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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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I think that Tesla is being more than a bit optimistic on just how much ramping up can be done and how cheap it would be at scale, but even they list 10% of 2023 GDP (i.e. the output of 1 in every 10 working adults from 2023 devoted to just batteries for an entire year). For comparison, 10% of US working adults, roughly, work in all manufacturing combined.

One item to note about the waste heat figure, is that it is calculated based on the energy contained within the fossil fuel molecules that is ultimately expended as heat instead of being converted to electricity. This is setting the denominator based on fuel pulled from the ground, not as an efficiency metric of how much electricity is lost. The fair comparison for renewables would be the amount of wind/sun/hydro potential energy not converted to electricity after engaging with the PV module, wind turbine, or hydro turbine. I design solar systems as part of my job and even I think that is a dubious way to promote the technology.

That also means there is not a can of efficiency to be opened up once switching to renewables, we still need the same number of watt-hours to power cars, grids, equipment, etc. There are marginal gains to be had in some cases, sure, but if we were to wave a magic wand and eliminate that waste heat from fossil fuels, all that would mean is our fuels would last two to three times longer. Eliminating production based waste heat would not change the throughput of the systems because those are limited by quantity of plants, turbine design, transmission lines, and ultimately end-user needs.

One item to note about the waste heat figure, is that it is calculated based on the energy contained within the fossil fuel molecules that is ultimately expended as heat instead of being converted to electricity. This is setting the denominator based on fuel pulled from the ground, not as an efficiency metric of how much electricity is lost. The fair comparison for renewables would be the amount of wind/sun/hydro potential energy not converted to electricity after engaging with the PV module, wind turbine, or hydro turbine. I design solar systems as part of my job and even I think that is a dubious way to promote the technology.

I don't get your point.

Humanity's primary energy consumption is some number. 160 PWh per year. But most (80%+) of that is fossil fuels. Turning fossil fuel into heat is inefficient, so if we electrify everything, we don't actually need to make 160 PWh of electricity per year, less than half is enough (the power plants don't make waste heat and residential/low temperature industrial heating will be done by heat pump at 300% efficiency).

And sure, the sun is going to put much more than 160 PWh onto those solar panels. But the sun shines anyway.

The point is that a battery storage system is not hooked up to the theoretical total energy contained in fossil fuels or nuclear rods or solar irradiance, it is connected to the output of the power plants and solar fields. That output (and corresponding residential/commercial/industrial usage numbers) is what the battery needs to be sized in relation to. Heat pumps may help on the margins with that number but there are no low-hanging fruits to pick up in the world of energy usage and production.