Medium term though Renewables can/will become an increasing share of all additional capacity. Increasing it to most of, about 60%-80% of all capacity add is very much feasible. And predictable. No one knows where tomorrow's coal/oil is coming from. But we have to start now. PV price has fallen so dramatically, one should not look a gift horse in its mouth. The path to $0.30 cents a watt panels is open. No show stoppers. There was a time Solar was $70 per watt and even the researchers are stunned that this technology, of all the 100's pursued, has paid off.
Long term our energy source will become intermittent. There is no choice in the matter. It is either Solar/Wind or Nuclear Breeder(U-235 fails math). All others are marginal and the math fails.
Even Nuclear Breeder struggles with scaling beyond even 10%. And the costs will be astronomical. The cheap U-235 once thru is only a curiosity per the math. Thorium is still uncertain. There are so many unresolved commercial show stoppers in the way it make one nervous if it will ever payoff. Even then it is still 50 years away tech. One reason the PFBR quietly switched to Pu-239. Keep in mind that world Nuclear will be shutting down at a rate of about 10% a year over the next 30-40 years, as the plants built till the slow down in the 80's, slowly phase out. This means world needs to add 30,000MW of Nuclear every year just to stand still. Nothing like this build out is even under consideration. So Nuclear will gradually sunset and become ever more marginal.
I've been having a long series of e-mails with a couple of Prof's I know, running numbers and they are very clear on the medium to long term future. The scientific consensus has settled on this for the past few years now. According to them there are 3 test states the US is using. Hawaii, California and Texas. The medium term, 2035 plan is to have Hawaii transition to 75% renewables. California is to get to 30% by 2020 and to 50% by 2035. Texas, if you can believe it, (no coal) is on its way to 30% renewables (mostly wind) by 2020 and is quietly aiming for 50% Renewables by 2035, all the while spiting and sneering at renewable power. It is not accidental that the USA is quietly spending $50 Billion building massive massive transmission lines into the windy Midwest and into the sunny Southwest. USA has the Geographic scale to spread out power and smooth out the intermittency problem. Also about 30,000 MW of pumped storage is wending its way through permits and another 50,000MW is in planning stage. They are preparing for it big time, including the Republicans. Don't believe the stuff you hear in the media.
We on other hand, other than JNNSM are snoozing as usual. I'm sure the coming coal price spike and shortage will hit us with no preparation as well.
How much we displace is a function of how prepared we are. If we can get to 60%-80% with cheaper technologies we can then strap in the more expensive afterburners. Mostly Salt/Thermal storage technologies. These are very cheap. Right now about 2 cents a kw. Projected to decline to about 0.05 cents a kw with scale.
The idea is to have a daily spinning thermal reserve. If we need roughly 700,000 MW by 2050, we need at least, 200,000 MW of 100% plf storage to displace the last 30% of Coal/Nuclear (maybe). This will be the hardest process. The costs will be against us, as the coal plants will be fully depreciated and the temptation to keep burning the cheap coal will be high. But if we do it, we will need a daily salt spinning reserve of roughly 1 km3 or about 1.8 billion tonnes of molten salt!
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