/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Of course, this depends which resources are available where you live and how much energy your area uses.

Costa Rica:
>”In 2020, 99.78% of our energy has been generated from clean sources,” President Carlos Alvarado announced. “We are at six consecutive years of generating more than 98% of our electricity from renewable sources. We advance in the line of decarbonization, which protects the environment and generates economic benefits.”

Iceland:
>Almost all electricity in Iceland is produced using renewable energy sources, with 73% of electricity provided by hydropower plants and 26.8% from geothermal energy, accounting for over 99% of total electricity consumption in Iceland.
https://visiticeland.com/article/renewable-energy

Norway:
>In Norway, 98 percent of the electricity production come from renewable energy sources. Hydropower is the source of most of the production.
https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/energy/renewable-energy/id2000124/

I have to go to work now but check others, I heard the largest state in Austria is around that high and some countries like Germany are rapidly improving, with 42.1% consumption coming from renewables.

>>402989
>Of course, this depends which resources are available where you live and how much energy your area uses
I think that should be stressed more. Iceland relies on geothermal energy, but this reliance is obviously not something that other countries can emulate

bump

>>402975
renewable energy has a huge energy potential but it has 2 problems
the energy is not concentrated enough,
the energy is not continuous enough
those problems have technical solutions but they are expensive enough that it limits how much it actually can be scaled up.

Nuclear fission energy has no scientific opposition, it's very safe, very clean, and has fuel reserves for millennia.
The 3 main sources of opposition comes from irrational fear, chemical chauvinism and market fundamentalism.
Irrational fear is that nuclear power is seen as very dangerous despite all the statistics that prove that extremely few people are harmed or killed as a result of nuclear energy production.
Chemical chauvinism is a tongue in cheek label that i made up for people that are ok with humans manipulating matter on a molecular level but not on smaller scales, and for some reason oppose exploiting subatomic phenomena for technology.
Market fundamentalism is blocking nuclear power because it says only private investors should command the surplus of society. Private investors don't invest in nuclear power because it has high upfront capital cost and it's a long-term (more than half a century) commitment.

>Are there studies that show us renewables are nowhere near replacing coal in its capacity?

There is no alternative to the concentrated potential energy of fossil fuels that can maintain the current civilization at scale. There's a reason fossil fuels are used. There is no other source of energy on earth as readily available and as concentrated. In theory you could run everything just by burning wood chips, but you'd need truckloads just to get a car down the street. Electricity is another viable source, but it has to be generated. Renewables lack the output necessary. Nuclear technically isn't renewable, because the earth contains a fixed amount of suitable radioactive material, but properly maintained it is sustainable and clean. People look at the very few nuclear accidents and get spooked, but you have to weigh the costs of a nuclear incident once every 100 years versus carbon emissions and the destruction of the habitable surface of the planet.

A green new deal might sound nice on paper, but the fact is there is no current technological replacement for fossil fuels that would allow industrial society to continue to operate at the present scale. Maybe that's a good thing and it shouldn't anyway, but people won't have that if it means going without air conditioners or airplanes.

>>403123
> there is no current technological replacement
Besides nuclear, let me add. But it seems off the table for various political and emotional reasons.

Enormous amounts of energy are spent on things that ultimately get wasted in the US. Cutting waste and increasing forms of re-use would be one of the best ways to improve our energy situation, period.

>>403123
>There is no alternative to the concentrated potential energy of fossil fuels that can maintain the current civilization at scale. There's a reason fossil fuels are used. There is no other source of energy on earth as readily available and as concentrated.
Nuclear power is more concentrated, and thorium isotopes are available literally everywhere, if you take any cubic meter of dirt your will get more energy return on energy investment than from the best oil and gas deposits.
>but the fact is there is no current technological replacement for fossil fuels that would allow industrial society to continue to operate at the present scale
nuclear power could generate much more energy than fossil fuel.
>>403127
>Besides nuclear, let me add. But it seems off the table for various political and emotional reasons.
oh you just added that correction, well fuck it i already typed out the comment so i'll post it anyway

>>403134
You should always improve efficiency by reducing waste, but that should not be an excuse to not increase energy production.

>>403135
I'm very interested in the viability of nuclear fusion. It seems that there have been many breakthroughs recently. It has many of the advantages of fission but is safer. Realistically it should be the number 1 priority for sustainable energy investment. Wind turbines and solar panels are supplemental at best.

>>403139
>I'm very interested in the viability of nuclear fusion.
The technology is already viable now if you are willing to build reactors the size of a city-block. Put them into shallow places in the ocean, and use the unfathomably vast heat energy output for thermal-splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can be pumped to gas-turbines or reverse electrolysis stacks to make electricity. You could even use the hydrogen as feed stock for synthetic chemical fuel.

It would be extremely expensive, but still cheaper than fighting wars for control over oil. Half the worlds military budget would do it.
Best case scenario for building this is 10 years worst case 30 years.

Smaller fusion reactors are more technically complicated than the mega-sized one, and developing that would probably take longer than a few ultra large construction projects. There are a few private companies that claim to be on the cusp of commercializing small economical reactors, but so far nothing concrete has materialized. Like with all these ultra high-tech ventures you have to assume it's vaporware until proven otherwise.

>>403169
>It would be extremely expensive, but still cheaper than fighting wars for control over oil.
For now. It's still an experimental technology. Look how much cheaper chips got over time.

>Smaller fusion reactors are more technically complicated than the mega-sized one, and developing that would probably take longer than a few ultra large construction projects.

Prototypes of a new technology are always big and clunky. The first computers filled warehouses. Eventually as more is learned and fine tuned, the components are miniaturized. We need a proof of concept that fusion can generate more energy than it takes to make it happen before it gets taken seriously as a power source.

>>403173
No, you missunderstand the big reactor is a fundamentally different type of fusion reactor, that has to be huge because of the physics that are involved. The big one will certainly work and produce so much energy that normal heat-engines like turbines can't handle it, and it needs an intermediate step of thermalizing water.

The small reactors aren't better, from a technical perspective, it's a trade off: wait longer for technical development, to make upfront initial capital cost lower. It will not be like computers where miniaturization increases performance.

>We need a proof of concept that fusion can generate more energy than it takes to make it happen
that is already proven.