America Can Achieve Its 90% Clean Electricity Goals 15 Years Early

FTFY.

This focuses on electricity production, which represents about only 20-25% of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. The rest is transportation, industry, buildings (heating/cooling) and agriculture (CO2: fertilizers, tractors; CH4: livestock, rice/paddy fields). Those should also be worked on, because emissions must be reduced by over 90% to avoid climate change's worst consequences. (The article, quoting the IPCC, says 50% by 2030, which is true, but then the IPCC says “net zero by 2050”.)

Unfortunately, the article only focuses on electricity; and most of the comments here are focusing on nuclear electricity, for or against. This only validates what J-M. Jancovici (France's most visible expert on the impact of climate change and energy supply) often says: “nuclear power is 5% of the problem, but absorbs 95% of the debate.” The policy proposed in the article does retain the current US nuclear electricity production capacity; however, if the US wants to power most of its grid with renewables, as long as the emission reduction targets are met, let them. I think it will be more expensive than with nuclear, but it's possible: the US has a low enough population density to allocate the surface areas required to solar and wind. But please get rid of all those fuel-burning SUVs already, or at least make them electric if you have the (decarbonated) capacity!

Can we have more nuclear power now? No? Then expect atmospheric CO2 to keep going up.

The US has a low enough population density that it could probably live on renewables alone, even taking into account their low capacity factor, by covering all these deserts with solar panels and all the fields with wind turbines. It would probably be more expensive than going nuclear, though, and would support less growth. And Europe, let alone China, don't have that option; they must develop nuclear power or massively reduce their energy consumption (or keep burning fossil fuels, as long as they/we last).

However, developing decarbonated electricity production only solves about 1/4 of the greenhouse gas emissions problem in the US and most Western countries. The rest is transportation, industry, buildings (heating/cooling) and agriculture (CO2: fertilizers, tractors; CH4: livestock, rice/paddy fields).

Reducing that does require some increase in electricity production, though not that much because electric vehicles are more efficient (and public transportation too, but good luck selling that in the US), and insulation and heat pumps can save a lot of power for buildings. Probably some industrial processes can also be converted to electricity. But these investments, converting all vehicles, buildings, and everything, must be done now. Never mind the current economic crisis; as long as the economy depends on fossil fuels, it's only going to get worse, there won't be a better time, let alone long-term economic growth anymore.

Even after that, agriculture will remain a problem, because even a 90-% reduction isn't enough to keep global warming to a manageable value. But it would be a good start.

But as economies develop, GDP growth becomes disconnected from energy usage.

Interesting but do you have a similar graph with GDP vs actual energy usage? The one you point to only shows electricity use, which is only about 20-25% of energy use, I believe.

I'm asking because I've read the same affirmation as the one in the gp: energy use is essentially linear with GDP, including in developed economies, because service industries only exist thanks to the underlying manufacturing industries (e.g. an insurance company only works if things are being manufactured for them to insure). So even if things aren't produced in the country, you'll still need to get them delivered; thus oil usage for transportation, not electricity (until you get more electric trucks or rail). GDP vs energy is the right measure to test this hypothesis, but it needs to include all energy uses.

The simple fact is that nuclear is really the only energy technology that can reliably fill the growing need for energy.

Technically you're right, but only if we develop both reliable industrial-scale breeder reactors and the technology to extract seawater uranium on a large scale. There's just not enough U235 to generalize the use of nuclear energy on a worldwide scale, so we need breeders to burn U238, and get more of it than current reserves. Not sure about thorium reserves, but that would also require breeders. But indeed, with the aforementioned technologies we can sustain some growth, though not indefinitely. Further down the road, the only technology I'm sure would leave room for lots of growth is deuterium fusion; not deuterium-tritium (which would need to tap into lithium reserves to make tritium) but deuterium-deuterium, which is of course harder and much, much less certain than fission with breeder reactors.

What makes your point correct is that, although renewables can probably sustain us at current consumption rates, they won't allow for any significant growth. OTOH, any significant growth with any energy source will incur lots more waste heat, which would compound global warning. I don't have numbers for how waste heat would compare to current greenhouse-gas emissions in terms of warming the planet. But the numbers supporting my post can be found in Sustainable energy without the hot air, a bit dated but still a must-read.

Any analysis that is more than a couple of years old is very likely to be wrong.

The cost of renewable energy has dropped significantly faster than predictions [...]

The book I mention is not about cost, but about available energy, as in e.g. how many kWh the sun is giving you over time per unit of area. That won't change; the efficiency of solar panels does, but the book already takes an optimistic stance, looking for fundamental rather than technological limits.

That study is quite interesting. However, if you account for the global energy consumption, especially in transportation, heating, manufacturing, etc., electricity is only a fraction of the required energy. This may, I'd even say must, change in an electric-car future; but this will increase a lot the electricity demand.

This book, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, although a bit dated, is a good reference on how much energy we actually consume, and what can possibly be produced with renewables and others. The conclusion agrees with TFA: North America probably can live on solar, wind and enough storage. Not that easily, but it seems possible.

The UK is surrounded by sea for offshore turbines and almost every roof could have solar and storage (home and plugged in EVs) which can be linked together via microgrids.

It's still not enough.

we can run our civilization for 10000's of years with nuclear. That makes is sustainable. If we include seawater extraction and thorium we can run our civilization for millions of years.

According to http://withouthotair.com/ it's more like a few thousand years with seawater uranium extraction and breeder reactors (and maybe thorium). Without those technologies, uranium reserves would only last a few decades. And that's assuming total power consumption remains stable.

What stunned me further is that even deuterium-tritium fusion doesn't do better. It takes deuterium-deuterium fusion, if we ever manage it, to last millions of years at current consumption rates.

Wishing that everyone had access to food, shelter, and healthcare makes me a liberal.

Nitpick: I thought that everybody would wish that, but liberals think society should intervene directly to force that goal, while conservatives think society will be better off as a whole if this is left to the actions of private organizations and individuals. Am I correct?

Isn't Spain in the EU? How the hell is this allowed to happen?

The EU doesn't have a police force like the FBI that could override state authorities. It does have a supranational court, the ECHR, that can judge human-rights issues and force an EU country to implement a decision. However, I believe that it can only hear a case after it has gone through the country's judicial system and all possible appeals have been tried. In this case, the catalonians could, and probably will, sue the spanish state before spanish courts first, then appeal to the ECHR, which may then condemn Spain. This could take years, of course.

I used to think that, and I still don't really disagree, but it's not quite that clear-cut. This book, Sustainable Energy – without the hot air runs the numbers. I find 2 points particularly significant:

• North America does have enough sun (and deserts) to live entirely on renewables; Europe doesn't, though a Europe+North Africa block could; it doesn't say about China, which has deserts but also a much larger population. The book dates from 2009, meaning it didn't anticipate photovoltaics' improved efficiency, which helps. Wind power can also provide a significant part of the required power, though not all.
• Nuclear isn't renewable, but assuming you want it to last 1000 years at current consumption levels, you need both breeder reactors and an industrial-scale process to extract uranium salts from the ocean, otherwise you can't provide more than a fraction of the required power for the world's population with known uranium reserves — and that's without population or consumption growth. Not sure about thorium, but I think that uses breeder designs anyway. As for fusion, even deuterium-tritium fusion doesn't cut it; we can only hope to manage deuterium-deuterium fusion someday, in which case we'll be home free with lots and lots of margin.

I do agree that, to prevent a global catastrophe, we must decarbonate the world's entire economy as fast as possible, which requires:

• Phasing out all gas-based transportation in favor of electric vehicles (EVs); both cars and trucks. In turn, this requires...
• A several-fold increase in total electricity production even while phasing out gas- and coal-powered power plants. For this, we need a massive deployment of solar or nuclear, preferably both and preferably nuclear breeder reactors (which will take a long time, so start ASAP, and deploy solar in the meantime).
• Overhauling the power grid to reliably handle the extra load. Also, in an all-renewables scenario, storage is required to smooth out variations on production and consumption. The book suggests using the new EVs' batteries, which requires cooperation from people and/or a very smart grid and market (make electricity costs fluctuate in real time even for home users).
• Massively improve buildings' and homes' insulation, and replace existing heating systems with heat pumps (which can double as air conditioners when it's hot). Yes, current heating systems consume almost as much on a global scale as ground transport.
• Air transport is a huge problem, because there's a minimum required energy to keep a plane aloft, and we're almost already there. Right now it's fortunate that most of the world's population doesn't fly as much as that of developed countries, but that's bound to change, which would result in completely unacceptable CO2 emissions; biofuels would help, but it's not clear whether we can produce enough. The book proposes zeppelins (efficient but way slower). I propose hydrogen planes (if they can be made safely). In the meantime, air travel should be actively discouraged.

One could argue that the above measures are too disruptive and require too much cooperation at every level (from worldwide to individuals) to be realistic. That means that we should also research ways to mitigate the catastrophe:

• Increase agricultural productivity in hotter conditions.
• Find ways for population to stay alive in places that will become unhinabitable due to the heat (underground cities?)
• Build dams against rising sea levels, hurricane-proof coastal areas.
• Promote reducing the population, handle population aging.
• ...
• Profit! And in fact, those are economic opportunities, aren't they? King of like the broken-window fallacy, but what if you can't avoid breaking the window?

I've read an interesting opinion piece by a Russian opponent: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/06/trump-russia-conspiracy-trap/.

Basically, the messages are: first, yes, Russia has meddled in, and there are links between them and Trump. But it's nothing new, Russia's always tried to destabilize Western democracies and undermine their credibility, including by supporting political crackpots there. This time the crackpots won the election.

Second, the media frenzy about this is being played up because it's seemingly the only scandal that riles people enough that the Republican majority in Congress might have to take notice, instead of looking the other way as they did with all the other documented lies. So Trump opponents are playing this specific card.

But, third, there's probably nothing concrete enough there to warrant a successful impeachment. And this is beginning to border on speculation and conspiracy-theory thinking, in other words using some of Trump's foul tactics against him in the unlikely hope of getting rid of him. Bad precedent.

So, fourth, not only it won't work, it's drowning out more urgent and serious issues: dismantling healthcare, crippling budget cuts everywhere but in the military, hurting government agencies. If more attention was focused on them instead, sure, it would be even less likely to cause Trump's demise, but it would mitigate the damage, as it did for the Muslim travel ban.

Also...doesnt France get 1 year off maternity leave with pay?

Only for multiple pregnancies (triplets or more). The standard maternity leave in France is 16 weeks, extended to 26 weeks for the 3rd child and after, or more depending on the medical/family situation (e.g. pregnant with twins: 34 weeks; or with triplets: 46 weeks, indeed almost a year).

It's not quite "with pay", though: normally the employer stops paying the employee that takes a leave, the national healthcare insurance (Sécurité Sociale) pays her a portion of her salary, and optional private insurances pay the rest of the salary. Likewise for any kind of sick leave.

Fans of the book/movie "The Martian" would be happy if SpaceX does select Arcadia Planitia for their first landing site as that was the landing site of the Ares 3.

No, that would be Acidalia Planitia, not Arcadia Planitia. Completely different location.

And we all know what happened to OS/2 (or I suppose I presume we all know -- I guess you could be 16 or 17 years old and not know what happened back then. When did I start getting so damned old???)

You probably know the legend of the Pea Sea. I realized that it's been longer since the end of that story than the duration of the story itself...