Renewables surprisingly "on track" to meet net zero by 2050

newatlas.com Renewables surprisingly "on track" to meet net zero by 2050

Renewable energy is taking off at exponential rates, putting global clean power "in line with ambitious net-zero scenarios." A new report suggests fossil fuel demand in the energy sector has already peaked, and "will be in freefall" by 2030.

Renewables surprisingly "on track" to meet net zero by 2050::undefined

33 comments

The last 10% takes 90% of the effort.
Garbage reports like that do a lot of damage. Fraction of fossil in the primary energy use is nearly constant, and net zero is merely a greenwashing scam.
- I work with a climate lobbying group and upwards of 95% of all new energy construction in the US is renewables. Right now the focus of the group is lobbying for energy infrastructure and lessening permitting requirements (both of which have at least some bipartisan support). If we get both of these, renewable goals are definitely reachable.
  
  Carbon tax is still a non-starter with Republicans in general tho, and that's what would really tip the scales.
  
  When and how do we get offshore wind that's worth a crap in the US? It seems so obvious to me that we have huge population centers right next to huge "wind reserves".
  
  The goals of renewable should be quantitative substitution of fossil primary energy within less than 50 years.
Nonsense.
- The core issue is grid-scale storage. Adding 10 or 30% renewables is easy and is where we currently are, getting to 100% means we need to solve that technology issue which we don't currently have a solution to.
  
  Nuclear + renewable is the current way to de-carbonize the grid. Build both heavily until we solve the technological issue with grid-scale storage in the coming decades.
  
  On the timescale of 27 years, grid-scale storage is going to be a complete non-issue. There's already a decent amount of work being done at that level right now and battery tech has been improving at a consistent pace. Renewables can work quite well as-is with a good mix of location and source. Offshore wind is more consistent wind speeds, solar locations can mitigate light cloud coverage, solar output peaks during the times of greatest human use, and land based wind is typically dispersed over large areas.
  
  I'm a huge proponent of nuclear power, but as things stand it isn't going to be necessary on these time tables. The value in nuclear is that it's another thing we can build now without needing to wait ten years for battery prices to continue to decline or for manufacturing capabilities to ramp up. Building 10 GW of nameplate capacity wind+solar is great. Building 10 GW of nameplate wind+solar and 5 GW of nameplate nuclear is better! That's the advantage of nuclear today, and we should fucking make use of it. That doesn't make it mandatory in the long-term.
  
  Couldn’t we pump water into dams during times of surplus and then drain the dams for hydroelectric when needed? Is that not feasible at scale?
  
  Agreed 100%.
  
  Adding even 10% of renewables (minus biofuels since fake renewable) to primary energy use of major industrialized countries is by no means easy. Which is why world fossil fraction of primary energy use is nearly a constant.
Well even if we take those nonsense extrapolations seriously and had the material capacities to build that infrastructure globally (remember it isn't a local problem), what is also lacking in many countries are skilled workers who actually put that stuff together. I can't seem to find enough political action to fulfill that part. And it's not only the production side, but the transport of the energy (grids and storage) and then also the consumer side. Those heat-pumps aren't gonna install themselves, you know.

You've viewed 33 comments.