this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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We can’t manufacture and install enough solar farms and storage to get us off of fossil fuel within 20 years and more importantly available investment capital isn’t the limiting factor.
Investments in nuclear power are not taking money away from investments in solar.
We can do both, and it gets us off fossil fuels sooner.
Total solar manufacturing capability has been increasing exponentially. So has wind, and so have various storage methods.
Yes, we can install enough.
Solar has been growing exponentially for the past decade or so, wind has not. Wind has run into supply chain limitations on rare earth metals such as neodymium and isn’t growing exponentially anymore.
It’s doubtful that solar will continue growing exponentially for the next 20 years but even if it does, that only gets us to the point of enough capacity to displace the ~17.9 PWh of electricity generated by fossil fuels in 2023.
To get off of fossil fuels we need to change everything else that’s burning fossil fuels too. That means every vehicle replaced with an EV, every gas furnace replaced with a heat pump. As we do that it’s going to 2-3x electricity demand.
The world burned 140 PWh worth of fossil fuels in 2023, and we only generated 1.6 PWh from solar power. That 1.6 is up from 1.3 PWh in 2022. A lot of that 140 PWh was wasted heat energy so we don’t need to get that high, but we still need to generate something in the area of 60-90 PWh of electricity annually to eliminate fossil fuels.
~4/5th of our energy still comes from fossil fuel, we have a long f’ing way to go. Even with the current exponential growth of solar we don’t get off of fossil fuels within 20 years, and that’s assuming global energy demand doesn’t increase.
Don’t take my word for it. Extrapolate the data yourself. Your rose coloured glasses aren’t helping.
That's why we also need to reduce our use of pretty much everything. We can never reach zero fossil fuel used, unless we start by reducing the amount of stuff we buy/use, starting with things that currently use fossil fuels: cars, shipping, flights, plastics and so on.
Then we could use renewable energies only or nuclear only or a mix of both to power what is truly necessary for our lives.