Thomas Spencer Profile picture
Sep 19, 2020 9 tweets 4 min read Read on X
@KanitkarT
@tjayaraman
1/8
In my thread on their article in the Hindu, I wrongly concluded that @KanitkarT and @tjayaraman had got India's and world per capita emissions wrong, as I didn't spot that they used tons C not tons CO2.
I've taken that tweet down and I'm sorry.
2/8
In my defense, no units were mentioned only 'emissions', and tons C is an odd unit to use in a newspaper article.

Adding units would have been good.

I think the rest of @KanitkarT responses to me miss the point. I'll respond to that here again.
3/8
On Germany, I was responding using it as a counterexample to a very specific claim in your piece, which you have sidestepped in your response to me.
You state "renewables at best can meet residential consumption and some part of the demand from the service sector".
4/8
This statement's inconsistent with the literature on grid integration of renewables and real-world experience. It's perfectly possible to power grids with large shares of variable renewables, certainly larger than India's 7% today.
bit.ly/32L25Y4
5/8
Secondly, on innovation you made a very specific claim that green innovation has slowed down since the Copenhagen accord moved away from legally binding commitments.
You respond not on this claim, but by saying that at best battery technology is 5 Rs/kWh.
6/8
Your support for this claim in the article is vague numbers on global patenting falling 30 - 50% between 2009-10 to 2017.

You do not engage at all with what we know about technology cost curves for wind, solar, batteries, electrolyzers, energy efficient LEDS, etc
7/8
I am also having real trouble replicating your claim that "Annual filing of patents shows a marked decline, ranging between 30% to 50% or more from 2009-10 to 2017, across all subsectors and across all developed countries, without exception."
7/8
According to my calculations, annual patenting rose in all but 4 OECD countries from the 2009-10 average (you say 2009-10, I take the average) to 2017.
See below.
What's your source & calculation for this claim?
My data and calculations here:
drive.google.com/drive/folders/… Image
8/8
My source:
WIPO IP Statistics Data Centre
Intellectual property right : Patent
Year range : 1980 - 2018
Reporting type : Resident and abroad count by applicant's origin (equivalent count)
Indicator :1 - Total patent applications (direct and PCT national phase entries)

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More from @ThomasASpencer

Mar 1
Today we published our estimate of CO2 emissions in 2023. The bad news is that they rose again, by 1.1%.

The good news is that there are lots of causes for optimism if you look underneath the headline numbers.

A quick 🧵

iea.org/reports/co2-em…
Clean energy technologies grew strongly in 2023. Solar PV, driven by China, grew 420 GW and wind around 120 GW.

That's another ~550 TWh of clean electricity coming online this year (a lot of this capacity came online at the end of 2023, and will only be felt fully in 2024) Image
Extreme weather, notably very bad droughts, and continued Covid reopening in the aviation sector and China's transport sector drove around 70% of the increase in emissions at the global level. Image
Read 7 tweets
Nov 15, 2022
1/n
Today the @IEA released a special report on the role of coal in net zero transitions. With this thread I want to highlight some of the key findings of the report.
Thread
iea.org/news/achieving…
2/n
Firstly, energy transitions are not and cannot be just about coal. In the central scenario in our report, advanced economies act strongly this decade already on emissions from oil and gas, as well as coal.
3/n
But for three reasons, we need to focus on coal:
1.It’s the largest source of CO2, and far from declining
2.It’s increasingly under pressure in electricity
3.Coal is important for local jobs and development
So what are the key messages?
Read 9 tweets
Dec 28, 2021
1/10
Back in India, back reading about India.
It's time for another 10 tweet review.

Book: Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India

Author: Rukmini S. @Rukmini
2/10
Firstly, this book gets an A-plus for the pun (visual and titular) that you get right from the cover.

@Rukmini is a data journalist from Chennai, one of the field's Indian pioneers and a leading voice in interpreting India's covid experience.
3/10
Her book brings together four key characteristics of a good data journalist.
First, she has a sensitivity to the importance of the process of data production. A fascinating description of how all is not what it seems in data on sexual assualt is a case in point.
Read 10 tweets
Feb 23, 2021
1/n Today we published a model-based assessment of the grid integration costs of VRE.
Note: we only look at profile and balancing costs, not network costs.
Here I summarize the results in 6 easy tweets.
2/n
In all scenarios we study, a short-term 'optimal' level of VRE is substantially higher than current levels, in the order of 40% of total generation.
This is robust to assumptions on demand, storage cost, cost of capital, retirement of end of life assets, etc.
3/n
The substitution of expensive energy with cheap VRE allows total system costs to decline as we approach 'optimal VRE', even as total system-wide fixed costs go up.
Basic point: cheap energy + expensive capacity is a winning combination for substantially higher VRE.
Read 8 tweets
Jan 4, 2021
1/n
We ended 2020 with the news that India's power demand cross 180 GW for the first time. Unusually, this occurred in December, when power demand usually peaks is in summer?

What is going on here? Is it sign of the economic recovery?

Short thread.
2/n
Firstly, as I have been repeating, we need to look carefully at both base effect and time period when looking at demand growth.

Monthly demand smooths out daily fluctuations, and comparing 2020 against both 2019 and 2018 shows the importance of the base effect. 👇 Image
3/n
Compared against 2018, 2020 monthly demand has registered only a few months of growth since the lockdown effectively ended in June.

Because of the collapse in demand in the second half of 2019, the picture looks more optimistic if we compare against 2019 (low base effect)
Read 9 tweets
Dec 21, 2020
1/n
Last week TERI released its flagship report on the prospects for H2 in India.

The full report is here. bit.ly/3poYA2n

At 140 pages, I can't summarize the whole thing in a single thread, but I can do a series of threads.

Today's: H2 in the Indian power sector.
2/n
We do a bottom up assessment to 2050 of power demand across all sectors, including direct and indirect electrification (for electrolytic H2 production).

In the low carbon scenario, power demand reaches as much as 6200 TWh by 2050, with almost 1000 TWh of that for H2. 👇
3/n
This would consume a very substantial chunk of India's maximum estimated technical potential for onshore wind and solar PV. 👇
The required rate of supply growth and land footprint may be challenging!

This reinforces the message: direct electrification wherever possible.
Read 12 tweets

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