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What are the obstacles? The only one I can think of is lobbying and politics, e.g. there was a report recently that Trump is selling favors to the fossil fuel i

What are the obstacles? The only one I can think of is lobbying and politics, e.g. there was a report recently that Trump is selling favors to the fossil fuel industry - a cool billion now for future privileges when he's in the office. I think that's a real possibility, but my view on that is that this will just shoot his own country in the foot. The first one now will later be last - if you hop on the wrong train you'll be going nowhere. Technically I think the biggest advantage is that it's mostly trivial to install and maintain. There's probably a fair deal of complexity in the technology, but it's all contained in a module, it's plug and play. Beta didn't lose to VHS because it was a lesser format. Worse is better. This keeps projects on time and budget, it makes people invest further in it, capacity grows and the prices keep plummeting. This attracts more people into it, rinse repeat. It causes investments to grow in complementary technology and we are seeing that now with batteries and other forms of storage. There is already now a growing panel recycling industry, etc.

jltsiren 2y ago
The biggest obstacle is the lack of demand for intermittent power. Most countries that take renewable energy seriously have already reached the point, where the construction of new solar/wind depends on investments that can take advantage of it. Exponential growth is somewhere in the past, and further growth depends on the normal pace of industrial investments.
- locallost 2y ago
  And yet those countries led the way in the record shattering 2023. Even if you look within the EU there are big differences between the countries, where some like Poland got serious about it less than 10 years ago. They will continue to grow rapidly. Take a look at outside of developed countries and you will see the rest of the world is still far behind, so there's still a huge untapped market. People follow what other people do. There are other factors too (battery prices going down, electrification etc).

jltsiren 2y ago

The biggest obstacle is the lack of demand for intermittent power. Most countries that take renewable energy seriously have already reached the point, where the construction of new solar/wind depends on investments that can take advantage of it. Exponential growth is somewhere in the past, and further growth depends on the normal pace of industrial investments.

locallost 2y ago
And yet those countries led the way in the record shattering 2023. Even if you look within the EU there are big differences between the countries, where some like Poland got serious about it less than 10 years ago. They will continue to grow rapidly. Take a look at outside of developed countries and you will see the rest of the world is still far behind, so there's still a huge untapped market. People follow what other people do. There are other factors too (battery prices going down, electrification etc).