“with wind the single-biggest contributor… Power production costs have declined “by almost half” … And the clean energy sector has created 50,000 new jobs… Ask me what was the impact on the electricity sector in Uruguay after this tragic war in Europe — zero.”
does anyone ever assume that it’s anything other than the grid when it comes to some article like this?
electricity is’t the majority of the energy consumed in nearly any country.
it’s a easy way to keep confusing less vigilant people by calling electricity as energy.
Just call things the way they are.
I mean I doubt any reasonable person would think that literally every household in Uruguay has replaced their gas stove with an electric/induction stove and that they use only AC/heat pumps and everyone has switched to an electric car and every bus has been converted to a trolley and or Battery/Hydrogen Electric
and a bunch of other stuff.
You’re right; 2/3 of worldwide energy is actually waste heat.
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-energy-still-comes-from-oil-2015-10
Here’s the chart from 2007: Waste heat / losses are in the top right, although it doesn’t show the transport sector losses which are higher than for coal generation.
What this means is that when we fully electrify all sectors, by using renewable energy such as wind and solar, our total energy generation capacity will only need to be about 1/3 to 1/4 of what we currently produce today to fulfill our current energy needs. That’s huge.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but electrifying a process doesn’t automatically make it not produce waste heat, right?
that’s not quite right and mixes couple things
you have production losses and transmission losses. then you have waste heat used for household and industrial heating.
now you would also have to produce that portion electrically.
For instance in winter heating requirements of a typical house are 2x that of the electricity used.
