https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/uploads/ee2523dc632c9b01df... ("Australia is the sunniest country in
the world and one of the windiest.
Australia’s potential for renewable
energy generation is 500 times
greater than current power
generation capacity.")
https://www.afdb.org/en/news-and-events/why-africa-is-the-ne... ("Africa has an almost unlimited potential of solar capacity (10 TW), abundant hydro (350 GW), wind (110 GW), and geothermal energy sources (15 GW). The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that renewable energy capacity in Africa could reach 310 GW by 2030; which would put the continent at the forefront of renewable energy generation globally.")
Neither of these articles offers a detailed plan on how this storage will be provisioned. The second doesn't even mention storage at all, only that Europe has enough wind power to power the whole world. Sure, but that's not very useful if that power isn't delivered when you need it.
I like framing the problem in this term. Our ultimate goal is decarbonization: $1 million per gram of C02 emitted unless equivalent mass is sequestered.
Do we have a realistic plan to built a wind and solar grid under that market? I don't think so, wind and solar are useful for taking a bite out of natural gas but not actually serving as the backbone of an electrical grid. The amount of storage necessary to decarbonize with wind and solar is not feasible, and essentially amounts to betting on some future invention of a cheap mass energy storage device that works everywhere.
By comparison we have demonstrable examples of countries going 80+% nuclear, and the US is already at 20% nuclear power generation. Building four nuclear plants for each existing plant is a lot more achievable of a goal than first building a massive amount of solar and wind, and building extensive HVDC transmission, and building tens of Terawatt hours worth of storage. The first step in the latter is cheaper than building nuclear, it's the other two steps that are wildly expensive if they're even possible. If we actually enacted a binding rule of zero emissions by 2050 people would start building nuclear power plants.
We have methane seeping through thawing permafrost today. We can't delay decarbonizing our energy mix for technologies we haven't even invented yet, let alone mass produced.
Yes that is the point, it's basic risk management. Betting the farm on future breakthroughs if you consider climate change to be an existential threat is being on fire and waiting for the fire department because you don't wan't to get your soiled jumping to a pond nearby.
Nuclear is by far the best technology we have today so we should go with it until we have better options in our hand.
* In 2020, the U.S. had over 23.2 GW of capacity in energy storage compared to 1,100 GW of total installed generation capacity.
* Globally, installed energy storage capacity totaled 173.6 GW.
* 1,355 energy storage projects were operational globally in 2020, with 11 projects under construction. 40% of operational projects are located in the U.S.
* California leads the U.S. in energy storage with 215 operational projects (4.2 GW), followed by Hawaii, New York, and Texas.
"Two of the planned 10 MW batteries are up and running already, with a total of 10 expected online by year's end, Vavrik said. That means that BRP and Key Capture are running neck and neck for operational capacity in Texas. The title of biggest battery operator in the state could change hands repeatedly based on the order in which those companies' projects wrap up.
The broader story is that multiple experienced energy investors are converging on Texas simultaneously. The interconnection queue contains more than two dozen batteries that are each larger than 100 megawatts; some go up to 300, 400, even 500 megawatts."
To put these in perspective, the US consumes 500 GWh of electricity every hour. Of the 23 GWh of existing storage, 20 GWh come in the form of hydroelectricity. 100 MWh of storage only amounts to 1.4 seconds of electricity storage. We don't need megawatt hours worth of storage. We don't need gigawatt hours worth of storage. We need terawatt hours worth of storage. We're 6+ orders of magnitude off between the amount of storage necessary, and the storage we can feasibly build.
The Tesla giga factory is making 20 gWh per year. 10 factories for 5 years and we have 1tWh. And we would need to massively scale up battery production anyway for electric cars in a nuclear scenario. And remember that those batteries are one of the easiest technologies to deploy. You don't need much more than a grid connection, a substation and a concerete pad.
Yes you're missing the point. Most of that storage is hydro and there's a huge gulf between what's required to cover prolonged lulls in such as weeks as was observed recently in Texas and regularly elsewhere - and to peak shave, regulate frequency, and cover until CCGTs can spin up as we have now. Until we start getting to the multi-GWh scale it's a nonstarter.
Again, you either think climate change is an existential problem in which case relying on magic pixiedust in the future is an absurd, or you don't. There's no two ways about it.