The momentum of the solar energy transition - Nature Communications
www.nature.com
Nijsse and colleagues find that due to technological trajectories set in motion by past policy, a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies. Uncertainties arise, however, over grid stability in a renewables-dominated power system, the availability of sufficient finance in underdeveloped economies, the capacity of supply chains and political resistance from regions that lose employment.

Due to technological trajectories set in motion by past policy, a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies

  • Addition@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    I like nuclear a lot too, but it does have its drawbacks:

    1. Expensive. Plants are expensive to build and maintain. They also take like 5-10 years to build from scratch.

    2. Water intensive. In the coming century water is going to a really hot commodity as water reserves dwindle. Having a power source that relies on lots of water might not be a good idea.

    3. Fuel sources. Not about what’s fueling it but where is coming from. Uranium is only found in certain deposits and if your country either doesn’t have a source in house then they need to have political clout and money to obtain it. Everyone likes to point to France as a nuclear powered country but where did they get their uranium? Niger. The same Niger that just had an anti-french coup, cutting off their supply.

    Maybe future tech like SMRs will make it more viable but for now the solar/geothermal/wind route will be a much quicker and easier replacement for fossil fuels.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      Regarding scarce uranium, if more money was poured into perfecting a thorium based molten salt design, we would have enough readily available fuel to power the world for over a thousand years, as Thorium deposits are quite common.

      However I’m not hopeful that Nuclear will become a significant power source in any reasonable timeframe, at least in america, due to the massive amount of red tape making building them slow and costly. Though I hope I’m wrong about that.

    • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
      4·
      1 year ago

      Niger supplied 20% of Frances uranium over the last ten years. The coup is not a threat to Frances electricity supply at all as France can buy urnanium ore from others countries with ease. The problem is that Russia has nearly half of the global uranium enrichment capacity and we all have seen that Russia should not be trusted when it comes to energy security.

    • keepthepace@slrpnk.net
      4·
      1 year ago
      1. Count per kWh. Countries like France who managed to standardize models get cheap costs.
      2. Air cooling is a possibility and water availability not a problem. If water becomes scarce or warm to the point where we can’t warm a percent of a stream up a few degrees, we will have much more serious problems than electricity.
      3. France started mining uranium locally. We stopped because Niger was cheaper and with less labor rights. But blockade France and the uranium mines can get reopened.
    • Eheran@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago
      1. So is solar and wind if you take everything into account. Most importantly storage to make it viable for night time use. Let alone overcast days with no wind. Unless you have that storage, you need to have parallel capacity of some other power plant to make up for that. Which is, the more wind/solar there is, used less and less. But still costs the same. Storage big enough to get over winter is way to expensive. And even with storage you need excess capacity to actually fill that storage.
      2. There is no inherent need to use water, air cooling is possible too, but costs more. The water is also not “wasted”, so unless all the mayor rivers etc. dry up there is no issue.
      3. The least of all issues. Uranium can be found in lots of places, including Germany and the USA. We can also use thorium, from which we have even more.
      • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
        3·
        1 year ago

        For 1. grid size matters a lot. It is always sunny and/or windy somewhwere, so if you can transport the electricity with a good enough grid you can cut down on storage. In the EU the lowest share of renewables on a single day was 23% of electricity production of what over the entire year was 37.6%. 8.3% of total production on the worst day was from solar and wind the rest mainly hydro and biomass. Btw that was 06/12/2022.

        Point is that seasonal electricty storage for renewables grid is absolutly not needed and for a continetal sized grid you mostly run to about a days worth of storage and some smart grid management. We also already have hydro power reservoirs, which have some truely massive storage capacity, if used not for baseload, but for dispatch.

        • Eheran@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago
          1. You still need the massive excess capacity then. Costs x2 or x3 are a big change. Without seasonal storage you need a global grid as well as that massive excess capacity. That not only costs extremely much (this was the argument against nuclear) but would also be impossible given the unstable relations around the world, let alone terrorists who only need to cut “one line” to remove power from all of Europe. Not going to happen.

          Hydrostorage is absolutely nothing and can not be significantly increased, just like hydro power. Take a calculator and see how long it lasts. World wide it’s 180 GW of power and 1.6 TWh energy, as per wiki. The USA need over 4000 TWh yearly, they empty the whole world capacity of hydro storage from 100 to 0% in 3 hours. Just the USA alone.

          • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
            2·
            1 year ago

            That was exactly my point, you do not need a global grid for this to work a continent sized one already does a great job. That was why I used the EU as an example. As for seasonal storage the worst month last year had 42.8% renewables, which was March, the best was February so a month earlier with 60.0%. The average was 49.7%. So we are talking 20% up or down. That is also true when you just look at wind and solar. Average was 47.15GWh and the worst month was 40.97GWh and the best 59.00GWh. So again fairly even distribution over the entire year. So no need for seasonal storage, unless you have something super cheap.

            That is real world data and not some crazy stuff. You basicly just have to overbuilt by 50% and add a days worth of storage to the EU grid to work and the ability to move around electricity.

            Also I am talking about hydro power, which per wiki only makes up 16% of global generation. That has storage capabilities built in current reservoir power plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Properties