

The "You can't trust solar or wind to produce 24/7" is one of the leading arguments used by the fossil fuel industry to push back against renewables. Storing excess electricity in the form of H2 would go a long way towards alleviating that.

I still think geothermal is getting short-shrifted, in part because of the prevailing notion that you can only generate power if you are located in an area with volcanic activity, which is anything but the truth. And look at the potential:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power

Geothermal power requires no fuel; it is therefore immune to fuel cost fluctuations. However, capital costs tend to be high. Drilling accounts for over half the costs, and exploration of deep resources entails significant risks. A typical well doublet in Nevada can support 4.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity generation and costs about $10 million to drill, with a 20% failure rate. In total, electrical station construction and well drilling costs about 2–5 million € per MW of electrical capacity, while the levelised energy cost is 0.04–0.10 € per kW·h. Enhanced geothermal systems tend to be on the high side of these ranges, with capital costs above $4 million per MW and levelized costs above $0.054 per kW·h in 2007.

Getting the cost of drilling down is the biggest hurdle. But:

A 2006 report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that included the potential of enhanced geothermal systems estimated that investing US$1 billion in research and development over 15 years would allow the creation of 100 GW of electrical generating capacity by 2050 in the United States alone. The MIT report estimated that over 200×10⁹ TJ (200 ZJ; 5.6×10⁷ TWh) would be extractable, with the potential to increase this to over 2,000 ZJ with technology improvements – sufficient to provide all the world's present energy needs for several millennia.

All the world's present---as in current gluttony---for several millennia...

In the aforementioned MIT report, the conclusion (after 330 pages of analysis...) is interesting given the recent Congressional handout of an additional $1 billion dollars to Israel's defense budget:

Analysis suggests that, with significant initial investment, installed capacity of EGS could reach 100,000 MWe within 50 years, with levelized energy costs at parity with market prices after 11 years. It is projected that the total cost, including costs for research, development, demonstration, and deployment, required to reach this level of EGS generation capacity ranges from approximately $600 -$900 million with an absorbed cost of $200-$350 million.

Adjusted for inflation, that about equals what we just authorized for military purposes to Israel. Jeezus we are so effing stupid....