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Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
- mikewarot 6y agoSolar powered engines have been around since Mouchot had the first models working in Tours in 1865. The fact is renewable energy was always a choice, just not the cheapest in the short run. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Mouchot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Mouchot
- roywiggins 6y agoWind power is centuries older than fossil fuel engines, but actually using it to do the sort of things we expect from power generation takes some doing.
- bioinformatics 6y agoYes, solar is even older, with plants and other organisms on the forefront of energy production and development. It is kind of an untapped source of renewable energy.
- outworlder 6y agoIf we are going to include organisms here... ALL of our energy production is or was at some point solar, with the exception of geothermal and nuclear. Coal? Solar. Wood burning? Solar. The food you eat? Solar. Wind? Solar. Gasoline? Solar too.
- roywiggins 6y agoThat's why I talked about wind power, which was being used to directly power mechanical things- without any intermediate biology- long before anyone used fossil fuels to do it.
- zests 6y agoYeah but what is solar energy? Nuclear.
- BurningFrog 6y agoSo fossil fuels, at least for power generation, is already obsolete. Fantastic! Since the power plant replacement cycle is much slower than for phones, it will take a while to propagate the shift, but it is already inevitable.
- the_economist 6y agoThere's still the problem of what to do between 4pm and 8 am on a day without wind, which means we won't be able to shut down too many power plants until cheap energy storage exists.
- simongr3dal 6y agoGlobal energy grid?
- gruez 6y agoYou really want to be dependent on other countries for your vital infrastructure? Imagine if we go to war with china/russia, and they shut down energy exports to the US causing rolling blackouts everywhere.
- simongr3dal 6y agoThen get your electricity nationaly, or from france, or from germany, or from saudi arabia, or from australia, or from argentina. The point of a global energy grid would be that there's always sun and wind somewhere on the planet and you would smooth out time-of-day differences in usage. The point is NOT to outsource your country's entire electricity production.
- gruez 6y ago> Then get your electricity nationaly, or from france, or from germany, or from saudi arabia, or from australia, or from argentina. Ah yes, because the other countries will magically have the spare capacity (both in terms of generation and transmission)? We already see this play out in Europe: nobody there wants to do anything about russia because they control the natural gas supply. >The point is NOT to outsource your country's entire electricity production. Maybe, but the effects are the same. If you can't produce enough electricity to make it through the night, that puts you in very vulurable position. Even if it doesn't completely shut down the country, it might cause enough unrest to topple the current administration (eg. if they're only leading in the polls by a few percentage points and there's an election in a few months).
- albertop 6y agoToo bad that low cost is invisible for the consumers. California has one of the most, if not the most, expensive electricity in spite of years of investment in renewables.
- Knufen 6y agoSame here in Denmark, taxes on my last electricity bill were 6x the price for electricity
- HighlandSpring 6y agoWhy is this? Is there no competition?
- weaksauce 6y agothey are geographical monopolies.
- jellicle 6y agoCalifornia deregulated electricity and in the absence of regulations, electricity providers discovered that they could collude in reducing capacity until prices went nice and high, and make continuous windfall profits from then forward.
- pdonis 6y ago> California deregulated electricity "Deregulated" is something of a misnomer here. They removed restrictions on prices and collusion, but did not remove the state-enforced monopolies that different electric providers have in different areas of the state. So they combined the worst aspects of deregulation with the worst aspects of regulation.
- WalterBright 6y agoThe source of that problem was the price for consumers was fixed by the government, while the utility was obliged to pay whatever the wholesale price was.
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- bregma 6y agoThe article says the world relies on fossil fuel for energy because it's cheaper. That's true. It doesn't mention that the world relies on it because it's reliable. It doesn't disappear for 6 months of the year, or stop producing for 3 out of 5 days or during peak demand periods. Make renewables cheaper and more reliable and they will replace fossil fuels in a snap. Cheaper is not enough if it doesn't do the job.
- dariusj18 6y agoThat's still cheaper. No need to create battery farms that can hold power for half a year.
- BurningFrog 6y agoIt does mention this briefly in the Batteries and electricity storage follow learning curves too section.
- shoguning 6y agoYeah, that is mentioned as "one of the downsides of renewables". That is like saying, "one of the downsides of using a cooked noodle as a fork is that it doesn't hold its shape". It's disqualifying until that issue is sorted. The value of solar right now is that it provides energy at the hottest, most energy use part of the day. But there is a tipping point where marginal solar is not really valuable for a grid anymore. California and Germany are at that point. Hopefully we get cost-effective day-scale energy storage, it's not going to happen in the next few years unfortunately.
- oblio 6y agoWell, at least the upside is that this will be another forcing function for better battery tech. Another step up in battery tech would literally level us up as a civilization.
- marshray 6y ago> But there is a tipping point where marginal solar is not really valuable for a grid anymore. And that is a very good problem to have. There are any number of industrial processes that could easily put that excessively cheap energy to use. Aluminum smelting, for example.
- marshray 6y ago> Fossil fuels dominate the global power supply because until very recently electricity from fossil fuels was far cheaper than electricity from renewables. This has dramatically changed within the last decade. In most places in the world power from new renewables is now cheaper than power from new fossil fuels. This is the thing our great-grandkids will ask us about. ("were you alive back when?") Millenia from now, historians will not talk so much about the commercialization of electric power. They will divide time between the "pre-industrial" and "post-solar" eras, because that's what will be visible in the fossil layers.
- oblio 6y agoI'd vote for "post-advanced batteries" instead of "post-solar". Solar will only be one of the energy sources and the thing that will take us to the next level will be advanced battery tech, in my opinion. Imagine something with the energy density of kerosene but rechargeable. My brain can't even imagine what we'd do with it, but it would probably transform our daily lives more than the invention of the automobile did.
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- yurishimo 6y agoI'm trying to imagine something more revolutionary than the automobile, and I'm having trouble! Barring the legal/political hurdles, I could theoretically drive from my home in Texas to Alaska, then cross to Russia, and on to Paris in around 250~ driving hours. Throw in another day or two for a private boat across the Bering Strait/North Pacific. 9 days to basically drive around the entire world. 15000 miles. Just for giggles, my 2012 Honda CRV will get around 350-400 miles per tank of gas. We'll drive conservatively at 60 mph to hit the full range. Depending on the cost of gasoline, I could drive around the entire world for about $1200. Maybe $1500 once I get into Europe. Insane! Before cars, that same journey would take months moving non stop. A solo trip can now be done in about 2 weeks with an experienced driver. Absolutely insane the cool stuff we can do with modern technology :)
- 99_00 6y agoThis is the source they are using: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... Does lazard include subsidies in their numbers or not? I can't figure it out. I'm having trouble making sense of the lazard report, but to me it seems that it does, and ourworldindata.org is using their numbers while claiming they are without subsidies.
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- bryanlarsen 6y agoIt doesn't matter. The subsidy is 22% and the gap is more than 22%.
- reitzensteinm 6y agoI don't have time to check that report in particular, but past Lazard studies have included both subsidized and unsubsidized figures side by side. And as Bryan says in the sibling comment, there's not a large gap between the prices. Residential solar was heavily subsidized in many countries but wind and utility scale solar aren't as much, and they're also the cheap ones. If they're not clearly marked, you may need to hunt down another with more detail.
- 99_00 6y agoWhat does this mean? >Lazard’s latest annual Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE 14.0) shows that as the cost of renewable energy continues to decline, certain technologies (e.g., onshore wind and utility-scale solar), which became cost-competitive with conventional generation several years ago on a new-build basis, continue to maintain competitiveness with the marginal cost of selected existing conventional generation technologies. I assume new-build is building a wind for or nat gas plant. What is marginal cost? Is that adding capacity to a wind farm or nat gas plant, or just having an existing nat gas plant generate more power per day. Are they basically saying that renewables are competitive when capital costs are included and also when capital costs are excluded?
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoConfronting and solving the duck curve[1] and producing high duty-cycle electricity during non-sunlight hours is going to be a real challenge. We're at the point now where states will often pay other states to take excess renewable electricity during peak hours. What's the point in cheaper when we're already effectively throwing away electricity? I personally don't believe batteries are going to do it. The world needs too many batteries. They're an important part but they aren't going to cut it, especially not fast enough. The kind of power we need starts with an "N". 1. https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-how-address-over-generation-solar-energy https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-...
- bryanlarsen 6y agoThe listed nuclear price is $155/MWh. But that's for baseload power, which can't replace batteries. What's needed is dispatchable or on-demand power, which costs about 3x as much for gas, I have no idea how much it inflates the price for nuclear, but the answer will be "a lot". Nuclear in 2020 doesn't make any sense. It's far cheaper to over-provision and use storage. We should have been building nuclear like crazy over the past 40 years. Then it could have followed a similar learning curve that renewables did and it'd still make sense today.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago> The listed nuclear price is $155/MWh. Getting the price down for nuclear construction and maintenance is important. Keep in mind that these plants were built in the 80s or earlier. > Nuclear in 2020 doesn't make any sense. It's far cheaper to over-provision and use storage. What storage? That's the point. You can listen to what Bill Gates said about this last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xe3BWPsBTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xe3BWPsBTU
- pjc50 6y agoThe Hinckley C price is about that, and it's late.
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- km3r 6y agoThe graph shows solar becoming on par/ slightly cheaper then oil/gas/coal solutions over the past decade. If this trend continues we may see an energy revolution take place in the next 10-20 years. Data center costs will dive down, more places will become livable with always on AC/heating. Even inefficient energy storage becomes viable with low enough prices (if solar is 70% cheaper than gas, then it can still compete with gas at night if the energy storage is more than 30% efficient or so, when in reality storage is close to 70-80% efficient). Humanity as a whole might even make it to a Type 1 Civilization with our increased usage. Carbon capturing even becomes a viable solution to climate change. Just as rapidly changing CPU and internet speeds changed the world over the past few decades, so too will an energy revolution. I look forward to this new world and how we can use the innovations to solve todays problems.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago>more places will become livable with always on AC/heating It's time to realize that climate change is not the only environmental catastrophe we're facing now. If the switch to renewable energy leads us to speed up the ecological collapse (due to land artificialization, natural habitat loss/fragmentation...), we're £%cked. https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/inline/files/ipbes_global_assessment_report_summary_for_policymakers.pdf https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/inline/files/ipbes_glo...
- gandalfian 6y agoThe Germans paid for it creating the market/industry. Vast amounts. Then the Chinese thought it looked like a good industry to be in and threw unbelievable money at developing manufacturing capacity. If the Germans keep voting green and being parsimonious savers then we may yet get cheap batteries and survive.
- 99_00 6y agoIs Germany's experience a success or failure? What is the counter to this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/05/renewables-threaten-german-economy-energy-supply-mckinsey-warns-in-new-report/?sh=3237d9368e48 https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/05...
- haberman 6y ago"What is the counter to this article?" does not deserve downvotes.
- merb 6y agowell the problem in our grid is mostly coal. it's cheap (in germany since it's subsidized for the next x years) but it generates exactly the problems in the article. basically mckinsey study is not against green energy, it's more of a "politics do way too less" i.e. mckinsey analyzes the co2 targets for germany and it critizes it for doing way too less and having unrealistic expectations. news article basically love such studies besides that the studies in question want to show that we need to do even more. tbf between '19 and '20 we atleast reduced lots of lignite/hard coal in favor of wind (onshore) but 2019 (year of the article) it was really really bad for renweable in germany, we actually only talked about green energy, but internally we were really dirty... but we are still behind norway, sweden, denmark and lots of other countries.
- zdragnar 6y agoA charitable reply would be advances (real and predicted) in energy storage- I dont think anyone is deluded into thinking that wind or solar alone form a good baseline. That said, Germany's investments are clearly a failure, IF you go by the desired carbon reduction goals for 2020-2030. I also don't know anyone who genuinely believes any of those carbon goals are feasible, or that we have high odds of hitting them... but that might just be that I tend to have cynical friends.
- jamez1 6y agoSubsidized polysilicon produced from coal in Xinjiang is a much larger contributor than the technology improvements. https://www.pv-tech.org/news/wacker-chemie-blames-chinas-polysilicon-support-for-750-million-impairment https://www.pv-tech.org/news/wacker-chemie-blames-chinas-pol...
- konjin 6y agoBy ignoring most costs. Saying renewables are cheap when it's sunny or windy is like saying coal is cheap at the mine. For some reason people realize that distance in space is a problem. But distance in time is something that we can't wrap our heads around. It would cost trillions to build up enough storage capacity in the grid to time shift the power needed, or to build a grid capable of moving power between regions on the scale of continents.
- afrojack123 6y agoMany things wrong with this. First, clickbait headline. Renewables aren't cheap but they are saying they will become cheaper over time. This yet another use of the trick where you say something that is universally true but irrelevant to decision making. All objects go down in cost when production scales. The key factor is the UNIT cost of renewable energy with scaled production vs UNIT cost of fossil fuels now(already scaled).
- throwaway12319 6y agoThe "safest and cleanest" chart is VERY misleading when in comes to nuclear. It completely ignores the LONG-TERM risk for human survival: catastrophic release of large quantities of active fuel or waste (due to events like war, terrorism, natural disasters).
- rini17 6y agoBig disasters too happen with fossils and hydro.
- throwaway12319 6y agoIf there was a systemic risk that all dams in the world magically collapse at the same time then it should be included in the comparison. Not accounting for all types of risks makes for a very skewed comparison.
- dredmorbius 6y agoHydro plant failures have ocurred, and are far and away the most lethal energy-related accidents to date, true. The worst power plant accident of time, not a nuclear power plant failure, but a hydro station in China, Banqiao Dam. It's instructive several ways. Any number of fairly simple methods would have hugely alleviated the impact of the disaster. Much as with major nuclear disasters, it was a cascade of failures, starting with poor management and a dysfunctional culture, amplified through poor design, adverse conditions, poor communications, delayed or absent warnings, and little or no disaster response (many of the deaths were attributed to starvation and disease, not drowning or other physical impacts). A useful thing to keep in mind, though, is that after a dam break is done being a a massive disaster area, which typically resolves in a few hours to a few weeks, the land is no longer a glowing radioactive mess. It can be re-settled and populated as structures and infrasctructure are rebuilt. Zhumadian City, the region surrounding Banqiao, has a present population of over 7 million. Hydro disasters have been large, but are tangible/sensible, immediate, and resolve relatively quickly. There are literally tens of thousand of dams, if not > 100k, worldwide (over 22k in China alone), with well over a century of major utilisation. Granted 100 or fewer major (2+GWe) installations. There are fewer than 400 nuclear power stations worldwide, with at least three highly notable failures. The immediate innundation from Banqiao was responsible for ~25k deaths. The additional 100k or so came from starvation and disease due to widespread disruption of the region, and a grossly inadequate disaster response plan and capability. Adequate engineering, operation, management, forecasting, disaster planning, preparation, and response, could have reduced the loss still further. Organisational / institutional failures at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and for that matter, Hanford and Sellafield, were and are massive contributing factors. These cannot be engineered around.
- sxates 6y agoPersonal anecdote - my house has two sets of solar panels on the roof - the first was installed in 2017, the second was just installed last month. In 2017 my 6kw system cost $24,000 before any incentives (by SolarCity). In 2020 my 7.8kw system cost $15,000 before any incentives (by Tesla). Of that $15k, $4.3k was for the panels themselves, $2k for the inverter, $1k for mounting hardware, and $8k for installation. It's pretty shocking to me that in just 3 years the price per watt was basically halved, all in. Because looking at the breakdown, half the cost is in installation and presumably marketing and sales costs. Even if the panels themselves cost half as much, it would be a relatively small decrease in the total cost of the system. I wonder what the practical bottom is - even if the panels were free, there's a floor on the labor cost.
- xyzzyz 6y agoHow much savings/profit do these actually generate to you? I guess some quite significant numbers, if you decided to actually expand capacity.
- Jedd 6y agoI'll add some anecdata from Australia. My neighbour had a 5kW system put on, single-phase inverter, about three years ago - for ~ A$7000. I've just put a deposit down for installation of 12kW of panels with a 10kW three-phase inverter for A$7400 Same provider, though I haven't compared breakdown of costs (I'm assuming very similar installation / labour costs).
- harry8 6y agoHow do you find a provider? Feel like sharing who you used and some details?
- Jedd 6y agoI'm not sure where you are, and what regions the vendor I'm using covers, but I did pick Beyond Solar. This was mostly because my neighbour, an ex-power plant engineer, with much more expertise in this tech than me, had selected them three years ago, and his son had gone through a similar process a month or so ago and also chose them. Quality of the equipment is the big factor, and I gather a lot of the significantly cheaper companies are cutting costs on the quality and/or warranty. I was recommended https://www.solarquotes.com.au/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/ by several trusted sources for comparing options, though didn't end up using them.
- rossdavidh 6y agoAll true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for that change, we can think about the actual consequences. It's inevitable; fossil fuels are on the way out. What does that mean, besides lower carbon? It means that countries which rely on fossil fuels for their economy, are going to see the same kind of crushing economic decline that, say, the UK coal industry has. What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? To be clear, I'm not saying we should somehow try to prevent fossil fuels exiting the scene. The change in energy sources to lower-carbon ones is an old one, and there's no way to stop it, nor should we try. Wood gave way to coal and then oil and then natural gas, and the process will continue with zero-carbon sources like photovoltaics. That's a bullet that's already been fired, and there's no way to stuff it back inside the barrel of the gun. But, do we really have a plan for the consequences, not only in Saudi Arabia but also every other nation that's dependent on oil? Hint: we do not.
- Schiendelman 6y agoIt’s always better to force us to make that plan sooner than later. The later we get, the worse the consequences are. Nobody’s going to prepare for any of this.
- mrDmrTmrJ 6y agoHere's an article worth your time on this topic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/05/climate-geopolitics-petrostates-russia-china/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/05/climate-geopolitics-pet...
- Retric 6y agoThat’s a surprisingly short term article about the future. The question isn’t really about what happens in 15 years but rather the next 50. The inertia of existing infrastructure is going to have a massive impact in the short term, but change is only accelerating.
- mrfusion 6y agoI hate the argument that we’re just waiting for batteries now. I think if we had variable pricing that matched the availability of renewables, consumers would shift quickly. Say something like power costs .02/kWh while the sun is shining and .30 when it’s not. I’d charge my car at work. I’d put a timer on my dryer to turn on at 10am. They probably come out with a hot water heater that goes really hot during the day and coasts through the night. Same idea for your freezer. Heck I’d even blast my AC to ten degrees below where I want it during the day and then ride out the night.
- ashleysmithgpu 6y agoOctopus energy in the UK has something like this https://twitter.com/energystatsuk https://twitter.com/energystatsuk would be great if you could push energy back to the grid and get paid for it too
- sp332 6y agoThat water heater idea is interesting. You could put a thermostatic valve on the output that mixes in cold water so the output was always the same temp no matter what the inside is. Usually people turn the temp down to save money, but if you can heat it way up when energy is cheap, that might change completely.
- thombat 6y agoAt least in Germany that's already the standard plumbing practice: a mixing valve on the tank outlet ensures the tap temperatures are safe. This is important because the tank is required to periodically heat to 65C to kill legionella bacteria, and with solar input can heat to as much as 85C, so without such a valve the tap temperature would be unpredictable and sometimes dangerous.
- audunw 6y agoWhat may be easier is to move the heating element to the top, and add a pump to move water to the top when heating. Hot water will stay at the top of the tank, so that means you can use most of the hot water without a significant drop in temperature. There's a company making tanks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Z4JCoPAGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Z4JCoPAGc
- _carbyau_ 6y agoThe issue for me is that it doesn't matter how cheap they are. Australian government approach is largely to subsidize homeowners to put solar panels on their roof. (They do do other things too! But billions in home owner subsidies...) The main incentive of course is they then have cheaper power bills for not much outlay. If you rent, nearly nothing. You'd have to have a generous landlord or luck out on a house someone has already done and then moved from. The latter will admittedly will become more common over time. If you live in an apartment, nearly nothing. While it is technically possible to put solar on the roof the extra complications of body corporate make it largely a non-starter. Besides, in truely large apartment buildings the roof top space is tiny compared to the number of apartments so the benefit is minimal anyway. So for now, only standalone homeowners get this benefit. And while I am not sure, I suspect reducing homeowners customer costs shifts the cost burden for the grid slightly more to others. I just want the government to fund society wide infrastructure to benefit everyone in society...
- bawolff 6y agoThere's lots of people in the world with lots of different situations. If you only fund things that benefit every single person equally, you won't fund anything, because there are no initiaves that benefit every single member of society equally.
- _carbyau_ 6y agoI agree with your first sentence. But you lost me after that. I never asked for benefit to every single person perfectly equally. For society, having the quite significant proportion of people who are renters and apartment dwellers getting more than an insignificant benefit from our own government should be a thing. I am not asking for handouts. But for the handouts to those people wealthy enough (not rich per se but wealthy enough) to own their own standalone home to stop. And for that money to benefit all via society wide infrastructure such as a powerstation/energy storage/grid costs and upgrades. It'd benefit the standalone homeowners still. But everyone else too.
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- jhallenworld 6y agoYou know what's amazing? Farmers in rural Pakistan choosing to prefer solar to irrigate their crops (panels + VFD/inverter + 10 HP 3-phase motor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfNgF0WTeCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfNgF0WTeCM Or grinding wheat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G2evJOiU9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G2evJOiU9I The comments in these video are all about how much does it cost, what is your contact number, etc. Clearly this is a sea-change. Also amazing that they all have cell phones :-) The old system included 80+ year old hand-started diesel engines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZuqT7dgM08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZuqT7dgM08 These are very cool, but solar requires less man-power.
- bausano_michael 6y agoThat reminds me of an article linked few months back about opium farming: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53450688 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53450688
- jhallenworld 6y agoA good cash crop unfortunately... To complete the picture, here is how you can drill the well in the first place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn7twImE2ug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn7twImE2ug
- bausano_michael 6y agoThank you for the link. Satistying to watch tradition meet modernish equipment. Would you know how long does a tube well like this yield water? Do the farmers regularly deepen the drill or just find a new location?
- jhallenworld 6y agoI don't know, but one thing occurs to me: those ponds the opium growers make are essentially batteries.
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- peter303 6y agoGovernment subsidies stimulated the virtuous circle. Remember dry fossil fuel well costs are fully deductible too. Eventually both could be phased oit.
- jillesvangurp 6y agoIf you look at where investors put their money, it's very clear that the learning effects have already convinced them that renewables provide the best ROI. It's not even a debate or a hypothetical outcome. This happened years ago. Price parity for wind/solar happened about seven years ago in most markets. The learning curves that this article talks about have not slowed down since and the result of that is that is that prices are no longer similar but at this point obviously cheaper (2-3x). What's more interesting is what is going to happen next: they prices going to be an order of magnitude cheaper; and then another one. And this is going to happen quickly. And unless something changes, it's happening on a predictable timeline even. Investors and policy makers are already taking decisions based on this. The effects of a two orders of magnitude change in pricing are both easy and hard to predict. The easy part is predicting that we will not merely use renewables to replace non renewables. Or put differently, an order of magnitude change in price will be paired with an order of magnitude increase in demand. The world electricity right now is a bit over 30 PWH (peta watt hour) per year, give or take. Normal linear growth would probably get us to 50-100PHW in a couple of decades. However, orders of magnitude changes in prices (10x, 100X, 1000X) could put us on a different path where we are producing hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of PWH of electricity. Like this half of this century. People worried about storage: Elon Musk is building TWH battery factories right now. A few decades from now we might have hundreds or thousands such factories: enough battery production to store current electricity production for about a year every year. And bear in mind that batteries can be used more than once. A single TWH worth of batteries with about 3000 cycles would store about 3PWH of energy; we only need ten such factories to get to 30PWH. Back of the envelope math is fun. That's all easy part to predict but it may be hard for people to wrap their heads around the numbers. Exponentials are hard for people's intuitions. The only uncertainty here is how long the learning curves will apply. The most pessimistic perspective on that would be that thousands of R&D projects, startups, research institutes are going to fail 100% starting right now and the learning curves will flat line completely and immediately. Any other perspective means that 10x is 100% certain to happen in 15-20 years and 100x would be extremely likely by 2060 or so. I hope to still be around by then. I could be off by an order of magnitude (both ways) and basically the only change would be the years in this paragraph would change a little. The hard part is predicting what we'll actually do with this energy. There's no shortage of interesting applications that are essentially cost bottle-necked on energy. Synthetic fuels, clean water, heavy industry, transport, mass transit, etc. all benefit from orders of magnitude changes in pricing for energy. This is a massive economic opportunity. What that also means is that the learning curves this article talks about will start impacting the cost of things that currently don't have them. Including most of our legacy fossil energy infrastructure. A gas plant burning fossil methane doesn't benefit from this learning curve. The same plant burning methane produced from thin air using excess solar/wind does: that becomes cheaper to operate as the price of solar/wind drops. Current fossil fuel energy consumption is going to be a rounding error when you consider the demand increase fueled by a 100x drop in electricity prices. Eventually, fossil fuel is going to be beyond irrelevant as we'll literally be able to synthesize the entire current demand for that orders of magnitude cheaper than current prices. All forms of fossil fuel exploitation will grind to a halt because of that. That's good news.
- biren34 6y agoI have real problem with this discussion of "cheap" when it comes to wind and solar. 1. The marginal cost per kWh is calculated based on amortizing upfront costs over 20+ years, and those schedules have often proven to be quite optimistic. 2. The marginal cost per kWh is only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to intermittent power sources. The proper cost needs to attribute the cost of matching supply and demand. The supposedly easy answer is storage, but storing electricity is hard. Grid scale batteries are quite expensive and general deployment would cause a very real spike in the cost the raw materials. With proper accounting, the cost of renewables are not cheap at all, as proven by Germany and California. 3. The renewables industry likes to downplay the sheer volume of fossil fuels required to manufacture the parts. The energy ROI on this is quite poor, and in many cases, we would have been better off skipping the intermediate step and burning the oil and gas directly.
- graeme 6y ago> The renewables industry likes to downplay the sheer volume of fossil fuels required to manufacture the parts. The energy ROI on this is quite poor, and in many cases, we would have been better off skipping the intermediate step and burning the oil and gas directly. Is this from electricity (which could be renewable in future), or is there an actual hard requirement for carbon in terms of burning very hot materials to generate heat in the manufacturing process or something?
- biren34 6y agoSome of it is in base materials and some of it in smelting requirements (though I'm not 100% sure how much of that could be replaced by electricity). Most of it is in the mining, refining, and transport of the massive quantities of metals needed to manufacture and install the combination of generation, transport, transformation, and storage equipment + the second/third order equipment to manufacture the electrical equipment. Our supply chains are dependent on fossil fuels for all of this, and we're a long long way off from replicating even a fraction of it with a purely electrical version. If we do choose to pursue that goal (which I think is worthwhile), the renewables still lack the energy ROI to make it feasible. We can do it, but it pretty much requires wide scale adoption of nuclear for the thermodynamics to work out.
- killjoywashere 6y agoThe price of solar dropped because China put it in their five year plans about for about the last 4 plans to dominate that market.
- tommilukkarinen 6y agoThe article shows how competition and increased demand drop the solar and wind price. How obvious when you think about it, technologies that are based on building plants have limited competition, or even legislation that prevents competition, so there is no similar drive for price. While panels can be made anywhere and installed by normal people.
- skocznymroczny 6y agoAre they also so cheap without subsidies? I feel like without subsidies and without carbon taxes, they are no match for fossil fuels.
- _ph_ 6y agoYes, those graphs show the pure productions costs. Which is actually not fair, because coal might have low production costs, but the damage to the atmosphere isn't included in the calculation, so carbon taxes are not artificial, but partially express the actual costs of coal.
- ncmncm 6y agoOne very hopeful, usually neglected point is that we don't need to produce anywhere near the same amount of renewable energy as the total enthalpy (raw energy content) of the carbon sources to maintain the same level of service. Electric vehicles convert power to motion several times as efficiently as internal-combustion equipment (except ships and aircraft), so much less total energy is needed to move the same mass of (especially) people and cars. This is most immediately visible in the current usefulness of electric scooters. (Big ships are already 70+% efficient, so there is less room for improvement. Small aircraft can claim benefits similar to cars, but airliners will suffer losses converting to (e.g.) LH2 or LCH4, and/or after the electric motors have worked; but there is still room for some improvement.) Similarly, and surprisingly to many, the same applies to building heating systems, where better than 300% efficiency of heat pumps means that 1 kW of electric power produces 3+ kW of warm air. (The extra 2 kW comes from outside air. So, today, while we still get more than 80% of raw energy from petroleum, renewables driving electric systems already have reduced that to 60% of actual delivered service.
- kokey 6y agoI don't think we can assume costs will keeping coming down in a kind of linear fashion. To get to 50% renewable energy it probably will and I think this will happen by itself because there's a clear financial benefit to it. For the other 50% this may be difficult, but this is where carbon taxes probably will have to fill the gap, but this could also mean things like biofuels and carbon capture and a whole bunch of unconventional things we haven't even dreamed of yet will be cost competitive to further expansion of renewables.
- qPM9l3XJrF 6y agoWhat appears to be missing from this discussion is that renewables are not enough: >Our hardest climate problems – the ones that are both large and lack obvious solutions – are agriculture (and deforestation – its major side effect) and industry. Together these are 45% of global carbon emissions. And solutions are scarce. >Agriculture and land use account for 24% of all human emissions. That’s nearly as much as electricity, and twice as much all the world’s passenger cars combined. >Industry – steel, cement, and manufacturing – account for 21% of human emissions – one and a half times as much as all the world’s cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes combined. https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/how-to-decarbonize-america-and-the-world/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/how-to-decarbonize-america... We need to start putting just as much research effort into these areas as went into renewables.
- kieranmaine 6y agoThis podcast (https://www.npr.org/transcripts/923966126 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/923966126) has some interesting info on lowering the CO2 emissions of concrete.
- marcosdumay 6y agoMost of industry can use renewables just fine. Chemical ones need carbon that, if energy is plentyful can be captured from the atmosphere. The agriculture number is mostly methane. Methane is different from CO2 in that it's short lived, so it doesn't keep adding up after a certain amount. Just adding it to the CO2 emmissions us very misleading. We do need research, but renewables are a key part for solving those problems too.
- mike_n 6y agoI worked for a solar co in the US for a while, 10yrs ago or so. It was a very interesting time, the hardware (solar panels, inverters) part of our Cost of Goods Sold fell considerably over the course of a few years. I'll suggest a few reasons, as I saw them: 1) Larger-scale, fully-automated manufacturing facilities were coming online. Some mfrs were reputable and high-quality, some not so much. But the abundance of supply caused these vendors to compete for business on price/warranty/etc terms, which drove down our cost to build systems. 2) Lots of developers were also bidding for projects, and utilities forced solar/wind developers to compete to offer lower prices for their power. 3) Government/utility subsidies helped get manufacturing facilities up and running, and made marginal projects more affordable to build/buy. Some incentive programs were well-designed, some were not. The markets that offered the best total return to investors got done first -- the lowest-hanging fruit for solar was in areas with relatively good sun, expensive grid power, and perhaps some extra tax/etc subsidies. Same idea for wind (or any infrastructure or real estate investment, really). 4) Attractive project margins encouraged lots of developers to enter the market, which increased competition and resulted in innovation in business models and processes. 5) Manufacturers scaled up further to satisfy increased demand, resulting in lower hardware costs. 6) Larger investors started angling for a slice of the action. VCs were looking for unicorns, MBA students were looking for jobs. Bankers wanted to make loans and do IPO/M+A work. Big renewable projects/portfolios of >$100M are pretty much the minimum interesting size deal for big project financiers, small deals don't move the needle for them. In fact, if you can put $1B+ to work in a responsible manner, that's even better. Banks are risk averse and renewables were a new/unproven (and thus risky) asset class, and in the early days it was hard to get any sort of financing, at any rate. As more projects demonstrated good ROI, more banks did the work to understand the (hardware/warranty/operational/etc) risks and became willing to lend in this sector. The IRS issued clear guidance on some tax issues which further reduced uncertainty (=risk) for would-be investors. As more financiers entered the market, they competed for deals and the cost of capital for high-quality developers/borrowers fell by several %. 7) Over time, the subsidy programs faded away, but (as intended) during that time hardware costs fell considerably. As developers got more experience, they also got better at reducing ancillary costs (sales, development, legal, etc). And so it goes, a nice virtuous cycle of competition, some subsidies to help a nascent industry, decent deal economics for investors and early adopters, and manufacturing scale-up.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoI wonder if the Solar death rates are under-reported. Installation and maintenance has significant risks. Folks fall off roofs all the time, and usually die.