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Comment by hntrader | Hacker News Reader

Maybe you should write an article about that, and put it up on HN, given that it's such a common point of contention/misunderstanding.

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There are people more knowledgeable then me who have made these points better than I could, I'd recommend Vaclav Smil as a great source on this. The problem is that his material makes for grim reading, and I think many people researching this subject are drawn to techno optimism even when the numbers don't add up because the subject as a whole is so grim.

Do you have specific recommendations among his writings?

http://vaclavsmil.com/2017/05/08/energy-and-civilization-a-h...

I also recommend looking through his list of books on the sidebar.

The whole "baseline" thing is partly a myth, and there is an article about that

https://energypost.eu/dispelling-nuclear-baseload-myth-nothi...

This is a good one http://www.withouthotair.com. It looks at whole energy plans. Not just wether technology X is cool.

Isn't that the site that argues the UK cannot get by with renewables, but assumes large amounts of biomass are needed to be grown locally?

It's from 2007 and will not get an update since the author has died. I do like it for taking a quantitative approach even though the assumptions used are increasingly outdated.

Here's the summary page where the author asked if the UK could supply its energy needs from renewables alone:

http://www.withouthotair.com/c18/page_103.shtml

The answer was "not quite."

However, he assumed that utility scale solar farms would be using 10% efficient panels. 20% are now widely available. So let's make these two quick edits:

- Assume that solar farms provide double the energy from doubled panel efficiency.

- Drop biomass, because it's unneeded with better solar farms.

With these changes the renewable energy supply of 206 kWh/person/day exceeds modeled demand of 195 kWh/person/day. Making some other simple updates like assuming that car transportation is mostly electrified would further increase the margin of safety.

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