Night's Candles Are Burnt Out, Seán Keating, 1889–1977

As part of the Work on Climate Expert Office Hours, I had a chance to talk to Dave, a renewable energy technologist at Google.

A few notes on our conversation:

Book recommendations on energy

• "The Grid" by Gretchen Bakke (talks about challenges of integrating intermittent renewables into the grid)
• "Powering in the Future" by Robert Laughlin (good for energy nerds)
• "Energy and Civilization" by Vaclav Smil (about the role of energy in human civilization)
• "The Climate Casino" by William Nordhaus (on climate economics and renewable energy)
• "A Citizen's Guide to Climate Success" by Mark Jaccard (policy book, also funny)
• Short Circuiting Policy by Leah Stokes (if you want to get angry about policy)

Current challenges

• Supplying clean energy for data centers
  • Rapidly growing need for data centers to power large language models
  • Increasing efficiency of these models 100x could prevent devastating CO2 emissions
• Transmission Bottlenecks
  • Building out more high-voltage transmission lines is a major bottleneck
  • Many transmission projects stalled due to "not in my backyard" opposition
  • New wind/solar farms are pointless without transmission to get electricity onto grid
• Intermittency and Weather Forecasting
  • Classic problem of wind/solar being intermittent and mismatched to demand
  • Improved weather forecasting is crucial for optimizing renewable dispatch
  • More predictive capability through better weather models is imperative
• Optimal Power Flow (OPF) Modeling
  • Solving OPF problem is key for grid operators to avoid overloads/blackouts
  • OPF models determine optimal electricity flows during periods of energy scarcity
  • Understanding OPF is valuable for using computing/software for renewable integration
• Overall grid management challenges
  • Intermittency of renewables coupled with transmission constraints
  • Inability to perfectly predict and match supply/demand
  • Must be overcome for effective integration of high levels of renewables

Role of Nuclear Energy

• We have to build a lot more nuclear power plants. Nuclear power provides stable baseload power and is one of the safest forms of electrical power generation
• It produces a tiny amount of nuclear waste, which can be managed despite opposition
• Once built and paid off, nuclear plants can last 100 years and provide inexpensive, stable power
• The French have perfected building nuclear plants cost-effectively, achieving economies of scale and low carbon intensity
  • as of Dec 2023, they generate 2/3 of electricity from nuclear.
  • they have one of the lowest CO2 emissions per unit of electricity in the world at 85g of CO2/kWh, compared to global average of 438.

on Fusion

• Dave spent 5 years working on fusion energy at Google, mostly exploring ideas that didn't pan out
• Commonwealth Fusion Sciences, an MIT startup, has a promising approach combining high-temperature superconductivity with toroidal Tokamak fusion
• Their approach is based on well-understood models, making it more predictable and engineerable
• However, fusion is still at an early stage, similar to solar energy in the 1950s before silicon cells became practical
• Fusion may be viable for future generations, but serious decarbonization efforts can't rely on it in the near-term

what he wished people knew more about energy

• energy in food
  • You can put food into a calorimeter and figure out its energy content in joules.
  • For a potato, if you burn it in a calorimeter, you'll find out how many joules of energy it contains.
  • You can then trace back how many joules of fossil energy it took to produce that potato.
  • Divide the fossil energy input by the food energy output, and you get a dimensionless ratio in joules per joule.
  • For a potato, it's something like one quarter of a joule of fossil energy per joule of food energy, so a 4 to 1 ratio.
  • That's not great that fossil energy is still burned to make a potato, but at least it's 4 joules out for every 1 in.
  • If you look at the American diet on average, it's about 8 joules of fossil energy per joule of food energy.
  • So the American diet is about 30 times worse than just eating potatoes in terms of embedded fossil energy.
• energy in air travel
  • He's happy Google Flights shows you the tons of CO2 emitted for flight routes.
  • People should especially avoid short flights, as a lot of emissions come from the energy expended in the climb to cruising altitude.
  • For short flights, planes may never reach that cruising altitude before descending.
  • Long distance isn't good either, as it burns more fuel over a longer distance.
  • If people were more aware, we'd have electrified high-speed rail networks which are much easier to decarbonize than air travel.
  • Airplanes running on batteries are either too heavy or too short range currently.

imparting words

• get to know your neighbors and the people around you
• volunteer for a nonprofit / start your own like Dave
• Dave started his own nonprofit that he volunteers for
• find joy and happiness close to home and in their own communities, this can make communities stronger and happier
• The implication is that being engaged locally and finding fulfillment in one's community can lead to lower climate impacts from factors like reduced consumption, travel, etc.