The US plan to become the world’s cleantech superpower

(fact checks appreciated. This is back of the napkin math that I've only spent an hour researching and putting together, and some of the terminology I may have wrong, like production VS capacity etc, leading to wrong conclusions.)

Neat. A pretty balanced and factual article. A few extra facts: hydro and biomass are stagnant, wind has doubled overall production from 2014-2021, and solar about 6x. [2] wind from 180 to 380TWH's, solar from 28TWH to 163TWH.

The issue then becomes realistic expectations. The world uses the equivalent of 180,000TWH [1] of electric energy per year, which is 20.5TW per hour. Overall, if vehicles and gas powered equipment were electrified, my understanding is the world would need about 3x as much electricity, or about 65TW's per hour constant production. I can't find the source for this number ATM.

I'm going to go ahead and use the number 500,000TWH of electricity to electrify the world.

Solar seems to be the key, and in the US in Oct 2021 there were 130 GWH of capacity[2]. There were 115TWH of electricity produced[3]. For which I have calculated an average efficiency of 11.5% (130gwh x 365 x 24 = potential for 1007TWH of production. 115/1007 = 11.5%)

If the world could average 11.5% efficiency putting panels close to usage and had adequate storage capacity, the world would require 565 terawatts per hour of capacity for decarbonization.

Bringing it all back together, this article shows a rough investment correlation of about $1 Billion per GW of renewable capacity. (110gw capacity added in 2031 for 115 billion usd. The earlier the timeframe, the more expensive per GW)

I understand this is back of the napkin, but the idea that the world requires 565,000gw of capacity at a Billion dollars per unit is terrifying.

That's 565 Trillion to decarbonize, and that doesn't include increasing total world energy usage year over year.

US electrical usage seems to be stagnant for about 15 years now, probably because of the increases in costs associated with the decarbonization of the grid.

The future is not bright. The future is broke and short energy.

[1]https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_Unit...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183447/us-energy-generat...