So a few billion will perish

Wakey wakey one and all, get real.

Begins 06:25

Where was this presentation given? Campus is mentioned a few times, but I do not recall which one.

Mr Michaux, I happen to be, like you, an engineer (chemical in my case), now recently retired, but with experience in renewable energies, having co-founded a company active in bio-based chemistry, renewable energies, as well as mineral resource recycling (in our case phosphate). So, I didn't only talk about the transition at hand, but invested my life savings as well as the last 13 years of my career in the matter. So, I have the immodest pretension to know a thing or two on the topic at hand. Your orders of magnitude are WAYYYY OFF! Mainly your 28 days storage, which is a pretty key assumption, conditioning much of the rest! That might well be correct for your host country Finland (which I know reasonably well, having worked there for 3 years), but as a world average, it is an order of magnitude too high! I take the European example to illustrate my point, as a) Europe is where we both live, and b) it is probably the one requiring most storage capacity: - Solar and wind power generation can be made totally constant energies, requiring ZERO storage, with an extensive global network of HVDC transmission lines. It IS technically possible, but is it economically optimum? No, it isn't... but a measure of that goes into the overall solution, and you failed to take that into account. - The installed capacity in solar and wind power generation assets can be such as to cover even the darkest windless day of the year. It IS technically possible, but is it economically optimum and socially acceptable? No, it isn't... but a measure of that goes into the overall solution, and you failed to take that into account. - Yes, a winter high-pressure system can bring windless days and low cloud cover in a part of Europe. But such systems are never ever so large as to cover the entire continent... and, by the very nature of them, there are strong winds and cloudless days on their fringes. So, there is no such thing as "Dunkelflaute" at the size of a continental-wide grid, just variations of a much lesser amplitude. - You fail to mention, and to illustrate with a simple graph, that the production of solar + wind in Europe is nearly constant on a monthly basis. There is less solar in the winter but more wind, and vice-versa. Yes, there may well be periods of lesser production within a month, but it means that no or very little seasonal storage is required... so , definitely no 28 days of storage! If you add run-of-the-river hydro resources, which are also higher in winter-time, and geothermal, which is practically constant, the sum of renewable resources is NOT seasonal, and does NOT know significant and prolonged lows. It is so true that simulations based on multiple years of real-life power consumptions vs meteorological data have been made for several regions in the world (source: Energy Report, RethinkX), concluding that storage requirement varies between 2 days for favored regions (south-western USA) and 5 days for less favored ones (Germany). Those are VERY CONSERVATIVE numbers, as the authors excluded any other generation asset than solar + wind (no hydro, no geothermal, no nuclear, ...), and did not take into account the buffering effect of the much more extended grids those regions are included into. RethinkX, but also Tesla, as well as several academic teams, put the global average power storage requirements at approximately 2 days... NOT 28 days, which is either a very naive, or a very bad faith assumption! - You fail to mention demand (mainly industrial) curtailment. It might be less expensive to invest in slight over-capacity AND pay an industry to lower or stop production, should it be needed, than to install the equivalent storage capacity, used only once or twice a year. It is already being done! It is also de facto being done with home owners in France, with EDF TEMPO tariff, as well as elsewhere in Europe. My home is precisely on that TEMPO tariff, and I curtail my power consumption on maximum 25 "red" days per year, in exchange for a much lower energy price 95% of the year. The "sacrifice" is very benign, and collectively goes a long way towards alleviating mismatches between production capacity and consumption during the most critical winter days. But such easy, zero or very low investment solutions find no place in your storage calculations. - Then, storage itself. The bulk of the storage is unlikely to be done by lithium-ion batteries! Most of it is already, and is likely to stay pumped-hydro, of which potential capacity is absolutely huge, covering all of mankind's energy storage need one to two orders of magnitude over. By the way, pumped hydro does NOT require much water like you mentioned, as it works in closed circuit. Only evaporation must be replaced, and there are ways to minimize it. Sure, you need enough water for the initial commissioning of the installation. Pumped hydro is presently by far the cheapest solution for energy storage. It is compatible for multiple-hour to a few days storage duration. It does not require ANY significant amount of mineral resources. While a pumped-hydro installation does take years to complete, thousands of projects can be built in parallel the world over, as this construction is not dependent on any rare resource or production capacity. It has also the big advantage to decouple power and storage capacity, unlike batteries. Batteries are the best solution for short-duration (4-6 hours), very fast-response storage, and therefore will also have their role to play. And those batteries might well be of chemistries using only common, cheap minerals, NOT NCA or NCM lithium-ion ones! - Finally, you also fail to acknowledge that the electrification leads to a MUCH lower consumption of primary energy! The amount of primary energy required can be divided by 3 for heating, by 3-4 for road transportation, etc. Renewable energies must NOT replace the present sum of primary energies being consumed, but less than half that amount! That leads ALL your resource calculations, in particular but not only copper, to be off by more than an order of magnitude! Yes, additional copper will be required for a complete energy transition, but 10-20% of KNOWN copper resources will suffice, and copper production will have to be increased, but only by 10-25% of present capacity... and with a decade or so to adapt. Also, and perhaps most importantly, contrary to fossil fuels, those minerals can be nearly fully recycled, and will need to be extracted only once! Misinforming/disinforming people, in that time in which we need to form consensus and implement a planet-wide change, is very destructive indeed!

Mr Michaux, Your orders of magnitude are WAYYYY OFF! Mainly your 28 days storage, which is a pretty key assumption! That might well be correct for your host country Finland, but as a world average, it is an order of magnitude too high! I take the European example to illustrate my point, as a) Europe is where we both live, and b) it is probably the one requiring most storage capacity: - Solar and wind power generation can be made totally constant energies, requiring ZERO storage with an extensive global network of HVDC transmission lines. It IS technically possible, but is it economically optimum? No, it isn't... but a measure of that goes into the overall solution, and you failed to take that into account. - The installed capacity in solar and wind power generation assets can be such as to cover even the darkest windless day of the year. It IS technically possible, but is it economically optimum? No, it isn't... but a measure of that goes into the overall solution, and you failed to take that into account. - Yes, a winter high-pressure system can bring windless days and low cloud cover in a part of Europe. But such systems are never ever so large as to cover the entire continent... and, by the very nature of them, there are strong winds and cloudless days on their fringes. So, there is no "Dunkelflaute" at the size of a continental-wide grid, just variations of a much lesser amplitude. - You fail to mention that the production of solar + wind in Europe is nearly constant on a monthly basis. There is less solar in the winter but more wind, and vice-versa. Yes, there may well be periods of lesser production within a month, but it means that no or very little seasonal storage is required... so , definitely no 28 days of storage! If you add run-of-the-river hydro resources, which are also higher in winter-time, and geothermal, which is constant, the sum of renewable resources is NOT seasonal, and does NOT know significant and prolonged lows. It is so true that simulations based on multiple years of real-life power consumptions vs meteorological data have been made for several regions in the world (source: Energy Report, RethinkX). They conclude that storage requirement varies between 2 days for favored regions (South-western USA) and 5 days for less favored ones (Germany). Those are VERY CONSERVATIVE numbers, as the authors excluded any other generation asset than solar + wind (no hydro, no geothermal, no nuclear, ...), and did not take into account the buffering effect of the much more extended grids those regions are included into. RethinkX, but also Tesla, as well as several academic teams, put the global average power storage requirements at approximately 2 days... NOT 28 days, which is either a very naive, or a very bad faith assumption! - Then, storage itself. The bulk of the storage is unlikely to be done by lithium-ion batteries! Most of it is already, and is likely to stay pumped-hydro, of which potential capacity is absolutely huge, covering all of mankind's energy storage need one to two orders of magnitude over. By the way, pumped hydro does NOT require much water like you mentioned, as it works in closed circuit. Only evaporation must be replaced, and there are ways to minimize it. Sure, you need enough water for the initial commissioning of the installation. Pumped hydro is presently by far the cheapest solution for energy storage. It is compatible for multiple-hour to a few days storage duration. It does not require ANY significant amount of mineral resources. While a pumped-hydro installation does take years to complete, thousands of projects can be built in parallel the world over, as this construction is not dependent on any rare resource or production capacity. It has also the big advantage to decouple power and storage capacity, unlike batteries. Batteries are the best solution for short-duration (4-6 hours), very fast-response storage. And those batteries might well be of chemistries using only common, cheap minerals, NOT NCA or NCM lithium-ion ones! - Finally, you also fail to acknowledge that the electrification leads to a MUCH lower consumption of primary energy! The amount of primary energy required can be divided by 3 for heating, by 3-4 for road transportation, etc. Renewable energies must NOT replace the present sum of primary energies being consumed, but less than half that amount! That leads ALL your resource calculations, in particular but not only copper, to be off by more than an order of magnitude! Yes, additional copper will be required for a complete energy transition, but 10-20% of KNOWN copper resources will suffice, and copper production will have to be increased, but only by 10-25% of present capacity... and with a decade or so to adapt. Misinforming/disinforming people, in that time in which we need to form consensus and implement a planet-wide change, is very destructive indeed!

I am concerned that the decision trees you lay out seem to require centralized control of many decisions in societies. If this is true, how do they respond to shifts in demand? Imaging your city planners determine that on average people want x amount of wine and y amount of beer. The planners determine how to integrate this into the plan. Consumer preferences change and now people want a different amount of wines vs beer. Or to take something more a basic need like clothing, demand shift to more wool and less cotton. How does the system detect and respond to these changes in basic needs without prices?

Fascinating… It’s like designing life on a big space ship. Oh gosh, I guess it is! It’s childhood end; time to get serious…

I have been following the Venus project for a long time. How did this madman end up there? He has no idea about science at all.

How to have more discussions with fellow engineers about this, Simon? You've done some great analyses here and the discussions rising from this are beyond priceless. Much respect.

Simon, we have been over this. Unsustainable is unsustainable. The Venus concept completely contradicts your own analysis. While there is the claim of designing to meet the needs of those living in the city, this is irrelevant if it is not aligned with the needs of the bio-region. And, Venus' emphasis on hi-tech solutions simply at smaller scale ignores that those technologies are inherently unsustainable and depend on future discoveries to make them make sense - just like all the tech you claim can't be done because of resource constraints. I do not understand why you are so in love with the Venus Project when it is the opposite of what your own research says we should do. Regenerative Governance is the key, not technology and fancy tech. It is the **decision-making** that makes or breaks whether a society is sustainable. You still do not seem understand this.

Is the next day's talk online also? Would love to hear some radical solutions!

There is one question that is never addressed that would expose the "climate crisis" for the scam that it is, which is "What percentage of the atmosphere is CO2?" The answer, never given in plain language, is that CO2 is currently around 420 parts per million, (google it) increased, they tell us, from 280 ppm in 1850. That's a difference of 140 ppm, or in terms more readily understood by the layman, the composition of the atmosphere has changed by 0.014% (14 thousandths of 1%) in the last 170 years. LESS THAN 1 THOUSANDTH OF 1% PER DECADE! How much closer to "zero" do they think it's possible to get? How gullible do you have to be to believe that this rate of change is causing extreme weather events, which have always happened and always will? Their claim is that this tiny amount "traps heat". ALL gasses dissipate heat and even if CO2 is an exception, the suggestion that a total of 0.042% can overwhelm the capacity of the remaining 99.958% to dissipate that heat is abject nonsense. CO2 DOES NOT control the global temperature, there is no "climate crisis". Wind farms, solar panels, heat pumps, EV's.. None of these measures are necessary, nor will they have the slightest effect on the weather. Eye-watering sums of money have already been wasted on this futile exercise. Time to wake up, stop throwing our money at these boondoggles and squandering the world's resources on projects that cannot possibly succeed as there never was a problem to begin with. There is no need to save the planet from a minuscule increase in the gas on which all life depends, but it does need to be rescued from idiot politicians and media mouthpieces that push this garbage.

The things you own end up owning you. The average house has 4 tonnes of stuff in it, I wonder how much of that is actually a net positive for us. I'm sure we could pare down our stuff per capita till each person could carry it in a backpack.

It is guaranteed that the Sun will have a ‘BIG’ say in all our future plans, and sooner than many can’t even imagine. All bets are going g to be ‘off’ unless the ‘powers’ that like to think they are powers recognise this, and begin to prepare for ‘events’, and right soon. The clock is ticking.

Only Tesla style industrialism can actually transition the world to sustainable energy. Period! This includes China's and all other's, too. 😀

Thanks for publishing this video

If the market isn't broken - then the market will find the solution. Simon does present a good case that there was underinvestment from a resource standpoint, but considering we don't know what the future would look like in generation and storage - we should just let different stakeholders invest in their version of the future and allow them to duke it out. Storage: Water heater energy storage in homes, new industrial scale battery tech, and vehicle to grid innovations are all simmering, the former cheat code of using water dams doesn't mean we have exhausted innovation. And.. if it gets dire, build another dam! Generation: Solar panel production price collapse, innovation 3 days until Sunday, graphite, low cobalt, geo thermal, and the nuclear option: go nuclear. All these become more real as price of energy *consistently* rises. The best form of investment is to --- add a carbon tax gradually, increasing cost, hopefully before the supply of oil runs out. As this would multiply the incentives - no need to guestimate the mineral needs for supply especially when minerals allow for more resilient energy supply than the current infrastructure. So the argument that Europe is the least prepared, doesn't jive with the industrial scale wind farms being built there, the massive green energy infrastructure that has already come online, the french heavy investment in nuclear, and the surprising resilience to missing Russian oil. And then who knows... if fission is real... we might be in a completely different ballpark altogether. Scrap every version of the future we presumed.

Hi Simon, What about farming large amounts of algea in the sea and ferment this algea to get biogas and then use this biogas as fuel (its already a thing at least in france there are vehiculs that work on biogas from cow shit) Gunther Pauli from the club of rome suposidly has projects to produce mass amounts of biogas with algea farmed in the sea, he claims it is doable (part of the blue economy project i believe). Is it doable ? Is it possible to scale up a project like this that would give enough biogas to replace our consuption of oil so that our societies don't collapse ?

I’ve always believed we wouldn’t be able to replace our entire energy profile and just continue business as usual. To me, the more we convert our economy, the softer the collapse.

We need a complete reversal of what we have to all manufactured things made to be long lasting and easily recycled, accepting mass transit , smaller very efficient spartan living spaces and very little global shipping of all the crap we consume , no air travel and an end to militarism …. I see nothing leaning that way. And an end to there being people who have huge wealth and the entire luxury economy and travel tourism ….. whaaah no no no no . High tech and advanced manufacture to be focused on health and communications and education and humans serving humans in all the arts and social things that actually make a good life. A super advanced technology non consumer good life. No sorry you cannot have more stuff go see your therapist.

I think we will all be riding Ebikes and conventional bicycles and that could be as soon as5 year's

The world will transition away from fossil fuels as they become scarce and expensive. We will transition to uranium and later to thorium. Wind, and solar are a complete and total waste of time and money.

This was a wonderful far-reaching presentation and discussion. Thank you!

Thank you. Great talk. Hey, so I wonder what you think now of the 1970x experiment or computer exercise done in Australia that input a bunch factors and predicted civilisation basically crashing by or around 2040. In my mind, maybe the plotting of x and y axis and the 2040 date is more about our reckoning with having to defenestrate hedge funds managers the world over, embrace the idea of a great simplification (I also follow Nate Hagens) and change our civilization to one of less growth, less consumption, less complexity. That it does not all have to so dire as I and we interpret the results to be or as dire as articles about it make it. Those scientis or programmers back then lived a growth is right kind of mindset and greeted the big X of their results like it was a bad thing. And take it easy on me, my degree is in Spanish Literature, math makes my head hurt and I'm going on an at least 5 year memory of seeing it :)

Thank you M. Michaux. The world need people like you. After 20 years of practice in engineering, I realized that I chose the wrong field of work. Your work will change life of thousands of future engineers in order to make our world a better place. Thank you again.

Dear Simon, on one of the nice slides you had: So, what do we do? - We must collectively decide... I thought about it before as well. we miss a platform where we could interact collectively.(i missed during lecture) more details on it - have any ideas? Some global voting software or? (In back of head I aslo have what JF - mentioned that people usually are not trained in what they out to want. In your Tier 2 economic slide - do you really see a place for this in future? (About tier2) While keeping this rate of resource depletion vs. what TVP calls for an access to all inhabitants..seems to me a value update or (paradigm change) as you called seem inevitable. Thanks for all the extensional work!

Rigorous methods here, but I see one glaring issue. This assumes power consumption will be at will (as it is today) and forces us to build the grid that supports that. As the work shows, that's not likely so that won't happen. What could happen is a world that powers up with available energy and goes silent when the wind is still, the sun doesn't shine, etc. We could build some version of that world. Thata probably closer to the 6 hour storage scenario. Let's see that study.

Unbelievably impressed Simon. If you build it they will come, I might come too! Or maybe help to build a sister community here in rural upstate NY based upon those same principles.

Great info!

it is going as planned. destroying everything for the middle class. you have missed the entire agenda and real goals of what they are up to. get your head out of the sand

Last graphic has no wind turbines or solar....is the energy 100% MSR ?

Great numbers. I mean really for all the large grids the only answer that seems to make sense is that base load NEEDS to be nuclear. It is the only way to bring the carbon intensity down in any reasonable time frame.

It seems like the most obvious way it won't go as planned is that it won't go. What is more likely: That folks eliminate coal, gas and oil and accept an 1880s level of prosperity, or that enough folks keep using fossil fuels the transformation is less than half way accomplished as compared to the plans.

The Pentagoons says - “simple: invade Russia and steal their resources!”

It’s not about establishing Western type democracy (but with more/less corruption) in Ukraine, but rather more ‘who’ will control mineral and energy resources across 11 timezone-wide Russia. Read ‘A Century of War’ by F William Engdahl, to learn about certain (wild) Western powers’ strategy in respect of these resources since the discovery and realisation of the importance of oil as a strategic resource, and thereby why and by whom the Russo-German Nordstream pipeline got blown up, and what to expect in the future.

There’s precious little discussion about the ‘why reduce CO2?’ When it is an entirely beneficial essential gas, which does not drive climate change, and has been proven conclusively not to do so by Professors Wm Happer and Wm van Wijngaarden, Princeton, as discussed here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eaK6p2Vshb2ksJIsi=KGXzecz4sLr71ESy

This guy thinks he will reinvent capitalism. You best buy bitcoin friend. Look out for your 500 year projections.

I think that we need to pair the Allam cycle natural gas and SMRs to couple with intermittently renewable power.

Obviously, most - if not all - Governments build their working energy models on Magical Thinking, also known as Fantasy Land. Then they call it Science?

Did you cover flow batteries? I fast-forwarded through this, but didn't seen anything except "VFB" is a graphic that might refer to "vanadium flow battery". There are other chemistries, but since the "bullshit" plan won't work, I guess we will need to start constructing a lot of new nuclear generation, while also reducing consumption i.e., use more efficient machines (EVs), lights (LEDs), heating (heat pumps).

"The non-fossil fuel system has yet to be constructed"? Then what are all these wires about? And how am I charging my two EVs at home? Weird, right? OK, so that's a little simplistic, I get it. We need to increase clean (non-carbon) electricity production, transmission infrastructure, and storage. But how hard will this be, really? Second, it's not clear what the 1.1% means ("of transport"? planes, trains, shipping, as well as cars and light trucks?), but using data from most auto brands and EV models, cars and light trucks sales from the industry grew from 2.2% of total sales to 6.1% towards the end of 2022. That's a big jump and the share is only going to increase, unless gas prices come down to $2/gallon again. Third, it's irrelevant what a British Petroleum report says about renewables' share of total electricity generation in 2022. What matters is how quickly we can ramp up to ~100%. That's the key. p.s. I like it when academics used "bollocks" in their talks, really raises the level of the discourse.

Noticed Sodium was missing from calculations - Vandium will be the main metal for storage and Sodium, Magnesium, Silicon, seawater will displace Lithium in traction batteries. However this is the best video on the subject I have seen and integrates a lot of the research in a very direct manner. Many thanks

Demanding the end of fossil fuels is just another tactic in the arsenal of Marxists whose sole goal is to destroy capitalism and bring down the Western world. What better way to accomplish this than to demand the end of inexpensive reliable energy. The foundation of the modern Western world that they despise so much.

Yes, historically, the US went down the uranium pathway instead of the thorium pathway so they could have EASIER nuclear weapons. (Even the products of Molten Salt Reactors can be weaponised by it's a bit more difficult.) But as an Australian, good luck trying to promote nuclear in Australia! I've tried the last 15 years, published in magazines (more philosophical than technical - because I approach this from that sort of background), and became really discouraged that everyone bought into the renewables myth. Until I realised it wasn't a myth. Until I realised they were now 1/4 the cost of nuclear (Lazard LCOE - unfirmed.) Until I realised that the BUG I used to criticise had become the FEATURE! That is, Overbuild! OVERBUILD WIND AND SOLAR TO REDUCE STORAGE - peer-reviewed engineers plan to Overbuild the grid to get through winter with just 2 days for storage for each city. Many studies confirm this, from Tony Seba through to engineer David Osmond who tracked Australia's AWFUL 2022 La Nina weather and concluded a 170% build would supply our electricity grid without much storage at all. reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-grid-is-well-within-reach-and-with-little-storage/ INDEED SODIUM GRID BATTERIES USE NO RARE METALS - no lithium, cobalt, graphite, or copper. They're less flammable, less toxic, and 30% less expensive than Lithium. www.pv-magazine.com/2023/04/03/australian-manufacturer-reveals-1-mwh-sodium-chloride-battery-design/ There's 83.5 Quadrillion tons - enough that if we built GIGANTIC batteries to store the entire world's electricity for a YEAR - it would only use 0.0006% of the sodium. AND we can recycle it. AND there are some EV's using sodium batteries. Shorter ranges, but so much cheaper to! A great city car. AVOID METAL BATTERIES THROUGH PUMPED HYDRO WHERE POSSIBLE: these are "batteries" mainly of water and gravity. The metals in them are equivalent to a coal power station - instead of burning millions of tons of coal - we're just moving millions of tons of water. Professor Blakers has a satellite atlas of the earth’s many pumped hydro sites we could use. There is 100 TIMES more potential sites than we would need. re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ IRON BATTERIES rust and “derust” iron. Iron is 5% of the earth’s crust. No rare earth’s required! Form Energy are building one in Minnesota. There are also a variety of Redox flow and liquid metal batteries made from super-abundant materials as well. WIND AND SOLAR do not NEED rare earths - they can use them for a sector boost, but do not *have to*. The majority of brands are moving away from rare-earths due to cost. 95% of Solar uses silicon (which is 27% of the Earth’s crust) and aluminium (8%) and glass. Wind is made from iron (5%), aluminium and now recyclable fibreglass. There are new wind generators that do not use ANY rare earths in the magnets, and we now have the technologies and companies that can recycling up to 95% of the materials in a wind turbine - even those pesky fibreglass blades. Wind generators WITHOUT rare-earth magnets are now a thing:- www.offshorewind.biz/2022/07/28/15-mw-rare-earth-free-offshore-wind-turbine-seeks-path-to-market/ and www.nironmagnetics.com/ and this next one sounds AMAZING and could be the future of wind power because it ELIMINATES servicing 4 times a year to basically ZERO over 30 years! Meet the Twistac rotary electrical contact. newsreleases.sandia.gov/turbine_innovation/ ELECTRIC VEHICLES are now up to 1 in 5 vehicles sold today (IEA) and are moving to Lithium Iron Phosphate: These do not use ANY rare earths. The USGS reserves from 2022 show we have 89 million tons of lithium which at 6 kg of lithium per EV would build 14 BILLION EV's - we only need a 1.4 billion. That was before Sept 2023 when America found the world’s largest lithium deposit (so far!) We keep finding it faster than we can use it. We haven't even reached a peak in lithium DISCOVERY yet - let alone a peak in production. The head of the IEA predicts a peak in world oil demand within the next few years due to the rise of EV's. TRUCKS: Tesla have their 40 ton Semi, Janus Electric in Australia have their 100 ton EV (that does a 60 battery swap every 400 km or so.) As the EV's increase, the oil demand decreases - leaving more than enough to keep mining going until even mining and industry are converted to electric. MINING: Most brands are now trialling giant EV's! But the real action is in converting old diesel haulers into EV. There is ALREADY funds to convert 8,500 diesel mining trucks over the next 3 years, but the "Cool Planet Group" has it's sights set on 5 giant mining companies and getting as many of the MILLION mining trucks worldwide as it can converted by 2030. www.mining-technology.com/features/mining-vehicle-electrification ALUMINIUM CAN REPLACE 90% OF COPPER'S FUNCTIONS - "Aluminium has 60% of the conductivity of copper. This means you will need a 25% thicker wire for the same results. However, the aluminium in this equivalent wire will cost and weight about half as much as copper. That’s it." It can be used for powerlines, electric motors, electric cars, wind turbines and heat sinks. www.shapesbyhydro.com/en/material-properties/how-we-can-substitute-aluminium-for-copper-in-the-green-transition/ Peak copper? NO COPPER? No problem. The energy transition will roll on regardless! 60% LESS ENERGY REQUIRED WHEN WE ELECTRIFY EVERYTHING. Renewable sceptics often insist renewables must replace the ORIGINAL fossil fuel thermal value straight out of the oil well or coal pit. But this is a dirty "double-dipping" accounting trick. Thermal systems waste so much energy that when we Electrify Everything the required base energy target will be 40% of the original thermal energy mined. So while wind and solar are doubling every 5 years, bringing us forward towards the end goal, as we Electrify Everything the end goal rushes towards us! The final energy required shrinks. www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency INDUSTRIAL HEAT can be stored in various thermal batteries, from giant sand silos at 600 C for district heating in cooler cities, to Rondo's heat bricks at 1500 C - and only loses 1% per day! That's a great place to dump excess wind and solar, and get industry through a rainy day. Australia's "Energy Transition Initiative" - from Climateworks and the CSIRO - run a thinktank representing a THIRD of our stock-market. It includes big names like Australian Gas Infrastructure Group, APA Group, Aurecon, AustralianSuper, BHP, BlueScope Steel, bp Australia, Cbus, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Fortescue Metals Group, HSBC, Orica, National Australia Bank, Rio Tinto, Schneider Electric, Wesfarmers Chemicals, Energy & Fertilisers, Westpac and Woodside Energy. They have plans to Electrify Everything, use renewables to generate industrial heat - boosting it with green hydrogen as necessary - and smelt all the steel, aluminium and copper we could need. ALSO make all the chemicals and explosives as well. energytransitionsinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Presentation-Australian-Industry-ETI-Setting-up-industrial-regions-for-net-zero.pdf RECYCLING: There are remarkable new technologies in recycling all these things. Every ton of minerals mined will be recycled forever in a growing pool of resources. By 2040, HALF of the EV batteries made will be from recycled materials. Basically, Big Battery is replacing Big Oil. Wind and solar have a 4 year doubling curve. The IEA says the peak of fossil fuel demand will occur in a few years. We are moving from finite and polluting thermal fuels to electricity systems made from super-abundant materials that can be recycled forever! FOOD: 3d seaweed and shellfish farming & Precision Fermentation are competing to feed the world. I don't know who will win, but seaweed farms restore the oceans with the potential to feed the human race many times over without using any fertiliser, land, or fresh water. 2% of the ocean (nutrient rich coastal areas) would feed 12 billion people. www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/01/sea-forest-better-name-seaweed-un-food-adviser The seaweed is dried into a powder, and then like soy, can be a protein we add in everything from dairy to bread to everything. Precision Fermentation? It produces a bacterial fermented paste that can be turned into chicken tenders or bacon strips. It uses solar power to make hydrogen, feeds them to special bacteria with a few minerals, and BOOM! All the fats and protein you could want. If you include solar panels in the land to protein equation, it's about 10 TIMES more efficient than soy beans! But when you consider arable land, and how solar panels can be on rooftops and float on fresh water reservoirs or be in deserts - we can basically discount the area for solar as it is not consuming ARABLE LAND! So this system is thousands of times more efficient than soy beans from a farmland perspective, and 138,000 times more efficient at generating protein than BEEF! www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/24/green-technology-precision-fermentation-farming PEAK CONSUMPTION: Then when everyone has everything they need and are living in first world economies, the Worldwide Demographic Transition will start and the population will actually start to decline - maybe back to 6 billion by 2100. www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/27/world-population-bomb-may-never-go-off-as-feared-finds-study

Great talk. I think the cheap sand batteries would be great for district heating and should be rolled out

What role can geothermal have to alleviate the heat requirements?

Hello Simon, agree with all this and think you're raising critical issues Regarding water batteries using fresh water. The fresh water should be possible to still use after collecting energy from it as a battery so it wouldn't be all an additional need - logistics would be a problem to solve as obviously we can't use it while it's being stored - but assuming some constant drain on this battery

9:09 cognitive dissonance. and not so "hopeful". as this goes along maybe it is answered but..... the EV folks never intended, at all, to actually reduce FF consumption but to delay any serious carbon tax or other Co2 reductions. so it does not require an at all realistic plan. kerosene, and diesel also, but especially kerosene, is a limited fractional distillate. about 9/100. and today kerosene is marketed almost exclusively as jet fuel. there isn't any need to go into why we are still not even doing SAF05, and are "hopeful", as the announcer says in this video, that e-fuels will suddenly appear while we talk about Land Use and terrible food price increases because of not enough sugar, cassava and corn. except $2 to $3 a gallon for jet fuel, while apple juice sells for $8 or $9 might help illustrate that what EV's... and Land Use... Drop The Crops etc etc etc is all about. air travel. more fracking. and politicians that can see with their own eyes that very few of us have even reduced our use of fossil fuel kerosene. plus the USA has done nothing, unlike China, to reduce kerosene or diesel. but maybe make petrol cheaper by Switching To EV's. which is "hopeful" as well as not something anyone needs any "real" plans for. just more talking. and $2 to $3 a gallon jet fuel. for which non-OECD demand will easily exceed any aircraft improvements.

I will give you 5 out of 5 stars for this presentation. However you erred in the explanation of seasonal storage by assuming lossless storage. Assuming only H2 can satisfy seasonal storage at 28% round trip, the horizontal line should be drawn with 3.57 times as much area above the line as gray area below it. I'd say that would mean storage for 8 months and withdrawal for only four months. Summer storage would easily consume 2/3 of available solar energy production for seasonal use. And about half of the remaining third would be stored in batteries for overnight use. Thus solar can serve only about 1/6 of rated capacity on an annual basis, which is optimistic, since an 11% capacity factor device can only serve a continuous load of 1/9 capacity with perfect storage. That might translate into a peak load of 1/6 capacity having a .66 load factor - but only with perfect storage. So imperfect seasonal storage must reduce peak load that can be served to far less than 1/6 rating - possibly a tenth of rating annually. Lets compare 10 MW of solar with all of its storage requirements and H2 turbine requirements to 1 MW of nuclear on a cost and materials basis. The ratio needs refinement to account for every month in the year, but is certainly far greater than six to one. I should add that nothing in the above seasonal discussion deals with the mineral requirements for a battery buffer. That need exists entirely within each monthly period to make complete use of what is left after seasonal storage needs are met. Within the month the need to deal with possible week long shortages still exists and near perfect battery storage of at least 8 hours exists in each day. A day without sun mandates tripling that need to 24 hours of average load and a week long outage extends that to at least 100 hours of average load. Should those needs draw upon the seasonal storage with its 72% energy loss, rather than a near perfect battery buffer, the value of each MW of solar capacity could drop from the vicinity of 1/10 of a MW to some lower level of uselessness.