Don’t count solar out, the growth trajectory is looking like it’ll supply most of the world’s electricity in a couple of decades. Solar will be the MVP that makes all these inefficient energy uses more viable.
Comment on Inspiring. Innovating.
Lightfire228@pawb.social 3 weeks agoCarbon capture is the inverse of burning hydrocarbons (fossil fuels). You have to dump energy (from the grid) into a chemical processes that “refine” the air back into concentrated carbon
The only way this thermodynamically is viable is with a surplus of carbon neutral energy
So either nuclear, or fusion
olafurp@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
davidagain@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Only because it’s not being built, so really very very very misleading.
In sunny places like the southern parts of the USA, if you took the land footprint of a typical nuclear power station and covered it with solar panels with regular sized walkways in between, you generate pretty much the same power output, but with none of the toxic nuclear waste.
If you put a used EV battery under every 40-80 of them now you have 24 hour instantly responsive power.
Onshore wind power is the cheapest way of generating electricity, by some margin.
Guess why we’re not doing all this. Is it the cost? Of course not! It’s far more expensive to build a nuclear power plant. Is it the output? Of course not! Is it the environmental impact? Of course not! Is it the political lobbying and online FUD from vested interests in the power industry? Bingo bingo bingo! Of course it is!
StarMerchant938@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I started playing around with solar just for hobbyist/emergency preparedness type stuff and it’s actually crazy how good and cheap the tech is now. With blackrock getting into the power grid business and datacenters driving up prices I’m considering investing in enough panels/batteries to run most of my daily power usage so the price hikes don’t hit as hard later on.
davidagain@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sound plan. I wish I had done so a decade ago before the global price hikes by the oil industry.
Lightfire228@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
The reason i discount solar is that, (i’m assuming) carbon capture requires equivalent amounts of energy that was produced by burning the hydrocarbons
This means, we would need to produce roughly double our current energy consumption (1x to continue current consumption, 1x to carbon capture at a rate comparable to historic carbon emissions)
Also, solar and wind are intermittent, and therefore not ideal for dealing with real-time grid demand. However, that may make them ideal for passive carbon capture
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I think that’s a huge part of the long term solution: intentionally building overcapacity so that lower production days still produce enough energy to meet needs, but especially sunny or windy days have surplus that needs to be used. If the intermittent energy surplus meets a carbon-fixing method to consume that surplus energy, then we can have carbon capture without that energy use displacing a reduction of greenhouse emissions elsewhere.
davidagain@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah carbon capture is nonsense and we just have to stop burning the carbon, it’s the only sane option.
Wind and solar is absolutely used note for grid, and increasingly. Whoever is telling you you can’t use them for grid is telling a bare faced lie. Onshore wind being the cheapest energy isn’t theoretical. It’s practical. It’s now.
Lightfire228@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
I said
The grid has to meet demand in real time. You can’t make the wind start blowing within a few seconds to ramp up supply, and battery technology isn’t capable of storing enough juice to handle this either
That’s why the grid uses different power sources, each with different response times, each serving a different purpose