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You can't overtake oil without spending a comparable amount on developing renewables. While it isn't quite there yet, soon renewables will be a bigger business

by Zigurd 7y ago

You can't overtake oil without spending a comparable amount on developing renewables. While it isn't quite there yet, soon renewables will be a bigger business than oil. That's impressive, and it makes the kind of growth needed to replace nuclear power plausible. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/renewables-investment-overtake-oil-gas-170000937.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/renewables-investment-overtak...

Retric 7y ago
As renewables are currently vastly cheaper than oil or nuclear, it’s going to take far less investment to reach the same place.
- beat 7y ago
  The main reason for the current inflection point is that the cost per unit energy for solar/wind has dropped precipitously (and continues to drop), while the cost/energy for most fossil fuels is growing rapidly (natural gas is an exception, due to new fracking tech). And nuclear is such a massive long-term capital investment in a rapidly developing energy picture that the risk profile is really bad, even if a new plant operates perfectly with no problems for its entire planned lifespan. Nobody wants to be the one who decided to build a nuclear plant for X dollars/gigawatt (most of that cost up-front), only to have solar going for .5X before the new plant is even operational. And it's not just the cost of solar/wind that's dropping... it's the cost of short-term energy storage, by way of batteries/thermal/hydro/etc. Nuclear plants are base-load power, good for long-term stable output rather than quick spikes up and down. But short-term storage allows solar/wind to act as baseline as well, capturing more when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and dumping it from storage when needed. Committing to expensive nuclear power plants now, with this much disruption going on, is a good way for a utility to go bankrupt twenty, thirty years from now.

by Zigurd 7y ago

Retric 7y ago

As renewables are currently vastly cheaper than oil or nuclear, it’s going to take far less investment to reach the same place.

beat 7y ago
The main reason for the current inflection point is that the cost per unit energy for solar/wind has dropped precipitously (and continues to drop), while the cost/energy for most fossil fuels is growing rapidly (natural gas is an exception, due to new fracking tech). And nuclear is such a massive long-term capital investment in a rapidly developing energy picture that the risk profile is really bad, even if a new plant operates perfectly with no problems for its entire planned lifespan. Nobody wants to be the one who decided to build a nuclear plant for X dollars/gigawatt (most of that cost up-front), only to have solar going for .5X before the new plant is even operational. And it's not just the cost of solar/wind that's dropping... it's the cost of short-term energy storage, by way of batteries/thermal/hydro/etc. Nuclear plants are base-load power, good for long-term stable output rather than quick spikes up and down. But short-term storage allows solar/wind to act as baseline as well, capturing more when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and dumping it from storage when needed. Committing to expensive nuclear power plants now, with this much disruption going on, is a good way for a utility to go bankrupt twenty, thirty years from now.