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Your analysis wrt deaths completely ignores intermittency. Overbuilding is a good solution esp when combined with battery or pumped storage but note that that w

Your analysis wrt deaths completely ignores intermittency. Overbuilding is a good solution esp when combined with battery or pumped storage but note that that would also necessarily increase material costs and human costs vs nuclear and geothermal. The momentum for both is good but again until we get that be 3-4 orders of magnitude improvement in scale required to do without gas. Until then having a mixed portfolio with greater emphasis on nuclear and geothermal will be a better option. HVDC grids are also great but IMO less often considered are the risks of relying on continental grids so much such as the increased susceptibility to brittle failure at a system level and vulnerability as a soft target to economic terrorism/hybrid war. Again, blindly extrapolating from immediate is not helpful. The same logic caused half of HN to claim that datacenters wouldn't use HDD/Tape anymore because SSDs would be so much cheaper than everything else because moore's. And that's before considering Elon's egregious track record and obvious conflict of interest.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
I am not an expert, but simply an enthusiast. The Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley just released a report that arrives at a similar conclusion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580707 https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-90-percent-clean-electricity-by-2035-dependably-and-without-increasing-consumer-bills https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-... > The United States can deliver 90 percent clean, carbon-free electricity nationwide by 2035, dependably, at no extra cost to consumer bills and without the need for new fossil fuel plants, according to a study released today from the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. The study also finds that without robust policy reforms, most of the potential to reduce emissions and increase jobs would not be realized. 2035 Report: Plummeting Solar, Wind, and Battery Costs Can Accelerate Our Clean Energy Future is the first study of its kind to show how recent cost declines for solar, wind, and battery storage allow the U.S. to dramatically reduce generation and emissions from existing fossil power plants, while retiring coal and reducing gas generation by 70 percent.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

I am not an expert, but simply an enthusiast. The Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley just released a report that arrives at a similar conclusion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580707 https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-90-percent-clean-electricity-by-2035-dependably-and-without-increasing-consumer-bills https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-... > The United States can deliver 90 percent clean, carbon-free electricity nationwide by 2035, dependably, at no extra cost to consumer bills and without the need for new fossil fuel plants, according to a study released today from the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. The study also finds that without robust policy reforms, most of the potential to reduce emissions and increase jobs would not be realized. 2035 Report: Plummeting Solar, Wind, and Battery Costs Can Accelerate Our Clean Energy Future is the first study of its kind to show how recent cost declines for solar, wind, and battery storage allow the U.S. to dramatically reduce generation and emissions from existing fossil power plants, while retiring coal and reducing gas generation by 70 percent.