We won't even focus on storing much of it but just build more and more.
The story on that is surprisingly positive, but it's quite easy to FUD by parties with a vested interest (carbon lobby, nuclear lobby) because some people will hear:
* "well, the sun doesn't shine at night. the wind doesn't always blow! check mate!"
E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161473 (posted after I wrote this)
or, if it's aimed at a slightly higher intellectual level, things like:
* "pumped storage is a nice idea but realistically there just isn't enough space for all the pumped storage we need".
E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37161790 (posted after I wrote this)
* "we need 1-2 weeks worth of storage to deal with the inherent instability of wind/solar"
And they'll believe it because it all sounds plausible enough, even though it's wrong.
And then they'll repeat it all over hacker news lol...
Pumped storage and batteries for short term energy storage - hours to weeks. Australia is already building one pumped storage battery which should provide them with roughly 350GWh - roughly half of the short term storage they'd need if they had a 100% solar and wind based grid. With one plant. You can't do this in, e.g. Florida but the geography to build this is more than plentiful enough in most of the world (this topic is pretty well settled: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14555-y but for some reason people keep disputing it).
Hydrogen for seasonal storage - for weeks when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Roughly 2-3% of power will need to be stored this way on a 100% solar/wind grid. It's not efficient and expensive to generate hydrogen from electricity and then turn it back into electricity but still cheaper than generating and using nuclear power at the point of generation. It is cheap to store enormous amounts of power for long periods this way though.
Which part is wrong? Except that we need more than 1-2 weeks worth of storage to rely on solar/wind as anything more than occasional addition.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/much-storage-needed-solar-wind-p...
"Graham says that the CSIRO modelling showed that at very high levels of wind and solar, a maximum of half a day’s average demand was needed for storage. In some areas of the grid, only around three hours might be needed."
Or:
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora...
The amount of short term storage to get a grid between 80-95% running on solar/wind is measured in hours.
Electrolyzing and storing hydrogen in an underground cavern can buffer the rest and be stored easily for years if necessary.
The goal is to reduce Co2 emissions and replace fossil usage.
Well, empirically, we only observe that countries heavily relying on renewable (Denmark and Germany are the poster children) (i) have a much worse average CO2/kWh ratio, (ii) still need to import energy when, well, the wind does not blow and the Sun does not shine.
But feel free to elaborate on where this is wrong.
117 looks ok to me. They're probably one of the most improved countries in the world in the last 10 years, although overall France's is likely still lower thanks to all their 1970s nuclear power plants - decarbonizing decades before anybody gave a damn about global warming.
For reference Poland is at like 650. They use an ungodly amount of coal. Environmentally Poland are an absolute a disaster compared to every country in Europe (even poorer ones), but, they didn't shut down a couple of aging nuclear power plants so they're on the good side of the American nuclear power lobby and get relatively little stick.
Surely california has tons of taxpayer money in excess what is preventing them to do all that?
