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by ptkd 1770 days ago
high level there's a two pronged path:

* Clean electricity generation (solar, wind, hydro with some sort of grid storage/distribution mechanism to handle when sun isn't shining/wind isn't blowing) and

* Electrification (EVs, non-gas heating)

> Can we have planes

Yes, at some point. Electric planes are being explored but have difficulties with battery weight. Another possibility is green hydrogen or perhaps some other yet-undiscovered energy source. Planes account for a relatively low percentage of global emissions (maybe 2% right now?) so this is not a priority

> Boats?

Yes -- electric pleasure crafts exist already. For long haul/shipping I'm not totally sure what's being worked on, but it certainly will be possible

> Clothing

Another space I'm not super familiar with. Again, it's important to remember that we need to focus on the heavy hitters, which currently are dirty electricity production (ie coal plants) and transportation (gas-powered cars)

1 comments

So basically you say, let's replace most of the energy sources by solar, wind and hydro. And use battery every time we need to get off the grid.

As for storage for the grid, are we actually confident that we can transfer that quantity of energy between countries ? Because if everything becomes electricity powered. That means a lot of power over long distance.

Do we know if there are enough natural resources to produce that amount of lithium batteries also ?

Grid-level batteries will likely be made of something else -- check out form energy who does iron-based batteries.

> Can we transfer power between countries

Certainly possible, but requires infrastructure build out. Most countires can also provide a lot of their own solar/wind