I may be wrong, but I get the impression that the authors of this paper aren't fully convinced that there's a problem, if that is the case it would explain some of their conclusions. My main concern is that they don't seem to even consider energy efficiency, and the are really not very creative in considering how we use the energy we do use. There's a long debate elsewhere on these forums about the use of hydrogen, and the fact that it is "inefficient" (which, strictly, it is) but when you couple hydrogen generation with intermittent solar and wind - which this paper somewhat dismisses as unusable because they are variable - you start getting something interesting. Yes in pure energy terms it's inefficient, but it's not creating CO2 which is the point. (But yes there are complicated environmental issues with solar and wind.) 


What is quite fun is that they get into Mathusianism, so the first argument is that we will run out of resources, and then the counter argument is that this is not a problem because we will (and have in the past) developed system and/or technology to cope with this. So therefore we don't need to consider developing solutions to combat climate change because we will develop solutions to combat climate change. Errr....


Re Battery EV, and indeed all forms of transportation, I think the other question is - will we actually keep travelling around as much as we did pre-Mar 2020? (Hard for me to admit since I work in transportation!) If we actually paid the full cost, including saving towards the cost of coping when climate change hits, would we see society change such that the use of vehicles simply dropped? The idea that it's normal for the majority of the population to get in a car and drive to work (or children to school) has grown up in my lifetime - and I'm still of working age -  it's not set in stone as much as we might think it is. And that was before home working was possible for so many.


But yes, I suspect you're right that in the short term nuclear probably is the only feasible answer.


Cheers,


Andy

Im no expert but Nuclear energy is what is needed.

pv cells will be a problem at end of life as they have lead and cadmium to recycle. 

ev batteries are full of rare cobalt bound for landfill.

hydrogen cells are inefficient, high pressure explosives.

Maybe all this new tech is politically driven by vested interests.

CO2 is not a problem.

We should first use our coal and gas then nuclear. And invest time in tech that cleans up pollution.

It is worth recalling how much fossil fuel we have and how much we are using.

If there were no concerns with acid rain, mercury emissions, CO2 &c. then there would be enough (of the dirty sort of) coal to keep the world turning all- electric for perhaps a century, reserves  between 1 and 2 thousand billion (1 or 2 *10^12) tonnes.

Right now we burn a bit slower than that - about 9 billion tons a year (or if you prefer a million cubic feet for every person on the planet, per year )-  mostly in Asian power plants, rest of world consumption is lower and falling. However, absent another planet to pump the smoke into, reverting to all coal is not very practical. Oil is cleaner, which is why as a species we burn about 5 billion tonnes (a cubic mile of it, roughly) every year - which does not sound so much does it? There is still enough oil (well so long as you include the harder to refine tarry stuff with lots of heavy metals and sulphur compounds) to keep us rolling at that rate for several decades.  But it is in places harder to reach, and in some cases politically unstable (not just the US and Russia....) Here we had to rely on British coal or oil, we would soon be (politely) snookered, we used to pump 3 bl/yr in the 1980s and late 1990s from the north sea, now down to about a third and falling while  the amount we pump on land in Hants and Dorset is negligible.

Gas (methane), as a planet there is quite a lot left, but we are not so sure how much, and  a lot of the stuff under the ice in Russia is being released as the ice melts and cannot be captured. From the UK only perspective we are a net importer, and have been since the early 2000s - we are on a plateau at the moment of about half of what we consume, and the rest is piped from Russia, or comes by tanker from Qatar or perhaps places like Turkmenistan (though even they have stopped giving their citizens free gas a few years ago).  Iran has plenty, but for political reasons we do not buy it.

Even if you do not buy the climate change argument, you must realise that there are resource limits that will bite  in the lifetime of current school children, and by the time their children are fully grown, will be very serious.

Given that we are still using Victorian sewers, and in some places pre-war electrical distribution, and half UK housing was built in the 1950s or earlier, we do need to be longer sighted than just looking at profit over a couple of decades.

And personally, I'd add that if there is any chance at all of us stuffing up the planet, we should err on the side of cautious, or all that money will be worth nothing.

Nuclear has a role to play - and if we were less worried about the present and more about the future maybe we could make better use of spent fuel by using as hot rocks to heat water for swimming pools and so on.

Opinion again: On one aspect, hydrogen cells, it is true there is a lot of 'scientific propoganda' (ha!) as to it's current unsuitibility. Well, I dont mind being a [perhaps poor] conspiracy theorist at times, as conspiracy is only a conspiracy until it isnt  (one cant prove God does not exist, just as one cant prove God does.. etc, though some argue.  I digress), so for me there are huge attractions to HFC tech and therefore there will be vested interests to stop that happening or simply lesser interest, unless power control and profit is in it (part of the unfortunate human flaw perhaps).  So lets adopt the obnoxious unfriendly battery EV and related tech, the wind turbine with limited lifetime blades and most likely then to landfill, the gross amounts of public money commited for these expensive options in vain hope, in the interim, instead of going at the best we can (whatever that is), or are those all we can muster.  Any way, line 100 'clever' folk up and there will be a split opinion on the best way to proceed. To succeed, it would appear the world has to pool its resources and come together with its great minds with input from all sides to get the best plan. That's a tough ask.


I stand down.


Now then, where was that twin and earth I was looking for.  All the best folks. :-)

There are no two ways about it - fossil fuel is running out so either we (that is the "developed" countries) must use less fuel overall or we have to use something else. Wind and solar may be marginal now, but we have to start from somewhere. I'd like to see more nuclear power, but home-grown please.


At some stage, hydrocarbons will be reserved for flying and then when it gets really scarce, military flying. Shipping will, presumably, revert to sailing.

I forgot to add a link I intended in my lastr -  it matters not about scrutinising (or 'peer' review etc) it...its just meant to show other views. (I still dont like the idea of batteries as even the article mentions them ,but accept it seems a here and now favoured option by many).  https://www.respectmyplanet.org/publications/fuel-cells/debunking-dr-bossels-anti-hydrogen-thesis

"I'd like to see more nuclear power, but home-grown please." I agree with that sentiment.

All these are good points and we have a problem which can be solved by nuclear power. However, the "Greens" object to this too, and do everything they can to make it unavailable! It takes a huge length of time to build nuclear, partly because "proper" nuclear (the British type) has huge amounts of "safety" built-in, and is also hugely expensive to build. However, the cost of the power is low. Britain used to lead the world in nuclear reprocessing, but again this has been run down because the "Greens" (shorthand for the Marxist left environmentalists) want no nuclear bomb materials to be available to Britain, although they do not object to Russia and China having them! They object to reprocessing, storage, or anything else vaguely nuclear and Governments of all persuasions seem to become frightened they might lose votes.


We must continue to use gas, oil, and coal (of which we still have large reserves, although little is mined due to H&S rules), and shutting down our very clean coal power stations is just plain idiocy. We get some very expensive electricity from wind and solar, but it is very unreliable and runs at very low capacity utilisation on average, because of the weather and seasons, which we cannot control.


We need reliable power all the time to operate our society as it is. I know some people would like to wreck that too, but that is another story. I hate this new term, "demand management". That is simply code for restricting usage by some external power to wreck our society. The climate debate continues, despite Covid having given us solid proof that CO2 levels are NOT controlled by fossil fuel burning! The theory has never been very good, but it is the centre of a huge money grab industry, particularly by academics who just want the money. The same result can be seen with Covid, "give us money and we will cure all known ills". Someone might but it will take a long time, equals money forever for making out that it is extra serious, worth wrecking the economy for, it isn't. We need to start another 10 or more nuclear builds at once, sort out Sellafield and scrap HS2 to pay for it. That is how much HS2 is costing, our entire energy supply for the next 50 years. Get a grip, Boris!!!

I had to come back to post this, seen in an earlier announcement:


"National Grid ESO

Good job we are looking at small modular reactors (SMR's) then.


The Gubmint has just ploughed several more million in the consortium, led by Rolls Royce and including some big "nuclear" players, so we should see a few with bloody great Union Jacks on them coming to a bit of wasteland near you


It will probably be a world leading design - and then we'll DFUQ it up commercially in that uniquely British fashion and end up buying them from the Chinese a generation later.


Regards


OMS