this is a legacy of the exact kind of American supremacist thinking that assumes that if the US can't build it from scratch, it's not worth doing. I think the question I'm positing is something closer to, what does a world look like where the US is humbled enough to start stealing from others again

ironically all the evidence I've seen is that China is also dramatically ahead of the US in advanced nuclear (certainly small modular reactors, and maybe soon nuclear fusion)

I know some folks that are very bullish on dimethyl ether (DME) precisely because it's a fairly drop-in compatible fuel replacement for propane that can be synthesized directly from methanol, either from e- or biofuel sources!

may be true now, but it won't be true forever. the US is well-resourced and at some point an intelligence agency with strategic vision will make a move.

easy to forget but for decades the *American* competitive advantage was that we had patriotic e.g. Chinese-Americans that would spy for the US!

vanishingly few people seriously engage with the second-order implications of an American Century of Humiliation, one of which is being a global underdog for the first time in living memory

a huge number of chemicals and reagents are byproducts of fossil fuel extraction and are implicitly subsidized by our fossil economy. not just plastic monomers but even non hydrocarbon things like sulfur from hydrodesulfurization or helium from fossil gas liquefaction!

here in Singapore some local EPC firms are piloting containerized solid-state grid charging batteries to replace onsite diesel generators, which are the #1 source of operational emissions!

capacity factor and storage cost are inversely related with an asymptote to infinity at 0%. (i.e. for EXISTENTIAL stuff, black start or ICU backup generators, you'll prob always have some diesel)

the 24/7 solar Ember Energy report actually explains this very well!

ember-energy.org/latest-insig...

my preferred framing for this truly last-mile backup fossil generation is that it's providing necessary optionality to backstop multiplicatively more VRE resources on the grid — a service it provides even if it never actually had to run! it's basically "blackout insurance".

bsky.app/profile/jmel...

it really, really depends on the specific capacity factor (implicitly, provided storage duration). a backup diesel generator that runs ~1% of the time is providing ~seasonal energy storage, unrealistic for batteries to meet regardless of freq management. 10% c.f. is weekly~monthly energy storage.

I think both that that's likely (in the context of total gas replacement) and that Kevin's question w/r/t gas power specifically is still valid in the context of e.g. frequency management on high-VRE grids (like the controversial Iberian peninsula blackout)

—William 02:26

193/ my problems not so bigdeal ✌️😺✌️

It is both the case that the RCP8.5 emissions scenario is completely implausible and that we cannot preclude >4C warming by 2100 (though I’d argue SSP5-8.5’s 4.7C by 2100 is rather outlandish at this point). journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

192/ wheat for sheep

191/ 🐝🍯🏘️

190/ 🐱🍎

189/ survivor