As the grid scale storage ramps up, renewables will be doing even more;
The results are in: last year, for the first time, renewables generated more electricity than fossil fuels across the EU, spurred on by new solar and wind power projects.
www.forbes.com
That's only debatable true. Depends on what you count as "renewables".
Because originally, renewable energy was supposed to be energy that came from non-environmentally impacting sources of power. Like Wind and Solar (although both still have an environment impact, the left-wingers just ignore it).
Because hydro power, damages the habitats of fish, and kills spawning migration, and a host of other problems.
Now that's works for me. I'm ok with it. But environmental groups across the world oppose hydro electric dams.
Then you have biomass electricity. Which I kind of find Ironic. What is the vast majority of biomass electricity? Do you know? It's burning plants. What is coal? Burning plants that died a long time ago. Either way, both are burning plants, but you pretend one smoke stack is clean, and the other is dirty, and I'm not sure why since CO2 is released in both. (and please spare me your rationals, because I'm fine with burning wood for power. By all means continue).
Regardless, the issue for conservatives like myself, has always been with wind and solar, because they are simply not viable sources of replacement power. And the evidence shows this.
View attachment 448656
Saying "renewables have over taken fossil fuels", is a bit misleading. Hydro, wood burning, and nuclear have displaced fossil fuels. Not solar or wind. Solar and wind, still to this day, is barely a fraction of energy production.... because they suck.
Now it's true that wind and solar might have over taken coal power, but that is largely because coal has been declining in favor of natural gas, rather than any significant increase in wind and solar. You realize that wind and solar are not even at the same levels that coal was in 2018?
And lastly, and I think this is worth mentioning in this discussion. The people of Europe are paying a hefty prices for these changes. Honestly, they are paying many times in cost for power, than what Americans do.
So acting like this is a huge win, while the rest of the citizens of Europe suffer a lower standard of living, is a factor you need to be considering before proclaiming how great that is.
Olfraud is a poor excuse for a propagandist. He lies more than Trump, and is scientifically illiterate.
He's also the world's biggest hypocrite. He lectures everybody about how they need to be cleaner while he worked for one of the worst polluters on the planet.
He's basically a piece of shit.
And you are correct about how renewable is a lie for the most part. Hydroelectric is absolutely renewable. But, wind costs more CO2 to make than it prevents. And solar requires massive amounts of toxic chemicals to be used in their production which is why the manufacturers are all in countries populated by brown people. These hypocrites have no problem poisoning brown people.
Hydroelectric is absolutely renewable.
I didn't say it wasn't. As I said that before, the goal was energy sources that don't have an environmental impact, and hydro electric dams most certainly do.
That said, hydro is only renewable to a point. Meaning, you can't always scale it.
What happens if the amount of power demand, exceeds how much rain there was? Well as you increase power generation at a dam, what are you doing at the exact same time? Naturally the amount of water that is flowing out of the dam, increases.
That follows logically. The amount of power created is proportional to the amount of water that flows through the dam. Thus more power = more water through the dam.
The problem is, the amount of water that flows into the dam is never static. So if you increase outflow higher than inflow, the dam goes dry.
This is EXACTLY what happened in Venezuela. The socialists Hugo Chavez shut down non-government power companies, and relied almost exclusively on hydro power. The problem is, by running the hydro power for so long, as such high levels, they eventually drained the reservoir, and then had nation wide black outs.
However, even if you put in hard limits on electricity production at hydro electric dams.... they are still actually temporary. All dams are temporary. None last forever.
www.glencanyon.org
All dams are eventually swamped with sedimentation. All of them. No exceptions.
As the water flows down stream or river, into a dam, as it stagnates, the sediment collects at the bottom of the dam, decreasing the amount of water, and thus usable pressure for electric generation.
Now in the case of Hoover dam, it is so large that it likely will not be swamped for perhaps a thousand years. Who knows.
But as the sediment increases, the amount of power generation declines, because it reduces the amount of water volume in the dam.
So to be clear... unlike any other form of power, hydro electric dams have a hard time limit, that sometimes can be delayed or extended, but never prevented. All eventually close.
Even Hoover Dam only has a long life span, because of the Glen Canyon Dam, which has the silt that would be behind the Hoover dam, trapped up stream.
Again, some have pointed out that the dam is still projected to last for another 300 years or more. True... but again, the amount of electricity the dam can produce is declining with every foot of silt filling up the dam. Silt can't be used to generate power, and as the amount of water is replaced by silt, the amount power that can be produced is reduced.
Something to think about.
By the way, this is one of the reasons you should always be skeptical of any renewable energy sources, that claim a 'name plate' power capacity.
Name plate on a traditional power plant, is generally exactly what it produces. A 1 Giga watt Nuclear power plant, produces 1 Gigawatt. A 1 Gigawatt Coal power plant, produces 1 gigawatt.
A 1 Gigawatt, solar, hydro, or wind power plant.... is not ever a gigawatt. And most never produce a gigawatt on their most ideal days.
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