I suspect the people that still claim that renewables + storage alone can’t work are going to look pretty silly in 10 years time (although they’ll likely find a way to move the goalposts yet again by that point).
I’m confident solar + batteries will solve short term storage. But as far as I know energy density is just not there for seasonal storage. However when energy becomes dirt cheap, chemical storage through Hydrogen or downstream products should become an economic no brainer as well
Seasonal storage is mostly not needed. Close to the equator it is not due to not really having a season problem. Further to the poles you have stronger winds in winter.
That could be the case. But with solar prices consistently dropping every year it should dominate even more in the future. I’m not so sure wind will keep up
Yeah, there’s a bunch of modeling that shows that fairly small amounts of storage enable 90% or more decarbonization at temperate and tropical latitudes.
Batteries too seem to be growing exponentially, perhaps even more so than solar. See the cleantech report from RMI, page 14 (PDF).
I suspect the people that still claim that renewables + storage alone can’t work are going to look pretty silly in 10 years time (although they’ll likely find a way to move the goalposts yet again by that point).
I’m confident solar + batteries will solve short term storage. But as far as I know energy density is just not there for seasonal storage. However when energy becomes dirt cheap, chemical storage through Hydrogen or downstream products should become an economic no brainer as well
Seasonal storage is mostly not needed. Close to the equator it is not due to not really having a season problem. Further to the poles you have stronger winds in winter.
That could be the case. But with solar prices consistently dropping every year it should dominate even more in the future. I’m not so sure wind will keep up
So does wind, just not as fast as solar.
Yeah, there’s a bunch of modeling that shows that fairly small amounts of storage enable 90% or more decarbonization at temperate and tropical latitudes.