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I'll be surprised if renewables overtakes oil for energy production anytime soon. I could see nuclear doing that, but I never can get past the challenges of mai

I'll be surprised if renewables overtakes oil for energy production anytime soon. I could see nuclear doing that, but I never can get past the challenges of maintenance and replacement costs for solar panels, turbines, and especially for storage. I will be very happy to be proven wrong here over time though. New battery technology could make a big improvement. And I keep hearing that AI will give us answers to all our technical challenges and lead to an age of abundance where we all make a high income, so there's that too.

nemomarx 2mo ago
Are we using that much oil for energy? The leading non renewable power source now is natural gas or similar, which I didn't think interacted much with the oil market. So even without nuclear, if the future is natural gas pipelines for baseload oil would still be mostly a manufacturing and vehicle fuel deal.
- curmudgeon22 2mo ago
  My understanding is that the shift towards natural gas is largely because it is a very cheap byproduct of fracking (for oil). It happens to be "greener" when burned so gets green-washed also. I wonder what would happen if oil demand was significantly reduced, thus reducing fracking.
- throwaway473825 2mo ago
  [dead]
imtringued 2mo ago
Ah yes, nuclear is known for having cheap replacement costs, especially Fukushima was known for being particularly cheap. Solar power is the worst, it gets more expensive every year. Regarding batteries... It's over for sodium based batteries (the ones promising us cheap battery storage) because dry coated Lithium ion batteries are coming onto the market which means sodium batteries are an economic dead end.
- onraglanroad 2mo ago
  Until we get dry coated sodium ion batteries of course. Not sure it's over.
anon7000 2mo ago
> but I never can get past the challenges of maintenance and replacement costs for solar panels Maintenance? Compared to fossil fuels that require a complex global supply chain just to burn the damn thing you spent so much effort digging up? And large, complex power plants with a large number of moving pieces and complex machinery? Which also require big water supplies? Solar is the most modular, easy to install, scalable, and cheapest energy source on the planet. And dare I say most reliable, because it practically doesn’t need any major scheduled or non-scheduled maintenance over several decades, other than cleaning it like a window. And get this, once it’s installed, what are the operating costs? They just sit there, on land (which could be taken from ethanol production), any give you free electricity for 30+ years. Other power sources seem and overly complex in comparison, and it especially seems crazy to use anything that relies on finding, digging up, shipping, and then burning fuel, when such an alternative exists. Current battery technology is very solid, increasingly cheaper (solar+battery already cheaper than most others), and only getting better.

nemomarx 2mo ago

Are we using that much oil for energy? The leading non renewable power source now is natural gas or similar, which I didn't think interacted much with the oil market. So even without nuclear, if the future is natural gas pipelines for baseload oil would still be mostly a manufacturing and vehicle fuel deal.

curmudgeon22 2mo ago
My understanding is that the shift towards natural gas is largely because it is a very cheap byproduct of fracking (for oil). It happens to be "greener" when burned so gets green-washed also. I wonder what would happen if oil demand was significantly reduced, thus reducing fracking.
throwaway473825 2mo ago
[dead]

imtringued 2mo ago

Ah yes, nuclear is known for having cheap replacement costs, especially Fukushima was known for being particularly cheap. Solar power is the worst, it gets more expensive every year. Regarding batteries... It's over for sodium based batteries (the ones promising us cheap battery storage) because dry coated Lithium ion batteries are coming onto the market which means sodium batteries are an economic dead end.

onraglanroad 2mo ago
Until we get dry coated sodium ion batteries of course. Not sure it's over.

anon7000 2mo ago

> but I never can get past the challenges of maintenance and replacement costs for solar panels Maintenance? Compared to fossil fuels that require a complex global supply chain just to burn the damn thing you spent so much effort digging up? And large, complex power plants with a large number of moving pieces and complex machinery? Which also require big water supplies? Solar is the most modular, easy to install, scalable, and cheapest energy source on the planet. And dare I say most reliable, because it practically doesn’t need any major scheduled or non-scheduled maintenance over several decades, other than cleaning it like a window. And get this, once it’s installed, what are the operating costs? They just sit there, on land (which could be taken from ethanol production), any give you free electricity for 30+ years. Other power sources seem and overly complex in comparison, and it especially seems crazy to use anything that relies on finding, digging up, shipping, and then burning fuel, when such an alternative exists. Current battery technology is very solid, increasingly cheaper (solar+battery already cheaper than most others), and only getting better.