I wish I could attend Jessika Trancik's lecture tomorrow at the Andlinger Center for Energy... [View all]

[NNadir]

...and the Environment.

Here's the abstract of her talk:

ABSTRACT
Wind and solar industries have grown rapidly in recent years but they still supply only a small fraction of global electricity. The continued growth of these industries to levels that significantly contribute to climate change mitigation will depend on whether they can compete against alternatives that provide high-value energy on demand. Energy storage can transform intermittent renewables for this purpose but cost improvement is needed. Evaluating diverse storage technologies on a common scale has proved a major challenge, however, owing to their widely varying performance along the two dimensions of energy and power costs. Here we devise a method to evaluate storage technologies against the dynamics of energy demand. Some storage technologies today are shown to add value to solar and wind energy, but cost reduction is needed to reach widespread profitability. The optimal cost improvement trajectories, balancing energy and power costs to maximize value, are found to be relatively location invariant, and thus can inform broad industry and government technology development strategies.

highlight seminar: jessika trancik, massachusetts institute of technology

At the Andlinger Center, it's all "renewable energy" all the time.

The bold above is mine, and is a rare bit of what's called "honesty" about so called "renewable energy" about which we've been cheering like rednecks for Trump for half a century.

but they still supply only a small fraction of global electricity.

In the week ending February 27, the readings at Mauna Loa were 407.37 ppm, 3.29 ppm higher than last year during the same week.

Now we hear, "Energy storage can transform intermittent renewables for this purpose but cost improvement is needed. Evaluating diverse storage technologies on a common scale has proved a major challenge, however, owing to their widely varying performance along the two dimensions of energy and power costs"

How and when will wind power become a significant form of energy? When we hit 450 ppm? 500 ppm? 550 ppm?

I'm getting a little fed up with the Andlinger Center.

When they look at a ton of plutonium over at the Andlinger Center, they run over to Von Hipple's office at the um, Woodrow Wilson school, and figure out how many nuclear weapons could be made from it.

Curiously they don't look at an offshore oil rig and figure how much napalm it could produce, but they look at plutonium and calculate how many theoretical bombs it involves.

When Jim Hansen - and I - look at a ton of plutonium - including weapons grade plutonium which, speaking only for myself, I'd like to see denatured via fission/capture - we see about 80 petajoules of energy, enough to power two large nuclear plants for a year, thus saving thousands of lives that would otherwise be lost to air pollution.

Nuclear energy saves lives, and it is, in fact, our last best hope. This crap about "economic energy storage some day" is no more useful than "wind power will be the answer by the year 2000" half a century ago.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.