The costs are trending down all the time. Same as EVs. The wheels are in motion (no pun) and normal technological advancement will do the rest.
Our energy costs are mostly down to reliance on gas and Truss getting rid of the reserves.
Even if you remove carbon costs, renewables are the cheapest form of generation.
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And we are comparing a proven technology with cutting edge ones with billions being poured into research.
Places with strong residential solar like California are already seeing almost zero grid dependence at noon:
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Next up is to shift that out as the sun sets, which means battery storage. Luckily that is consistently outperforming our predictions on cost there as well:
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Solid state batteries will eventually fall to lithium prices and enable EVs that beat the range of ICE with not much more fuelling time. Meanwhile EV costs are dropping and number of the road growing rapidly, 60% of new registrations in China were EVs last year.
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We’re at the point of western governments talking about putting tariffs on EVs because they’re too cheap. 2027 is the latest projection of when they will be cheaper to build than ICE cars. Even without laws banning them electric cars will win out and once petrol isn’t as profitable the supporting services will disappear hastening its demise.
This is before you get to advancements in nuclear, most of the cost of which is regulatory. And the advancements in consumer electronics. When I was a kid you had to worry about turning the lights off, that’s basically a solved problem now because LEDs are so cheap. I’m about to buy a tumble dryer that uses a third of the electricity of a standard one. My 65 inch TV uses about half the energy of the 32 inch one I had 20 years ago.
We are fast transitioning to a world where data centres and factories run off small modular reactors (or full plants in the case of Microsoft and Three Mile Island), residential and offices run from solar and battery and cars act like off grid storage.
Energy and transport is basically solved if current trends continue, and we keep beating trends.