Ciao Marco, and thanks again for sharing your process thought in analyzing data trend. we (coming from the oil & gas industry) can appreciate the high level of complexity in the value production of transforming useful energy and im always dubbed as the dirty guy when i attempt to explain the leap is more than a simple step into a new era and sometimes i just give up. but where i never give up is regarding the usage of AI as your assistance, i published on LinkedIn the paper 'Do you believe your questions always have intelligent answers?' in which i faced your exact surprise of HAL 9000 sindrome... I truly believe that we can harness AI full trusted power once its feed with the data set you want to analyze not the stochastic vast data of the internet. My father has terminal cancer and we are submerged with documents with diagnosis and recommendation that is truly difficult to extract what has to be done, once AI feed with all the 'cartelle cliniche' it summarize what, who, when, how. i will never ask for a medical diagnosis! maybe at school the new topic is how to use AI. take care. paolo.
Ciao Paolo. First of all, my warmest thoughts and prayers to your father and to you and your family. On AI, you are right. My tone in the blog was a bit too glib. Like you, I believe that AI properly used (and more improvements are constantly being developed) can be an extremely powerful help. You mention HAL. I think The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was prophetic: the key is asking the right question; otherwise you might get just a puzzling "42". In my case, checking the numbers myself was simpler. In yours, properly used AI is the best way to go. On energy, i think our shared GE experience was a good school -- with the company involved in both renewables and fossil fuels, we had to think through the trade-offs and the pros and cons of both. All the best, and again my very best wishes for your father. Marco
Thanks Marco, much appreciated, I read from your blog many thoughts i share from Musk biography that i just downloaded to energy and AI to a bit lesser GE old days glory, again i loved the old one GE and its powerhouse it was amazing. I believe in rebirth or second chances for the new GE as phoenix from the ashes. thanks. stay in touch. p
Enjoyable read Marco, thank you. It's essential to maintain contact with reality and debunking spin. But this is an easy target, right? Aren't the real questions what needs to be done to increase the share of renewables? It's hardly surprising the US hasn't made much progress - except for California and RGGI there is no pricing of carbon. Indeed, certain parties and certain people have staked their political existence on there not being any pricing of carbon. Just sayin'. :)
Thank you Spyros, and yes, my intent is exactly to point attention to what needs to be done to have a sensible energy strategy.
The consensus answer is, just keep building more solar and wind generation capacity. But California has built an enormous amount, and even with carbon pricing (as you note) it has been unable to reduce the share of fossil fuels (and hence increase that of renewables) for seven years -- and electricity prices are the second-highest in the nation. That should be very surprising to anybody who keeps arguing that better carbon pricing and more renewables capacity are the answer...
The obvious problem is that energy storage technology is not moving fast enough, and we need to factor that into the strategy. Carbon pricing is not enough. So yes, the "just build more wind and solar capacity" is an easy target, but only once you take a look at the unpleasant numbers, which very few people seem willing to do.
To restate the obvious, we can raise carbon pricing all we want, but until we have a viable alternative, we either use less energy (and reduce economic growth) or we keep burning fossil fuels and pay more for it (like California). It's a bit like congestion charging in cities like London: if your public transport is at capacity already, congestion charging just raises costs with little or no impact on congestion.
So we go back to what you and I have discussed before: a choice of how to price carbon's externalities, how quickly we want to move away from fossil fuels and what economic cost we are willing to bear.
Fair enough. I'd just say that transforming the energy system will take decades, and that storage is just one of the variables. The general thing needed is flexibility, which is greater in the long run. Flexibility means changes in the mix of generation (not just renewables up, other things down, but also the right balance between what is now base/mid/peak load); adjustments to the demand side (including energy efficiency); grid integration etc. Essentially, I don't think we can reasonably expect renewables to be able to provide very high shares so early in the game (I'm addressing this not just to you, but also to "the other side", the one that you are objecting to). But again, we have most of the tools, we just need to get on with the job. Of course it will be a challenge, we are trying to change something that's grown over centuries within a few decades. But given what's at stake, failure is not an option.
Anyway, I'll have a piece out one of these days on much the same issues.
Ciao Marco, and thanks again for sharing your process thought in analyzing data trend. we (coming from the oil & gas industry) can appreciate the high level of complexity in the value production of transforming useful energy and im always dubbed as the dirty guy when i attempt to explain the leap is more than a simple step into a new era and sometimes i just give up. but where i never give up is regarding the usage of AI as your assistance, i published on LinkedIn the paper 'Do you believe your questions always have intelligent answers?' in which i faced your exact surprise of HAL 9000 sindrome... I truly believe that we can harness AI full trusted power once its feed with the data set you want to analyze not the stochastic vast data of the internet. My father has terminal cancer and we are submerged with documents with diagnosis and recommendation that is truly difficult to extract what has to be done, once AI feed with all the 'cartelle cliniche' it summarize what, who, when, how. i will never ask for a medical diagnosis! maybe at school the new topic is how to use AI. take care. paolo.
Ciao Paolo. First of all, my warmest thoughts and prayers to your father and to you and your family. On AI, you are right. My tone in the blog was a bit too glib. Like you, I believe that AI properly used (and more improvements are constantly being developed) can be an extremely powerful help. You mention HAL. I think The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was prophetic: the key is asking the right question; otherwise you might get just a puzzling "42". In my case, checking the numbers myself was simpler. In yours, properly used AI is the best way to go. On energy, i think our shared GE experience was a good school -- with the company involved in both renewables and fossil fuels, we had to think through the trade-offs and the pros and cons of both. All the best, and again my very best wishes for your father. Marco
Thanks Marco, much appreciated, I read from your blog many thoughts i share from Musk biography that i just downloaded to energy and AI to a bit lesser GE old days glory, again i loved the old one GE and its powerhouse it was amazing. I believe in rebirth or second chances for the new GE as phoenix from the ashes. thanks. stay in touch. p
Enjoyable read Marco, thank you. It's essential to maintain contact with reality and debunking spin. But this is an easy target, right? Aren't the real questions what needs to be done to increase the share of renewables? It's hardly surprising the US hasn't made much progress - except for California and RGGI there is no pricing of carbon. Indeed, certain parties and certain people have staked their political existence on there not being any pricing of carbon. Just sayin'. :)
Thank you Spyros, and yes, my intent is exactly to point attention to what needs to be done to have a sensible energy strategy.
The consensus answer is, just keep building more solar and wind generation capacity. But California has built an enormous amount, and even with carbon pricing (as you note) it has been unable to reduce the share of fossil fuels (and hence increase that of renewables) for seven years -- and electricity prices are the second-highest in the nation. That should be very surprising to anybody who keeps arguing that better carbon pricing and more renewables capacity are the answer...
The obvious problem is that energy storage technology is not moving fast enough, and we need to factor that into the strategy. Carbon pricing is not enough. So yes, the "just build more wind and solar capacity" is an easy target, but only once you take a look at the unpleasant numbers, which very few people seem willing to do.
To restate the obvious, we can raise carbon pricing all we want, but until we have a viable alternative, we either use less energy (and reduce economic growth) or we keep burning fossil fuels and pay more for it (like California). It's a bit like congestion charging in cities like London: if your public transport is at capacity already, congestion charging just raises costs with little or no impact on congestion.
So we go back to what you and I have discussed before: a choice of how to price carbon's externalities, how quickly we want to move away from fossil fuels and what economic cost we are willing to bear.
Fair enough. I'd just say that transforming the energy system will take decades, and that storage is just one of the variables. The general thing needed is flexibility, which is greater in the long run. Flexibility means changes in the mix of generation (not just renewables up, other things down, but also the right balance between what is now base/mid/peak load); adjustments to the demand side (including energy efficiency); grid integration etc. Essentially, I don't think we can reasonably expect renewables to be able to provide very high shares so early in the game (I'm addressing this not just to you, but also to "the other side", the one that you are objecting to). But again, we have most of the tools, we just need to get on with the job. Of course it will be a challenge, we are trying to change something that's grown over centuries within a few decades. But given what's at stake, failure is not an option.
Anyway, I'll have a piece out one of these days on much the same issues.
Look forward to it!