> appealing to nerds to believe that a long-tail disaggregated phenomenon like EV V2G is going to save the grid, but the apparent truth is that the grid will be saved by central planning and top-down command and control.
I think this sentiment applies to a lot of facets of the energy transition/preventing climate collapse - perhaps sadly?
A lot of the cooler distributed solutions and demand-side solutions could have been our saviors had we started on them in earnest 10-15 years ago. They should still be pursued as part of a robust and resilient system (everything from re-insulating homes to V2G to cutting out dairy and meat from diets to dispatchable home heating/cooling-appliances etc etc) but the truth is that we are spiraling towards climate collapse and those sorts of solutions are simply put more difficult to implement and maintain, especially because they often involve massive social buy in; at the same time, those solutions don’t tend to address the source energy question in any meaningful way (besides rooftop PV which is not enough even for low energy homes in many climates), so supply-side solutions will always still be needed, and like you said, there are economies of scale in both thermodynamic/physics efficiencies and in management and planning. It would be awesome if everyone stopped eating steak, but the realist in me knows that expecting that to happen at a scale which moves the needle just does not seem realistic.
It’s sad to me in that the “distributed” solutions tend to actually address root causes of climate catastrophe - addiction to energy consumption, “capitalism” writ large, being good denizens of the planet, etc etc in one way or another - and would entail a real improvement to how we understand the fabric of society and modern civilization (I’m speaking broadly here of course, but I think it holds water), whereas the centralized solutions feel in some sense like bandaids that obfuscate our collective responsibility and engagement with the issue (besides tax dollars and utility rates going towards the solutions I guess), but at the timescale of the crisis we are dealing with the size of that lever and its effectiveness is kind of unarguable I think.
Build big solar and wind farms, lots of batteries, start using cleaner steel and cement manufacturing processes, hope that super deep geothermal or micro-reactors progress, hope that we find a better way to sequester carbon coming from either direct air capture or post-combustion carbon capture.
Everything else is just (important) gravy. And I say this as someone mostly focused on the demand side, not supply side! (I’m a building scientist)
I think this sentiment applies to a lot of facets of the energy transition/preventing climate collapse - perhaps sadly?
A lot of the cooler distributed solutions and demand-side solutions could have been our saviors had we started on them in earnest 10-15 years ago. They should still be pursued as part of a robust and resilient system (everything from re-insulating homes to V2G to cutting out dairy and meat from diets to dispatchable home heating/cooling-appliances etc etc) but the truth is that we are spiraling towards climate collapse and those sorts of solutions are simply put more difficult to implement and maintain, especially because they often involve massive social buy in; at the same time, those solutions don’t tend to address the source energy question in any meaningful way (besides rooftop PV which is not enough even for low energy homes in many climates), so supply-side solutions will always still be needed, and like you said, there are economies of scale in both thermodynamic/physics efficiencies and in management and planning. It would be awesome if everyone stopped eating steak, but the realist in me knows that expecting that to happen at a scale which moves the needle just does not seem realistic.
It’s sad to me in that the “distributed” solutions tend to actually address root causes of climate catastrophe - addiction to energy consumption, “capitalism” writ large, being good denizens of the planet, etc etc in one way or another - and would entail a real improvement to how we understand the fabric of society and modern civilization (I’m speaking broadly here of course, but I think it holds water), whereas the centralized solutions feel in some sense like bandaids that obfuscate our collective responsibility and engagement with the issue (besides tax dollars and utility rates going towards the solutions I guess), but at the timescale of the crisis we are dealing with the size of that lever and its effectiveness is kind of unarguable I think.
Build big solar and wind farms, lots of batteries, start using cleaner steel and cement manufacturing processes, hope that super deep geothermal or micro-reactors progress, hope that we find a better way to sequester carbon coming from either direct air capture or post-combustion carbon capture.
Everything else is just (important) gravy. And I say this as someone mostly focused on the demand side, not supply side! (I’m a building scientist)