solarpunk memes

As to solar, payback is usually 7-15 years depending on overhead costs, while most panels are still at 80% output in 20 to 25 years. Batteries don’t last as long as panels when being used to near capacity, but they’ll still do about half the lifespan of the panels. Batteries prices are also falling about as quickly as panel prices, with us now being in the neighborhood of 100 dollars per kwh of storage.

I also think it’s a bit of a misnomer, especially on this instance, to consider these things completely dead and worthless at 80% effectiveness, especially when that is still far more effective than a brand new top of the line one a decade ago. I think that there are a lot of people in the world who wouldn’t mind the system taking up 25% more space if they could get them much cheaper, it’s just that much like EV battery range, a lot of people are finding that they don’t really need to replace the thing away at 80% capacity in the first place.

For your first point, sure let’s consider that the case, then the old panels can be recycled and you get more efficient ones, not a bad trade.

Also, share with your neighbour the extra energy? Or contact your municipal office to pass a tax cut/payback? There’s so much opportunity there! (Just imagine if your city passes such an initiative and others adopt too! Less reliance on fossil fuels!)

On your second point, yeah, we need more innovation in recycling technology. Hopefully we get there too 😊

I hate stocks, but I hope yours go to the moon!

Didn't Britian just close down it's last coal plant? Also Colorado is switching away as well. I thought natural gas was replacing coal?

Since 2021, nearly 4 full years, the world has closed less than 1% of active coal power plants.

Closing will come later, when alternatives are widely available. What renewable energy does currently - at least here - is forcing those plants temporarily out of the market, especially during summer months and windy weather. The plants will exist and stay ready in case of need for well over a decade, maybe even two - but they will start up ever more rarely.

Technically, the deal is: we don't have seasonal energy storage. Short term storage is being built - enough to stabilize the grid for a cold windless hour, then a day, then a week... that's about as far as one can go with batteries and pumped hydro.

To really get the goods one has to add seasonal storage or on-demand nuclear generation. The bad news is that technologies for seasonal storage aren't fully mature yet, while nuclear is expensive and slow to build. There's electrolysis and methanation, there's iron reduction, there are flow batteries of various sorts, there's seasonal thermal storage already (a quarter step in the right direction)...

...but getting the mixture right takes time. Instead of looking at the number of closed plants, one should look at the sum of emissions. To remain hopeful, the sum should stop growing very soon.

We might already have reached peak carbon emissions. There's also the thing where renewables are so much cheaper that it's in most countries best self interest to build renewables.

The thing the world is doing now is more energy but the cheapest one is electricity so more electricity. The duck curve is an energy storage opportunity that's being taken advantage of more and more. Things are heading in the right direction but it's not fast enough.

The next emissions on the chopping block are household heating and cement and low-med industrial heat with more advanced heat pumps or heat pumps set up in series.

I've decided to become cautiously optimistic recently the more I learn about how science is advancing the renewables despite governments sometimes being in the way.

From your link it, for me, it seems like emissions are platooning, similar to a technological S curve. Even if China and India are growing exponentially, reduction in other countries are enough to slow down the process significantly (specially if you zoom in in the last 10 years).

It’s very hard to predict change, but I suspect the deprecation of solutions that emit lots of emissions is about to skyrocket.

Been growing plants for 30-years, using zero sunlight to full sunlight. The difference in energy use, manpower, all that, is stunning.

Food is food because it contains loads of energy. We eat corn not oak leaves. That energy has to be put into the plant, at a loss, to get energy out. TANSTAAFL, literally.

Precisely that, hydroponics to be more precise. It’s not everything, but a great start

You still need fertilizer and electricity that is less efficient than sunlight to grow indoors.

But somebody once gave terrible math about being able to feed a city from a vertical skyscraper farm and it's been latched onto very hard as a futurism solution.

Not just that, it’s a combination of factors. Sustainable thinking, independence, a connection to the world and self and much more.

climate defeatism has become a religion

Going outside to 90⁰ weather in October is a religion?

Things just shifted instantly from "nothing needs to be done" to "nothing can be done."