Greenwashing is real and its insane. How people are being given false hopes in the name of renewables.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix

by aks_red184

6 comments

  1. Yeah, saw a post a couple months ago that put it into perspective a bit more succinctly (if succinctly is a 10-part post), using essentially the same data as what’s linked:

    >85% of primary energy still comes from fossil fuels!

    >This graph is grim.

    >But here’s a short thread about why things are not as bad as they first seem

    [https://bsky.app/profile/thierryaaron.bsky.social/post/3lrb6vltw7s2y](https://bsky.app/profile/thierryaaron.bsky.social/post/3lrb6vltw7s2y)

    I do appreciate the “things are horrible, but be happy” of his post.

  2. This doesn’t show what you think it does. “primary energy” is bullshit. It counts all of the energy wasted by thermal fossil fuel processes as energy end use.

    Example: a coal power plant uses 3 units of coal energy to produce 1 unit of electrical energy. That counts as 3 times as much “primary energy”

    A gas car uses 4 units of oil energy to go 100km. An EV charged off a solar panel uses 1 unit of electrical energy to go 100km. Again, 4 as much primary energy for oil.

    They are not the same thing. That’s why fossil fuel lobbyists talk about primary energy so much. It inflates their importance and the difficulty of replacing them.

  3. If hope is your takeaway from current events, you do not read events well.

  4. Everything you need to know is in the end notes at the bottom. This is not an intellectually honest paper.

  5. What I know is, when your batteries are dead, you are running the generator.

  6. ALSO: When we electrified the country/world smart meters and real time pricing were not technologically possible. Consequently we initially created a pure load following model. When customers exercised their option to turn on a light, run the drier/oven/AC we ramped up generation in real time to keep the generation and load (load = demand) in synch.

    I am on a “time of use” plan. “On peak” electricity costs me more than the base fixed rate plan charges. “Off peak” charges me less. We minimize our use during “On peak” hours, and shift everything to “off peak”. Overall this saves us money.

    If there was a dynamic pricing plan (like with surge pricing), I’d sign up for that. 77% of US residences have real time electricity meters. Only 7% of customers are on “time of use” plans. If we encouraged consumers to move to “time of use” plans, or even better, dynamic pricing plans, we could synch up generation and load and greatly increase our shift to renewables.

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