Decreasing cost of renewables unlikely to plateau soon

[Gonswanza]

Hence why we need a mixed energy solution, rather than fighting back and forth between nuclear and other forms of energy like as if nuclear is somehow a rebranded version of coal/oil/nat. gas but also somehow worse.

[Cannot think of a name]

Good I love NSG some times. "Renewables will continue to get cheaper and save a lot of money the faster its adopted." NSG: Sounds like we need some expensive nuclear power!

Never change.

[Antipatros]

Good I love NSG some times. "Renewables will continue to get cheaper and save a lot of money the faster its adopted." NSG: Sounds like we need some expensive nuclear power!

Never change.

I make energy policy recommendations based on my vast experience in the SimCity game franchise.

[Saiwania]

Good I love NSG some times. "Renewables will continue to get cheaper and save a lot of money the faster its adopted." NSG: Sounds like we need some expensive nuclear power!

So how pray tell, is solar going to become cheaper without there being more power generation coming online such as would be the case if there were a few more new nuclear plants or if ITER was successful at getting to nuclear fusion? These are only projections that're unproven.

There might be better manufacturing or improved technology but I don't expect it to work miracles or be enough of a game changer to be able to sustain itself on its own. Chances are to hedge our bets, more power from somewhere else will be needed, especially if its not from fossil fuels.

[Cannot think of a name]

Good I love NSG some times. "Renewables will continue to get cheaper and save a lot of money the faster its adopted." NSG: Sounds like we need some expensive nuclear power!

So how pray tell, is solar

First, renewables. You see that little s at the end of the word? That means that it's plural. Plural is a fancy word for more than one. Which means that 'renewables' is not a synonym for solar but a term that includes solar among other options. So when you respond about 'renewables' by asking about solar as if it's the only part of the puzzle...that's silly.

Don't be silly.

Second...ask the fucking article you cats didn't read apparently.

[Lord Dominator]

Good I love NSG some times. "Renewables will continue to get cheaper and save a lot of money the faster its adopted." NSG: Sounds like we need some expensive nuclear power!

Never change.

I make energy policy recommendations based on my vast experience in the SimCity game franchise.

Based on my experience there, I suggest we solely build fusion plants.

[Diarcesia]

Based.

The only bad thing is that Big Oil will be replaced by Big Renewable in the medium term.

[Saiwania]

Second...ask the fucking article you cats didn't read apparently.

I have and these are just projections that haven't panned out or don't currently prove anything. Where as we know that nuclear power can generate more electricity than any one single solar panel can.

[Resilient Acceleration]

I hope y’all have fun when the toxic shit running off those panels during the rain goes into the soil and eventually your groundwater.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget how much material waste they’ll create after they need to be replaced.

Ignoring the nonsense, breathing literal poison that is fossil fuel pollution that already kills 4 million people/year (i.e. two Holocaust every 3 years) and causes immeasurable misery in terms of healthcare costs and experiences isn't exactly fun either.

[Picairn]

I hope y’all have fun when the toxic shit running off those panels during the rain goes into the soil and eventually your groundwater.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget how much material waste they’ll create after they need to be replaced.

Have you been to a coal/oil plant? Smoking all that toxic gases must be real good to your health. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fue ... ive-people

[Stellar Colonies]

Tucking away small amounts of nuclear waste in sealed areas is a small price to pay for increasing the rate that we cut other kinds of waste from being spewed constantly into our atmosphere...although the costs are quite prohibitive.

Hydropower probably isn't that environmentally friendly to the river life, although it tends to be very stable.

Solar is a somewhat variable power source and fairly toxic, although it can be put everywhere. A civilization running on solar would probably need to coat everything with them and decentralize power generation, not to mention those huge banks of reserve power in...lithium batteries?

Biofuels may tie up a lot of agricultural land and have minor carbon emission issues, although I don't know much about them.

Wind in general is even more variable than solar, although certain regions may be fairly consistent sources.

Tidal power is an interesting concept which may have some promise, although again, I'm not an expert on most power generation methods.

Geothermal is neat and seems fairly stable, although certainly limited to areas with subterranean warmth which can be tapped.

Could be missing some kinds.

A multilayered system is probably ideal. Nuclear as the centralized fallback for power grids, tidal, geothermal, and wind being strong secondaries to it in certain regions, solar as a 'free-range' source in general used as a supplement. Not sure about biofuels. Hydroelectric seems pretty destructive to natural environments, so probably best to limit new ones and continue exploiting current ones while addressing the damage.

*As I'm not really an expert in power generation, the above may be verbose nonsense

[Outer Sparta]

I hope y’all have fun when the toxic shit running off those panels during the rain goes into the soil and eventually your groundwater.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget how much material waste they’ll create after they need to be replaced.

Have you been to a coal/oil plant? Smoking all that toxic gases must be real good to your health. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fue ... ive-people

I don't think they even acknowledge the health risks of burning fossil fuels if they talk about whatever hazards renewables pose. They also didn't even cite their claims, which makes it more suspicious.

[Resilient Acceleration]

I hope y’all have fun when the toxic shit running off those panels during the rain goes into the soil and eventually your groundwater.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget how much material waste they’ll create after they need to be replaced.

Ignoring the nonsense, breathing literal poison that is fossil fuel pollution that already kills 4 million people/year (i.e. two Holocaust every 3 years) and causes immeasurable misery in terms of healthcare costs and experiences isn't exactly fun either.

Sorry, I was mistaken. Apparently, air pollution now kills 10 million people per year. In other words, fossil fuel is literally Hitler - anuallly. Screw "nuclear plants risks", we could nuke Tokyo right now and the death toll from air pollution will exceed that, at the maximum, in 2025.

[Gonswanza]

Tucking away small amounts of nuclear waste in sealed areas is a small price to pay for increasing the rate that we cut other kinds of waste from being spewed constantly into our atmosphere...although the costs are quite prohibitive.

Hydropower probably isn't that environmentally friendly to the river life, although it tends to be very stable.

Solar is a somewhat variable power source and fairly toxic, although it can be put everywhere. A civilization running on solar would probably need to coat everything with them and decentralize power generation, not to mention those huge banks of reserve power in...lithium batteries?

Biofuels may tie up a lot of agricultural land and have minor carbon emission issues, although I don't know much about them.

Wind in general is even more variable than solar, although certain regions may be fairly consistent sources.

Tidal power is an interesting concept which may have some promise, although again, I'm not an expert on most power generation methods.

Geothermal is neat and seems fairly stable, although certainly limited to areas with subterranean warmth which can be tapped.

Could be missing some kinds.

A multilayered system is probably ideal. Nuclear as the centralized fallback for power grids, tidal, geothermal, and wind being strong secondaries to it in certain regions, solar as a 'free-range' source in general used as a supplement. Not sure about biofuels. Hydroelectric seems pretty destructive to natural environments, so probably best to limit new ones and continue exploiting current ones while addressing the damage.

*As I'm not really an expert in power generation, the above may be verbose nonsense

We need this guy as president.

[Outer Sparta]

Tucking away small amounts of nuclear waste in sealed areas is a small price to pay for increasing the rate that we cut other kinds of waste from being spewed constantly into our atmosphere...although the costs are quite prohibitive.

Hydropower probably isn't that environmentally friendly to the river life, although it tends to be very stable.

Solar is a somewhat variable power source and fairly toxic, although it can be put everywhere. A civilization running on solar would probably need to coat everything with them and decentralize power generation, not to mention those huge banks of reserve power in...lithium batteries?

Biofuels may tie up a lot of agricultural land and have minor carbon emission issues, although I don't know much about them.

Wind in general is even more variable than solar, although certain regions may be fairly consistent sources.

Tidal power is an interesting concept which may have some promise, although again, I'm not an expert on most power generation methods.

Geothermal is neat and seems fairly stable, although certainly limited to areas with subterranean warmth which can be tapped.

Could be missing some kinds.

A multilayered system is probably ideal. Nuclear as the centralized fallback for power grids, tidal, geothermal, and wind being strong secondaries to it in certain regions, solar as a 'free-range' source in general used as a supplement. Not sure about biofuels. Hydroelectric seems pretty destructive to natural environments, so probably best to limit new ones and continue exploiting current ones while addressing the damage.

*As I'm not really an expert in power generation, the above may be verbose nonsense

Biofuels can be quite dumb, especially if you cut down trees (the bets carbon sinks) to burn for fuel. Certain biofuels like algae do have potential.

[Lord Dominator]

I will also eternally note that our ability to build safe nuclear waste storage facilities for permanent is principally flawed because we aren’t sure we can guarantee it’ll hold in a couple hundred thousand years.

I will leave you to ponder this relative to the expected timeframe on climate change, and the current age of human civilization.

[Resilient Acceleration]

I will also eternally note that our ability to build safe nuclear waste storage facilities for permanent is principally flawed because we aren’t sure we can guarantee it’ll hold in a couple hundred thousand years.

I will leave you to ponder this relative to the expected timeframe on climate change, and the current age of human civilization.

I mean hundreds of thousands of years is plenty of time to develop technologies able to counteract such kind of concerns. even if God suddenly tried to troll us by randomly bursting all nuclear waste facilities in the year 3000. In the meantime, more people died falling off the roof trying to install solar panels than every long-term victim of Chernobyl and Fukushima, while fossil fuel kills more people than the Holocaust did, every year.

[Neu California]

Another problem with nuclear is that it takes forever to build. Vogtle Electric power generating station, for example, proposed two new reactors in 2009 for completion in 2016 and 2017, which is still much slower than solar would take for roughly the same amount of power (they would generate about 25GWh of power, while solar nationwide added over 10GWh of power in 2017 by itself and over four years added over 45 GWh of power. Vogtle is the only nuclear plant building reactors in the entire nation right now). That date has since slipped to 2022. 45GWh over four years, with it being constantly added to the grid, vs. 25 GWh over 9 (breaking ground in 2013) with the first watt only being produced when it's done, I'd pick the first any day of the week

[Eahland]

Good I love NSG some times. "Renewables will continue to get cheaper and save a lot of money the faster its adopted." NSG: Sounds like we need some expensive nuclear power!

Never change.

I make energy policy recommendations based on my vast experience in the SimCity game franchise.

SC2000 taught me that hydro is by far the best energy source. Clean, reliable, relatively dense, reasonably priced and easily tailorable to demand in the short run, and in the long run by far the most cost-effective, because it doesn't need to be replaced every 50 years. Wind is the only other one that hits that last requirement, and it's unreliable and not nearly dense enough to be worthwhile.

My real-world power supply is almost all hydro, which also has the advantage of helping control flooding along the river, but for some reason, everyone always ignores that option.

[Resilient Acceleration]

Okay, now my turn: I will also eternally note that, as of current production levels, we simply don't have enough supply of rare earth minerals to globally transition to 100% non-fossil fuel energy.

According to the analysis, turbines and solar panels might be skyrocketing a bit too much. Demand for some metals like neodymium and indium could grow by more than a dozen times by 2050, and there simply might not be enough supply to power the green revolution.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc ... structure/

Note that as the relationship between China (who owns like 90% of the world's rare-earth minerals production) and the West worsens, this is set to become more and more catastrophic.

As of today, I see four paths to sustain these rapidly growing demands:
1. Military invasion, occupation, or political intervention to Bolivia and other metal-rich countries, to provide a supply of cheap rare earth metals at the expense of the local population and environment.
2. Widespread mining and extraction in the ocean floor, at a time of an impending maritime collapse due to global environmental exploitation.
3. Space mining, whose profitability figures is still uncertain.
4. Metal recycling. But how much can recycling actually cover our exponentially growing needs, I don't have the data.

[Antipatros]

Okay, now my turn: I will also eternally note that, as of current production levels, we simply don't have enough supply of rare earth minerals to globally transition to 100% non-fossil fuel energy.

According to the analysis, turbines and solar panels might be skyrocketing a bit too much. Demand for some metals like neodymium and indium could grow by more than a dozen times by 2050, and there simply might not be enough supply to power the green revolution.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc ... structure/

Note that as the relationship between China (who owns like 90% of the world's rare-earth minerals production) and the West worsens, this is set to become more and more catastrophic.

As of today, I see four paths to sustain these rapidly growing demands:
1. Military invasion, occupation, or political intervention to Bolivia and other metal-rich countries, to provide a supply of cheap rare earth metals at the expense of the local population and environment.
2. Widespread mining and extraction in the ocean floor, at a time of an impending maritime collapse due to global environmental exploitation.
3. Space mining, whose profitability figures is still uncertain.
4. Metal recycling. But how much can recycling actually cover our exponentially growing needs, I don't have the data.

This materials issue is a pretty big problem. Copper and cobalt prices are also probably on the up and up due to the energy transition and electrification.

Tesla's former CTO founded a company to do lithium ion battery recycling called Redwood Materials. Several companies are also working on different electric motor and battery technologies to help reduce the strain on different commodities.

[Resilient Acceleration]

In the mean time, maybe the first option of turning Bolivia and similar African countries into de-facto colonial posessions of corporations might not be that far-fetched. After all, most of the cobalt and some other types rare earth metals that fueled the world's technological revolution are already procured by child and slave labors run by violent dictatorships in the last four decades, and the world still run just fine. Expanding the concept a little bit more shouldn't result in any meaningful global disruption.

I think Big Renewable might be getting a new job desk very soon.

[Engadine Mcdonalds 1997]

Good I love NSG some times. "Renewables will continue to get cheaper and save a lot of money the faster its adopted." NSG: Sounds like we need some expensive nuclear power!

Never change.

It's a real head scratcher

[Union of Socialist Council-Republics]

Geothermal is neat and seems fairly stable, although certainly limited to areas with subterranean warmth which can be tapped.

It should be noted that it is in principle possible to create geothermal plants practically anywhere, provided you can dig a deep enough hole. That's the basis of the Hot Dry Rock concept.

[Gonswanza]

Tucking away small amounts of nuclear waste in sealed areas is a small price to pay for increasing the rate that we cut other kinds of waste from being spewed constantly into our atmosphere...although the costs are quite prohibitive.

Hydropower probably isn't that environmentally friendly to the river life, although it tends to be very stable.

Solar is a somewhat variable power source and fairly toxic, although it can be put everywhere. A civilization running on solar would probably need to coat everything with them and decentralize power generation, not to mention those huge banks of reserve power in...lithium batteries?

Biofuels may tie up a lot of agricultural land and have minor carbon emission issues, although I don't know much about them.

Wind in general is even more variable than solar, although certain regions may be fairly consistent sources.

Tidal power is an interesting concept which may have some promise, although again, I'm not an expert on most power generation methods.

Geothermal is neat and seems fairly stable, although certainly limited to areas with subterranean warmth which can be tapped.

Could be missing some kinds.

A multilayered system is probably ideal. Nuclear as the centralized fallback for power grids, tidal, geothermal, and wind being strong secondaries to it in certain regions, solar as a 'free-range' source in general used as a supplement. Not sure about biofuels. Hydroelectric seems pretty destructive to natural environments, so probably best to limit new ones and continue exploiting current ones while addressing the damage.

*As I'm not really an expert in power generation, the above may be verbose nonsense

Biofuels can be quite dumb, especially if you cut down trees (the bets carbon sinks) to burn for fuel. Certain biofuels like algae do have potential.

Even trees have a limited capacity for carbon based on nutrient density and water, plus sunlight.

Less nutrients and less water means less capacity for carbon, further compounded by less sunlight.

It also depends on the species as well as how dense a forest is, which is reliant on geography and climate... And then you have the fact that natural wildfires tend to aid this whole system in spite of dumping carbon into the atmosphere along with soot and ash.