Relying on Renewables Alone Significantly Inflates the Cost of Overhauling Energy (technologyreview.com)

A growing number of US cities and states have proposed or even passed legislation that would require producing all electricity from renewable energy sources like solar and wind within a few decades. That might sound like a great idea. But a growing body of evidence shows it's not. From a report: It increasingly appears that insisting on 100 percent renewable sources -- and disdaining others that don't produce greenhouse gases, such as nuclear power and fossil-fuel plants with carbon-capture technology -- is wastefully expensive and needlessly difficult. In the latest piece of evidence, a study published in Energy & Environmental Science determined that solar and wind energy alone could reliably meet about 80 percent of recent US annual electricity demand, but massive investments in energy storage and transmission would be needed to avoid major blackouts. Pushing to meet 100 percent of demand with these resources would require building a huge number of additional wind and solar farms -- or expanding electricity storage to an extent that would be prohibitively expensive at current prices. Or some of both.

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Re:NEWSFLASH: WATER IS WET

[AmiMoJo]

TFA first states that

Pushing to meet 100 percent of demand with these resources would require building a huge number of additional wind and solar farmsâ"or expanding electricity storage to an extent that would be prohibitively expensive at current prices. Or some of both.

Translation: it gets expensive if you do it the stupidest possible way.

It then doubles down on the stupid by investigating the stupid way in more depth:

Just getting to 80 percent of demand reliably with only wind and solar would require either a US-wide high-speed transmission system or 12 hours of electricity storage. A storage system of that size across the US would cost more than $2.5 trillion for a battery system.

Yeah, a giant battery would be expensive, but fortunately you already gave us the solution and Europe has demonstrated that it works just fine. But nah, let's ignore that because look, $2,500,000,000,000 battery!

The summary is even worse, leaving out the obvious, tried and tested solution completely and instead trying to give the impression that it's just really really expensive and there is no alternative except non-renewable sources.