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The Lazard LCOE cost of unsubsidized solar/wind + storage has recently achieved parity with gas turbine combined cycle. So the writing is on the wall for fossi
by AtlasBarfed 3y ago
The Lazard LCOE cost of unsubsidized solar/wind + storage has recently achieved parity with gas turbine combined cycle.
So the writing is on the wall for fossil fuels.
What's also important is that gas combined cycle kind of represented the end state of maximum power for minimum cost from fossil fuels. Wind and especially solar (perovskites, etc) and storage (sodium chemistries, etc) have lots of runway for further cost drops. So you might squeeze a couple percent out of gas combined cycle for LCOE in the next decade, but solar/wind may still drop by 50%.
So if you have a ten year view (which is what you have fore investment in power projects) fossil fuel projects (and alas nuclear, which is 6x more expensive than wind/solar) simply don't balance the sheet.
Lots of hope. Lots of work to do.
EDIT: response to "why do you think solar/wind have bigger runway to drop in price:" (I hit my post limit)
Wind can simply scale up more, and there are other designs coming online. Wind I don't have the holy-crap-this-is-still-coming thing.
Solar however has made its gains with silicon, but perovskites are simply dirt cheap to manufacture, IF they can eliminate lead and get them to last long enough. I'm spitballing, but perovskites will probably drop the cost by 50% long term in solar.
Solar also really hasn't developed large scale multijunction, and perovskites + silicon may enable that. Multijunction is how you get the higher efficiencies by capturing more wavelengths and the like.
As for gas turbine, they already are exceeding the carnot efficiencies by capturing downstream heat cycles and other tricks. And I think the other thing as an energy financeer I'd worry about is that any fossil fuel power generation has to be worried about an eventual carbon tax imposed.
As the political power of oil companies wanes as their economic strength withers away as EVs and alternative energy undermine their economic value proposition, their ability to keep the environmental lobby from imposing a proper externality tax on carbon emissions with falter.
So any gas generation power plant could overnight have their costs increased by 10-50% or maybe worse. Best case: you have to pay for bullshit offsets, which will probably increase costs 10-20%. Medium case: they have to explicitly pay for the carbon scrubbing/removal, probably 50% increase or more to the generation cost. Worst case: we realize that fossil fuels carbon taxes should include a cost to remove PREVIOUSLY UNTAXED carbon that is sitting in the atmosphere. So then the cost could be exhorbitantly increased.
Likely SOMETHING is coming that will increase the cost of fossil fuel power and fuels due to carbon removal. It will start small and increase as the political strength of oil / gas wanes.
- margorczynski 3y ago> Wind and especially solar (perovskites, etc) and storage (sodium chemistries, etc) have lots of runway for further cost drops Could you tell on what you base this assumption?
- blkhawk 3y agoperovskites have the potential if used in tandem with normal cells to get you more efficency per panel since they are sensitive toa different part of the spectrum. You might get relatively cheap 40% panels out of that. That means you need less panels, less mounting, cableing ect. sodium batteries have the potential to be dirt cheap and thus might be able to be rolled out for less of what lipos cost at scale especially in non-mobile applications where size and weight aren't that important.
- blkhawk 3y agomind you sodium is probably not that much worse than lipo once developed so it might end up in some mobile applications.