Where the world stands in terms of meeting green-energy material demands

I think when we take a look at green energy in whole, it's not nearly at "green" as propontents would have us believe:
- this video I linked above shows us that getting the necessary minerals/metals to the production front in the required quanitities is multiple DECADES away
- biofuels are not anywhere near their promised potential, and are at best neutral in their carbon footprint
- the costs of "green" energy are staggering when applied in a full-approach format
- hazardous byproducts from mining and refining necessary metals is polluting the third-world countries
- hazardous and non-recyclable waste from wind and solar arrays pose a HUGE probelm in the very near future, for which no solution exists yet

I'm a huge fan of going to nuclear reactors for just about any stationary energy consumption system. The power potential is massive and proven safe and reliable. The power density of nuke is fantastic. The waste byproducts are fractionally tiny relative to any other major energy source. Whereas we do need some upgrades to the grid, it's far better than the massive investments required if we go total electric.

For mobile energy consumption, we need to stick with fossil fuels. There are still improvements to be made in the efficiency of ICE, though those are smaller with each decade that passes.

Engines run incredibly clean today; there are major cities which prove this (like LA, Atlanta, etc). There are no more "smog" choked cites in the US; those are concerns of the past. Think of the planet as a massive aircraft carrier; it does not stop nor turn on a dime. It is quite possible that the needed improvements necessary to stem global disaster are already in place, but we cannot see the effects just yet due to the nature of Nature taking it's own sweet time. I'm not saying we should stop looking for solutions. I'm saying that cramming unproven technologies and poorly vetted systems into use are both foolish and wasteful. We should be looking at long term solutions in a "whole effect" view, and not taking snapshots and guessing our way into the future.
 
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That was an excellent presentation. Thanks for posting it. I'll join those advocating for nuclear power for stationary applications and fossil fuel derivatives (gasoline and/or natural gas, the latter of which exists in extraordinary abundance) for mobile applications. How about a renewal and expansion of rail and inland barge transport as more energy-efficient alternatives to road and air transport?

Sometimes I think a prerequisite to serving in government at any level should be an education in physics; with even a rudimentary understanding of physical principles, a lot of nonsensical schemes would be stopped dead in their tracks.
 
I’m in the electrical industry and very much look forward to listening to this when I get a chance.

We are always discussing how exactly we are going to support this change in terms of material, technology and most importantly but often forgotten manpower. There is a massive projected shortage in the labor force looming. The older generation is moving out and the younger is not entering this industry in enough numbers to support the loss of personnel plus the growth ambitions. It’s a dizzying problem. But it will likely be very financially beneficial for me in the longterm. I’m already starting to see my “stock” go up and I’m not at all sad about it.

Thank you for posting this.
I read, some time ago, that in order to modernize our power grid importing engineers from Chiina will be needed, as America does not graduate enough power engineers./

fat biker
 
I mean the escalation of retail rates.

If you pay a source $0.80/kWh and market price is $0.04/kWh, that's a subsidy in the form of a FIT. That's not a functional market economy at that juncture if the market is being removed from the picture for certain sources.

See above.

EV's, electric heating, electric cooking...etc. There are myriad contributors in an electrified economy that will drive-up demand, and drive up average demand, which drives up the requirement for baseload power sources.
There is a long history of government intervention in energy markets; subsidies abound. Is this good or bad? I would argue that our unparalled economic growth is tied to cheap energy, especially subsidized fossil fuels.
I would further argue that some the reasons for those fossil fuel subsidies no longer exist, as those markets are mature and generally highly profitable.
This is why I struggle with some of the subsidized market arguements. The goal of a subsidy is to improve the supply of certain products.

Your 2nd point, that of consumption is spot on. People discuss the supply side but seem to ignore the consumption (demand) side. It takes both, but an ounce of prevention... as they say.
 
I for one would like to see more advances on the consumption side. More efficiency. Lighting, electric heaters, large appliances, they can all be made more efficient.
 
I think when we take a look at green energy in whole, it's not nearly at "green" as propontents would have us believe:
- this video I linked above shows us that getting the necessary minerals/metals to the production front in the required quanitities is multiple DECADES away
- biofuels are not anywhere near their promised potential, and are at best neutral in their carbon footprint
- the costs of "green" energy are staggering when applied in a full-approach format
- hazardous byproducts from mining and refining necessary metals is polluting the third-world countries
- hazardous and non-recyclable waste from wind and solar arrays pose a HUGE probelm in the very near future, for which no solution exists yet

I'm a huge fan of going to nuclear reactors for just about any stationary energy consumption system. The power potential is massive and proven safe and reliable. The power density of nuke is fantastic. The waste byproducts are fractionally tiny relative to any other major energy source. Whereas we do need some upgrades to the grid, it's far better than the massive investments required if we go total electric.

For mobile energy consumption, we need to stick with fossil fuels. There are still improvements to be made in the efficiency of ICE, though those are smaller with each decade that passes.

Engines run incredibly clean today; there are major cities which prove this (like LA, Atlanta, etc). There are no more "smog" choked cites in the US; those are concerns of the past. Think of the planet as a massive aircraft carrier; it does not stop nor turn on a dime. It is quite possible that the needed improvements necessary to stem global disaster are already in place, but we cannot see the effects just yet due to the nature of Nature taking it's own sweet time. I'm not saying we should stop looking for solutions. I'm saying that cramming unproven technologies and poorly vetted systems into use are both foolish and wasteful. We should be looking at long term solutions in a "whole effect" view, and not taking snapshots and guessing our way into the future.
Wow ..... you said it ALL in a neat package. No one who pays attention or really follows these things has much of any type argument with most of your words. I dont mind and in fact welcome new sources of energy , once proven. Too many get blinded into thinking any new "green or non ICE" type of energy is not only gonna have to be better but I fear they have some notion tons cheaper on the consumer's pocket books. No one is looking to create anything to sell to consumers that is cheap. Matter of fact the gov is already making plans to charge EV users some type of fee similar to how they tax gasoline use for transportation maintenance and improvements, even though we rarely see anything to do with roads n bridges ever improved until they just about collapse under us.
 
There is a long history of government intervention in energy markets; subsidies abound. Is this good or bad? I would argue that our unparalled economic growth is tied to cheap energy, especially subsidized fossil fuels.

This argument has been brought up here before, and the vast majority of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry is primarily by 3rd world and middle eastern countries, none of which have made any attempt or have any interest in electrify their vehicles. and hence Its a false strawman towards the EV argument. In the US, there are many more subsidies towards electricity and specifically green energy than there are towards fossil fuels.

Our unprecedented economic growth is a function of money printing / debt. Global debt is $250 trillion or some such number, like 2.5x global GDP. Debt is simply future consumption moved forward. They subsidized everything from oil to green energy to college, and even cheerios at walmart.
 
Joined the electricity industry January 1989, so literally a "lifer".

If you take the footprint of (for example) a black coal station, and the energy produced by a "business card" sized block of footprint (including mines and ash placement), a nuke would typically take two business card sized footprints to do the same...get to wind and batteries, and it's 7 square metres of impacted land.

Great conversations
Yup, a nuke that uses natural uranium (so, in my case, a CANDU), is ~20,000x more energy dense than a comparable fossil source (coal/oil/gas).

One of my biggest gripes is with the framing of "biomass" as green. The volume of material used is absolutely staggering and there is absolutely no way it is sustainable.
 
I for one would like to see more advances on the consumption side. More efficiency. Lighting, electric heaters, large appliances, they can all be made more efficient.
Very true, though this will be more than offset by increased electrification. Ontario's electricity consumption would triple if we eliminated gas from heating for example.
 
On biomass, a C&P of a thread I made on twitter:

Well, for CANDU's, it would be 20,000x, as it's generally, 20,000x more dense than fossil sources. That's extracted energy, not theoretical energy. Coal varies between 14,340Btu and 6,900Btu per lb (lignite), while timber biomass is between 8,570Btu and 5,140Btu per lb.
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Timber biomass is ~87 tons per acre; 174,000lbs. One 20g CANDU uranium pellet produces the same amount of electricity as 882lbs of coal. There are approximately 23 of these pellets in a lb. Ergo, the electricity yield from one 20g pellet is 12,355,000Btu.
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The yield from natural uranium is 284,165,000Btu/lb compared to biomass at 5,140-8,570Btu/lb, making it 33,158x more energy dense than the best timber biomass. So, one acre (174,000lbs) of dry timber biomass can yield 1.49 billion Btu. The same in uranium 49,444.710 billion Btu.

So, it would take 33,158 acres of biomass to yield the same amount of electricity as 174,000lbs of uranium; 4,002,000 20g pellets. Since we know there are 20 pellets per pin in a 37 element bundle, that's 740 pellets per bundle, 5,408 bundles.
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Each used fuel storage cask holds 384 bundles, so the two visible rows here represent 7,680 bundles. So, 14 of these casks is the equivalent to 33,158 acres of biomass. This facility houses 700 containers, the equivalent to 1.65 million acres of biomass; 6,677 square kilometres.
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For scale, Prince Edward Island is 5,660 square kilometres and Algonquin Park is 7,653 square kilometres.
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One single reactor load of fuel at OPG Darlington is 5,760 bundles, so one reactor load of fuel produces more electricity than 33,158 acres of biomass. Darlington has 4 reactors, so a single fuel load in each reactor represents 132,632 acres of biomass.

For easier to understand electrical terms, each bundle can produce 1,094MWh. That means each used fuel cask has generated 420,096MWh and those 14 casks, equivalent to 33,158 acres of biomass, have produced 5,881,344MWh or 5.88TWh. If we convert that to acres of biomass per TWh, that's 5,637.827 acres.

Ontario's CANDU fleet lifetime output, at the end of 2021 was:
Darlington: 735,259,720MWh
Pickering: 929,244,380MWh
Bruce: 1,521,994,170MWh
Total: 3,186,498,810MWh

That's the equivalent of 17,964,929 acres of biomass; 72,701 square kilometres; 28,070 square miles, or equivalent to biomass covering almost the entire state of Maine.
 
Biomass does have the useful property of regrowing, for free even in the case of trees. But for sure I agree that biomass isn't totally replacing nuclear anytime soon for a less CO2 intensive energy source.
I think the key in the future is investing in efficiency, in home design, in vehicle design(even now, an Aptera in Arizona may never need to be plugged in for a short tripping daily use), and less disposable consumer items, basically wean ourselves off of "cheap" fossil fueled bad habits, like shipping lots of things around the world and then across the country. Then with less demand, more small scale and local solutions to energy become more possible.
 
I just read an article about my area. SHELL is very big employer all around the gulf south region and has been for close to 100 years. They are actually planning to build new and expand some facilities. The first thing they mentioned is they know there is a manpower shortage all over. They are now in the process of trying to build some process units with more automation to allow them to need less field operators. But they still say they even have a shortage of young who want to sign on as maintenance or trainees. How on earth do so many live without working. Saw a report of about 7.5 million working age males in the USA from 18 -35 yrs old who are not working and not looking for jobs. What do these people plan to do when they get elderly? I guess you dont think about tomorrow when your face is smashed in a Smart phone and video games all day just hanging out having your fun times.. How do they even pay the Smart phone bills?
as someone who is in that age range , i wish there was that kind of work available in my region. moving provinces and or countries just isn't feasible for many.
not to mention that it is increadibly hard to gain such employment without the applicable schooling and or knowing someone on the inside already.
 
Being a geologist that explores for critical minerals...looks like I'll be good for a while ahahah
 
Yup, a nuke that uses natural uranium (so, in my case, a CANDU), is ~20,000x more energy dense than a comparable fossil source (coal/oil/gas).

One of my biggest gripes is with the framing of "biomass" as green. The volume of material used is absolutely staggering and there is absolutely no way it is sustainable.
I think every nation on earth should have its own CANDU fleet and then we can talk about world peace.
 
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