Clean Power and Storage Wars
powering-the-planet.ghost.io
When people find out what I do for work, it’s not unusual for them to ask, “Are we doomed?” My usual response is, “We would be, if not for the amazing developments in renewable energy.” We know the people willing to destroy the planet for personal gain are still

I wasn’t aware just how good the news is on the green energy front until reading this. We still have a tough road in the short/medium term, but we are more or less irreversibly headed in the right direction.

  • @SkybreakerEngineerEnglish
    34•6 months ago

    More and better renewable energy is great. The problem is that we’re not getting rid of the other stuff

    • @GamingChairModelEnglish
      12•6 months ago

      The problem is that we’re not getting rid of the other stuff

      We are, though. Coal use in the United States has cut in half in the last 15 years, and it’s still on a steep downward slope. Even as natural gas (which emits roughly half the CO2 per unit energy as coal) increased over the same time period, our total emissions from energy consumption has dropped from about 6 billion tons to 4.8 billion tons.

      The progress we’re making might be slower than many of us would like, but we’re also at a tipping point where we’re making many fossil fuels simply uneconomical. And that’s the key: to make polluting costly enough that big businesses won’t want to.

    • @[email protected]English
      10•6 months ago

      As renewables becomes cheaper and easier to implement they will naturally supplant fossil fuel just by the nature of economics.

    • @LesserAbeOPEnglish
      8•6 months ago

      You’re right, we’ve got to get rid of fossil fuel. As one example, the article talks about how energy storage has reduced the need for gas peaker plants. In California in April the power required from those plants was half what it’s been in April the prior three years.

      Still plenty of progress that needs to be made, but what’s notable is that it’s now cheaper for a business to turn to green energy and storage to solve a problem. There’s not an incentive to build new polluting tech. So while the impact of climate change is going to get worse (because those emissions and warming are already baked in) the business argument for fossil fuel is no longer viable.