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This article seems like a cherry picking exercise. In particular the cherry not picked is the exponential drop in the cost of solar, wind and HVDC lines. Taki

This article seems like a cherry picking exercise. In particular the cherry not picked is the exponential drop in the cost of solar, wind and HVDC lines. Taking the dates of 2000 to now for fossil fuel energy percentage is a picked cherry in that the cost of unsubsidized solar has happened just within the past five years. Sure, don't expect much in the next two or three years but in the next two or three decades everything energy wise will have changed because the technologies are now in place and will only get better. Perhaps the reliable writing on the wall is in the stock market where the enterprise value of oil and gas companies has been falling since about 2011. That's because investors require a thirty year time frame for financial viability and that window is already closing. You can still buy buggy whips but that industry is not what it used to be.

Gatsky 4y ago
One has to consider why the cost is dropping... which has a lot to do with manufacturing in China. I don't take it as a given that in the geopolitical turmoil that seems to be developing, and the trend to deglobalisation, that the prices will continue to fall, or even remain stable. The other aspect of this is that after Europe's recent experience everyone is likely to get much more paranoid about energy securtiy and redundant capacity, which will also affect uptake of renewables. It is also not clear to me that the same driving forces in the West will apply to the big fossil fuel consumers of the next 50 years, India and China. But it doesn't matter I guess, if renewables are cheaper they will win whatever someone thinks.
jackmott42 4y ago
Exponential drop in the cost of solar/wind is good, but will not necessarily continue for long, and to become a large % of the grid will also need to come with gigantic storage projects. If all it took was plopping enough solar panels down and wiring them up, this would be pretty straightforward. Nobody knows how to quickly scale up the storage though. Lots of pumped back hydro? Trillion dollar projects, and we have water crises all over, so we can't just dam up any river that it is convenient to do it either.
- pydry 4y ago
  Pumped hydro is the only way, really. Coire glas, snowy 2, fengning, etc. The problem isnt so much the scale or cost, just the amount of time it takes to commission and build them. You can deploy a solar farm in months, but pumped storage is like building a dam. It takes several years. There also isnt a lot of point to storage unless you turn the gas off sometimes and I think we basically never do even at the sunniest and windiest. Not yet. We should have been preparing for this for years rather than letting Putin pull the rug out from under our feet.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Pumped storage is in the same category as nuclear. If it's already built then we might as well use it as long as it's not about to collapse, but any new build is probably dubious from a cost benefit angle. There's some articles going over the numbers for Snowy 2 and it'll probably be a bad investment overall.
  - deepdriver 4y ago
    Pumped hydro isn't feasible everywhere, you really need the right geologic conditions.
    - pydry 4y ago
      It's feasible in most places. You can also usually run power lines to the ones where it isnt. Europe is essentially already using the alps as a battery.
  - xienze 4y ago
    > We should have been preparing for this for years rather than letting Putin pull the rug out from under our feet. Not to be that guy, but one does have to wonder what European leaders were thinking was going to happen after sanctioning a major source of their oil and natural gas.
    - jackmott42 4y ago
kyrra 4y ago
We still haven't solved the energy storage problem of solar and wind, which there is no indication we will in th next 30 years. Betting our future on something that doesn't exist is foolish. They also take up significantly more land than coal, gas, and nuclear. They also don't work in all climates. Nuclear is the only viable option today if you want rapid decarbonization.
- jackmott42 4y ago
  I wouldn't say we haven't solved it. The solution are straightforward, but they represent an scale of project that most people don't understand at all. However, there are examples of humans doing projects at such scale before. Most notably, the totality of the infrastructure we built to extract and refine the amount of fossil fuels we do today. The gigantic offshore rigs, the thousands of miles of pipelines, the refineries, etc. Doable, but can't happen overnight without everyone dropping everything and working on only this.
  - data_maan 4y ago
    "The main barriers to the widespread implementation of large-scale renewable energy and low-carbon energy strategies are seen to be primarily social and political rather than technological or economic" from the Wikipedia link above
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  > With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 If land use is the hill to die on a much better target is the beef industry. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore
dominotw 4y ago
> Perhaps the reliable writing on the wall is in the stock market where the enterprise value of oil and gas companies has been falling since about 2011. Huh? ExxonMobil stock is near all time highs, they've been posting record never-seen-before profits ( much to the chagrin of politicians and general public) .

Gatsky 4y ago

One has to consider why the cost is dropping... which has a lot to do with manufacturing in China. I don't take it as a given that in the geopolitical turmoil that seems to be developing, and the trend to deglobalisation, that the prices will continue to fall, or even remain stable. The other aspect of this is that after Europe's recent experience everyone is likely to get much more paranoid about energy securtiy and redundant capacity, which will also affect uptake of renewables. It is also not clear to me that the same driving forces in the West will apply to the big fossil fuel consumers of the next 50 years, India and China. But it doesn't matter I guess, if renewables are cheaper they will win whatever someone thinks.

jackmott42 4y ago

Exponential drop in the cost of solar/wind is good, but will not necessarily continue for long, and to become a large % of the grid will also need to come with gigantic storage projects. If all it took was plopping enough solar panels down and wiring them up, this would be pretty straightforward. Nobody knows how to quickly scale up the storage though. Lots of pumped back hydro? Trillion dollar projects, and we have water crises all over, so we can't just dam up any river that it is convenient to do it either.

pydry 4y ago
Pumped hydro is the only way, really. Coire glas, snowy 2, fengning, etc. The problem isnt so much the scale or cost, just the amount of time it takes to commission and build them. You can deploy a solar farm in months, but pumped storage is like building a dam. It takes several years. There also isnt a lot of point to storage unless you turn the gas off sometimes and I think we basically never do even at the sunniest and windiest. Not yet. We should have been preparing for this for years rather than letting Putin pull the rug out from under our feet.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Pumped storage is in the same category as nuclear. If it's already built then we might as well use it as long as it's not about to collapse, but any new build is probably dubious from a cost benefit angle. There's some articles going over the numbers for Snowy 2 and it'll probably be a bad investment overall.
- deepdriver 4y ago
  Pumped hydro isn't feasible everywhere, you really need the right geologic conditions.
  - pydry 4y ago
    It's feasible in most places. You can also usually run power lines to the ones where it isnt. Europe is essentially already using the alps as a battery.
- xienze 4y ago
  > We should have been preparing for this for years rather than letting Putin pull the rug out from under our feet. Not to be that guy, but one does have to wonder what European leaders were thinking was going to happen after sanctioning a major source of their oil and natural gas.
  - jackmott42 4y ago

kyrra 4y ago

We still haven't solved the energy storage problem of solar and wind, which there is no indication we will in th next 30 years. Betting our future on something that doesn't exist is foolish. They also take up significantly more land than coal, gas, and nuclear. They also don't work in all climates. Nuclear is the only viable option today if you want rapid decarbonization.

jackmott42 4y ago
I wouldn't say we haven't solved it. The solution are straightforward, but they represent an scale of project that most people don't understand at all. However, there are examples of humans doing projects at such scale before. Most notably, the totality of the infrastructure we built to extract and refine the amount of fossil fuels we do today. The gigantic offshore rigs, the thousands of miles of pipelines, the refineries, etc. Doable, but can't happen overnight without everyone dropping everything and working on only this.
- data_maan 4y ago
  "The main barriers to the widespread implementation of large-scale renewable energy and low-carbon energy strategies are seen to be primarily social and political rather than technological or economic" from the Wikipedia link above
Gwypaas 4y ago
> With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 If land use is the hill to die on a much better target is the beef industry. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore

dominotw 4y ago

> Perhaps the reliable writing on the wall is in the stock market where the enterprise value of oil and gas companies has been falling since about 2011. Huh? ExxonMobil stock is near all time highs, they've been posting record never-seen-before profits ( much to the chagrin of politicians and general public) .