alt Hacker NewsThat’s good. I wonder how much longer it will take for countries to make their energy supply dependent on fossil fuels or nuclear power, thereby becoming pawns of unpredictable or hostile regimes and being helplessly at the mercy of geopolitics. It’s so baffling that many countries, even those with plenty of sun and wind, still prefer to rely on fossil fuels rather than make life a little easier for future generations.
And no, there will be better solutions for base load as well. Battery storage, for example. Sure, it’s a transformation, but those who refuse to think for the future can see the consequences of stubbornness and backward-looking attitudes today.
Replies
The answer is batteries (why it hasn’t seen the adoption and also what is about to enable it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y94yV7WUwGY is a short lecture by someone from BloombergNEF that speaks to some of your questions.
[dead]
Renewable energy is really expensive. [About 4x more expensive than nuclear, and 14x more expensive than gas.](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4028640) People mistakenly think that because wind and sun are free, renewable energy generation is cheap.
The geopolitics don't go away because the resources needed to switch to renewables aren't evenly distributed geographically:
https://www.statista.com/chart/33754/countries-with-the-larg...
https://www.techpolicy.press/us-critical-mineral-aggression-...
Battery storage is only a solution if you can actually generate a surplus of energy that can be stored, which is not a given.
We absolutely need to move off of fossil fuels but thinking that renewables are the only solution seems very short-sighted to me.