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Tripling renewables globally by 2030 is doable, says new IEA report (electrek.co)

submitted 1 month ago by threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works to c/energy

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[–] Mihies@programming.dev 0 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Fossil fuels end up doing the work of balancing the grid during times when wind and solar are low. That’s not ideal, but a world where fossil fuels are used to balance renewable provision is much better than a world where they’re the primary energy source.

That's true, but only as long as your primary source/balancing source are fossil fuels. I can imagine a lot of them being burned during short and cloudy winter days + all nights in this scenario. If we want to avoid CO2 emissions, nuclear pps seems like the best choice today. But then we don't need nearly as much renewables. Tricky situation, even worse for countries without much wind.

I work in the UK energy sector, and that’s definitely not true! About 1/3 of our energy comes from wind which is somewhat but mostly not stored.

Yep, because you are still relaying on fossil fuels and can adjust their output quite dynamically. But the more renewables power you have, the more fossil fuels you'll burn when renewables aren't producing.

Makes sense?

[–] houseofleft 11 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I agree with all of what you said, apart from "without storage renewables aren't that useful".

UK and USA are good comparatives here, where the USA has better nuclear provision, but on average very little renewables (approx 10%). The UK obviously burns more fossil fuels when renewables aren't used, but in spite of this still generates less than 1/3 of the co2 per KW overall as the USA (120g vs 390g).

So storage would be drive that down much further, but even without it, more renewables equals less CO2 overall in pretty much every real world case.

Data sources in CO2 per KW: UK: https://grid.iamkate.com/ USA: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

[–] Mihies@programming.dev -1 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Sure, I agree that it helps, but only as long as you are emitting co2 as an alternative. Not sure whether comparison to USA is a good one since they ditched new nuclear plants after Three Mile Island accident. Try comparing against France though - they are the greenest and most reliable energy producer out there (maybe Scandinavian countries are better, but they have excellent predispositions). And then we have Germany, which went diehard renewable with the side effect of becoming one of the biggest European polluter.

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