from Hacker News

We Need an Energy Miracle (2015)

by pidge on 10/2/17, 1:02 AM with 59 comments

• by Caveman_Coder on 10/2/17, 1:43 AM

  "There are many people working on storage—batteries are a form of storage, and there’s a few others, like compressed air, hot metals. But it’s not at all clear that we will get grid-scale economic storage."

  Grid-scale storage is the key. Duke Energy is one of the leaders in this effort, at least among the major utilities [1].

  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307767

• by Animats on 10/2/17, 4:14 AM

  And we got it. Wind power works, is cost effective, and scales well. Solar power works, is cost effective, and scales well. Battery storage works, is starting to be cost effective, and scales well. Fracking works, too, until that level of reserves runs out.

  Energy has moved down the priority list of problems.

• by noncoml on 10/2/17, 1:52 AM

  All this cryptocurrenty craziness doesn't help either.

  I don't understand how the HN crowd that is usually so pro-environment, is also happy with the tons of wasted energy from crytptocurrency mining.

• by lozenge on 10/2/17, 8:26 AM

  A response: https://thinkprogress.org/no-bill-gates-we-dont-need-energy-...

  > What is particularly unfortunate about Gates’ mistaken rhetoric is that it can disempower people and policymakers and pundits into thinking that individual or even government action is not the central weapon needed to win the climate fight and that our only hope is some long-term deus ex machina strategy to avoid catastrophic warming. Nothing could be worse than leaving people with the impression that humanity’s only hope is future miracles...

  > What is particularly ironic about Gates’ mistaken energy-miracle-centered strategy, as I’ll discuss at the end, is that it is the exact opposite of the deployment-driven innovation strategy Gates himself used to make Microsoft a software giant and to make personal computers the “miracle” that Gates calls them today.

• by ZeroGravitas on 10/2/17, 6:03 AM

  The miracle will be society not being run by vested interests who maintain dirty expensive energy sources for their own narrow benefit.

  Personally, I've found Gates's public pronouncements unhelpful as they've promoted this idea that the current tech is of no use when simple things like replacing coal with natural gas can have large impacts.

• by nickhalfasleep on 10/2/17, 4:38 AM

  I wonder if storage could be offset with sufficient grid ties. Power could be shared across the day/night side of the planet, from a sufficient number of areas to avoid 100% cloud cover.

• by jmnicolas on 10/2/17, 7:43 AM

  Since we probably won't get an energy miracle, the sad truth is what we "need" is an economic collapse that will set us back decades (centuries even).

• by alexasmyths on 10/2/17, 3:15 AM

  There are no miracles in tech.

  We usually see things coming a long way off. We were burning coal just like wood - and the entire hydrocarbon industry is a big refinement on 'coal fires'.

  Nuclear Energy has been vastly understudied in the last 30 years. There are so many opportunities there, and the 'yield' is earth-shaking: 1000 years of electricity.

  Yes - I'm aware of the issues, but with the right approach, most of them, possibly all of them can be mitigated.

  Just with '1980's tech' - and some institutional responsibility (A big 'ask', I know) - we could wipe out climate change for a hefty, but not unreasonable price tag. (FYI - a huge new component factored into costs is 'insurance' for these plants, which is crazy expensive and hard to assess - in addition to improvements - we can legislate and plan around these things).

  At very least - we should be investing in research both in tech, but also in operating modalities. The upside is too great to ignore.

• by eip on 10/2/17, 2:34 AM

  The military has been suppressing advanced energy tech for 70+ years in order to maintain the stability of the global financial (slavery) system.

  Decentralized energy production means loss of control.