Obviously that's not true, but it is a data point you have to explain. For all the lip-service paid to wind and solar, nobody is actually acting like wind/solar are the future.
Look, all that the lack of domination of solar/wind shows at this time is that solar and wind are not yet cheap enough to displace already installed, capital-cost-sunk fossil-fuel-using plants which are not being charged CO2 fees. Be able to achieve that would be remarkable.
However, in most of the world, most new generating capacity is renewable, even without CO2 charges. Renewables have crashed in cost so quickly that there's still a large installed base of fossil fuel capacity that just hasn't reached end of life yet. The persistence of this zombie technology doesn't mean renewables can't power the world, it just means zombies are hard to kill.
>Look, all that the lack of domination of solar/wind shows at this time is that solar and wind are not yet cheap enough to displace already installed, capital-cost-sunk fossil-fuel-using plants which are not being charged CO2 fees.
Even if solar/wind were free, they still can't displace fossil-fuels(i.e. they need coal or natural gas to serve as base load). That's the problem.
Of course it could, in any number of ways. No, you don't need coal or natural gas to serve as baseload. One could, for example, make hydrogen, store that underground, then burn that when renewables are not directly available. If renewables are very cheap, one could simply heat some large thermal mass (rocks, sand) by resistive heating, then use that later to drive a thermal cycle.
Babcock and Wilcox is commercializing a system like that second right now, using sand heated to 1200 C to store energy for 100 hours or more, with a round trip efficiency > 50% and a storage cost of maybe $0.05/kWh.
This is what I was talking about when I dissed you for saying anything that wasn't existing yet couldn't exist. You need to censor your prejudices about renewable energy, your irrational dislike for it is leading you astray.
These are engineering projects, not science projects. They are becoming practical not because of huge advances in science fictional novelties, but because the economic context (where fossil fuels are going to be gone, one way or the other) is making approaches using largely off-the-shelf things competitive. Thermal storage, for example, is almost steampunk.
The big question with renewables is not whether it can do the job -- it clearly can -- it's which of the many subsidiary technologies will win.
>These are engineering projects, not science projects. They are becoming practical not because of huge advances in science fictional novelties,
You equivocate between things that are ready and proven NOW versus things that may be ready in the future. This is a common method of argument with proponents of wind and solar.
How about this: There are around a thousand cities in the world with a population of 750,000 or more. When you show me one of those cities powered by wind/solar/choose-favorite-storage (not even to 100%, but maybe to 90%), then maybe we can say that wind/solar can do the job.
Right now that number is 0 (and there are no near to mid-term plans to change that) so I think you have to have a little bit of humility with respect to wind/solar viability.
What's happening is that the environment in which these technologies have to work is changing. When fossil fuels were cheap and CO2 untaxed, it's really hard for renewables and storage to win.
But that's not going to be the world going forward. Fossil fuels have to be phased out, which means raising CO2 taxes as high as needed to make that happen. In that environment, it's suddenly highly profitable to push these technologies, and they will go from nothing to dominant in very little time.
The supposed advantage of nuclear, that it has already been demonstrated, means very little. Nuclear had its change to get better, and it got worse. It's already demonstrated it's a loser.
The market is already making the judgment on how this will turn out, whether you like it or not. Money is flowing into renewables and storage; very little is going into nuclear. Nuclear is old, tired, and slowly dying.
