I wonder how good it could be if the governments offered the exact same amount of subsidies to renewable energy they offer to coal and petroleum, including indirect subsidies like distribution infrastructure etc.
So if you look at new resources being added to the grid, it's all solar, wind, storage, and a tiny bit of new fossil gas generation.
The biggest impediment to more renewables is no longer cost, it's politics and regulations. We have a president that has torpedoes one of the best new sources of wind, offshore wind, just as it's becoming super economical, and all the rest of the world is going to get the benefit of that cheap energy while the US falls behind. Floating offshore wind in the Pacific, based on the same type of tech as floating oil platforms, could provide a hugely beneficial amount of electricity at night and in winter, to balance out solar with less storage and less overbuilding.
Meanwhile on land, transmission line are a huge bottleneck towards more solar and wind, and the interconnection queue for the grid is backed out to hell in most places.
The technology and economics are there, but the humans and their bureaucracy is not ready to fully jump on board.
its bottlenecked by price. The reason why the UK's electricity is so fucking expensive is because its pegged to international gas prices
I'd totally agree for UK and continental Europe. The difference between oil and gas is massive on the distribution angle, oil moves easily as long as there's not a naval blockade, but fossil gas requires super super expensive infrastructure either via pipeline or LNG. And with nearly all fossil fuel companies in the last stages of their life, trying to maximize profits on existing capital, it's hard to get investor support to buy infrastructure that costs multiple billions and has limited lifetime. I don't know the details in Europe, but it seems like this phasing out of infrastructure as the transition happens is a major hassle... I'd love any links on that sort of info about Europe.
When you say that distribution costs for the UK are much less than in the US, do you mean the cost of distributing natural gas? I'm not following your logic there.
"I wonder how good it could be"
It's already here, solar is already dramatically cheaper and has none of the risk profile a global energy market produces. You install solar and you have that energy for decades.
Solar is here and its cheaper, batteries are good enough for utility scale. Now its simply an adoption curve.
Moralizing or bringing up silly arguments about how cost ought to be accounted should be considered harmful to the progress away from fossil fuels. Unless it's your intent to start pointless arguments.
But I do think I get your point - the subsidies are there so we should compare the costs as they are.
It’s quite intriguing that we haven’t been able to come up with solid energy policies in the recent decades and it’s all about rent seeking behavior of existing providers that’s holding us back. I don’t understand why we can enable things like Uber/Lyft to disrupt the taxi madalyon system, but become very protective about certain industries, even when it’s in our best interest to explore those areas in detail (regardless of the result).