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The only thing that will stop this is for battery storage to get cheap and available enough that it can cover for renewables. If we are still building gas turbi
by api 2y ago
The only thing that will stop this is for battery storage to get cheap and available enough that it can cover for renewables. If we are still building gas turbines it means that hasn’t happened yet.
AI is a red herring. If it wasn’t that it would be EV power demand. If it wasn’t that it would be reshoring of manufacturing. If it wasn’t that it would be population growth from immigration. If it wasn’t that it would be replacing old coal power plants reaching EOL.
Replacing coal with gas is an improvement by the way. It’s around half the CO2 per kWh, sometimes less if you factor in that gas turbines are often more efficient than aging old coal plants.
- agentultra 2y agoMethane has a shorter half-life than CO2 but is a far worse green house gas; retaining far more heat. And delivering methane leaks like a sieve into the atmosphere from all parts of the process. Sure it’s probably “better than coal,” but not by much. It’s a bit like comparing what’s worse: getting burned by fire or being drowned in acid.
- Nition 2y agoPumped hydro is an excellent form of storage if you have the terrain for it. A whole order of magnitude cheaper than battery storage at the moment.