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I agree with you. I read it cover to cover at the time and felt like a smart ass ("AksHuALLy renewables can't work alone!"), then wondered a few years ago how his calculations turned out in the real world.

1. Sad that he died from cancer

2. Noticed he compared primary energy and felt stupid for missing that

by kragen7 hours ago|

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I never got a blanket claim of "actually renewables can't work alone" from the book. It seemed more like "actually you need to understand things quantitatively or you are doomed to talk nonsense".

MacKay's "renewables can't work alone" claim always seemed carefully scoped to the economics of 02008 (when solar modules cost 33× as much as they do now) and also his own densely populated, rather polar country. Renewables were already working nearly alone, at scale, in equatorial countries and more sparsely populated countries; I live in Argentina, whose grid was mostly hydroelectric at the time, and next door to Brazil, where a large fraction of the automotive fleet ran on sugar-cane-derived ethanol, which is a viable renewable energy source (unlike, apparently, corn ethanol).

by PaulDavisThe1st3 hours ago|

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There is nowhere that renewables are remotely close to working "nearly alone" if you are talking about total energy needs (which MacKay is/was).

There's some incredible progress for electricity generation, but there's still huge amounts of energy being used in ways that are not currently electrified and not close to electrifiable in the short term.

We should celebrate the forward progress, but also not be blind to what is not yet feasible (while also hoping that it may soon be so).

by kragen33 minutes ago|

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You're right, and I appreciate the correction — even Norway mostly runs its transport on fossil fuels, not electricity, and trucking and ships aren't going to be electrifiable in the short term. Here in Argentina, when we ran our grid mostly on hydroelectric, the cars were still running mostly on gasoline and compressed natural gas.

(Yes, I know that makes me sound like an LLM.)

by mbgerring1 hours ago|

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Right, as long as you specify “without energy storage”, renewables “can’t work alone,” even though energy storage is included in most common sense definitions of “renewables”

Thankfully, energy storage is being deployed worldwide, so this is a moot point, and renewables can and will replace fossil fuel electricity generation.