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Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

newyorker.com

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Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#51
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Return on energy is different from cost, and it's strange that you're ignoring that. When you look at the levelized cost of energy, solar and onshore wind win: On a per-kWh basis, they produce the cheapest energy around. Gas combined cycle plants are close, but they have pollution and CO2 drawbacks. LCOE doesn't capture everything you want, but when your grid mix is low on solar, it's the most relevant metric. When w…

From a pure physics and first principles perspective, a higher EROI implies higher scalability and lower costs. Nuclear today has high costs associated to it due to uncertainty in permitting, high upfront costs due to red-tape, annd archaic regulations that stifle any innovation. These make risk management prohibitively expensive as is the cost of insuring them. If the catastrophic rate of failure and associated deat…

Let's start with privatizing the risk of it going kaboom. Why do we need red tape that pushes the cleanup costs onto taxpayer shoulders? It's so safe!

Sophisticated private insurers being willing to shoulder the full financial downside of nuclear power plants going fukushima (not Assuming you are correct, there will be less red tape, the sophisticated insurers will happily take on the additional risks and unsophisticated taxpayers dont have to worry about being on the hook for one of those ~$800 billion Fukushima style cleanup events.

I wont hold my breath though.... after all, they know the nuclear industry would stop existing if insurance were actually priced according to the risk even if the consumers of their expensive public relations campaigns dont.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#52
post #24

Nice article explaining solar energy policy. I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms. Also would have been nice to have a critical look at how the Chinese were able to corner the Solar market via state sponsored means.

What "critical look" is there to take? How about the way that the US gov't subsidizes the oil and gas industry, and is about to restart the coal industry? For some reason gov't investment in industry is only bad when China does it.

When the U.S. does it we're "picking sides".

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#53
This was a great positive start to the day. Thanks whoever posted that.

One point curious in its omission is whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget. Presumably that’s the critical metric in all of this.

[Edit: I ran this question through ChatGPT and the initial (unvalidated) response wasn’t so exciting. This obviously put a dampener on my mood. And I wondered why people like McKibben only talk about the upside. It can sometimes feel a bit like Kayfabe, playing with the the reader’s emotions. And like my old man says: if someone tells you about pros and cons, they’re an advisor. If someone tells you only about pros, they’re a salesman.]

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#55

[flagged]

China seems to be taking the joke rather seriously [1] > The 277 GW of utility-scale solar capacity installed in China in 2024 alone is more than twice as much as the 121 GW of utility-scale solar capacity installed in the United States at the end of 2024. So they took all the solar installed in the USA since forever, and build it in a year. Twice. That being said, they're _also_ building everything else: * PWR nucle…

I’d also point out that China is teetering on the edge of a financial meltdown, having also built complete ghost cities, so some of these investments may not look very smart in just a few years. Don’t confuse investment with malinvestment, in other words. Throwing money at everything, much in direct opposition to market forces, has never really been shown to be a winning strategy.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#56
post #24

Nice article explaining solar energy policy. I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms. Also would have been nice to have a critical look at how the Chinese were able to corner the Solar market via state sponsored means.

> I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms.

Or just some old gas plants. No one is demanding a 100% solution. Let's get to 85% or whatever first. Arguments like this (which always appear in these threads) are mostly just noise. Pick the low hanging fruit, then argue about how to cross the finish line.

And the bit about China is an interesting article about trade policy but entirely unrelated to the technology being discussed. "Because it's Chinese" is a dumb reason to reject tech.

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also a lot of people on the ground that don't want it to work, or will protest it, and that's where state power seems to work well to cut through opposition and just build things. Certainly a lot of tradeoffs are made to allow that but the Chinese government seems very good at building. I'm not sure if it's the model or the particular culture working though - aren't there also a lot of party bureaucrats ove…

So get government out of the space here. Keep essential regulations for ensuring safety and so that insurance companies can cover liabilities. Let the free market play it out. If the profit incentives are there(which there are as higher EROI = lowest cost per kWh), then it is a race to who can provide the product(energy) at the lowest cost more reliably. Government unfortunately has a monopoly here as traditional rea…

Like I said, if you have some pathway to a functional government (either to cut regulations sufficiently or to build it, I don't think either is much simpler) then you should get on that part first. But I'm not holding out much hope. We can barely reduce regulations to build houses, and voters like houses. You'll have environmental protests a plenty for city scale small reactors if they're in anyone's "backyard" at all

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#58
post #31

> offering a plausible check to not only the climate crisis but to autocracy. Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply. A lot of this article was clearly written with rose-colored glasses on, but this might be the silliest line of all. The auth…

With some investment you can make solar panels locally, you can't produce new oil deposits.

Isn't that what biofuels are?

Sun -> plants (corn) -> liquid that goes in (modified) cars

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear seems to only work if nation-states build and operate it directly - no private firm can build them profitably and on time. If you can get the us federal government to be functional again or have a path to doing that, please let people know, but with the current defunding everything mindset and general gridlock and one bill a year passed I think solar will be much cheaper by the time you even start breaking th…

> If you can get the us federal government to be functional again or have a path to doing that Impossible. Federal government in US is failing along with the rest of large scale western style governments. They are too big, cost too much, and have too many fundamental structural deficiencies. The model of having professional class of administrators and politicians running the country as part of a massive bureaucracy i…

> Federal government in US is failing along with the rest of large scale western style governments. They are too big, cost too much, and have too many fundamental structural deficiencies.

How do you see those governments failing, and when?

When sorting countries by tax burden (as a percentage of GDP), then you will find that there are tons of extremely livable countries at the top (wealthy European nations), while basically everything under ~10% GDP taxation is a 3rd world disaster.

How big of a GDP percentage would you propose can a government take at most and not "invariably fall apart"?

Re: Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

#60
post #42
post #24

Nice article explaining solar energy policy. I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms. Also would have been nice to have a critical look at how the Chinese were able to corner the Solar market via state sponsored means.

It'll probably be fulfilled in 3 stages 1) Gas peakers - where every kilowatt hour delivered by solar or wind is just a kilowatt hour of gas that would otherwise have been burned. We are generally still here - still burning gas while it's sunny and windy. 2) Pumped storage and batteries gets us to 98% carbon free grids with ~5 hours of storage with 90% roundtrip efficiency - https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per…

My google-fu is failing to resurface the links, but IIRC:

One study determined the cheapest energy grids for many countries. IOW, if you had to rebuild the energy grid from scratch today, what would be the cheapest way to meet your needs?

And the answer was 90 - 95% renewables, depending on country. Solar + wind + batteries for 90 - 95% of the power, with natgas peakers for the rest. And that 90-95% number increases every year.

Another survey noted that while Australia and many other equatorial countries are optimal for solar, Finland is pessimal. Most countries have already passed the point where solar is best in pure financial terms. Finland hasn't, but it's very close. Which is insane, given that Finland is a poor place for solar, but a great place for wind, nuclear & geothermal.

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