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I don't mean to downplay this achievement, but I've always thought that renewable power, as it is today, isn't going to scale to meet global energy demand. One

I don't mean to downplay this achievement, but I've always thought that renewable power, as it is today, isn't going to scale to meet global energy demand. One of the biggest issues is that it's nontrivial to store electrical energy. I think the holy grail for renewable power is farming algae for biodiesel. Essentially solar power, only we get out chemical energy in the form of gasoline instead of electricity. Burning that gasoline would be carbon neutral, since the carbon was taken from carbon dioxide in the air during photosynthesis. Gasoline is much easier and cheaper to store than electricity, we can use existing power infrastructure to burn it, and it makes the transition from fossil fuels to renewable power trivial. Plus the organism just needs sunlight and nutrients and it will self-replicate, so will be much cheaper than solar panels. I think we're probably decades away from this being a reality. More research needs to be done, and we'll almost certainly need to genetically modify the algae to produce more butane/octane/etc.

L_Rahman 10y ago
Here's a paper that lays out a plan to switch the US to 100% wind, water and sunlight based power by 2050 and 80% by 2030. There are non trivial problems to solve, but the core set of technologies already exist or are experiencing Moore's law like cost curves. https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USSt...
- pilom 10y ago
  That report is better than most but it relies on the assumptions that 1) the grid can route power nearly instantaneously from LA to NYC with very low losses and 2) on cuts in per person energy use by 30-50% (primarily by switching to electric cars). I see both of those assumptions being even less likely than 3) we cover 6240 square miles (5 Rhode Islands) with solar panels.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    For comparison, roads and parking cover the same area as the entire state of West Virginia, roughly 24,000 square miles or 62,000 square kilometers.

L_Rahman 10y ago

Here's a paper that lays out a plan to switch the US to 100% wind, water and sunlight based power by 2050 and 80% by 2030. There are non trivial problems to solve, but the core set of technologies already exist or are experiencing Moore's law like cost curves. https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USSt...

pilom 10y ago
That report is better than most but it relies on the assumptions that 1) the grid can route power nearly instantaneously from LA to NYC with very low losses and 2) on cuts in per person energy use by 30-50% (primarily by switching to electric cars). I see both of those assumptions being even less likely than 3) we cover 6240 square miles (5 Rhode Islands) with solar panels.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  For comparison, roads and parking cover the same area as the entire state of West Virginia, roughly 24,000 square miles or 62,000 square kilometers.