[Steve_American]

All of the above.
1 It is neither politically palatable nor economically feasible for the US to "buy" the whole world solar panels, and it is not just solar panels, it is infrastructure, installation, maintenance, batteries for storage, training of in-ground technicians, and my other issues.
2 I gave you a pretty long explanation with many reasons why solar power (or wind power) cannot be the sole source of energy, it cannot even reasonably make for 50%, not unless somehow you find some sort of extremely cheap to make, maintain and transport "batteries", such technology simply doesn't exist.
3 So paying with debt a politically and economically questionable "project" that has zero chances of having the impact that you want (decoupling from fossil fuels) is cuckoo as far as I am concerned.

4 I mean, if we are going to talk about unfeasible projects, maybe you should start with sending a massive array of solar panels into space and beaming the energy via lasers to every country in the world (wouldn't have to worry about nighttime, in space, you can make it so that it is daytime all the time ).
But again, if you want to seriously tackle our problem, and we do have a problem, you have to deal with reasonable solutions.

#4 That would be a great idea IF we had an elevator up into orbit. We don't so the CO2 cost to launch millions of tons into orbit makes it a dumb idea. But, you were comparing my idea that that idea. Your comparison is way off, solar panels are useful.
#3 How do you know what "impact" I want the plan to have? If it provides 50% of the world's energy needs that that would be useful, right? Right?!
. . Paying with debt is what we did in WWII. Look it up. I pointed the way for you in the OP. That was when the world assumed the gold standard would return. Now we have had close to 50 years off of the gold standard, and Repubs and Repuds have added $24T to the US national debt. The US can never get back onto the gold standard. With a full fiat currency the US can roll the debt over forever or pay it as the bond IUOs come due with newly created IOUs called dollars.
. . I know that politically the world is committed to doing nothing until we are all dead. So, I assumed that this political mind set would change. I also assumed that the MMT theory of economics would be adopted by the world's leaders, and especially by the US's leaders. See my many threads in "Political Circus" and "Credit and Debt".
. . The alternative is Civilization comes to an end and maybe we all die. YMMV.
#1 You missed the word I thought I used. I said buy the world's production of solar panels. This was based on past experience where food was flooded into an earthquake devastated area and that bankrupted the small farmers who's corn could not be sold at a profit. Also, the nations can buy their own fittings, batteries, and labor to install. My OP in this thread assumed that batteries would not be possible or would provide less overnight energy than needed for a full Western life style.
#2 I didn't imply that solar would be the sole source of energy. I said do R&D, and then (obviously) fund the building of what you have invented.

[BeesKnee5]

Nuclears problem isn't perception, it's cost.

VC summer nuclear power station - construction abandoned after $9bn spent due to overruns pushing the cost to $25bn and delays of 5+ years.

There are only two reactors being built in the US, Votgle is five years late and has cost $17bn. Causing Westinghouse to go bankrupt.

France and UK are in the same position, aging nuclear power stations that are offline half the time for maintenance and any new/replacements years behind schedule. EDF is now only surviving thanks to government bail outs.

Why would any investor go for a 1 GW reactor at such cost and delay when a much larger wind or solar project can be generating within 3 years and therefore paying for itself even before the whole project is complete?

[BeesKnee5]

All of the above. It is neither politically palatable nor economically feasible for the US to "buy" the whole world solar panels, and it is not just solar panels, it is infrastructure, installation, maintenance, batteries for storage, training of in-ground technicians, and my other issues.
2 I gave you a pretty long explanation with many reasons why solar power (or wind power) cannot be the sole source of energy, it cannot even reasonably make for 50%, not unless somehow you find some sort of extremely cheap to make, maintain and transport "batteries", such technology simply doesn't exist.
So paying with debt a politically and economically questionable "project" that has zero chances of having the impact that you want (decoupling from fossil fuels) is cuckoo as far as I am concerned.

I mean, if we are going to talk about unfeasible projects, maybe you should start with sending a massive array of solar panels into space and beaming the energy via lasers to every country in the world (wouldn't have to worry about nighttime, in space, you can make it so that it is daytime all the time ).
But again, if you want to seriously tackle our problem, and we do have a problem, you have to deal with reasonable solutions.

I think you are wrong on many counts.

Firstly solar panels are cheap and portable, far more so than any alternative. Like all technology, expertise arises as demand increases, there are very few blacksmiths because we switched to cars and moving to electric will see a similar shift of workforce.
Secondly, maintenance is minimal compared to combustion, no moving parts and panels are good for 25 years. They need an occasional clean and the inverters replacing every 5-10 years.

When you are arguing about batteries you are looking in the wrong place. The latest solar and wind farms already include batteries to smooth supply and help load balance. That is the purpose of batteries, you don't need to transport them, you need to connect them. Virtual power stations are leading the way on this and cropping up all over the world including using vehicle to grid.
Long term storage for wind and solar is already happening using six methods, all of which are cheaper than gas peaker plants. This matters because that is their competitor and what they will replace when those power stations reach end of life.

There are already countries whose renewables have exceeded 50% and no reason why others won't follow suit. The key ingredient you are missing is interconnectors. You have several times referred to local generation and while this may exist, it is inefficient and not part of the key strategy for reducing carbon emissions. As an example, no European country is acting alone, the energy market is connected and set to become even more connected in future, the UK can draw on hydro from Norway, biomass in Sweden, solar from Spain, geothermal from Iceland, nuclear from France and wind from Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark. This is true the other way, meaning periods of low wind or solar in one area does not necessarily mean storage is needed.

In terms of development the next breakthrough will probably be perovskite solar paint. Turning whole buildings into solar panels by painting them.

[Atlantis]

@XogGyux, biomass is part of the problem not part of the solution. A third of green house gas emissions are due to agriculture, which releases soil carbon into the atmosphere. ALL biomass needs to go back into the soil so that air carbon is returned to soil carbon. Fertile soil can store all the CO2 in the atmosphere and produce healthy food into the bargain. Biomass should not be burned and storing carbon in wood is a delusion. All of the proposed climate-engineering projects involve problems that could be worse than the problem they are intended to fix. There is a lot of hype from people who want to sell their project. They don't care that, in 100 years, their cure may turn out worse than the problem they intend to fix. By that time they have made their money.

The only true solution is a holistic solution. You need to understand the natural cycle of substances/gases. There is a balance in this cycle that has been disturbed by human activity. Blindly fiddling with the climate by some bio-engineering project so that some dude may make a lot of money is stupid.

It's not enough to reduce emissions, we also need to increase sequestration by the natural cycles that make life possible on this planet. Soil fertility, soil carbon (ie. humus), food production, human health, environmental destruction, climate change, clean water, species extinction, etc., are all different aspects of the same problem. The solution can only be to change land management practices so that all organic matter is returned to soil. Everything else will lead us astray. To burn or otherwise destroy organic matter is stupid beyond believe. The industrial age has seen an incredible destruction of organic matter already.

[BeesKnee5]

biomass is part of the problem not part of the solution. A third of green house gas emissions are due to agriculture, which releases soil carbon into the atmosphere. ALL biomass needs to go back into the soil so that air carbon is returned to soil carbon. .

Whilst I absolutely agree that soil degradation and agriculture emissions are a serious issue, I don't agree that biomass isn't part of the solution.

If you plow organic waste into the soil it will rot and produce methane as part of the decomposition process. That methane is a far more dangerous GHG and it is also an opportunity. Anaerobic Digesters can capture that methane to produce biogas and then the composted material can be plowed back into the soil as carbon rich solid and also liquid fertiliser.
By doing this and replacng fossil fuel gas with biogas you not only convert methane to a gas 25 times less harmful, you also generate a sustainable energy source that is capable of long term storage.

There is huge potential for this from human waste, farm waste and food waste.

[XogGyux]

I think you are wrong on many counts.

Firstly solar panels are cheap and portable, far more so than any alternative. Like all technology, expertise arises as demand increases, there are very few blacksmiths because we switched to cars and moving to electric will see a similar shift of workforce.
Secondly, maintenance is minimal compared to combustion, no moving parts and panels are good for 25 years. They need an occasional clean and the inverters replacing every 5-10 years.

When you are arguing about batteries you are looking in the wrong place. The latest solar and wind farms already include batteries to smooth supply and help load balance. That is the purpose of batteries, you don't need to transport them, you need to connect them. Virtual power stations are leading the way on this and cropping up all over the world including using vehicle to grid.
Long term storage for wind and solar is already happening using six methods, all of which are cheaper than gas peaker plants. This matters because that is their competitor and what they will replace when those power stations reach end of life.

There are already countries whose renewables have exceeded 50% and no reason why others won't follow suit. The key ingredient you are missing is interconnectors. You have several times referred to local generation and while this may exist, it is inefficient and not part of the key strategy for reducing carbon emissions. As an example, no European country is acting alone, the energy market is connected and set to become even more connected in future, the UK can draw on hydro from Norway, biomass in Sweden, solar from Spain, geothermal from Iceland, nuclear from France and wind from Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark. This is true the other way, meaning periods of low wind or solar in one area does not necessarily mean storage is needed.

In terms of development the next breakthrough will probably be perovskite solar paint. Turning whole buildings into solar panels by painting them.

Don't confuse tiny storage capacity for "buffer" to account for a quick cloud passing by, with the kind of storage that you need if you were to have most/all of your energy come from solar. There are no large industrialized countries with more than 50% solar. Yes, there are a few smaller countries with large "renewable" but those include countries that have very particular fortunate hydro/geo/wind which are more stable and these countries are just a handful and not energy guzzlers and most of the time the calculations for "sources of energy" do not include transportation.

If you want to make a case that we should maximize renewable, I don't disagree, but realistically you won't get close to 50% globally unless we find some sort of storage technology that does not currently exist. Meanwhile, nuclear does exist and the downsides are nowhere near as bad as the hippie craze would like you to believe. Look at Germany, nice push for renewables, started facing out nuclear earlier than expected due to scares of Fukushima (even though as bad as the accident was... it was non-sense compared to the health damage and even deaths that are linked to fossil) and now they are using even more carbon because they have to somehow cover the times that there is no sun shining.

Switching to 100% solar is not going to be enough to combat climate change either. We still produce shiton of greenhouse from other sources and frankly, we could be at the mercy of natural phenomena as well. Our best bet is to achieve energy revolution which allows us to have a degree of control of our own planet's climate. That is possible, but we need to have a breakthrough on cheap plenty energy. We can hardly envision a world that can satisfy 100% of our current energy production from solar within the next half a century, let alone cover whatever energy demand increases happens during this time and let alone bonus energy to reverse the change.

But whatever.

[Steve_American]

Are the reports I've seen accurate when they say that now during the covid crisis CO2 levels are still rising?
With most all the planes grounded and 20 to 40% unemployment world wide, we are still releasing more CO2 than we did before the crisis.
If it is true or close to true, then it means that those who think we can have a Western life style with zero emissions are also in denial.

It shows that we need drastic action. Some ideas.
1] Impose a nighttime curfew on cities. Turn off the street lights. Use infrared to track violators.
2] Increase the cost of electricity at night. So, people cut way back on its usage.
3] Educated people to turn the air cond. temp up and use fans to make it feel OK. Turning the temp down to 75 deg. F was done to show off your wealth, "poor people use fans and I don't ...". Use infrared to look for cold houses and buildings.
4] Get people to live closer to where they work.

People did all these things for thousands of years, we can do it again.
The alternative is disaster.
.

[XogGyux]

Are the reports I've seen accurate when they say that now during the covid crisis CO2 levels are still rising?
With most all the planes grounded and 20 to 40% unemployment world wide, we are still releasing more CO2 than we did before the crisis.
If it is true or close to true, then it means that those who think we can have a Western life style with zero emissions are also in denial.

It shows that we need drastic action. Some ideas.
1] Impose a nighttime curfew on cities. Turn off the street lights. Use infrared to track violators.
2] Increase the cost of electricity at night. So, people cut way back on its usage.
3] Educated people to turn the air cond. temp up and use fans to make it feel OK. Turning the temp down to 75 deg. F was done to show off your wealth, "poor people use fans and I don't ...". Use infrared to look for cold houses and buildings.
4] Get people to live closer to where they work.

People did all these things for thousands of years, we can do it again.
The alternative is disaster.
.

The thing is, most people don't really have a strong connection for whatever comes in 2 or 3 generations in the future. We won't see real drastic damage until it is too late. These 0.x degrees C increases over a year is not readily seen by individuals, and the vast majority of individuals are selfish.
Taxing people is not likely to fix anything anyway, they will find alternative methods of doing what they are doing, or they might reluctantly pay the tax anyway.
Even if you could irrefutable proof that the world will go in literal flames in 200 years, I don't think most people living today would necessarily care.
That is why I think it is important to address this problem with as little compromise as possible, and if at all feasible, get something in return for our investment.

[Steve_American]

So, you are not saying that my one fact in that post is false.
So, as far as you know it may be true that CO2 emissions are still going up in this crisis.

And you don't see this as a huge problem.
I agree that people don't see that far ahead, i.e. 200 or even 100 years.
The thing is that the ACC crisis will come in 20 years. It will come in the form of people reacting to being hungry.
They will invade their neighbors and riot in their cities when they get hungry enough.
If you don't agree then you are in partial denial of ACC.

In Medieval times more castles and cities fell to traitors who open the gates than to all other causes combined. IIRC.
People can be stupid.

[XogGyux]

The thing is not so much whether it is false, or true. Honestly, I have not looked at the data but I have no reason to doubt it. There is no doubt that even operating at 10% industrial world capacity we are certainly pumping more shit into the air we breathe than humans would have pre-industrial times.

Climate change is not likely to affect us as a matter of "quick" disaster. It will be very gradual and we will likely adapt for many years before we stand any serious imminent damage. Certainly this is true for rich countries, some countries in the caribbean, latin america, poor asia and africa might suffer more but nobody will give a shit because it is not affecting their lives. I have not seen someone declining to buy a 120k mercedez benz because someone in africa is hungry. What makes you think that this will change for something like climate change?

It is the hard truth, it is sad but it is true. I personally would be willing to live a slightly more modest life if all of my fellow humans were doing the same, my impact alone and that of perhaps a few thousands is not going to do shit when there are billions doing crazy shit out there.

My next best idea is to try to debate and convince people to take small but manageable steps that make sense.
Energy runs the world. It pushed the industrial revolution, it made the richest people in the 20th century and many of the largests corporations of today. It has been the reason for many wars, and probably many more to come. The sooner we can arrive to cheap plentiful energy, the sooner we can "waste it" in conservational projects (and I do realize it is not a waste, it is perhaps the single most important use as far as humanity as a whole is concerned, but the individual won't see it as an investment but will see it quite literally as a waste).

Thats why I rather focus my energy in trying to achieve the best "realistic" case scenario. Oil will be used for a while, as much as I might like it or dislike it is irrelevant. However, it might be better to transport it relatively more safe and clean on a pipeline than on trucks and trains. Similarly, solar might be a holy grail, but the technology for batteries to use at night and/or to transport cheaply to higher latitude places (winter) is prohibitively expensive, nuclear is far cleaner and safer than hydrocarbons, readily available and on the long run cheaper. TBH I think we are closer to Fusion than we might be to any kind of crazy "game changing" mass storage battery. Admittedly this is all speculation and unless someone happens to have some sort of secret proprietary information, my guess is as good as anyone elses.

[Steve_American]

The reports and predictions I've seen say that food production is the big problem for Europe and the US.
Europe is further north, Madrid is as far south as Chicago is north.
How dependent is Europe on imported food and animal feed? If that is cut off and internal food harvests are cut by even 10%, what happens?
The US exports food and animal feed, but most of its food is grown in the center of the continent which will heat up faster.
What happens if the US harvest is cut by 30 to 40% and it can't import food?

Did you see the new theory that the eruption of the big volcano in Iceland is what caused the crop failure and so the hunger in Paris that caused the French Revolution?

Most climate scientists report what they can prove and *not* what they *know* but can't prove. What they know but can't prove includes *when* the known things (like a methane release) will be triggered. This is unprovable but it is known that there are a few trigger points at some level of heating. The scientists' gut feelings** are the best estimates we will have. They are all more scared than they will say publicly.

. ** . This is another example of how stupid humans in general can be. Most of us trust the gut feelings of Neo-liberal economists about the dangers of hyperinflation. BUT, we don't trust the gut feelings of climate scientists about the imminent dangers of ACC. YET, the principals of physics are much better known than are the principals of economics. I think it is based on how much change is being asked for; and who is or is going to be hurt. Middle class Americans and Europeans who I talk to on the internet (and in person before I moved here) are not bearing the brunt of the economic pain that the fear of hyperinflation (which is spouted by "experts") is now causing. OTOH, those same middle class people are the ones who will see their life style decline if anti-ACC measures are taken. So, they believe one set of gut feelings and discount the other set of gut feelings. I.e., they are in partial denial.
.
___________________________ ______________________________

BTW --- my plan to build a mountain of solar panels doesn't cost the middle class Americans anything, not 1 dollar.
I said it would be paid for 100% with bond sales.
So, again the "experts" warnings about hyperinflation based solely on gut feelings are enough to stop action.
.

[Hindsite]

THE DISPROOFS OF ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (AGW) HYPOTHESIS

Over the past twenty years, governments of the world have spent $100’s of billions on “research” ($50 to 60 billion in US alone) expressly to validate the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). This is in order to justify “the largest regulatory intervention in history: the restricting of carbon emissions from all human activity” (Horner, 2010). Today, however, this hypothesis has been thoroughly disproven by the scientific evidence. Most people understand one of the most basic rules of science is that when a hypothesis is disproven by the facts, that hypothesis is invalidated and must be discarded. As Thomas Huxley noted:

“The great tragedy in science- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

Award-winning Meteorologist Brian Sussman stated:

“Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels is allegedly warming the planet. This hypothesis couldn’t stand the test of an eighth grade science fair. (But) if you dare poke holes in the hypothesis you’re branded a ‘denier’. Well fine. I’d rather be called a ‘denier’ than try to push a scheme that would make Karl Marx green with envy."

https://naturalclimatechange.org/dispro ... ypothesis/

IPCC report: global warming theory is 'junk science'

William Gray, PhD: The Gross Scientific Faults in the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hypothesis

[BeesKnee5]

Don't confuse tiny storage capacity for "buffer" to account for a quick cloud passing by, with the kind of storage that you need if you were to have most/all of your energy come from solar.

I absolutely did not confuse short and long term storage and have repeatedly given examples that differentiate.

UK for example is focussing on liquid air for long term, VPP and V2G short term and grid side battery for load balancing and supply smoothing.

There are no large industrialized countries with more than 50% solar.

This isn't an argument, it just highlights that transition takes time. The global share of energy is shifting, with solar and wind continuing to increase share.

If you want to make a case that we should maximize renewable, I don't disagree, but realistically you won't get close to 50% globally unless we find some sort of storage technology that does not currently exist.

Only it does exist, in multiple forms. This is not a one size fits all.
Gravity towers (Hydro and physical)
Liquid air compression
Hydrolysis
Biogas
Molten salt
Sodium batteries.

I gave examples of some of these in my first post on this thread so it is bizarre that you continue to ignore this.

There is a piece to this Jigsaw you are clearly not taking on board. It isn't until sufficient renewables is reached that storage becomes viable. As countries increase their share of renewables then they will reach a point when those sources exceed demand, it is only at this point that storage becomes a viable competitor with gas as the alternative is curtailment.


You can see this in the UK energy mix
https://infogram.com/british-electricit ... y9z1okdpjd

It shows two developments,
A 20% fall in demand over 7 years as devices are replaced with more efficient equivalents and households adopt consumer side renewables, insulation etc.

Renewables rising from 4% to over 30% with multiple off shore wind farms still being developed.

In short we have storage technology and as renewables expand they will utilise it.

How the US could switch to 90% renewables by 2035 using existing technologies
https://www.2035report.com/downloads/

[Atlantis]

I don't agree that biomass isn't part of the solution.

Soil breathes in and out, just like humans breath in and out. To demand that we stop breathing or that we should only breath in and not out isn’t going to improve life. On the contrary, it’s going to result in death. The same applies to soil. Plants take most of their nutrients (especially CO2) from the air to deposit them in the soil. The soil processes the nutrients. Some are returned to the air, some are deposited in the soil. That is the process of life, the cycle of living substances: air-plants/animals-soil-air ..., that has turned dead mineral material into fertile soil since the beginning of life on the planet. That is the basis for life on this planet.

Since the industrial age, humans have destroyed this biological substance we live on to turn it into dead matter. Soil carbon has been turned into CO2 in the atmosphere. It started when we replaced draft animals that fertilized the soil with their manure by fossil-fuel driven engines. We have replaced the cycle of life by a cycle of death. This process keeps on accelerating by the asphalting of earth, by chemical fertilization in farming, by sealing of soil by concrete ... The latest turn in this destruction of organic matter is the perverse use of biomass for fuel.

People believe in such totally idiotic ideas because they have lost touch with the soil, which is the basis for all life on this planet. They believe in some narrow scheme they don’t understand the consequences of because they don’t have a holistic view. They don’t understand the cycle of living substances. That is why a large part of our biomass has already been destroyed and why we see degradation in all living systems.

Soil can sequester and permanently store all the CO2 in the atmosphere.

[BeesKnee5]

Soil can sequester and permanently store all the CO2 in the atmosphere.

The CO2 in the atmosphere is only a part of the cycle. If we can get to negative emissions then this will be buffered by the oceans for a very long time. Just like now a significant part of our CO2 emissions are absorbed by the oceans.

Yes we need to reverse soil degradation and yes it can be a carbon sink, but we need to be smart. Our emissions from construction can be significantly reduced by using organic materials, using the natural biological processes of decomposition to produce energy from gases that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere and burying CO2 in the same locations the excess CO2 came from in the first place.

Just like the warming of permafrost has reactivated biological processes that generate methane, this process happens naturally in the soil decomposition of organic material. It is therefore better to trap and use this methane.
There is a coal power station in the UK that is in the process of being converted to burn biomass in the form of wood and pump the CO2 back into the wells that fossil fuel gas came from. This only works if the biomass is from locally managed biodiverse woodland and not shipped half way around the world.

Just burying the bio waste we produce in the soil whilst generating CO2 emmisions through other means will not solve the problem, we need to come at it from every angle.

One thing I think we can agree on is the need to educate and change how we treat waste. I use a hot composter for all my garden, food waste and cardboard. This provides the compost and leachate to grow much of the fruit and vegetables my family eat.

https://www.hotbincomposting.com/hotbin ... ience.html

[Atlantis]

@BeesKnee5, you present of distorted view of how soil works. Organic matter in soil doesn't just release methane. Whatever soil releases or does not release depends on our soil management. Soil conservation means that plowing (especially deep plowing) is reduced to a minimum and that bare soil is avoided. Even if we don't use full no-till farming there are numerous ways of achieving this by cover crops, shallow soil cultivation, mulching etc. Deep plowing releasing anaerobic organisms from deep soil layers should anyways be reduced, or better still, completely avoided. The white settlers who applied the European moldboard plow to the fragile soils of the colonies destroyed unimaginable amounts of fertile soil. The resulting soil degradation is well known:



And it continues today. A third of the world's soil is in fragile condition and we lose each year millions of acres to desertification. That is worse than climate change. In fact, soil degradation and climate change are the two sides of the same coin. The one depends on the other, the one cannot be fixed without the other.

The distorted image you present of non-chemical farming is beside the point. You catch on to some special conditions under which methane is released, all the while ignoring that soil can only be regenerated by organic matter and that climate change can only be stopped by making use of natural cycles by returning the carbon to the soil where it belongs.

I can assure you that after over 20 years of enriching my soil with organic matter, it does not emit methane. It has turned into a rich dark soil that produces food naturally even without fertilizers. That means that my soil has stored gases that it takes from the air. By smart soil management we can store all the CO2 from the atmosphere.

The biomass farmers of today are like the white settlers of the previous century who produced the dust bowl. They found a simple way of increasing yield and didn't care about what that did to the soil. It has to stop.

[BeesKnee5]

I can assure you that after over 20 years of enriching my soil with organic matter, it does not emit methane. It has turned into a rich dark soil that produces food naturally even without fertilizers. That means that my soil has stored gases that it takes from the air. By smart soil management we can store all the CO2 from the atmosphere.

Aerobic decomposition absorbs oxygen and releases CO2 as it creates ammonia and ethanol, which is further broken down to nitrates by nitrosomonas and nitrobacters. Anaerobic produces methane which when burnt or split by solar radiation produces CO2 and water.

Either way the majority of the carbon taken up by the plant is retained in the soil and the use of biogas replaces fossil fuel gas in gas networks.

https://lpelc.org/uses-of-solids-and-by ... digestion/

"Digestate solids contain higher concentrations of plant-available nitrogen and phosphorus compared to as-excreted manure, according to research. The high carbon content of digestate solids adds organic matter to the soil and improves the water holding capacity of the soil."

[BeesKnee5]

I thought I'd mention that there is another angle to renewables and storage that is beginning to become available to consumers and could potentially change the way we use electricity by using smart devices.

It directly links the electricity price you pay to the half hourly wholesale price. This offers cheaper electricity when demand is low and renewables are producing lots of electricity and higher prices at peak periods. This shift of demand reduces the pressure on the grid normally filled by fossil fuels.

https://octopus.energy/agile

There have already been several occasions when electricity prices have gone negative and meant customers were paid to charge their car or run a washing machine. I expect to see more of this in future.

[BeesKnee5]

An easy to understand video on liquid air storage and why the UK is developing it as part of it's renewable plan