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Uh, yes it does! Economics and policy is all about making (often hard) decisions. Low energy costs have enabled us to make huge economics advances, enabling me
by skwb 7y ago
Uh, yes it does! Economics and policy is all about making (often hard) decisions. Low energy costs have enabled us to make huge economics advances, enabling me to use the computer I'm typing this on.
And as promising as renewables are, they still cannot fully replace baseline energy sources (such as coal or nuclear), nor modulate their output to comply with variances in grid demand (batteries, physical or otherwise, would still need to be accounted for in any fair comparison).
- cesarb 7y ago> And as promising as renewables are, they still cannot [...] modulate their output to comply with variances in grid demand Even if you forget to count hydroelectric as a renewable (my country has a huge amount of hydroelectric, and every time I look at the realtime power generation graph, it's the hydroelectric that's following the load, while thermal generation is flat), other renewables like solar and wind can also reduce their output as necessary to match the load. They currently don't because, since they're the cheapest power source, it makes more sense to reduce the generation elsewhere first.
- skwb 7y agoIt's not so much that they can wind down the energy they make, it's the fact that they cannot store energy for when there's increased demand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYLzss58CLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYLzss58CLs