| ▲ | murderfs 3 days ago | |
> * Carbon free energy is cheaper to produce these days, so the premis is wrong If it's cheaper to produce, then there's no point in doing anything special, because it'll just take over via market forces. The "problem" with renewables is that the economics are fantastic in the marginal case, but if you need it to take over baseload when the sun is down, wind isn't blowing, etc., it's much more expensive because you need to build energy storage, which fossil fuel generators get for free. Going from 50% of power generation to 100% is going to be many multiples more expensive than 0% to 50%. Until things like flow batteries become economical, in places without rivers you can dam for generation/pumped storage, it's probably not going to be feasible to go 0% carbon unless you just replace all of your baseload generation with nuclear or something. | ||
| ▲ | mullingitover 3 days ago | parent [-] | |
> If it's cheaper to produce, then there's no point in doing anything special, because it'll just take over via market forces. It is taking over via market forces. New utility-scale solar+battery capacity is already cheaper than building a new coal plant. The only reason it's not doing it more quickly is because of government intervention in the markets in the US to nerf it. | ||