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

(www.newyorker.com)
353 points dmazin | 4 comments | 09 Jul 25 12:31 UTC | HN request time: 1.15s | source
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rel_ic ◴[10 Jul 25 13:39 UTC] No.44520938[source]▶
Renewable energy is great, but we're not replacing fossil fuels with it, we're just adding more energy usage. And our energy usage is destroying the environment.

Don't let these advancements in solar make you think things are getting better. We need to reduce fossil fuel usage, not just increase solar usage.

https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/b3b696c0-226d-0137-f265-1d2...

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amarait ◴[10 Jul 25 13:44 UTC] No.44521010[source]▶
What replaces fossil fuels is some kind of breakthrough in batteries. At the moment its getting better every year were currently at less than $100 per KWh which is crazy but needs to be improved for allowing more off the grid energy consumption
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pydry ◴[10 Jul 25 14:03 UTC] No.44521234[source]▶
We can either pray and wait for a technological breakthrough that makes storage tech way cheaper than gas or we can just use taxes and subsidies to make it happen now.

It's not so hard. Lavish subsidies were used to make nuclear power semi-sort-of-competitive even though it's way more expensive.

The same thing could have been done with solar and wind but apparently we thought the best course of action was just to wait until they became cheaper than coal without subsidies (& then Obama and Trump slammed solar with tariffs).

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1. conductr ◴[10 Jul 25 14:11 UTC] No.44521312[source]▶
“We” are only in control of “us”. The rest of the world will keep burning fossil fuel
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2. triceratops ◴[10 Jul 25 20:07 UTC] No.44524942[source]▶
> The rest of the world will keep burning fossil fuel

As the article spends so many paragraphs to explain to us, the rest of the world is increasingly not burning fossil fuel for their new energy needs. Most of the fuel it burns is for the energy it already uses. And solar is starting to take a bite out of that too.

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3. conductr ◴[10 Jul 25 21:59 UTC] No.44526108[source]▶
That's great but if we had accelerated our transition, it wouldn't have lead to them accelerating their transition. The things are not linked or correlated.
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4. triceratops ◴[11 Jul 25 00:17 UTC] No.44527145{3}[source]▶
Solar has gotten cheaper and cheaper largely because as we build more panels and batteries, we find efficiencies. If we had accelerated our transition then the increased demand would have driven even more efficiencies and it would be even cheaper it is now.

If it were cheaper, developing countries would buy even more of it, accelerating their own transition.