[ben_w]

Those places also have a huge wind resource in the form of the North Sea, for Ireland whatever the other bits of that submerged continental shelf are called, and for Poland the Baltic: https://globalwindatlas.info/en/

This is important because wind season anti-correlates with PV season.

Plus, it's not like north-south power lines are beyond the wit of mankind. The US western interconnection includes both Canada and Mexico: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg

[deepsummer]

Yet there are whole weeks practically without wind in winter. And most climate models estimate that global warming reduces wind further. Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem.

[ben_w]

> Yet there are whole weeks practically without wind in winter. And most climate models estimate that global warming reduces wind further.

Not for the combination of [continent-wide, offshore, the Atlantic coast].

The Atlantic continental shelf isn't correlated with the Baltic.

Offshore Dunkelflaute is much shorter than on-shore.

> Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem.

Also false. The required quantities even of batteries is comparable to electrification of road transport.

Also, independently of batteries, hydro plants come in two flavours that people often mix up: generation, and storage. Of these, only generation requires an associated upstream supply and watershed; storage can be done with a hole in the ground, of which there are plenty, and just the currently and soon-to-be closed coal mines in the EU can be converted to around 13 TWh of pumped storage: https://gfzpublic.gfz.de/rest/items/item_5038282_1/component...

And it's not like we can't dig more holes if we wanted to, we dig holes to get out rocks even though rocks are one of the cheapest things you can buy.

[deepsummer]

> The Atlantic continental shelf isn't correlated with the Baltic.

How do you transmit the power? Do the countries on the Atlantic even want wind power, set up the transmission lines, and pay for it?

> Offshore Dunkelflaute is much shorter than on-shore.

That reduces the storage requirements a bit, but there is not nearly enough offshore. And offshore is expensive. That's why it's getting harder to find investors.

> The required quantities even of batteries is comparable to electrification of road transport.

That doesn't prove it's possible, but makes it even harder to get the required quantities.

> hydro plants come in two flavours that people often mix up: generation, and storage

Hydro requires the right geography. Is there any potential for hydro left in central Europe?

> EU can be converted to around 13 TWh of pumped storage

That would be a good amount of storage. But has this ever been tried? I would guess that's quite dangerous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseK5gp66u8

[deepsummer]

Max comment nesting reached. Instead of going through your response one by one, let me just say one thing: the premise and promise of the whole energy transition are based on studies that completely underestimated the physical and engineering challenges in practice. That's why we are where we are. Energy costs have gone up; CO2 emissions have not. I wouldn't believe any study before it has been implemented at scale, at least in a region or small country.

[ben_w]

> How do you transmit the power?

The usual way.

> Do the countries on the Atlantic even want wind power, set up the transmission lines, and pay for it?

They can sell the power, you know. This already happens.

> That reduces the storage requirements a bit, but there is not nearly enough offshore.

It more than covers it.

Even a Dunkelflaute period is reduced, not zero, output. Those seas are huge, and the normal wind there is fast; even on a continental-shelf-spanning Dunkelflaute (much rarer than "just Germany and Poland"), the capacity in those waters *even with that reduction* is more than EU demand just by itself, which in practice means "not building as much as possible".

> And offshore is expensive. That's why it's getting harder to find investors.

Compared to onshore wind. But even offshore wind is cheaper than new-build nuclear, coal, and has strong overlap with new CCGT.

Even then, it's not hard to find investors: the US went as far as banning it because the investors were actually happy to invest.

The limitation on investors right now is that we're transitioning faster than any previous energy transition before, while also having other things to also invest in. It's like how big tech in the US is running out of people to get money from to spend on data centres, the limit isn't actually building them, it's how fast they're getting built when your answer to "how many would you like to order?" is "yes".

> That doesn't prove it's possible, but makes it even harder to get the required quantities.

The fact that EVs are for sale, however, does.

> Hydro requires the right geography. Is there any potential for hydro left in central Europe?

I thought you might say something like that, *which is why I literally wrote what I wrote*:

  people often mix up: generation, and storage. Of these, only generation requires an associated upstream supply and watershed; storage can be done with a hole in the ground, of which there are plenty

And then linked you to a document, with a quote from that document, about using coal mines. The document you replied to with doubts, supports the conclusion you've just denied.

Also, I already saw all of Tom Scott's videos when they were new. As per the document:

   Finally, the realisable potential includes projects that are not only technically and economically feasible but also aligned with regulatory, environmental, social and implementation timelines, facilitating their implementation within short to medium time frame.

[frm88]

Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem.

No, it's not. Decommissioned nuclear plant infrastructure used as massive battery storage.

https://gesi-deutschland.de/en/gesi-project-presented-in-gro...

[deepsummer]

870 MWh? It would take about 500 of them to make it through a 1-2 week dunkelflaute.

[ben_w]

Why do you think that's a criticism?

  The following table shows that in total 2264 installations have been identified in the EU ETS to be power plants, which have reported emissions in at least one year since 2005. The fuel of 1440 power plants have been identified. Of this there are 124 lignite power plants, 284 hard coal power plants and 2  power plants using blast furnace gas. There are 57 power plants using oil products. The majority of the plants uses natural gas (858 plants). About 824 plants have not been matched to a fuel yet.

- page 8, https://www.eionet.europa.eu/etcs/etc-cme/products/etc-cme-r...