that’s a great graph, really looking forward to seeing those times where renewables exceed demand get more common then all flatten out as systems designed to use excess power are added - pumped storage for example and desalination can be scaled to match the excess.

Basically you have a desalination plant near your solar or wind and any excess power gets diverted there, fresh water is then pumped into lakes and reservoirs which can either be converted back into power via hydro or used in agriculture, industry and homes as needed.

tarmacking is a horrible job especially at night, personally I’d rather reduce the cost of infrastructure maintenance using automation and then pay people a living wage to do nicer jobs.

This is really positive news especially as most the efficiency savings come from things that are only at the start of their roll-out, a lot of the infrastructure development for solar and wind is already in place with construction already in progress for huge amounts of generation. It likely also that the lower demand for electricity comes in part due to more efficient devices gaining market share; better water heaters, heat-pumps, LED lighting, etc combined with better insulation and more focus on efficiency - plus of course home solar or similar, an increasing amount of people are at least partly off-grid and use home generated power which reduces demand on the power grid.

We also have some really useful new tech starting to reach market like tidal generation, tandem solar cells, Perovskite (which we’ve been hearing about for ages but they’re actually starting to build factories), e-fuels (again long heralded but actually starting to move into commercial production), and various new electric planes, boats, charging technologies, energy storage mediums, and etc all of which will help increase the rate of adoption and help decrease carbon emissions.

unaffordable to poor people, annoying to the middle classes, utterly inconsequential to the rich. economically slavery was pretty good too, there’s a lot more to making a good society than economics.

trying to price people out of living only affects those that already can’t afford it, we need to be creating actual solutions at price points where they can gain widespread adoption.

yeh this is a really promising technology and it’s not as far as most people seem to think from being widely adoptable, there are some great projects underway

The CCH2 [Carbon Capture and Hydrogen production from Biomass, Kew Technology] Project will develop designs for additional modules which will upgrade this gas to produce separate high-purity Hydrogen and CO2 streams. The hydrogen can be sold for industrial / transport applications and the CO2 sent for sequestration (20,000 tonnes per year per module). The strong revenues from the hydrogen enable overall very low costs per tonne of CO2 removed and the financing of sustainable biomass supply chains in a circular economy providing multiple environmental and societal benefits including new rural and industrial jobs.

basically you grow a load of plants (generally the excess biomass from crops and maintained spaces) and burn them (in this case through a gasification process that releases hydrogen also) the carbon which is released is then captured for storage or use, this can be especially useful when burning plants that have grown on toxic ground or polluted rivers as a way of absorbing all the bad stuff which is then trapped forever and returned to an old coalmine along with all the carbon that originally came from there.

another interesting project that just got funding is DRIVE;

Mission Zero has developed a new DAC technology that, at scale, is projected to have 75% lower costs and energy footprints than today’s commercial solutions and is suitable for both carbon utilisation and sequestration (CCUS) use cases. With engineering support from Optimus, the project will design Mission Zero’s 365 tons a year pilot plant in Phase 1. This will integrate with O.C.O Technology’s CCUS process which stores CO2 permanently while producing building aggregates from waste.

using the captured carbon to make useful materials like building aggregates makes it far more likely systems will get adopted, especially if they get to a price point where they’re creating profitable items This is something a lot of people are working on

[Cambridge Carbon Capture Ltd] aims to deliver a fully costed plan for a demonstrator capable of capturing CO2 from air and converting it directly into a mineral by-product with uses as construction materials using CCC’s CO2LOC carbon capture and mineralisation technology.

Another really cool use of captured carbon has recently passed a loads of tests from the US Air Force who’ve worked with a company called Twelve on a project to create a viable jet fuel from CO2,

E-Jet fuel is SAF produced using Twelve’s revolutionary carbon transformation technology, which uses only renewable energy and water to transform CO2 into critical chemicals, materials and fuels conventionally made from fossil fuels, and in partnership with Emerging Fuels Technology. As a power-to-liquid SAF with up to 90% lower lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to conventional, petroleum-based jet fuel, E-Jet fuel meets the applicable ASTM International specifications and is a drop-in ready synthetic fuel that works seamlessly with existing aircraft and airport infrastructure. It faces no real constraints on feedstock, thus offering the best viable long-term solution for addressing GHG and other emissions from the aviation sector.

the test facility they’re currently building isn’t going to produce much but it’s a huge first step on the way to industrialisation of the technology,

The facility is expected to begin E-Jet fuel production in mid-2024 at a capacity of approximately five barrels per day (40,000 gallons per year), with plans to quickly increase production capacity.

that’s only about 0.00007% of the Jet Fuel used per year, but if they refine the system and make one which can be built at any airport using power from onsite renewables then it’s likely we’d see a very rapid adoption.

The water wars prediction is especially interesting because when i was young they always pointed to a few locations where it would happen first, and top of the list was almost always Golan Heights where there were already water related tensions and conflict - however what actually happened is Israel invested in a huge desalination project which now supplies all their tap water, they also supply water to their neighbour Jordan who pays in solar power that’s used to run the system.

Saudi Arabia likewise has eased tensions within it’s borders through huge desalination investment, annalists predicted that competition for water resources would tear the country apart but again what actually happened is they invested in desalination which currently supplies around half their tap water and it’s helped add perceived legitimacy and gained support for the ruling family. Not people i like seeing gaining support but a far better outcome than the chaos and human suffering which was predicted.

yes they do that in some facilities, it’s called sewer discharge and can be quiet effective in a well monitored and designed system, surface water discharge uses a similar method of dribbling brine into the water as part of a system that uses ocean currents and tides to disperse the brine back into the ocean.

While brine return is a complicated and important step it’s really not some major ecosystem destroying problem in any of the modern installs - it’s just important to model and monitor the system, the same way sewage systems find a location where currents carry stuff away and allow it to disperse brine return systems do, with brine it’s just stuff that belongs in the ocean anyway so it all mixes back in fairly quickly.

A lot of people seem to like to learn the difficulties involved in a new tech and then just use negative thinking to exaggerate it into a reason the tech will never be useful even after decades of improvement and investment. There are huge projects around the world which have done really positive things for local ecosystems, they’re even refilling the sea of galilee after decades of over extraction and allowing groundwater levels to restore.

‘previous waves of digital tech were used to deskill workers and defang smaller companies’ just isn’t even close to true, it’s far easier to access learning resources, tools, and a final market for your product or skills than it ever has been.

I hate when people look back and say things like ‘technology took away jobs’ when the reality is it’s what ended the brutal privation and poverty as described in works like Jude the Obscure and Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - imagine how different Jude or Robert Tressell’s lives would have been with access to the educational and community organisation resources we all take for granted. Neither of those people had the slightest chance to reach their potential and that was the reality of working class life in those eras, today we all have free access to almost endless learning resources on any subject - we have for many things the tools freely available or at cost thanks to open source; coding, digital art, writing, publishing, film-making… If Joel Haver had been born Robert Tressell or Jude the Obscure then he’d certainly have never made a movie (anachronism aside) but today he and a million other normal people from average lives are able to create art and express themselves freely.

If anything tech has given fangs to little companies and independent creators, i’ve watched more Joel Haver movies than Marvel movies - one guy and his friends using hobby grade gear, home computers and a lot of passion is enough to make something that people all over the world can enjoy - tech has been fantastic for creators.

and when creators are able to use AI tools to make that even easier and to increase the scope of their creations it’ll be the big companies that suffer not the small creative groups full of passion, ideas and strong connection to the world they live in.

That’s really cool, would be a really impressive thing to see in operation.

Love the write up too, like the idea of it working at a different pace - maybe it’s designed in a way that it’s got a section that’s filled up with broken and sorted scrap that feeds in whenever it’s hot enough to run - that way most the work would likely be done on cloudy days, after it’s run for a few days they come in and refill the giant hoppers with scrap and when that’s done they go take all the bars or forms it’s made - probably like one of those huge industrial ones that have the conveyor belt of moulds that get filled then roll along something just long enough that they’re cool enough to dump out when it gets to the end and inverts dropping it into a huge pile as the mold goes round to get refilled.

and yaeh totally agree about the street cars, something i really love about solar punk is that thing of using whatever works for a locality rather than the current global trend of one-size fits all. It would be great being able to travel and actually see different things again, like nearer the equator you’ll see more sun based stuff and up here at 50N we’ll have some mostly associated with summer activities and a lot more wind power, in arid regions they’ll prefer processes that don’t require or can’t tolerate much water where as here we’ll build under the assumption that for most the year eveything’s damp. it certainly would be a more interesting world. I think localized industry is the key, especially a model when things are designed on a global scale through open source collaboration but selected and assembled locally to fit with the culture, tastes, requirements and available resources of the area.

yeah, i also really like the idea of algae grown biomas or electronically captured carbon being used for materials for cars, boars, etc - open source cars could have core components designed to last pretty much forever with components that have a shorter life such as body panels and interiors made from bio-plastics, e-plastics, even more traditional materials like wood and ceramics which are still fantastic materials when used in the right place and could come from coppiced trees and managed woodland.

there’s a lot of culture war stuff, they generally don’t vocally support the Tories but maga don’t really support the gop only trump and anything that isn’t ‘woke’ - this sort of move is i presume designed as a nod to those alex jones types that think climate change is just an excuse to install a one world government, exactly the people who voted us out of the EU because of some vague notion of sovereignty.

oh that’s really cool, would be a such a low impact way of making biochar that when you add it to the soil it’d probably actually be atmospheric carbon negative so essentially free carbon-capture - on a tiny scale but if it was how everyone did it then that’s one thing pushing in the right direction instead of the wrong direction.

and interesting about the electromagnetic pumping, i don’t think it’s especially hard to engineer compared to stuff that’s readily available in a dozen different colours so i guess there’s just no perceived market for it - i’ll have to read up and see if there are any DIY projects, being able to move liquid salt around would be really useful in a lot of heat transfer applications.

i can’t remember the details because i’m poor but they manage other peoples money so a lot of people who care about the environment have money in a 401k or something which means blackrock control the shares they own and vote in shareholder meetings for whatever’s best for rich people - there’s a way to be more proactive by registering your ownership yourself but i have no idea what it involves.

it’s not entirely irrational though, if you’re convinced you’re in a frying pan and doom is imminent then it can feel like your only option is to jump out into the fire - and maybe it will work out better, maybe we’d land on a recently added log and spring to safety… personally i’m more about doing some parcour out the pan and along and the wooden handle or jumping onto the hand holding the spatula and burning through the flesh of the beast that got us into this dire situation.

By that i of course mean developing a powerful open-source movement and an educated community which is able to transition to better ways of living without hurting anyone, it’s harder and far more complex but something we absolutely must strive for.

i could say the same thing about regulation, you really think if we can’t even restrict guns you’ll magic up the political will to ban something that would actually affect their daily life and earns so many companies so much money? coke pulls in 25b a year, they can afford all the lobbyists.

We need as many people as possible to have already moved away from them before we have the slightest chance at legislation.

what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?

But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.

ok play it through a bit, so we shut down those 7 companies - i’m not sure which seven companies people are talking about but i assume it’s related to this statistic Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions so let’s just shut them all down…

mother nature breaths a sigh of relief as billions of people die because of the collapse of global infrastructure, world governments collapse, desperate conflicts erupt around the world with warlords taking over oil reserves and production facilities… the handful of dictators with working tanks and who only care about wealth and power subjugate the helpless and starving masses promising food and prosperity when victory comes…

Now the planet has been purged of everyone who actually cares about the climate, every available source of food and energy is stripped in a frantic battle for survival - how many people do you know that would let their kids freeze to death and how many people do you know that’d go out and chop down a tree to burn? A couple of months of winter and every tree in every city would be felled.

also we need communities already experimenting with living like that or it’ll be a mess, for example I’ve never eaten meat in my life and as a kid people couldn’t even begin to grasp that it was possible - i’d constantly get asked ‘what do you eat then?!’ but I haven’t heard that question in years, closest to it is likely to be ‘what do you have at Christmas’ then when i say nut roast they no long say ‘whats that?’ they say ‘oh i had a great nut roast once…’

As a kid family holidays used to involve stopping at the only cafe that had something without meat on the menu, now even McDonalds has a wide vegan selection (in the uk). If someone had come out in the 80s and ended the meet subsidies then it would fail instantly, if it happened now there would certainly be a large backlash but the majority of people would be able to shift their consumption patterns without many problems - the policy might have a fighting chance. Even the meat-and-two guys that i know regularly have meet free dinners, it’s really common to only eat meat once or twice a week.

Of course if i was made dictator for life i’d bring in sweeping changes that ban all the evil practices which make the meat industry possible, but that’s not going to happen - what is going to happen is it’s going to continue to get easier and cheaper to eat plant based diets, we’re going to see endless headlines like ‘largest dairy producer announces closure amid increasing popularity of oat milk’, it’ll shift from the beef industry having a hugely powerful lobby backed by billions of dollars to the beef lobby being Joe Rogan and Liverking yelling at clouds about how they need to consume flesh to feel manly. When someone suggests banning an awful and disgusting practice within the meat industry the general consensus will be ‘yeah i can go without that if it’s damaging to the environment and cruel to the animals’ so policy change will actually be possible.

Just shrugging and saying ‘it’s not going to happen overnight so i’ll just keep eating meat until it does’ is absolutely mindless, the bath is never going to fill if the tap isn’t turned on - eating without meat helps fund and sustain the systems which makes it possible, it helps make it easier for other people to also eat without meat – even if it’s only dropping meat where it’s convenient it’s helping take power from the meat industry, by making a conscious choice to avoid meat you’re joining an increasing number of people who do the same which represents a sizeable portion of the market - the more that gets catered to the large it grows.

Yes it’s true that no one person is going to change things but when we start to move in the right direction it makes it easier for others to move that way also. This is the same with reusable bottles, using public transport, refilling containers at the store instead of single use plastics…

said 8 billion people in unison

a lot of infrastructure developments are nearing completion too which makes it easier to integrate new renewable projects, hopefully we’ll see an increase in tied usage for industries which can best make use of power at peek times as a way of stabilising the grid - when it’s windy they make hydrogen or extract carbon from the air using the excess energy then turn off when power generation levels fall, the more this replaces traditional constant use systems the easier it and more productive it is to add renewables to the grid especially at scale.

A similar thing is likely to emerge with electric cars, e-bikes, and other battery devices, smart meter tariffs which allow people to set it to only charge when the grid has power to spare and prices are lower - if they’re paired with home solar and localised generation then it could really help take the pressure off long distance transmission lines.