When I was in elementary school, the cafeteria switched to disposable plastic trays because the paper ones hurt trees. Stupid, I know… but are today’s initiatives any better?
When I was in elementary school, the cafeteria switched to disposable plastic trays because the paper ones hurt trees. Stupid, I know… but are today’s initiatives any better?
I’m not opposed to renewables at all, the progress in solar power has been awesome.
But I think the scalability is hard, both in providing a reliable baseload, and also producing all of the solar panels for example. I don’t think it’s insurmountable though.
Ideally we use all of them - we need more electricity than ever. “Degrowth” is the real enemy.
I think the scalability, in production as well as in installation, is the biggest plus for pv. You can build 0.25 kW PV or 1 GW. Nuclear reactors that are not even in the construction phase are, in my opinion, a waste of money and resources that could be invested in building renewables.
Renewables will never replace stable energy production until the storage problem as been solved. At present there are no practical mass storage solutions available. So on days when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, there isn’t sufficient energy generation without LNG/coal/nuclear. This will be true for decades. Nuclear is currently the best option of those three. Some places are lucky with hydro generation, but even this is subject to variable rainfall. Tidal generation has come a long way, but it’s still not ready for prime time, and it also suffers from variability.
Maybe spend some time reading about the actual market situation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-12/global-energy-storage-market-to-grow-15-fold-by-2030-bnef#xj4y7vzkg
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/12/23/global-solar-capacity-additions-hit-268-gw-in-2022-says-bnef/
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx
I wrote, “renewables will never replace stable energy production until the storage problem as been solved.”
It appears you read, “renewables are currently not economically viable.”
That’s not my argument. I didn’t write that.
The first link about growing storage wasn’t enough?
False. There is currently no technology which enables an economically viable solution for 100% renewable grids.
Just to give you an example, Denmark’s wind generation just yesterday fluctuated 92%. Over the last year, wind generation has fluctuated across Europe by more than 555%. Europe currently produces around 6,480GWh per day. To buffer even half this during periods of low wind/low sunshine would require 60+ million Tesla batteries. For reference, Tesla has only ever produced three million batteries.
For now, power grids require reliable generation. Unless you want coal and LNG, it has to be nuclear.
Do you have any proof of this other than your own conclusions? Because a lot of experts see this very differently.
It seems Denmark is doing fine at the moment, so I don’t really see your argument there.
By the way, the EU wants to develope hydrogen for long term storage.
If you want expensive, sure you can use nuclear.
https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/
One cannot prove a negative. Can you prove that god does not exist? Typically the burden of proof lies with the one making any positive claims such as you are.
The report you cite doesn’t appear to indicate that batteries could smooth a fully renewable grid. Perhaps I’ve missed that important part. Would you cite the page?