alt Hacker NewsTangent but: this is also why reducing greenhouse gas emissions is hard.
As long as fossil fuels remain one of the cheapest easiest to scale ways to make power, there’s a similar incentive to cheat. If everyone else cuts emissions and you don’t, your margins are higher and you can undercut them. Global reductions require an all-cooperate scenario.
Developing nations have the strongest incentive to cheat since they need those margins to catch up.
Which is why I think little progress will be made until other sources are actually cheaper. Until then it’s beyond us politically. We can’t get all nations across the world to simultaneously cooperate at that scale.
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> As long as fossil fuels remain one of the cheapest easiest to scale ways to make power, there’s a similar incentive to cheat. If everyone else cuts emissions and you don’t, your margins are higher and you can undercut them. Global reductions require an all-cooperate scenario.
IMO economics always wins. You're never going to see an all-cooperate scenario.
You will see an all-compete scenario, so constantly reducing costs for alternatives is key but you also have to find a way to ensure that the producers can win economically too. This is the conundrum.
If solar panels get cheap enough to create high demand, then that demand has to carry through the process of manufacturing, installing and maintenance. Every time I read that solar has gotten even cheaper, I start calling for quotes to install them at my house and the prices are borderline obscene. Same for geothermal last time I needed to update my HVAC.
I want solar and geothermal to work but the economics are a challenge.
There are economic mechanisms for this (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Me...) but broadly, yes, it is difficult.
So little political will is needed at this point as the economics now favor renewables. Unfortunately most of the political will seems to be leaning towards protecting the more expensive fossil fuel sources of energy.
Renewables (particularly solar) already are cheaper [1].
It's political will not economics that keeps us addicted to fossil fuels. Nobody gets rich from solar panels. You build them. They produce power. Oil wells like any mine are huge wealth concentrators. That's the real problem.
If anything, a bunch of countries (particularly those who are net oil importers) are re-evaluting their energy dependence given that the compact that the US will guarantee maritime transport has essentially been broken.
[1]: https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
Isn’t solar already cheaper?
Agreed - the good news is, in many circumstances renewable energy is cheaper for new energy capacity. As long as regulations move in the right direction, we are likely to see the global energy mix move towards renewable sources over time