admiralteal

I, for one, would support a law that requires any new unit over a certain size must be reversible and maybe even a tier where they must have variable speed compressors. But I can already hear the Republicans lying that the feds are coming to steal your window units.

Don’t be too depressed about it. The Texas grid actually isn’t doing too badly in its emissions trends, in spite of their best efforts. It’s so easy to interconnect resources to it that renewables don’t need to stare down awful queues and huge fees to get onboard and selling power.

That’s sort of the other side of the story from what this policy announcement is about – for the rest of the grid, a combination of FERC, state regulators, utilities, and such have created a system where it is very hard to get new generation online because of infrastructure problems.

This is a gross simplification, but the way it kind of works is that in Texas, infrastructure is up to ERCOT and the utility. Generation is a lot more decoupled from its eventual transmission. It doesn’t face the same terrible barriers to come online because of the deregulated market.

Since solar is a fractional cost per unit energy than gas and coal, it out-competes them any time the sun is shining – it can sell way cheaper and so gas/coal will either have to sell hugely below cost to compete or else they’ll have to curtail. Wind is still a bit more expensive on average, but when the wind is going it tends to be able to do the same since it has no marginal cost. And the same situation also means that anyone who can make economically grid storage (which is already getting possible thanks to rapidly declining battery prices) can also out-compete the literal and figurative fossil generators.

Both Texas and the US East and West grids need MASSIVE transmission upgrades to deal with an increasingly-electrified future, though.

Don’t misunderstand, Texas is a total mess. A profound lack of planning and both reliability and resiliency. But there’s lessons to be learned from it – decoupling production from transmission and some degree deregulation of that production can take advantage of very powerful market forces that already favor renewables. A post-transition future isn’t just better for consumers because of eliminated emissions, it should also be cheaper power.

I enjoy how “Climate change is making the problem worse” can basically be tacked onto any regional issue headline in a 100% honest and serious way.

Batteries have also seen huge price drops.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2021/ee/d1ee01530c

Even in the past 10 years, the cost per kWh has gone from something like $270 to $180. These prices maybe aren’t quite in the full freefall solar has seen, but they’re declining very rapidly even absent any technological quantum leaps.

Unlike transit busses, school busses only need to be in service a couple hours a day and can basically trickle charge overnight. They require far lower range on top of the declining battery prices. While I don’t know the original NYC study being referenced, it is zero surprise that the school busses are a lot lot lot cheaper.

BEV transit busses are, frankly, a stupid fucking idea. Almost as stupid as battery trains. Put up a pantograph and electrify it properly – it costs a fraction as much over relevant lifecycles.

That’s literally and unironically what they want you to do.

They want to destroy walkable cities because somehow, having financially-sustainable small towns featuring outdoor life and engaged communities is partisan. They do not want main streets to exist, only box stores from national brands on the edge of town. They do not want to have to know their neighbors because they believe all other human beings that life near them are potential hostiles, so the best way to live is permanently indoors, getting into your car to protect you from the outside even before opening the garage door to avoid ANY interactions with others.

They want everyone to be forced to only drive cars because being forced to comport with one very specific, expensive, unpleasant way of life that leads to tens of thousands of unnecessary annual deaths and unbelievable isolation and loneliness is “freedom”.

I agree with what you’re saying, but also the reality of Saudi Arabia being a good ally is changing rapidly in the last couple years.

They aren’t standing up to Russia. They aren’t moderating Israel (potential normalization with the Saudis was likely the proximate cause of the October 6th attacks – which of course entirely achieved the goal of ending that normalization). They’re pledging to “extract every molecule” of fossil fuels to keep the world hooked even while their own internal development clearly shifts towards transition.

I’m not sure the relationship is paying off for the US. Maybe that’s why this topic is being stirred back up – to get a bit more leverage against them. The Saudis seem to be VERY concerned with the kayfabe of being a functional, modern state (in spite of the fact that they’re a lunatic theocratic monarchy), so this kind of dirty laundry may be of influence to them if it really is undeniable.

I don’t envy the folks in the diplomacy trades who have to consider and interpret all these factors and come to a real conclusion about them.

Contrary to “common wisdom” and industry lies, LNG is not significantly better emissions than coal. When exported, especially across the Pacific to e.g., Japan, it’s sometimes within just a couple of percentage points the lifetime emissions as coal.

Solar is already a vastly cheaper form of energy than fossil gas and wind is rapidly going down those learning curves (it’s already comparable in many geographic areas. The issue that US energy utilities simply don’t care. They only really know how to deal with “dispatchable” power generation. They don’t want to change. They don’t want to adapt. They’d rather spend more (ratepayer) money doing things the old way. Even though we already have the technology to deal with nearly all of the “reliability” issues that come with renewable generation.

Your voice can influence this. In many states, the energy utilities are regulated by a regulatory commission – and those commissioners, frankly, aren’t getting a steady stream of feedback. They are often elected officials. I’ve got one of my commissioner’s cell phone number – they can sometimes be THAT accessible – and they’re in charge of holding these monopoly utilities to task.

We don’t need a global socialist revolution to seriously address climate change. Tons of progress is already happening, even under the regimes we’re currently stuck with. Don’t just read articles. Talk to friends and family. Take action. Make calls. Vote. Donate. It’s a still a winnable battle so long as you don’t let the doomsayers suck all the air out of the room, but it gets less so every day that people stand by.

Those blades are way, way, way bigger than you think they are. They are moving extremely fast even at normal speeds. That 15ish rpm converts to around 1.5 rads/s. Modern windmill blades are something like 70m long – so we’re talking speeds of 100m/s or north of 350 kph / 220 mph.

Pretty comparable speeds to the windspeeds of the tornadoes in question during routine operation. Of course, there’s a lot more intensity with a tornado, but windmills are actually designed to let most of the air pass them unimpeded because it makes them work more efficiently.

Of course, their energy production will be deliberately curtailed under high winds because the generators and infrastructure hooking them up can only handle so much – they’ll brake the blades, or rely on back-emf from the motors, or some combination of those factors to prevent them from over-generating.

Of course, unlike typical wind being harvested by the windmills, the tornado’s airflow is far from laminar, meaning that even with their highest intensity, they will be losing a lot of efficiency in driving those blades.

…the tornado, of course, will simply knock them down.

It’s undeniably better practice. Better for the land, better for the animals, often even better for the farmers. But meat production will always be an ecologically intensive, extractive process. We will always be better off not doing it at all compared to even the best of the best regenerative practice.

…so no, it’s not a climate-friendly solution. If you want climate-friendly meat production, we’re probably talking about meal worms or some such, never beef.

I’d like to see all meat producers held to high standards of regenerative ag because it offers a LOT of benefits. It’s better land utilization, it’s better for drought, it’s better for pollution, it’s a thumb in the eye of the chemical corpos, and more even than that. And when you hear the stories produced by the regenerative ag advocates for the farmers, they aren’t really talking about climate much at all. This is correct. The story of regenerative ag has nothing to do with preventing climate change and anyone claiming otherwise is either deluded or greenwashing.

Yeah, I run into it a lot in my smallish, somewhat historic town – though I am not a developer. SO many places where all the staff constantly bitch about how they’re always popping breakers and all that stuff. Or where they have to go around sharpie-ing faceplates where you must not plug in kitchen equipment.

Line cooks, in my experience, don’t really give that much of a shit about the equipment they need to use. It works or doesn’t. The comfortability of the space matters most, and as you said, electric’s a huge winner for comfortability.

Chefs are sometimes VERY opinionated about the stupidest shit, and egotistical to boot. You can’t really argue with the dude who tells you he KNOWS gas is better (but has never actually used electric). Fortunately, these are a dying breed. Even the NYC pizza joints are switching to electric because it’s just plain better.

But if there’s one universal truth above all others with the restaurant industry, it is that it is entirely allergic to ANY kind of capital investment. Rewiring a kitchen to switch from gas to electric is just a non-starter. Having to pay an extra however many thousands during initial build to get the utility to bring in 3 phase? Good fucking luck. They’d always rather MacGyver a sketchy solution than invest the money now to improve profitability and quality of life in the long-term. The flipside is, that means buying a $150 commercial induction hob is WAY cheaper than trying to add an additional gas burner – the latter is usually a flat non-starter, the former means a guy can (lol health code) be sent to poach eggs in the break room.

Irrelevant to commercial. A reasonably big restaurant doesn’t get enough amps in the panel to replace all their gas equipment with induction, especially in grid-strained California. Not unless it’s new construction in an area with quality 3 phase electrical service.

It was a huge, huge, huge mistake that the places that banned new fossil gas installs made it ALL installs instead of just residential.

They made an enemy out of the national restaurant association for no reason and have faced huge setbacks in otherwise-good legislation as a result. It’s all just so stupid and shortsighted. Especially since, as the other guy pointed out, commercial gas cooking is not a major contributor. Even just compared to the leaky, awful, terribly, idiotic residential fossil gas network.

Notable that the common european honeybee is an invasive species that tends to preferentially pollinate invasive flora, at least in North America. The likes of bumblebees and carpenter bees are the ones that really matter for conserving and supporting native ecosystems even if they get less love in public media. They’re the bees that actually need saving.

It’s worth looking up what you can do to support native pollinators – including native bees – in your area. Some of the stuff is surprisingly easy – planting native wildflowers, for example, or setting up an insect hotel.

~60% efficiency, I believe? Not far off from pumped hydro in terms of overall efficiency.

The extraordinary cheapness of solar energy has actually made some real green hydrogen commercially viable in the US, especially in conjunction with IRA subsidies. It’s hard to overstate how huge the inflation reduction act has been at promoting transition and renewable technology. The hopeful new tech developments in the field of green hydrogen would be “peaker” electrolyzers – current economics make it pretty hard to have a viable electrolysis plant without having it operate at very high utilization rates. Truthfully, the issue is more one of financing than technology, though tech developments could change that picture. Far better to run electrolyzers than curtail a renewable generation source and I have no doubt this will be a major transition industry.

The bigger issue is that there are no remotely viable hydrogen aircraft. Theoretically, maybe one day, but maintaining liquid hydrogen tanks is impractical even for automobiles. It makes even less sense in the goddamn sky. Revolutionary new tech would need to happen before this was a viable option for airlines. So this kind of plant is probably smarter to be producing e.g., ammonia, especially since some major shipping companies have already signed contracts to build ammonia-fuel cargo ships so the demand will definitely exist.

Unfortunately, there’s no carbon-free alternative to flying in the near future. Which is why the best approach is to minimize flying. The EU way is the right way; pick busy flight corridors and focus on them for high speed rail.

Now look at the top 3 US flight corridors. Last I looked, it was LA-Las Vegas, Hawai’i-Ohahu, and Atlanta-Orlando. Brightline is currently deploying high speed rail service for that first route. Flawed as hell service, but service nevertheless. The second is probably always going to be stuck to flight (but also, less tourism to the islands would benefit them tremendously either way). The third has huge potential to be built out into a rail corridor (Brightline Florida already has plans to expand to Jacksonville and an Atlanta-Savannah Amtrak route is already in development – would not be hard to close that gap).

Propane’s a different thing. It’s just trading in bottles. Those bottles will keep being available for a long time and are, frankly, not a major emissions source. Still one we should get rid of, but it’s not a low-hanging fruit. Propane is also still one of the more climate-friendly refrigerants, so it’s definitely sticking around.

As far as people in situations like that relying on fossil gas distribution infrastructure… one way or another they’re going to be left holding the bag.

Electrified appliances are almost universally better for consumers both in quality and economics. Electrification and gas-free new construction will keep happening. Keep accelerating.

The infrastructure of gas is already built. It costs a lot to maintain it even as poorly as they do. As fewer ratepayers are using the system, the remaining ratepayers have to pay a larger and larger share of that cost – making the gas even more expensive and an even worse choice for consumers. Inevitably, the poorest folks who cannot afford to replace their appliances but also cannot afford to keep using gas will be left behind. That’s the reality of the privatized system we have.

I feel bad for all the people who are going to get fucked, especially since for many it was bogus that they were saddled with fossil gas in the first place (e.g., bribes to builders/subdevelopment managers).

Even without accidental site leaks, the infrastructure itself leaks terribly. Residential fossil gas systems are constantly venting tiny amounts of methane from throughout the system, with occasional major issues that can go days or weeks without notice until a sniffer van or something like it catches it. This happened at my house just recently – my gas was fully capped off the week I moved in, but a guy showed up now several years later from the utility and said he was there for a detected leak and he had to remove the meter and re-cap everything. The whole time trying to convince me that gas stoves are better than my undeniably-superior induction one.

For all I know it was venting at a decent clip this whole time. Nothing I could really do about it. It’s not like I was checking the meter what with my no service, and as far as the guy could tell the leak was from before the meter anyway.

And it’ll get worse as the systems are used less. A smaller subscriber base means these companies will inevitably cut repair and maintenance budgets, leading to more leaks. More methane. The only safe and sensible thing to to have public takeovers on them and then immediately start working to decommission.

There’s zero merit to corn ethanol fuels.

Literally makes more sense to fill the fields with solar panels and just do electrolysis to make hydrogen/ammonia. It nearly makes more sense to do the same with DAC plants to “make up” for regular old jet fuel.

If we actually care about aviation emissions, there’s a solution: less aviation. Best way to do it: intercity high-speed rail. Bonus points, it will make for a more comfortable, pleasant, affordable world in the process. Let’s start with LA to Vegas… oh wait. So since trains in Hawai’i probably don’t make the most sense, the next target is Atlanta-Orlando… and go figure, there’s currently an Amtrak route being built to Savannah and Brightlight already has plans to connect to Jacksonville, so finishing that route wouldn’t be terribly hard either…

We try sooooo hard to come up with these techno-wizard solutions that we lose track of how simple and straightforward the actual problems are.

The dumbest thing is that some of the best greenfield urbanism in the country is in Florida (places like Seaside, which may be failing on their promise but are at least trying to do the right thing). They’re building first-class high-speed rail (no, Brightline isn’t really private – they function only because of vast support from the FL government). They have huge solar buildouts that are certain to continue scaling up simply by market forces. All things that, on paper, could look like they were totally climate-motivated even though they really are business-oriented.

And yeah, they also have things running opposite to all of this. Florida IS objectively the worst urban/transportation design in the country. They’re committing to use more fossil fuels for literally no reason other than Desantis’s war on woke. They’re forcing/subsidizing insurance companies in order to keep vulnerable people living in places that won’t even exist in the coming years/decades.

Even still, they have tons of things that could be part of a “climate action plan” which are just activities they are already doing. They could be real schmucks here and take the money without changing any behavior. They’re refusing to do so for entirely partisan reasons.

And the truth is, Desantis is (politically) right to do so. Once that transition money started coming in, it will built constituencies for renewable projects and emissions-reducing operations. It will motivate people and money to do the right thing, and in so doing create more inertia for doing the right thing. As the actual people of Florida experienced tiny, visible improvements to their lives motivated by this money, they’d become more open to the idea of doing more of it – weakening the power of the anti-science authoritarian right that currently run roughshod on the state. To a dictator, any loss of power is an injustice that must be avoided at all costs.

One note for anyone getting ready to switch to a heat pump water heater themselves: the fuckers are pretty loud. Make sure it’s somewhere where the noise won’t bother you when it’s installed.

Newer models are getting quieter but the damn things are almost as loud as a small, modern window air conditioning unit when running.

Mine was installed right in the dead center of my house. Works great but I have to close several doors to not hear it at night (and I have it set up to mostly run overnight, though in someone else’s situation it might be possible to have it run while everyone is out of the house at work or some such instead).

Believe It or not there are electrical tankless heaters. I actually installed one not too long ago because it made sense in a very odd application.

Mostly they’re a terrible idea though.

Permitting reform, interconnection queues, and general bad FERC/utility bureaucracy actually represent a far bigger impediment to the US transition right now than any technological limit.

Hopefully this kind of talk is signaling that this will be the next major target for the administration’s next energy phase – because if it is, it means they’re continuing to take things seriously.

Even more hopefully, progressives will recognize the marathon achievements that have been made so far when election day comes and do what is needed to ensure more comes.