> The smallest distance in relation to the target set for SDG 7 can be observed for Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, and Austria. By far the greatest progress in period 2010–2021 has been achieved by Malta, and significant for Cyprus, Latvia, Belgium, Ireland, and Poland.
Surprised not to see France on this list with all their nuclear power, though from glancing at this they seem to be using some aggregated measure instead of just CO2 which probably makes it much more complicated.
These last years, France has been burning a lot more natural gas than before because a lot of our nuclear reactors are in maintenance, because so of them should have gone down for maintenance during COVID but couldn't, and then we had double the amount of reactors to turn off for maintenance. This is irregular, of course, but it still means we're not quite where we should be in terms of carbon.
Seeing that list makes me deeply doubt the metrics or methodology here. As an Estonian, we use a lot of green energy, but the vast majority of it is imported, we're very much struggling with getting local production to where it needs to be.
Is there a problem with it being imported? The excess power from Finland's latest nuclear generator to come online (while already having ample low carbon energy) combined with Estonia's plans for increasing existing interconnector capacity with Finland seems like a fine solution, if only in the short term.
> The output of Finland's newest nuclear power facility, Olkiluoto 3, has been significantly cut back because electricity has become too cheap, according to the plant's owner, Teollisuuden Voima (TVO).
> "Electricity production must also be profitable for nuclear power plants, and when the price is particularly low, there may be situations where output is limited," TVO communications manager, Johanna Aho, said.
> Early on Wednesday the market price for electricity dropped below zero cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and for hours after that the price was only 0.3 cents per kWh at its highest, according to the country's grid operator, Fingrid.
> The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor in Eurajoki, southwest Finland, started regular electricity production in mid-April, about 14 years behind schedule.
> Generally, the amount of electricity generated in Finland is regulated by increasing or decreasing the amount of hydroelectric power that is used. However, due to flood conditions in northern Finland, reducing hydroelectric-generated electricity is challenging at the moment.
I think you misread the quote, which is understandable as it's awkwardly phased. Estonia is on the "not doing well" list, at least compared with some other EU nations.
If you put enough solar into an electricity grid you will eventually have coal generators shutting down because the variable pricing will drive them out of business. Watch the wholesale price dashboard for Australia for a while and compare it to local weather if you don't believe me [1]. The other effect will be that 24 hour power becomes prodigiously expensive or not available, which is why the Australian government is funding coal generators to the tune of 1.1 billion this year [2]. Even they are not stupid enough to think an industrialised society can manage without it.
As the cost of renewables get close to zero (but never reaching that), the predominant cost will be batteries and transmission. How quickly this occurs is a function of battery cost decline curve and manufacturing capacity ramp.
Coal is already dead based on current trajectories, the body just hasn’t hit the floor yet.
So why is electricity so expensive in places with lots of renewables? A few of these countries have absolutely absurd pricing of electricity per kwh especially compared to places that just burn coal and natural gas, but your sources say it should be significantly cheaper. Even in the US the only cheap electricity we can get is hydroelectric, but even that is not pushed very much due to ecological concerns.
Coal is not really very suitable for replacing renewables, natgas is much better suited.
The UK is building/planning a lot of natgas peaker plants at the moment, seemingly without anyone realising. One I read about is limited (for emissions reasons) to 240hours/10 days operation per year, which suggests that the price of power when renewables aren't going is going to be extremely high to make it profitable to build a plant that only runs 3% of the time.
> is going to be extremely high to make it profitable to build a plant that only runs 3% of the time.
It's probably fine, as the cost of renewable electricity is now lower than the fuel cost (aka the variable cost) of these plants.
In a lot of places, it's now cheaper to run a gas plant with renewables than without, as the build costs of the renewables is lower than the cost of the fuel they prevent to get burned.
Like France, often cited as the the world leader, with around 70% of its generated electricity coming from nuclear. Or Belgium, with around 50%, or Bulgaria around 30%, or Czechia around 40%, Finland around 35%, Hungary around 50%, Slovakia around 60%, Slovenia around 40%, Sweden around 30%, Switzerland around 35%...
Compared to Australia's one nuclear power, which isn't even being used to generate power, or the US' 18%, or UK's 14%, or Canada's 13%.
and look for 1 year as the time period then the places with low emissions from electricity either have lots of hydro, import power or are nuclear powered.
As yet there does not yet appear to be a single place in the world that uses solar and wind and has low emissions for electricity.
Germany's emissions given the Energiewende and the huge cost of that are particularly noteworthy.
conventional fixed nuclear is even less dispatchable than coal; you need totally different plant designs to make it dispatchable. those designs do exist (all naval reactors are highly dispatchable) but they diverged from commercial nuclear power over half a century ago
The OP's point about renewables fast fluctuations driving coal broke applies twice as much to nuclear. The problem coal has is it takes a few hours to ramp down, and during that time the electricity price is often negative. With nuclear, it isn't 1 or 2 hours, it takes 1/2 a day to ramp down. Worse, while a major cost of running coal generation (digging up the coal) does eventually ramp down, with nuclear the major cost is interest payments. They never stop, so they are paying interest while getting a negative price for the power they are generating (at the most expensive price per kWh of all generation methods).
It's all over bar the shouting for nuclear at this point. But granted, the shouting level seems to be going up not down. You would think NuScale going broke would damper the enthusiasm but no, Dutton's response to that seems to be to shout louder.
As for the OP claim Australia needs coal - South Australia has no coal. It's one of the few places in Australia that isn't build on coal seams. Consequently South Australia is now at 70% renewables, higher than any other OECD place on the planet with a substantial population (including other Australia states). That's 70% average over a year, not peak. Without coal. So much for "needing it".
Canada would likely be more than 13% except there was an abundance of easy hydro electric projects.
As the population of Canada grows past the point that the hydro projects provide nearly all electricity, I expect them to start burning more and more natural gas.
Initially this will show as New York state using more natural gas since Canada produces a huge amount of the total power there.
Home battery systems are getting absurdly cheap. Grid scale will follow, but before then it would be cheaper to incentivize rooftop solar and home battery installations in places where there’s plenty of sunlight (e.g., most of Australia)
I think home batteries are still absurdly expensive for their capacity. The most efficient storage would be for you to buy an electric vehicle and use its battery.
Australia is not a great example as no matter how cheap wholesale prices are, the consumer still gets destroyed by high electricity prices. It's a scam like most things in Australia.
The parent comment you're replying to draws the wrong conclusions from the data. Australia already obtains the majority of its power from coal, altogether fossil fuels represent 91% of Australia's consumed energy, with coal as the majority [2021-22 period, ref 1]. The subsidies provided by the state and federal government represent a -decrease- of 5% year on year. The parent comment seemingly skimmed over that point in their reference materials - they also misread the figure it's 11.1Bn, not 1.1Bn
The subsidies for coal generation are necessary and not a reflection of Australia having a growing need for greater coal production (it does not, consumption is trending lower year on year)[1], despite the lower coal-power generation over the 21-22 period[2], energy output has risen by 1% (primarily to service exports).[2]
Currently Australia is no where near the point of having that wonderful luxury problem of solar/renewable inputs tipping the balance to shut down coal production. Stating as such is merely regurgitating coal-industry propaganda. Rather, Australia is adequately planning for such a transition by significantly investing in battery technology. In the meantime current battery technology already allows Australia to burn less coal while simultaneously resolving coal's supply issues.
The reason why you don't see noteworthy subsidies against battery technology is two fold: they are a fraction of the cost and they pay themselves off relatively quickly. Coal doesn't feature either of these benefits, and must be propped up by tax payers. Due to the small cost, Australian states are implementing large battery schemes without federal subsidies, then growing these when they generate a profit.
To use an example: The South Australian "Big Battery" cost $200M, in a single year alone (2019) it saved consumers $116 million.
Alternative style batteries also exist (technically they're batteries too but not the kind you'd imagine). Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia has an attached hydroelectric plant and they'll pump water into the lake during off peak hours and run the turbines at peak demand.
zerocalories asks, 'Why bother? This is like paying off a debt with low interest early. A poor financial decision.'
this presupposes that the energy mix is changing because of costly government subsidies, and if that presupposition were correct, it would be a very reasonable comment
but that's not what's happening. countries aren't hitting their targets because the local government subsidies are more successful than expected; they're doing it because renewable energy (and, in some cases, energy efficiency improvements) is cheaper than fossil fuel in most of europe now, and has been for several years now, so companies and individuals invest in renewable energy instead of fossil-fuel production capacity, even without local government incentives
this is primarily because of capitalism in the people's republic of china, strongly supported, of course, by the so-called communist party of china. past subsidies in some european countries and the usa are of course also historically important
it would be easy to misunderstand that the chinese government is subsidizing the european energy transition, so that as europe switches over to renewables, it will cost the chinese government larger and larger amounts of money until finally they take measures to stem the flood. but that is not the case; the chinese renewable energy producers are profitable on their own terms. there was a price-fixing cartel announced at davos in 02019, which kept the price of solar panels at about €0.20 per peak watt of low-cost panels from the end of 02018 to the end of 02022 (or €0.29 for mainstream higher-efficiency panels). if we believe https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... that price has now fallen to €0.09 per peak watt for low-cost panel modules, €0.14 per peak watt for mainstream, so the cartel has evidently fallen apart; i infer that government support was helpful for holding it together for so long, but presumably at the end the panel producers' gross profit margins were close to 50%, like copyright-mafiaa rentiers. such high profit margins create enormous temptations to undercut other cartel members to win market share, so cartels in markets rapidly climbing up the experience curve tend to be very unstable
(wind turbine prices have also been falling, but the available wind resource is much smaller, and exploiting it is more often politically infeasible.)
suppose you can borrow money at 4% apr to build solar farms, and you somehow manage to keep the total cost of building a plant (inverters, cables, installation, etc.) to twice the panel costs, which has been roughly the historical average (https://ratedpower.com/blog/solar-farm-costs/), and you manage to site the plant somewhere with a capacity factor of 16%—not the 29% california gets, nor the 10% maine and germany get (china too for some reason!), but somewhere in between. €0.09 per peak watt becomes €0.18 per peak watt and €1.13 per average watt, and at that 4% apr, each average watt costs you €0.045 per year in interest. but an average watt is 8.77 kilowatt hours, because a year is about 8770 hours
so that's €0.0051 per kilowatt hour
fossil-fuel power usually costs around €0.03 per kilowatt hour, 500% more. it costs even more when it's being burned in an inefficient mobile internal-combustion engine. it can't compete, except where it's the only option. it can't even compete in germany, much less in india, perú, tunisia, and indonesia
unlike wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels scale down very well; you can get a 200-watt-peak panel. this greatly limits the options incumbent utility companies have to protect themselves from competition from this radical threat; if they try to keep their prices high to pay off the debt they owe on their coal and oil plants, many of their customers will install local generation capacity, reducing their customer base to one even less able to pay off the large fixed costs—the much-feared 'utility death spiral', a phenomenon which so far has not materialized
this is also why african, asian, and american countries with no emissions targets won't just replace european consumption of fossil fuels
it is difficult to overstate the importance of this change for human economic development. the last time the price of energy dropped so much was sometime in the early 19th century, and energy is still profoundly important to the economy, despite the migration of heavy industry away from rich countries. how will this near-order-of-magnitude reduction in the cost of energy affect the relative prices of goods and the possibilities for human development? how will it alter geopolitics?
and given that the price has been falling like this for 15 years (solarserver listed a price of €2.17 per peak watt in may 02009, 24× higher than today, an average halving time of about 3.2 years—the cartel bubble merely paused progress along the trajectory to which the price has now returned) it's likely that it's not done falling yet
> unlike wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels scale down very well; you can get a 200-watt-peak panel.
That's why in UK we have banned construction of Wind Turbines on land, we have banned construction of solar panels on land of 'potential agricultural value', which is basically anything except mountainous terrain.
We have blocked construction of a win farm in South England due to 'potential noise pollution and congestion'. And we give subsidies to the DRAX power plant that 'sustainably' burns the amazon rainforest that was turned into woodchips and shipping 9000 miles to get there.
I have entirely lost faith in the anglo-speaking west as a force for good and progress in this matter.
> That's why in UK we have banned construction of Wind Turbines on land, we have banned construction of solar panels on land of 'potential agricultural value', which is basically anything except mountainous terrain.
I think that ban has more to do with the current party of government being the Conservative Party, who like to imagine the natural state of the whole UK being just like the gardens of a Victorian era country house. For the sake of everyone not from the UK, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harlaxton_Manor_-_Univers...
> I have entirely lost faith in the anglo-speaking west as a force for good and progress in this matter.
You're not alone. Weirdly, even it seems that even Conservative MPs don't have much faith in the Conservative Party right now.
We should all strive to do what we can, regardless of what others do.
Setting an example and making investments eventually trickles down abroad with technologies being cheaper, with foreign companies being pushed by genuine or PR reasons to make investments on being greener in those countries etc.
Setting an example is a minor point - but that second bit "making technologies cheaper" that's where you'll really find compelling reasons for non-western nations to switch. If the world is producing so many tons to solar cells so that western nations can convert over and the demand starts to slow as their conversion processes near their end then those production lines can find new customers.
The idea that foreign countries will be influenced or pushed by Western countries "setting a good example" into making investments that would benefit their countries from an environmental standpoint is absurd. Do you really think that Chad, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. (who are all at the top of that list for countries with the worst air pollution) give a damn about their air quality? Or PR reasons for bettering their countries? Not even slightly. The leaders of those countries couldn't care less about "their people" because their goal is to keep them poor, uneducated and scared so they can stay rich and in power. This is painfully obvious and pretending it's not real won't help any advancements.
>We should all strive to do what we can, regardless of what others do
We will go broke trying to slash emissions while the rest of the world uses cheap energy to fuel their economic growth. The days of the US being a positive example of, well, anything are rapidly diminishing.
Looking at the data, Africa and Asia have been steadily increasing their renewables and currently have higher percentage than the US, though the US are catching up very fast thanks to the IRA
Literally exactly what I'm predicting will happen is what's happening today.
North American and European CO2 emissions are decreasing, but world wide emissions are constant. The rest of the world doesn't care, we're only bankrupting ourselves in a futile struggle.
If you really want to reduce atmospheric CO2 the only solution is massive sequestration or military force to stop the third world from burning fossil fuels.
When people in richer countries buy a lot of solar panels and heat pumps and whatnot, that brings down the manufacturing cost of these items, so that they also become the rational choice in poorer countries.
Once everyone in America started driving cars, that didn't drive a resurgence in the use of horses for transportation in Africa.
I’d argue that the rich nations have an obligation to find a way to structure a less carbon intensive economy. The global south can benefit from the R&D that the west does. It’s not a forgone conclusion that the only way to grow is by burning fossil fuels, but the global south will certainly go that way if there is no known alternative.
This is so hypocritical it is breathtaking! Tiny UK alone has, historically, produced more CO2 that all of Africa has done so far!
Furthermore, USA & West perceives themselves to be leaders in technology and innovation. Cleantech was a perfect opportunity to sell world-leading products to the rest of the world, and make bank. Instead we dithered and delayed, missed the opportunity, and now African leaders are making fun of us, "Why do you come to our country only to complain about China? That's all we hear from you!'
Renewable production is still rapidly increasing, and prices falling. At some point, you saturate the most profitable markets relative to production, and get a race to the bottom.
Worse off nations should benefit from the glut of cheaper panels from companies fighting to stay afloat, that are far cheaper than continuing to buy oil.
Let’s just hope China doesn’t collapse then. We need to produce more panels in more places, however high startup and supply chain setup costs with falling market prices means it’s leading to only established players or national strategic investing.
> Pretty sure none of these countries have emissions targets
That's wrong. I'm not sure why I'm replying as truth seems be to first casualty in culture wars, but the only two that matter in that list are China and India due to their population.
Air pollution is not the same thing as what you’re discussing. Generally speaking, yes, we should probably expect them to use renewables because renewables are gradually cheaper than fuels.
Readit News
Surprised not to see France on this list with all their nuclear power, though from glancing at this they seem to be using some aggregated measure instead of just CO2 which probably makes it much more complicated.
> The output of Finland's newest nuclear power facility, Olkiluoto 3, has been significantly cut back because electricity has become too cheap, according to the plant's owner, Teollisuuden Voima (TVO).
> "Electricity production must also be profitable for nuclear power plants, and when the price is particularly low, there may be situations where output is limited," TVO communications manager, Johanna Aho, said.
> Early on Wednesday the market price for electricity dropped below zero cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and for hours after that the price was only 0.3 cents per kWh at its highest, according to the country's grid operator, Fingrid.
> The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor in Eurajoki, southwest Finland, started regular electricity production in mid-April, about 14 years behind schedule.
> Generally, the amount of electricity generated in Finland is regulated by increasing or decreasing the amount of hydroelectric power that is used. However, due to flood conditions in northern Finland, reducing hydroelectric-generated electricity is challenging at the moment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653220 ("HN: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market")
https://yle.fi/a/74-20032375 ("Finnish nuclear plant throttles production as electricity price plunges")
https://elering.ee/en/elering-and-fingrid-launch-joint-activ... ("Elering and Fingrid launch joint activities for construction of EstLink 3")
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/EE?wind=false&solar=fal... ("Electricity Maps: Estonia")
[1] https://aemo.com.au/Energy-systems/Electricity/National-Elec...
[2] https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/fossil-fuel-subsidi...
Coal is already dead based on current trajectories, the body just hasn’t hit the floor yet.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/22/former-coal-plant-big...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/end-of-co...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-26/how-austr...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/20/agl-b...
https://www.energy-storage.news/australias-national-cefc-inv...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2023/07/18/the-us-is-...
The UK is building/planning a lot of natgas peaker plants at the moment, seemingly without anyone realising. One I read about is limited (for emissions reasons) to 240hours/10 days operation per year, which suggests that the price of power when renewables aren't going is going to be extremely high to make it profitable to build a plant that only runs 3% of the time.
It's probably fine, as the cost of renewable electricity is now lower than the fuel cost (aka the variable cost) of these plants.
In a lot of places, it's now cheaper to run a gas plant with renewables than without, as the build costs of the renewables is lower than the cost of the fuel they prevent to get burned.
Like France, often cited as the the world leader, with around 70% of its generated electricity coming from nuclear. Or Belgium, with around 50%, or Bulgaria around 30%, or Czechia around 40%, Finland around 35%, Hungary around 50%, Slovakia around 60%, Slovenia around 40%, Sweden around 30%, Switzerland around 35%...
Compared to Australia's one nuclear power, which isn't even being used to generate power, or the US' 18%, or UK's 14%, or Canada's 13%.
If you look at : https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
and look for 1 year as the time period then the places with low emissions from electricity either have lots of hydro, import power or are nuclear powered.
As yet there does not yet appear to be a single place in the world that uses solar and wind and has low emissions for electricity.
Germany's emissions given the Energiewende and the huge cost of that are particularly noteworthy.
It's all over bar the shouting for nuclear at this point. But granted, the shouting level seems to be going up not down. You would think NuScale going broke would damper the enthusiasm but no, Dutton's response to that seems to be to shout louder.
As for the OP claim Australia needs coal - South Australia has no coal. It's one of the few places in Australia that isn't build on coal seams. Consequently South Australia is now at 70% renewables, higher than any other OECD place on the planet with a substantial population (including other Australia states). That's 70% average over a year, not peak. Without coal. So much for "needing it".
As the population of Canada grows past the point that the hydro projects provide nearly all electricity, I expect them to start burning more and more natural gas.
Initially this will show as New York state using more natural gas since Canada produces a huge amount of the total power there.
It's also most expensive.
Last time I ventured into the Tesla subreddit, people were talking about 20 years. That's terrible.
The subsidies for coal generation are necessary and not a reflection of Australia having a growing need for greater coal production (it does not, consumption is trending lower year on year)[1], despite the lower coal-power generation over the 21-22 period[2], energy output has risen by 1% (primarily to service exports).[2]
Currently Australia is no where near the point of having that wonderful luxury problem of solar/renewable inputs tipping the balance to shut down coal production. Stating as such is merely regurgitating coal-industry propaganda. Rather, Australia is adequately planning for such a transition by significantly investing in battery technology. In the meantime current battery technology already allows Australia to burn less coal while simultaneously resolving coal's supply issues.
The reason why you don't see noteworthy subsidies against battery technology is two fold: they are a fraction of the cost and they pay themselves off relatively quickly. Coal doesn't feature either of these benefits, and must be propped up by tax payers. Due to the small cost, Australian states are implementing large battery schemes without federal subsidies, then growing these when they generate a profit.
To use an example: The South Australian "Big Battery" cost $200M, in a single year alone (2019) it saved consumers $116 million.
[1] https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-stat...
[2] https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-stat...
Ofcourse transmission lines might be a bottleneck.
Dead Comment
this presupposes that the energy mix is changing because of costly government subsidies, and if that presupposition were correct, it would be a very reasonable comment
but that's not what's happening. countries aren't hitting their targets because the local government subsidies are more successful than expected; they're doing it because renewable energy (and, in some cases, energy efficiency improvements) is cheaper than fossil fuel in most of europe now, and has been for several years now, so companies and individuals invest in renewable energy instead of fossil-fuel production capacity, even without local government incentives
this is primarily because of capitalism in the people's republic of china, strongly supported, of course, by the so-called communist party of china. past subsidies in some european countries and the usa are of course also historically important
it would be easy to misunderstand that the chinese government is subsidizing the european energy transition, so that as europe switches over to renewables, it will cost the chinese government larger and larger amounts of money until finally they take measures to stem the flood. but that is not the case; the chinese renewable energy producers are profitable on their own terms. there was a price-fixing cartel announced at davos in 02019, which kept the price of solar panels at about €0.20 per peak watt of low-cost panels from the end of 02018 to the end of 02022 (or €0.29 for mainstream higher-efficiency panels). if we believe https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... that price has now fallen to €0.09 per peak watt for low-cost panel modules, €0.14 per peak watt for mainstream, so the cartel has evidently fallen apart; i infer that government support was helpful for holding it together for so long, but presumably at the end the panel producers' gross profit margins were close to 50%, like copyright-mafiaa rentiers. such high profit margins create enormous temptations to undercut other cartel members to win market share, so cartels in markets rapidly climbing up the experience curve tend to be very unstable
(wind turbine prices have also been falling, but the available wind resource is much smaller, and exploiting it is more often politically infeasible.)
suppose you can borrow money at 4% apr to build solar farms, and you somehow manage to keep the total cost of building a plant (inverters, cables, installation, etc.) to twice the panel costs, which has been roughly the historical average (https://ratedpower.com/blog/solar-farm-costs/), and you manage to site the plant somewhere with a capacity factor of 16%—not the 29% california gets, nor the 10% maine and germany get (china too for some reason!), but somewhere in between. €0.09 per peak watt becomes €0.18 per peak watt and €1.13 per average watt, and at that 4% apr, each average watt costs you €0.045 per year in interest. but an average watt is 8.77 kilowatt hours, because a year is about 8770 hours
so that's €0.0051 per kilowatt hour
fossil-fuel power usually costs around €0.03 per kilowatt hour, 500% more. it costs even more when it's being burned in an inefficient mobile internal-combustion engine. it can't compete, except where it's the only option. it can't even compete in germany, much less in india, perú, tunisia, and indonesia
unlike wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels scale down very well; you can get a 200-watt-peak panel. this greatly limits the options incumbent utility companies have to protect themselves from competition from this radical threat; if they try to keep their prices high to pay off the debt they owe on their coal and oil plants, many of their customers will install local generation capacity, reducing their customer base to one even less able to pay off the large fixed costs—the much-feared 'utility death spiral', a phenomenon which so far has not materialized
this is also why african, asian, and american countries with no emissions targets won't just replace european consumption of fossil fuels
it is difficult to overstate the importance of this change for human economic development. the last time the price of energy dropped so much was sometime in the early 19th century, and energy is still profoundly important to the economy, despite the migration of heavy industry away from rich countries. how will this near-order-of-magnitude reduction in the cost of energy affect the relative prices of goods and the possibilities for human development? how will it alter geopolitics?
and given that the price has been falling like this for 15 years (solarserver listed a price of €2.17 per peak watt in may 02009, 24× higher than today, an average halving time of about 3.2 years—the cartel bubble merely paused progress along the trajectory to which the price has now returned) it's likely that it's not done falling yet
That's why in UK we have banned construction of Wind Turbines on land, we have banned construction of solar panels on land of 'potential agricultural value', which is basically anything except mountainous terrain.
We have blocked construction of a win farm in South England due to 'potential noise pollution and congestion'. And we give subsidies to the DRAX power plant that 'sustainably' burns the amazon rainforest that was turned into woodchips and shipping 9000 miles to get there.
I have entirely lost faith in the anglo-speaking west as a force for good and progress in this matter.
I think that ban has more to do with the current party of government being the Conservative Party, who like to imagine the natural state of the whole UK being just like the gardens of a Victorian era country house. For the sake of everyone not from the UK, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harlaxton_Manor_-_Univers...
> I have entirely lost faith in the anglo-speaking west as a force for good and progress in this matter.
You're not alone. Weirdly, even it seems that even Conservative MPs don't have much faith in the Conservative Party right now.
Yet they are.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...
Edit: Misread the post I was replying to but can’t delete it now. The graph is largely in agreeance with what OP is saying
Zero "zero-calories" should short up down their stmilycaly...? :think(metro emoji...)...
Good luck....
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Are we really naïve enough to think that African and Asian countries won't just replace our consumption of fossil fuels?
Pretty sure none of these countries have emissions targets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_air_pollu...
We should all strive to do what we can, regardless of what others do.
Setting an example and making investments eventually trickles down abroad with technologies being cheaper, with foreign companies being pushed by genuine or PR reasons to make investments on being greener in those countries etc.
We will go broke trying to slash emissions while the rest of the world uses cheap energy to fuel their economic growth. The days of the US being a positive example of, well, anything are rapidly diminishing.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...
North American and European CO2 emissions are decreasing, but world wide emissions are constant. The rest of the world doesn't care, we're only bankrupting ourselves in a futile struggle.
If you really want to reduce atmospheric CO2 the only solution is massive sequestration or military force to stop the third world from burning fossil fuels.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?time=1941..latest&f...
Here's a better link:
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?time=1941..latest&f...
Once everyone in America started driving cars, that didn't drive a resurgence in the use of horses for transportation in Africa.
This is so hypocritical it is breathtaking! Tiny UK alone has, historically, produced more CO2 that all of Africa has done so far!
Furthermore, USA & West perceives themselves to be leaders in technology and innovation. Cleantech was a perfect opportunity to sell world-leading products to the rest of the world, and make bank. Instead we dithered and delayed, missed the opportunity, and now African leaders are making fun of us, "Why do you come to our country only to complain about China? That's all we hear from you!'
Worse off nations should benefit from the glut of cheaper panels from companies fighting to stay afloat, that are far cheaper than continuing to buy oil.
If the centralized power grid is poor quality (think South Africa) or there is poor quality central government, yes.
That's wrong. I'm not sure why I'm replying as truth seems be to first casualty in culture wars, but the only two that matter in that list are China and India due to their population.
China: President Xi announced that China would reach its carbon emissions peak before 2030 and become “carbon neutral” before 2060. https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/the-carbon-brief-profile...
India: Reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by at least 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. Achieve the target of net zero by 2070. https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/assessing...
Most countries have announced feel good emissions targets. It's a great way to generate political feel good's, and talk is cheap.
500GW end of 2023. 1TW in 3 years is their current goal.
Especially in countries without any infrastructure.