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

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353 points dmazin | 2 comments | 09 Jul 25 12:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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1. agumonkey ◴[10 Jul 25 15:08 UTC] No.44521920[source]▶
there's also a lot of wastes, with different urban planning and build code a lot of cooling and heating would be avoided
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2. cogman10 ◴[10 Jul 25 15:23 UTC] No.44522051[source]▶
I think this is the most frustrating part. You wouldn't even need to massively change out neighborhoods to get a huge benefit. If a developer built with district and heating planned, you could have an entire neighborhood heated and cooled without needed AC and heaters in every building. You could still have single family homes that are massively more efficient per unit.

The problem is that has to be planned almost from the beginning. Which shouldn't be a huge deal. My neighborhood had a water tower built at the same time the neighborhood was built. There's no reason district heating couldn't have occupied the lot right next to it.