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353 points dmazin | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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rel_ic ◴[] 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 ◴[] 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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bena ◴[] No.44521257[source]
I think the overall point is that we will never get there.

Renewables will never be cheap enough to fully replace fossil fuels, batteries will never be good enough.

No matter what, as long as the cost of extracting and burning fossil fuels is less than the result of what gets produced by the consumption, someone will be doing it.

It’s why crypto will never solve the energy issue. Why AI/GPT/LLM won’t either. Especially when the cost of that output is pegged to the cost of generating the above.

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hnaccount_rng ◴[] No.44521367{3}[source]
But that isn’t the case _today_. Unless you have existing facilities (which we do have and which gives fossils momentum) it’s strictly cheaper to build new renewables! The problem for renewables is that the p99.9 price is much higher than the p95 price. But finance will be solving that part.
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