> The production would need an increase by several orders of magnitude.
Yes, but that doesn’t itself seem like an implausible economic shift given how large the existing fossil fuel sector is.
Challenging, sure — perhaps it is politically impossible, I wouldn’t know as I’m not at all politically astute — but physically it seems fine.
> Are there enough raw materials for this?
That part at least is fine. Earth is big, and while lithium is in the category “rare Earths”, it isn’t all that rare compared to what we need, and even if it was lithium isn’t even the only option for storage.
One of the things suggested in your [2] was long-distance HVDC to different weather zones, and Scandinavian (hydro? I’m unclear) storage. In principle we could also do antipodal HVDC (different time zone for day/night, different hemisphere for summer/winter), though on a previous thread I was encouraged to do the maths and realised the EU collectively would use a 1m^2 cross section conductor for current HVDC designs (if you wanted 100% substitution rather than it being merely part of the solution), and this will take quite a long time to mine at current rates.
> How much waste would there be, given the limited lifespan of those batteries?
No idea, but the current alternatives are “set lots of it on fire” (fossil fuels) and “bury a tiny quantity of extraordinarily dangerous stuff in scary artwork for geological timescales” (nuclear), and all it has to do is beat those.
IIRC the end-of-life batteries can be processed back into their raw material more easily than can the rocks we start with for fresh batteries.
There was a propaganda effort trying to paint renewables as dirty, pointing to environmental problems with Chinese REE refining. Shellenberger was hawking this at one point, claiming PV uses rare earth elements. One still hears echoes.
Yes, but that doesn’t itself seem like an implausible economic shift given how large the existing fossil fuel sector is.
Challenging, sure — perhaps it is politically impossible, I wouldn’t know as I’m not at all politically astute — but physically it seems fine.
> Are there enough raw materials for this?
That part at least is fine. Earth is big, and while lithium is in the category “rare Earths”, it isn’t all that rare compared to what we need, and even if it was lithium isn’t even the only option for storage.
One of the things suggested in your [2] was long-distance HVDC to different weather zones, and Scandinavian (hydro? I’m unclear) storage. In principle we could also do antipodal HVDC (different time zone for day/night, different hemisphere for summer/winter), though on a previous thread I was encouraged to do the maths and realised the EU collectively would use a 1m^2 cross section conductor for current HVDC designs (if you wanted 100% substitution rather than it being merely part of the solution), and this will take quite a long time to mine at current rates.
> How much waste would there be, given the limited lifespan of those batteries?
No idea, but the current alternatives are “set lots of it on fire” (fossil fuels) and “bury a tiny quantity of extraordinarily dangerous stuff in scary artwork for geological timescales” (nuclear), and all it has to do is beat those.
IIRC the end-of-life batteries can be processed back into their raw material more easily than can the rocks we start with for fresh batteries.