The books is good(ish) for it's time, but some of its analysis and forecasts are fundamentally flawed since it falls for the primary energy fallacy by comparing the chemical potential energy (in J) directly to electrical energy (also in J). The two are fundamentally different things and called be compared 1:1. E.g. To heat up your home with natural gas you need ~1J of chemical energy to get 1J of heat into the home, but with a electric heat pump you only need 1/6 J to get 1J of heat.
It is also a product of its time in terms of wind/solar vs nuclear. His forecasts of the impact of solar and wind is based on prices and performance from 2008. Prices have come down an order of magnitude since then, and performance and lifespan have increased drastically.
Heat pumps, and their efficiency (getting more than X Joules of heating for X Joules of electricity) are discussed in chapter 21 Smarter Heating, see for example the diagram and discussion on page 150: <a href="https://www.withouthotair.com/c21/page_150.shtml" rel="nofollow">https://www.withouthotair.com/c21/page_150.shtml
I imagine the economics (and perhaps technical improvements) of some things may have changed more than the book could forecast. But heat pumps were definitely understood by the author.
I’m not saying he was unaware of heat pumps, I’m saying he’s comparing apples to oranges simply because they use the same units.
Look at “3 - Cars” on page 29. He says the typical car uses 40 kWh/day. 40 kWh of what? Chemical energy in the gasoline.
The go to page 33 where he looks at how much energy onshore wind could produce per days in the UK. His number is 20 kWh/d. 20 kWh of what? electricity
He then compares those two numbers directly and uses that comparison as the basis of his arguments: “Britain’s onshore wind energy resource may be “huge,” but it’s evi-
dently not as huge as our huge consumption.”
This is simply incorrect. A combustion engine converts less than half of the chemical energy in the gasoline into mechanical work that can move the car. The electric model converts >90% of it. So we don’t have to replace 40 kWh/day, we have to replace less than half of that since the electric process is more efficient.
This same issues, the primary energy fallacy, underpins large parts of the book.
I think in 2008, it wasn't clear whether cars are going to be replaced by electric and what the final efficiency will be. It could also have been more because you would need to convert electricity to fuel first.
So I think as a conservative estimate, it kinda works.
Cost would depend on battery manufacturing but the original founders of Tesla created spreadsheets of well-to-wheel efficiency based on available data in 2002 and knew that electric came out as an obvious winner and so commited to starting the company based on that.
A lot of companies started in 02002 based on spreadsheets of available data went bankrupt due to the available data being wrong, or due to things not included in the available data at all. A quick check of Wikipedia turns up:
- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MStar" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MStar (patent infringement, the remains bought by MediaTek)
- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Flash_Brewing_Company" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Flash_Brewing_Company (succumbed to competition from local craft breweries, lender foreclosed, the remains bought by private equity)
- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primaris_Airlines" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primaris_Airlines (bankrupt in 02008, unclear why)
And those are cherry-picked from companies that got big enough to be "notable" by Wikipedia's guidelines. Far more companies never reach that level.
The conservative estimate is that any time someone tries to deploy a new technology, it will fail. Most innovations (new technologies or companies) do.
Take a look at the HN front page from 10 years ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-09-28">https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-09-28 There we see Uber's self-driving truck initiative Otto (an acquisition), deep learning startup Skymind, a new static Linux distro called Stali, and a bunch of things that weren't innovations. All three of those things failed; Stali hasn't been updated since 02019. LuaTeX, Coinbase, Linux, Wikipedia, and dyeing with indigo are other innovations that feature on that page, but they were already very old.
It doesn't change the physics though. I think the author under discussion actually gets this right in some chapters with regard to the superior efficiency of EVs, though not sure if that was a later revision or not.
That's true! What was holding up EVs 18 years ago, or for that matter 18000 years ago, was not physics, but the humans' ability to efficiently make things such as batteries and high-efficiency electric motors.
Chapter 21 of draft 2.9.3 from 02008 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080906132444/http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/cft.pdf#page=153" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20080906132444/http://www.infere... begins:
> In the last chapter, we learned that electrification could shrink transport’s
energy consumption to one fifth of its current levels; and that public transport and cycling can be about 40 times more energy-efficient than car-driving. How about heating? What sort of energy-savings can technology
or lifestyle-change offer?
and it goes on to talk about heat pumps, as today. So I think that even versions from 02008 got this right, though evidently that was at least the 13th numbered draft.
_aavaa_ · · focus · HN ↗
It is also a product of its time in terms of wind/solar vs nuclear. His forecasts of the impact of solar and wind is based on prices and performance from 2008. Prices have come down an order of magnitude since then, and performance and lifespan have increased drastically.
azornathogron · · focus · HN ↗
I imagine the economics (and perhaps technical improvements) of some things may have changed more than the book could forecast. But heat pumps were definitely understood by the author.
_aavaa_ · · focus · HN ↗
Look at “3 - Cars” on page 29. He says the typical car uses 40 kWh/day. 40 kWh of what? Chemical energy in the gasoline.
The go to page 33 where he looks at how much energy onshore wind could produce per days in the UK. His number is 20 kWh/d. 20 kWh of what? electricity
He then compares those two numbers directly and uses that comparison as the basis of his arguments: “Britain’s onshore wind energy resource may be “huge,” but it’s evi- dently not as huge as our huge consumption.”
This is simply incorrect. A combustion engine converts less than half of the chemical energy in the gasoline into mechanical work that can move the car. The electric model converts >90% of it. So we don’t have to replace 40 kWh/day, we have to replace less than half of that since the electric process is more efficient.
This same issues, the primary energy fallacy, underpins large parts of the book.
js8 · · focus · HN ↗
So I think as a conservative estimate, it kinda works.
ZeroGravitas · · focus · HN ↗
kragen · · focus · HN ↗
- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MStar" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MStar (patent infringement, the remains bought by MediaTek)
- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Flash_Brewing_Company" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Flash_Brewing_Company (succumbed to competition from local craft breweries, lender foreclosed, the remains bought by private equity)
- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primaris_Airlines" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primaris_Airlines (bankrupt in 02008, unclear why)
And those are cherry-picked from companies that got big enough to be "notable" by Wikipedia's guidelines. Far more companies never reach that level.
The conservative estimate is that any time someone tries to deploy a new technology, it will fail. Most innovations (new technologies or companies) do.
Take a look at the HN front page from 10 years ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-09-28">https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-09-28 There we see Uber's self-driving truck initiative Otto (an acquisition), deep learning startup Skymind, a new static Linux distro called Stali, and a bunch of things that weren't innovations. All three of those things failed; Stali hasn't been updated since 02019. LuaTeX, Coinbase, Linux, Wikipedia, and dyeing with indigo are other innovations that feature on that page, but they were already very old.
ZeroGravitas · · focus · HN ↗
kragen · · focus · HN ↗
Chapter 21 of draft 2.9.3 from 02008 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080906132444/http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/cft.pdf#page=153" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20080906132444/http://www.infere... begins:
> In the last chapter, we learned that electrification could shrink transport’s energy consumption to one fifth of its current levels; and that public transport and cycling can be about 40 times more energy-efficient than car-driving. How about heating? What sort of energy-savings can technology or lifestyle-change offer?
and it goes on to talk about heat pumps, as today. So I think that even versions from 02008 got this right, though evidently that was at least the 13th numbered draft.