Solar and batteries can power the world

No this statement is absolutely wrong. Here's why:

> west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China

China is dominating energy because the CCP doesn't care what their citizens think. They need energy and they are doing everything they can do to get it. They will put you behind bars at best or kill your family and demolish your house if it gets in the middle of a power line trench. For China, energy isn't a "nice to have" - they realize it's essential and they won't stop until they get there.

China is the person out in the mountains being chased by a hungry bear while we in the west is the person sitting in their air conditioned room debating whether to drive or take an Uber to have a drink with buddies.

News came out last week that you can buy a Chinese hypersonic missle for $100k - you can't even build a little two car garage where I am for double that price.

> Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy

Pension funds don't care whether energy is green or orange. What they hate are the horrible returns affected by all the stealing and grifting that happens in the name of "green energy".

Public utilities (atleast in the jurisdictions that I am aware of) love any infrastructure work - they are guaranteed a 10% ROI by the government on any approved infrastructure work they do. If you could work with them to build infrastructure to cremate just newborn kids and get it approved by the CPUC, they will happily start work on it tomorrow. The reason why they hate green energy is because after they've made their 10% ROI, they are now stuck with a power source that costs them more than their non-green sources and that hurts their razor thin margins.

However, as the customer - I don't care either about what public utilities and pension funds hate or don't.

What I do care about is having affordable and reliable power and I absolutely can get that with my own solar panels and batteries. The fact that it's green is a happy sideffect for most.

The reason why every home in the U.S. isn't overflowing with solar panels and batteries is because of regulation and government shenanigans making retail costs really high. Average people in Pakistan, South Africa and Lebanon certainly power their whole homes with solar panels and batteries but their governments don't have nonsense taffifs and fees on Chinese solar equipment.

Also: when we last spoke you were talking about energy storage solutions. How has that progressed recently?

1 kWh Wind, or Hydro, Thermal and other renewables do not go down as much in cost price because they have mechanical or chemical components that do not last as long as solar cells and need maintenance and repair.

We keep the cost low by group buying in bulk at wholesale prices (a shipping container with 770 panels for 20-30 houses) with our coop instead of premium installer prices by the electrotechnical or building companies. If you let our Fiberhood coöperative in the US install your solar, batteries, tiny house or eCamper you do not pay these high tariffs, we have enough panels pre-tariff. So you still can hit 1 cent per kWh but only if you get the decent installers and sellers.

Same with corn

> so you will have to flood a lot of land to get enough. Not necessarily, just use pre-existing water treatment plants to grow algae, and vertical photobioreactors exist. Algae also has a much higher harvest rate versus corn, and if you only wanted to ferment the algal biomass into corn you'd have much higher yields than corn.

> Also, in case of a war or blockade you can switch the corn use from ethanol to food. You will have to eat tortilla and polenta for a year [1] but it's better than algae from seawater or famine.

True

> Here we use sugar cane to produce etanol, it's more efficient because it's a C4 plant. I guess it's possible in the south of the US. Agreed.