It has not been gone over. You have not shown what these projections are based on. You categorize them out of hand, and substitute your own projections.
This report identifies the present conditions it is using as a basis and the factors that they are using to extrapolate. The fundamental methodology does not differ from yours. Except there is a lot more tangible information in this report and a lot less unsourced declarations.
It even backs some of your positions.
I’m not projecting anything.
What I’m definitely not doing is betting that all of these problems can be solved in the next five, ten, or 20 years because the tech does not yet exist and we have no idea of knowing when we’ll have it.
The life span of both the solar and went generators is piss poor and we don’t and can’t make the replacement parts in the US at anything near prices that would make them competitive without heavy subsidies.
Then you can’t make a claim to refute this report. The report may be accurate or not. And you have no position on it other than it should not be relied on.
This is fine by me.
There are no facts in the report to refute, it’s one big pile of hopes, dreams, wishes, and supposition.
The fact is their projections rely on technologies we’ve been promised were five or ten years away now for over forty years and they still don’t exist.
That is not accurate.
The report is clear on its assumptions. For the case of solar the projections include lower costs as well as improvements on the existing technology.
Figure 3 shows capacity-weighted and unweighted LCOE for CC, solar PV, and onshore wind plants entering service from 2022 to 2050 in the AEO2020 Reference case. Changes in costs over time reflect a number of different model factors, sometimes working in different directions. For both solar PV and onshore wind, LCOE increases in the near term with the phasedown and expiration of ITC and PTC, respectively. However, LCOE eventually declines over time because of technology improvement that tends to reduce LCOE through lower capital costs or improved performance (as measured by heat rate for CC plants or capacity factor for onshore wind or solar PV plants), which offsets the loss of the tax credits. The availability of high-quality resources may also be a factor. As the best, least-cost resources are used first, future development will occur in less favorable areas, potentially resulting in lower- performing resources, higher project development costs, and higher costs to access transmission lines. For CC, changing fuel prices also factor into the change in LCOE, as well as any environmental regulations that affect capital or operating costs.
For solar The technology model used is documented here and is based on existing technologies.
This information source is very transparently documented. You are trying a sledgehammer argument to dismiss it. Your tactic is not much different that the other extreme declaring that we must ditch fossil.
To be honest I’m interested in where we are at and where we are going (with respect to cost, capacity and source of energy).
I’m not even convinced or declaring that renewables won’t require or benefit from subsidies. Though it would be nice to know how much and “massive subsidies” is a qualitative and pejorative answer when I want to know really how much and evaluate if it is still appealing to pursue.
So on one hand we have a meticulously detailed set of yearly reports… pulled together by the Department of Energy. Laying out the information sources, the modeling, the projection assumptions and methodology. (And published yearly with corrections)
And on the other hand we have a statement that it is based on hopes and dreams. Along with arguments that keep drifting to “it can’t power the whole nation” and other statements that address a far-left/far right perspective rather than illuminate the true conditions of the problem.
At the of the day I find the information in the reports compelling, inconclusive regarding zero-subsidy viability and orders of magnitude more informative than what else has been posted so far regarding the costs of various energy sources.
What we know:
*None of our current alternative fuels have the killer combo of energy density and portability as oil/gas.
*However, liquid fuels are either peaking already or will peak soon…the cycles of boom/bust we have been stuck in since the 2000s started is a sign of this, along with the political instability of the oil-producing regions.
*So we will have to transition and waiting until we have stronger market signals than we have now is not going to help because, absent a breakthrough in super-capacitance, alternative energy can’t completely replace fossil fuels.
This in a nutshell is the issue facing us. I’m sure few will disagree with my points 1 and 3. I expect huge pushback on point 2.
I don’t agree with the timescale implied in #2. But the resources are finite… and volatile and controlled mostly by others.
So we may have 50-100 years of oil production. But trying to supplement 1% every 1-5 years with something else seems a prudent strategy.
MFG Cost reductions will have to be based on new tech and new industrial facilities that as yet don’t exist.
What we know is that every time we’re told “Peak Oil, Gas, or Coal” is predicted in the next decades we get to the end of that decade and fine whole new supplies.
We’ve been fed the “Peak” BS for over forty years and it has never been true.
Interesting…50 years ago back in early 70’s we all were told oil would be dried up by now.
And this wasn’t even counting China rise in their economic development.
Evidently at “some” point will will reach that point.
So yeah we need to be planing on that day when it does come.
But idea of wind and solar to power a industrialized advance nation is a pipe dream. It’s just not practical.
Agreed. But are these the same “technologies we have been promised for years” or rather incremental process improvements to existing technology. The later can be justified by past experience. Your earlier response implied the former which are obviously more prospective and can be relied on less. (But are not the basis of the report)
Or to put it in line with your earlier characterization of factual basis… cost downs and capacity increase of photovoltaic technology is evident and measurable looking backward. Whereas unproven solar technology is not. The report is basing projection on improvements in cost and capacity of existing solar technology which is spelled out in detail.
The projections quantify that expectation as well, so we can remove any improvement from the equation.
So I am saying that your characterization of this report is exaggerated to make it seem totally reliant on unlikely events.
In addition we can subtract the prospective improvements and use the report to characterize the magnitude of subsidies required to make solar viable. We can use those figures to quantify the cost in place of the more qualitative “massive subsidies” to get a better sense of the value we get by perusing this energy source.
All in all the report is a valuable source to add to this discussion.
I’m not exaggerating anything, there are no actual facts in the report to dispute. Hopes, dreams, wishes etc are not facts, they are just agenda driven propaganda.
Cost reductions in all forms of solar including photovoltaic have run up against the tech wall and they remain as unaffordable as ever on an industrial scale.
Wind Turbines if anything are less reliable today than those we were using 30 years ago.
Again, we run back into the problem of we can’t manufacture those items in the US so those manufacturing jobs end up in China, Vietnam, India etc, a huge net loss to the American Economy and to our national security.
Being dependent on foreign nations for your power supply exposes you to huge risk.
If you don’t believe the latter take a look at how it worked out for Japan and Germany in WWII.
No we haven’t been fed it for 40 years, and we’ve never had the signs we have now as to how close we are.
Boom/bust with very little year on year growth of total supplies (and that growth being fueled by the more expensive harder to get liquids) is a sign we are close.
You have posted no sources for your position.
The report goes to great lengths to document its inputs. They are not “hopes”. Even if you dispute them they are not hopes. The report is free of emotion or. cheerleading.
So the report has a methodology that we can pick apart and dispute.
You have fiat statements that the report is hope and dream.
We were being fed “peak oil” in the thirties and there was grave concerns we could produce enough to keep ourselves and our allies in the war.
Then suddenly we’ve got newly discovered fields pumping out hundreds of millions more barrels per day by the end of the war than had ever been imagined prior.
From the Sixties on, every decade we get a new generation of “Peak Oil Prophets”.
The same has been true of coal and gas, “We’re always just “this close” to the peak”, then suddenly new finds are made and they look like fools again.
The first formal presentation outlining “Peak Oil Theory” in Detail was in 1956.
That’s when it got it’s formal name but it wasn’t the first time “the end is near” for XYZ fossil fuel industry was blown through the loud speakers.
That is true. A pipe dream.
Besides we have plenty of fossil fuels and should go that route for now and many years to come.
Wind and solar as a supplement. fine.
Read the damned report.
Where do you think those reductions are going to come from?
They are predicated on new tech and new industries that don’t yet exist.
Five years ago new finds added up to at least a hundred years more life in the oil industry alone and much more for gas and coal.
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