This video was created in partnership with Bill Gates, inspired by his new book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” Find out more here: gatesnot.es/2ZnGCCg
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Credits:
Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus
Editor: Dylan Hennessy
Animator: Mike Ridolfi (www.moboxgraphics.com/)
Sound: Graham Haerther (haerther.net/)
Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster twitter.com/forgottentowel
References:
[1] www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2020/Apr/IRENA_Energy_subsidies_2020.pdf
[2] www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2019/Apr/Renewable-Energy-Now-Accounts-for-a-Third-of-Global-Power-Capacity
[3] www.esb.ie/docs/default-source/education-hub/turlough-hill-power-station
[4]smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/#all/generation
[5] smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/#all/wind
[6] smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/#all/generation?scroll=fuel
[7] www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032114003773
[8] www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261918305270#b0215
[9] www.hydroreview.com/business-finance/ireland-proposes-us-948-million-360-mw-silvermines-pumped-storage-project/#gref
[10] www.waterpowermagazine.com/features/featurejapanese-pumped-storage-embraces-the-ocean-waves/
[11] www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830583X
Thank you to AP Archive for access to their archival footage.
Music by Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com/creator
Thank you to my patreon supporters: Adam Flohr, Henning Basma, Hank Green, William Leu, Tristan Edwards, Ian Dundore, John & Becki Johnston. Nevin Spoljaric, Jason Clark, Thomas Barth, Johnny MacDonald, Stephen Foland, Alfred Holzheu, Abdulrahman Abdulaziz Binghaith, Brent Higgins, Dexter Appleberry, Alex Pavek, Marko Hirsch, Mikkel Johansen, Hibiyi Mori. Viktor Józsa, Ron Hochsprung
Never heard someone pronounce height that way lol. Great video as always. Learn how to hunt and farm btw. Humanity wont go extinct but the coming chaos will lead to disruption in the supply chain and while civliazation won't go back to the stone age or even a hybrid of now and the 1900s not everywhere will stay at our current tech level
It's going to send the world into chaos even if we put a bigger than WW2 style effort into transition which is why we need to do it now so we can lessen he damage and set up infrastructure that allows for the survival of civilization
We don't understand how the sun works. Climate change is a scam. Bill gates takes a private jet everyday.it BTW I'm happy as a fellow Irishman that your channel has grown so much over the years.
80% efficiency seems so generous, it's disingenuous. The generator alone is 80% efficient but that's not including the efficiency of the motor pumping water into the reservoir and the various mechanical losses such as head loss from the water moving in and out of the reservoir.
The burning of natural gas to produce electricity is not an issue!!! The burning of natural gas as a waste product certainly IS.
There are pros and cons with everthing. Something tells me you use way more power to pump all that water up than you make on it's way down. This solution is a capacitor that has many flaws. I feel like the way better solution would be a flywheel. Recent flywheel technology have progressed significantly. They cost less, take far less space compared to lakes, can work for longer that 5 hours and you can have a lot of them one next to another. While I like wind power the most, I'm sure the nuclear, fission or fusion, is most stable and efficient solution of them all. There are massive problems with renewables. Solar panels are just 20% efficient and windmills are poorly constructed and prone to damage (especially wings/ blades). Nothing's ever perfect..
Have you considered making a video on biomethane as a storage option? It's being pursued actively in my home country (Denmark) as a way to use the existing gas grid as a storage option for peak load hours, that also contributes to emission reductions in agriculture. Main purpose is to use it for industry and transport - but storage option is an important secondary benefit.
I was under the impression that flywheels would be a great way to store energy near cities , they could potentially be installed in or near utility tunnels underground, nobodu would ever see them, they are relatively compact and don't have any requirements that they need to be near anything
You forgot to thank the person to give us the pumped hydro technology, who also happens to be the person to bring us into the electricity era: Nikola Tesla.
I'd like to see a video exploring the viability of synthetic natural gas as a storage medium. More stable than H2 and smaller storage volume
Wind is a massive eyesore. Nuke desalination pump to inland hydro for irrigation is the way.
Windmills are currently killing approximately 100 million birds a year and the answer to that no one talks about it give me an oil spill and all you see your pictures of birds covered in oil when are you going to get honest
The taxes that are placed on power produced by fossil fuel Dwarf alternate energy in some cases there is no taxes taken at the beginning and or the delivery point of alternate energy your initial statement out of the box is a fucking lie if you can’t be honest just laying out the numbers why should anything else said going forward be trusted I think fossil fuels I’m at the peak of their efficiency and we need to go somewhere else but if you’re going to bass moving on or why I’m out
Weather ?????????
Renewables aren't cheap because they are subsidized. Renewables are cheap because we use fossil fuel powered industries and transport to produce them. Also, i think it wouod be interesting to compare fossil and renewable subsidies with regard to how much energy they produce. Last tipe I checked, the world mainly runs on fossil fuels which means that the subsidies per kilowatt-hour are lower no? That being said, i agree renewables still are crucial to fighting climate change along with nuclear, and we really need to phase fossil fuel out of our energy production for sure.
Explain that to Arizona people how good green energy is
As an engineer myself I don't understand why a channel claiming to be "real engineering" seems to believe that Climate change is a "real" issue when past data shows worst climate change than in resent times. It seems to me like these days we are all brainwashed into spending massive amounts of money on the absolute worst technologies for improving the environment rather than sound science, I mean engineering should be real science not based the New York Times and their ideas of what is best...that's a slippery slope.
TD. Tired of this shit. Unsubscribed.
Wow. The moment you realise Bill Gates sponsors these high production videos. Goodbye.
Try building ANY of these without fossil fuels or petroleum products... you cant. The propaganda of this video is enormous and its "promises" are pure BS.
Didn't here you say how much energy is used to pump back to the upper reservoir? It doesn't get back up there by itself......
That's great except for the damage to avian lifeforms.
Why not build them over the ocean and use the ocean itself as the lower? Then you loose no land but get access to populated areas. It also gives unlimited power storage.
the voice reminds me of a youtuber irishman
I thought you are an engineer... Your take on subsidies convinced me otherwise.
Great video and information. From working in the hydro industry, it's great to see this kind of useful information shared! Thank you!
If there was no talk of climate change wind and solar generation would still be lagging behind. It's not cheaper. If it were electric utilities would be demolishing coal plants and building towers non stop. Is it the future? Probably. Is it cheaper? No. There are huge costs. They don't last forever. And they aren't being recycled into newer wind/solar units
This video fails to mention the reality of hydro storage. Take Lake Shasta in northern California for example. Here you have a massive reservoir but the power house is not used for generating electricity, the dam is only used for flood control. Because it's too expensive and inefficient to turn on and off the generators as needed. Wind and solar will NEVER completely replace other forms of power generation.
This video makes me sad that my country, Norway, has not build more power cables to the continent. We have 87 TWh of hydro storage capacity, enough to storage all of the EU's and UK's electricity consumption for 1.6 weeks.
What a load of cobblers. There is no scientific evidence that there is anything like a climate "crisis", intermittent, unreliable and expensive windmills lead to energy grid instability, and storage doubles the cost! To maintain reliable power that modern society needs look no further than nuclear power. Indeed, the article shows very well how expensive and impractical is weather dependent energy.
Pumped hydro has downsides but I'm surprised there aren't at least a couple of projects under construction in every country developing renewable energy. You mentioned using ocean water and that would be great, but from what I believe and can find, high pressure, high speed salt water is extremely corrosive.
Too many lies in this video.
Why lie? Why make an absurd statement like renewable energy is cheaper? And more dependable? What a joke. I can light a fire anytime. I can't run a windmill or solar panel anytime. Renewable energy is finally a viable replacement, but it ain't cheaper and more dependable. Period.
Or you just build nuclear powerplants, it is cheaper more effective, less polluting (therefore less lethal), faster to implement and does not require any further improvement since the technology is already mature (no grid adaptation, no storage, etc.) If sun and wind, things that have been known and used for thousands of year were that great, I wonder why we ever felt the need to switch to fossile fuel. Where are our windmills and sun dryers we used the last two thousands years ? Yeah, reduction and nuclear. Edit : and hydro
these thumbnails are ridiculous. They are art pieces in and of itself. Does anyone know the name of the graphic artist?
"...in our battle against climate change..." You are funny. You may as well fight the day and night circle.
Almost one third of greenhouse gasses are from industrial heating which electricity is not suited to provide, however green it may be. Hydrogen and Molten salt (walk-away/safe, almost no waste) Nuclear can do it using small safe reactors. More resources needs to go into MSRs or china will have it first as they are spending billions on it now.
I like going to the solar plants in the deserts and watch the birds fry in mid air, or sometime I go to the windmills and watch birds freaking explode as they fly into the wind mill blades. They actually call the burning birds at the solar plant streamers. Pretty funny to watch. Even watched a burning bird start a small grass fire. Smelled like bbq chicken and burnt feathers. Pretty messed up that if I point a gun at an endangered avian I go to jail, but windmills wack thousands out of the air every month, and no one says a word. The world is a comedy, love it.
Brian, I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the hard work and effort you put into these videos. I'm currently a freshman undergraduate mechanical engineer and I have been watching your channel for years now. Your videos have given me so much inspiration and make me proud to know that I will one day call myself an engineer. The incredible achievements of these people absolutely astound me and fill me with so much passion to follow in their footsteps. Thank you for introducing me to so many amazing ideas and for helping me to see what I could become someday. I give you my truly best wishes and I hope that you continue with this channel and inspire more and more engineers after me. This is Real Engineering!
go Boring Company!
or we could simply go molten salt reactors and replace all our energy needs and not just electricity with its high heat reactors, like making fresh water, liquid fuels, fertilizers and other high heat needed chemicals/reactions.
renewables are a misnomer, they arent renewable when solar loses 20% efficiency, and the solar cells need to be built from rare earth materials, and take up so much land, and then dont work when it snows or the sun doesnt shine, but how about we spray particulates to block the sun like gill bates wants to do? great plan.
Not true ! Fossil fuel vs "renewable" subsidies . Since so called renewables are made with fossil fuels second they deliver almost nothing in capacity compared to fossil fuels . This individual is mistaken and misleads people
Total fail from the get go. Who told you your "facts" about subsidies for fossil fuels? The usual green lie is to pretend that normal accounting practices allowing for capital investment to be offset against taxes is somehow a subsidy unique to the fossil fuel industry. Every industry on the planet gets the same treatment. If you aren't a baby and you grew up in the UK you would know that the revenues from North Sea oil kept the country afloat in the 1980's. It was what allowed Thatcher to smash the Trade Unions and support massive payments from the state to support the unemployed. The oil industry subsidizes governments, not the other way round. Go away and study a bit of accountancy.
Why not use rocks instead of water? The gravitational energy would be extracted with gears instead of turbines. The rocks never wear out, which is one plus, and lots of rock was produced digging the tunnel and power chambers.
At the cost of $1B for 230MW per 6 hour storage facility, Ireland may as well just build a new 4 1000MW reactor nuclear power station to provide enough base load.
Sounds like a little bit of fear porn. The planet will do what's going to do regardless what we do. It's not just the planet heating up it's the entire galaxy and no green technology is going to stop that.
I've never seen something more incorrect than this.
"Height-th."
How about pumped hydro power without the pump? SEE: The World's Most Powerful Tidal Current: the Saltstraumen Maelstrom itworlds.info/round/n4d5Z62fpKZ3qZY/video These can be manmade, ya know.
"How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” Stepp 1: Expropriate and redistribute Bill Gates' fortune . . .
Cheaper and cleaner? Lol. Just go ahead and ignore all the rear metals you are pulling out of the earth to make the solar panels and wind turbines. At least the strip mining industry will boom. Also the excavators and factories to make the green energy solar panel and turbines run on the standard grid meaning coal and fossil fuels. I don't see us running a Bagger 288 on solar energy. We just don't have the technology.
Could you tell me what the carbon "cost" of the plant was? It would be interesting to know when it (did or) will pay back the energy used to create build, elsewise the so called "clean nuclear" solution still seems like the most logical and underutilized energy source. Perhaps you would consider a comparison video based on current knowledge.
What happened in Texas with all their wind turbines and solar farms????
Your calculations didn’t account for the power to pump it up as that would take more than you get out. Then you don’t just need to generate the average, you need to compensate for low wind when the power generation is really low for wind for several days
Bill Gates. That is the kiss of death for your video man.
Great video thanks. Can you do a similar video of wind to Hydrogen storage. Particularly with regards to losses and overall efficiency
learned a lot
All good stuff but Nuclear Nuclear Nuclear! We need new Nuclear as a big part of the "holistic" solution. Everyone knows about solar, wind and the storage problem, so why not focus on the thing that gets almost no attention but solves for most of the headaches? Seriously RE, is there a reason you shy away from Nuclear as a topic? Do you or do you not support nuclear? (SMR MSR Gen 4 etc) Do you not see that these technologies are part of the holistic future that you say is needed?
Climate change, what a fraud.
Nuclear as a stopgap to fusion is by far the best solution. High output, minimal impact on the surrounding environment, and doesn't require a battery that has to make up for it. The life-cycle carbon output of nuclear power is lower than solar and hydro. This technology is cool, but is unfortunately the consequence of unstable power generation.
Height.
Is it true that renewables are now cheaper to make than fossil fuels? If so then in 3rd world countries, they might use renewables as their electricity source of energy. They are still developing their economies but the problem is that they might use fossil fuels to meet their evergrowing energy demand... If the renewables are truly cheaper to use than fossil fuels then we might actually have a bright future
I'm surprised we don't see more electrolysis as a means to store power. Converting water to hydrogen the store energy would be a great alternative to these massive construction projects, I would imagine.
Why isn't Ireland developing tidal battery storage? (Storage of water at high tide, release for power generation at low tide)
This looks a lot like the New Zealand manapouri power station
Can you please don one on liquefied air as an energy storage system. This could be done anywhere, not just where there is water and topography.
Way to manipulate data 00:35. Why don't you normalize this to MWh produced?
Height not Heith. dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/height
Wind power works - except when the wind isn't blowing, and when you don't mind chopping up birds and bats, and when you find neighbors who don't mind the huge intrusive and unattractive installation in their backyard.
I'd like to say that while renewable energy is great and all and is cheap it is not clean by any means no more than coal and I don't mean by it doesn't produce emissions it does not one of the issues is the rare earth metals that are highly toxic to humans and the environment if not handled properly we've also not really solved the end of life on these products as well they've got about a 20-year time period and most of the pieces are not recyclable either because they're too large and the example of wind turbines or the majority of the parts are just unrecyclable or unusable after that and they are toxic now I'm not saying that we should just get rid of renewables they do have their place but the fact is it goes back to the old argument the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining so how do we take care of that well we burn fossil fuels to help pick up the slack so renewables until we have large grid power storage are not actually clean because they come with fossil fuels to help during the low times and there are some places where renewables are not realistic like the Appalachians of Kentucky there are too many mountains too many trees to reliably have any kind of renewable infrastructure that's why they've depended on coal for more than a century so what are we going to do dig up the mountains and cut down all the trees to put in more solar panels and wind farms that kind of sounds like we're doing more harm than good I'd also like to say that for solar panels it takes twice the space of a nuclear reactor to reduce the same amount of power and not as reliably when would probably be our best choice but we also need to be very careful about where we put it and how we reuse it at the end of its life
Pity about the Bill gates bit....(
A great report on an exceptional, little known Irish energy solution. You are lucky that you have more mountains to carve; we in Australia did our one and only Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme in the 1950's and have not done another one. itworlds.info/round/hYxwiq-ib82XnYg/video We have lots of coal! So we have been burning it for years in various state power stations to supplement the Hydro storage created. But that only services NSW and VIC. There's 5 other states it cannot reach really, and the green movement physically stopped an ambitious Hydro project in Tasmania 30 years ago. So we have been burning dirty coal instead, for that long ; good trade off, greens!
Here in Quebec we are pretty lucky with what have been done in the past, have you ever heard of Manic-5? Continuous 2660MW.
wow silly tech, they don't count the blasting and construction energy needed for this gadget
Cant stand you voice so I can't watch this vid
12:13 Ratio 1:5 is described as 1 - to - 5 (not 1-point-5)
Wouldn't a pipe laid deep in the ocean push enough water to a top reservoir from the pressure itself? And if you could have a continual refill 24/7 couldn't you then run the generators 24/7? Free power.
Glad you enjoy my book!
Sorry, I don’t buy this Bill Gates OVERHYPE! He is NOT an authority or scientist on first climate change & when that narrative didn’t pan out change the name to climate change so every crises in the world can be blame on it. You are not going to tell this electrician that the green technologies don’t have unintended consequences ie lithium batteries are highly toxic, can’t be disposed of easily, wind turbines freeze, solar panels get covered up by snow & have toxic materials in their makeup. Clean natural gas & new advances in nuclear engineering is the only way to go for BASE loads!
Quebec relies on it's many reservoirs to be 95%+ renewable electricity province
Great video 👍
Can we all just take a Moment and appreciate how greatly the Design of the Thumbnail, the Editing, the Animationd and the visual Design in general improved in the last few months. It's a shame that this kind of content doesn't get more Views.
For anyone interested in Nuclear power, id really reccomend watching : How Many People Did Nuclear Energy Kill? Nuclear Death Toll by kurzgesagt - in a nutshell
what's up with like/dislike ratio??
Lol so funny .. My dad works at VOITH Was suprised when i saw the sticker at 8:10
Would it be possible to do pumped hydro with a denser fluid like mercury? Preferably with something less toxic.
Oh "climate change"... #EyeRoll As to "cheaper" and "sustainable", try searching for damage solar panels. #Nightmare
You sound like a tween, #EyeRoll are you serious right now?
Did you say “4 years of laborious excavation?” Also, it’s not a climate crisis.
Looks extremely inefficient. Nice but very little return and short run time
Comparing the total amount of subsidies to fossil fuels and renewables is a bit dissengenous as the amount of energy and it's value is different. Likewise it rarely includes the subsidy that renewables get from having the rest of the grid to even out their intermittency.
Chile have similar technology, common sense said it's no the same pump water up to a hill than let it dawn. But is better than nothing. And common sense indicates that if you create a pond on the top of a mountain you damaged more the environment, only to accumulate no energy, accumulate money, the truth is the truth. Each country have own opportunities to generate clean energy, México have deserts, sun and winds, America less wind but great deserts, Europe tides and wind, but the use of any kind of energy affect the environment and create climate change, so experts think it's only another mythology issue the theme, in other hand it's no the same pollution, than efficiency, so solution is develop the technology to reduce drastically the emissions of oil and natural gas generators than prohibited their use, make them very much efficient in the use of the energy than to prohibited, latter the problem go to be battery disposal, and go to use energy, quimical energy to destroy them, and go on and go on. Better development of better electric motors, light led bulbs etc. Electric massive transports, home working. But if we continue to waste trillions of money in this epidemic issue of covid and the world don't punish china government for it. With what money wanted to promote world investigation of new technologies?. Forget it...loose the time of all the people with mind voyagers
hydrogen is the future. All others are hype.
Hydrogen will need to prove itself before it becomes a seriously contested solution
Bill gates must write a book, how can stollen to other the ideas?, be the first pirate, and go millionaire, without legal consequences. Now a filántrophy the world is upside down
It is a fairy tale that renewable energie is cheaper than the fossil energie. Here in Germany at the frontline of the fight against climat we have now to pay 32 cent per KWh. My son in Seattle has to pay about 12 cent per KWh. And that is just the beginning - the more renewable energie the more expnsive it will be. So please stop telling such lies.
To think that energy cost is purely based on production is disingenuous. Germany is a country with a greater focus on taxes and community development than the US which focuses on individual development and small scale government
really, i think the problem is too many people are running their mouth and not actually doing anything. eg. hollywood, youtubers, media, wankers on facebook, wankers in the comments section, you get it almost all people.
Have you done any research on vanadium redox flow batteries? I've heard a lot of good things about them, but not sure how much is just marketing fluff.
Nuclear is better
Do a google search for pumped hydro atlas. Apparently their is a possible 150GWh storage area at 52.45214°N, 3.91835°W a 50GWh one could be built at 53.60591°N, 9.58585°W And what about overbuilding solar and wind and throwing away spare generation?
Read this in Trumps voice 😄: How about you guys build big beautiful NUCLEAR plants instead of those ugly reservoirs to replace the gas and coal plants. Everybody is saying they are very reliable and they are good for the environment. And btw, advanced nuclear plants are better for our environment than pumped reservoirs, that I can tell you.
could off shore towers be used to pump hydro? Or cant they be build tall / large enough?