Decreasing cost of renewables unlikely to plateau soon

[Outer Sparta]

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.

Using these natural carbon sinks to burn for fuel is just stupid. One of the worst ideas for biofuels when you got renewables right there to use.

[Ethel mermania]

Yes, as you ramp up production costs go down.

It's sort of the point of mass production

This is a good thing

[The Emerald Legion]

So... A left wing economist think tank with nothing whatsoever to do with renewable energy research or production wants to tell me that renewables are the future based solely on projections using past information?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institu ... c_Thinking

[Ifreann]

So... A left wing economist think tank with nothing whatsoever to do with renewable energy research or production wants to tell me that renewables are the future based solely on projections using past information?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institu ... c_Thinking

As opposed to using projections based on future information?

[The Emerald Legion]

So... A left wing economist think tank with nothing whatsoever to do with renewable energy research or production wants to tell me that renewables are the future based solely on projections using past information?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institu ... c_Thinking

As opposed to using projections based on future information?

I mean, that would be handy if we could find it. But then if we act on it, do we fuck up the timeline?

[Picairn]

So... A left wing economist think tank with nothing whatsoever to do with renewable energy research or production wants to tell me that renewables are the future based solely on projections using past information?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institu ... c_Thinking

Unless you have a mirror that can see the future, what exactly do you think projections are based on?

[Mercatus]

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

All I’m saying is that it’s not a much better “solution” to a “problem”.

Solar farms already take up huge amounts of land, and the new landfills created by worn out panels will indirectly increase the land requirements, and the toxic metal compounds seeping from the waste along with the functioning farms will poison everything around them. Remember when DuPont was pumping Teflon into the water? That’s what will happen with solar panels.

[Mercatus]

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

Keep in mind hydropower takes up the most land for the same amount of power generation as most other sources, land which could be put to better use or just left the fuck alone.

[Diarcesia]

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

Keep in mind hydropower takes up the most land for the same amount of power generation as most other sources, land which could be put to better use or just left the fuck alone.

Are the flaws of renewables preferable over the flaws of fossil fuel or not? Why?

[Quebec-Libre]

Here in Quebec (and I mean IRL Quebec), we decided, from 1944 to the 1960s and up until today, to nationalise our hydroelectric dams all across the province, under HydroQuebec. Sure, building the dams themselves required a lot of mostly-fossile energy, but from then, 97% of the province's electricty is powered without an ounce of fossile fuel. However, the view of Nuclear Energy in Quebec is...not exactly good. Chernobyl and Fukushima seem to have left quite the impact on the quebecois population, so much so that the sole nuclear power station in the province, the Centrale nucléaire de Gentilly, was shut down in 2012, with its decommissioning process currently underway for atleast the next 50 years.

So here, that leaves us with 3% of energy produced by various means.

Sure, it would be exquisite if that small percentage would be filled by things like solar pannels, wind power and geothermal energy.

However, the whole world's not Quebec, and we have a fuckton of lakes, rivers and uninhabited land that frankly couldn't really be used for anything else (Think of the Canadian Shield as a big rock that goes from the NW Territories to Labrador), something most other countries really do not.

[Antipatros]

Here in Quebec (and I mean IRL Quebec), we decided, from 1944 to the 1960s and up until today, to nationalise our hydroelectric dams all across the province, under HydroQuebec. Sure, building the dams themselves required a lot of mostly-fossile energy, but from then, 97% of the province's electricty is powered without an ounce of fossile fuel. However, the view of Nuclear Energy in Quebec is...not exactly good. Chernobyl and Fukushima seem to have left quite the impact on the quebecois population, so much so that the sole nuclear power station in the province, the Centrale nucléaire de Gentilly, was shut down in 2012, with its decommissioning process currently underway for atleast the next 50 years.

So here, that leaves us with 3% of energy produced by various means.

Sure, it would be exquisite if that small percentage would be filled by things like solar pannels, wind power and geothermal energy.

However, the whole world's not Quebec, and we have a fuckton of lakes, rivers and uninhabited land that frankly couldn't really be used for anything else (Think of the Canadian Shield as a big rock that goes from the NW Territories to Labrador), something most other countries really do not.

Yep. There are only a few regions of the world where this sort of approach works. Places like Norway, Austria, and the Pacific Northwest are also great for hydropower.

One cool application for hydropower is energy storage. You can use excess energy to pump water into a reservoir, then release it to run a turbine when you need additional power. That is actually the biggest kind of energy storage that we have on the grid currently.

In the near future, I think that lithium ion batteries are probably going to displace natural gas peaker plants for the job of meeting peak demand.

[Antipatros]

Keep in mind hydropower takes up the most land for the same amount of power generation as most other sources, land which could be put to better use or just left the fuck alone.

Are the flaws of renewables preferable over the flaws of fossil fuel or not? Why?

I find that these sorts of debates are kind of pointless.

Renewables like wind and solar are winning in the marketplace. Most of the new capacity being added to the US grid is wind/solar, because it's cheap. Utilities also putting in some natural gas and battery storage.

If you look at a company like General Electric, much of their revenue growth is happening in their renewable energy segment, not in their legacy gas/steam power business.

Renewables are clearly the future, at least as far as the market is concerned. The public debate over renewables is basically just a political/culture war argument at this point, in my opinion anyway.

[Gonswanza]

Keep in mind hydropower takes up the most land for the same amount of power generation as most other sources, land which could be put to better use or just left the fuck alone.

Are the flaws of renewables preferable over the flaws of fossil fuel or not? Why?

Lets see... We either use up some livable land, or choke ourselves out and slowly die from either toxic fumes, global warming or a collective of both paired to smog and increases in lung cancer.

Yea, gee, I wonder which really is better, easily filtered chemical runoff that can be negated with some precautionary measures or the deadliest method of energy production known to man?

[Resilient Acceleration]

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

All I’m saying is that it’s not a much better “solution” to a “problem”.

Solar farms already take up huge amounts of land, and the new landfills created by worn out panels will indirectly increase the land requirements, and the toxic metal compounds seeping from the waste along with the functioning farms will poison everything around them. Remember when DuPont was pumping Teflon into the water? That’s what will happen with solar panels.

I mean this solution is still better than poisoning the air we breathe in, resulting in a casualty that equals to if America one day wakes up and nuke the entirety of modern Tokyo, killing all of its 38 million inhabitants, every four years.

Also, the "toxic metal compounds seeping from the waste" seems to be a regulatory issue fixable with regulations - and market forces, too. After all, rare earth metal scarcity means that metal recycling technologies and industries becomes a necessity.

[Lord Dominator]

All I’m saying is that it’s not a much better “solution” to a “problem”.

Solar farms already take up huge amounts of land, and the new landfills created by worn out panels will indirectly increase the land requirements, and the toxic metal compounds seeping from the waste along with the functioning farms will poison everything around them. Remember when DuPont was pumping Teflon into the water? That’s what will happen with solar panels.

I mean this solution is still better than poisoning the air we breathe in, resulting in a casualty that equals to if America one day wakes up and nuke the entirety of modern Tokyo, killing all of its 38 million inhabitants, every four years.

Also, the "toxic metal compounds seeping from the waste" seems to be a regulatory issue fixable with regulations - and market forces, too. After all, rare earth metal scarcity means that metal recycling technologies and industries becomes a necessity.

Heck, while not nearly true of all metals, currently it’s cheaper to recycle aluminum than to mine more - so companies literally pay to dig through the trash for it. I expect there are price points at which that becomes true of rare earth metals.

[Antipatros]

Are the flaws of renewables preferable over the flaws of fossil fuel or not? Why?

I find that these sorts of debates are kind of pointless.

Renewables like wind and solar are winning in the marketplace. Most of the new capacity being added to the US grid is wind/solar, because it's cheap. Utilities also putting in some natural gas and battery storage.

If you look at a company like General Electric, much of their revenue growth is happening in their renewable energy segment, not in their legacy gas/steam power business.

Renewables are clearly the future, at least as far as the market is concerned. The public debate over renewables is basically just a political/culture war argument at this point, in my opinion anyway.

I will add that, in the case of GE, this is despite the fact that the company invested billions of dollars into the fossil fuel side of the business.

They bought Alstom's power business (mainly to acquire their HRSG and steam turbine businesses -- they got some offshore wind too), and they also bought a big interest in Baker Hughes (an oilfield services company). Both deals have been pretty disastrous for the value of the company.

They bet big on fossil fuels and a slower energy transition. In hindsight, they should have invested that capital into renewable energy.

[Stellar Colonies]

...

Keep in mind hydropower takes up the most land for the same amount of power generation as most other sources, land which could be put to better use or just left the fuck alone.

Yea, and heavily disrupts said land.

[Cannot think of a name]

Here in Quebec (and I mean IRL Quebec), we decided, from 1944 to the 1960s and up until today, to nationalise our hydroelectric dams all across the province, under HydroQuebec. Sure, building the dams themselves required a lot of mostly-fossile energy, but from then, 97% of the province's electricty is powered without an ounce of fossile fuel. However, the view of Nuclear Energy in Quebec is...not exactly good. Chernobyl and Fukushima seem to have left quite the impact on the quebecois population, so much so that the sole nuclear power station in the province, the Centrale nucléaire de Gentilly, was shut down in 2012, with its decommissioning process currently underway for atleast the next 50 years.

So here, that leaves us with 3% of energy produced by various means.

Sure, it would be exquisite if that small percentage would be filled by things like solar pannels, wind power and geothermal energy.

However, the whole world's not Quebec, and we have a fuckton of lakes, rivers and uninhabited land that frankly couldn't really be used for anything else (Think of the Canadian Shield as a big rock that goes from the NW Territories to Labrador), something most other countries really do not.

Yep. There are only a few regions of the world where this sort of approach works. Places like Norway, Austria, and the Pacific Northwest are also great for hydropower.

One cool application for hydropower is energy storage. You can use excess energy to pump water into a reservoir, then release it to run a turbine when you need additional power. That is actually the biggest kind of energy storage that we have on the grid currently.

In the near future, I think that lithium ion batteries are probably going to displace natural gas peaker plants for the job of meeting peak demand.

It's worth highlighting this because the discussion over renewables is so easily derailed by people parsing it. They'll chase your tail over solar, 'it doesn't work here or this way or has this issue.' But then you point out that there's also wind, but now the conversation is as if we've chosen wind over solar and now wind has all of these problems. It's an oil mentality. Oil was a one stop shop for things and people, whether they realize it or not, are locked into this all or nothing premise that is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place, putting too many of our eggs in one basket.

But part of the idea of renewables is that you use the one that is the most appropriate for the area where you're generating the power. So no, the entire world is not going to run on solar-no one is suggesting that. But places that have both unused land and lots of direct sunlight, or lots of rooftops and 300+ days of sunlight a year will lean more on solar, places like altamont that is a literal corridor between the cool coastal air and the hot air of the valley that sucks that coastal air inland making it ideal for a windfarm. My hometown's first hydroelectric plant operated on diverting the flow of water and then returning it, the dam was build as a reservoir to store water for the area that was then also utilized as a power generator. There are areas were geothermal is an ideal option, obviously not every the same as solar, wind, tidal, etc. Using a smart grid that can direct adjust for peak generation and draw creates a diversified power grid that isn't susceptible to things like an oil embargo where the one source we've put all our cookies on gets fucked up. Fossil fuel energy is vulnerable and putting all our eggs in that basket was a bad idea even before the environmental costs became apparent.

[Antipatros]

Yep. There are only a few regions of the world where this sort of approach works. Places like Norway, Austria, and the Pacific Northwest are also great for hydropower.

One cool application for hydropower is energy storage. You can use excess energy to pump water into a reservoir, then release it to run a turbine when you need additional power. That is actually the biggest kind of energy storage that we have on the grid currently.

In the near future, I think that lithium ion batteries are probably going to displace natural gas peaker plants for the job of meeting peak demand.

It's worth highlighting this because the discussion over renewables is so easily derailed by people parsing it. They'll chase your tail over solar, 'it doesn't work here or this way or has this issue.' But then you point out that there's also wind, but now the conversation is as if we've chosen wind over solar and now wind has all of these problems. It's an oil mentality. Oil was a one stop shop for things and people, whether they realize it or not, are locked into this all or nothing premise that is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place, putting too many of our eggs in one basket.

But part of the idea of renewables is that you use the one that is the most appropriate for the area where you're generating the power. So no, the entire world is not going to run on solar-no one is suggesting that. But places that have both unused land and lots of direct sunlight, or lots of rooftops and 300+ days of sunlight a year will lean more on solar, places like altamont that is a literal corridor between the cool coastal air and the hot air of the valley that sucks that coastal air inland making it ideal for a windfarm. My hometown's first hydroelectric plant operated on diverting the flow of water and then returning it, the dam was build as a reservoir to store water for the area that was then also utilized as a power generator. There are areas were geothermal is an ideal option, obviously not every the same as solar, wind, tidal, etc. Using a smart grid that can direct adjust for peak generation and draw creates a diversified power grid that isn't susceptible to things like an oil embargo where the one source we've put all our cookies on gets fucked up. Fossil fuel energy is vulnerable and putting all our eggs in that basket was a bad idea even before the environmental costs became apparent.

That is all absolutely true. People get way too myopic in these conversations, and different regions are going to have different energy mixes.

I think that the conversation needs to be framed like this: "you will change or you will die". That is true from both a business perspective and from a societal perspective. This sustainable energy versus fossil fuels thing is a settled argument, from my point of view.

The main thing that's up in the air is how fast this transition is going to occur.

[Outer Sparta]

It's worth highlighting this because the discussion over renewables is so easily derailed by people parsing it. They'll chase your tail over solar, 'it doesn't work here or this way or has this issue.' But then you point out that there's also wind, but now the conversation is as if we've chosen wind over solar and now wind has all of these problems. It's an oil mentality. Oil was a one stop shop for things and people, whether they realize it or not, are locked into this all or nothing premise that is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place, putting too many of our eggs in one basket.

But part of the idea of renewables is that you use the one that is the most appropriate for the area where you're generating the power. So no, the entire world is not going to run on solar-no one is suggesting that. But places that have both unused land and lots of direct sunlight, or lots of rooftops and 300+ days of sunlight a year will lean more on solar, places like altamont that is a literal corridor between the cool coastal air and the hot air of the valley that sucks that coastal air inland making it ideal for a windfarm. My hometown's first hydroelectric plant operated on diverting the flow of water and then returning it, the dam was build as a reservoir to store water for the area that was then also utilized as a power generator. There are areas were geothermal is an ideal option, obviously not every the same as solar, wind, tidal, etc. Using a smart grid that can direct adjust for peak generation and draw creates a diversified power grid that isn't susceptible to things like an oil embargo where the one source we've put all our cookies on gets fucked up. Fossil fuel energy is vulnerable and putting all our eggs in that basket was a bad idea even before the environmental costs became apparent.

That is all absolutely true. People get way too myopic in these conversations, and different regions are going to have different energy mixes.

I think that the conversation needs to be framed like this: "you will change or you will die". That is true from both a business perspective and from a societal perspective. This sustainable energy versus fossil fuels thing is a settled argument, from my point of view.

The main thing that's up in the air is how fast this transition is going to occur.

Local solar generation in places with a lot of sunlight would be very helpful for those communities to be energy sufficient and draw less power from the national grid. Both a national and local approach will be needed to achieve the renewable potential we need.

[Diarcesia]

Are the flaws of renewables preferable over the flaws of fossil fuel or not? Why?

Lets see... We either use up some livable land, or choke ourselves out and slowly die from either toxic fumes, global warming or a collective of both paired to smog and increases in lung cancer.

Yea, gee, I wonder which really is better, easily filtered chemical runoff that can be negated with some precautionary measures or the deadliest method of energy production known to man?

Nuclear energy: *chuckles* I'm in danger

To /s or not to /s, that is the question.

[Stellar Colonies]

What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?

[Lord Dominator]

What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?

(Image)

I always appreciate that the graphic says nuclear is somehow more environmentally friendly than solar and wind. I’m sure it has something to do with the manufacturing process, but it’s still funny.

[Ayytaly]

If all goes wrong, just send fat people to prison and make them run on energy-generating threadmills and bikes. Once they lose enough weight that doesn't suffocate other passengers in the subway, they're free to go.

[Galloism]

What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?

(Image)

I always appreciate that the graphic says nuclear is somehow more environmentally friendly than solar and wind. I’m sure it has something to do with the manufacturing process, but it’s still funny.

A lot of it has to do with energy density and truly massive output of a single nuclear plant.