2000-Watt Society(en.wikipedia.org)
en.wikipedia.org
2000-Watt Society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society
304 comments
Related to this, one of the most brilliant insights about "how the world works" is the term: energy slave.
A good question to ask people is: How much work do you think can be done using the energy in a barrel of oil? As in, how much equivalent labour can you get out of it? Think of lifting heavy objects, pumping water, that kind of thing where it can be done by either a person or a machine fueled by oil.
Most people will say something like "a few days of work" or somesuch. The reality is closer to a fit adult male doing backbreaking labour all day every day like a slave for a full year.
Using up a barrel of oil is the same as having a slave toiling away for you for a year! One barrel = one energy slave for a year.
Put in those terms, a few things start to make sense:
At about $100-$150 per barrel, energy slaves are fantastically cheap, undercutting even the most impoverished human labourers in the most economically disadvantaged countries. Even some of the poorest people on Earth make about $300 annually. This means that having and using oil is an incredible boost to an economy, as each barrel burnt is effectively a very-nearly-free labourer adding to the output of the workforce. This is why many countries are so obsessed about controlling their supply of oil. The United States, of course, but also many western countries.
People in the US use an average of about 20 barrels of oil annually, which is the equivalent of having 20 slaves, each! That's not even counting coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Effectively, each person in the United States is about as wealthy as a very rich person in Ancient Rome. Think senator, or similar. But this makes sense: a typical person in the US can travel internationally on a whim, and enjoy fantastic luxuries that Romans couldn't even dream of.
Take the oil away, and the wealth goes away. Of course, other energy slaves can be substituted, but the point is the same -- our wealth is largely due to this "uncomplaining" workforce that is cheaper than the cheapest human labour.
A good question to ask people is: How much work do you think can be done using the energy in a barrel of oil? As in, how much equivalent labour can you get out of it? Think of lifting heavy objects, pumping water, that kind of thing where it can be done by either a person or a machine fueled by oil.
Most people will say something like "a few days of work" or somesuch. The reality is closer to a fit adult male doing backbreaking labour all day every day like a slave for a full year.
Using up a barrel of oil is the same as having a slave toiling away for you for a year! One barrel = one energy slave for a year.
Put in those terms, a few things start to make sense:
At about $100-$150 per barrel, energy slaves are fantastically cheap, undercutting even the most impoverished human labourers in the most economically disadvantaged countries. Even some of the poorest people on Earth make about $300 annually. This means that having and using oil is an incredible boost to an economy, as each barrel burnt is effectively a very-nearly-free labourer adding to the output of the workforce. This is why many countries are so obsessed about controlling their supply of oil. The United States, of course, but also many western countries.
People in the US use an average of about 20 barrels of oil annually, which is the equivalent of having 20 slaves, each! That's not even counting coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Effectively, each person in the United States is about as wealthy as a very rich person in Ancient Rome. Think senator, or similar. But this makes sense: a typical person in the US can travel internationally on a whim, and enjoy fantastic luxuries that Romans couldn't even dream of.
Take the oil away, and the wealth goes away. Of course, other energy slaves can be substituted, but the point is the same -- our wealth is largely due to this "uncomplaining" workforce that is cheaper than the cheapest human labour.
15 kWh of electricity for 100 km of car transportation is realistic for a defensively driven modest electric car. At 500W, that's about 80 km of car use per day. In an electric Hummer or similar, your car energy budget would be gone in 35 km. In a fossil fuel Hummer, getting to the bakery 10 km away might be possible, but only one way.
A good EV will get about 3 miles per kWhr. So 20kwh recharged over night will get you 60 miles per day. IMHO EVs need MUCH larger batteries to facilitate longer range driving or deviations from a daily routine, but that doesn't change the typical energy usage much.
What EVs are you using for comparison?
For something like a Standard Range Tesla Model 3 where you have around 260 miles of range when charged to full you don't really need to make any different life decisions w.r.t daily routine or even longer distance travel. I think the main problem is affordability right now there. But EVs that satisfy basically all of someone's need have been in the market for years.
Though the real change needs to be in using cars for daily needs in the first place.
For something like a Standard Range Tesla Model 3 where you have around 260 miles of range when charged to full you don't really need to make any different life decisions w.r.t daily routine or even longer distance travel. I think the main problem is affordability right now there. But EVs that satisfy basically all of someone's need have been in the market for years.
Though the real change needs to be in using cars for daily needs in the first place.
Charging infrastructure is a bit of an issue if you can't easily charge at home or work consistently. Tesla supercharger network is good for long trips though, other brands lack there and you do need to change your long distance travel a bit.
Yea that's true though I think it's a short-term problem.
> . . .or even longer distance travel.
I mean, this is completely false if you are someone who doesn’t mind a little discomfort (which seems to becoming rapidly uncommon).
When I was in my early 20s many Fridays saw me leaving for an all-night 500+ mile drive(one drive I did several times was 900 miles) to visit my friends at university.
Even recently, when I go backpacking I typically drive non-stop many hundreds of miles.
I mean, this is completely false if you are someone who doesn’t mind a little discomfort (which seems to becoming rapidly uncommon).
When I was in my early 20s many Fridays saw me leaving for an all-night 500+ mile drive(one drive I did several times was 900 miles) to visit my friends at university.
Even recently, when I go backpacking I typically drive non-stop many hundreds of miles.
People have run this experiment. A 1,000 mile road trip in a Tesla is about 8% slower than a gas car.[1] That's 90 minutes over 19 hours of driving, and the difference would have been smaller had they charged the car overnight. Battery and charging technology is only getting better, so that gap will narrow over time.
Also consider that if most of your driving is not road trips, EVs save time compared to gas cars. You plug the car in when you get home and wake up with a full tank, so to speak.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXzuFprlyrw
Also consider that if most of your driving is not road trips, EVs save time compared to gas cars. You plug the car in when you get home and wake up with a full tank, so to speak.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXzuFprlyrw
How much longer range driving do you personally need?
I drove a 2018 Chevy Bolt EV 12,000 miles per year on average for four years (totaled it this past Memorial Day weekend). Never got stranded/ran out of juice. Plenty of fast charging (55kW doesn't even reach 1 C (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger#C-rate) so I can basically fast charge with no concern for my long-term battery health), plenty of slow charging (1kW on my home 120V EVSE), 60kWh was more than enough for trips to Montréal, Vermont, and Chicago (from Philadelphia) over those four years.
I drove a 2018 Chevy Bolt EV 12,000 miles per year on average for four years (totaled it this past Memorial Day weekend). Never got stranded/ran out of juice. Plenty of fast charging (55kW doesn't even reach 1 C (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger#C-rate) so I can basically fast charge with no concern for my long-term battery health), plenty of slow charging (1kW on my home 120V EVSE), 60kWh was more than enough for trips to Montréal, Vermont, and Chicago (from Philadelphia) over those four years.
As someone that often travels across texas. I need a lot more range, but its a unique case. It doesn't help that I also need a van and Fords E-Transit line can barely push 130 miles on a charge when its partially loaded down.
Even looking at long range teslas they don't have enough juice to make it past stretches of chargerless road going from Texas to Colorado to visit friends, even before the losses from having to drive uphill.
Even looking at long range teslas they don't have enough juice to make it past stretches of chargerless road going from Texas to Colorado to visit friends, even before the losses from having to drive uphill.
That doesn't sound right. I drove from Sacramento (elevation 30 feet), over the sierras (7200 feet or so), across many mountain ranges in Nevada, through Utah, and through most of Wyoming and came nowhere close to running out of power.
Literally I packed the car, hit the listen button, and said "Navigate to Denver, Colorado".
Is any route from Texas to Colorado really have less charging than Wyoming (the least populated state)? I found 20+ superchargers between Houston and Denver. Even with a family of 3, dog, packed car, and bikes on the back I had no problems with Sacramento -> Denver, only in the most deserted stretches of Wyoming did I need anywhere close to half of my range.
I looked for the sparsest charging and it does indeed look like it's Wyoming, it's 360 miles from east to west and has 5 super chargers on 80. Judging by eye the longest stretch is Rock Springs WY to Rawlins WY and that's only 108 miles.
Even on Secondary highways that don't show up at the state level maps there's charger stations in Wichita Falls TX, Childress TX, Amarillo TX, Clayton NM, and Trinidad CO. From there Salida (West 147 miles) or Colorado Springs (North 130 miles) will get you to the rest of the state. Salida to Montrose (130 miles) gets you to west slope. Keep in mind elevation doesn't hurt that much, and while I have gotten a bit worried when I'm at under 60% climbing to a 14k foot peak, I was very surprised to end up with over 80% once I descended again.
This is all just using the Telsa charging network, there's many other places to charge as well.
Literally I packed the car, hit the listen button, and said "Navigate to Denver, Colorado".
Is any route from Texas to Colorado really have less charging than Wyoming (the least populated state)? I found 20+ superchargers between Houston and Denver. Even with a family of 3, dog, packed car, and bikes on the back I had no problems with Sacramento -> Denver, only in the most deserted stretches of Wyoming did I need anywhere close to half of my range.
I looked for the sparsest charging and it does indeed look like it's Wyoming, it's 360 miles from east to west and has 5 super chargers on 80. Judging by eye the longest stretch is Rock Springs WY to Rawlins WY and that's only 108 miles.
Even on Secondary highways that don't show up at the state level maps there's charger stations in Wichita Falls TX, Childress TX, Amarillo TX, Clayton NM, and Trinidad CO. From there Salida (West 147 miles) or Colorado Springs (North 130 miles) will get you to the rest of the state. Salida to Montrose (130 miles) gets you to west slope. Keep in mind elevation doesn't hurt that much, and while I have gotten a bit worried when I'm at under 60% climbing to a 14k foot peak, I was very surprised to end up with over 80% once I descended again.
This is all just using the Telsa charging network, there's many other places to charge as well.
The route from Dallas, TX to Trinidad, CO is the particular one I'm aware of that lacks charging stations. Things could have changed because its been like a year or two since I last made the trip, but it was well known as one of the tougher routes for EVs to conquer, particularly the stretch of it in New Mexico.
Ah, indeed, things have changed quite a bit.
Looks like Dallas (with 10 ish chargers) to Henrietta (134 miles), 127 miles to Childress, 117 miles to Amarillo, 132 miles to Clayton, and 104 miles to Trinidad. Depending on which Tesla you have you could likely skip half of those stops or so. The model 3 LR has a range of 358 miles, but most like to keep 10-15% in reserve.
One nice thing about EVs is that they are crazy efficient, so most of the losses are wind resistance, which is the square of speed. So you get 1.3x the range going from 75 mph to 65 mph. Another 1.4x going from 65 mph to 55 mph. So if things are dire you can extend the range significantly. The record is around 600 miles range if you have the patience for driving at 20-30mph.
While driving the car watches your progress and gives update coaching you about how much battery you'll have at the next charger or destination, and things like "staying below X MPH will get you there with 15% battery left".
Looks like Dallas (with 10 ish chargers) to Henrietta (134 miles), 127 miles to Childress, 117 miles to Amarillo, 132 miles to Clayton, and 104 miles to Trinidad. Depending on which Tesla you have you could likely skip half of those stops or so. The model 3 LR has a range of 358 miles, but most like to keep 10-15% in reserve.
One nice thing about EVs is that they are crazy efficient, so most of the losses are wind resistance, which is the square of speed. So you get 1.3x the range going from 75 mph to 65 mph. Another 1.4x going from 65 mph to 55 mph. So if things are dire you can extend the range significantly. The record is around 600 miles range if you have the patience for driving at 20-30mph.
While driving the car watches your progress and gives update coaching you about how much battery you'll have at the next charger or destination, and things like "staying below X MPH will get you there with 15% battery left".
>I need a van
Say no more - I totally understand the situation you're in and a Chevy Bolt EV would obviously not fit your needs.
Say no more - I totally understand the situation you're in and a Chevy Bolt EV would obviously not fit your needs.
Trust me I wish it did. I really like the styling of the new Bolt. I tested one out at the local chevy dealer during the whole battery replacement fiasco's beginnings.
> A good EV will get about 3 miles per kWhr
A mediocre one will, à good one will do ~4-4.2, especially if you don’t drive at 80mph/130kph.
A mediocre one will, à good one will do ~4-4.2, especially if you don’t drive at 80mph/130kph.
I think it's fair to assume 3mi/kWh as far as that's the realistic efficiency in winter time with the heat on.
That's the information people new to EVs need to know - the fact that efficiency goes up when conditions are better is gravy.
That's the information people new to EVs need to know - the fact that efficiency goes up when conditions are better is gravy.
I've driven a Nissan LEAF for 8 winters in New England. On a 50+ mile average, I've never seen worse than 3.3mi/kWh and almost always see 3.6-3.8 in the winter and 3.9-4.1 in the summer. (The car has a heat pump cabin heater, seat heaters, and steering wheel heat.)
If I saw 3.0, I'd be looking for the flat tire or a checkered flag.
If I saw 3.0, I'd be looking for the flat tire or a checkered flag.
Sounds like my experience when I had a Leaf with a heat pump. The Bolt does not, so it uses a lot more energy to keep the cabin warm.
Yeah our Chevy Bolt averages 4.5 miles/kWh, with mostly city driving including about 15% energy used for heating/cooling (20% during 8 months of winter/summer, 5% during 4 months of fall/spring)
Iirc the Lightyear Zero can do over 6, plus it charges while driving.
It charges while driving at about 5 miles of range per hour at best i.e. at noon, without clouds, near the equator.
In other words if you drive it faster than 5 mph in ideal conditions you're losing energy. If you drive it at 40 mph the solar panels are basically irrelevant. The panels are only really useful while the car is parked. This is the case for all "solar powered" electric cars.
In other words if you drive it faster than 5 mph in ideal conditions you're losing energy. If you drive it at 40 mph the solar panels are basically irrelevant. The panels are only really useful while the car is parked. This is the case for all "solar powered" electric cars.
Well sure, but it's also reducing the amps being drawn from the battery which should make it run cooler and last longer. Though again the effect isn't that large I guess.
What does the hummer get?
Makes me wonder if the next invention would be battery packs that you can put into your car for long trips, so your car stays light for the majority of the time, when you just need it for in-city commute. Ideally the battery packs would be shared so the "gas" station of the future has them ready for you to rent. Obviously the issue is high demand during weekends and school vacation times, and much lower demand otherwise...
It's possible for that to be a thing, but batteries are pretty heavy. Moving hundreds of pounds in and out of your car could be a rather aggravating chore just to avoid a few stops. There's also issues of standardization. You'd need a common battery form factor and connectors and voltage, and you might have to deal with fluid connections too since most EV batteries use liquid cooling.
I think the better long-term solution is electrified roads. (There are some pilot projects in Sweden that use rails embedded in slots in the road surface. The underside of a car or truck has a device that makes electrical contact.) With the right infrastructure it should be possible to drive non-stop from, say, Seattle to New York with a battery pack that's only good for a hundred miles or so.
I think giant batteries on EVs the same way I think about pontoons on commercial airliners: if, like Pan Am, you need to rely on existing port and harbor infrastructure because the airports you want to use haven't been built yet, sea planes make a lot of sense. But now that we have modern airports they don't.
I think the better long-term solution is electrified roads. (There are some pilot projects in Sweden that use rails embedded in slots in the road surface. The underside of a car or truck has a device that makes electrical contact.) With the right infrastructure it should be possible to drive non-stop from, say, Seattle to New York with a battery pack that's only good for a hundred miles or so.
I think giant batteries on EVs the same way I think about pontoons on commercial airliners: if, like Pan Am, you need to rely on existing port and harbor infrastructure because the airports you want to use haven't been built yet, sea planes make a lot of sense. But now that we have modern airports they don't.
A few years ago there was a company building test cars with aluminum air batteries. Aluminum air batteries have something like 4x as much energy for a given volume as lithium ion, and they were getting over 1000 miles of range.
The downside of aluminum air batteries is that they are not rechargeable, so the idea would be to design the cars so that the batteries can quickly be swapped. The discharged battery can be recycled.
It was an interesting idea.
The downside of aluminum air batteries is that they are not rechargeable, so the idea would be to design the cars so that the batteries can quickly be swapped. The discharged battery can be recycled.
It was an interesting idea.
I recollect that the original Teslas towed a small gas generator for long trips.
I don't recall that at all. It was true for Tzero, the vehicle from AC Propulsion that inspired the Roadster (and provided the very initial, but broken electronics). Tesla has never promoted hybrid propulsion.
That’s possible. I remember an interview with Eberhard back in the day, I think before Musk, where he described the trailer and also the concept of plugging the cars into the grid during the day to contribute energy to the grid.
I believe that but no Roadster was produced before Elon and I’m not aware that Tesla ever made such a trailer
[Ignore me, I misread. Original comment below.]
> 5kW (that's 5kWh per hour)
It's 5kW for an hour - but I think you understand that, and implicitly mean something like 'per hour continuously/on average over time' (where the 'over time' makes us dimensionally ok again).
> 5kW (that's 5kWh per hour)
It's 5kW for an hour - but I think you understand that, and implicitly mean something like 'per hour continuously/on average over time' (where the 'over time' makes us dimensionally ok again).
OP's comment makes perfect sense to me, but how I have read your comment three times without understanding what it is you want to communicate?
Yeah, I re-read, realise I just said the same thing in reverse. I misread as other commenter having the kW/kWh other way around. Ignore! (I'd delete, but can't after reply.)
[deleted]
A "normalized" person eats about 2000 kilocalories per day, so that's ~95W. Math checks out.
Great breakdown!
Comments here seem to be missing a key detail
>including embodied energy
Which is
>Embodied energy is the sum of all the energy required to produce any goods or services, considered as if that energy was incorporated or 'embodied' in the product itself.
I'm far below the 2k limit on mains energy usage, but I suspect after factoring in above it'll be comically far off. Making all this plastic stuff can't be energy cheap...
>including embodied energy
Which is
>Embodied energy is the sum of all the energy required to produce any goods or services, considered as if that energy was incorporated or 'embodied' in the product itself.
I'm far below the 2k limit on mains energy usage, but I suspect after factoring in above it'll be comically far off. Making all this plastic stuff can't be energy cheap...
If this chart is accurate, it seems like there are bigger problems than plastic. It's bad, but I'm guessing a lot of people don't even see some of their biggest resource intensive purchases as an issue, while feeling guilty or criticizing stuff that isn't as bad as they think.
Disposable stuff in general is a big issue, but lots of natural fiber clothes get landfilled too without much thought.
https://www.eupedia.com/ecology/carbon_footprint_consumer_pr...
Disposable stuff in general is a big issue, but lots of natural fiber clothes get landfilled too without much thought.
https://www.eupedia.com/ecology/carbon_footprint_consumer_pr...
Plastic is a great carbon sink, and could be quite carbon negative if it is used as feedstock for carbon capture (either bio-capture or artificial). Micropollution is why plastic gets such a bad rap.
Genuine Question: how is it a carbon sink, if we left the crude oil in the ground instead of turning it into plastic, wouldn't that be better for our carbon budget?
It would only be better for our carbon budget if the thing you were previously making out of plastic has a substitute with a better carbon footprint. (And you can make plastic out of other things than crude oil)
Plastic is made from oil, so at best it could be carbon neutral (assuming all energy used to process and recycle it is carbon neutral).
Plastic can be made from bio-oil or from synthesized hydro carbons.
Not in this economy
In an optimal economy it would be.
Climate change will cause many tens of trillions of dollars in damages and/or mitigations.
Halting climate change would cost < $10T.
A world that was spending $10T to stop climate change would be incentivizing carbon capture, among many other things. It would also disincentivize oil production. If you were paid substantial money to store atmospheric carbon and oil was really expensive, then turning atmospheric carbon into stable plastic could be highly profitable.
Climate change will cause many tens of trillions of dollars in damages and/or mitigations.
Halting climate change would cost < $10T.
A world that was spending $10T to stop climate change would be incentivizing carbon capture, among many other things. It would also disincentivize oil production. If you were paid substantial money to store atmospheric carbon and oil was really expensive, then turning atmospheric carbon into stable plastic could be highly profitable.
You mean, if captured carbon is used to make plastic? That's the only way I can make this make sense.
Absolutely. I've just done a naïve calculation, and Apple's self-reported 33kg CO2 emissions for a new Apple Watch Series 8 45mm Aluminium, at an equivalent power level of "0.85 pounds of CO2 emissions per kWh" from my first result on Google, suggests 85.6 kWh embedded energy, or 9.772 W if the device only lasts one year before replacement (divide according to expected lifetime).
It's not the watch, it's your house... and the roads, sewer, power etc. It's the $$$s!
Furthermore, don't forget your investments! Those are earning money BECAUSE they are consuming power. The workers build more houses, drive more cars, and consume more power to go on vacation to Tahiti. Profit is reinvested to consume more power. You own/rent it, you're responsible.
Furthermore, don't forget your investments! Those are earning money BECAUSE they are consuming power. The workers build more houses, drive more cars, and consume more power to go on vacation to Tahiti. Profit is reinvested to consume more power. You own/rent it, you're responsible.
On the investments, isn't that double counting? The people buying the products/services are counted once, then the owners of the factory (etc.) are counted for the same energy a second time?
Yeah. Also, energy is very very similar to money (spending power). Both represent the ability to transform your environment.
This connects to the formula for estimating "net worth of a country": one has to add up net worths of just people and non-profits (and govt infrastructure), because everything else is 100% owned.
This connects to the formula for estimating "net worth of a country": one has to add up net worths of just people and non-profits (and govt infrastructure), because everything else is 100% owned.
Well, who are the owners of the factory (not the products they generate), because the infrastructure energy cost (concrete, aluminum, steel, semiconductors) is huge? Are we just counting the people... and if we're counting corporations, shouldn't it be the people who own those corporations. Aren't stocks ownership? Debt is a bit more complex since that lien could be double counted (if it was ever all paid off), but in most cases more money just gets created by banks and few growing companies lower their debt burden over time when you count commercial paper.
Infrastructure and other energy use would be counted as part of the product in the form of embodied energy[1] of the end product. This isn't about distributing blame. It's about getting average energy use per person to <2000W on a societal level.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy
It's not about blame. Stock/debt ownership isn't just an opportunity it's also a responsibility. You own the means of production. The customers do not.
If you want to embed the capital costs (and not just the marginal costs of production) into products you have a much bigger amortization problem. Do you do it on the first sale so the first Tesla generates a billion metric tons of carbon, the first 10 years, the first million, retroactively?
What about companies that never sell a product, but consume billions of $$ in R&D? Do the employees own that, or the owners, or society as a whole?
If you want to embed the capital costs (and not just the marginal costs of production) into products you have a much bigger amortization problem. Do you do it on the first sale so the first Tesla generates a billion metric tons of carbon, the first 10 years, the first million, retroactively?
What about companies that never sell a product, but consume billions of $$ in R&D? Do the employees own that, or the owners, or society as a whole?
you run into the same amortization problem with the means of production. When and to whom is the imbedded energy cost assigned? Does it follow each stock sale? Does some of the energy stay with someone if they trade a stock for a profit? Is it continuously updated in real time as more energy is consumed by the company?
If you can figure all of that out for the owner, you can certainly recalculate the carbon footprint of a tesla in real time.
In my opinion, carbon footprint follows the inventory. It is on your books until someone buys the good or service.
If you can figure all of that out for the owner, you can certainly recalculate the carbon footprint of a tesla in real time.
In my opinion, carbon footprint follows the inventory. It is on your books until someone buys the good or service.
No amortization problem, it follows the ownership/stock sale, just like your house or your car, a gallon of gasoline, or anything else you buy/sell. So when you sell your stock the embedded value/energy goes with it. If you received dividends, and spent it then that probably had some embedded energy too. If you have money in the bank, then that earns interest which you'll spend/save, and if you own Gov bonds then you own part of the government, which has spent lots directly on concrete and oil. None of that concrete is free (you could argue they should get credits for all the un-cut trees grown on federal land though).
Even donations to charity have carbon footprint. Imagine you give to a charity that pays gas bills for poor people. Those people didn't buy that oil/gas. The one giving to charity did.
You earn money, you spend money, you save money, you give away money... that money gets spent on objects with embedded carbon. Unless you want to say that corporations get a free pass, or the government gets a free pass, or banks get a free pass, or wealthy people get a free pass. Just like taxes... maybe the monarchy gets a free pass?
Now there's still a way to game it, which is to have your company pay for everything. Just like cheating on your taxes, if you have no income and everything is held in a corp, then whoever holds the corp owns your carbon production.
Even donations to charity have carbon footprint. Imagine you give to a charity that pays gas bills for poor people. Those people didn't buy that oil/gas. The one giving to charity did.
You earn money, you spend money, you save money, you give away money... that money gets spent on objects with embedded carbon. Unless you want to say that corporations get a free pass, or the government gets a free pass, or banks get a free pass, or wealthy people get a free pass. Just like taxes... maybe the monarchy gets a free pass?
Now there's still a way to game it, which is to have your company pay for everything. Just like cheating on your taxes, if you have no income and everything is held in a corp, then whoever holds the corp owns your carbon production.
I just don't buy it.
By that logic, as long as I don't own a company I have no carbon footprint if I drive a Hummer everyday, have my meals flown in from France, and lease a power hungry mansion.
After all, the Hummers carbon footprint belongs to the auto manufacturer and oil company, the footprint of the flights belong to the airline company, and the owner of the mansion is responsible for my extravagance. I'm not responsible for my carbon because the companies are the ones that sold me all these things I enjoy
By that logic, as long as I don't own a company I have no carbon footprint if I drive a Hummer everyday, have my meals flown in from France, and lease a power hungry mansion.
After all, the Hummers carbon footprint belongs to the auto manufacturer and oil company, the footprint of the flights belong to the airline company, and the owner of the mansion is responsible for my extravagance. I'm not responsible for my carbon because the companies are the ones that sold me all these things I enjoy
In order to talk about one person's energy use we do have to come up with a system of assigning each piece of energy use to a person - a.k.a. blame.
Yep, the flow of money is almost perfectly correlated with flows of energy and material. Fuel/material consumption and GDP are basically measuring the same thing ("useful work accomplished") with a different quantitative lens.
Absolutely. For many (perhaps most) people in the rich world, embodied energy in the stuff we buy is our greatest source of energy consumption.
Very rough breakdown here: https://www.robinlinacre.com/energy-usage/
Very rough breakdown here: https://www.robinlinacre.com/energy-usage/
That calculator is super helpful! Thank you! Is the water usage meant to encompass energy to heat said water?
Also, this sadly puts even my household's meager (by US standards) car mileage (6k miles/yr) as the bulk of our energy usage. Cars are such a waste of life, energy, and space...
Also, this sadly puts even my household's meager (by US standards) car mileage (6k miles/yr) as the bulk of our energy usage. Cars are such a waste of life, energy, and space...
I'm having to adjust the energy use for heating fact some of that heat actually goes into hot water. So the calculator is figuring how much heat is needed to heat the water you use for washing, and subtracting that from the total amount on your energy bill (the remainder of which is heat).
Yeah - one of the things i learned building this is the huge amount of energy it takes to move humans anywhere (in cars/planes). News articles often mention trivial things like turning off phone chargers, when the energy consumption from car use dominates total energy use from electricity for most households.
Electric cars are genuinely a lot better in this regard, and the payoff period for the embedded cost of manufacture is lower than many people think: https://www.robinlinacre.com/carbon_electric_car/
Yeah - one of the things i learned building this is the huge amount of energy it takes to move humans anywhere (in cars/planes). News articles often mention trivial things like turning off phone chargers, when the energy consumption from car use dominates total energy use from electricity for most households.
Electric cars are genuinely a lot better in this regard, and the payoff period for the embedded cost of manufacture is lower than many people think: https://www.robinlinacre.com/carbon_electric_car/
That is neat.
Not sure how to quantify taking a bus to work.
Not sure how to quantify taking a bus to work.
Making plastic stuff is energy cheap, relatively, that’s why plastic is cheap. Plastic packaging uses a lot less energy (to produce, ship, and dispose of) than metal, wood, etc. Though of course with cheapness comes increased usage, so the net effect is probably difficult to determine
> Though of course with cheapness comes increased usage, so the net effect is probably difficult to determine
Induced demand, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand.
Induced demand, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand.
Right. So it’s hard to say. Stuff that you’d buy anyway (like food, cars, etc.) it’s probably a huge environmental win. Cars are sooo much lighter now, I have to imagine plastics are a part of that. A whole lot of a car is plastic, fiberglass, etc that used to be metal, so probably big savings both in manufacturing and fuel. When you refloor your house with LVP instead of ceramic tile might be another example.
But people buy cheap plastic garbage they throw out that probably just would not exist if plastic didn’t.
I’d guess overall it’s a win for the environment, though it’s very unevenly distributed in any case. It’s obviously much worse for pollution in the ocean, for instance.
Also fun fact: it was originally developed to replace ivory in billiard balls and without that we probably wouldn’t have elephants left.
But people buy cheap plastic garbage they throw out that probably just would not exist if plastic didn’t.
I’d guess overall it’s a win for the environment, though it’s very unevenly distributed in any case. It’s obviously much worse for pollution in the ocean, for instance.
Also fun fact: it was originally developed to replace ivory in billiard balls and without that we probably wouldn’t have elephants left.
Plastic is also cheap because it draws down on a stockpile of oil that nature has been saving for us for the last few million years.
It won’t be so cheap when we have to synthesize the feedstock.
It won’t be so cheap when we have to synthesize the feedstock.
We'll probably use it, but much less. Plastic is literally a wonder material, literally unobtainium, except that it's quite obtainium thanks to the sacrifices of ancient dinosaurs.
>Making all this plastic stuff can't be energy cheap...
Plastic is relatively cheap, energy-wise. Your embodied energy usage is dominated by semiconductors.
Edit: Google tells me that a laptop takes 4500MJ to manufacture. If you were living in a 2kW society, you'd have to save up 1250kWh, or about a month, to get your laptop.
Obviously personal car ownership is right of the question.
Plastic is relatively cheap, energy-wise. Your embodied energy usage is dominated by semiconductors.
Edit: Google tells me that a laptop takes 4500MJ to manufacture. If you were living in a 2kW society, you'd have to save up 1250kWh, or about a month, to get your laptop.
Obviously personal car ownership is right of the question.
> Plastic is relatively cheap, energy-wise. Your embodied energy usage is dominated by semiconductors.
Given how energy costly cement is, and how much quantity we use, I'd be really surprised if it didn't dwarf semiconductors by several orders of magnitude.
Given how energy costly cement is, and how much quantity we use, I'd be really surprised if it didn't dwarf semiconductors by several orders of magnitude.
Concrete takes 1.1MJ/kg to manufacture[1]. So, you get ~4000kg of concrete for one laptop's worth of embodied energy. Amortised over the expected lifetimes of the items in question, manufacture of high-density electronics still represents our greatest usage of energy.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy
Thanks for this.
Something to keep in mind - concrete weighs an awful lot and comes in at 2.2-2.5 tons per cubic meter. That 4000kgs is less than 2 cubic meters of concrete.
If it’s reinforced steel the energy usage leaps up.
Building is incredibly energy intensive and very wasteful.
Thanks for your link, it’s really interesting.
If it’s reinforced steel the energy usage leaps up.
Building is incredibly energy intensive and very wasteful.
Thanks for your link, it’s really interesting.
Yeah, concrete is dense and we use a enormous amount of it! We're making 4 billion tons of concrete each year, nnd without even counting the energy needed for transporting it (which is also high, because of the enormous mass involved), concrete production represent 8% of the total CO2 emissions!
https://www.archpaper.com/2019/01/concrete-production-eight-...
https://www.archpaper.com/2019/01/concrete-production-eight-...
I'm wondering whether the 1.1MJ/kg takes into account that the heat used for cement production is often used for heating nearby households.
If a laptop lasts 5 years then a month doesn't seem too bad. That's only 1/60th of your allowance. It shows the importance of continued software support for old hardware though. It's a hell of a lot better if a laptop can be used for 10 years rather than 5.
In the future, you'll take out a 5-10 year energy mortgage that eats up 1-2% of your daily energy allotment just to get a single laptop.
There's a vision we can all get excited about.
There's a vision we can all get excited about.
But lots of people have multiple devices. Laptop, phone, maybe an ereader or tablet.
Well maybe they'll have to have less, or keep them longer. Or we'll have to get better at prioritising energy consumption in manufacturing, and creating products that can be used for longer. Seems to me that there's no reason an ereader shouldn't last for 20 years or longer for example.
I definitely agree. Just wanted to point out how the personal computer energy challenge might have a larger scope than just laptops.
I just picked laptop as a convenient example, and because it might remind people that they probably have a house full of similar gadgets (and with a similar level of embodied energy).
You can get a rough estimate based on cost (not perfect but it can be usable) and then own the thing long enough that the energy cost to make drops to negligible. A made in USA toolset from USA sourced materials is unlikely to cost less than the energy needed to make it.
Or you can “cheat” by insisting used items don’t carry the energy cost because those were already borne by the original owner.
Or you can “cheat” by insisting used items don’t carry the energy cost because those were already borne by the original owner.
> Or you can “cheat” by insisting used items don’t carry the energy cost because those were already borne by the original owner.
When calculating footprint I generally use the partial cost paid for the item as proxy for the partial footprint to attribute for its total lifecycle. Interested in hearing about degenerate/edge cases.
When calculating footprint I generally use the partial cost paid for the item as proxy for the partial footprint to attribute for its total lifecycle. Interested in hearing about degenerate/edge cases.
I tend to pull lots of materials and appliances out of scrap and trash piles. Do I get to count those as zero?
I think you do, but the point is to have a society where on average we're all under the limit. In such a society we would ideally have stopped throwing away usable items that were energy-intensive to make.
Wouldn't years of function (potentially scaled with remaining effectiveness) he a better proxy where it's calculable?
Price is a good stand-in for it, and it helps encourage "landfill rescue" - buying a shirt at goodwill that would otherwise go into the grinder is better than almost any other option for acquiring a shirt, even if it's a relatively crappy shirt.
Part of the issue with it is that what is "most energy efficient/best for the planet" for a single user may not scale up to what is best for everyone to do.
There's also a problem in that future years of function cannot be estimated well or reliably; the average American kitchen will last 40-60 years, but be remodeled in 10-15 years. Since you cannot control what happens after your house is sold, you are better off using another calculation (or assuming that the purchaser of your house will bulldoze it or something).
Part of the issue with it is that what is "most energy efficient/best for the planet" for a single user may not scale up to what is best for everyone to do.
There's also a problem in that future years of function cannot be estimated well or reliably; the average American kitchen will last 40-60 years, but be remodeled in 10-15 years. Since you cannot control what happens after your house is sold, you are better off using another calculation (or assuming that the purchaser of your house will bulldoze it or something).
Isn’t that already approximated by the purchase price of a used item? There’s some weird transients where a 45-day old car is artificially cheaper (because why would someone sell a 45-day-old car if it wasn’t a lemon?), but that seems to average out pretty quickly.
It might slightly underprice used electronics, but if the alternative destination is a landfill, that slight underpricing seems fine to me.
It might slightly underprice used electronics, but if the alternative destination is a landfill, that slight underpricing seems fine to me.
The "embodied energy" calculation is always going to be somewhat arbitrary based on what one wants to include. With more or less relevance.
E.g: human rest power is ca 100W at ca 20% efficiency. The agricultural production is at best 2% efficient. That's already 25kW, just to survive. * Edit: partially wrong, see comments below. *
But it is perhaps relevant to exclude all non-CO2 energy sources? Thus putting the agricultural efficiency much higher since the sunlight would be "0".
E.g: human rest power is ca 100W at ca 20% efficiency. The agricultural production is at best 2% efficient. That's already 25kW, just to survive. * Edit: partially wrong, see comments below. *
But it is perhaps relevant to exclude all non-CO2 energy sources? Thus putting the agricultural efficiency much higher since the sunlight would be "0".
You're double counting that 20% the 100W is thermal output of a resting human, not work done. As evidenced by not needing 5000 Calories a day just to survive
It's still about 50-150kW average of sunlight for the absolute minimum to sustain a person with a mostly closed ecosystem (this will also feed numerous insects/bacteria/fungi/etc). A very optimized hydro setup might do it with 2~kW based on C4 photosynthesis being about 4%.
But yes, excluding sunlight of a reasonable amount of agricultural and urban land seems sensible.
It's still about 50-150kW average of sunlight for the absolute minimum to sustain a person with a mostly closed ecosystem (this will also feed numerous insects/bacteria/fungi/etc). A very optimized hydro setup might do it with 2~kW based on C4 photosynthesis being about 4%.
But yes, excluding sunlight of a reasonable amount of agricultural and urban land seems sensible.
> ... double counting ...
Thanks for catching that. Sedentary lifestyle is around 2000kcal/day, ca 100W.
I assumed the ca 20% efficiency was for efficiency of chemical energy extraction from the food (on average, varies a lot between carbohydrate, protein, fats) to storage as glucose/fat before we run it to ... > AMP > ... > ATP & NADH.
But that should probably already be taken into account by the output calculations from the agricultural production. Right? (so my original comment was wrong).
Embarrassing that I don't know this off the top of my head. I used to be good at it. Need to dust off the books. Or probably buy new ones since the field has progressed since last I dug around in it.
Thanks for catching that. Sedentary lifestyle is around 2000kcal/day, ca 100W.
I assumed the ca 20% efficiency was for efficiency of chemical energy extraction from the food (on average, varies a lot between carbohydrate, protein, fats) to storage as glucose/fat before we run it to ... > AMP > ... > ATP & NADH.
But that should probably already be taken into account by the output calculations from the agricultural production. Right? (so my original comment was wrong).
Embarrassing that I don't know this off the top of my head. I used to be good at it. Need to dust off the books. Or probably buy new ones since the field has progressed since last I dug around in it.
I was thinking more in terms of inputs to known systems.
There are small scale farming methods that feed one person on about 400m^2 with some experience and almost no inputs other than water, or up to 6 people on a quarter acre/1000m^2 block with minimal inputs.
160m^2 in a very good climate is very roughly 50kW average including day/night and some weather.
So a hundred or so kW seems like a pretty reasonable total budget to aim for, with 10% used by things that aren't plants (which would come to ~2kW of work at current efficiencies).
Re. the idea that I'd believe 2kW was possible (if beyond current methods):
These methods generally dedicate around 30% of the land to energy limited crops like potato, and of that land maybe half is covered by a leaf.
You can beat sunlight->photosysnthesis in efficiency by only producing photons that plants use well (currently the best is blue+phosphor white LEDs), and I'm willing to believe without evidence that precisely scheduling and dosing your light could double output again. As could switching to some king of genetically modified corn or sorghum from potatoes. Recycling nutrients on a budget of a few hundred watts plus whatever is in discarded leaf matter seems somewhat scifi but not impossible.
There are small scale farming methods that feed one person on about 400m^2 with some experience and almost no inputs other than water, or up to 6 people on a quarter acre/1000m^2 block with minimal inputs.
160m^2 in a very good climate is very roughly 50kW average including day/night and some weather.
So a hundred or so kW seems like a pretty reasonable total budget to aim for, with 10% used by things that aren't plants (which would come to ~2kW of work at current efficiencies).
Re. the idea that I'd believe 2kW was possible (if beyond current methods):
These methods generally dedicate around 30% of the land to energy limited crops like potato, and of that land maybe half is covered by a leaf.
You can beat sunlight->photosysnthesis in efficiency by only producing photons that plants use well (currently the best is blue+phosphor white LEDs), and I'm willing to believe without evidence that precisely scheduling and dosing your light could double output again. As could switching to some king of genetically modified corn or sorghum from potatoes. Recycling nutrients on a budget of a few hundred watts plus whatever is in discarded leaf matter seems somewhat scifi but not impossible.
In the (2008) Swiss example, the 2kW are already spend on public infrastructure, food and consumer discretionary alone. So even somebody living in an unheated cottage without electricity, using only public transportation, would exceed the 2kW as long as they otherwise eat and spend like the average Swiss.
(though I would assume public infrastructure to use less energy now, with the efficiency improvements in lighting)
(though I would assume public infrastructure to use less energy now, with the efficiency improvements in lighting)
This is absolutely doable, I've been off-grid for almost 3 years now with a very minimal setup and for the most part I have no complaints outside of a couple weeks in the dead of winter, and the one week that gets really really hot in the summer. I'm not sure how to calculate my total embodied energy but in terms of electricity I have never used more than 7kWh in a single day, which works out 300W and includes all of my computing needs as well as refrigeration, lighting, minor heating/cooling, some small amount of cooking and at least a couple lattes every day.
On the worst day in winter my consumption is usually ~1kWh, limited by solar production.
On the worst day in winter my consumption is usually ~1kWh, limited by solar production.
My partner and I have been living "off grid" using PV + battery for electricity for the last 5 years in the Appalachian mountains. We track energy use meticulously. We try to use mostly wood heat in winter, but also have a buried propane tank for supplemental heat and hot water in winter. So that is arguably not fully off grid? We have a 2,400-sq. ft. A-frame house with R-52 insulation in most walls (closed-cell + batt) and low-e glass windows (but, alas, lots of windows). We mostly cook with electric or the woodstove in winter. Our woodstove is a massive, pretty efficient soapstone masonry stove central in the house by design. South-facing windows are backed by local stone floors that capture and radiate heat in winter. The house is angled to allow sun to enter windows in winter and block sun in summer for passive heating/cooling.
The two of us use just under 5kWh / day average electricity. Our big energy use is heat in winter though! Here is the breakdown:
5kWh/day electric * 365 days = 1825 kWh/year electrons
2.5 cords wood (mostly oak) = 17584 kWh/year wood heat
300 gal. liquid propane = 8400 kWh/year propane heat
That's a total of ~27800 kWh/year for the two of us including heat. That's about 76 kWh/day or 38 kWh/day per person on average. *This includes charging my e-bike for my work commute--but we also have a gas car so not nearly all transportation energy costs.[edited to add this]
I can't see any way to go much lower than that without freezing in the winter. 2 kWh/day seems crazy low to me.
The two of us use just under 5kWh / day average electricity. Our big energy use is heat in winter though! Here is the breakdown:
5kWh/day electric * 365 days = 1825 kWh/year electrons
2.5 cords wood (mostly oak) = 17584 kWh/year wood heat
300 gal. liquid propane = 8400 kWh/year propane heat
That's a total of ~27800 kWh/year for the two of us including heat. That's about 76 kWh/day or 38 kWh/day per person on average. *This includes charging my e-bike for my work commute--but we also have a gas car so not nearly all transportation energy costs.[edited to add this]
I can't see any way to go much lower than that without freezing in the winter. 2 kWh/day seems crazy low to me.
The easiest way to go lower is to live in a smaller house. Two people don't need 2,400 square feet.
a smaller house, and fewer exterior walls. common walls instead of all exterior walls drastically reduce heating requirements.
i understand that probably doesn't fit OP's lifestyle, and i'm not suggesting they move to an apartment. but i think it's important to acknowledge that dense urban living can have significant environmental benefits over the sort of self-sufficient, off-grid, rural lifestyle that's typically regarded as being more environmentally friendly. cities, and specifically apartments, are very efficient.
i understand that probably doesn't fit OP's lifestyle, and i'm not suggesting they move to an apartment. but i think it's important to acknowledge that dense urban living can have significant environmental benefits over the sort of self-sufficient, off-grid, rural lifestyle that's typically regarded as being more environmentally friendly. cities, and specifically apartments, are very efficient.
Cities have never been and will never be sustainable. You can cram 100 people into an apartment building, but you’re never going to be able to grow all of their food in a rooftop garden.
Although high density can be more energy efficient, it’s not the only metric to consider. Apartment dwellers are completely dependent on importing resources, while rural people at least have a chance at breaking the dependency.
Although high density can be more energy efficient, it’s not the only metric to consider. Apartment dwellers are completely dependent on importing resources, while rural people at least have a chance at breaking the dependency.
You're saying that cities don't have enough surface area to collect the energy for their residents, but that's irrelevant since the energy doesn't have to be collected within the city. There's nothing unsustainable about a dense city core surrounded by fields.
At best, you've proved that a planet composed entirely of cities is unsustainable. I hope nobody wants that, but sadly some people do.
At best, you've proved that a planet composed entirely of cities is unsustainable. I hope nobody wants that, but sadly some people do.
It's relevant where the resources come from. If a city depends on importing from nearby or distant fields (as well as distant mines and factories), what happens if the people who live in those places do not want their land exploited for the benefit of city dwellers? That is why civilization is based on violence: https://derrickjensen.org/endgame/premises/
Higher density living reduces heating costs... but it also increases summer cooling costs.
I don’t see how 2 people living in a 500 square foot house in the mountains would have significant cooling needs.
If you’re talking about high density in a concrete city, then cooling is a problem.
If you’re talking about high density in a concrete city, then cooling is a problem.
That's almost three times the size of my family's home.
> low-e glass windows
> South-facing windows are backed by local stone floors that capture and radiate heat in winter.
Have you done any analysis or testing on low-e vs normal glass windows in the wintertime? In summer, obviously you want the low-e glass to block the radiant energy. But in the winter, you'd want to allow that radiant energy through, which the low-e glass is not doing.
It seems like low-e glass is only good for summer, and not winter. Have you put any thought into this? Maybe I am missing something crucial about the situation though.
Have you done any analysis or testing on low-e vs normal glass windows in the wintertime? In summer, obviously you want the low-e glass to block the radiant energy. But in the winter, you'd want to allow that radiant energy through, which the low-e glass is not doing.
It seems like low-e glass is only good for summer, and not winter. Have you put any thought into this? Maybe I am missing something crucial about the situation though.
> But in the winter, you'd want to allow that radiant energy through, which the low-e glass is not doing.
Low-E glass reduces inside heat radiating to the outside, too. You can find many articles online discussing the advantages during winter/heating season if you look.
I tested a couple years with/without a tinting film on my west-facing windows (under mini-blinds) and noticed a very, very small increase in winter heating costs, with a big decrease in summer cooling costs, and more consistent temperatures throughout the day in both seasons, which is a benefit in itself (you can use a lower-capacity HVAC system). I suspect a proper upgrade to low-E windows (or at least tinting ALL my windows) would have done much better.
Low-E glass reduces inside heat radiating to the outside, too. You can find many articles online discussing the advantages during winter/heating season if you look.
I tested a couple years with/without a tinting film on my west-facing windows (under mini-blinds) and noticed a very, very small increase in winter heating costs, with a big decrease in summer cooling costs, and more consistent temperatures throughout the day in both seasons, which is a benefit in itself (you can use a lower-capacity HVAC system). I suspect a proper upgrade to low-E windows (or at least tinting ALL my windows) would have done much better.
The article suggests aiming for 2 kWh per hour (why don't they just say 2 kW?), not 2 kWh per day. So you're already there: 38 kWh/person/day = 1.6 kW/person
I'm not entirely sure if the article intends to measure embodied energy, though, which your calculations don't capture.
I'm not entirely sure if the article intends to measure embodied energy, though, which your calculations don't capture.
If you aimed to reduce your heat requirements further you can either improve the insulation or reduce your living space (or add a person to improve efficiency :P).
For comparison, we're currently working on our home (bought last year around this time). The new insulation will be U=0.1455 for walls & roof (R-68?) and U=0.29 to the basement. I don't recall the values for windows & the front door. We'll also replace oil with a heat pump and add a ventilation system with heat exchanger. And we only have 1500sqft for two (no additions planned). That will probably be still miles away from those 2kWh/d/person, but much better than the status quo (~2.5kW of heat alone, per person).
Obviously you're already in a good ball park, but GPs value of 2kWh/d/person is just really amazing.
For comparison, we're currently working on our home (bought last year around this time). The new insulation will be U=0.1455 for walls & roof (R-68?) and U=0.29 to the basement. I don't recall the values for windows & the front door. We'll also replace oil with a heat pump and add a ventilation system with heat exchanger. And we only have 1500sqft for two (no additions planned). That will probably be still miles away from those 2kWh/d/person, but much better than the status quo (~2.5kW of heat alone, per person).
Obviously you're already in a good ball park, but GPs value of 2kWh/d/person is just really amazing.
> Obviously you're already in a good ball park, but GPs value of 2kWh/d/person is just really amazing.
It's 2kW/person, or 2kWh/h/person, or 48kWh/d/person
It's 2kW/person, or 2kWh/h/person, or 48kWh/d/person
You are of course right, 48kWh/d/person is what the article is all about (& I'm perfectly aware of that).
But as GP[0] replied to GGP
> 2 kWh/day seems crazy low
I was under the impression that he was actually pondering a much better personal energy consumption of 83W/person. And yeah, I'm inclined to say that (with our current level of technology) achieving this number without lowering standard of living might be nearly impossible in many climate zones.
The rest of my comment is more generic.
[0] GP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32911031
But as GP[0] replied to GGP
> 2 kWh/day seems crazy low
I was under the impression that he was actually pondering a much better personal energy consumption of 83W/person. And yeah, I'm inclined to say that (with our current level of technology) achieving this number without lowering standard of living might be nearly impossible in many climate zones.
The rest of my comment is more generic.
[0] GP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32911031
The article mentions "no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 2 kWh per hour or 48 kWh per day) by the year 2050, without lowering their standard of living" so it is not 2kWh/day but 2kWh/hour. You are already below it in your household.
There are still a lot of omitted factors in the above accounting. The car's petrol use was mentioned but not added, then you have all the embodied energy in the food and other consumed items that were never included. Finally all the energy in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure used, such as roads and internet.
48kWh/day is not hard to achieve at all. That’s just about what my solar array produces and that’s more or less energy neutral for our household. We are far from energy misers as well.
Some of it depends on the local climate and other factors that you don’t have a lot of control over though.
Some of it depends on the local climate and other factors that you don’t have a lot of control over though.
That 48kWh/day is supposed to include the energy used to make all of the objects you own and use though, not just your household energy usage. It takes a lot of energy to produce a house or car just to name two examples.
note that the example in the article of a swiss person's 5.1KW usage includes only 0.6KW of electical power draw, with the rest coming from other sources.
> I can't see any way to go much lower than that without freezing in the winter. 2 kWh/day seems crazy low to me.
Apart from insulation energy required for heating changes massively with local climate and scales directly with living space. So directly comparing those numbers without additional information is quite meaningless.
Here in Germany, which seems to have a roughly similar climate, ~120kwh/m2 and year is the average for a detached home. Modern buildings are usually a lot less though, 30-50 kWh/m2year seems standard. With specialised construction ('passive house') and heatpumps 10 kWh/m2year is well feasible.
Apart from insulation energy required for heating changes massively with local climate and scales directly with living space. So directly comparing those numbers without additional information is quite meaningless.
Here in Germany, which seems to have a roughly similar climate, ~120kwh/m2 and year is the average for a detached home. Modern buildings are usually a lot less though, 30-50 kWh/m2year seems standard. With specialised construction ('passive house') and heatpumps 10 kWh/m2year is well feasible.
Could district heating (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating) help? I'm from the US so I'm not familiar with the idea in practice.
> I can't see any way to go much lower than that without freezing in the winter.
Since your house is very large for just two people, you could occupy only a fraction of it, and heat only that part. Or, just move to a smaller house.
Since your house is very large for just two people, you could occupy only a fraction of it, and heat only that part. Or, just move to a smaller house.
as others pointed out i misread the article, which says 2kwh per hour. indeed that is easily do-able.
So easy enough if building a new small house or a cabin.
The US has many many houses with 4000+ square feet, and no good way to heat it cool outside if AC and a furnace. Are we going to bulldoze all existing houses to meet this goal? What’s the impact of that to the environment?
The US has many many houses with 4000+ square feet, and no good way to heat it cool outside if AC and a furnace. Are we going to bulldoze all existing houses to meet this goal? What’s the impact of that to the environment?
4,000 sq ft is a 95th percentile home in the US.
https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-...
https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-...
> Are we going to bulldoze all existing houses to meet this goal?
Nah, we can retrofit. There are more efficient means of heating/cooling, like mini-splits and heat pumps, insulation, geothermal, etc. With more local and energy-efficient methods (and better insulation) we can get much better efficiencies.
Back in the day, for heating you would have one or two fireplaces. The home was configured so that rooms would get progressively colder away from the heat source. You wouldn't heat the whole home, just one or two rooms, unless there was a special occasion, and then you'd open all the doors. For passive cooling, house facing was critical, as were ventilation, cross-breezes, and later on fans. Homes located in places with extreme temperature shifts were designed to open or close up more or less over the seasons, although they were never "efficient" as they often had no insulation.
Nah, we can retrofit. There are more efficient means of heating/cooling, like mini-splits and heat pumps, insulation, geothermal, etc. With more local and energy-efficient methods (and better insulation) we can get much better efficiencies.
Back in the day, for heating you would have one or two fireplaces. The home was configured so that rooms would get progressively colder away from the heat source. You wouldn't heat the whole home, just one or two rooms, unless there was a special occasion, and then you'd open all the doors. For passive cooling, house facing was critical, as were ventilation, cross-breezes, and later on fans. Homes located in places with extreme temperature shifts were designed to open or close up more or less over the seasons, although they were never "efficient" as they often had no insulation.
The best retrofit would be splitting those mega homes into multiple units. We have a housing crisis after all.
I can't even imagine what a 4000sq ft home looks like. You would start using olde timey names for random rooms. "This is the Conservatory, where we keep our 4th xbox, just in case".
I can't even imagine what a 4000sq ft home looks like. You would start using olde timey names for random rooms. "This is the Conservatory, where we keep our 4th xbox, just in case".
Here is a random one: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/339-County-Road-4315-Napl...
Often the newer ones have large amounts of "waste space" where hallways are larger, entryways are larger, rooms of course are larger.
Often the newer ones have large amounts of "waste space" where hallways are larger, entryways are larger, rooms of course are larger.
> Often the newer ones have large amounts of "waste space" where hallways are larger, entryways are larger, rooms of course are larger.
That house seems to have been built in 1971.
In contrast, here is a brand new home in the same city that is only 1200 sqft.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/154-Lt-Rusty-Dr-Naples-TX...?
It seems like someone is building sensibly sized homes there, however rare.
That house seems to have been built in 1971.
In contrast, here is a brand new home in the same city that is only 1200 sqft.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/154-Lt-Rusty-Dr-Naples-TX...?
It seems like someone is building sensibly sized homes there, however rare.
Yeah, the "newer ones" refers to the general trend of McMansions to expand in size even though not much else changes.
Square feet is such a bad measurement of a house, but it's easy to measure and state so it continues unabated.
You also have weird economies of scale where the first 1k sq ft of a house is much more expensive than the second 1k, and that continues basically until you're forced to use other construction methods (steel, for example).
Square feet is such a bad measurement of a house, but it's easy to measure and state so it continues unabated.
You also have weird economies of scale where the first 1k sq ft of a house is much more expensive than the second 1k, and that continues basically until you're forced to use other construction methods (steel, for example).
We can require higher standards for new houses. Renovating existing houses will need to focus on the worst ones first. Possibly at sale time.
Four thousand square feet? That's more than ten times the area of the apartment I own back in the UK.
Big is generally easier to keep warm than small thanks to the square cube law, but even in pathological cases it's never harder when scaling up.
Even assuming that 4000 sq ft is spread over 4 levels, that's a ground area of just under 93 m^2, and even in Anchor Point Alaska [0] with 15% panels, that roof can make more on average than the other poster says they're using.
[0] This map doesn't go as far north as Anchorage: https://solargis.com/maps-and-gis-data/download/world
Big is generally easier to keep warm than small thanks to the square cube law, but even in pathological cases it's never harder when scaling up.
Even assuming that 4000 sq ft is spread over 4 levels, that's a ground area of just under 93 m^2, and even in Anchor Point Alaska [0] with 15% panels, that roof can make more on average than the other poster says they're using.
[0] This map doesn't go as far north as Anchorage: https://solargis.com/maps-and-gis-data/download/world
> 4000+ square feet
For reference, that's 370m². In European terms that's probably double what you would expect for a typical family of four.
For reference, that's 370m². In European terms that's probably double what you would expect for a typical family of four.
It is double in US terms too:
https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-...
https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html
> The median size of a new single-family home sold in 2021 was 2,356 square feet.
https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-...
https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html
> The median size of a new single-family home sold in 2021 was 2,356 square feet.
Hong Kong apartments start at around 120 sq feet (about 11m²), and a family of 6 might live in 550 sq feet (50m²).
Just spray the walls full of aerogel using a process that hasn't been invented yet. Optionally, board half the windows (with aerogel).
Less dramatically they could also close some vents and doors.
Sounds interesting, are you writing down what you are doing somewhere?
If you're off-grid, it's generally because you have to, and you reducing energy consumption is a must.
That said, I have an off-grid office (w/ ~5kw of storage and 1.5kw of solar) and it has definitely changed the way I use energy at home, and what my expectations for my next home will be.
That said, I have an off-grid office (w/ ~5kw of storage and 1.5kw of solar) and it has definitely changed the way I use energy at home, and what my expectations for my next home will be.
> I'm not sure how to calculate my total embodied energy
It's probably dominated by your vehicle if you have one (decent rule of thumb is abkut equal to the fuel you'd put through an ICE of the same size in a given time)
It's probably dominated by your vehicle if you have one (decent rule of thumb is abkut equal to the fuel you'd put through an ICE of the same size in a given time)
It is dominated by the infrastructure around the vehicle.
Personal vehicle means space to park it. Space to park it means things are further spread out. This leads to a few inevitabilities:
Things being further spread out means walking and public transit are less feasible.
Individual vehicles means insufficient political support for infrastructure for walking, cycling, and public transit.
The mass required for living (water, food, energy, trash, sewage) has to travel further, and energy = force * distance.
Of course, people’s desire to have backyards and space in general contributes to even more spreading out, but individual cars go hand in hand since they enable being able to consume more space.
In other words, there is no getting around the fact that energy and distance scale with each other, so anything that allows one to consume more space, and hence cause mass to travel more distance, has a multiplier effect on energy consumption.
Personal vehicle means space to park it. Space to park it means things are further spread out. This leads to a few inevitabilities:
Things being further spread out means walking and public transit are less feasible.
Individual vehicles means insufficient political support for infrastructure for walking, cycling, and public transit.
The mass required for living (water, food, energy, trash, sewage) has to travel further, and energy = force * distance.
Of course, people’s desire to have backyards and space in general contributes to even more spreading out, but individual cars go hand in hand since they enable being able to consume more space.
In other words, there is no getting around the fact that energy and distance scale with each other, so anything that allows one to consume more space, and hence cause mass to travel more distance, has a multiplier effect on energy consumption.
This is very much true of high density areas.
Although there is somewhat of a counter point to your energy and distance scaling. Without infrastructure and laws forcing the worst possible vehicles, it's quite possible to build a comfortable vehicle which will hang on your wall in a bedroom that does 40-80km/h for several hours a day with the only energy input being the sunlight that falls on it and human effort equivent to a brisk walk.
Similarly a self sufficient homestead doesn't need those utilities and can sustain a person in surpriaingly little area.
We don't have to force the minority who want an actually rural lifestyle to give it up. We just have to apply the same rules and changes that would fix suburbia.
A low-input, no-beef, mostly vegetarian homestead with a 2 story cottage that manages its own utilities and has a 2m wide LEV path 10km to the train station is no more unsustainable than arranging those ingredients into some large farms and a large city. It could be a large mostly-native food forest, or an acre of high yield closed system.
It would be vastly less labour efficient, but if a household wants to dedicate one member's time to agriculture and domestic labour that's fine.
Although there is somewhat of a counter point to your energy and distance scaling. Without infrastructure and laws forcing the worst possible vehicles, it's quite possible to build a comfortable vehicle which will hang on your wall in a bedroom that does 40-80km/h for several hours a day with the only energy input being the sunlight that falls on it and human effort equivent to a brisk walk.
Similarly a self sufficient homestead doesn't need those utilities and can sustain a person in surpriaingly little area.
We don't have to force the minority who want an actually rural lifestyle to give it up. We just have to apply the same rules and changes that would fix suburbia.
A low-input, no-beef, mostly vegetarian homestead with a 2 story cottage that manages its own utilities and has a 2m wide LEV path 10km to the train station is no more unsustainable than arranging those ingredients into some large farms and a large city. It could be a large mostly-native food forest, or an acre of high yield closed system.
It would be vastly less labour efficient, but if a household wants to dedicate one member's time to agriculture and domestic labour that's fine.
Aiming at the wrong goal. A "10kw society" on solar or nuclear is better than "2kw society" on coal.
Because they specify Primary Energy, coal does get penalised more than solar or nuclear, so that part is kind of implied, plus it's from the 80s.
Generally negawatts (watts you don't use due to efficiency or insulation) have always been the cheapest watts, that's only recently become less true because of solar price declines.
Generally negawatts (watts you don't use due to efficiency or insulation) have always been the cheapest watts, that's only recently become less true because of solar price declines.
It did mention getting 500W from carbon based means.
I'm in the lets use as much green energy as we want camp. The hair-shirt stuff from many in the green movement is the main reason I don't take them seriously.
Agreed that GW and sea level rise are existential issues for coastal communities (and possibly the human race as a whole) but why cap energy usage from Nuclear, Wind and Solar.
I'd sign up for a 100W cap on carbon faster than a 10kW cap on energy.
I'm in the lets use as much green energy as we want camp. The hair-shirt stuff from many in the green movement is the main reason I don't take them seriously.
Agreed that GW and sea level rise are existential issues for coastal communities (and possibly the human race as a whole) but why cap energy usage from Nuclear, Wind and Solar.
I'd sign up for a 100W cap on carbon faster than a 10kW cap on energy.
We do still need to avoid a civilization where every square inch is plastered with solar panels used for bitcoin mining.
Fortunately this is unlikely since:
- Nuclear doesn't take up that much space.
- BitCoin/crypto mining is so wasteful someone will think up a better idea. I'm sure if it.
- Nuclear doesn't take up that much space.
- BitCoin/crypto mining is so wasteful someone will think up a better idea. I'm sure if it.
They are independent variables. In practice the "10kw society" solar/nuclear society that economic-growth-above-all people push means "2kw coal + 4kw solar + 4kw nuclear". Growth is just cover for not replacing the dirty sources.
This seems very misguided. The problem isn't energy usage its the side effects of the energy production. If everyone was using a megawatt but this was in the form of some factory on the moon being incredibly inefficient as they make the new Must Have MoonRockTM that gets teleported to your living room this would actually be just fine.
As someone who works at a utility, I respectfully disagree. From the wholesale energy market perspective, demand must be met.
Sure, you can slowly switch out old production for new cleaner sources of energy. The fastest way to reduce carbon footprints (and cheapest) is to reduce demand.
Growing consumer awareness over their over-consumption, to change their behaviour, is one of the most powerful and direct solutions we have.
Sure, you can slowly switch out old production for new cleaner sources of energy. The fastest way to reduce carbon footprints (and cheapest) is to reduce demand.
Growing consumer awareness over their over-consumption, to change their behaviour, is one of the most powerful and direct solutions we have.
> Growing consumer awareness over their over-consumption, to change their behaviour, is one of the most powerful and direct solutions we have.
Actually, that has been shown time and time again to be false. Asking consumers to change their behavior to lower energy consumption is about as effective as telling people to diet and exercise to lose weight: it may work on an individual level, but it is a complete failure at a societal level, and when it comes to decarbonizing the economy, the societal level is all that matters.
If we want to lower people's energy consumption, we need to make policy and economic changes, e.g. raising the cost of certain types of energy use so that it causes people to reconsider their use of it, or redesigning spaces so that less energy use is needed (e.g. making public transportation, or human-powered transportation, a more viable alternative to driving).
Actually, that has been shown time and time again to be false. Asking consumers to change their behavior to lower energy consumption is about as effective as telling people to diet and exercise to lose weight: it may work on an individual level, but it is a complete failure at a societal level, and when it comes to decarbonizing the economy, the societal level is all that matters.
If we want to lower people's energy consumption, we need to make policy and economic changes, e.g. raising the cost of certain types of energy use so that it causes people to reconsider their use of it, or redesigning spaces so that less energy use is needed (e.g. making public transportation, or human-powered transportation, a more viable alternative to driving).
Why not just use energy that actually is pretty clean? No reason we can’t use nuclear for the majority of energy, and it’s waste is far more manageable than C02 in the air.
It's well guided as a goal from a social planning level. When thinking about what to incentivize and penalize with governmental regulations, it makes sense to drive out living environments and industry towards more efficiency.
But I agree it's very misguided if it gets turned into strict quota system that everyone is locked into. We don't want to turn civilization a zero sum game.
But I agree it's very misguided if it gets turned into strict quota system that everyone is locked into. We don't want to turn civilization a zero sum game.
If everyone in US and Europe were using only 2kw, we would probably be carbon negative today, as renewable + nuclear + storage might be enough for all our needs.
Reducing consumption is a huge part of the solution, especially because it makes the extremely hard energy storage problem way more tractable.
Reducing consumption is a huge part of the solution, especially because it makes the extremely hard energy storage problem way more tractable.
Not misguided. Because here in the real world, both now and for the foreseeable future, especially the near future in which we have to urgently deal with climate change impacts, energy production does indeed have those side effects.
Solar is getting cheaper by the day, batteries are getting cheaper and more efficient by the day, and there's a ton of money pouring into research. Maybe I'm crazy, but I can see a future, maybe a few decades from now, when power is "too cheap to meter" because of renewables.
Electricity use is only one part of energy consumption. Transportation costs, production costs, and even food generation are all included in the umbrella. Also, "costs" aren't just referring to dollars spent, but also environmental impact. Having cheap electricity is only a small part of the equation, and barely a relevant one at that.
Energy is roughly transferable - if you have cheap electricity you can use it to produce cheap process heat, synthetic fuels, food, environmental cleanup, etc. You get enough solar panels for a low enough price and all the other problems become trivial.
Electricity is already priced negatively in some markets at some times of the day because of the mismatch between demand and supply from intermittent wind and solar generation. The trick here is how to design an energy storage solution that can exploit that mismatch. It’s the ultimate buy-low sell-high opportunity.
The trick is to design energy-intensive industries so that they can use DC power for a few hours each day and to site them at the PV/wind farms.
This is already happening with desalination and hydrogen production via electrolysis, and hydrocarbon production (for carbon-neutral transport fuel) is being piloted too. Future likely applications include electrolytic refining of iron ore to the metal. Cheap electricity is going to enable new industries we haven't thought of yet.
"P2X" is the abbreviation to look out for.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-X
This is already happening with desalination and hydrogen production via electrolysis, and hydrocarbon production (for carbon-neutral transport fuel) is being piloted too. Future likely applications include electrolytic refining of iron ore to the metal. Cheap electricity is going to enable new industries we haven't thought of yet.
"P2X" is the abbreviation to look out for.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-X
I think that taking it outside of the context of today and adding in moon rock energy sources might be a bit more misguided.
I had a non-optional experience along this axis living thru the 2021 Texas grid crisis.
Being in the gulf coast region automatically makes it nearly impossible to fit a 2kW budget during the summer (unless you live in a large walk-in freezer), but during the winter I was able to get down to 800 watts continuous for a period of a few days. This included my computer, fridge, some lights and central furnace blower. The furnace is kind of cheating though - replacing the natural gas with a heat pump would instantly blow my 2kW budget all on its own. That said, you could probably get really close if you tried to hit the target with a modern heat pump and good insulation throughout.
The only reason I voluntarily subjected myself to this was because I was being billed $9/kWH thru Griddy (a wholesale, real-time rate provider) during the entire, multi-day incident. I did run a one-off load of laundry that probably cost me ~$50.
Requiring use of variable rate energy providers and forcing consumers to adapt habits to the available resources seems like one way to get people to pay attention to how much energy various things consume. It also seems like an effective way to mitigate one-off generation shortfalls.
Being in the gulf coast region automatically makes it nearly impossible to fit a 2kW budget during the summer (unless you live in a large walk-in freezer), but during the winter I was able to get down to 800 watts continuous for a period of a few days. This included my computer, fridge, some lights and central furnace blower. The furnace is kind of cheating though - replacing the natural gas with a heat pump would instantly blow my 2kW budget all on its own. That said, you could probably get really close if you tried to hit the target with a modern heat pump and good insulation throughout.
The only reason I voluntarily subjected myself to this was because I was being billed $9/kWH thru Griddy (a wholesale, real-time rate provider) during the entire, multi-day incident. I did run a one-off load of laundry that probably cost me ~$50.
Requiring use of variable rate energy providers and forcing consumers to adapt habits to the available resources seems like one way to get people to pay attention to how much energy various things consume. It also seems like an effective way to mitigate one-off generation shortfalls.
I come from a country where the average temperature is the same as in a refrigerator.
I sometimes think it would be a lot easier to just move most people away from here... at least those living in big badly insulated electrically heated houses. Some pensioners actually do move to Spain, maybe visit the summer cottages every now and then (when it's too hot in Spain and the cottage doesn't need heating). Birds certainly follow the seasons.
I guess the same applies to very hot climates. You could move away for the summer at least, if not completely.
I sometimes think it would be a lot easier to just move most people away from here... at least those living in big badly insulated electrically heated houses. Some pensioners actually do move to Spain, maybe visit the summer cottages every now and then (when it's too hot in Spain and the cottage doesn't need heating). Birds certainly follow the seasons.
I guess the same applies to very hot climates. You could move away for the summer at least, if not completely.
In both places you may get most of the benefits from moving down - underground rooms mitigate temperatures.
An interesting question springs to my mind. How does the carbon omissions of having a summer and winter house and flying between them compare to heating the summer house in winter or cooling the winter house in summer.
If you live alone and use 10 kW constantly, and an airliner uses 40 kWh per passenger per 100 km, that means per day you use 240 kWh, equivalent of 600 airplane kilometers. If your season travel is 6000 km, and you don't need any energy in the destination (since it's a paradise), it is worth it if with that you can stay there for more than 10 days. (2400 kWh). If you travel away for 3 months, you could save 90 x 240 - 2400 = 19200 kWh. If a kilowatt hour costs 10 cents, you save 2400 dollars in electricity bills and of course you pay back some (or all) of it in flights.
I used [0] for the carbon calculations of a roundtrip flight. Assume 200 passengers. Flying between Stockholm and Malaga gives us 460 kg of CO2 in total.
An average 150 sq meters villa uses about 12500 kWh during October-March, if I take the current CO2-intensity from [1] this gives us about 375 kg of CO2 during these months. This is excluding any calculations to cool the summer house in southern Spain. This calculation would be completely different for Germany right now, which has 10x as much CO2-intensity as the electricity region that Stockholm is a part of. That would be 3,75 tonnes of CO2 during these months. In other words, it's very country dependent. This is also ignoring any different heating modes (heat pump/gas/wood/...) between houses.
[0] https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/P... [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
[0] https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/P... [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
You'd have to winterize the summer house really well when you left it for the winter house. And for either house you probably don't want to turn the heat/AC completely off, anyway. Modern house interiors aren't built to survive huge temperature and humidity swings. Your finishes will fall apart fast and the winter house will have serious mold problems, if you totally shut off heating and cooling.
We have had a summer cottage for 30 years and we let it just freeze every year. It has electricity, TV, etc. No problems whatsoever so far. Normal water pipes are drained before leaving in the fall. We leave a little bit of heat in the bathroom with most of the critical stuff like boiler, washer, toilet seat and the (well insulated) waste water pipe to the tank.
> Being in the gulf coast region automatically makes it nearly impossible to fit a 2kW budget during the summer (unless you live in a large walk-in freezer),
Metric R5 insulation is quite achievable, and you don't need to keep things at a perfect 24C year round in the whole building.
I live in an area that has plenty of 35-40C days and have never used more than 1kW on average even in a poorly insulated rental. On the really bad days you just cool one room.
Also the 2kW is entire primary energy (ie. including fuel and the energy to drill for and refine the fuel and make the AC etc. etc.). In a western country it's almost impossible to get your share of the total energy budget that low because you likely are not allowed to go many places without being in a car (or travelling 5x as far and waiting 10 minutes to cross each road) and the shops will all be blasting AC with the doors open.
Metric R5 insulation is quite achievable, and you don't need to keep things at a perfect 24C year round in the whole building.
I live in an area that has plenty of 35-40C days and have never used more than 1kW on average even in a poorly insulated rental. On the really bad days you just cool one room.
Also the 2kW is entire primary energy (ie. including fuel and the energy to drill for and refine the fuel and make the AC etc. etc.). In a western country it's almost impossible to get your share of the total energy budget that low because you likely are not allowed to go many places without being in a car (or travelling 5x as far and waiting 10 minutes to cross each road) and the shops will all be blasting AC with the doors open.
> I did run a one-off load of laundry that probably cost me ~$50.
So ~5kWh for a load of washing? Use a cold wash and a clothes line instead of the tumble dryer and you'd be well under a single kWh.
So ~5kWh for a load of washing? Use a cold wash and a clothes line instead of the tumble dryer and you'd be well under a single kWh.
Its not about the watts - it is about the composition of those watts.
You could use 2000Wh of electricity in Texas, but that would still only be 29% zero carbon.
You could use 5000Wh of electricity in Norway, but 99% of that would be zero carbon. This is superior to the 2000Wh approach.
You could use 2000Wh of electricity in Texas, but that would still only be 29% zero carbon.
You could use 5000Wh of electricity in Norway, but 99% of that would be zero carbon. This is superior to the 2000Wh approach.
This wouldn’t really be necessary if we had cleaner power generation.
Yeah, this talk of 'energy' rather than 'pollution' seems to be growing recently. Presumably some attempt to capitalise on the Russian gas crisis to undermine net zero goals and keep fossil fuels burning a tiny bit longer.
This group seems to get it as they're talking about reducing Primary Energy without reducing standard of living (mostly done by "electrifying everything") but I don't think that would be clear to most readers, who will just ignore the "same standard of living bit" and feel they are being oppressed.
This group seems to get it as they're talking about reducing Primary Energy without reducing standard of living (mostly done by "electrifying everything") but I don't think that would be clear to most readers, who will just ignore the "same standard of living bit" and feel they are being oppressed.
> most readers, who will just ignore the "same standard of living bit" and feel they are being oppressed.
I think this is an uncharitable view, but that aside, is that not a reasonable assumption for "most readers"? This group is exceptional in that they explicitly state maintaining the same standard of living as a goal. In what I know of most modern climate-related discourse, there are very few such mentions.
I think this is an uncharitable view, but that aside, is that not a reasonable assumption for "most readers"? This group is exceptional in that they explicitly state maintaining the same standard of living as a goal. In what I know of most modern climate-related discourse, there are very few such mentions.
No it's not a reasonable assumption.
Which specific groups are you aware of that think dealing with climate change by phasing out burning fossil fuels will reduce standards of living? I think you'll find a common funding source behind them.
Which specific groups are you aware of that think dealing with climate change by phasing out burning fossil fuels will reduce standards of living? I think you'll find a common funding source behind them.
The proponents of the Green New Deal in the US, for example, rarely mention maintaining or improving the standard of living as an imperative goal of the project, at least from the side of the carrot; there's plenty of talk on the stick side that everyone will have a cataclysmic fall in their standard of living if the status quo stays.
For example, House Resolution 109 of the 116th Congress[0] mentions "[ensuring] prosperity and economic security" as an objective, but being sandwiched between "[achieving] net-zero greenhouse gas emissions" and "[promoting] justice and equity" it's difficult to see it as more than hand-waving and one that won't be forfeited for those other goals once the rubber meets the pavement.
Bernie Sanders' website on the issue[1] doesn't mention the standard of living at all among the Key Points. AOC's[2] does but in the same way as HR 109, which makes sense given that she was the sponsor behind it. The New York Times explainer[3] on the issue does not even discuss whether the average person's material standard of living will change.
The number one goal from all sources is the categorical imperative of going "net-zero" or "100% renewable", without asking or answering the question of "at what cost at the margins" (again, other than the undefined cost of calamity), which is what I'm really interested in addressing; because it's going to be a very hard sell to tell the people of the developed world to scale back on their standard of living, and a great moral injustice to tell the people of the yet-to-be-developed world that they cannot take advantage of cheap, abundant energy sources.
[0]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolutio... [1]: https://berniesanders.com/issues/green-new-deal/ [2]: https://www.ocasiocortez.com/green-new-deal [3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/climate/green-new-deal-qu...
For example, House Resolution 109 of the 116th Congress[0] mentions "[ensuring] prosperity and economic security" as an objective, but being sandwiched between "[achieving] net-zero greenhouse gas emissions" and "[promoting] justice and equity" it's difficult to see it as more than hand-waving and one that won't be forfeited for those other goals once the rubber meets the pavement.
Bernie Sanders' website on the issue[1] doesn't mention the standard of living at all among the Key Points. AOC's[2] does but in the same way as HR 109, which makes sense given that she was the sponsor behind it. The New York Times explainer[3] on the issue does not even discuss whether the average person's material standard of living will change.
The number one goal from all sources is the categorical imperative of going "net-zero" or "100% renewable", without asking or answering the question of "at what cost at the margins" (again, other than the undefined cost of calamity), which is what I'm really interested in addressing; because it's going to be a very hard sell to tell the people of the developed world to scale back on their standard of living, and a great moral injustice to tell the people of the yet-to-be-developed world that they cannot take advantage of cheap, abundant energy sources.
[0]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolutio... [1]: https://berniesanders.com/issues/green-new-deal/ [2]: https://www.ocasiocortez.com/green-new-deal [3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/climate/green-new-deal-qu...
It's about six lines in on one of your links that:
global warming at or above 2 degrees Celsius beyond preindustrialized levels will cause -
* (B) more than $500,000,000,000 in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100;
... other bad stuff..
* (F) a risk of damage to $1,000,000,000,000 of public infrastructure and coastal real estate in the United States
Which is just a summary of the IPCC which goes into great detail on the GDP impacts.
And that's just the "Green" part, they immediately launch into a bunch of things that just are standard of living and how they want to improve it.
> life expectancy declining while basic needs, such as clean air, clean water, healthy food, and adequate health care, housing, transportation, and education, are inaccessible to a significant portion of the United States population;
So I think we've conclusively demonstrated, that you're not reading/hearing what these peaple are actually saying.
edit: on Bernie's relatively short page which you provided the link to:
> The cost of inaction is unacceptable. Economists estimate that if we do not take action, we will lose $34.5 trillion in economic activity by the end of the century. And the benefits are enormous: by taking bold and decisive action, we will save $2.9 trillion over 10 years, $21 trillion over 30 years, and $70.4 trillion over 80 years.
And this is from a plan that pays for itself in 15 years.
global warming at or above 2 degrees Celsius beyond preindustrialized levels will cause -
* (B) more than $500,000,000,000 in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100;
... other bad stuff..
* (F) a risk of damage to $1,000,000,000,000 of public infrastructure and coastal real estate in the United States
Which is just a summary of the IPCC which goes into great detail on the GDP impacts.
And that's just the "Green" part, they immediately launch into a bunch of things that just are standard of living and how they want to improve it.
> life expectancy declining while basic needs, such as clean air, clean water, healthy food, and adequate health care, housing, transportation, and education, are inaccessible to a significant portion of the United States population;
So I think we've conclusively demonstrated, that you're not reading/hearing what these peaple are actually saying.
edit: on Bernie's relatively short page which you provided the link to:
> The cost of inaction is unacceptable. Economists estimate that if we do not take action, we will lose $34.5 trillion in economic activity by the end of the century. And the benefits are enormous: by taking bold and decisive action, we will save $2.9 trillion over 10 years, $21 trillion over 30 years, and $70.4 trillion over 80 years.
And this is from a plan that pays for itself in 15 years.
What if you believe standards of living can be improved by giving up some of the luxuries we currently take for granted due to historically cheap fossil fuel based energy?
E.g. I have no doubt my physical and mental health has vastly improved since deciding 15 years ago I didn't need to own a car and hence forced myself to minimise the use of such. Likewise significantly reducing meat consumption has made my diet more interesting and hopefully healthier etc., and investing in improving the energy efficiency of my house and dressing more appropriately has made it more comfortable to live in, with no need to have artificially hot or cold air constantly blowing into it throughout the year.
I don't doubt many people would see those choices as a drop in their standard of living though.
I'm glad that you were able to improve your life, and I agree with you that the availability of modern luxuries are difficult to reconcile with a healthy, happy life.
But I posit that you are able to enjoy a car-less life due to the existence of fossil fuel-burning elsewhere: the public transportation you presumably ride, the groceries that are delivered to the store presumably within walking distance from where you live, the construction of your residence and all commercial buildings near you, the massive industrial production at scale that allows you to trade a smaller amount of your time for more goods and services. All of those things are, as you point out, built on the back of cheap energy. It would be downright immoral to deny that same opportunity to the people of the developing world.
And objectively speaking, having the capacity to do something is better than not having it. Whether you eat meat or not, it is objectively better for the common folk to be able to afford it; whether you own a car or not, it is objectively better to have the ability to move people and goods across long distances at an affordable price; whether you artificially cool and heat your home or not, it is objectively better for people to be able to live in comfort in places they otherwise may not be able to. Privation may end up being better for your health, both mental and physical, but only if it arises out of choice.
But I posit that you are able to enjoy a car-less life due to the existence of fossil fuel-burning elsewhere: the public transportation you presumably ride, the groceries that are delivered to the store presumably within walking distance from where you live, the construction of your residence and all commercial buildings near you, the massive industrial production at scale that allows you to trade a smaller amount of your time for more goods and services. All of those things are, as you point out, built on the back of cheap energy. It would be downright immoral to deny that same opportunity to the people of the developing world.
And objectively speaking, having the capacity to do something is better than not having it. Whether you eat meat or not, it is objectively better for the common folk to be able to afford it; whether you own a car or not, it is objectively better to have the ability to move people and goods across long distances at an affordable price; whether you artificially cool and heat your home or not, it is objectively better for people to be able to live in comfort in places they otherwise may not be able to. Privation may end up being better for your health, both mental and physical, but only if it arises out of choice.
> And objectively speaking, having the capacity to do something is better than not having it.
I’m not so sure I would universalize this. Up to a point sure, but there’s certainly a point at which having the capacity to do something quickly or easily can be detrimental. Some examples:
- We have a ton of unhealthy, nutrient-poor, high-calorie foods practically at arm’s reach in the US. Not all of us have the self-control to avoid grabbing them in the supermarket. Myself included! I certainly wish I didn’t have quite so many unhealthy options nearby; I’d probably be healthier if I didn’t.
- Being able to easily move people long distances (in particular via cars, which are horrifically space-inefficient) has led to people moving far away from population centers and infrastructure that requires cars for transportation. The presence of convenient cars as an option in a sense removes choices, because the infrastructure required to sustain them makes other forms of transportation impractical. I would gladly trade the capacity to move quickly through my city in a car for the ability to safely bike around it.
I’m not so sure I would universalize this. Up to a point sure, but there’s certainly a point at which having the capacity to do something quickly or easily can be detrimental. Some examples:
- We have a ton of unhealthy, nutrient-poor, high-calorie foods practically at arm’s reach in the US. Not all of us have the self-control to avoid grabbing them in the supermarket. Myself included! I certainly wish I didn’t have quite so many unhealthy options nearby; I’d probably be healthier if I didn’t.
- Being able to easily move people long distances (in particular via cars, which are horrifically space-inefficient) has led to people moving far away from population centers and infrastructure that requires cars for transportation. The presence of convenient cars as an option in a sense removes choices, because the infrastructure required to sustain them makes other forms of transportation impractical. I would gladly trade the capacity to move quickly through my city in a car for the ability to safely bike around it.
> All of those things are, as you point out, built on the back of cheap energy
Well yes, but much, much less of it than if everyone drives everywhere.
> And objectively speaking, having the capacity to do something is better than not having it.
All else being equal, then sure. But all else is not equal. There's a significant cost to producing all of that energy. And it is not likely to be feasible to sustain the entire world at US (or even European) levels of energy usage anytime soon. As such, it's quite reasonable to start having a conversation about what high-energy usage activities we might be able to cut out without having too significant an impact on quality of life. Things like reducing meat consumption (not necessarily cutting it out entirely), reducing car usage, and cutting down on air travel, etc are obvious candidates for this.
Well yes, but much, much less of it than if everyone drives everywhere.
> And objectively speaking, having the capacity to do something is better than not having it.
All else being equal, then sure. But all else is not equal. There's a significant cost to producing all of that energy. And it is not likely to be feasible to sustain the entire world at US (or even European) levels of energy usage anytime soon. As such, it's quite reasonable to start having a conversation about what high-energy usage activities we might be able to cut out without having too significant an impact on quality of life. Things like reducing meat consumption (not necessarily cutting it out entirely), reducing car usage, and cutting down on air travel, etc are obvious candidates for this.
Actually I hardly ever use public transport. And I didn't suggest my existence was car-less, just far far less car dependent than it used to be.
Nobody's suggesting we're going to get to a zero-net-emissions world just by these sorts of personal choices, but I think more could be done to promote that there are benefits to be had even if some of them seem like giving up on things we enjoy.
You are living in a dream world. Climate change will put many cities/parts of cities in "developed countries" underwater. Bigger tornadoes will rip apart those further indoor. Forest fires will decimate towns close to forests.
Either the developed world gives up on its luxuries or they will be forcefully taken by a complex climate system that is not beholden to political statements.
Either the developed world gives up on its luxuries or they will be forcefully taken by a complex climate system that is not beholden to political statements.
Interesting that this comment, one of the only realistic ones in the entire thread, gets aggressively downvoted.
I guess we're going to have to wait until several major cities are utterly destroyed, or a few mass-heat-death events occur, before some people finally get it.
We don't have time, we don't have the resources, and we don't have the global societal cohesion to address this problem in the way a lot of the fantasists in this thread would prefer.
I guess we're going to have to wait until several major cities are utterly destroyed, or a few mass-heat-death events occur, before some people finally get it.
We don't have time, we don't have the resources, and we don't have the global societal cohesion to address this problem in the way a lot of the fantasists in this thread would prefer.
Didn't downvote the parent, but I'd be willing to bet that if the comment didn't lead with "You are living in a dream world" it'd be the same shade as other comments. Often it's not the point, but the tone. In the author's mind, it may've been intended as funny or light-hearted, but as bare words on a page, it comes across as personal and contemptuous.
There's no pollution free energy. Even solar is not perfect, there's only so much land that is suitable.
If you don't focus on efficiency they might just invent new ways to use energy that don't really improve standard of living.
It's a lot easier to switch to renewables if you don't need as much energy in the first place.
If you don't focus on efficiency they might just invent new ways to use energy that don't really improve standard of living.
It's a lot easier to switch to renewables if you don't need as much energy in the first place.
This is a false equivalency - fossil fuel consumption produces gas and particulate pollution which causes severe and irreversible damage to health and the environment on a planetwide scale indiscriminately, solar takes up a small area of unused land in a location which can be arbitrarily chosen to avoid harm and the space can be reclaimed at any time. Yes, solar isn't free, but we as a civilization could be consuming many hundreds of times more power than we currently use with no meaningful issues if it were all coming from solar energy.
It's a quantitative question. How much cleaner can each energy source be made, what is a feasible energy mix, and which ecological and climate constraints are we trying to stay within? It seems 2000-watt vision provides realistic answers to these questions that are compatible with an overall improvement in human well being in the developed countries.
Power generation isn't the only thing causing issues.
Power consumption can also generate a lot of heat. I'm not sure how much of a factor it plays in the big picture.
Power consumption can also generate a lot of heat. I'm not sure how much of a factor it plays in the big picture.
Almost none. Combustion heat is a rounding error compared to sunlight heat trapped by greenhouse gases.
Globally that's true, but perhaps more relevant when considering the part of the biosphere that humans primarily inhabit? To what degree is the urban heat island effect caused by artificially heated air (including waste heat from A/Cs), for instance?
Urban heat island effect is cause by cutting down too many trees (which reflect infrared) and paving over the majority of the surface. Here too mechanical heat is dwarfed by sunlight.
I'm not so sure, I can't find numbers but it is commonly listed as a secondary factor (including by wikipedia).
I did find this: "Results show that the urban heat island causes an average increase of 2.2 °C in the external air temperature mainly caused by the waste heat rejected from cooling system" (https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/9/3/48/htm)
And while it's true UHIs don't significantly contribute towards climate change, they can cause increased rainfall, and presumably have some effect on agricultural production that's done near larger cities.
I did find this: "Results show that the urban heat island causes an average increase of 2.2 °C in the external air temperature mainly caused by the waste heat rejected from cooling system" (https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/9/3/48/htm)
And while it's true UHIs don't significantly contribute towards climate change, they can cause increased rainfall, and presumably have some effect on agricultural production that's done near larger cities.
You underestimate how wasteful suburban life is. If you have 2,000 people in a square kilometer all burning tens of kW of petrol in their cars and running multi kW AC systems in their homes and their office as well as pools, giant LED billboards and whatever else it starts to give sunlight a run for its money.
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How much oil is required to heat the air over Los Angeles by 2C?
(Facts quickly googled)
Area of Los Angeles: 1.29 * 10⁹ m²
Height of air column over city: say 1000m
Volume of air = 1.29 * 10¹² m³
Mass of air (density 1.29 g/l) = 1.66 * 10¹² kg
Energy of air (700 J/kg for each C) = 2.32 * 10¹⁵ J
Equivalent number of barrels of oil (6.1 * 10⁹ J) = 380327 ~= 0.4 * 10⁶
Daily consumption in all of california: 1.8*10⁶ barrels
If the calculations are right, you would have to burn around 20% of California's daily consumption inside the city to raise the air temperature by 2C.
(Facts quickly googled)
Area of Los Angeles: 1.29 * 10⁹ m²
Height of air column over city: say 1000m
Volume of air = 1.29 * 10¹² m³
Mass of air (density 1.29 g/l) = 1.66 * 10¹² kg
Energy of air (700 J/kg for each C) = 2.32 * 10¹⁵ J
Equivalent number of barrels of oil (6.1 * 10⁹ J) = 380327 ~= 0.4 * 10⁶
Daily consumption in all of california: 1.8*10⁶ barrels
If the calculations are right, you would have to burn around 20% of California's daily consumption inside the city to raise the air temperature by 2C.
Power generation creates a lot of heat too. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants usually all operate by boiling and recondensing water, and as a consequence they have cold water as an input and warm/hot water as an output. That's a problem for rivers. France recently had to reduce output on their nuclear reactors because running them full power would make the rivers unacceptably warm.
I suppose it's less of an issue if your power plant uses sea water as coolant.
I suppose it's less of an issue if your power plant uses sea water as coolant.
Watt could be used as kind of universal physically based, end-game-level currency, sounds better than crypto or fiat IMHO.
As envisioned by sci-fi authors like Heinlein.
The only problem is storage. Carrying a wallet with a few MJ in it may be just hazardous, even if transferring funds is 100% efficient (using superconductivity). So any realistic scheme would include some tokens, with associated energy stored / generated elsewhere.
More realistically, these tokens are associated with the economic and military might of the issuing party; this is similar to what modern fiat money is.
The only problem is storage. Carrying a wallet with a few MJ in it may be just hazardous, even if transferring funds is 100% efficient (using superconductivity). So any realistic scheme would include some tokens, with associated energy stored / generated elsewhere.
More realistically, these tokens are associated with the economic and military might of the issuing party; this is similar to what modern fiat money is.
Naive utopian solution: Distribute a fixed amount of energy credits equally among the population on a regular basis and let the market determine what is best to do with them. Peg the amount of such credits to the dirtiness of the global energy mix, including transportation, gas usage, etc. such that, if we clean up our energy usage this month, everybody gets to spend more credits next month. Eventually we have more tokens than we know what to do with because our energy supply is nearly free of emissions. There may still be some niche uses for carbon-emitting fossil energy (running helicopters to inspect electrical transmission lines, for example) but market forces will have pushed them to the absolute minimum level.
This is of course all a way of getting everyone on board with our real, material situation, which is that there is a finite amount of carbon that we can afford to dump into the atmosphere in the immediate next few centuries.
This is basically just cap-and-trade with extra steps but has the advantage of novelty, and that it is graspable by the average voter who (rightfully) views cap-and-trade schemes as being 1) really boring and 2) mainly a way for Wall Street types to scam money out of productive enterprises. Under this scheme, we can generate huge public support for green energy schemes since each new watt of generation installed this month will mean everyone is better off in real terms next month.
This is of course all a way of getting everyone on board with our real, material situation, which is that there is a finite amount of carbon that we can afford to dump into the atmosphere in the immediate next few centuries.
This is basically just cap-and-trade with extra steps but has the advantage of novelty, and that it is graspable by the average voter who (rightfully) views cap-and-trade schemes as being 1) really boring and 2) mainly a way for Wall Street types to scam money out of productive enterprises. Under this scheme, we can generate huge public support for green energy schemes since each new watt of generation installed this month will mean everyone is better off in real terms next month.
This is a dystopia. Utopia is where everyone can just do whatever they want, because the human population is lower than the carrying capacity.
To a great extent this is what the oil economy is like.
It's bitcoin. Bitcoin is electricity money. The universal electro-dollar.
Because the miner reward for securing the monetary network is intrinsically linked to electricity availability, there will always be fundamental link between cost of electricity and value of bitcoin.
Because the miner reward for securing the monetary network is intrinsically linked to electricity availability, there will always be fundamental link between cost of electricity and value of bitcoin.
No, this is nonsense. In reality, there is a link between cost of electricity, value of bitcoin, hashing rewards, and electricity used in hashing. And the dependent variable is the electricity used in hashing - not the cost of electricity, nor the value of bitcoin.
It's staggering how old these topics were. Club of Rome: 72, never heard of it until few years ago. 2kW society .. 1998, first time I hear the name, even with all the fuss about climate change, it didn't hit my radar. So strange.
I can't help but feel like this is an ass-backwards approach to the problem, we should be trying to add a zero to the (greenly produced) energy available for each person instead of bean-counting. Imagine if this was our approach to internet bandwidth? "No you don't need more bandwidth, just compress your geocites webpages by an extra 5x - that's the future of the internet we want to see!"
We could produce far more energy than we could ever save by cutting. It is not an accident that the historical chart of quality of life vs. energy consumption per capita is up and to the right.
We could produce far more energy than we could ever save by cutting. It is not an accident that the historical chart of quality of life vs. energy consumption per capita is up and to the right.
Nah. Sorry but I don't like it at all.
Let's have a 20,000-Watt society, not a 2,000-Watt one.
But, let's make sure that the production, storage and distribution of energy, in all its forms, is sustainable, and available to every country.
The trend is already here: cheaper than ever solar and wind energy, cheaper and cheaper energy storage, new energy breakthroughs, promising ones like nuclear, etc.
It means the world will be able to soon produce much more energy, using only sustainable sources.
Let's make energy available to everyone, at an affordable rate. That's my dream. Not a communist-like starvation of sorts.
Let's have a 20,000-Watt society, not a 2,000-Watt one.
But, let's make sure that the production, storage and distribution of energy, in all its forms, is sustainable, and available to every country.
The trend is already here: cheaper than ever solar and wind energy, cheaper and cheaper energy storage, new energy breakthroughs, promising ones like nuclear, etc.
It means the world will be able to soon produce much more energy, using only sustainable sources.
Let's make energy available to everyone, at an affordable rate. That's my dream. Not a communist-like starvation of sorts.
Agreed 100%
Article from MIT regarding Solar energy: "The potential is enormous, says MIT physics professor Washington Taylor, who co-teaches a course on the physics of energy. A total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously. That's more than 10,000 times the world's total energy use. And that energy is completely renewable — at least, for the lifetime of the sun. "It's finite, but we're talking billions of years," Taylor says. "
Article from MIT regarding Solar energy: "The potential is enormous, says MIT physics professor Washington Taylor, who co-teaches a course on the physics of energy. A total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously. That's more than 10,000 times the world's total energy use. And that energy is completely renewable — at least, for the lifetime of the sun. "It's finite, but we're talking billions of years," Taylor says. "
Totally agree. I think the premise of maintaining quality of life while dramatically reducing energy consumption won't bear out.
There is no successful path to stopping global warming that dramatically drives up energy cost or reduces quality of life. Plentiful zero carbon energy is the path forward.
There is no successful path to stopping global warming that dramatically drives up energy cost or reduces quality of life. Plentiful zero carbon energy is the path forward.
2kW isn't starvation, it's abundance, luxury, and leisure for all. Especially if used efficiently (medium sized buildings, mass transit and low speed transport, power efficient durable applicances. We can have rich fulfilling lives on a fraction of that.
20kW is obscene needless waste, wholesale destruction of anything near a city or industrial area, exhaustion of every scarce resource and with the albedo increase and waste heat it entails will give us climate change just through sheer thermal output.
20kW is obscene needless waste, wholesale destruction of anything near a city or industrial area, exhaustion of every scarce resource and with the albedo increase and waste heat it entails will give us climate change just through sheer thermal output.
20 kW is a little more than the 25 hp engine of a VW beetle from the 1950's. (1 hp ~= 0.75 kW).
A PA system for a rock concert might be 20 kW.
A PA system for a rock concert might be 20 kW.
And if everyone had a beetle engine running full power 24/7 we would have run out of oil decades ago and every urban or even suburban area would be uninhabitable.
A rock concert serves hundreds or thousands of people for a few tens of hours in a year. It adds milliwatts.
20kW each is 160TW. 20kW of work per person if prodiced in the area is enough to double the heat that a city like paris has to dissipate.
At 160TW from fission, world uranium reserves last a single year in a LWR or a few decades at full burnup (which basically no nuclear programs do). Thorium reserves would barely last longer.
At 160TW from PV we need 100 million tonnes of panels to be produced per year just for maintenance and to cover an absurd amount of land. Current tech would use all of the silver ten times over. Copper in the panels and wiring would use 5-100% of world reserves.
At 160TW direct thermal forcing is 1W/m^2 which isn't as catastrophic as 500ppm CO2, but is about the current GHG forcing (which is just going super swell). Take into account any realistic generation scenario (3W/W of heating from nuclear or 2W/W of albedo increase) and you're in a 2 or 3 degree heating scenario on top of our GHG problems. Add in a few billion more people and any 20kW future is apocalyptic.
20kW is obscene and if you think a lifestyle based on that level of wanton waste can be sustained without forcing many others in other places and other times to suffer you are deluded.
A rock concert serves hundreds or thousands of people for a few tens of hours in a year. It adds milliwatts.
20kW each is 160TW. 20kW of work per person if prodiced in the area is enough to double the heat that a city like paris has to dissipate.
At 160TW from fission, world uranium reserves last a single year in a LWR or a few decades at full burnup (which basically no nuclear programs do). Thorium reserves would barely last longer.
At 160TW from PV we need 100 million tonnes of panels to be produced per year just for maintenance and to cover an absurd amount of land. Current tech would use all of the silver ten times over. Copper in the panels and wiring would use 5-100% of world reserves.
At 160TW direct thermal forcing is 1W/m^2 which isn't as catastrophic as 500ppm CO2, but is about the current GHG forcing (which is just going super swell). Take into account any realistic generation scenario (3W/W of heating from nuclear or 2W/W of albedo increase) and you're in a 2 or 3 degree heating scenario on top of our GHG problems. Add in a few billion more people and any 20kW future is apocalyptic.
20kW is obscene and if you think a lifestyle based on that level of wanton waste can be sustained without forcing many others in other places and other times to suffer you are deluded.
Couldn't have said it better. At a certain point--and I think some are past this point--it becomes a death cult of "any energy used is evil."
Agree 100%. We should be building mega-factories for solar cells, nuclear plants and pumping trillions of dollars into fusion research. Pivoting to renewable energy should be giving the same society wide focus that nation states gave to warfare and the production of weapons during ww2.
Nice fantasy. Note that building up that infrastructure at scale itself (within decades) overconstrains resources already.
> Let's have a 20,000-Watt society, not a 2,000-Watt one.
You know this really means “let’s keep the average per capita consumption high, so I can keep spending the 10x more than a third world citizen” right?
> Not a communist-like starvation of sorts.
Rational usage of resources is very far from “starvation”.
You know this really means “let’s keep the average per capita consumption high, so I can keep spending the 10x more than a third world citizen” right?
> Not a communist-like starvation of sorts.
Rational usage of resources is very far from “starvation”.
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Unless someone breaks thermodynamics, there is really no way to reduce to 2000W without reducing consumption of goods by a factor of 10 in the west. That means a new phone every 20 years instead of 2 (global mobile device supply chain is huge), getting new shoes every 10 years instead of 1, getting a new car every 50 years instead of 5, etc.
According to the article, the US us by far (very far) the worst offender and yet it is only 6x over the target, not 10. Switzerland, which does not strike me as a country with a low standard of living, is 2.5x over the target. Europe 3x.
In terms of globalization supply chain, the west has similar power utilizations.
US has much larger homes and drives far more inefficiently due to individual vehicle usage instead of mass transit.
Reducing those by 6x would be a huge change.
US has much larger homes and drives far more inefficiently due to individual vehicle usage instead of mass transit.
Reducing those by 6x would be a huge change.
That's perfectly fine, let's build durable goods. I still have some tableware from my great-grandmother, more than 100 years old. It works just as well as new plates and forks.
But more than that, we won't have the choice. Thermodynamics will constrain us sooner or later.
But more than that, we won't have the choice. Thermodynamics will constrain us sooner or later.
Or just get rid of the lawn, beef, the 'great room', and 95% of cars (and keep the rest for 30 years). Then make the electronics last at least 5 years, and you're well past target.
I'm living/working remotely off grid with a solar panels, batteries, and a 2000w inverter. It's comfortable. I usually have a few lights, the wifi router, a monitor, laptop charger, and a fridge plugged in. This comes out between 100w and 300w, so I have room to spare for bigger items like power tools.
I do cheat by using a propane range for cooking and wood for heat. At some point I'd like to move to an electric induction stove, but I need to do some research how efficient they are.
I do cheat by using a propane range for cooking and wood for heat. At some point I'd like to move to an electric induction stove, but I need to do some research how efficient they are.
> At some point I'd like to move to an electric induction stove, but I need to do some research how efficient they are.
I know for a fact that the induction cooktop is the epitome of efficiency. Virtually every watt that passes through the switching electronics and coils winds up somewhere in the cookware.
I've got a Breville control freak and a 750w microwave oven as my emergency cooking gear for when I am stuck on solar battery backup.
I know for a fact that the induction cooktop is the epitome of efficiency. Virtually every watt that passes through the switching electronics and coils winds up somewhere in the cookware.
I've got a Breville control freak and a 750w microwave oven as my emergency cooking gear for when I am stuck on solar battery backup.
Pressure and slow cookers are beasts for energy efficiency - pressure winning because they’re on for shorter time, but slow cookers can do things too (especially if you have “waste solar” during the day).
Have you looked into home biogas digesters? They can turn waste into cooking fuel.
I haven't, I'll check them out, thanks!
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Wow, I just calculated my direct energy usage. Now I live in Texas where it is hot so I only required heating 2-3 months of the year, and have one electric and one gas car.
* Electricity - 13,000 kWh * Natural Gas - 7,000 kWh * Gasoline - 14,000 kWh
Burning stuff is just so wildly inefficient. A heat pump to replace my furnace and water heater; and only using the electric car would cut my direct energy usage in half.
* Electricity - 13,000 kWh * Natural Gas - 7,000 kWh * Gasoline - 14,000 kWh
Burning stuff is just so wildly inefficient. A heat pump to replace my furnace and water heater; and only using the electric car would cut my direct energy usage in half.
> A heat pump to replace my furnace and water heater; and only using the electric car would cut my direct energy usage in half.
That's more due to the seemingly magical properties of heat pumps producing 2-3x as much heat as energy input.
Burning nat gas to create heat in your home is nearly 100% efficient, which is why resistant electric heaters generally can't compete. Though resistant heaters might be more carbon neutral depending on your local grid.
Of course, burning stuff to do mechanical work is quite inefficient, especially in a small scale engine like a car. If we must burn stuff, we should do it is massive thermal plants that have the money and expertise to squeeze out the maximum efficiency possible, and deliver electricity to do the small scale work, like driving.
That's more due to the seemingly magical properties of heat pumps producing 2-3x as much heat as energy input.
Burning nat gas to create heat in your home is nearly 100% efficient, which is why resistant electric heaters generally can't compete. Though resistant heaters might be more carbon neutral depending on your local grid.
Of course, burning stuff to do mechanical work is quite inefficient, especially in a small scale engine like a car. If we must burn stuff, we should do it is massive thermal plants that have the money and expertise to squeeze out the maximum efficiency possible, and deliver electricity to do the small scale work, like driving.
India experienced a massive heat wave last summer. My electricity consumption exceeded the average US per month figures for the first time (>900 KWh/month). Bulk of it went to airconditioning. Needless to say I am deeply concerned about the times ahead. I am pretty sure increase in electricity consumption is only going to aggravate things further.
Huh. We're absolutely crushing this at our house. We averaged 486 watts per person in the worst month this year so far. I cheat and charge the car at work, but even when I commute every day (40 miles round trip, half-mile elevation change), it's only half our energy consumption, so we're easily below 1kw per person. I'm not including embodied carbon of stuff we buy, but still...
We did buy energy efficient everything: Induction range, hybrid heat pump water heater, spent extra on insulation, heat pump furnace, LED lights, medium-wattage desktop computer, high MPGe EV, etc.
However, we live in a normal US house with few compromises (though we don't need air conditioning or heating most days, due to the local climate).
It makes me wonder how the average US household is at 12KW. That's roughly two of our house's air conditioners running full blast, per person, 24 hours a day.
We did buy energy efficient everything: Induction range, hybrid heat pump water heater, spent extra on insulation, heat pump furnace, LED lights, medium-wattage desktop computer, high MPGe EV, etc.
However, we live in a normal US house with few compromises (though we don't need air conditioning or heating most days, due to the local climate).
It makes me wonder how the average US household is at 12KW. That's roughly two of our house's air conditioners running full blast, per person, 24 hours a day.
> wonder how the average US household is at 12KW
If you've eliminated transportation and heating that is #1 and #2 for most people's energy consumption. Third place would likely be air-conditioning, and you've eliminated that too.
If you've eliminated transportation and heating that is #1 and #2 for most people's energy consumption. Third place would likely be air-conditioning, and you've eliminated that too.
I’m including transportation and heating/cooling.
Even if we kept the thermostat at 120F in the winter and 32F in the summer, we’d still be under 3kw per person (due to our furnace being on 100% of the time and never reaching temperature).
Even if we kept the thermostat at 120F in the winter and 32F in the summer, we’d still be under 3kw per person (due to our furnace being on 100% of the time and never reaching temperature).
The number also appears to include 'upstream' energy usage, things like how much energy was used to transport food to you. How much energy to produce the items you consume. I imagine raw household electrical usage is only a small fragment of this.
Food (and discretionary transport) is the second-highest number (1100w of 5100w) in their Swiss energy use table, between heat and electricity.
The 12kW includes producing and shipping that car battery every 7 years, and the fossil fuel derived fertilizer on the corn that feeds the beef you eat. And the distillation of the tonnes of ultra pure water required to make your phone. And so on.
But yes. It is relatively trivial to come closer to a sustainable level than the US average.
But yes. It is relatively trivial to come closer to a sustainable level than the US average.
48kWh per person per day? That seems like a huge amount. I live in an a place where we have to run the AC almost all day and we use less than this along with all the other electric appliances.
It's all energy consumption by a person, not just their residential electrical usage. So the gas you may use to heat your water, or the gasoline in your car, or the fraction of the street light outside your home. The energy that runs your local grocery store, hair salon, or Chick-fil-a. The energy that went into growing your food, making your clothing, and shipping your monthly Chewy.com order.
48kWh is a much smaller amount when it includes all of our per capita economic activity.
48kWh is a much smaller amount when it includes all of our per capita economic activity.
>> I live in an a place where we have to run the AC almost all day and we use less than this along with all the other electric appliances.
They're including transportation costs.
They're including transportation costs.
>which pictures the average citizen of energy poor countries reducing their overall average primary energy usage rate to no more than 2,000 watts
Why the distinction? Why not all citizens?
Why the distinction? Why not all citizens?
I live in Sweden. I have a large house. It consumes 14 MWh/year. I have not sacrificed anything. I use a heat pump (using energy from the ground).
I wish someone would setup neighborhood geothermal heat pumps as a heating utility or coop model. It's so expensive for everyone to bore into the ground for this.
Modern new builds of housing do this, at least in some countries. At that stage you can not bother installing gas pipes and come out financially ahead.
Though air source are getting so good that places that require ground source are getting smaller.
Though air source are getting so good that places that require ground source are getting smaller.
Similar situation here, but in Finland. I use 14 MWh of /electricity/ each year (medium-sized house, three-person household). That excludes the firewood that we use for heating the sauna, and to keep the house warm during winter, when the cold is too much for the heat pumps to manage. Oh, and travel.
In order to reach the goal in the article, a three-person household would need to restrict energy use to 52560 KWh/year, /including/ all those things AND the production of everything that household consumes.
I can't see how it's even remotely possible with today's technology and societal climate. That being said, there's no harm in researching and developing more efficient technologies. I don't even want to think about how bad the energy crisis would be if we were all still using 60w/40w lightbulbs.
In order to reach the goal in the article, a three-person household would need to restrict energy use to 52560 KWh/year, /including/ all those things AND the production of everything that household consumes.
I can't see how it's even remotely possible with today's technology and societal climate. That being said, there's no harm in researching and developing more efficient technologies. I don't even want to think about how bad the energy crisis would be if we were all still using 60w/40w lightbulbs.
A Tesla Model 3, the most efficient EV, uses 240 Wh/mile. You could not drive more than 8.3 miles without exceeding the 2 kWh/h.
Almost as if hauling 2 tonnes of metal and batteries to transport a single 70kg person is inefficient as hell no matter the energy source...
You get all day to average 2kW, or 48kWh/day, or 200 miles/day [if you spent no other energy, of course].
If you drove 20 miles, that’s 10% of your energy budget for the day, even if you did it all in a single hour.
If you drove 20 miles, that’s 10% of your energy budget for the day, even if you did it all in a single hour.
Might as well just use a horse and buggy at that point.
Personally I prefer a bicycle if the use case and distance is right!
If it was possible to move multiple persons with electric vehicles and if those people lived in close proximity that don't require driving long distances everyday then just going to the shop wouldn't exceed the goal.
Sounds logical to me! Put more people in the car and the total energy budget for car travel goes up, right?
The budget goes up linearly by person but the cost behaves differently because you don't have to add the same amount of gear for each person.
Well, it depends on the length of the measurement. If you build up the calculation for the total consumption for a year, then you can do spikes of energy use.
And if you factor in the embodied energy from building the car, you wouldn't be able to drive it, at all.
It's a bit hard condensate the concept in an HN comment but I'll try:
- the "Green" new deal, originally have imagined (with a classic managerial fallacy) a world made up by single-family homes in places with enough Sun for p.v., BEVs, a little need to move and no industries. Perhaps because this is the way some manager's live and they call it sobriety respect of others who do differently. Than they discover people's in crowd then to behave in stupid ways, like Le Bon describe in his masterpiece BUT not that stupid so grid-connected p.v. without stationary and/or on-wheel storage because cutting electricity bill with p.v. for a significant amount of locations on earth pay back, the rest do not. As a result electricity grids are more and more unstable. Keeping the frequency is always hard and we have chosen to made "large enough" grids to have a "slowly changing mean load" slow enough that big power plants can keep up the frequency; when p.v/eolic start to be big enough the power peaks they produce make's the grid frequency skyrocket or fall too fast for large power plants to lower/step up their generator power. Not counting the fact that most people do not live in single-family homes where a p.v. system and an on-wheel battery can live with;
- some politicians who have blindly follow the initial vague dream have decided the answer is "reduce energy consumption" and have even invented ways to reduce it who actually increase the amount of consumed energy like regulating "how many hour to run the heating" vs "let the system run quietly 24/7;
- since most people DO NOT live on nor have p.v. anyway most home appliance are NOT designed to maximize self consumption witch means run full power as quick as possible when energy from the Sun is available vs try to spread the load as much as possible to keep the grid load as stable as possible. As a result most p.v. systems instead of target maximizing self-consumption target to produce as many kWh as possible. As a result p.v. systems are LESS interesting and the grid is more strained.
A simple example: most hot-water systems try to run few minutes every hours instead of all at once on input. To keep a grid load stable running few minutes every hours and have small quantity of water to heat is IDEAL, you consume less energy and keep the load stable on average. On p.v. it's the exact opposite. Since the Sun shine for limited period of time but when it do it offer much energy what it count is heating as much as possible large amount of water to have enough hot water for the rest of the day, possible for more than one day. Essentially NO system on sale offer such simple regulation, while some offer "grid-backed" regulations like grid energy meters who told "run" or "do not run" depending on current grid load but in ways that are hard to be used on p.v. even if they are very similar. Another example: most appliance start to consume from 0 to max in a snap. For the grid is not an issue, the single appliance consume a very small fraction of power of a power plant and on average that's just noise. Small p.v. inverters on contrary have issues keeping up such peaks, who happen to be big at micro-grid scale. As a result many appliance like ovens who try to use peaks to reduce the total amount of kWh consumed they run very bad on p.v. in self-consumption and inverter stress terms. Again: some appliance try to run for longer time to reduce the amount of peak power usage, while on p.v. it's better run quickly to run an appliance after the other in the limited amount of time the Sun shine and so on.
Long story short if some really want a new deal:
- ALL BEVs MUST have an open standard data port (no matter if canbus or something else) to talk to any p.v. inverter on sale allowing to do the same stationary battery inverters and batteries do: charge ONLY from p.v., offering power from battery to the home to a maximum DOD if the grid do work, another threshold if case of grid blackout and parameters to tell the car ensuring a minimum SOC for a certain point in time allowing to charge from the grid if needed;
- BEV need to cost equally of their correspondent ICE not pushing up ICE and fuel price to makes EV convenient;
- incentive de-urbanization in the sense from a multi-apartments building (sorry I do not know how to name such buildings in English) to a single family home if you live there for a certain amount of years;
- impose a simple and cheap communication mode to power-hungry home appliances like simple modbus to allow their control from a central home system, like a home server/a p.v. inverter etc and allowing communication to tell how much power they going to need to run, in the next few seconds etc to allow inverters compensate peaks less hardly;
- incentives the design of systems targeting maximizing self-consumption instead of grid-tied "metering" like "I give X kWh, get back Y and so...".
Asking for "sobriety" is like asking do not panic on a sinking ship, the rebound effect is higher then else.
- the "Green" new deal, originally have imagined (with a classic managerial fallacy) a world made up by single-family homes in places with enough Sun for p.v., BEVs, a little need to move and no industries. Perhaps because this is the way some manager's live and they call it sobriety respect of others who do differently. Than they discover people's in crowd then to behave in stupid ways, like Le Bon describe in his masterpiece BUT not that stupid so grid-connected p.v. without stationary and/or on-wheel storage because cutting electricity bill with p.v. for a significant amount of locations on earth pay back, the rest do not. As a result electricity grids are more and more unstable. Keeping the frequency is always hard and we have chosen to made "large enough" grids to have a "slowly changing mean load" slow enough that big power plants can keep up the frequency; when p.v/eolic start to be big enough the power peaks they produce make's the grid frequency skyrocket or fall too fast for large power plants to lower/step up their generator power. Not counting the fact that most people do not live in single-family homes where a p.v. system and an on-wheel battery can live with;
- some politicians who have blindly follow the initial vague dream have decided the answer is "reduce energy consumption" and have even invented ways to reduce it who actually increase the amount of consumed energy like regulating "how many hour to run the heating" vs "let the system run quietly 24/7;
- since most people DO NOT live on nor have p.v. anyway most home appliance are NOT designed to maximize self consumption witch means run full power as quick as possible when energy from the Sun is available vs try to spread the load as much as possible to keep the grid load as stable as possible. As a result most p.v. systems instead of target maximizing self-consumption target to produce as many kWh as possible. As a result p.v. systems are LESS interesting and the grid is more strained.
A simple example: most hot-water systems try to run few minutes every hours instead of all at once on input. To keep a grid load stable running few minutes every hours and have small quantity of water to heat is IDEAL, you consume less energy and keep the load stable on average. On p.v. it's the exact opposite. Since the Sun shine for limited period of time but when it do it offer much energy what it count is heating as much as possible large amount of water to have enough hot water for the rest of the day, possible for more than one day. Essentially NO system on sale offer such simple regulation, while some offer "grid-backed" regulations like grid energy meters who told "run" or "do not run" depending on current grid load but in ways that are hard to be used on p.v. even if they are very similar. Another example: most appliance start to consume from 0 to max in a snap. For the grid is not an issue, the single appliance consume a very small fraction of power of a power plant and on average that's just noise. Small p.v. inverters on contrary have issues keeping up such peaks, who happen to be big at micro-grid scale. As a result many appliance like ovens who try to use peaks to reduce the total amount of kWh consumed they run very bad on p.v. in self-consumption and inverter stress terms. Again: some appliance try to run for longer time to reduce the amount of peak power usage, while on p.v. it's better run quickly to run an appliance after the other in the limited amount of time the Sun shine and so on.
Long story short if some really want a new deal:
- ALL BEVs MUST have an open standard data port (no matter if canbus or something else) to talk to any p.v. inverter on sale allowing to do the same stationary battery inverters and batteries do: charge ONLY from p.v., offering power from battery to the home to a maximum DOD if the grid do work, another threshold if case of grid blackout and parameters to tell the car ensuring a minimum SOC for a certain point in time allowing to charge from the grid if needed;
- BEV need to cost equally of their correspondent ICE not pushing up ICE and fuel price to makes EV convenient;
- incentive de-urbanization in the sense from a multi-apartments building (sorry I do not know how to name such buildings in English) to a single family home if you live there for a certain amount of years;
- impose a simple and cheap communication mode to power-hungry home appliances like simple modbus to allow their control from a central home system, like a home server/a p.v. inverter etc and allowing communication to tell how much power they going to need to run, in the next few seconds etc to allow inverters compensate peaks less hardly;
- incentives the design of systems targeting maximizing self-consumption instead of grid-tied "metering" like "I give X kWh, get back Y and so...".
Asking for "sobriety" is like asking do not panic on a sinking ship, the rebound effect is higher then else.
I want a personal cold fusion reactor and to be a 2000 MW person, not this unviable milquetoast degrowth.
Yeah. Screw this 'climate change' nonsense. Let's see if we can vaporize the mantle by 2100.
The second law exists and climate change is just the first of many symptoms of running face first into it.
2kW is a sensible limit for living on a planet and having it still be a planet worth living on. You might push it up an order of magnitude or two without cooking humans by fully transforming most habitable land and carefully rejecting 30% of the sunlight whilst using the rest, but that would destroy most ecosystems.
If you want a barren rock to bake, go live on the moon.
The second law exists and climate change is just the first of many symptoms of running face first into it.
2kW is a sensible limit for living on a planet and having it still be a planet worth living on. You might push it up an order of magnitude or two without cooking humans by fully transforming most habitable land and carefully rejecting 30% of the sunlight whilst using the rest, but that would destroy most ecosystems.
If you want a barren rock to bake, go live on the moon.
Just to check, have you ever looked up the total solar irradiation wattage? You might be surprised.
Climate change isn't "Grug burn too many fire, fire make hot.", it's a comparatively tiny shift in a delicate balance.
Climate change isn't "Grug burn too many fire, fire make hot.", it's a comparatively tiny shift in a delicate balance.
Yes. Sunlight that makes it to the surface is about 170PW.
Primary energy is about 17TW this is roughly on the order of what can be utilized without drastically altering the planet.
GHG emissions shift the balance by about 200TW which is enough to be extremely harmful.
20kW is 170TW which is enough to be similarly harmful (although not to escalate to being apocalyptic).
2000MW per person is enough to raise the temperature of the entire earth (the whole thing, not the surface) by 25 degrees a year.
Primary energy is about 17TW this is roughly on the order of what can be utilized without drastically altering the planet.
GHG emissions shift the balance by about 200TW which is enough to be extremely harmful.
20kW is 170TW which is enough to be similarly harmful (although not to escalate to being apocalyptic).
2000MW per person is enough to raise the temperature of the entire earth (the whole thing, not the surface) by 25 degrees a year.
Unviable degrowth or unliveable planet
Degrowth will absolutely remove more enjoyable life-years from the planet than even maintaining the status quo, let alone achieving technological progress that will allow carbon-free 2000MW per person. The latter is certainly preferable to the former.
> let alone achieving technological progress that will allow carbon-free
No guarantees that we are on that path, if it was the case we'd already all be running on nuclear but we made the opposite choice, in Europe for example because gas is cheaper, cheaper = more profit = growth = better and we all see where it got us
But let's continue with out ultra wasteful ways of life, surely when China and India catch up with EU/US level of waste the world will be saved
No guarantees that we are on that path, if it was the case we'd already all be running on nuclear but we made the opposite choice, in Europe for example because gas is cheaper, cheaper = more profit = growth = better and we all see where it got us
But let's continue with out ultra wasteful ways of life, surely when China and India catch up with EU/US level of waste the world will be saved
> ... (i.e. 2 kWh per hour or 48 kWh per day) ...
That's just over 1400 kWh per month. As a reference of personal and immediate consumption, most central- and north European apartment dwellers consume around 2000 kWh per year.
Anecdote: my household - two adults, two terrible cats, dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer, no TV, two bicycles and feet instead of a car - have consumed 160-170 kWh per month steadily, around the year, for as long as I can recall.
That's just over 1400 kWh per month. As a reference of personal and immediate consumption, most central- and north European apartment dwellers consume around 2000 kWh per year.
Anecdote: my household - two adults, two terrible cats, dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer, no TV, two bicycles and feet instead of a car - have consumed 160-170 kWh per month steadily, around the year, for as long as I can recall.
Maybe continue reading a little…?
> The concept addresses not only personal or household energy use, but the total for the whole society, including embodied energy, divided by the population.
Filling up my car’s gas tank once is roughly 444 kWh in fuel value alone. Add to that gas refining, logistics and whatnot.
> The concept addresses not only personal or household energy use, but the total for the whole society, including embodied energy, divided by the population.
Filling up my car’s gas tank once is roughly 444 kWh in fuel value alone. Add to that gas refining, logistics and whatnot.
I read all of it, not just a little of it. I'm commenting on personal, immediate consumption.
Before you edited your comment, it was purely about average consumption of grid electricity. However, that’s not even the “personal, immediate consumption”. It’s just… grid electricity. You eat. You have clothes, devices, machines that had to be made and shipped. You heat your dwelling. Everything counts. It’s sometimes hard to quantify what this means, a lot of amortization is always going on.
Please don't go on the Internet and tell other people what they meant. My comment says APARTMENT DWELLERS for a reason, to contrast with e.g. house owners, whose needs are vastly different. I edited and added/clarified with "personal immediate consumption" because either you were nitpicking or I wasn't clear enough with "apartment dwellers".
That's all very well, but the 48kw/h number you quote is not only talking about those things. Hence your comment that it's high is not very relevant. It's not so high once those other things are included.
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I don't see how this is possible with modern technology, unless you limit people to low power laptops or chrome books.
If the average person has a modern desktop there's a good chance it has 400w power supply. Run a 400w power supply for 8 hours and you have used 3.2 kwh [1]. That's already 1.2kwh over, without accounting for anything else.
I see the solution as providing renewable electricity at low cost, rather than reducing the amount of electricity.
[1] https://www.inchcalculator.com/watts-to-kwh-calculator/
If the average person has a modern desktop there's a good chance it has 400w power supply. Run a 400w power supply for 8 hours and you have used 3.2 kwh [1]. That's already 1.2kwh over, without accounting for anything else.
I see the solution as providing renewable electricity at low cost, rather than reducing the amount of electricity.
[1] https://www.inchcalculator.com/watts-to-kwh-calculator/
Watts are a unit of energy per unit time. So not like a fixed budget in dollars, but rather a recurring budget in dollars per hour. Obviously, our energy use varies a great deal over time (just as our monetary spending tends to), so we can smooth that out (amortize it) to get a rough idea of our average rate of energy use.
If you use a 400 watt computer all of the time your personal remaining energy budget is 1600 watts. I use a computer around 10 hours a day during the week, and three or four on weekend days (so around a third of the time). Amortized, that means I would be using on average around 133 watts on computing, if I used such a desktop. But I actually use a Thinkpad T420, and its consumption averages out to around 30 watts when in use (so amortized to 10 watts).
If you use a 400 watt computer all of the time your personal remaining energy budget is 1600 watts. I use a computer around 10 hours a day during the week, and three or four on weekend days (so around a third of the time). Amortized, that means I would be using on average around 133 watts on computing, if I used such a desktop. But I actually use a Thinkpad T420, and its consumption averages out to around 30 watts when in use (so amortized to 10 watts).
First of all, your calculation is completely wrong. 400W * 8h would be 3,2kWh which is a lot less than 2000W * 24h = 48kWh per day that is advocated here.
Second, the Macbook Pro which i use 8 hours a day has a 140W power supply but I'm sure it uses less than 50W on average.
- 50W * 8h = 0,4kWh
- 2kW * 24h = 48kWh.
The laptop isn't going to be the problem! Heating OTOH uses lots of energy so good insulation is the key.
Second, the Macbook Pro which i use 8 hours a day has a 140W power supply but I'm sure it uses less than 50W on average.
- 50W * 8h = 0,4kWh
- 2kW * 24h = 48kWh.
The laptop isn't going to be the problem! Heating OTOH uses lots of energy so good insulation is the key.
It's shocking how hard of a time people have distinguishing watts from watt hours. Even in a forum aimed at technical people.
I like to use the analogy of fuel tank capacity (kWh) vs. engine output --- horsepower for Americans and most Brits (kW).
Power is a flow, it's the rate of energy usage (or output) over time. More power means higher top speed, or stronger acceleration, or hill-climbing ability, or towing capacity.
Energy is a stock, it's a total quantity of potential. A bigger fuel tank won't make your car any faster, but it will determine how much range you have.
Since appliances, equipment, generators, etc., consume or produce watts of power, it's handy to consider how much energy this represents by simply multiplying watts by time, by default, hours.
Power is a flow, it's the rate of energy usage (or output) over time. More power means higher top speed, or stronger acceleration, or hill-climbing ability, or towing capacity.
Energy is a stock, it's a total quantity of potential. A bigger fuel tank won't make your car any faster, but it will determine how much range you have.
Since appliances, equipment, generators, etc., consume or produce watts of power, it's handy to consider how much energy this represents by simply multiplying watts by time, by default, hours.
Not that shocking. About half of American society was unable to figure out why masks and social distancing were helpful during a pandemic.
Your desktop is not going to spend 8 hours running at max TDP, even if you're gaming or doing CAD work. The majority of that time it will be close to idle, pulling no more than 40w from the wall (and thats if you have a poorly optimized system).
You are confusing the watt and the watt-hour. Running a 2000 watt load for 24 hours will use 48,000 watt-hours (48 kilowatt-hours).
The average person doesn't use desktop computers anymore, hell the younger generation barely use laptops.
Also a high end desktop computer might pull 400 W from the wall while gaming, but that's not something the average person does 8 hours a day. Light work on a desktop computer with a monitor should be around 80 W on average.
Also a high end desktop computer might pull 400 W from the wall while gaming, but that's not something the average person does 8 hours a day. Light work on a desktop computer with a monitor should be around 80 W on average.
> If the average person has a modern desktop there's a good chance it has 400w power supply.
Well, first of all, the 400w is a limit, not a _target_. A computer with a 400w power supply does not generally run at 400w. If it did, you'd notice it; that's not an insignificant amount of heat.
However, more importantly, you've misread the article significantly:
> which pictures the average First World citizen reducing their overall average primary energy usage rate to no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 2 kWh per hour or 48 kWh per day)
> Run a 400w power supply for 8 hours and you have used 3.2 kwh
So well within budget, then.
Well, first of all, the 400w is a limit, not a _target_. A computer with a 400w power supply does not generally run at 400w. If it did, you'd notice it; that's not an insignificant amount of heat.
However, more importantly, you've misread the article significantly:
> which pictures the average First World citizen reducing their overall average primary energy usage rate to no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 2 kWh per hour or 48 kWh per day)
> Run a 400w power supply for 8 hours and you have used 3.2 kwh
So well within budget, then.
That's an astonishingly small minded and fractally incorrect take.
First 400W is peak not average.
Second Wh isn't W. 400W is 400/2000ths of 2000W
Third 500mW can provide a reasonable amount of compute for most tasks as evidenced by my 2 yo phone being a perfectly usable desktop when plugged into a monitor. The 10W to run peripherals vastly exceeds the compute needs and is mostly in the form of light being absorbed by an lcd. Before that I had a 6yo laptop that used around 3-10W including screen. Phone hardware is perfectly capable of gaming, local document editing, compiling, and even running small scientific workloads.
Fourth you're completely ignoring embodied energy, transport and climate control which are the things that actually matter.
Fifth. You can do things that aren't sit at a computer.
Sixth. A high power desktop isn't that common even amongst people who play new AAA games a lot.
Seventh. The attitude of 'we can't possibly deviate even miniscully from having everyone on earth follow my exact lifestyle (even the 90% of people who have no access to it) right down to one particularly wasteful aspect of it that has only been around for fifteen years in its current most wasteful form' is unfathomably small minded and entitled.
First 400W is peak not average.
Second Wh isn't W. 400W is 400/2000ths of 2000W
Third 500mW can provide a reasonable amount of compute for most tasks as evidenced by my 2 yo phone being a perfectly usable desktop when plugged into a monitor. The 10W to run peripherals vastly exceeds the compute needs and is mostly in the form of light being absorbed by an lcd. Before that I had a 6yo laptop that used around 3-10W including screen. Phone hardware is perfectly capable of gaming, local document editing, compiling, and even running small scientific workloads.
Fourth you're completely ignoring embodied energy, transport and climate control which are the things that actually matter.
Fifth. You can do things that aren't sit at a computer.
Sixth. A high power desktop isn't that common even amongst people who play new AAA games a lot.
Seventh. The attitude of 'we can't possibly deviate even miniscully from having everyone on earth follow my exact lifestyle (even the 90% of people who have no access to it) right down to one particularly wasteful aspect of it that has only been around for fifteen years in its current most wasteful form' is unfathomably small minded and entitled.
On top of misusing watts and watt hours as already pointed out. The issue of computers is the embodied energy in actually producing it.
So you're better off just using your existing pc for longer, that will make more difference.
A 400 watt power supply doesn't consume 400 watts by just being powered on. It just means it can deliver 400 watts of power if necessary, sometimes briefly, sometimes continuously.
Much the same as a 400 horsepower automobile isn't generating that output all the time, but can reach a peak output of that amount.
In the case of power supplies, both total capacity and durability are indicated by the power rating. I don't know what current thinking is, but recall when overspeccing the power supply was often recommended for reliability and cooling considerations.
In the case of power supplies, both total capacity and durability are indicated by the power rating. I don't know what current thinking is, but recall when overspeccing the power supply was often recommended for reliability and cooling considerations.
I remember the old recommendation from the early 2000s, but I'm not sure if it's still "a thing". Switched-mode power supplies reach closer to their nominal efficiency rating the more current you pull through them.
I have an anecdote: many years ago when Bitcoin/altcoin mining on GPUs was still feasible I ran a rig with a 335 watt TDP graphics card, and the whole setup measured 360-something watts at the wall outlet. It ran 24/7 for months on a 400 watt PSU, without problems.
I have an anecdote: many years ago when Bitcoin/altcoin mining on GPUs was still feasible I ran a rig with a 335 watt TDP graphics card, and the whole setup measured 360-something watts at the wall outlet. It ran 24/7 for months on a 400 watt PSU, without problems.
I just checked my HP Pavilion business-class desktop purchase a couple of years ago, it has a 180W power supply.
> If the average person has a modern desktop there's a good chance it has 400w power supply.
The average person doesn't have a desktop, let alone a 400w one, it's all phones and laptops these days
The average person doesn't have a desktop, let alone a 400w one, it's all phones and laptops these days
Measure is the best way to know how much energy actually used. Let's check your own computer.
400W is, well, 20% of 2000W.
No-one uses 400w computers anymore for working though?
No-one? Really? What do you do with your computer?
I mean, three years ago at work i had a 1000W power unit and even when i plugged a TitanX and tried to learn Deep learning i don't think I used more than 200w/h on average (it's still hot, couldn't put my feet near the CU).
On the plus side, i learned how to install and debug Cuda.
On the plus side, i learned how to install and debug Cuda.
I've never owned a computer that uses anywhere near that. Maybe the family computer back in the early 2000s when computers were shared and had their own room.
Everybody move to the tropics, get used to the heat and ride motor scooters just like India and Bangladesh. Cold climates that require a lot of energy just to live in are going to empty out in the next decades.
I predict a massive wave of immigration from Europe, Australia, and Canada to Latin America. There are already a ton of people from these countries showing up in Mexico because of Covid restrictions, easy immigration for first-worlders, and a lower cost of living. I suspect the upcoming winter of deprivation and economic crisis in Europe and other cold regions will send a bunch more economic/cold refugees that way.
I predict a massive wave of immigration from Europe, Australia, and Canada to Latin America. There are already a ton of people from these countries showing up in Mexico because of Covid restrictions, easy immigration for first-worlders, and a lower cost of living. I suspect the upcoming winter of deprivation and economic crisis in Europe and other cold regions will send a bunch more economic/cold refugees that way.
Australia has millions of km^2 in the subtropics. Why would they move due to heating requirements?
Also there will be many, many climate refugees from floods, famines, droughts, super storms, fires, dust storms, and so on. Most of these issues are much harder to overcome than adding insulation, living in a reasonably sized home, sharing a wall or two, installing a heat pump, and putting on a jumper.
Also there will be many, many climate refugees from floods, famines, droughts, super storms, fires, dust storms, and so on. Most of these issues are much harder to overcome than adding insulation, living in a reasonably sized home, sharing a wall or two, installing a heat pump, and putting on a jumper.
The facts disprove your hypothesis.
Also, climate change.
Also, climate change.
Currently averaging about 9.75kWh per day during spring/summer/fall. However, come winter the max average will probably be 50kWh per day.
My latitude is about 60 (59.9139) degrees north and electric heating panels don’t seem to be the most efficient when it is below freezing.
With improved insulation and a modern heat pump, I’d be curious to see how much energy we would consume.
My latitude is about 60 (59.9139) degrees north and electric heating panels don’t seem to be the most efficient when it is below freezing.
With improved insulation and a modern heat pump, I’d be curious to see how much energy we would consume.
Assuming you're talking about heating & electricity in your accommodation only?
The vision here encompasses all energy use if I understand correctly.
The vision here encompasses all energy use if I understand correctly.
Yes, I’m referring to electricity as it is my largest source of energy use.
Aside from that, accounting for the energy used to produce the food and consumables is somewhat challenging, so I don’t really consider it. But I suppose it would be worth trying to guesstimate? I’m not that familiar with the 2000-watt society.
Aside from that, accounting for the energy used to produce the food and consumables is somewhat challenging, so I don’t really consider it. But I suppose it would be worth trying to guesstimate? I’m not that familiar with the 2000-watt society.
There's more to this than just energy, we're all about to get a very strong lesson in the fact that fertilizers require fossil fuels as chemical feedstock. The Ukraine conflict has already lead to a steep drop off in the availability of fertilizers for many countries across the globe. Those will result in greatly reduced harvests and food scarcity.
The next few years are to be very rough, and nothing can be done to fix it. Deglobalization will make things even worse for countries that can't produce or purchase enough fuel, food or fertilizers.
The next few years are to be very rough, and nothing can be done to fix it. Deglobalization will make things even worse for countries that can't produce or purchase enough fuel, food or fertilizers.
Luckily you can make them from sunlight as well (either through PV or sustainable agriculture)
Unluckily none of our governments seem to have had the forethought to either make the massive capital investment required for the former or the even bigger labour and knowledge investment to do the latter when this became obviously important.
Unluckily none of our governments seem to have had the forethought to either make the massive capital investment required for the former or the even bigger labour and knowledge investment to do the latter when this became obviously important.
As the Wikipedia article highlights, the average Swiss uses about 5kW (that's 5kWh per hour), of which only about 10% are electricity.
Similarly, about 10% are car usage, or about 0.5kW. If we take the average car to develop on average 50kW, and assume an efficiency of 1 (for the sake of the argument), then they use a car around 1% of the time or about 15 minutes a day (less if efficiency is <1, as it is).
ETA some more reference points:
A human eats around 10,000kJ per day = 86400 seconds, let's call it 100,000s, so 10,000kJ/100ks = 100J/s = 100W, about as much as a bright lightbulb (the old fashioned ones, not LED).
The sun gives us about 1kW of power per square meter. Say photovoltaic cells have an efficiency of 10%, and the sun shines 6 hours a day (=25%), then we are talking around 25W/m².
So, the average Swiss uses the energy corresponding to about 50 people working for him or 200m² of PV, the average US citizen of 120 people or 480m² (5000 sq feet), and the goal here is to push it down to 20 people or 80m² PV.
Great reference: the books by Vaclav Smil, eg. How the World Really Works.