Renewables Still Too Expensive vs Fossil Fuels
The core pain is the ongoing struggle to make renewable energy economically competitive with fossil fuels, hindering widespread adoption and creating societal costs. Complaints highlight price barriers, reliance on fossil fuel infrastructure, and the need for continued technological advancements to drive down costs and ensure a viable transition. There's a sense of urgency and frustration with slow progress and inadequate solutions.
SOURCES (60)
“Exactly. Specifically energy infrastructure. Which is the foundation of sustainable growth”
“It seems like they should also be generating their own power instead of straining the power grid (which needs to be strengthened).”
“Hi there! I’ve recently picked up economics and policy and I’ve gotten into a little bit of a rabbit hole of theories! After seeing some news and case studies of how the oil shortage has impacted economies worldwide, I’ve seen a lot of headlines where governments fail to adapt properly and civil unrest is sparked. I was thinking what kinds of approach could be used to navigate through this period, especially for developing countries from either low or middle income groups that may not be able to”
“The problem with 100% solar+batteries is that you need to massively overbuild for the system to meet demand. It's far more cost-effective to have some portion of generation come from a firm, weather-independent source. The main options are fossil fuels, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Since fossil fuels emit carbon and hydro and geothermal are geographically limited, nuclear is the best option in a lot of places.”
“The problem with monopolies is that they can hike prices at will. This has certainly happened with district heating in Sweden. You can't do that with AC and solar.”
“He said concept though. The concept is great and is never the point of contention. Implementación, cost, and environmental/societal impact are.”
“New to the energy industry, previous experience and exposure was running a solar and battery consumer products retailer. I've been trying to get my head around the best resources to learn about everything electricity, the grid, storage systems, etc., and would appreciate any advice or resources people have to share. Thanks in advance! submitted by /u/flexoneinnovate [link] [comments]”
“> Is your carbon footprint below what is sustainable?What a waste of time this is. Carbon footprint? Zero-emission homes? The climate is global and the balance sheet is spread across all of us. Someone with a disability might have much more use for cars and transporation than someone who is able-bodied. And homes out in the boonies without much sun (for solar power) might need a diesel generator for their three-times-a-year power outages in order to keep up productivity and a comfortable existen”
It's much less damanding to mother earth. ... and father pocketbook.
“Oh I love this question cause this is what I think about a lot. If you are in the US: Anything to do with energy production is going to be big in a few years. A shit ton of energy powergrids are old and decaying and will soon be causing issues. Look at what is happening in Northern Indiana right now. The Year 2038 problem - Legacy Unix-based banking systems and ATMs will run out of time-tracking numbers. Anything to do with fixing, maintaining upgrading vintage/ manual / pre-AI systems/technolog”
“No! This is not a race car. It is a vehicle intended for use in cities at low speeds. Race cars require too much energy, which cannot be obtained from the Sun (currently).”
“The US has local oil extraction so in theory its oil supply should be easily self-sustaining. Of course oil doesn't work like that (the local refinement industry is not built for the domestic oil) but this failure is ultimately a consequence of economic policy - not that the US is unique in this.As I understand it, the oil reserves simply weren't built for frequent use. They were built as a backup plan for a global supply chain collapse. Arguably that happened twice in recent history - first wit”
“Well this is disappointing. John Michael Greer (formerly of The Archdruid Report) revisits his old peak oil predictions. There's some good stuff here, especially if you haven't read JMG before. And it's great to see someone engaging with their past work to see what was wrong and why. But he's not staying with the times on solar and wind energy : "[S]olar power, [and] windpower [are] niche resources propped up by government subsidies for political reasons. They have to be pro”
“We absolutely should invest in nuclear. We won't have enough with solar anymore. AI and EVs alone have blown our projections off by 1000x at this point. Can't put the genie back in the bottle either.I'm not saying there are no risks, but if we don't start making more nuclear power companies, Elon will and he will go from $1T to $8T. Who am I kidding, he's probably the only one that can turn them around in 2yrs with nextgen tech. Everyone else is going to keep faking it and build them in 20 years”
“What is the purpose of deliberately spreading half truths and making Americans feel as though they haven't been implementing renewable energy? Is it to drive these people towards pathological perfectionism? Why not give credit where credit is due? https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65904 Ethanol: https://ethanolrfa.org/markets-and-statistics/annual-ethanol-production Geothermal: https://worldgeothermal.org/geothermal-data/geothermal-energy-database Hydropower: https://www.hydrop”
“Was there a good reason not to build there?It seems at a glance like we should have just built the turbines, not paid off or stiffed them.Since we seem to desperately need more energy, currently expanding with every other short term high polluting source we can.”
“Are you talking about the Box Elder County Stratos project? I did some digging into that. AFAIK, they are mostly going to be powered by a natural gas pipeline. I haven't heard of them using nuclear. Got any links?It is in a remote valley. And, it's going to use less groundwater than the previous use of the land. The only things to really complain about are huge amounts of gas consumption and AI bad. If the locals pinned them down to building out solar and mini-nuke power, the only thing left wou”
“"It is increasingly clear that continued reliance on oil and gas risks perpetual crises and ongoing wealth transfers from the vast majority of us to a handful of corporations and their shareholders. We have choices, and it is beyond time for us to choose electrification, efficiency and renewables over locking in increasingly expensive fossil fuels." https://substack.com/home/post/p-209017787 submitted by /u/OilResearcher [link] [comments]”
“Buybacks work if they outpace sellers in the market. They have nothing to do with emissions, or at least have no impact if people are actively selling and driving the price down.”
“The problem with electricity for industrial use is, that you also need electricity during long, dark, cloudy winters, when there is very little solar power available. Somehow all the "green" supporters are all afraid of nuclear powerplants for some reason and instead prefer coal, even though there's more radioactive crap going into the air from that than from nuclear plants.”
“I love renewables, but the problem with solar is the lack of inertia (literally). Big spinning masses like steam turbines have an easier time staying on network frequency. Wind turbines better than solar of course so I hope we continue to have diversity there.”
“I’ve seen this debated on here before (the old “gravity-based energy storage tower developer” threads still have some of the most brutal engineering takedowns I’ve read on Reddit). The math skepticism is fair, a DTU physics professor flatly said Energy Vault’s concept “makes no sense” and that people are “forgetting to calculate orders of magnitude”. r/AskEngineers has called this exact tech “uneconomical fantasies” and said the companies selling it “are all scams”. So I went and looked at what’”
“This is actually fairly standard for Switzerland, ~80% of power here is hydro and tossing a heat-exchanger into the local lake is how most heat intensive things are cooled (e.g. nuclear reactors) although in a few cases I've heard of datacenters being used to heat water for nearby buildings, which is also pretty neat.”
“It’s not power plants directly, but power solutions. Bloom energy, fuel cell energy, plug power are all guarantees for large gains while the infrastructure is built”
“For most of the last century, international politics revolved around oil. Whoever controlled production, pipelines, and shipping lanes held significant strategic leverage. I’ve been researching whether that framework is quietly becoming outdated. My argument is that we’re moving from resource geopolitics to network geopolitics . Electricity can’t be stockpiled like oil at a geopolitical scale—it has to be generated, transmitted, balanced, and consumed almost instantly. That shifts strategic impo”
“More talk of climate and energy policy rollbacks in the news has me worried about the public's perception of sustainability and how much it influences policy decisions. Affordability and equity are now front of mind for young voters, and sustainability has come to feel at odds with both, thanks to greenwashing, green gentrification, and decades of the movement being marketed to the upper class. Now the word "sustainability" immediately paints a picture of fancy galas with open bars”
“I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables.Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries as having the highest CO2-equivalent emissions (in Mt): | China | 5,5”
“Even if you are correct, in practice there's no way to put this particularly genie back in the bottle. It's the same as trying to argue that we should solve our energy problems by asking people to consume less energy. Outside of some climate dictatorship, it's not happening.Also, on travel, I think there's a lot to be said for the value of travel and being exposed to other cultures and societies. "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness[..]" and all that.”
“Having watched CPUC in action, it's not quite a blank check, but damn close.Utility comes in and says "we desperately need a rate hike to fund $X00 million" then CPUC gets them down to x-1 or x-2 and the whole thing could hav been avoided by better management from the start.”
“There’s a lot of focus on a few major energy technologies, but I’m curious what people here think is the being overlooked or underestimated right now.... submitted by /u/OpportunityOk2911 [link] [comments]”
“We spend a lot of time talking about how much energy the world produces. I wonder if we're paying enough attention to how it moves. A surprising share of the world's energy and trade still depends on just a handful of narrow waterways. Around 20% of global oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly 12% of global seaborne trade passes through Bab el-Mandeb. Different places. The same vulnerability. First came the Ever Given. Then the attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Now it's”