Green Energy

This is not a bad way to prioritize:

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"The UK’s era of coal-free power begins on the 1st October 2024, following a rapid decline over the last 12 years which has seen power sector emissions plummet by three quarters."

"This report provides an overview of the UK coal power phase-out, looking at changes in electricity generation since 2012 when coal began to rapidly decline. It provides context on how phase-out was achieved through a mix of initiatives and policy frameworks, and considers how this can inform the next chapter of UK power sector decarbonisation."

"Coal power provided almost 40% of UK generation in 2012, shrinking to 2% by 2019, and finally falling to zero by October 2024. In 2012, coal generated 143 TWh of electricity, equivalent to Sweden’s total power demand in 2023."

basically:

Pakistan, with Chinese financing, solved a problem of frequent rotating blackouts by building coal-fired power plants. Those are more expensive than solar, so people are installing small-scale solar right and left...which means that the coal-fired power plants aren't financially viable.

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This means that it's not going to be possible to simply assume that jobs produced from renewables are going to able to drive public support for an energy transition; we're going to need to attach decarbonization policy to a broader guarantee of employment, wages, and working conditions.

Heat pump water heaters already exist. These are hybrid things where a traditional electric water heater is fitted with a heat pump. The heat pump can increase the water temp but cannot deliver enough, so heating elements are still needed to reach a usable temp.

I’m wondering if that design can be improved on this way: instead of powering the heat pump from the wall, the heat pump can be connected directly to a PV. I think that would be more efficient and cheaper because PV output is not normally directly usable. IIUC, it’s variable D/C which must be regulated and/or inverted to A/C involving more hardware, conversion, and waste. But exceptionally, I’ve heard that a PV can directly power a compressor with no middleware. Any reasons this would be infeasible or uninteresting?

Of course the tank still needs wall power for the heating elements, but would use less wall power and entail less conversion loss.

The most steel-intensive power source – by far – is the modern wind turbine. The steel intensity of a wind turbine depends on its size. A single, large wind turbine requires significantly more steel per megawatt of installed power than two smaller wind turbines.

The link is from the-most-solarpunk-website and is mostly about steel in general, but I wanted to pull out that one fact.

Wind and solar energy are not "good for the environment"; they pollute; it's just that we hope they pollute less than the alternative. One major reason they pollute is because they require a lot of steel to build. But the household-scale or village-scale ones use less

de Decker is citing: Topham, Eva, et al. “Recycling offshore wind farms at decommissioning stage.” Energy policy 129 (2019): 698-709.

cross-posted from: https://tucson.social/post/1067292

  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack highlighed more than $600 million in recent financing to support renewable energy in rural Arizona, including $83.5 million to Trico Electric Cooperative to expand battery storage and increase the reliability of electricity for residents on the Pascua Yaqui Reservation.

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