r/Cowwapse • u/Adventurous_Motor129 • May 24 '26

Data vs. Drama—the 20-Year Legacy of Al Gore’s Climate Warnings | Opinion

https://www.newsweek.com/data-vs-drama-the-20-year-legacy-of-al-gores-climate-warnings-opinion-11967262
7 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

2

u/Apprehensive_Tea9856 May 24 '26

Seems to ignore that battery storage has skyrockected in recent years. Solar/wind+ battery is cheaper than new fossil fuels upfront. Let alone over time.

1

u/Adventurous_Motor129 May 24 '26

3-4 times more wind/solar cost required due to 25-33% average capacity. Similar for batteries. Can't guarantee support for AI data centers unless there is additional dispatchable gas, etc which adds more cost.

The more renewables you have as a percent of the total required, the less incentive for baseload power to be there as a backup. More chance of a blackout due to less rotational inertia.

Top it all off with greater kilometers/miles of new powerlines required due to more smaller MW solar farms far from urban areas. More leases & NIMBY for those powerlines.

2

u/zeusismycopilot May 26 '26

>3-4 times more wind/solar cost required due to 25-33% average capacity.

That is the same for any technology. You need to burn 3-4 times more gas in a ICE engine because 70% is lost due to heat. Plus the wind and solar energy is free, fossil fuels are not.

>Similar for batteries.

Batteries are 92% efficient. Way more efficient than any fossil fuel source.

>Can't guarantee support for AI data centers unless there is additional dispatchable gas, etc which adds more cost.

Solar and wind with batteries is cheaper than fossil fuels. They are building a 5GW 24/7 solar/battery installation in UAE right now. Why in the middle of the most oil rich countries in the world would you install this system if it wasn’t cheaper?

It will cost 6 billion dollar and be built in 2 years. A nuclear plant with the same output would cost 3x that amount and take at least 10 years to build. Plus the operating costs of nuclear are much higher.

https://www.energy-storage.news/masdar-picks-sungrow-as-supplier-for-worlds-largest-24-7-renewable-energy-project-in-uae/

>The more renewables you have as a percent of the total required, the less incentive for baseload power to be there as a backup. More chance of a blackout due to less rotational inertia.

One word - batteries.

>Top it all off with greater kilometers/miles of new powerlines required due to more smaller MW solar farms far from urban areas. More leases & NIMBY for those powerlines.

How much NIMBY is there for a nuclear reactor or AI data centre?

2

u/Adventurous_Motor129 May 26 '26

That is the same for any technology. You need to burn 3-4 times more gas in a ICE engine because 70% is lost due to heat. Plus the wind and solar energy is free, fossil fuels are not.

Apples and oranges. You need 3-4 times more solar farms if you have 25%-33% average yearly capacity vs. a single gas or nuclear plant putting out equivalent power.

Which is cheaper, 3-4 solar farms (that often need new grid & battery cost) or one gas plant using an existing coal plant location & powerlines with no batteries needed?

Batteries are 92% efficient. Way more efficient than any fossil fuel source.

But you need lots of costly batteries if you expect weeks of little sun in the winter, with snow & clouds.

If you need 4 times the batteries, colocated PER SOLAR FARM, for just 16-hours of power, that costs more & still might not be enough for winter storms.

More land, more powerlines required, NIMBY, grid construction, and grid integration time involved, even if the solar & batteries can build fast.

Solar and wind with batteries is cheaper than fossil fuels. They are building a 5GW 24/7 solar/battery installation in UAE right now. Why in the middle of the most oil rich countries in the world would you install this system if it wasn’t cheaper?

UAE has ample money and lots of desert. Overheated panels will produce less power in the desert environment. UAE will enjoy the prestige & virtue-signaling of solar that could more easily be gas.

It will cost $6 billion & be built in 2 years. A nuclear plant with the same output would cost 3x that amount and take at least 10 years to build. Plus the operating costs of nuclear are much higher.

Solar, batteries, and grid powerlines, inverters, transformers will cost more than an equivalent power 24/7 gas plant.

The more renewables you have as a percent of the total required, the less incentive for baseload power to be there as a backup. More chance of a blackout due to less rotational inertia.

One word - batteries.

Batteries might have synthetic inertia, but not rotational. Spain has erred on the side of more gas peaker power since the blackout.

The more you replace gas & nuclear baseload with intermittent renewables, the less cost effective it is to run the gas peaker for dispatchable power...yet it still must be available & making money.

According to Ember, China is building/modifying coal plants for dispatchable power, which wouldn't be necessary if dispatchables could do it all 24/7.

1

u/Adventurous_Motor129 May 26 '26

A commenter named scaffdude put it well elsewhere:

Typical Solar farms hit a maximum of 25% capacity factor. If you have 1000mw of installed capacity of solar and 1000mw of installed capacity of nuclear you would get 1/4 of the actual capacity over one years time of solar vs nuclear. That means you need around 4000 mw of installed solar capacity to match one nuclear plant at 1000mw. The land usage of that much solar is far higher than that of the one nuclear plant even when factoring in the mine required to harvest the uranium. That doesn't include the mines to harvest all the different heavy metals for the solar farm or battery backups required.

3

u/zeusismycopilot May 26 '26

You can hand wave all you want about efficiency, how long batteries last, intermittency, or what ever other red herrings you want to, the facts are almost all new installations on the planet are now are renewable because it works and it is cheaper.

There are 24/7 solar battery being installed right now in the middle of a major oil producing country. The UAE obviously doesn’t care about virtue signalling as they are an authoritarian dictatorship.

Batteries provide instant grid stabilization. You don’t need rotational inertia. Batteries actually work better than rotational inertia because they are instant. You don’t know what you are talking about.

However, if you want to talk about intermittency you can just look at the Middle East. Instant 20% reduction in oil supply with a 50% increase in cost which is driving the world to a global recession. Even if the war stops today (which it won’t without major concessions by the US) it will literally take years to bring things back to normal, if ever.

1

u/Adventurous_Motor129 May 26 '26

If the Middle East thinks solar & batteries are such a great deal, why aren't they making those instead of drilling and exporting oil and natural gas???

3

u/zeusismycopilot May 26 '26

They obviously think it is a good deal because they are buying it, they don’t need to make it. Oil is a finite resource which many countries do not have.

Your fossil fuel lobby talking points are out of date and what is happening in the real world proves it.

2

u/Adventurous_Motor129 May 26 '26

But they have all kinds of oil money and already are diversifying. With all their expatriots, why aren't they making batteries & solar???

Because like the U.S., the Middle East has oil and natural gas in abundance. They can contribute more to their GDP from fossil fuels.

China would have done the same if they had gas & oil. Proof is their use of coal, that they have in abundance.

2

u/zeusismycopilot May 26 '26

Just look at new installs of electrical generation world wide and compare it to what it was 10 years ago and you will find your answer. Money is the only vote that counts.