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Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

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Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#291

Post by dd36 »

dsr_ wrote: post #159
rossdavidh wrote: post #145

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

The House of Saud has a plan. It isn't going quite as well as they had hoped, but it's going. Aramco was IPO'd. They wanted a trillion dollar valuation, and didn't get it. The next step is to sell that stock before the oil market collapses, preferably leaving themselves with a lot of cash and a minority stake in a much smaller company. Cash is going into technology stocks, venture funds, and international real estate…

They should’ve bought TSLA at $420/share ($84/share adjusted for split).

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#292

Post by ehnto »

klipt wrote: post #265
fomine3 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Index funds

Index funds will buy at the market value, no? Is the market still overvaluing oil given knowledge of renewables?

Renewables as a utility power source won't stop our reliance on oil. Fossil fuels like coal and natural gas are on the chopping board, but oil still has considerable permeation through our lives and a very large conversion cost and social inertia to overcome yet.

Plastics, shipping fuels, many manufacturing processes use oil during manufacturing but perhaps not in the final product. Vehicles are still decades away from being replaced by EVs.

The technology is all there and there are some "quick wins" coming around the corner I think. Container shipping switching to nuclear would be a quick change once regulations are in place for one example.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#293

Post by hectormalot »

disown wrote: post #202
rossdavidh wrote: post #145

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

> It's inevitable; fossil fuels are on the way out. It's not on the way out. Fossil fuel use is increasing and projected to increase for the next 3 decades at least. solar/wind/etc account for pretty much nothing today. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio... And the 2050 projection shows that petroleum and natural gas use will increase and that even coal will rebound by 2050. https://www.eia.…

I hope they (EIA) are off the mark. If the predictions from the EIA a will materialize, we’re going to have a huge carbon problem.

However, I think there also are reasons to believe things will be better:

1) the EIA forecasts linear growth of renewables, while its been behaving exponentially over the last 5-10 years. That gives me hope they’ve underestimated the long term growth rate. (It would be interesting to compare their older predictions vs actual)

2) nearly all of the energy consumption growth is non-OECD and will require newly built generation. If cost of renewables continues to drop, it might just be economic sense that pushes renewables over coal

3) at least on the EU side, fossil fuels are increasingly getting a negative connotation. On top of the financial comparison, I expect this could dampen new fossil growth as well.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#294

Post by photojosh »

mb7733 wrote: post #260
photojosh wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia, the renter almost always pays the power bill (excepting share houses, usually students). It's hard to market "you'll spend less on power so that's why the rent is higher".

Of course it's not the headline on the rental ad, but that is a factor in what makes a rental property desirable. If you're not taking average utility bills into account when looking for a rental, you should be. Maybe this is more relevant in cold climates. As a student I once rented an old house where the heating oil bill would surpass the rent in the winter. I won't make that mistake again, even if the rent on the…

My experience with renting (up until 2 years ago) was always that demand exceeded supply and so we couldn't put things like appliance energy efficiency into the must-have list.

And yeah, in quite a temperate part of Australia here... cooling is more important than heating.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#295

Post by tuatoru »

mooreds wrote: post #285
tuatoru wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, do we really have a plan for the consequences, not only in Saudi Arabia but also every other nation that's dependent on oil? Hint: we do not. That's kind of sad. A long time ago (just before the GFC) I looked at trends in climate change (Arctic sea ice specifically, but that's just a canary), demography, China's GDP, and things like PV/Wind learning curves, and said to myself: "things will get interesting in 2…

If geopolitics + trends is interesting to you, I highly recommend "Disunited Nations": https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/

Thanks!

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#296

Post by Qwertious »

rossdavidh wrote: post #145

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

>What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death?

Saudi Arabia has a sovereign wealth fund with trillions of dollars. The obvious answer is that they'll build a ton of renewables and build a ton of [hydroponic/aquaponic/aeroponic/etc] farms to make food locally.

Indoor farming is expensive but very water-efficient, which suits Saudi Arabia as their water comes from expensive desalination plants.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#297

Post by nl »

wp381640 wrote: post #272
manfredo wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's doing much better in terms of actually being used as a large portion of countries electricity generation, as I demonstrated above. But more importantly, the reality is that nuclear isn't competing against renewables it's competing against a fossil fuel grid that's supplemented by renewables. Germany, the poster child for renewables, still emits 10x the carbon dioxide per watt of electricity as France. Let me put…

Battery was and is never supposed to take up the entire storage load of a network - nobody is designing or forecasting future networks in that way. Batteries provide fast response Pumped hydro is what is being used on a lot of networks and in future network planning. Ironically old open cut mines are often perfect locations for them. This paper discusses an algorithm used to find pumped hydro sites - there is _a lot_…

To add to this, there are numerous very large scale project already underway to use existing hydro capacity as pumped hydro storage.

Eg, Bath County Pump Storage is a 3GW plant[1] although ironically it is often filled using nuclear power because the hydro station can adapt better to rapid changes in demand.

In the US there is 22GW total pump hydro storage already (compared to say 98GW total nuclear power capacity).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#298

Post by mrkstu »

an_opabinia wrote: post #270
discordance wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel" - Saeed Al Maktoum

Middle-income Americans - their innumeracy, their illiteracy, their armchair-quarterbacking, their habit of seeing the Other one-dimensionally, their racism, their dollars - have always been a greater threat to Saudi Arabia and other people of the world than the price of fucking oil.

So, middle-income Americans are just like the average human being, just luckier in having a few more bucks in their paycheck?

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#299

Post by nl »

xyzzyz wrote: post #192
robocat wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Existing hydro lakes can act as storage (within the constraints of how much inflow there is and minimum outflow rates). Decrease lake outflow when solar and wind are producing power. Increase lake outflow when they are not. https://www.hydro.org/waterpower/why-hydro/available/

Your link says that at best we could double our current hydro generation capacity, which supports my point: it's simply too little for our storage needs, and if we electrify more of our economy (i.e. use it to replace heat and transport for which we use a lot of fossils now), it will be even less. It might still be worth doing, but is far from solving the storage problem: it just has significant limits on its potenti…

> Your link says that at best we could double our current hydro generation capacity

No, it says "that without building a single new dam" [hydro could roughly double its existing capacity in the US].

I'll assume you just misread that, but in any case that's pretty different to building new dams, or utilising tech like mines, or at-sea pumped storage.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#300

Post by ClumsyPilot »

an_opabinia wrote: post #270
discordance wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel" - Saeed Al Maktoum

Middle-income Americans - their innumeracy, their illiteracy, their armchair-quarterbacking, their habit of seeing the Other one-dimensionally, their racism, their dollars - have always been a greater threat to Saudi Arabia and other people of the world than the price of fucking oil.

Um, suppose you would want take a stab at that, why would specifically comment on middle-income ones?

Are they even the ones in charge of the country?

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