22 ms·

The Third Phase of Clean Energy Will Be Most Disruptive Yet

443 points by kickout 8y ago

steve76 8y ago
If demand increases, and there's no real technological advance to combat scarcity, cheap can suddenly turn into expensive, right? What did we do to get here? Hidden cost in price inflation of everything? Misallocation of scarce resources which are needed for other things, and hold back real technological advancement? Is it a true price comparison? I remember reading about OPEC countries where gasoline is free, and mineral rights payouts to people out West. Most importantly, are we really do everything not to have a scarcity crisis in the first place? Are we circling empty airplanes, not docking full oil tankers in the ocean and driving 500 miles each weekend for real value or profiteering for vanity's sake? Are ERs filled with people who really need it, or the consequences of bad habits?
acidburnNSA 8y ago
These trends are excellent and impressive. > But these problems are distant. Renewables will start to encounter them in earnest when solar makes up >20-30% of electricity and when wind makes up >40-50% of electricity. Today, worldwide, solar is only 2% and wind is only perhaps 6% of global electricity. Cheap multi-hour storage will arrive before that (indeed, in the next few years), lowering the price of using solar to meet the evening peak, and of dealing with intermittency on the order of minutes to several hours. Only seasonal storage (and perhaps the political challenges of long-range transmission) seem to be truly difficult problems. And we have time before they begin to impair the growth of renewables. This is where things get hard. Besides electricity, we also have to clean up all transportation, industrial, and space heating. This isn't so distant in an energy systems perspective. This is where having things like nuclear power plants with district heating will likely be important. Until then, it's great to see wind and solar performing so excellently. I still can't believe San Bernardino county already NIMBY-banned more large solar installations in the California deserts.
- philwelch 8y ago
  I don't know if it's absolutely necessary to completely zero our carbon emissions. We're going to need to do some sequestration and other countermeasures anyway to lower the current CO2 levels to a safe level, and it may very well end up more cost-effective to continue using those countermeasures than to try to invent an electric jet engine.
  - kaybe 8y ago
    If we manage to make that jet fuel from anything else but fossil energy that should do. The only issue is that the CO2 emission up there has so much more impact, but I think we should be able to manage if we have the rest under control.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    I'll feel more confident when we have large scale sequestration methods that are beyond the drawing board. I loosely agree with your conclusion, but until we KNOW the numbers, it seems worth it to shoot for as close to zero emissions as we can get while figuring out the sequestration options. The closest I've heard of is some seabed oilfield sequestering from Nordic countries, IIRC, but that has some built in limitations. Are you aware of sequestering efforts I've missed?
    - chalst 8y ago
      There's new research that suggests that there are soil-based sequestration methods that work far faster than the well-studied approach of growing forests: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08636-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08636-w
    - philwelch 8y ago
      We should invest the R&D effort into as many places as we can. I just have a hunch that "electrifying everything" isn't going to win out over, say, "use electricity to synthesize energy-dense liquid fuels", which can even be generalized to the sequestration strategy of "use electricity to synthesize liquid fuels and then store them in underground salt caverns like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve". Though I have no idea if we can make enough salt caverns, at least it would be a fixed amount of salt caverns, since you could establish a closed-loop supply of liquid fuel this way that was long-run carbon-neutral.
4thaccount 8y ago
The part about renewables suppressing prices is already and has been a thing for awhile. We even see $0 prices in some market intervals because wind is so highly subsidized. This causes some issues as the market prices don't reflect the actual need.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  It often goes negative, which is really backwards. This pulls the rug out from generators that don't like to reduce in power because fuel is a small fraction of their cost. Good old production tax credits.
- ip26 8y ago
  You don't need subsidies for the price to hit $0. The power must be removed from the grid.
  - 4thaccount 8y ago
    That is not true. Where are you getting this from? Maybe I misunderstand you. Low prices generally come from when you have a very low marginal price (often because a windfarm can put in a $0 offer and still make a profit due to subsidies). Note that I'm not against the production tax credits, but the market distortions are very real and can impact decisions to build more generation.
    - 7952 8y ago
      Surely in a free market the cost of renewables would just track fuel prices. You would have to sell your renewable energy for slightly less than the cheapest fuel based source. That would make it very difficult to get finance because the rate of return would be unpredictable. So in a market dominated by unpredictable fossil fuel generation it makes sense to set a minimum price. And the government has to act as the buyer who agrees a price ahead of time.
      - jgamman 8y ago
Reedx 8y ago
Solar & wind are great, but no mention of nuclear? (look into Gen IV if concerned about nuclear's reputation) That's looking like what we need most of all if we want to seriously tackle the problem. If you're wondering why, Bill Gates argues a good case on why solar & wind are not enough: https://youtu.be/d1EB1zsxW0k?t=518 https://youtu.be/d1EB1zsxW0k?t=518
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  Problem is, there is no private sector money for that. You want that? You gotta figure out how to get government to pay for it. Investment in nuclear requires MUCH more captial than just throwing up some windmills somewhere. Even if you get rid of all regulation and taxes, it'd still be orders of magnitude more expensive. Private money would still rush into wind, solar, and storage.
  - kingnothing 8y ago
    Vogtle, the only nuclear power plant currently under construction in the US, is privately funded. The only info I see about government involvement is the guarantee of about $8B of construction loans, with a total cost of around $25B paid for by a few regional power companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
    - beat 8y ago
      If it was economically viable, it would be done. Forget the US and complaining about the darn treehuggers. Look at countries that don't particularly care about the environment. Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. India gets only 3% from nuclear, and new development will get that to maybe 5%. China gets less than 4% of its power from nuclear, and is backing off from new construction plans as well. If nuclear were really cheap, and environmentalist resistance was really the problem, we'd see much more nuclear power in these countries, both existing and under construction.
effnorwood 8y ago
It won’t unless it’s nuclear.
tntn 8y ago
See also https://medium.com/otherlab-news/decarbonization-and-gnd-b8ddd569de16 https://medium.com/otherlab-news/decarbonization-and-gnd-b8d.... Saul Griffith + Otherlab estimate that electrifying the US will reduce the total energy needs by 50+% as a result of reduced waste (among other reasons).
orwin 8y ago
This is a really, really good news. However i really don't like the fact that again we talk that much about PV solar energy. As utility, spot electricity generator, they are fine (and way more effective than thermal), but as far as solar farm are concerned, we should lobby for thermal if the water supply allows it.
- mac01021 8y ago
  > we should lobby for thermal if the water supply allows it Why?
hairytrog 8y ago
It's too bad they don't include post-use decomissioning/recycling costs. There is some really toxic crap in there Nuclear has to, so should solar. They also forget that renewables are not that versatile and only address a small part of the big 4 carbon emitters (grid, industrial, cargo, cows). Industrial and cargo transport are going to require nuclear heat sources. So while it's great that costs are coming down, they are not are not reporting the full cost, and it's only a partial solution to the big energy problems.
- CabSauce 8y ago
  If we're going to count disposal cost, we should definitely count the externalities for other methods as well. Climate change, pollution, etc.
- beat 8y ago
  Demanding a TOTAL ENERGY SOLUTION OR NOTHING is an endemic problem in these comments. Partial solutions rock.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  Toxic crap in solar? For silicon panels, which are the vast majority of the market, what specifically is toxic in the panel itself? I can only think of lead in solder, which is the same issue for all electronic devices. There are toxic chemicals used in the processes for making the panel, which need proper environmental regulation, but that doesn’t mean the panel itself contains toxic materials.
  - jhayward 8y ago
    There is one major manufacturer (First Solar) that makes CIGS [edit: should read 'CdTe'] thin-film panels which do have Cd, etc and need a waste management strategy. I believe First Solar guarantees waste recovery for their panels [1]. But you are correct, the vast majority of panels are silicon-based and have no significant environmental disposal issues. Leaded solder use is already quite low and is targeted for zero content in the near future. [1] http://www.firstsolar.com/-/media/First-Solar/Sustainability-Documents/Recycling/First-Solar-Recycling-Datasheet.ashx http://www.firstsolar.com/-/media/First-Solar/Sustainability...
chris_va 8y ago
(disclaimer: I am part of a Climate&Energy research group that does this sort of economic modeling) I would say that the author's broad conclusions are actually likely to pan out (albeit on a different timeline). However, the individual arguments are cherry picked (e.g. specific utility decisions that do not generalize) and do not necessarily support the conclusion. So, please ignore the graphs as just visual candy. Also, their conclusions around wind are likely incorrect, given the learning curve and deployment rates for solar vs wind. Some problems: - The author skips over the difference between dispatchable and non-dispatchable power. The article alludes to it with the discussion of storage, but the nuances are actually very important. - There are graphs comparing solar and coal. Coal is already dying, and not going to get serious traction by any investors in the future. It is a high capital, low marginal cost plant with expensive cycling for shutdown/turn-on. With today's renewables, the variability in grid demand is too high to make it economical. Even if that wasn't true (which it might not be in the future with sufficient storage), natural gas is strictly cheaper with fracking, and likely will be for the next 50 years. - The author states that renewables are on the verge of being "cheaper than the cost of continuing to operate existing coal- or gas-fueled power plants". They support this argument with some cherry-picked examples. Realistically, that is not true, nor will it likely every be true. The marginal cost for natural gas is roughly ~1.8 cents/kWh today (including O&M), though NG is very cheap right now. With a capacity factor of 25%, solar would have to be ~$0.50/W including ammortized O&M (so call it $0.35/W. With a ~20% learning curve, that is ~5 doublings from today, so more than net electricity demand). On top of that, that power is mostly useless without storage, which adds additional LCOE (e.g. amortized battery capital and RTE derating). - Much of the authors argument would require full electrification of transportation+commercial/residential heating, which is unlikely to really pick up steam until the 2030s. Industrial heating will likely be the last holdout (barring some regulatory pressure like a carbon tax). Anyway, after years of research I would say that I am actually optimistic (I did not used to be) about renewables+storage with sufficient regulatory pressure to get us over today's cost hump (e.g. tax credit, RPS, carbon tax, anything), but take this article with a grain of salt. Edit: I should say that NG prices vary dramatically by location, and Europe will likely see a very different path forward than the rest of the planet (they also get to cheat with storage with the Norwegian Fjords), so they may push us down the learning curve significantly faster than the US/Asian market. China seems to be doing things by fiat, too, which is always handy.
lixtra 8y ago
> replace virtually all of that coal power with a mix of solar, wind, storage, and flexible demand In the linked document I did not find any guarantees how flexible the demand has to be in worst case. It’s easy to run on renewables when you can just shut down everything.
- Dumblydorr 8y ago
  It's not just shutting down everything, you can shift heating and cooling and battery charging loads to renewable rich times. Its economically incentivized to do so as renewables can drastically reduce wholesale prices at those times.
tmaly 8y ago
Battery and storage technology is still the limiting factor in broad adoption of clean energy. We need a Manhattan project for storage technology is we will every realize the conclusions in this post.
stcredzero 8y ago
Error establishing a database connection
- superkuh 8y ago
  Yup. Here's a mirror for anyone else looking: http://archive.is/ATJXq http://archive.is/ATJXq
  - kristianp 8y ago
    Or via a proxy if you're in Australia, as archive.is is blocked.
rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
No mention of possible resistance from fossil fuels interests? They have trillions of $ of assets to defend, so I would expect some unconventional methods to prevent renewable from growing quickly: buy some media, disrupt elections, promote FUD, get some big countries into war (an autocracy like Saudi Arabia certainly have this capability, or Russia since its regime also massively relies on gas to keep its economy afloat), etc. Energy is not just about cost, it's a huge power that can make and destroy countries and empires. They will certainly not die without a fight.
- nestorD 8y ago
  Watching the following TED talk, I was surprised to discover that gas compagny such as Total are actually promoting renewable energies because they currently need to be complemented and gas is the main solution used for that purpose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w
clomond 8y ago
> Finally, there will in fact be a Phase 4 of renewables, when their penetration has grown so high that they become limited by headwinds of their own creation: Value deflation I hold the opinion that this "Phase 4" - or a relative slowdown in momentum of renewables is unlikely to ever occur for a sustained period of time (i.e. more than 2-5 years). Rather, I view value deflation as more of a resistance or "constant headwind" that, you could argue we even have today. There are a few reasons I hold the opinion that this "Phase" will never actually become a phase: - On the value deflation curve, where "energy" at certain times of day decreases in value as more solar is installed in a particular market that "can't be used" - batteries (or any kind of dispatchable energy storage) results in a "shifting up" of the curve. If for example a market had enough dispatchable energy storage to meet 10% of a grid's needs, energy deflation dynamics only start to kick in once demand exceeds the energy that can be stored (similar to the situation we have today) - Value deflation (or moments where there is zero cost energy, negative electricity prices etc) is a market signal for "here is some free energy" or "I will pay you to take this off my hands". If you believe in markets, and innovations that emerge to capture value - I see technologies and businesses in due time stepping in place to take advantage of this underutilized value. We as humans are pretty good at finding ways to consume and use energy - particularly if it is nearly free. Large volumes of "low cost" energy could be used in multitudes of applications - think: desalination of large volumes of water, cleaning of water via reverse osmosis, hydrogen production for transportation or fertilizer production, operating most industrial applications etc. - Given the above, and general political and market pressures developing over time to electrify and transition all uses of energy to become carbon free (industrial, transportation, etc) to lower carbon sources, I think you are doing the analysis injustice if you are only looking at the electricity sector (assuming you are looking on the decades timescale, which this author is). Energy is energy and can be transformed from one form to the other. If it is cheap enough in one form, that transformation can in situations become economical. Regardless, I think it is a very exciting time and it will be interesting to see how things unfold. I am aware that there is a sizeable camp of analysts/experts out there that strongly believe in the value deflation risk - but I am a little more optimistic than most regarding the power of markets and human ingenuity. For anyone interested in the topic, I encourage you to do research on the value deflation of solar/wind.
chkaloon 8y ago
The headwinds mentioned should also include NIMBY. If you've ever driven through western Minnesota and the turbine forest that is out there, you'll realize there there is the potential for serious blowback if onshore turbine installation gets more widespread. I just hope that less intrusive alternatives become more prevalent before that blowback causes a price increase that makes fossil fuels look good again.
- beat 8y ago
  I haven't seen serious blowback on our wind farms, and I live in MN. It's generally well embraced by the vast majority of the public and the political system.
  - chkaloon 8y ago
    That's good for now. I live in WI and the blowback is rising. I'm guessing one reason for that is because of the low population density there. Once they start creeping into more dense areas, or less dense but more ecologically sensitive areas, it could get interesting. Also MN is a pretty blue state. I seem to remember that as soon as you crossed the red SD line, the forest vanished. Maybe that will change, but it's definitely a potential headwind.
    - beat 8y ago
      It's not so much red vs blue as state policy. Iowa has even more wind power than MN, and it's a lot more red. SD is definitely backwards in that regard. edit: Correcting myself, SD is getting 30% of its electricity from wind now. There's fewer towers because of a smaller population.
      - chkaloon 8y ago
        So, it's a non issue? Nothing to worry about? https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/12/14/communities-fight-wind-farms-face-pushback https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/12/14/communities-fight... https://www.thelocal.fr/20180807/why-do-some-people-in-france-hate-wind-farms-so-much https://www.thelocal.fr/20180807/why-do-some-people-in-franc... https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/al-maiorino/just-how-widespread-is-wind-farm-opposition-20190312 https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/al-maiorino/just-how...
jayalpha 8y ago
"tl;dr: Building new solar, wind, and storage is about to be cheaper than operating existing coal and gas power plants. That will change everything." Yeah, right Ramez. Galactic-Scale Energy https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy
- convivialdingo 8y ago
  Interesting take. Very few are looking at future energy needs - we're mostly concerned about here and how.
- philwelch 8y ago
  > "Let me restate that important point. No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years." 1400 years seems like a perfectly reasonable timeframe to develop into a Kardashev II civilization.
AtlasBarfed 8y ago
Eh, I didn't see any substantive treatment of one of the most disruptive aspects of solar: personal power generation that brings over-100% independence from the grid and can power local grids with surplus.
- wmf 8y ago
  Virtually all residential solar installations today cannot function without the grid and would require much more expensive equipment to do so. It's not clear why that would change.
arcturus17 8y ago
I'm completely ignorant about this field, but I've heard Bill Gates and others say there are many problems with clean energy, such as land-efficiency (particularly in the case of solar), of course storage, etc. What might be some counterpoints to these objections?
- zanny 8y ago
  Storage at nation-state levels is largely solved by pump-storage hydro[1]. Yes, its expensive, especially if you lack natural reservoirs to convert into pump basins, but the economics of it are well known, the technology is mature, and implementations already exist. The real barrier is the chicken and egg problem that until there is urgent need for such storage it won't be built and building it will be time consuming and centralized-cost expensive to do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
  - kristianp 8y ago
    That's only where a mountainous area is close enough. There are limits to how far transmission losses allow you to go.
    - cesarb 8y ago
      > There are limits to how far transmission losses allow you to go. These limits are higher than you might think. The currently longest HVDC link in Brazil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Madeira_HVDC_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Madeira_HVDC_system) is 2300 km; there is another one being built that will be over 2500 km. For comparison, a quick web search tells me that the "width" of the USA (from the east coast to the west coast) is only 4500 km.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  For the US, at least, land efficiency is not a huge deal since the places with greatest solar intensities are largely also the areas with the fewest other uses (i.e. desert). For most other countries it's a much harder problem. Northern africa may be fairly close geographically to Europe, but the political climate is such that Europe probably won't want to rely on power coming from Africa. What seems to make the most sense currently as far as solar goes for places that don't have cheap sunny land is distributed PV plus large scale concentrated solar. CSP is about twice the power density of traditional PV in terms of land use, but typically requires a much higher capex. If battery storage continues to improve at the rate it has for the past 10 years, the storage problem will solve itself fairly quickly, though the economics are hard to figure: if NG becomes used only for peaking, then the price of NG will probably drop substantially making the target for battery pricing much lower than todays costs of NG generation. If NG keeps being used for heating (which seems likely in the near-to-medium term in the US), then that will help to keep the costs of NG up.
ctdonath 8y ago
I never see intermittency addressed sufficiently. Early this year, I noted the US was almost entirely covered with clouds for a week. Will these renewables really have enough battery (or other) storage capacity for prolonged solar/wind insufficiency? There's a lot of "well, with enough batteries or smart grids..." but not enough even back-of-napkin calculations for what such cases would require, likely cost, and consequences of outlier environmental happenings. It's easy/cheap to pile up coal, or fill giant buckets with oil, but batteries are expensive .
- Havoc 8y ago
  >I never see intermittency addressed sufficiently. Even with storage the cost is falling fast & will approach coal shortly
- m_fayer 8y ago
  You can have a few coal or gas plants on standby for those rate occasions when reserves are insufficient.
  - ctdonath 8y ago
    Problem is you need enough "on standby" to run full-output indefinitely ... at a cost high enough that you may as well just use them instead of unreliable renewables. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for renewables. Run my office near 100% on solar in summer, and run my home partly on year-round. My experience convinces me that while it's nice/fun/clean/etc, it's also painfully unreliable. People talking about renewables while living on coal/etc energy don't seem to grasp this.
    - peterashford 8y ago
      I don't get your argument. In NZ, were very largely running on renewables. Hydro filling in the rest. There's a coal plant in Huntly which can be fired up to fill in any gaps. Most of the time it's not needed and this isn't a big deal.
    - cesarb 8y ago
throw3355666 8y ago
The article mentions a utility in Northern Indiana and references a public presentation made last year that outlined various scenarios and chose a preferred path forward. If you go to that utility's website, you'll see that they adopted the scenario of decommissioning 4 coal-fired generation units by 2023 and a 5th by 2028. They've begun the decommissioning process (apparently it takes a long time) and have a press release from February of this year announcing the signing of agreements for the construction of 3 wind farms totaling ~800MW.
browsercoin2019 8y ago
Will there ever be a solar panel that is so powerful it will just run s device all day? This would require a huge amount of storage of power. I saw an HN article the other day about an American University developing paper thin batteries with superior power storage. We are truly headed for a major leap towards being independent from non renewable sources of energy
kumarski 8y ago
Did a quick reply to his weak assertions and claims. https://twitter.com/datarade/status/1113535596108992512 https://twitter.com/datarade/status/1113535596108992512 Ramez is much like Kurzweil, desperately needs to open a chemistry book.
vermilingua 8y ago
Forgive me if this is an utterly ignorant question, or already answered: but with the plan to make 40-50% of power wind-based, is there any potential impact on the environment? Intuition tells me that if wind is able to generate so much power, the energy is coming from somewhere. For solar, the power is coming from “waste” energy from the sun, but wind takes all its energy from the natural activity of our climate, which is more or less a closed system is it not? If we’re extracting all this energy from our weather systems, could we not in theory cause some major disruption?
- opportune 8y ago
  It's not a closed system, the wind patterns on the earth are due to heat differentials which are constantly being created due to... the sun. You can think of it as a way of harvesting more concentrated solar energy
  - vermilingua 8y ago
    If that were true, wouldn’t the weather get progressively more energetic over time? Wouldn’t we now be living with constant planetoids storms?
    - opportune 8y ago
      No, because the friction between the air and itself/the rest of the planet slows down the winds and dissipates the energy as heat
      - vermilingua 8y ago
        Aaahh, I see; thanks. Also, *planetary.
- imtringued 8y ago
  Where do you think does the energy in fossil fuels come from? It comes from the same place wind energy and solar energy come from: The sun.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
Lots of arguments in this thread. Yet, there are few that are missing that I would like to add my two cents to. 1) People keep pointing out the need for batteries and yet keep forgetting that battery production is ramping up exponentially over the next few years because of EVs. Vehicle to grid power is technically feasible, obvious, and well on its way to becoming a thing in many places. So, EVs are not a problem but actually part of the solution here. Yes, EVs use a lot of power when they are charging and they use some of that power when they are driving. But most of the time they are not driving and plugged in to the grid. This means that lots of people switching to EVs in the next two decades is going to result in plenty of battery capacity that is already plugged into the grid that can absorb lots of the excess power generated during the day. It won't be enough by itself but it's a big factor. 2) The article is about grid solar and wind. However, lots of house holds are now technically capable of going completely off grid with privately operated solar and wind + batteries. In some places people already do this and in some places they even do it without subsidies. This is only going to get more affordable and common over the next few decades. Ironically the biggest factor slowing this down is not technology but legislation and the de-facto exclusive monopolies of existing energy players in a lot of markets. E.g. the US energy market is closer to a communist planned economy than anything resembling a free market right now: expensive, inefficient, and stupid. IMHO that is something that can be fixed quite easily and price pressure will make this a popular demand and basically irresistible for politicians to act on. I doubt this will survive decades in its current sorry state. 3) The key argument that Ramez Naam makes is about economies of scale driving prices down. This is true for clean energy and will continue to be true for some time as technology improves. You can bicker about the time lines of course but a 2-3 factor price drop is purely a question of when rather than if and there may very well be more in stock beyond that (5x, 10x, 20x?). IMHO we've seen nothing yet. It's worth noting that a lot of studies on this in the past have been systematically pessimistic on price levels and efficiency. E.g. a lot of coal plants are shutting down prematurely precisely because the economic studies that convinced their investors that was a good investment years ago were flat-out wrong by magnitudes. The current prices for clean energy are nowhere near as high as what people commonly believed would be the case even ten years ago. IMHO the combination of growing demand and the obvious VC investments at scale in this area are going to continue to yield results for decades/centuries to come. 4) Likewise, economies of scale provide little more benefit for non clean power solutions. Nuclear, coal and gas are not going to get massively cheaper in the next few decades and the latter two are arguably at risk of actually getting (much) more expensive as carbon taxation is becoming more of a thing and state subsidies for coal, oil, and gas are becoming much less of a thing at the same time their primarily fuel is actually getting scarcer. Also, price volatility for oil and gas is already a problem. Especially oil is going up and down like crazy. You can't do reliable price projections for even a few years ahead. Right now it seems world+dog is dumping oil thus depressing prices. But perhaps this is in anticipation of easy sources running out and demand collapsing: better to sell now at a low price while you still can. If it was a safe investment, people would be waiting for demand and prices to go up. That's not what's happening. Peak oil and coal is already in the past according to some and investors are already acting accordingly and they are primarily greed driven. Clean energy only has the 'problem' of getting massively cheaper than it is right now at a somewhat unpredictable pace for decades to come. Maybe someone will figure out fusion at some point. For that to be feasible, it will need to be cost effective with clean energy. I believe it is possible but might not happen until next century. 5) Batteries and grid are not the only way to use (excess) clean energy. Having cheap electricity means that you can do interesting things like desalinate seawater and store the resulting drinking water or use it for agriculture. You can also use it to generate all kinds of fuels from air and water. IMHO a potentially disruptive thing is the notion of actually generating methane and other carbon based fuels from basically air and water. Right now this is stuff that is feasible in labs and mostly not very practical, just yet. However, imagine this becoming actually cheaper than pumping oil out of the arctic, shipping it halfway across the planet, refining it, trucking it to your favorite petrol filling station, etc. The point I'm trying to make here is that excess energy has plenty of useful applications and is an opportunity rather than a problem. IMHO the vast majority of energy we generate in a few decades or so may not be for grid usage but this type of applications. We might still be burning diesel or gas in a century but I doubt it will be of the fossil variety. 6) The transport sector is electrifying. Ships already run of generators (see point 5) and increasingly also using batteries. Cars, trucks, buses etc. are well on their way of becoming EV only. Even short haul flight is likely to become electric in the next few decades (fuel cells & batteries). Most of that energy is going to come directly or indirectly from on site solar/wind. If you are going to be charging vehicles at an industrial scale, clean energy is what you will invest in to do it as cheap as you can. Buying it from a last century grid connected dinosaur plant burning oil/gas/coal from the Jurassic era (apologies for the bad pun), is not even close to being a plan. This is a cut throat business with super thin margins that is completely dominated by fuel cost. Clean energy is going to have insane cost effects here and anything that can't keep up will be out of business in a few decades.
Sam_PFS 8y ago
Hi Everyone, My name is Sam Samida-Pugh, and I am the CEO and Founder of Progressive Fusion Solutions (PFS), a fusion energy research company I started when I was 16. I've been operating PFS for 2 years now, and so far, our team has constructed 2 fusion reactors, raised $17k in funding, and presented our research at TRIUMF, Canadas National Lab for Particle Physics. Our fusion area of focus is that of the Polywell, a method of fusion which is commercially viable on a small, and inexpensive scale in relation to other fusion projects. We have 3 patents on the Polywell, and it is our goal to demonstrate energy extraction from one of our models by 2025. Currently, we are looking to raise $2 million to advance our company to its 3rd stage this year. If anyone is interested in learning more, or is aware of anyone who may be interested, then I kindly invite you to visit our website: https://www.progressivefusionsolution.com/ https://www.progressivefusionsolution.com/, or send me an email through progressivefusionsolutions@gmail.com. Cheers, Sam

443 points by kickout 8y ago

If demand increases, and there's no real technological advance to combat scarcity, cheap can suddenly turn into expensive, right? What did we do to get here? Hidden cost in price inflation of everything? Misallocation of scarce resources which are needed for other things, and hold back real technological advancement? Is it a true price comparison? I remember reading about OPEC countries where gasoline is free, and mineral rights payouts to people out West. Most importantly, are we really do everything not to have a scarcity crisis in the first place? Are we circling empty airplanes, not docking full oil tankers in the ocean and driving 500 miles each weekend for real value or profiteering for vanity's sake? Are ERs filled with people who really need it, or the consequences of bad habits?

acidburnNSA 8y ago

These trends are excellent and impressive. > But these problems are distant. Renewables will start to encounter them in earnest when solar makes up >20-30% of electricity and when wind makes up >40-50% of electricity. Today, worldwide, solar is only 2% and wind is only perhaps 6% of global electricity. Cheap multi-hour storage will arrive before that (indeed, in the next few years), lowering the price of using solar to meet the evening peak, and of dealing with intermittency on the order of minutes to several hours. Only seasonal storage (and perhaps the political challenges of long-range transmission) seem to be truly difficult problems. And we have time before they begin to impair the growth of renewables. This is where things get hard. Besides electricity, we also have to clean up all transportation, industrial, and space heating. This isn't so distant in an energy systems perspective. This is where having things like nuclear power plants with district heating will likely be important. Until then, it's great to see wind and solar performing so excellently. I still can't believe San Bernardino county already NIMBY-banned more large solar installations in the California deserts.

philwelch 8y ago
I don't know if it's absolutely necessary to completely zero our carbon emissions. We're going to need to do some sequestration and other countermeasures anyway to lower the current CO2 levels to a safe level, and it may very well end up more cost-effective to continue using those countermeasures than to try to invent an electric jet engine.
- kaybe 8y ago
  If we manage to make that jet fuel from anything else but fossil energy that should do. The only issue is that the CO2 emission up there has so much more impact, but I think we should be able to manage if we have the rest under control.
- ergothus 8y ago
  I'll feel more confident when we have large scale sequestration methods that are beyond the drawing board. I loosely agree with your conclusion, but until we KNOW the numbers, it seems worth it to shoot for as close to zero emissions as we can get while figuring out the sequestration options. The closest I've heard of is some seabed oilfield sequestering from Nordic countries, IIRC, but that has some built in limitations. Are you aware of sequestering efforts I've missed?
  - chalst 8y ago
    There's new research that suggests that there are soil-based sequestration methods that work far faster than the well-studied approach of growing forests: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08636-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08636-w
  - philwelch 8y ago
    We should invest the R&D effort into as many places as we can. I just have a hunch that "electrifying everything" isn't going to win out over, say, "use electricity to synthesize energy-dense liquid fuels", which can even be generalized to the sequestration strategy of "use electricity to synthesize liquid fuels and then store them in underground salt caverns like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve". Though I have no idea if we can make enough salt caverns, at least it would be a fixed amount of salt caverns, since you could establish a closed-loop supply of liquid fuel this way that was long-run carbon-neutral.

4thaccount 8y ago

The part about renewables suppressing prices is already and has been a thing for awhile. We even see $0 prices in some market intervals because wind is so highly subsidized. This causes some issues as the market prices don't reflect the actual need.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
It often goes negative, which is really backwards. This pulls the rug out from generators that don't like to reduce in power because fuel is a small fraction of their cost. Good old production tax credits.
ip26 8y ago
You don't need subsidies for the price to hit $0. The power must be removed from the grid.
- 4thaccount 8y ago
  That is not true. Where are you getting this from? Maybe I misunderstand you. Low prices generally come from when you have a very low marginal price (often because a windfarm can put in a $0 offer and still make a profit due to subsidies). Note that I'm not against the production tax credits, but the market distortions are very real and can impact decisions to build more generation.
  - 7952 8y ago
    Surely in a free market the cost of renewables would just track fuel prices. You would have to sell your renewable energy for slightly less than the cheapest fuel based source. That would make it very difficult to get finance because the rate of return would be unpredictable. So in a market dominated by unpredictable fossil fuel generation it makes sense to set a minimum price. And the government has to act as the buyer who agrees a price ahead of time.
    - jgamman 8y ago

Reedx 8y ago

Solar & wind are great, but no mention of nuclear? (look into Gen IV if concerned about nuclear's reputation) That's looking like what we need most of all if we want to seriously tackle the problem. If you're wondering why, Bill Gates argues a good case on why solar & wind are not enough: https://youtu.be/d1EB1zsxW0k?t=518 https://youtu.be/d1EB1zsxW0k?t=518

bilbo0s 8y ago
Problem is, there is no private sector money for that. You want that? You gotta figure out how to get government to pay for it. Investment in nuclear requires MUCH more captial than just throwing up some windmills somewhere. Even if you get rid of all regulation and taxes, it'd still be orders of magnitude more expensive. Private money would still rush into wind, solar, and storage.
- kingnothing 8y ago
  Vogtle, the only nuclear power plant currently under construction in the US, is privately funded. The only info I see about government involvement is the guarantee of about $8B of construction loans, with a total cost of around $25B paid for by a few regional power companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...
  - beat 8y ago
    If it was economically viable, it would be done. Forget the US and complaining about the darn treehuggers. Look at countries that don't particularly care about the environment. Russia gets about 20% of its power from nuclear, and is currently scaling back expansion plans due to cost. India gets only 3% from nuclear, and new development will get that to maybe 5%. China gets less than 4% of its power from nuclear, and is backing off from new construction plans as well. If nuclear were really cheap, and environmentalist resistance was really the problem, we'd see much more nuclear power in these countries, both existing and under construction.

effnorwood 8y ago

It won’t unless it’s nuclear.

tntn 8y ago

See also https://medium.com/otherlab-news/decarbonization-and-gnd-b8ddd569de16 https://medium.com/otherlab-news/decarbonization-and-gnd-b8d.... Saul Griffith + Otherlab estimate that electrifying the US will reduce the total energy needs by 50+% as a result of reduced waste (among other reasons).

orwin 8y ago

This is a really, really good news. However i really don't like the fact that again we talk that much about PV solar energy. As utility, spot electricity generator, they are fine (and way more effective than thermal), but as far as solar farm are concerned, we should lobby for thermal if the water supply allows it.

mac01021 8y ago
> we should lobby for thermal if the water supply allows it Why?

hairytrog 8y ago

It's too bad they don't include post-use decomissioning/recycling costs. There is some really toxic crap in there Nuclear has to, so should solar. They also forget that renewables are not that versatile and only address a small part of the big 4 carbon emitters (grid, industrial, cargo, cows). Industrial and cargo transport are going to require nuclear heat sources. So while it's great that costs are coming down, they are not are not reporting the full cost, and it's only a partial solution to the big energy problems.

CabSauce 8y ago
If we're going to count disposal cost, we should definitely count the externalities for other methods as well. Climate change, pollution, etc.
beat 8y ago
Demanding a TOTAL ENERGY SOLUTION OR NOTHING is an endemic problem in these comments. Partial solutions rock.
Brakenshire 8y ago
Toxic crap in solar? For silicon panels, which are the vast majority of the market, what specifically is toxic in the panel itself? I can only think of lead in solder, which is the same issue for all electronic devices. There are toxic chemicals used in the processes for making the panel, which need proper environmental regulation, but that doesn’t mean the panel itself contains toxic materials.
- jhayward 8y ago
  There is one major manufacturer (First Solar) that makes CIGS [edit: should read 'CdTe'] thin-film panels which do have Cd, etc and need a waste management strategy. I believe First Solar guarantees waste recovery for their panels [1]. But you are correct, the vast majority of panels are silicon-based and have no significant environmental disposal issues. Leaded solder use is already quite low and is targeted for zero content in the near future. [1] http://www.firstsolar.com/-/media/First-Solar/Sustainability-Documents/Recycling/First-Solar-Recycling-Datasheet.ashx http://www.firstsolar.com/-/media/First-Solar/Sustainability...

chris_va 8y ago

(disclaimer: I am part of a Climate&Energy research group that does this sort of economic modeling) I would say that the author's broad conclusions are actually likely to pan out (albeit on a different timeline). However, the individual arguments are cherry picked (e.g. specific utility decisions that do not generalize) and do not necessarily support the conclusion. So, please ignore the graphs as just visual candy. Also, their conclusions around wind are likely incorrect, given the learning curve and deployment rates for solar vs wind. Some problems: - The author skips over the difference between dispatchable and non-dispatchable power. The article alludes to it with the discussion of storage, but the nuances are actually very important. - There are graphs comparing solar and coal. Coal is already dying, and not going to get serious traction by any investors in the future. It is a high capital, low marginal cost plant with expensive cycling for shutdown/turn-on. With today's renewables, the variability in grid demand is too high to make it economical. Even if that wasn't true (which it might not be in the future with sufficient storage), natural gas is strictly cheaper with fracking, and likely will be for the next 50 years. - The author states that renewables are on the verge of being "cheaper than the cost of continuing to operate existing coal- or gas-fueled power plants". They support this argument with some cherry-picked examples. Realistically, that is not true, nor will it likely every be true. The marginal cost for natural gas is roughly ~1.8 cents/kWh today (including O&M), though NG is very cheap right now. With a capacity factor of 25%, solar would have to be ~$0.50/W including ammortized O&M (so call it $0.35/W. With a ~20% learning curve, that is ~5 doublings from today, so more than net electricity demand). On top of that, that power is mostly useless without storage, which adds additional LCOE (e.g. amortized battery capital and RTE derating). - Much of the authors argument would require full electrification of transportation+commercial/residential heating, which is unlikely to really pick up steam until the 2030s. Industrial heating will likely be the last holdout (barring some regulatory pressure like a carbon tax). Anyway, after years of research I would say that I am actually optimistic (I did not used to be) about renewables+storage with sufficient regulatory pressure to get us over today's cost hump (e.g. tax credit, RPS, carbon tax, anything), but take this article with a grain of salt. Edit: I should say that NG prices vary dramatically by location, and Europe will likely see a very different path forward than the rest of the planet (they also get to cheat with storage with the Norwegian Fjords), so they may push us down the learning curve significantly faster than the US/Asian market. China seems to be doing things by fiat, too, which is always handy.

lixtra 8y ago

> replace virtually all of that coal power with a mix of solar, wind, storage, and flexible demand In the linked document I did not find any guarantees how flexible the demand has to be in worst case. It’s easy to run on renewables when you can just shut down everything.

Dumblydorr 8y ago
It's not just shutting down everything, you can shift heating and cooling and battery charging loads to renewable rich times. Its economically incentivized to do so as renewables can drastically reduce wholesale prices at those times.

tmaly 8y ago

Battery and storage technology is still the limiting factor in broad adoption of clean energy. We need a Manhattan project for storage technology is we will every realize the conclusions in this post.

stcredzero 8y ago

Error establishing a database connection

superkuh 8y ago
Yup. Here's a mirror for anyone else looking: http://archive.is/ATJXq http://archive.is/ATJXq
- kristianp 8y ago
  Or via a proxy if you're in Australia, as archive.is is blocked.

rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago

No mention of possible resistance from fossil fuels interests? They have trillions of $ of assets to defend, so I would expect some unconventional methods to prevent renewable from growing quickly: buy some media, disrupt elections, promote FUD, get some big countries into war (an autocracy like Saudi Arabia certainly have this capability, or Russia since its regime also massively relies on gas to keep its economy afloat), etc. Energy is not just about cost, it's a huge power that can make and destroy countries and empires. They will certainly not die without a fight.

nestorD 8y ago
Watching the following TED talk, I was surprised to discover that gas compagny such as Total are actually promoting renewable energies because they currently need to be complemented and gas is the main solution used for that purpose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w

clomond 8y ago

> Finally, there will in fact be a Phase 4 of renewables, when their penetration has grown so high that they become limited by headwinds of their own creation: Value deflation I hold the opinion that this "Phase 4" - or a relative slowdown in momentum of renewables is unlikely to ever occur for a sustained period of time (i.e. more than 2-5 years). Rather, I view value deflation as more of a resistance or "constant headwind" that, you could argue we even have today. There are a few reasons I hold the opinion that this "Phase" will never actually become a phase: - On the value deflation curve, where "energy" at certain times of day decreases in value as more solar is installed in a particular market that "can't be used" - batteries (or any kind of dispatchable energy storage) results in a "shifting up" of the curve. If for example a market had enough dispatchable energy storage to meet 10% of a grid's needs, energy deflation dynamics only start to kick in once demand exceeds the energy that can be stored (similar to the situation we have today) - Value deflation (or moments where there is zero cost energy, negative electricity prices etc) is a market signal for "here is some free energy" or "I will pay you to take this off my hands". If you believe in markets, and innovations that emerge to capture value - I see technologies and businesses in due time stepping in place to take advantage of this underutilized value. We as humans are pretty good at finding ways to consume and use energy - particularly if it is nearly free. Large volumes of "low cost" energy could be used in multitudes of applications - think: desalination of large volumes of water, cleaning of water via reverse osmosis, hydrogen production for transportation or fertilizer production, operating most industrial applications etc. - Given the above, and general political and market pressures developing over time to electrify and transition all uses of energy to become carbon free (industrial, transportation, etc) to lower carbon sources, I think you are doing the analysis injustice if you are only looking at the electricity sector (assuming you are looking on the decades timescale, which this author is). Energy is energy and can be transformed from one form to the other. If it is cheap enough in one form, that transformation can in situations become economical. Regardless, I think it is a very exciting time and it will be interesting to see how things unfold. I am aware that there is a sizeable camp of analysts/experts out there that strongly believe in the value deflation risk - but I am a little more optimistic than most regarding the power of markets and human ingenuity. For anyone interested in the topic, I encourage you to do research on the value deflation of solar/wind.

chkaloon 8y ago

The headwinds mentioned should also include NIMBY. If you've ever driven through western Minnesota and the turbine forest that is out there, you'll realize there there is the potential for serious blowback if onshore turbine installation gets more widespread. I just hope that less intrusive alternatives become more prevalent before that blowback causes a price increase that makes fossil fuels look good again.

beat 8y ago
I haven't seen serious blowback on our wind farms, and I live in MN. It's generally well embraced by the vast majority of the public and the political system.
- chkaloon 8y ago
  That's good for now. I live in WI and the blowback is rising. I'm guessing one reason for that is because of the low population density there. Once they start creeping into more dense areas, or less dense but more ecologically sensitive areas, it could get interesting. Also MN is a pretty blue state. I seem to remember that as soon as you crossed the red SD line, the forest vanished. Maybe that will change, but it's definitely a potential headwind.
  - beat 8y ago
    It's not so much red vs blue as state policy. Iowa has even more wind power than MN, and it's a lot more red. SD is definitely backwards in that regard. edit: Correcting myself, SD is getting 30% of its electricity from wind now. There's fewer towers because of a smaller population.
    - chkaloon 8y ago
      So, it's a non issue? Nothing to worry about? https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/12/14/communities-fight-wind-farms-face-pushback https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/12/14/communities-fight... https://www.thelocal.fr/20180807/why-do-some-people-in-france-hate-wind-farms-so-much https://www.thelocal.fr/20180807/why-do-some-people-in-franc... https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/al-maiorino/just-how-widespread-is-wind-farm-opposition-20190312 https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/al-maiorino/just-how...

jayalpha 8y ago

"tl;dr: Building new solar, wind, and storage is about to be cheaper than operating existing coal and gas power plants. That will change everything." Yeah, right Ramez. Galactic-Scale Energy https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy

convivialdingo 8y ago
Interesting take. Very few are looking at future energy needs - we're mostly concerned about here and how.
philwelch 8y ago
> "Let me restate that important point. No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years." 1400 years seems like a perfectly reasonable timeframe to develop into a Kardashev II civilization.

AtlasBarfed 8y ago

Eh, I didn't see any substantive treatment of one of the most disruptive aspects of solar: personal power generation that brings over-100% independence from the grid and can power local grids with surplus.

wmf 8y ago
Virtually all residential solar installations today cannot function without the grid and would require much more expensive equipment to do so. It's not clear why that would change.

arcturus17 8y ago

I'm completely ignorant about this field, but I've heard Bill Gates and others say there are many problems with clean energy, such as land-efficiency (particularly in the case of solar), of course storage, etc. What might be some counterpoints to these objections?

zanny 8y ago
Storage at nation-state levels is largely solved by pump-storage hydro[1]. Yes, its expensive, especially if you lack natural reservoirs to convert into pump basins, but the economics of it are well known, the technology is mature, and implementations already exist. The real barrier is the chicken and egg problem that until there is urgent need for such storage it won't be built and building it will be time consuming and centralized-cost expensive to do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
- kristianp 8y ago
  That's only where a mountainous area is close enough. There are limits to how far transmission losses allow you to go.
  - cesarb 8y ago
    > There are limits to how far transmission losses allow you to go. These limits are higher than you might think. The currently longest HVDC link in Brazil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Madeira_HVDC_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Madeira_HVDC_system) is 2300 km; there is another one being built that will be over 2500 km. For comparison, a quick web search tells me that the "width" of the USA (from the east coast to the west coast) is only 4500 km.
aidenn0 8y ago
For the US, at least, land efficiency is not a huge deal since the places with greatest solar intensities are largely also the areas with the fewest other uses (i.e. desert). For most other countries it's a much harder problem. Northern africa may be fairly close geographically to Europe, but the political climate is such that Europe probably won't want to rely on power coming from Africa. What seems to make the most sense currently as far as solar goes for places that don't have cheap sunny land is distributed PV plus large scale concentrated solar. CSP is about twice the power density of traditional PV in terms of land use, but typically requires a much higher capex. If battery storage continues to improve at the rate it has for the past 10 years, the storage problem will solve itself fairly quickly, though the economics are hard to figure: if NG becomes used only for peaking, then the price of NG will probably drop substantially making the target for battery pricing much lower than todays costs of NG generation. If NG keeps being used for heating (which seems likely in the near-to-medium term in the US), then that will help to keep the costs of NG up.

ctdonath 8y ago

I never see intermittency addressed sufficiently. Early this year, I noted the US was almost entirely covered with clouds for a week. Will these renewables really have enough battery (or other) storage capacity for prolonged solar/wind insufficiency? There's a lot of "well, with enough batteries or smart grids..." but not enough even back-of-napkin calculations for what such cases would require, likely cost, and consequences of outlier environmental happenings. It's easy/cheap to pile up coal, or fill giant buckets with oil, but batteries are expensive .

Havoc 8y ago
>I never see intermittency addressed sufficiently. Even with storage the cost is falling fast & will approach coal shortly
m_fayer 8y ago
You can have a few coal or gas plants on standby for those rate occasions when reserves are insufficient.
- ctdonath 8y ago
  Problem is you need enough "on standby" to run full-output indefinitely ... at a cost high enough that you may as well just use them instead of unreliable renewables. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for renewables. Run my office near 100% on solar in summer, and run my home partly on year-round. My experience convinces me that while it's nice/fun/clean/etc, it's also painfully unreliable. People talking about renewables while living on coal/etc energy don't seem to grasp this.
  - peterashford 8y ago
    I don't get your argument. In NZ, were very largely running on renewables. Hydro filling in the rest. There's a coal plant in Huntly which can be fired up to fill in any gaps. Most of the time it's not needed and this isn't a big deal.
  - cesarb 8y ago

throw3355666 8y ago

The article mentions a utility in Northern Indiana and references a public presentation made last year that outlined various scenarios and chose a preferred path forward. If you go to that utility's website, you'll see that they adopted the scenario of decommissioning 4 coal-fired generation units by 2023 and a 5th by 2028. They've begun the decommissioning process (apparently it takes a long time) and have a press release from February of this year announcing the signing of agreements for the construction of 3 wind farms totaling ~800MW.

browsercoin2019 8y ago

Will there ever be a solar panel that is so powerful it will just run s device all day? This would require a huge amount of storage of power. I saw an HN article the other day about an American University developing paper thin batteries with superior power storage. We are truly headed for a major leap towards being independent from non renewable sources of energy

kumarski 8y ago

Did a quick reply to his weak assertions and claims. https://twitter.com/datarade/status/1113535596108992512 https://twitter.com/datarade/status/1113535596108992512 Ramez is much like Kurzweil, desperately needs to open a chemistry book.

vermilingua 8y ago

Forgive me if this is an utterly ignorant question, or already answered: but with the plan to make 40-50% of power wind-based, is there any potential impact on the environment? Intuition tells me that if wind is able to generate so much power, the energy is coming from somewhere. For solar, the power is coming from “waste” energy from the sun, but wind takes all its energy from the natural activity of our climate, which is more or less a closed system is it not? If we’re extracting all this energy from our weather systems, could we not in theory cause some major disruption?

opportune 8y ago
It's not a closed system, the wind patterns on the earth are due to heat differentials which are constantly being created due to... the sun. You can think of it as a way of harvesting more concentrated solar energy
- vermilingua 8y ago
  If that were true, wouldn’t the weather get progressively more energetic over time? Wouldn’t we now be living with constant planetoids storms?
  - opportune 8y ago
    No, because the friction between the air and itself/the rest of the planet slows down the winds and dissipates the energy as heat
    - vermilingua 8y ago
      Aaahh, I see; thanks. Also, *planetary.
imtringued 8y ago
Where do you think does the energy in fossil fuels come from? It comes from the same place wind energy and solar energy come from: The sun.

jillesvangurp 8y ago

Lots of arguments in this thread. Yet, there are few that are missing that I would like to add my two cents to. 1) People keep pointing out the need for batteries and yet keep forgetting that battery production is ramping up exponentially over the next few years because of EVs. Vehicle to grid power is technically feasible, obvious, and well on its way to becoming a thing in many places. So, EVs are not a problem but actually part of the solution here. Yes, EVs use a lot of power when they are charging and they use some of that power when they are driving. But most of the time they are not driving and plugged in to the grid. This means that lots of people switching to EVs in the next two decades is going to result in plenty of battery capacity that is already plugged into the grid that can absorb lots of the excess power generated during the day. It won't be enough by itself but it's a big factor. 2) The article is about grid solar and wind. However, lots of house holds are now technically capable of going completely off grid with privately operated solar and wind + batteries. In some places people already do this and in some places they even do it without subsidies. This is only going to get more affordable and common over the next few decades. Ironically the biggest factor slowing this down is not technology but legislation and the de-facto exclusive monopolies of existing energy players in a lot of markets. E.g. the US energy market is closer to a communist planned economy than anything resembling a free market right now: expensive, inefficient, and stupid. IMHO that is something that can be fixed quite easily and price pressure will make this a popular demand and basically irresistible for politicians to act on. I doubt this will survive decades in its current sorry state. 3) The key argument that Ramez Naam makes is about economies of scale driving prices down. This is true for clean energy and will continue to be true for some time as technology improves. You can bicker about the time lines of course but a 2-3 factor price drop is purely a question of when rather than if and there may very well be more in stock beyond that (5x, 10x, 20x?). IMHO we've seen nothing yet. It's worth noting that a lot of studies on this in the past have been systematically pessimistic on price levels and efficiency. E.g. a lot of coal plants are shutting down prematurely precisely because the economic studies that convinced their investors that was a good investment years ago were flat-out wrong by magnitudes. The current prices for clean energy are nowhere near as high as what people commonly believed would be the case even ten years ago. IMHO the combination of growing demand and the obvious VC investments at scale in this area are going to continue to yield results for decades/centuries to come. 4) Likewise, economies of scale provide little more benefit for non clean power solutions. Nuclear, coal and gas are not going to get massively cheaper in the next few decades and the latter two are arguably at risk of actually getting (much) more expensive as carbon taxation is becoming more of a thing and state subsidies for coal, oil, and gas are becoming much less of a thing at the same time their primarily fuel is actually getting scarcer. Also, price volatility for oil and gas is already a problem. Especially oil is going up and down like crazy. You can't do reliable price projections for even a few years ahead. Right now it seems world+dog is dumping oil thus depressing prices. But perhaps this is in anticipation of easy sources running out and demand collapsing: better to sell now at a low price while you still can. If it was a safe investment, people would be waiting for demand and prices to go up. That's not what's happening. Peak oil and coal is already in the past according to some and investors are already acting accordingly and they are primarily greed driven. Clean energy only has the 'problem' of getting massively cheaper than it is right now at a somewhat unpredictable pace for decades to come. Maybe someone will figure out fusion at some point. For that to be feasible, it will need to be cost effective with clean energy. I believe it is possible but might not happen until next century. 5) Batteries and grid are not the only way to use (excess) clean energy. Having cheap electricity means that you can do interesting things like desalinate seawater and store the resulting drinking water or use it for agriculture. You can also use it to generate all kinds of fuels from air and water. IMHO a potentially disruptive thing is the notion of actually generating methane and other carbon based fuels from basically air and water. Right now this is stuff that is feasible in labs and mostly not very practical, just yet. However, imagine this becoming actually cheaper than pumping oil out of the arctic, shipping it halfway across the planet, refining it, trucking it to your favorite petrol filling station, etc. The point I'm trying to make here is that excess energy has plenty of useful applications and is an opportunity rather than a problem. IMHO the vast majority of energy we generate in a few decades or so may not be for grid usage but this type of applications. We might still be burning diesel or gas in a century but I doubt it will be of the fossil variety. 6) The transport sector is electrifying. Ships already run of generators (see point 5) and increasingly also using batteries. Cars, trucks, buses etc. are well on their way of becoming EV only. Even short haul flight is likely to become electric in the next few decades (fuel cells & batteries). Most of that energy is going to come directly or indirectly from on site solar/wind. If you are going to be charging vehicles at an industrial scale, clean energy is what you will invest in to do it as cheap as you can. Buying it from a last century grid connected dinosaur plant burning oil/gas/coal from the Jurassic era (apologies for the bad pun), is not even close to being a plan. This is a cut throat business with super thin margins that is completely dominated by fuel cost. Clean energy is going to have insane cost effects here and anything that can't keep up will be out of business in a few decades.

Sam_PFS 8y ago

Hi Everyone, My name is Sam Samida-Pugh, and I am the CEO and Founder of Progressive Fusion Solutions (PFS), a fusion energy research company I started when I was 16. I've been operating PFS for 2 years now, and so far, our team has constructed 2 fusion reactors, raised $17k in funding, and presented our research at TRIUMF, Canadas National Lab for Particle Physics. Our fusion area of focus is that of the Polywell, a method of fusion which is commercially viable on a small, and inexpensive scale in relation to other fusion projects. We have 3 patents on the Polywell, and it is our goal to demonstrate energy extraction from one of our models by 2025. Currently, we are looking to raise $2 million to advance our company to its 3rd stage this year. If anyone is interested in learning more, or is aware of anyone who may be interested, then I kindly invite you to visit our website: https://www.progressivefusionsolution.com/ https://www.progressivefusionsolution.com/, or send me an email through progressivefusionsolutions@gmail.com. Cheers, Sam