this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
598 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
59421 readers
3944 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Just from looking at some government studies. This doesn't necessarily compare longer-term costs, but it does give some direct comparisons between storage options.
I'm certainly no expert here, but just throwing out some rough estimates of battery degradation, it doesn't seem to be cost-effective vs natural gas, which is already only slightly more expensive than solar. So solar plus battery storage seems to be significantly more expensive than natural gas.
It's certainly more complex than that (i.e. you'd need less generation if battery backup is plentiful), but that's the data I'm looking at.
But how can one consider natural gas? The whole point is to avoid getting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?!
No, the point is to put less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Natural gas is way cleaner than coal, and it's quite a bit cheaper (from what I can tell) vs battery storage. Everything has a cost tradeoff, and the cost tradeoff for natural gas is very attractive right now. Maybe we'll develop some really inexpensive energy storage (sodium batteries look promising), but regardless of what we come up with, there will be a transition period where we roll it out, and natural gas is a fantastic alternative until that's done because supply lines are already in place.
It might be cheaper but that is a pure capitalistic point of view. And capitalism is what brought us to our worlds current state
Yes, the current state is a pretty near constant improvement on standard of living and a pretty steady decrease in greenhouse emissions (at least in the US) despite rising population and access to gadgets. Electric vehicles exist because capitalists found a niche and exploited it at a time when battery densities could finally support a reasonable range. Rooftop solar exists because people care and can afford to place them on their houses. Governments came in later to help encourage those, but the tech existed before the subsidies did.
Capitalism isn't the enemy, it's merely a force that can be channeled to create a lot of good in the world. If a society sets up the right incentives, capitalism is incredibly efficient at meeting the demand.
So we shouldn't be destroying the economy to combat climate change, we should be channeling the economy to combat climate change. For example:
Most of the reason renewables are less attractive vs fossil fuels is because fossil fuels don't need to pay for negative externalities like pollution. If we add that in, the market will adapt and change their operations to reduce costs.