| They absolutely do have these associated costs. Robust electricity networks? The US has spent trillions on transmission networks in the era dominated by coal. Dispatchable power plants? We’ve had both base-load and peaker plants for decades. Indeed, base load gas is cost-competitive with solar now. But all base-load gen is so slow to start up and shut down that peakers can charge 2-3 orders of magnitude more per MWh. Storage technologies? Given the exorbitant cost of peaker power, pumped storage has been in use for decades. Demand response has also made sense for decades, but we’ve lacked the technology and market structures to make it a reality until recently. It was introduced before renewables had real market share. In short: yes, renewables require these technologies. So does fossil-fuel generation. The IEA’s bias is showing if they’re implying that this is unique to one technology. Of course, our current system is optimized around the characteristics of huge fossil plants, and a lot of capital will be required to optimize it around a different technology. These investments are worth it if you consider the externalities of carbon emissions. If you do it correctly, and include extreme weather costs, we should try to get to a zero emissions ASAP. But even if you ignore externalities, as you appear to be doing, renewables are now so much cheaper that there is no economic reason to replace obsolete generation with non renewables. Under this approach, we’ll still get to 100% renewable in 40-50 years. |