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You touched on the resource availability but not the economic viability. Mining, manufacturing, and land—all expensive. Renewables are a great goal, but witho

You touched on the resource availability but not the economic viability. Mining, manufacturing, and land—all expensive. Renewables are a great goal, but without realistic economics you will simply will not get the level of investment to get there a fast as the proponents would like. To give a personal example—I live in a very efficient home in Florida. My electricity runs me average about $115/mo, despite running A/C almost all year round. The cheapest I can put solar on my roof to have net $0 electrical consumption costs is around $135-150/mo (with a 15 year pay off, which will be long past when I sell this home). Additionally, because of our wetter summers and some problematic installers some of my neighbors have had roof leak issues. Thanks to incorrect installations homeowners are dealing with voided roof warranty issue revealing a hidden cost of owning solar. These issues make solar an occasional barrier in real estate sales. Considering all of the I don’t see a realistic economic reason to put solar on my roof.

pfdietz 4y ago
Land is not expensive in most parts of the world. In west Texas, for example, land contributes maybe 1-2% of the cost of a PV field. Other resources (steel, glass, aluminum, for example) needed to build a renewable energy system capable of powering the world will be small compared to the resources otherwise used by that world industrial economy. Renewables don't require any resource that isn't required in general (some renewable sources or storage technologies do, but this is not generally true.) Those other resources would be consumed even if the world were powered by something else. So, if resource constraints prevent renewables from working, they prevent industrial society from working at all. Home PV in the US is several times more expensive than utility scale PV, because installing PV at small scale on awkward elevated surfaces like residential roofs is a more complex problem than just laying them out on the ground (not even mounting hardware is needed now; just lay them flat. https://www.erthos.com/ https://www.erthos.com/ )

pfdietz 4y ago

Land is not expensive in most parts of the world. In west Texas, for example, land contributes maybe 1-2% of the cost of a PV field. Other resources (steel, glass, aluminum, for example) needed to build a renewable energy system capable of powering the world will be small compared to the resources otherwise used by that world industrial economy. Renewables don't require any resource that isn't required in general (some renewable sources or storage technologies do, but this is not generally true.) Those other resources would be consumed even if the world were powered by something else. So, if resource constraints prevent renewables from working, they prevent industrial society from working at all. Home PV in the US is several times more expensive than utility scale PV, because installing PV at small scale on awkward elevated surfaces like residential roofs is a more complex problem than just laying them out on the ground (not even mounting hardware is needed now; just lay them flat. https://www.erthos.com/ https://www.erthos.com/ )