The revolution is going to be paradigm shifting. The evolution of storage should eliminate the need for transmission. At the individual home level storage for 2-3 days consumption will soon become affordable and the energy itself is free. If there continues to be a need for transmission, it could become the reverse of what it is now as excess home generation could be injected into the system powering residential or businesses unable to self generate enough for their needs.
Thanks for expanding the mental analogy we can use in the clean energy transition. I have thought a lot about the transition from hunter/gatherer societies, but hadn’t made the link to our current energy transition. I learned so much from this. Again, thanks!
Electricity works more like a transmission medium than an energy source, hence its difficulty to create affordable storage solutions. Most of other energy sources store its energy densely in chemical bonds and to handle most of them, you just need a bucket. Gas can be bottled. This exemplifies the challenge to create energy storage for electricity: how much material, energy and labor, do one need to build a battery compared to make a bucket or a bottle? And worse yet: to store them inneficiently, volume-wise?
Another point, renewalbles (and I'm including hydroelectricity in this group) may need lots of transmission lines compared to gas and nuclear, that can be located nearer comsumption. And gas pipelines can haul energy more efficiently in MBTUs than GWs. Nuclear fuel can be hauled by plane!No need to build specialty transport infrastructure to feed it.
Only sunshine and wind are no-cost items. All other have costs before entering its production life. PVs,, blades and windmill towers have energy, land space and capital expenditures like any other energy source. They all depend on industrial facilities and energy inputs to produce all needed items, so no free lunch here.
Absolutely true, but here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZIfqLDG_Qs -- you'll hear the assertion that for clean tech, through 2050, 230 million tons annually must be mined. Quite a lot, but compare to 8 billion tons of coal, 5 billion tons of oil, 3 billion tons natural gas annually.
Coal, oil and natgas will be needed anyway to feed our modern industrial complex. And, this is the most important point: to processing the vast amount of minerals needed to clean tech. For example: China produces the majority of PVs using coal to feed their industrial base. So, it is not clean tech sources versus fossil fuels. Energy and resources must be extracted and processed one way or another. With high penetration of electirity storage and renewables, maybe it can be a solved problem very far in the future, but I think it is unlikely. PVs don't last more than 20 years and are not recyclable economy-wise, while a proper coal, gas ou nuclear station can be operating for more than 50 years, if properly mantained.
By the way, steel and aluminum requires smelting with huge amounts of heat, provided by coal, gas or huge amount of electrical currents, that must come from another energy source, to produce the proverbial bucket in my first reply. Compare that to silicon in PVs, with high purity and correct cristaline layout, the calorific expenditures goes throuth the roof in comparison.
Anyway, mining won't stop using diesel anytime soon.
One more point: mining uranium and thorium and investing more in nuclear power, seem more economical in land area, building material requirements and mineral inputs overall.
"PVs don't last more than 20 years and are not reciclable" Modern solar panels generally come with a warranty that states they will retain around 88% of capacity after 30 years. Panels are certainly recyclable--silicon is recyclable, silver is recyclable, the aluminum in frames is recyclable, the steel in racking is recyclable. EV batteries are being recycled now--and even being repurposed for stationary storage before recycling, since when the vehicle is done, the battery may still have 80% of its life. China may or may not have reached peak coal, but the more solar it builds, the less likely it is to need coal in the future.
"investing more in nuclear power" I'd agree that we should build more nuclear. Too bad that the state of things now is that it takes 12-15 or more years to bring a new one online.
The real failure of permitting isn’t bureaucracy. It’s the economic drag. When a nation can’t build energy or industrial infrastructure on reasonable timelines, it loses pricing power, investment and strategic autonomy.
Countries that fix permitting don’t just get cleaner or faster projects. They get cheaper power, stronger industry and a competitive edge that compounds for decades.
Permitting reform isn’t a culture issue. It’s an economic one.
I’m more dubitative on the end of the day ahead market than you. We’ll always need information for dispatch in the short run, batteries do not change that fondamental.
Really enjoyed this piece. Will be fascinating to see how local storage gets. Communities managing their own energy, homes storing and sharing power, real transformation in tech use and habits is on the horizon.
The revolution is going to be paradigm shifting. The evolution of storage should eliminate the need for transmission. At the individual home level storage for 2-3 days consumption will soon become affordable and the energy itself is free. If there continues to be a need for transmission, it could become the reverse of what it is now as excess home generation could be injected into the system powering residential or businesses unable to self generate enough for their needs.
The work you do is amazing.
Thanks for expanding the mental analogy we can use in the clean energy transition. I have thought a lot about the transition from hunter/gatherer societies, but hadn’t made the link to our current energy transition. I learned so much from this. Again, thanks!
Good analogy, but color me skeptical.
Electricity works more like a transmission medium than an energy source, hence its difficulty to create affordable storage solutions. Most of other energy sources store its energy densely in chemical bonds and to handle most of them, you just need a bucket. Gas can be bottled. This exemplifies the challenge to create energy storage for electricity: how much material, energy and labor, do one need to build a battery compared to make a bucket or a bottle? And worse yet: to store them inneficiently, volume-wise?
Another point, renewalbles (and I'm including hydroelectricity in this group) may need lots of transmission lines compared to gas and nuclear, that can be located nearer comsumption. And gas pipelines can haul energy more efficiently in MBTUs than GWs. Nuclear fuel can be hauled by plane!No need to build specialty transport infrastructure to feed it.
The main point isn't what the bucket costs, but what it costs to fill it (and refill it 10,000 times).
Only sunshine and wind are no-cost items. All other have costs before entering its production life. PVs,, blades and windmill towers have energy, land space and capital expenditures like any other energy source. They all depend on industrial facilities and energy inputs to produce all needed items, so no free lunch here.
Absolutely true, but here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZIfqLDG_Qs -- you'll hear the assertion that for clean tech, through 2050, 230 million tons annually must be mined. Quite a lot, but compare to 8 billion tons of coal, 5 billion tons of oil, 3 billion tons natural gas annually.
Coal, oil and natgas will be needed anyway to feed our modern industrial complex. And, this is the most important point: to processing the vast amount of minerals needed to clean tech. For example: China produces the majority of PVs using coal to feed their industrial base. So, it is not clean tech sources versus fossil fuels. Energy and resources must be extracted and processed one way or another. With high penetration of electirity storage and renewables, maybe it can be a solved problem very far in the future, but I think it is unlikely. PVs don't last more than 20 years and are not recyclable economy-wise, while a proper coal, gas ou nuclear station can be operating for more than 50 years, if properly mantained.
By the way, steel and aluminum requires smelting with huge amounts of heat, provided by coal, gas or huge amount of electrical currents, that must come from another energy source, to produce the proverbial bucket in my first reply. Compare that to silicon in PVs, with high purity and correct cristaline layout, the calorific expenditures goes throuth the roof in comparison.
Anyway, mining won't stop using diesel anytime soon.
One more point: mining uranium and thorium and investing more in nuclear power, seem more economical in land area, building material requirements and mineral inputs overall.
"PVs don't last more than 20 years and are not reciclable" Modern solar panels generally come with a warranty that states they will retain around 88% of capacity after 30 years. Panels are certainly recyclable--silicon is recyclable, silver is recyclable, the aluminum in frames is recyclable, the steel in racking is recyclable. EV batteries are being recycled now--and even being repurposed for stationary storage before recycling, since when the vehicle is done, the battery may still have 80% of its life. China may or may not have reached peak coal, but the more solar it builds, the less likely it is to need coal in the future.
"investing more in nuclear power" I'd agree that we should build more nuclear. Too bad that the state of things now is that it takes 12-15 or more years to bring a new one online.
The real failure of permitting isn’t bureaucracy. It’s the economic drag. When a nation can’t build energy or industrial infrastructure on reasonable timelines, it loses pricing power, investment and strategic autonomy.
Countries that fix permitting don’t just get cleaner or faster projects. They get cheaper power, stronger industry and a competitive edge that compounds for decades.
Permitting reform isn’t a culture issue. It’s an economic one.
I’m more dubitative on the end of the day ahead market than you. We’ll always need information for dispatch in the short run, batteries do not change that fondamental.
The work you do is critical.
Really enjoyed this piece. Will be fascinating to see how local storage gets. Communities managing their own energy, homes storing and sharing power, real transformation in tech use and habits is on the horizon.
Excellent, thank you
How will transportation be impacted? Electrification of modes?