One of the demands that the Extinction Rebellion Movement are wanting met are zero carbon emissions by 2025 via replacement of all sources of energy with renewable resources. To do this by 2025 is next to impossible, but even with a reasonable target of 2050 such a task is still a massive undertaking.

The main proponent of achieving 100% renewables globally is Mark Jacobson, where in 2009 he co-authored an article in Scientific American titled "A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables". In 2017, Jacobson co-authored a Stanford University paper that details a roadmap as to how this goal can be achieved:

https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CountriesWWS.pdf

There are numerous clips on Youtube where Jacobson talks about the proposal, the following is such an example:



A number of people have criticised Jacobson's proposal. One person is Mathijis Beckers, whose book 'The Non-solutions Project not only shows the flaws in his numbers but also looks at what resources would be required to achieve his goal. The following is a summary video of a presentation Beckers gave in 2017 where he outlines what resources would be needed:



One of the main point Beckers makes in his presentation is that you would need about 5.5 times the amount of copper per Megawatt for a 100% renewable scenario compared to nuclear. In a scenario where 80 Terawatts of renewables were constructed, this would translate to about 445 million tonnes of copper, where current known reserves are about 720 million tonnes. Note that figure doesn't account for the copper required for other new electrical infrastructure, such as charging stations, electric vehicles, etc.

Americans Mike Conley and Tim Maloney released a paper in 2017 titled "Roadmap to Nowhere: The Myth of Powering the Nation With Renewable Energy", written in response to the paper "100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight (WWS) All-sector Energy Roadmaps for the 50 United States" by Jacobson et al.  The paper goes into detail what resources would be required for Jacobson's proposal for 100% renewables in the United States to be achieved, how much it would cost and how much  infrastructure would need to be rebuilt on a periodic basis. A copy of the paper can be downloaded from their website:

https://www.roadmaptonowhere.com/

The following video summarises Conley and Maloney's paper:



While nations with a small population and the available resources at hand, including Australia, could achieve a 100% renewable energy target, doing so globally, even by 2050, will be a massive undertaking. In addition, there is an increased probability of other environmental issues being created by going down the "clean" renewable energy path, not only from the additional mining and production but also the waste that can't be recycled and will be created as renewable infrastructure is rebuilt every 30 years or so. In any of the conversations from the Extinction Rebellion, or 100% renewable advocates for that matter, do I see these issues being addressed.

juliar wrote on Oct 21^st, 2019 at 7:50pm:


including hydrogen ?? LOL

juliar wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2019 at 12:16am:


that's your reply is it socko LOL

Renewable rubbish bombs out and leaves Alice Springs cold and dark.




Oopsie Daisy solar-battery fail? Cloud causes System Black event at Alice Springs affecting thousands
October 15th, 2019

Welcome to the new complexified energy grid where a cloud can cause a system black event — knocking out power for as much as nine hours. This affected the hospital for 30 minutes and the prolonged problems caused many businesses and supermarkets to close. Alice Springs is an island microgrid servicing about 29,000 people in the centre of Australia. It was 38 degrees C yesterday when the power went out. Shame about those fridges and air conditioning units.

Alice Springs is a mini version of larger grids showing how fragile these new complicated systems of multiple generators based on weather events and batteries can be.


Alice Springs, Blackout. Photo by Stefano, Wikimedia.  Modern, sometimes has electricity too. Alice Springs  |  Photo by Stefano, Wikimedia.


Yesterday: Thousands impacted by Alice Springs power blackout*
Steve Vivian, ABC News

Thousands of residents in Central Australia went without power yesterday afternoon, with some experiencing blackout conditions for up to nine hours.

Electricity was cut across the Alice Springs region around 2:30pm yesterday and was not restored in some areas until 10:47pm.

Today: Inquiry called, and explanations garbled — NT Chief Minister announces review
NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner told ABC Darwin Breakfast the outage stemmed from a generation issue.

“We’re not quite sure what’s happened there,” he said. “It shouldn’t happen … there seems to be an unacceptable failure here between the battery and the gensets [generation sets]. “We should be able to handle switches between solar and gensets.”




Apparently there were many warning signs and engineers saw it all coming

From April 2019: “Without old power station we’d be ‘stuffed’: ETU”
A letter to the Editor of Alice Springs News, from the ETU = Electrical Trades Union

Sir – The majority of the 29,000 residents of Alice Springs were without power on Easter Sunday after a cable fault in the Desert Springs and Mount Johns area.

This is the second time in 10 days major power outages have affected the Alice Springs network. We praise the PowerWater (PWC) and Territory Generation (TGen) front line workers for their dedication and expertise which ensured a timely restoration of supply, but we have major concerns about future reliability of the Alice power supply.

Concerns relate to the ability of the new Owen Springs Power Station (OSPS) to consistently maintaining supply to the network without the Ron Goodin Power Station (RGPS) being available. There are also questions remaining around the Battery Energy Storage System’s (BESS) actual functions.

We are disappointed that TGen and the Government were failing to respond to workers’ concerns about the compressed timeline for the closure of RGPS. This blackout and the previous blackout show clearly that without backup of Ron Goodin Power Station (pictured), the Alice would have been stuffed. Without RGPS being available as it is currently we have no idea how long Alice Springs residents would have been without power after both these recent events.
Dave “Strawbs” Hayes
ETU NT Organiser


Oct 14, 2019 Probe into Alice Springs power outage
AAP, The Canberra Times

“The guys on the front line live and breathe this stuff and they have been saying for months that Ron Goodin Power Station was prematurely closed and that Owen Springs was not adequately tested to ensure continuity of supply,” union organiser Dave Hayes said.

This is what happens when electrical grids are run by climate scientists and not engineers.
h/t Dave B

Correction: The first link led to a different 2016 blackout story (highlighted by the ABC as “related news”):  Thousands impacted by Alice Springs power blackout, calls for compensation.  by Joanne Crothers. This has been replaced with a quote about the blackout two days ago which is obviously more “related”.  h/t Peter Fitzroy and commenters. Sorry about the confusion caused

http://joannenova.com.au/2019/10/oopsie-cloud-causes-system-black-event-at-alice...

The silly fool Greeny with a child's mind in an adult body, Scunge just keeps making herself look pathetic as she begs to try to get noticed.

Wonder where this idiotic DoomsDay fool will glue herself to next ?