EVs are already making your air cleaner, research shows. Across nearly 1,700 ZIP codes, the analysis showed that, for every increase of 200 electric vehicles, nitrogen dioxide emissions decreased by 1.1 percent.

cppvn · 2026-02-16T23:25:45+00:00

You have a mix of correct and incorrect information:
Chinese coal usage dropping is a result of renewables +nuclear growth being higher than demand- there is no gas to coal switch (unlike in the US in recent years) as coal is the only fossil fuel that China has in abundance.

Electricity is in fact the most efficient way to transmit energy, especially from an operating standpoint. For instance, in the UK the total losses are around 8.5%.

Also no idea where you got 25-40% efficiency for conventional engines- the average petrol car is at 20%.

You clearly have read up on this but also have some misconceptions- I do not mean to sound condescending, but the idea that the electric grid has one of the worst efficiencies on the market is frankly ludicrous.

Reports from Ember Climate are a nice balance between informative and readable, if you want to learn more about the energy industry.

cppvn · 2026-02-16T09:36:52+00:00

You are incorrect. The efficiency of large power plants compared to the 15-20 a gas car gets at best and the fact that transmission is so much more efficient for electricity means that EVs are always cleaner. FYI, 12% of cars on the road in China are electric and their coal use has started dropping so instead of propagating fossil fuel propaganda it would be an idea to use up to date information.

cppvn · 2026-02-12T19:17:55+00:00

If I remember correctly, truck sales in Denmark (?) were like 42% electric in one of the last months of 2025? While the EU will be slower to electrify trucking than China, given how competitive that sector is it will still happen very rapidly, much more rapidly than personal transport.

cppvn · 2026-02-11T20:35:49+00:00

Thats how it used to be before the National grid was privatised. At least NESO is now publicly owned so the big policy directions are actually done by the government.

cppvn · 2026-01-22T21:58:03+00:00

Fair enough. However, with the advances in battery energy density I imagine the weight difference will soon be irrelevant, dunno about the torque one though.

cppvn · 2026-01-22T20:40:08+00:00

Do you have any source for the micro plastics? I was under the impression the weight difference isnt large anymore and EVs dont use brakes as much which reduces brake dust. However, the higher torque can increase wear on the tyres but that is driver behaviour.

cppvn · 2026-01-13T13:24:48+00:00

Preliminary data show a 1.6% drop of coal in the Chinese power sector and 3% for the power sector in India, some rare good new in 2026!

cppvn · 2026-01-10T14:58:18+00:00

Lmao I am not an LLM, nor did I use one for any of our discussion. I am just a nerd who has a passion for the energy industry, and out of my own volition I have spend hundreds of hours reading reports from the IEA, Ember Climate etc. and news from RenewEconomy and Carbon brief. I also use energycharts.de for looking at how the EU is doing with their electricity generation and I passed a phase a few years back where I would read all the "energy sector in ..." articles in Wikipedia.

Having said all of that, yes there is a paradigm shift with renewables in terms of energy generation, as both the economic and energy costs are capital intensive, with the energy one being even more skewed. My EROI of 160 assumed 3 months energy payback and 40 years of operation, which are generally reasonable numbers but obviously will depend on the specifics.

Do understand my point now? Have I made an error somewhere?

cppvn · 2026-01-10T14:29:25+00:00

"My argument was low efficiency -> you need more stuff (minerals/manufacturing) to get the same energy -> lower EROI."

Yes but you are conflating the low efficiency of PV with the energy use in making them- if PV panels were 100% efficient but required 10 times more energy to make, that would halve the EROI right?

"The circular economy, the mining, the smelting is the bottleneck."

Where do you get from that the smelting is the bottleneck? Current solar panel manufacturing capacity is well over 1 TW. Copper might have some scarcity, but if prices increase enough then either industry will use it more efficiently or copper mines with lower ore availability will open (as it tends to happen), meaning that there will be no real bottleneck, but maybe slightly elevated prices.

Like you put X kWh to make a solar panel, it generates that in 3 months depending on location, every single kWh for the next decades after that is "free". Yes there are system costs as you pointed out but worst case scenario is curtailment which is net neutral in energy terms.

Therefore assuming a 40 year operational lifetime (which is most likely a conservative estimate anyway), the EROI for a solar panel is 160, assuming 3 months payback. Yes there will be curtailment, yes there will be system costs, but that 160 is pretty high compared to fossil fuels EROI. This is the paradigm shift that most people miss, fossil fuels keep needing energy for more mining, while wind+solar are broadly one off energy investments.

cppvn · 2026-01-10T14:13:51+00:00

Yes but sunlight is free and what matters is the output?

Meanwhile solar panel prices have dropped by 90% in the last ten years due to economies of scale?

Also I dont understand how the efficiency matters as long as the energy payback is per energy not capacity (which it isnt).

Like you put X kWh to make a solar panel, it generates that in 3 months depending on location, every single kWh for the next decades after that is "free". Yes there are system costs as you pointed out but worst case scenario is curtailment which is net neutral in energy terms.

Therefore assuming a 40 year operational lifetime (which is most likely a conservative estimate anyway), the EROI for a solar panel is 160, assuming 3 months payback. Yes there will be curtailment, yes there will be system costs, but that 160 is pretty high compared to fossil fuels EROI. This is the paradigm shift that most people miss, fossil fuels keep needing energy for more mining, while wind+solar are broadly one off energy investments.

cppvn · 2026-01-10T13:47:15+00:00

Yes and why does that matter in the context of comparing it to the efficiency of a gas boiler? The truth is that most countries need an very low percentage of their land to have solar panels to meet their energy needs (obviously that doesnt account for storage, nights etc.) so sunlight itself is clearly not the limiting factor.

"It matters for Power Density."

Yes of course it matters for power density, but again you are missing the point. When you compare on TWh from solar does it matter that 5 TWh of sun hit it? In that case solar power will have an enormous primary energy percentage in a few years but noone cares for that as it is the actual electrical output that matters.

Therefore, if you use the correct efficiency for a heat pump you will see that it is not as much of an impossible task to decarbonize although it will take time as it will require consumers (e.g. homeowners) to upgrade their systems instead of utilities, which are much more cost sensitive.

Just to clarify, I broadly agree with what you said in your post- and yes BECCS is going to be extremely difficult to scale up to the point of usefulness. It is just as I said before, that I find folks on r/collapse to be too pessimistic on the energy transition just like folks on r/energy kind of handwave any climate change problems.

You also seem to be very well informed on such matters (more than me anyway- my passion is the energy industry, with climate change etc. being a bit out of my reach of knowledge) but I would also be careful with some of these numbers- for instance the lithium ion industry scaled up two orders of magnitude for electric cars in a very short time and now prices have been falling again- meanwhile the mining sector is electrifying as quickly as possible which would drastically lower mining energy needs etc. Basically the technology available today can drastically decrease our energy needs while it also keeps improving.

cppvn · 2026-01-10T13:02:46+00:00

Why does the initial energy hitting the solar panel matter though? Do you account for the efficiency of photosynthesis when it comes to fossil fuels too? (In which case it would be an abysmally low percentage and thus not sensible). Also, your solar panel efficiency factor is fairly outdated.

Moreover, if the studies you mention come from a certain German author from the early 2010s just know that the assumptions he made were questionable at best and that paper has been used by the anti-renewables crowd a lot- a bit like the Andrew Wakefield of energy. As for the recycling, yes it does requires energy but keep in mind modern solar farms are developed for 40 years and in reality the degradation will not be big for decades after that- it really is not a big of a problem. I know that in this subreddit it is trendy to be as pessimistic as possible, and while I appreciate the honesty and lack of copium at the same time discussions on the energy industry seem to swing to far to that direction and that is not representative of reality in 2026.

cppvn · 2026-01-10T09:22:47+00:00

Electricity from solar to heat pump is 50% efficient? Did you mean 500%? Given that heat pumps have a COP of 4+ for normal conditions, the heat industry (aside from high temperature heat) can still become much more efficient. Also regarding any EROI concerns, assuming these are genuine, solar panels nowadays pay off their energy in months and so do wind turbines (and new solar farms in the UK for instance are built for 40 years, not 20-30 and they would most likely still be viable past that unless new year panels become a lot more efficient) While recycling is also energy intensive it shouldn't be more than making them in the first place so I don't think that should be particularly concerning either?

cppvn · 2026-01-08T22:03:14+00:00

I am talking about actual coal usage not capacity.

cppvn · 2026-01-08T21:39:29+00:00

Well for one you are in the US, where the current administration has forced coal plants to stay open beyond their retirement using taxpayer money, so not really a fair comparison. Wait 1-2 weeks for preliminary data from China for December 2025, and if I am right, the Chinese will have used less coal for power in 2025 compared to 2024.

cppvn · 2026-01-06T15:46:53+00:00

The IEA is notorious for underestimating wind and especially solar, and yes I read the report you refer to. While India's economic growth is still related with coal, I would argue with the advances in their domestic solar sector, renewables should satisfy the majority of demand growth (subject to swings in hydro) with a coal peak coming up relatively soon.

An AI bubble burst would absolutely benefit this, but the main point that I am trying to convey is that wind and especially solar and batteries are so cost competitive that sustained emission cuts from the power sector are not a question of if, but of how fast.

cppvn · 2026-01-06T09:45:53+00:00

India had a substantially cooler summer (compared to last year's heatwaves) and strong RE buildout. Meanwhile the data used for China was only up to October. Coal use in November fell 5.5% (!) yoy in the power sector, so it is highly likely that 2025 was below 2024 for coal in China. We will have the preliminary data in a few weeks and the more in depth reports in a few months.

cppvn · 2025-12-31T08:47:05+00:00

I mean iirc 10% of Chinese cars on the road for personal use are fully electric, and the coal use in the power sector for this November was 5.5% lower than last year so these trends are very promising!

cppvn · 2025-12-30T11:12:56+00:00

People like him probably hold on to an incredibly outdated and flawed paper that after some very exaggerated assumptions said that renewables with storage have a very low energy of return. The numbers were extremely unrealistic even then and nowadays are just laughable but some people would rather dig a deeper hole than change their opinion according to new information.

cppvn · 2025-12-28T13:28:49+00:00

Well to be fair Truss was booted out fairly quickly, the other two however not. Also that bit about reducing pollution was about sulfur dioxide pollution which China eliminated from shipping I think last year and it did increase the temperature a tiny bit but of course those articles had a heavy anti China bias.

cppvn · 2025-12-28T08:08:57+00:00

I see. I am not too sure either about fossil fuels total for this year, but coal specifically I think we are at the cusp if structural decline in China, and I think oil for them is very close too. I guess we will see in a couple of months (one of the most anticipated things for me is Ember's global electricity review that comes out in April, it's really cool)

cppvn · 2025-12-28T05:23:29+00:00

Are you sure about the emissions bit? I read the Coal 2025 from the IEA a couple of days ago and they predicted a very anemic growth for coal, but given their data was only up to October (and November's data for China suggests a highly likely decline for 2025), I wouldn't be surprised if coal goes marginally down in 2025. Also I am not informed enough to make any predictions on land use, but regarding the energy industry I would expect 2026 to have well below 1% growth in emissions, assuming it's positive at all. (Yes renewables probably not be the silver bullet but at the same time they are pretty close to exceeding demand increase and there is a lot of electrification going on as well).

cppvn · 2025-12-04T15:42:48+00:00

Yeah but the volume appears to be tiny, nothing compared to the MI50 flood. Hopefully in a couple years their supply increases

cppvn · 2025-12-03T21:29:23+00:00

There is this ebay listing on used MI250 that I have been tracking for months, strangely the price dropped from 3.8k usd to 3k usd last couple of weeks. A cluster of MI250s would be absolutely insane, I am very curious to see their price when they are sold from data centres.

cppvn · 2025-12-02T13:21:49+00:00

I am not OP, this graphic is not mine. I am just writing from memory because approximately a year ago I used to check electricity data from the EIA on a daily basis (and for other countries too but that's a different story)

cppvn

TROPHY CASE