<story><title>Why battery costs have plunged since 2010</title><url>https://fullstackeconomics.com/untitled-2/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gibolt</author><text>The follow-up to this article would discuss the effects of falling costs on accelerating the transition.&lt;p&gt;Massive battery installations plus solar are already cheaper than operating an *existing* natural gas peaker plant in California. Batteries that are 50% cheaper will make that true across the U.S. That could happen by 2025 if Tesla&amp;#x27;s new battery process is successful.&lt;p&gt;Battery installations&amp;#x27; faster response to grid demand also means they can quickly undercut remaining operating non-baseline usage, making the most polluting plants even less economically viable.&lt;p&gt;Excess storage in EVs and batteries will allow flattening the duck curve to rely even more on efficient baseload and shift renewable energy production to times of demand.&lt;p&gt;Things are going to go into overdrive faster than nearly all predictions... but still not fast enough for net zero :(</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zionic</author><text>People talk a lot about a lot of things when it comes to energy production, but in terms of what actually happens the largest factor is $&amp;#x2F;MW in terms of new capacity in the expected timeframe. That economic force dominates all.&lt;p&gt;As a provider I (they) want x GW of new capacity, and will chose whatever costs the lowest amount to get that capacity. Solar is getting so cheap now that overbuilding is an entirely viable option. This is why renewables are getting built over new coal plants, the environmental benefits are just a marketing bonus.&lt;p&gt;As Engineers&amp;#x2F;scientists our job is to innovate and get the costs of the &amp;quot;correct&amp;quot; decision low enough that the economic forces take over and steer humanity towards the best outcome.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why battery costs have plunged since 2010</title><url>https://fullstackeconomics.com/untitled-2/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gibolt</author><text>The follow-up to this article would discuss the effects of falling costs on accelerating the transition.&lt;p&gt;Massive battery installations plus solar are already cheaper than operating an *existing* natural gas peaker plant in California. Batteries that are 50% cheaper will make that true across the U.S. That could happen by 2025 if Tesla&amp;#x27;s new battery process is successful.&lt;p&gt;Battery installations&amp;#x27; faster response to grid demand also means they can quickly undercut remaining operating non-baseline usage, making the most polluting plants even less economically viable.&lt;p&gt;Excess storage in EVs and batteries will allow flattening the duck curve to rely even more on efficient baseload and shift renewable energy production to times of demand.&lt;p&gt;Things are going to go into overdrive faster than nearly all predictions... but still not fast enough for net zero :(</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ZeroGravitas</author><text>There was a recent paper that discussed this and said the transition is now inevitable due to economics and maybe always has been, but lots of forecasts were linear in their assumptions.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.inet.ox.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;energy_transition_paper-INET-working-paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.inet.ox.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;energy_transition_paper-INET...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Rapidly decarbonising the global energy system is critical for addressing climate change,
but concerns about costs have been a barrier to implementation. Most energy-economy
models have historically underestimated deployment rates for renewable energy tech-
nologies and overestimated their costs1,2,3,4,5,6. The problems with these models have
stimulated calls for better approaches7,8,9,10,11,12 and recent e↵orts have made progress in
this direction13,14,15,16. Here we take a new approach based on probabilistic cost fore-
casting methods that made reliable predictions when they were empirically tested on
more than 50 technologies17,18. We use these methods to estimate future energy system
costs and find that, compared to continuing with a fossil-fuel-based system, a rapid green
energy transition will likely result in overall net savings of many trillions of dollars -
even without accounting for climate damages or co-benefits of climate policy. We show
that if solar photovoltaics, wind, batteries and hydrogen electrolyzers continue to follow
their current exponentially increasing deployment trends for another decade, we achieve
a near-net-zero emissions energy system within twenty-five years. In contrast, a slower
transition (which involves deployment growth trends that are lower than current rates)
is more expensive and a nuclear driven transition is far more expensive. If non-energy
sources of carbon emissions such as agriculture are brought under control, our analysis
indicates that a rapid green energy transition would likely generate considerable eco-
nomic savings while also meeting the 1.5 degrees Paris Agreement target.</text></comment>