this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
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Climate
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
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Not quite: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
Electricity for heat pumps and moving vehicles is far more efficient than burning stuff. You need to look up the difference between energy and exergy. Electricity is 100% exergy, and can power heat pumps. Fossil fuels not.
The race is about new energy. An old gas plant is still cheap to operate. But when faced with the decision of building new capacity, solar is cheaper and its not close. New gas energy is grinding to a halt.
Old plants aren’t cheap enough to operate. The cost of gas and coal is expensive and ongoing. The plants are old and need increasing maintenance and costs are rising. Unless they can charge a premium they are money pits. Solar beats them hands down as once the capex is paid then the opex is trivial by comparison. It’s the preferred financial model.
And as oil reserves are shrinking, extraction becomes ever more expensive. This will turn into a negative feedback loop.
At some point, fossil power will not generate any more enough money to sustain itself. Especially since the oil economy has truly horrendous costs in terms of economic development, political independence, military expenses, wars, aircraft carriers threathening whole regions, human rights, authoritarianism, denied democracy, and so on. It could collapse just like Stalinism in 1989.
Electric motors and heat pumps are far more energy efficient than their combustion counterparts. Solar and wind electricity can be generated in situ or transported via cable. No need to power ships and trucks for fossil delivery to refineries or fuel stations. Thus we will end up with less primary energy.
How does a heat pump helps you firing Portland cement, ceramics, melting glass and metal, fixating air nitrogen? And these are all 24/7 industrial processes.
These are still big challenges, but very bright people already work on them. For example, Germany's Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, a top climate scientist, is working on climate-friendly buildings. Other research groups have worked on recycling concrete into more climate-friendly cement as a co-product of electrical steel processes.
As you say, these are industrial processes and need to be addressed by industrial solutions. There are new processes for steel, cement and fertiliser being developed and tested. They will move to mainstream as we electrify everything.
Looking at glass, or cement. Do you know a heat pump that runs at up to 1600 C? So it's just plain ohmic heating. And it's a 24/7 process, so it needs electrochemical backup. Do you know what that does to your EROEI?
In cement production particularly: Pumps + co 2 capture = 5x efficiency in the process + negative carbon footprint
Add renewables and voila, best cement factory in the world