| > It would take until well after 2050 to build those, and they would cost many, many times as much as renewables + storage, and produce zero kWh in the meantime. Again, no, if nuclear power plant construction was carried out at the same rate as it was in the 1960s and 70s it'd be completed on time. You might be doubtful that we'd be able to manage that pace of construction in the 21st century, but at least there's precedence for that pace of construction actually being achieved. > Just the money spent on coal, in the meantime, not counting nuke construction, would be more than the cost of building out enough renewables. That's a very bold, source-less, claim you're making. Unfortunately the numbers don't even remotely add up. At a total of 535 million tons, and 36.14 dollars per ton for electric power consumption, we're looking at only $20 billion dollars of coal sales [1]. And that's generously assuming that all coal production went to electricity. If you're including power plant construction, that figure doesn't change much [2]. It's so small it's hard to see on the graph, but it appears to be below $25 billion dollars [3]. > No "breakthroughs" are needed for storage. Everything works already. All that is unknown is which will end up cheapest. Right. We know something will make storage incredibly cheap. We don't know what kind of storage it will be. We don't have examples of it being delivered at that cost. But we just know it in our heart that something will save us and make intermittency a non-issue. This is called "hope" and it's not a plan. The plan is to keep burning natural gas while wind and solar aren't producing, and keep our fingers crossed that our miraculous something will come about. 1. https://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/ 2. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45076 3. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2020.09.10/chart2.s... |
We don't need "something" to make storage cheap. Storage is cheap, and is getting cheaper.
Again, we are not building storage out yet because we don't have enough renewables to charge it from yet. Instead, we are right now building out factories to make it. E.g., the factories to make iron-air batteries, $20/kWh, are under construction right now. Ammonia synthesis plants are under construction right now. Tankage for ammonia is dirt cheap. No breakthroughs needed, just build-out.
When we do get to building out storage itself, it will be cheaper than it already is.