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Renewables Are Set To Overtake Gas and Coal By 2027 (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: Renewable energy, including solar, wind and hydroelectric will overtake natural gas as an energy source by 2027. According to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ten years later those same renewables will have surpassed the largest electricity-generating fossil fuel: coal. Solar and wind will account for almost 60% of the $11.4 trillion invested in energy over the next 25 years, according to Bloomberg's New Energy Outlook 2016 report. One conclusion that may surprise, Bloomberg noted, is that the forecast shows no golden age for natural gas, except in North America. As a global generation source, gas will be overtaken by renewables in 2027. The electric vehicle boom will increase electricity demand by 2,701TWh (terawatt hours), or 8% of global electricity demand in 2040. The rise of EVs will drive down the cost of lithium-ion batteries, making them increasingly attractive to be deployed alongside residential and commercial solar systems.
especially about the future....Berra
Title and summary don't agree. There is a difference between "surpass coal and gas by 2027" and "surpass gas by 2027 and surpass coal by 2037".
Even ignoring the date differences, there's a difference between "surpass gas", "surpass coal", and "surpass gas and coal".
And let's not get into the whole base load thing. Gas and solar isn't baseload, but coal is....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I see no reason why polluting industries like (oil/gas companies) should be subsidized at all. Frankly, we should be taxing them based on how much pollution they emit and how damaging it is. We are eventually going to have to remove CO2 from the air and it's going to be a pricey project. We might as well start saving money for it now.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Large scale maybe, but if every home could provide 75% of their load through local solar panels during a hot summer day then the overall grid will be better. As the usage wouldn't spike as much.
I've wondered for a long time why we don't have every commercial building rooftop covered in solar panels. Particularly any building that utilizes air conditioning. It's just wasted space right now. Rather than put the panels in fields somewhere, use the space we already have for something productive.
I realize there are some economic and technical hurdles but in principle it's insane not to use solar panels on rooftops wherever possible. Install some battery systems and smarts to the grid to distribute the power adequately.
So long as "smart grid" isn't like "smart bomb", ie. yeah it's better, but innocents still die, as it were. The so-called "renewables" can help in some places, but not enough to really make a difference? ie. replace fossil fuels. And it is up to the enthusiasts for renewables to show that they could. I want my green paradise Earth as much as anyone. And humanity is like a cancer that will keep eating everything. So unless renewables actually do work, people will simply keep using coal or whatever they can afford, and nobody can stop that. It isn't a question of whether people are willing to get with the program, it is that when people are stressed, they'll resort to whatever means they can, and if that means completely abandoning green initiatives, then they'll do that. So the first question is just, do renewables actually work to replace base load? It'll only make it harder later if they don't. It is up to champions of renewable energy to SHOW that they can.
No, it's just that pretending climate change doesn't exist has been succesfully made part of conservative identity, just like being anti-abortion and anti-gay is part of evangelical identity. Some believers rationalize the dogma through conspiracy theories, some by re-interpreting the data, but the real reason is that enough lobbyists told them that people like them believe climate change doesn't exist.
It's actually a pretty fascinating view into the human psyche.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Ah, but what of the pollution costs of rare earth mining and refining ?
Probably substantial and it should be factored into the cost of any products that use them. My guess is that the pollutants that result from such refining are substantially easier to mitigate than the CO2 and other crap that spews from every fossil fuel power plant, mine and transport. If for no other reason than scale. I'm no expert so I could be wrong but I doubt it. The amounts of rare earth minerals needed for a typical solar panel is minute. Compare this to the (literally) tons of coal burned for every human on earth it seems improbably that the pollution footprint for the rare earth mining and use would be greater than the footprint for coal mining and use.
I don't think anyone who understands the technology is arguing that there is no pollution from wind or solar. There clearly is. But it also seems clear from the available data that it is an improvement. We're looking for least-worst here. There is no useful form of power without some drawbacks. Even photosynthesis has some negative implications in certain circumstances. Where the problem lies is that some forms of energy (particularly fossil fuels) aren't realizing even close to the full cost of the pollution they generate. It's a tough problem. The solutions are mostly straightforward (taxes mostly) but politically that is very difficult to realize.
Coal isn't being destroyed by the stroke of a Pen. Fracking is destroying coal. The new coal regulations aren't even into effect yet and coal has already been devastated by competition with gas. Coal has gotten a free pass for nearly 300 years to dump uranium, mercury and dozens of other heavy metals all over our cities and crops. It's high time that changed, regardless of the impact to the industry. There is so much mercury in fish these days that you probably shouldn't even eat it.
What you see with Trump is selling the narrative that the coal companies would like to see sold. That is the idea that government regulations are destroying their industry, not competition with cheap gas.
Your right, installing solar panels north of a certain latitude is just nuts, you know like Germany, that's at the latitude as Quebec and cloudy all the time, it would be just stupid to install solar panels there.