Get Ready: Clean Energy is About to Get Cheaper and Greener! 🌱

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Summary:

  1. Promising Future for Renewables
    Experts, including J. Doyne Farmer from Oxford, predict that solar and wind energy will become increasingly affordable and grow rapidly, mirroring the technological advancements seen in computer chips under Moore’s Law.

  2. Dramatic Cost Reductions
    The cost of solar panels has decreased by about 10% each year, making them roughly 10,000 times cheaper than when they first powered the Vanguard 1 satellite in 1958. Lithium batteries and wind turbines have also seen significant price drops.

  3. Stagnation of Fossil Fuels
    In contrast, fossil fuel prices have remained largely unchanged over the last century, and nuclear power costs have increased due to heightened safety concerns.

  4. Rapid Adoption Expected
    Technological adoption typically follows an S curve, indicating that renewable energy technologies like solar, wind, and green hydrogen are set to expand quickly, potentially dominating the energy landscape within the next 20 years.

  5. Economic Viability
    Investing in clean energy not only combats climate change but is also economically sensible. The long-term savings from this transition can outweigh initial investments, making it a wise choice for the future.

Read more at: Yahoo News | Joule

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Nope. It won’t happen. Renewables cannot replace fossil fuels. Here is a quick summary to understand why :

"Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh.

Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. But the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells, the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34% of photons into electrons; the best commercial PV technology today exceeds 26%.

Wind power technology has also improved greatly, but here, too, no 10-fold gains are left. The physics boundary for a wind turbine, the Betz Limit, is a maximum capture of 60% of kinetic energy in moving air; commercial turbines today exceed 40%.

The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced."

More about this, and source : https://manhattan.institute/article/the-new-energy-economy-an-exercise-in-magical-thinking

pdf version : https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf

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this is ironically true. fossil source energy still leading in terms of cost per production. same as vegetable oil from palm oil. eventhough the production sacrifice so many land, but the output of the oil exceed other source of oil, like canola, sunflower, etc. such dilemma.

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