Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

I do not feel as optimistic about any uptick in cables as I do about solar and wind. Solar and wind can grow through a multitude of small, plug-and-play projects. Cable projects like HDVC are still giant, long-term punts.

A lot of the wind projects could be classified as "giant, long-term punts".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsea_Wind_Farm

This is literally the problem. Transmission is desperately needed, much more than generation right now. The issue is that it's hard to explain to people why this is, and even when they understand they react like you do.

RENEWABLES NEED TRANSMISSION!!! We need to be building unprecedented Manhattan project levels of transmission, yesterday! But instead we will put some solar panels on a car park and feel like we did our part. Solar is the easy part. Storage and/or transmission is the hard part.

Is this whole "new set of cables" factored into the CO2 emissions equation? We're undoubtedly going to use massive amounts of energy to mine the metal, melt it into wire, transport it to the site, build the towers, etc. Is that energy "green" ?

> Is that energy "green" ?

Not very, but neither is continuing to use fossil fuels on a huge scale.

And I'd still much rather pay a utility every month for electricity (and have them be responsible for maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure) than install and maintain my own solar plant on my roof, for the same reasons that I'd rather pay utilities to provide me with water and sewer service than have my own well and septic system.

With sufficiently cheap storage, no transmission is needed. There's a tradeoff, and batteries are rapidly improving.

What exactly does that mean?

The project you linked to was completed pretty quickly and is supplying 2.5GW to the UK grid

The only real downside to batteries is the cost. The upsides are vast. Beyond adding feasibility to solar and wind, batteries stabilize the grid. The ability to instantly absorb and output power in response to demand or a lack of demand is incredibly valuable.

I was somewhat gobsmacked when I learned there are electric stoves with integrated batteries (the batteries serving to reduce the maximum current draw for homes wired for limited current.)

And, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Stoves spend 90% of their time drawing 0 power.

A fridge would also do well to have a backup battery.

So why do it at all if there is no accounting to prove it's green? It's almost as if this movement is a scam. No CO2 equivalent publications on solar, or on recycling. It's just "do what we say or the climate will die". I reject that imperative.

Before you've built any green power plants, none of the energy you use to build green power plants can itself be green.

When all the power plants are green, all of the energy you use to build green power plants is necessarily green.

How green a new power plant is, during the process of construction, is a statement of how much progress you've already made before this step, not how much you make in the act of making this step.

its not a green plant if they conveniently escape all accounting. its a scam.

While true, with sufficiently cheap transmission, no storage is needed.

But only the Chinese have either the capability to, or interest in, building a one-square-meter-cross-section aluminium belt around the planet, and that means a geopolitical faff.

They're also not escaping any such accounting, but that wasn't my point.

PV pays its own energy cost in a few months these days. But even then, the very first PV had to be made with mostly fossil fuels and some hydroelectric, now the new ones in China are made with 35% renewables.

Grids have the same question: how green it is to modify today is the current status of the power supply (etc.), not the status it will be when it's been modified.

> While true, with sufficiently cheap transmission, no storage is needed.

Where "sufficiently cheap" here means "affordable over intercontinental distances".

I believe storage costs are falling faster than transmission costs.

> if there is no accounting to prove it's green? It's almost as if this movement is a scam. No CO2 equivalent publications on solar, or on recycling

You state this as if that's a fact - just because you haven't looked for them doesn't mean they don't exist. Here's two examples showing that wind [1] and solar [2] have good environmental payback times in my home country due to avoided emissions, a country which already has an ~80% renewable grid. Additionally, [3] is a good resource that puts the potential waste from solar farms into context with other sources (such as coal ash) and shows this is an unfounded fear. Do some research and challenge your biases before you spread misinformation.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03036758.2024.2...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X2...

[3] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02230-0

[3 - sharing link] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02230-0.epdf?shar...

I remember seeing such a paper linked by a nuclear bro.

Going on and on about how important the LCA was and how nuclear should be the choice.

After pages and pages of ”sciency” equations it ends with the Chinese average grid mix in terms of gCO2/kWh.

The "intercontinental distances" part is simpler, and potentially* cheaper at current aluminium prices, than the domestic grid upgrades and repairs much of the west needs anyway.

* The scale is such that it's more of an opportunity cost than a dollar cost, what else can be done with 5% of Chinese aluminium per year for the next 20-or-so years.

But also, much research needed before a true price tag can be attached, rather than just a bill of materials

>With sufficiently cheap storage, no transmission is needed.

This logic eats its own tail. Yes, if battery storage was cheap a lot of things would be monumentally better. It isn't. We need today solutions, not hypothetical ones.

Progress marches on: Chemical Process Produces Critical Battery Metals With No Waste https://spectrum.ieee.org/nmc-battery-aspiring-materials

Energy storage technology is on a roll, and grid storage isn't limited by weight energy density in the same manner as vehicle batteries are.

There have been articles like this for decades. Yes, batteries will get incrementally cheaper and incrementally better. They will get better slower than climate change gets worse.

The batteries are already cheap enough, per kWh deferred over their lifetimes, to make a huge difference. Like, "97% of the problem can be solved without requiring a single new invention" kind of difference.

The current limiting factor is the number of factories making batteries, not the cost per deferred kWh of the batteries they do make.

> Before you've built any green power plants, none of the energy you use to build green power plants can itself be green.

Another dimension is time. They can be considered "green" once they have produced more energy than was used for construction from non-green sources.