Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Why Green Energy Can't Satisfy Electricity Demands || Peter Zeihan" video.

  1. AUSTALIAN ENGINEER HERE: This is NOT an American problem but it is caused by the adoption of American economics in the 80s and 90s. I first became aware of Australia's issues from a small consulting job in 2016. I found we had a fleet of ageing power stations and NO PLANS on the table. There wasn't even a single proposal being spoken about and there still isn't to this day. Our ID0TIC media will put a microphone in front of anyone EXCEPT an engineer leading to the general public being badly informed. When I started to dig further I found that the same or similar situation existed across the developed world. Ageing fleets of power stations and no plans to replace them. Because of population growth the moment you finish 1 power station you should at least start planning the next ones AND THAT PROCESS STOPPED in the 1990s. MYTH #1: The energy transition is being driven by a move to green energy . WRONG - it was always going to happen because power stations wear out and need to be replace. On top of that populations grow and they need new power stations to keep businesses operating and the lights to work. The only question is "What do we build next?" In this case there are competing technologies who hate each other along ideological NOT technical lines. Its also a 4-way battle not a 2-way battle and inside those 4 groups are factions who don't always get along. There's fossil fuel made up of the oil & gas factions. There's renewables made up of wind & solar factions. There's nuclear which has a bunch of factions with different technologies all fighting each other for venture capital. Then there's the natural resource people which is 99% hydro but also geothermal, tidal, wave., ... etc. The biggest issue right now is the fighting going on between the Renewables and Nuclear promoters. They both know coal is dead and are fighting each other which is stupid because there's so much to do they'll both be fine. I actually suspect the fossil fuel people have infiltrated some of those groups to stir the argument into the morass it now is. MYTH #2: This mess was caused by the Greenies. WRONG - It was caused by the economists restructuring the energy markets in the 80s & 90s. It just took a couple of decades for what they did to finally come to where we are. BEFORE Reaganomics, Thatcherism and the neoliberal way, Governments built large power stations and kept the energy markets in OVER SUPPLY. That guaranteed new businesses access to CHEAP power. Its was great for employment and GDP growth but as Milton Friedman said businesses don't exist to create jobs or drive GDP. Private companies exits to make PROFIT and as much as they can. So when the bought up the energy sectors they DID NOTHING in the way of new power stations and simply let population growth catch up and flip the system into UNDER SUPPLY. They did this to make profit and they made boat loads, but now we are all left with ageing fleets of power stations that need replacing and NOBODY has that much money.
    126
  2.  @projectgolio  That's exactly the thing I have found everywhere I look with few exceptions and the few exceptions aren't that clear either. There's actually 2 business cases for large base load power stations. 1) If the government built them they are insanely profitable because if you don't do anything but keep them running then eventually population growth will flip the system from over supply to under supply. Prices go up but costs remain the same and especially for the coal plants where the coal mine is right there beside the plant. At that point profits skyrocket. 2) If private industry tries to build large scale then there is no viable business case. It takes too long to pay off. How do you ask a CEO who's probably 55 or older that if he spends this monster pile of money that he'll break even when he's 75? So its only viable with massive government subsidies, tax breaks and forward profits/bonusses.
    4
  3.  @thefisherking78  Agreed. I watch Peter every chance I get because on the geopolitics he's fantastic. Even on points you might find out later he's a bit off on you'll find that at least he's giving a perspective. ON ENGINEEERING how ever he is getting some damn bad information at times and I have commented a few times on things he's just been plain wrong about.
    3
  4.  @borag  Great question. I think its going to be more significant than some do. UP front I will say Sorry if this is lengthy but I have looked at Hydrogen and there's things many have NOT looked at or are aware of. Most notably many don't realise that hydrogen can be used in gas turbines. My degree is in aerospace and back in the 90s when they thought jet fuel was going to be done away with companies like Rolls Royce and GE did a lot of work on hydrogen as a fuel for gas turbines AND they solved many of the problems. These days GE and Siemens offer large gas turbines at 800MW (with combined cycle) that can use 50% hydrogen WITHOUT and modifications. The also say they have a path to use 100% hydrogen. FIRST (and this is very important) EVERYTHING has efficiency issues. If we'd used efficiency as the arbiter we would never have had the industrial revolution and possibly would never have made it out of the cave. We do need massive investments in energy storage research, but for the immediate future we need to use what we can. We can't rely on hope or maybe and have to use what we can and in ways we can. That means hydrogen will be huge, but there are some misunderstandings being bandied about. Simon Michaux (another Australian engineer) has done some really great work on the energy transition regarding the issues of just how much stuff is needed versus what's actually available. Once you realise there's 1.5 billion cars and 500 million trucks in the world, its a mind numbing task. Just to do that many cars with the same Lithium based tech Tesla uses you need in excess of 94 million tons of Lithium and according to the US Geological Survey there's about 21 million tons in reserves available. Other sources put that at 26 million tons (See Wikipedia). So there's some major problems to over come with energy storage. As Simon says "Its not impossible we just need a better plan." One thing I know Simon is wrong on is hydrogen. I have watched several of his videos including one only a few hours ago that he gave for the University of Queensland. In that video his models uses PEM cells for BOTH the hydrogen generation and power generation. Plus he insists it needs to be stored at 700 Bar which might be true for some cases BUT NOT ALL CASES. All up he gives an efficiency of 18% making Hydrogen unfeasible but I know his method is WRONG. If you use PEM cells on the generation and current generation gas turbines those have a combined efficiency of 45% with the PEM only at 70% efficiency. PEM can be as high as 80% and its believed they can get it up to 94%. At that point its over 60% without the losses for storage. Simons problem is that using PEM for generation only gets about 40% efficiency which combined cycle gas turbines are over 64% RIGHT NOW. What people forget is that if you have to flip the power from AC to DC and back to AC which you have to with these lithium based battery storage because its DC and that causes a lot of losses. A hydrogen gas turbine just produces AC directly. Now is GE and Siemens are BOTH pushing these turbines I think that means they know something. They are selling lots into SE Asia. The first couple have gone into Malaysia already and I saw a report that said one country might be buying 23. Here in Australia, we have 2 old gas thermal plants (Torrens island & Newport). Torrens is already past its "end of life" date. Based on their age I doubt if either gets better than 30% thermal efficiency. If I simply replace Torrens with one of these turbines it would be almost identical in power output but use less than 1/2 the gas. If we add in a hydrogen supply that comes down even further meaning there's more gas available in the gas market (i.e. lower prices). Based on age I'd estimate its running less than 30% thermal efficiency which is less than 1/2 the 64.7% these new gen gas turbines run at. So even without Hydrogen they'd be a massive saving on gas. With hydrogen there's an even bigger saving on gas and reduced emissions although at this point emissions reduction is only a fraction of the problem. FYI - I did my degree in aerospace and back in the 90s Rolls Royce, GE and others were flat out trying to run their turbines on 100% hydrogen because they all thought Jet-A1 was going to be phased out of the aircraft industry. So I know they've worked out the issues with using Hydrogen in gas turbines.
    3
  5.  @Brainfryde  What's your background, because you sound like an economist. An awful lot of blah blah blah about things you clearly don't understand. Do you even grasp what I am actually saying? Myth #1 is a myth because we were always going to have to build new power stations BECAUSE THEY GET OLD & WEAR OUT. No amount of maintenance will keep them running forever. The current need to build new power stations has NOTHING to do with environmental issues. Its simply a matter of relacing them. The only question is what with. One thing that has to be considered is population growth. The US population was 180.7 million in 1960, 205.1 million in 1970, 226.5 million in 1980, 250.1 million in 1990, 282.2 million in 2000, 309.3 million in 2010 and 329.5 million in 2020.
    2
  6.  @jesan733  New nuclear has only been killed in a couple of countries like America and Australia. If you want to complain about any of the subsidies that the Renewable Energy sector has got then FINE. But I want to know what you are going to tell the Coal, Oil & Gas companies who get something like $3 TRILLION in tax breaks, subsidies and other incentives each year. Hear in Australia our gas companies have stated on there yearly reports they have made over $400 Billion over the last decade and NOT PAID A CENT IN TAX because they all got insanely good concessions. I don't mind anyone commenting on the subsidies and grants to renewables BUT FOR F*CK SAKE STOP IGNORING WHAT THE FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES GET.
    1
  7.  @dwayne7356  Great comment on all points. Another Australian Simon Michaux has looked at how much stuff is needed and in terms of things like Lithium at current production we can't do it. There's 1.5 Billion cars registered in the world and 500 million trucks. (that data is on Wikipedia). A Tesla model 'S' needs 62.6kg of Lithium. Just for argument say we only need 50kg for a car on average (to make the math easy). Those 1.5 billion cars need 75 million tons of Lithium. It took me seconds looking on Wikipedia (under Lithium) to find "The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated worldwide identified lithium reserves in 2020 and 2021 to be 17 million and 21 million tonnes, respectively." The KNOWN reserves are a fraction of what's needed. Also current Lithium production is about 80,000t and at that rate it'll take around 1,000 years. As Simon Michaux says (and I don't agree with all he says) "Its not impossible but we need a better plan."
    1
  8.  @britefeather  YEP - if you let rapacious greed drive energy prices up it effects everything in society. The dumbest thing we ever did was listen to Milton Friedman and his clown brigade.
    1
  9. ​ @sharemyjoys  I watch Rosie often and she's very good for a University based person. I rarely disagree with her and its usually on things I have industrial experience on that she doesn't. On those coal fired power stations. I agree they are uneconomical to maintain but it depends on what you replace them with as to whether the replacement is economical or NOT. Those sites still have the grid connection and if the replacement can utilise that connection then it can be very economical. Hazelwood in Victoria was 1,600MW and so it had a 1,600MW grid connection. The European EPR is also 1,600MW so could be very economical. Although I'd be more inclined towards the Canadian CANDU because its quicker and cheaper. Even if they've pulled down that connection there's still the alley way it ran through and land costs money. So the economics relies on the planning and what you are doing.
    1
  10. YEAH SURE - SOON AS THEY ARE AVAILABLE. Go look at the websites of the companies all promoting SMRs and they are all trying to raise money to get going. AT BEST the SMR industry might be what the envision sometime in the mid 2030s. The SMRs being proposed ARE NOT the same technology that's in Submarines and Aircraft Carriers. The YT Channel "Decouple Media" has a couple of good videos on the subject. I can't say I agree with everything that's said on Decouple but its mostly sound because he talks to actual engineers and I am an engineer.
    1
  11.  @jesan733  Quick point nuclear IS NOT FAST. Hinkley Point C which has 2 EPRs (European Power Reactor) and will take 10 years to complete. It will also take at least 20 years to break even on construction costs based on current British energy prices. Yeah I calculated all that out a couple of months ago. Finland which recently commissioned an EPR took 18 years to complete. That said once constructed and if they run them at 90-100% then they are very cheap for BASE LOAD. But is you check the IEA data the moment you start trying to throttle them back the cost per kilowatt climbs and at a certain point which varies for reactor types it skyrockets. There's a great talk on the YT channel Decoupled about the Canadian CANDU. They are not only cheaper but quicker to build and of the reactor types so far used they are the only one not to have a melt-down. All the talk about SMRs being quick is utter crap and garbage from companies looking for investors. The best any of them claim is that they'll be ready for shipment to sites MAYBE in the mid 2030s. Yes there's a couple under construction but go check the details. They're prototypes.
    1