That totally makes sense -- although renewable energy and energy storage have been making huge strides recently, let's assume that no further improvements will happen.
Not questioning whether innovation can and will occur. Question is whether the innovations to be developed can compete with what is the present reality which is ~10cents/kWh price that we currently pay for power.
All things considered that is pretty cheap and even a minor improvement on price won't change the sunk costs of current infrastructure. The service of getting electricity is pretty cheap around the country and any replacement will have to be substantially cheaper. 'Better' doesn't count for much here because its just electricity and without government mandates people generally don't really care where it comes from.
Idealists like to say that we 'should' be getting power from somewhere else or in a different way. These idealists tend to ignore the market reality that our current situation isn't that bad for almost everyone.
This is the big problem that a lot of these discussions tend to ignore. Not only does our market tend to always pick the cheapest options, the real challenge is the developing world that is going to massively increase their power needs in the next few decades. This well have significant benefits for the world in general if we can pull it off. Unfortunately, given the economic realities of these areas that means coal unless we can provide a cheaper option. Unless some breakthrough happens with storage, that means nuclear.
> Idealists
It's easy to be an idealist when your lifestyle already benefits from massive amounts of cheap energy. As Hans Rosling[1] puts it,
When I lecture to environmentally concerned students, they tell me "No! Everybody
in the world cannot have cars and washing machines!" ... Then I ask my students,
"over the last two years, how many of you doesn't use a car," and some of them
proudly raise their hands and say, "I don't use a car". Then I put the really tough
question, "how many of you hand wash your jeans and your bedsheets, and no-one
raises their hand. Even the hardcore in the green movement use washing machines.
[...]
Until they have the same energy consumption per-person, they shouldn't give advice
to others on what to do and what not to do.
All things considered that is pretty cheap and even a minor improvement on price won't change the sunk costs of current infrastructure. The service of getting electricity is pretty cheap around the country and any replacement will have to be substantially cheaper. 'Better' doesn't count for much here because its just electricity and without government mandates people generally don't really care where it comes from.
Idealists like to say that we 'should' be getting power from somewhere else or in a different way. These idealists tend to ignore the market reality that our current situation isn't that bad for almost everyone.