I mean, there is money to be made. CATL stock (the major producer of EV batteries with 50% market share, with billions of contracts for stationary batteries) rose 48.81% over the last 6 months, for example.

But I agree that news about renewables goes unnoticed. I only see news about renewables because I actively seek out channels and websites that cover it. I wonder if it is because most companies in the industry are Chinese and don't focus on PR in the West as AI companies do.

And not buying something tends to be cheaper than buying :)

1. Take statistics from any of these excellent solar power plants for, say, five years time span

2. Find the worst week in terms of energy production in these statistics

3. Explain to the renewable energy skeptic how this 20+ times drop in productivity will be compensated for users

4. The skeptic is successfully convinced and becomes a renewable energy proponent

A question might be "why is it woke?"

And if it's because libtards like it, then you can point out that libtards like coffee, beer, sports, etc -- so when will they boycott those?

it will be adopted when the money speaks. the good news is that money is a reasonably close proxy to "environmental benefit" (balancing the environmental costs of green infra production versus dirtiness of gas generation)

I appreciate his ability to talk renewables for almost an hour and barely mention climate change. This video has a bit of a twist ending, but he gives you a solid out before he becomes political if you're showing it to someone who won't be receptive to that messaging.

But wind?? Huge nature areas are destroyed by beton fundaments, rotors break, and just in germany was a scandal lately about recycling, as the first structures need to be renewed.

What California and others have shown is that you can replace natural gas peaker plants (literally - tear out natural gas turbines) with batteries and get both superior cost dynamics and "dispatchability" (aka turning them on and off). Batteries have millisecond level dispatch, peaker plants have hours level dispatch.

Are they against solar subsidies or other policy provisions? It’s hard to understand someone who is against passive energy collection.

- removes nasty geopolitical dependencies on eg gulf state oil and gas; costs are more predictable

- easier to plan and build because the base units are much smaller

Variability remains a valid objection, to which the main answer today is "batteries. Lots of batteries. And other cheaper longer duration storage, like sand heat storage, vanadium flow, and good old pumped hydro."

let me guess... they sell oil?

Increasing utility energy prices worked for me. I wasn't anti-solar, but it didn't seem worthwhile for me. When the utility price doubled over three years (or just about), the math makes sense now. I'm not looking for solar to acheive grid independence though, I already have a whole house generator for that, because utility power is two nines reliable around here.

https://www.volts.wtf/p/sooner-than-you-think-electricity

https://www.volts.wtf/p/giving-clean-electricity-a-political

Of course that energy generation comes with the caveat of being variable with sun and wind. It can still be a net benefit to the grid but the variability means alternative energy sources are still needed.

The cost trend of installing solar/wind plus enough storage capacity to provide steady grid power will eventually cross over to also being cheaper than other sources of energy. At which point the only reason to be against it is if you prefer artificially subsidizing another energy source.

First would be to be clear and unambiguous when it comes to building gas/oil thermal power plants in order to deal with the intermittence problem of solar and wind. Political strategies in wind and solar is built on trust, and people will quickly become unconvinced when politicians are dishonest/ambiguous about the requirements that is needed to support a grid with a high ratio of wind and solar.

Using fossil fuels as the reserve energy for when the weather is bad allows the producers of reserve energy to demand high market prices, to the point where a whole month in EU can cost as much as a full year. Even if solar and wind would put the grid costs to zero for 90% of the time, it doesn't make the cost for the consumer any lower if the fossil fueled "reserve energy" can increase their price by 10x. Selling solar and wind require some kind of solution here.

Reserve energy also want to be paid if they are expected to stand-by 365 days a week, which is a big reason why EU subsidizes to fossil fueled thermal power plants are not decreasing when the ratio of wind and solar goes up. That costs is then added as a grid fee/taxes, hiding the true cost. Paying first to keep the fossil fueled power plants warm and ready when solar and wind is producing, and then pay them a second time for whatever the market price is when they are producing is a very costly way to operate a grid.

And last is the transmission costs. Switching between multiple different energy sources depending on the weather has a high demand for a very flexible infrastructure in terms of transmitting energy from where it is being produced to where it is being consumed. In south of Sweden as an example, the cost of transmission infrastructure and the cost of reserve energy is now the majority of consumers electricity bill, with cost associated with production of energy being a small minority.

Solving those issues is what will convince people of the viability of wind and solar.

Ensure that the prices decrease for people with existing contracts. The hatred comes from people being told that it's better and cheaper now while the price is significantly higher than before.

If I didn't have solar panels on my roof that basically cover all my energy needs, I'd be absolutely furious seeing politicians pat themselves on the back for shutting down nuclear power plants and talking about how energy is now cheaper at some foreign exchange where I can not buy while I pay more and more every month.