Comment on Solar and wind energy could fulfill energy demand 10-fold, Oxford study finds

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mriguy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

It’s hard to say it’s “wasted”. That just means the sun will shine, and the wind will blow, and nobody will use some of the electricity it could generate.

By that metric, almost 100% of wind and solar power is currently “wasted”. By putting up all that capacity, the amount “wasted” goes way down.

And what becomes possible if you have huge amounts of no cost energy available for some of the day/year? Direct carbon capture? Widespread desalination to produce fresh water? These are things that would help a lot, but are currently infeasible for to energy cost. You don’t have to do them 24/7 - just turn them on to soak up the excess grid capacity. If the cost of electricity went way down, I guarantee you somebody would figure out what to do with the power.

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