In response to comment by D_Alex on Why capitalism?
Comment author: Alsadius 08 May 2015 04:00:09PM 1 point [-]

If that non-OECD number is to be believed, 2% of non-OECD GDP goes to fuel subsidies. Or, if you prefer to think of it this way, it's close to 1/3 of the total world oil market to fossil fuel subsidies. And this number comes from a think-tank that's obviously out to make an anti-subsidy point, with no detail as to where it came from or why we should believe it. Think tanks aren't to be immediately dismissed, but they frequently exaggerate badly.

And the discussion is about why renewables get used. German use of renewables is very different than Canadian or Congolese, and aggregating them leads to muddy thinking and useless stats. Germans use modern renewables because the government is dumping a bloody lot of money into the industry. Canadians use renewables because we have massive amounts of easily-tapped hydroelectric potential, and hydro dams are the cheapest source of power known. Congolese use renewables because they have no better options than burning wood.

I'll agree with you that some poor countries spend a lot on subsidizing gasoline, but it's only a lot by poor-country standards, and it's hardly all of them. I want a better source than naked statement of a number from a biased group before I'll believe it adds up to that staggering a sum. And even if it does, that has no impact on the US, where fossil fuel is nearly unsubsidized - if you want me to think that renewables and an "energy internet" are a good choice for the US, then you need to explain how switching from a cheaper source to one that's more expensive even with bigger subsidies is a net cost savings.

In response to comment by Alsadius on Why capitalism?
Comment author: D_Alex 10 May 2015 06:00:38AM *  -1 points [-]

I still do not understand your objective in this discussion. It seems that you are implicitly against subsidising renewable energy. Is this correct?

(I work in the oil and gas industry, by the way, so fossil fuel subsidies sort of help me out...).

For that matter, I do not understand the upvotes in this thread. A citation was asked for - then it was provided - and then there are several posts attempting to invalidate the citation, attracting upvotes. Strange.

I want a better source than naked statement of a number from a biased group

We all do... could you please provide one?

if you want me to think that renewables ... are a good choice for the US...

I don't know when this discussion started to be about the US, and I don't know if I really care enough about what you think to put in more effort... are you in a position to influence what the US chooses? If yes, then I will explain why this statement:

how switching from a cheaper source [presumably fossil fuels] to one that's more expensive [presumably renewable energy]

is wrong.

Comment author: D_Alex 08 May 2015 02:27:30AM 9 points [-]

Engineering solutions (RO desalination powered by photovoltaics) exist right now to deliver practically limitless amounts of potable water in a sustainable manner for around $1/m3. That is 1 cent per 10 litre bucket.

I am not sure who is feeling the pain in California... $1/m3 may be too much to pay for broadacre farming. But for city residents, who (in Australia) typically use ~300l/person/day, including lawn care, this seems very affordable.

Incidentally: Perth, Australia, used to rely on dams and groundwater to supply its needs. When I visited the dams 10 years ago they looked about what Californian dams look like now. This year, the dams are nearly full, and the annoying ads urging reduced water consumption have disappeared. What has changed? Two RO desalination plants were built, and now roughly half of Perth's fresh water supply comes from these plants. To power the plants, two small-ish wind energy farms have been built. So perhaps this is the right solution for California also...?

In response to comment by D_Alex on Why capitalism?
Comment author: Lumifer 05 May 2015 06:01:11PM *  2 points [-]

I think that at the moment 3D printers (for home use) are toys. Certainly, cool toys and I've been tempted to get one a few times. But then I realize that while the magic of materializing physical objects out of bytes and some plastic filament is great, I just don't need many (if any) small uneven pieces of plastic.

The claim that I objected to at the start of this sub-thread is that a 3D printer is now a cost-effective method of producing useful household objects. I didn't think so and I still don't think so. Saving money on a 50-cent bracket via buying a $1,000 printer doesn't look particularly rational to me. Maybe things will change in a few years. We'll see.

In response to comment by Lumifer on Why capitalism?
Comment author: D_Alex 06 May 2015 03:32:55AM 0 points [-]

cool toys and I've been tempted to get one a few times

If you can use a 3D design program like Google Sketchup - do it! It is a cool toy, it is at least of minor practical use, and you might catch a wave to the future.

Saving money on a 50-cent bracket via buying a $1,000 printer doesn't look particularly rational to me

Naturally. But throwing away a $1000 item for the lack of some stupid bracket that should cost 50 cents but can't be had for any money AFAICT is not great either...

In response to comment by D_Alex on Why capitalism?
Comment author: Alsadius 05 May 2015 03:05:19PM *  0 points [-]

Remember, a lot of renewables get thrown in together without being the same. The renewables that get subsidies are mostly the flashy new ones, like wind, solar, and ethanol. Those are only a few percent of world consumption. Virtually all renewable energy production is either hydroelectric(which is quite profitable, and attracts basically no subsidies) or burning of wood and dung(which almost entirely happens in poor countries that can't afford to subsidize much of anything). Slightly dated graph, but one that gives a good sense of how things break down: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy#/media/File:Total_World_Energy_Consumption_by_Source_2010.png

Also, over 80% of fossil fuel subsidies are outside the OECD? Seriously? 80% of the money spent on anything being non-OECD is hard to fathom, because the OECD has somewhere around 80% of the world's money, and a lot more disposable income to blow on subsidizing things.

In response to comment by Alsadius on Why capitalism?
Comment author: D_Alex 06 May 2015 03:22:45AM 0 points [-]

Remember, a lot of renewables get thrown in together without being the same. The renewables that get subsidies are mostly the flashy new ones...

I have provided a few facts... you are trying to put a certain interpretation on them. To what end? What is it exactly that you are trying to argue?

Seriously? 80% of the money spent on anything being non-OECD is hard to fathom...

And now you are denying the data.

What is subsidised and where, is decided by factors that are not necessarily obvious or "sensible", and there is a huge element of political electability. In OECD, fuels are a source of taxation revenue, whereas farmers, for example, benefit from subsidies. In the middle east and South-East Asia, fossil fuel is heavily subsidised, eg. in Indonesia gasoline sold for about 90% of crude oil price while I was there (and Indonesia imports their crude). I read that fully half of government revenue was at one point used to pay for the fuel subsidies. Why? Well, as soon as there is a discussion of reducing the subsidies, protests break out, and the politicians supporting the reductions do not get re-elected....

In response to comment by Algon on Why capitalism?
Comment author: Lumifer 04 May 2015 04:04:09PM 3 points [-]

with one of these, you can make things like stands, casings, door handles, so on and so forth.

You can?

Your toilet paper roll holder usually has a steel spring inside. The door handles need to have sufficient mechanical strength -- both for the screws (or bolts) and for the cases when someone leans on them. Will 3D-printed out of the standard feedstock door handles be strong enough? I have my doubts. And how often do you change door handles in your house?

That's about 4 years before the 3D printer pays for itself.

First, please estimate labor costs for all of that and price it in. Time is valuable. Second, will a "cheap, low-end 3-D printer" even last four years?

I don't have problems with the idea that 3D printing is a very interesting technology which could impact things at some point in the future. What I have problems with is the claim that the time is now. I don't think it is.

In response to comment by Lumifer on Why capitalism?
Comment author: D_Alex 05 May 2015 02:54:25AM *  2 points [-]

I have a 3D printer (Makerbot 2, not really low end, cost ~$2000), so let me correct a couple of misconceptions in this thread:

  1. 3D printed parts can be, and usually are, quite strong. The strength of a part is directional - the parts are much stronger in the direction parallel to the filament deposition than in the perpendicular direction. But door handles and the like are no problem at all. The parts can also be strong and very light, because printing the inside volume as a honeycomb mesh is possible (and is the default option at least on the printer driver I am using)

  2. The labout input in actually making a part is minimal, surely less than a trip to the store to buy one. Currently, the labour-intensive part is finding or producing the right design - but once the design is made, it can in theory be available to anyone in the world to use. "Thingiverse" is an attempt to collate the various designs, unfortunately it is full of sub-mediocre stuff and not sufficiently easy to navigate around.

I have literally hundreds of 3D printed objects around me right now, most are models of industrial plants and boats. But I have also made a few everyday objects that I otherwise would have had trouble getting at all, including:

  • A control knob for my amplifier, the original was lost somewhere
  • A knob for window wiper control for my car
  • The little thing that you pull to open the door in the car
  • A hard-to-explain bracket that holds a milk shelf in my fridge

Now that i have made the models (and it was fun to do, so was there a labour "cost"?), these things above should be available on the 'net for anyone... I feel kinda bad for not doing that, but the problem is this: How do I identify say the fridge bracket, so that people can find it? OK, its a Fisher and Paykel 350 l fridge, model ABC-1234 or w/e, but then...? Now if the fridge maker provided the design on their web site, we'd be getting somewhere, and if 3D printers have sufficient penetration, perhaps they will one day.

In response to comment by D_Alex on Why capitalism?
Comment author: Alsadius 04 May 2015 11:56:06AM 3 points [-]

But renewables are vastly smaller than fossil fuels, and the relevant number is subsidy per unit energy.

In response to comment by Alsadius on Why capitalism?
Comment author: D_Alex 05 May 2015 02:26:57AM *  -1 points [-]

But renewables are vastly smaller than fossil fuels

Not really. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy :

"Based on REN21's 2014 report, renewables contributed 19 percent to our energy consumption and 22 percent to our electricity generation in 2012 and 2013, respectively"

So if you believe Wikipedia (and is there a better general source?), fossil fuels attract more subsidies per unit energy as well as in total.

Comment author: ChristianKl 02 May 2015 10:20:56PM 3 points [-]

Elon Musk recently proposed to run the whole world on solar panels + lithium ion batteries.

Is there enough lithium in the world that we can mine to build enough batteries?

Comment author: D_Alex 04 May 2015 07:55:47AM 3 points [-]

Yes, there is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial gives reserves of 13 million tonnes, ie 13 billion kg. I think these are "proven" reserves, ie economical to mine at current prices.

The amount of lithium in a Li-ion battery is not that much, roughly 500g/kwhr. So a 10 kW Tesla Power Wall would contain about 5 kg of lithium. We can make 2.6 billion Power Walls... and E. Musk said at the launch that 2 billion would be enough to convert the entire planet's energy usage - including industry and transport - to renewable electricity.

Comment author: ChristianKl 01 May 2015 11:44:59PM 5 points [-]

Solar panels don't take that much space. Elon Musk has a nice graphic in yesterday's presentation of his new battery: https://youtu.be/yKORsrlN-2k?t=3m32s The amount of space required for enough solar panels to produce enough energy for the whole world is tiny.

Comment author: D_Alex 04 May 2015 07:21:52AM 1 point [-]

Yep... take a look at this, one of the largest solar PV plants in the world:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/35.383333,-120.066667/@35.383333,-120.066667,12z/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!2m1!4b1?hl=en&dg=dbrw&newdg=1

It supplies but ~1% of electric power for Los Angeles... However zoom until you can see Los Angeles itself, a little to the southeast.

Comment author: DanArmak 03 May 2015 05:49:16PM 5 points [-]

I guess the problem is scale, after all. I'm quite bad at physical calculations, so the below may be wrong.

Even a small hydroelectric dam generates gigawatts of power. Assuming a 30 meter tall cliff, each cubic meter of water generates 294 kJ when descending. To produce 1 GW of power, we would need 1,000,000/294=3400 cubic meters of water descending every second (watt = joule/second).

If we build a lake at the top, 10 meters deep and 1 kilometer on a side, it would contain 10 million cubic meters of water. If we run it at 1GW, it would be emptied after 49 minutes. Not very useful, after all.

It makes me really appreciate the scale of natural phenomena like Niagara Falls.

Comment author: D_Alex 04 May 2015 07:08:08AM 3 points [-]

Apart from what g_pepper has correctly pointed out regarding size/power of hydro plants...

If we build a lake at the top, 10 meters deep and 1 kilometer on a side

With the right terrain, this is pretty trivial, all you need is a relatively small dam wall closing off a small ravine between mountains... here is a nice example:

http://www.iwb.ch/media/de/picdb/2012/366/nant_de_drance_stausee_vieux.jpg

http://www.iwb.ch/media/de/picdb/2012/367/nant_de_drance_stauseen_vieu.jpg

In response to comment by Algon on Why capitalism?
Comment author: VoiceOfRa 04 May 2015 12:19:34AM 4 points [-]

Renewable energies have lower subsidies globally than fossil fuels.

Citation please.

In Germany, a quarter of energy comes from renewables.

Only, because of German subsidies for renewables.

In response to comment by VoiceOfRa on Why capitalism?
Comment author: D_Alex 04 May 2015 06:50:40AM 0 points [-]

Citation please.

"Fossil fuel subsidies reached $90 billion in the OECD and over $500 billion globally in 2011.[1] Renewable energy subsidies reached $88 billion in 2011.[2] "

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies

(This is without even considering that fossil fuel usage imposes external costs such as pollution, that the fossil fuel user does not pay. Some have argued that this amounts to an effective subsidy of the order of a trillion dollars per year).

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