This is an era of plentiful, cheap, renewable energy, but politicians just can’t admit it

@HoraceGreenley Renewable energy is cheap and plentiful. If you've been following Davos, solar and wind as well as battery storage costs will be lower than coal in the US this year, and will continue to fall. It's not physics, it's politics.

@SW-User Davos is nothing more than a creepy cult.

Physics is the same everywhere.

Renewable energy souces like wind and solar are not efficient enough nor energy dense enough.

You can't cheap physics

@HoraceGreenley Wait and see. Coal is done. Oil is done. Gas is not far behind.

@SW-User You can't change physics no matter how much you wish for it.

The photoelectric effect is over 100 years old. It's not going to magically get more efficient.

Converting mechanical energy into electrical energy is also extremely inefficient.

Energy demands far out strip renewable sources ability to meet that demand.

It's a pipe dream.

@HoraceGreenley Wait and see. Renewable energy is skyrocketing, fossil fuels are declining. Tipping points are already being reached. Fossil fuels are done.

@SW-User
Wishing for it won't make it so

@SW-User The world will be a hydrogen economy . Wind and solar are niche players.

It's just physics

@HoraceGreenley The world will be a hydrogen economy. Wind and solar will accelerate the transition, forcing out fossil fuels. It's not just physics, it's economics (and politics).

@SW-User No its physics. You don't understand it so you think there must be some other reas like politics.

@HoraceGreenley Politics is the only reason that we are not at 100% renewables and in the middle of a hydrogen economy, and that's a fact. Exxon knew that fossil fuels would wreck the climate as far back as 1970, but suppressed it and paid governments off to protect profits. Physics is irrelevant.

@SW-User Physics is only irrelevant to those that don't understand it.

You sound like a little kid that thinks they are the reason his parents got divorced.

@HoraceGreenley Perhaps you'd like to prove to me why physics has already determined that renewables are a pipe dream...

@SW-User Converting mechanical energy to electrical energy is very inefficient.

Photovoltaics are also very inefficient.

Both are expensive to make and have significant environmental impact on manufacturing.

Both have energy densities thousands of times lower than the chemical energy of fossil fuels.

Prices of both aren't commercially competitive without government subsidies.

Many issues with both

@HoraceGreenley 🤭

. Maybe, but the amount of energy that is wasted as heat by fossil fuels is far more, and drags the overall efficiency down. Also, if you add in better-insulated buildings and end drilling and mining for fossil fuels, which consumes about 11% of all energy on its OWN, and you get 56% less energy use on average from 2035 to 2050. Plus, of course, energy bills will decrease by 63% on average by 2050, since renewables will be dirt cheap. And that's economics, not politics

They're currently at 23% efficiency; not a bad increase from just a few years ago when they were about 6%. The only way is up, particularly as coal will never be more than 40% efficient and gas 60% efficient (STOP PRESS: A company in Silicon Valley is trialling PV panels at 39.3% efficiency...)
Agreed, but scaling up both these technologies, particularly offhshore wind, is getting easier and easier, particularly as costs plummet and fossil fuels will only get more expensive. They're being scaled up now and are meeting significantly greater shares of our energy use. It's only the political will that is lacking.

Both are expensive to make and have significant environmental impact on manufacturing.[/quote] But these costs pale against the colossal environmental damage that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels has wreaked over the previous decades.

Yes they are. Government subsidies have actually been cut on renewables, incredibly, yet demand is mushrooming, which kinda shows that they're commercially competitive. Additionally, you know as well as I do that government subsidies for coal,oil and gas far, far, FAR outstrip the relatively paltry subisidies for renewables, yet Big Oil is currently panicking. I think we know the trend here...😊

It's a good time to be a liberal, and to look forward to a world that has already left the fossil fuel era behind :)🌱

@SW-User The chemical energy of fossil fuels is thousands or hundreds of times more energy dense than wind and solar. So any inefficiency is overcome by the sheer amount of energy available.

That's why I mentioned energy density.

A kilogram of fully charged batteries has thousands of times less energy that a kilogram of oil or natural gas.

@SW-User Solar panels are not that energy efficient. That's overstating it .

@SW-User Renewable energy is only growing because of the taxpayers

@SW-User Insulation, energy to produce energy, blah, nlah, blah...is baloney.

Wishful thinking that makes sense if you ignore the obvious

Try making solar panels and windmills.

@HoraceGreenley It's not. And it's a good thing.

https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2022/nrel-creates-highest-efficiency-1-sun-solar-cell.html

@HoraceGreenley I'm aware. And that is why battery storage is the answer :)

@SW-User Batteries are not the answer.

Not energy dense enough. Not even close
Discharge without being used
Environmental nightmare to manufacture

Batteries are a terrible choice

@HoraceGreenley No, it's ok. Thousands of companies are investing billions in doing just that for all of us.

@HoraceGreenley Oh, I'm afraid you're wrong...

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201217-renewable-power-the-worlds-largest-battery

@SW-User No I'm not wrong. This is just throwing money at the problem trying to overcome physics.

1 megawatt is the electric usage for 1 month of 100 homes in Los Angeles.

Drop in the bucket.

You'll have to have hundreds of miles of storage to meet the California electricity needs. I have no idea what that woukd cost in money and environmental impact.

It doesn't scale

@HoraceGreenley It does, and will scale. Energy storage, managing the demand, and connecting up renewables over wider areas to enable greater continuity of supply will all work. Storage can be batteries, pumped hydro, flywheels, compressed air and lowering and raising heavy weights.

You just have to throw money at the problem.