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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

Does it also concern nuclear energy? Because if it doesn't, I doubt it will really matter in the long term.

Renewables are great to remove coal/gaz electricity, but at some point, energy must be stored, and apparently there is not enough lithium on earth to store renewable electricity.

So I would say it really allows US to offset coal/gaz, but nuclear is still the best solution to entirely remove coal.

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> apparently there is not enough lithium on earth to store renewable electricity

Any source for that? Also what quantity of power are we talking?

I am all for nuclear though.

I'm not the OP, but Simon Michaux (working with the Geological Survey of Finland) is one person I follow who is doing good research in this field. I would recommend his paper "Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels" as an introduction to some of the estimates of rare earth materials available/required for a zero-carbon transition.

Lithium is not the only technology for storing energy at large scale. We have multiple options. I believe one strong point of lithium is the ability to respond almost instantaneously to changing demands which other technologies are still not that good at.

Except those options are inefficient or too expensive, and so far germany is not implementing them.

Renewables are quite pointless without a energy storage solution.

Electricity is difficult to store, especially when you need to store between seasons.

> but at some point, energy must be stored

Green hydrogen is one option for storing excess renewable energy.

Electrolysis is very very inefficient.

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