• JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
    1343·
    10 days ago

    Daytime energy is soon going to be free in much of the world. The advances in green tech, especially solar and batteries, are real. Much faster progress than even the optimists were predicting a decade ago. The revolution is reaching a tipping point where it becomes self-sustaining and requires no state subsidies. I am not a tech utopian, and this alone will not save us. But there’s no denying it’s good news. It’s all happening far too late but it does look like humans are going to kick their fossil habit after all.

    Inconvenient footnote: thank China.

    • perviouslyiner@lemmy.world
      28·
      10 days ago

      It’s gotten so good that China might be restricting output to keep the prices high…

      (their onshore wind, and pumped hydro storage, are also great success stories, as is the EV industry there)

      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
        241·
        10 days ago

        Indeed. China is such a paradox. An absolute anathema in terms of culture and politics. It’s almost impossible for us Westerners to grasp how a people could accept that level of authoritarianism, how they could value their personal freedom so little. And yet, and yet. Without China we would be royally screwed. They are pulling the weight of the green transition basically alone. So personally I’ve decided to hold off on China-bashing for now.

        • cm0002@lemmy.world
          62·
          10 days ago

          Westerners to grasp how a people could accept that level of authoritarianism,

          So personally I’ve decided to hold off on China-bashing for now.

          You just did, according to .ml users, because ACkShuLly cHiNa iSnT aN AuThoRitArIaN CounTRy

        • her_name_is_cherry@lemm.eeEnglish
          51·
          9 days ago

          Tiananmen Square was not that long ago. There are lots of living people who would have seen their fellow students get crushed by tanks and rinsed down a drain.

          That will keep a generation and their children quiet. Their children have also now seen how risings are punished via Hong Kong.

          I don’t think it’s even possible to imagine what you would do having seen your government enact that kind of violence on your peers. So I certainly don’t judge.

          • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
            31·
            9 days ago

            In a way it’s even scarier than that. Most younger Chinese do not even know those things happened. I can confirm this incredible fact from personal experience. At this point “Tiananmen Square 1989” has more meaning to the average educated Westerner than it does over there. It has been scrubbed from history.

    • crystalmerchant@lemmy.world
      12·
      9 days ago

      Optimistic of you to assume pricing is cost-plus not willingness-to-pay. US utilities (and their foreign counterparts) will only too gladly keep charging you

    • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
      4·
      10 days ago

      Is there a good place to ask about independent (non-grid-connected) solar for an otherwise grid-connected structure? I’d love to set something like this up, but can’t find any systems which don’t require wiring into the gird.

    • Bosht@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      8 days ago

      People can talk shit on China from a geopolitical stance and I’ll agree with them, but yeah, they picked up the slack where other countries were lacking when it came to green progression. Technically our (US) own fault too. Greed ruling over progression really fucked us.

      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
        3·
        10 days ago

        Sure, but energy efficiency is always improving, distribution and storage are always improving. And the full electrification of transport (which is what you seem to be alluding to) is not going to happen overnight.

  • acchariya@lemmy.world
    71·
    9 days ago

    Battery prices are collapsing and we are at an inflection point where electric vehicles will soon be more economical to purchase, drive and maintain for a much greater number of people. This is as inevitable as the phaseout of coal.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 days ago

        Oh it tipped a few years ago. It’s just still being implemented. There may be less startup to ramping up fossil fuel plants still, but solar is cheaper to build and operate

    • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
      7·
      9 days ago

      Yeah, I was shopping for lithium on phosphatase leisure batteries maybe two years ago and was looking at spending over £1000 per battery. Now those batteries are not much over £100 and prices still seem to be falling.

    • nednobbins@lemm.ee
      6·
      9 days ago

      I’d broaden that to a whole host of “green” and “alternative energy” sectors.

      All the panic about Chinese “overproduction” of EVs and similar technologies is just China going whole hog on those industries. It’s not an “overproduction” in the traditional sense, where a company produces more than the market will bear and has to sell excess inventory at a loss. China just produces all of this stuff cheaply and at a huge scale.

      About 20 years ago the general perception was that EVs were a joke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2HX5wsQVEA Now we have cost effective solar and wind, efficient battery storage, good and cheap EVs and drones, modern heat pumps etc.

      I don’t even think all the tariffs will matter in the long run. China is currently adopting all that stuff at a breakneck pace. Their production capacity won’t just go away once they’ve saturated the domestic market and the growing number of countries that have trade agreements with China). At that point, Chinese manufacturers will have no choice but to start actually selling below cost, just so they can clear inventory.

      And this has a snowball effect too. Energy is often the limiting factor in production. An abundance of cheap energy makes it cheaper to produce more cheap energy production.

      • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
        2·
        9 days ago

        There’s too much money in renewables for rich people. The tariffs may or may not happen, but the renewable switch is a runaway train, and almost entirely in the country.

        On the electricity futures market, wind producers regularly sell their power for negative prices (paying transmission companies to take their power) because it’s so cheap for them to make, with such negligible overhead; since the government subsidies are based on the mWh they produce, they can sell it at a loss and still make money. But even if those subsidies go away, renewables can still easily undercut every other producer on the grid.

        That’s just one example. The same tipping point is approaching fast all over just about every industry. Obama and Biden got the renewable energy industry over the hump of research and infrastructure outlay, so now Tr*mp gets to take the credit for their work while it all falls into place; and because the rich people are benefiting from it financially, they’re going to protect the industry.

          • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 days ago

            Definitely true, though Elon paid enough money to Trump that he’s probably going to make sure there’s a cutout in any tariffs for Tesla’s batteries (which are largely made by CATL in China). Besides, cheap power means that even with tariffs raising the prices of batteries, BEVs are still going to be worth driving.

        • USNWoodwork@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 days ago

          The tariffs may or may not happen

          The 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs already happened in September. Joe Biden announced them in May and they kicked off already. I don’t expect Trump to change anything with that.

    • thawed_caveman@lemmy.world
      31·
      9 days ago

      Yeah, but that will be true for the electric cars made in the coming years, not the ones made in the past few years. People were right to be put off by the prices.

      And even then, will these new cheap batteries be durable? I worry a lot about all these EVs becoming unusable in 10 years because the batteries are ruined, just like my 10 year old laptop

      • acchariya@lemmy.world
        2·
        9 days ago

        People who didn’t lease will lose their shirts but the price of new cars is the primary driver for the price of used cars. New, cheap, and more useable EVs will make used ones cheap.

        As to the reliability, it remains to be seen. Considering the size of a vehicle I think an aftermarket will pop up for refurbishing and replacing batteries like it has for the earliest modern EVs in the us, the leaf.

  • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
    311·
    9 days ago

    Thanks to COVID and speeding mRNA research we are at the cusp of curing many auto-immune diseases. I’m 47 with a kid with diabetes and another with celiac. I’m confident both will be cured in my lifetime

  • Caveman@lemmy.world
    22·
    9 days ago

    People now about solar but I think most people don’t know that the 21st century will become dominated by solar really fast. The growth will be exponential and in the coming decade we’ll really see it happening at a ridiculous pace.

    It’ll also be really cheap and complemented by cheap storage. It always sounds like it’s 50 years away but in reality electrification is coming in so fast and cheap where the developing world will leap frog fossil fuels.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
      7·
      9 days ago

      If you’re a homeowner you can almost certainly buy solar in a manner where the monthly financing will be similar to what you save in monthly electric bills. So it’s a wash.

      This year.

      The difference is that electric bills will go up, while the financing terms stay the same.

      • USNWoodwork@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 days ago

        Looked into this a few years ago and you could have said the same then. The problem was the deal with the financing had all these weird caveats when you looked into the details like you didn’t own the panels, and any cost would transfer with the sale of the house, it was like a forever rental with no upgrades ever.

        When we get to the point that you can get solar added, and own everything, and can pay for it without financing with a positive ROI in 3 years, that’s the tipping point.

      • Caveman@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 days ago

        I’m projecting inflation adjusted prices of energy to go down in the coming years as well as financing costs. The energy market is stabilising with the Ukraine war and central bank rates are also going down right now. Outlook is pretty good economically right but Covid and Ukraine really threw a wrench into the works and fucked up 4 years so far

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      1·
      9 days ago

      Yeah i wouldn’t be surprised if the next 4 years saw natural gas and coal plants being torn down because they can’t be subsidized cheaper than solar.

  • sumguyonline@lemmy.world
    6·
    8 days ago

    The corporate real estate market is going to tank, people are going to turn their empty office building caused by everyone working from home into apartments, and rental prices are going to crash because of how desperate the corps are to bring in any money. Once rental market tanks, housing market tanks, and all those massive investment firms buying up neighborhoods are going to see their investment shrink like a cold Wang doodle. Expect crying ceo’s and a massive government bailout in the next 4-7 yes for this exact scenario.

    • JackFrostNCola@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      8 days ago

      I know turning office buildings into apartments seems like a fantastic idea on the surface but there are a LOT of reasons this doesnt work, ranging from fire code issues, utility service locations and access and HVAC design. Sorry.

  • Etterra@discuss.onlineEnglish
    54·
    8 days ago

    Humanity will probably die out in the next hundred years and the planet will finally be able to recover, even if it has to start over from microbes to get there.

  • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.caEnglish
    16·
    10 days ago

    Well this only good news for Russian bootlickers but the foundation’s of geopolitics becoming more and more true.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 days ago

      What does that mean?

      I think russia is going down hard (20 jan being their sole hope to salvage their kleptocracy) and with it the evil influence in many parts of the world => good news.

      • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        I would recommend if you wish to sit down and read the book, it reads like a mad mans manifesto on how to take over europe and china but putin is using it as a playbook. It’s available on the internet archive in english to read. Everything over the past few years is going to their plan, and the instability of civility in the USA is apart of that. killing CEO’s and people being pushed to brink of using violence to send their message or push progress forward, bringing a domino effect of the US goverment under donlad trump revolting and causing a 2nd civil war. Eurpoe should not rely on the US for defence, and should focus on their own.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
          2·
          9 days ago

          Ya, that’s quite clear.

          But we’re waking up, I mean Europe, the Kremlin forgets the numerous times when we kicked their ass.

          Lots of “normal” people also starts to understand that lots and lots of bad things are backed by russia (libya, iran, argentina, cuba, rise if the right wing in EU/USA, hate and division, electoral interference, the list goes on) whicb mean they are out in the open. Also the ruble has collapsed, the soviet arms stockpiles are running out and so forth, russia is going under.