Ramez Naam

The best predictions have come from people that know the "least" that make the simplest predictions just extrapolating current trends. To get bad predictions, you need to be "deeply knowledgeable" about energy and come up with all sort of ways to bias the predictions against renewable energy. Greenpeace (not known for being very numerate in the first place) and Ramez Naam did much better: https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/

One of my favorite facts of recent note is the rapid decrease in the price of solar. This article by Ramez Naam puts the whole thing into perspective: https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/

Another good read: https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/ Solar follow exponential cheaper trajectory with no signs of slowing down. Virtually all forecast underestimated the trend. In less than a decade solar will be way cheaper than operating cost of gas or coal plants. It make sense to overprovision capacity and shut down pretty much anything that could be shut down during the day. Plus cheap spurious electricity opens a lot of new frontiers.

This very thorough analysis of the potential for wind energy in the US concludes that the great plains have massive potential for fantastically cheap wind power generation, with some sites having potential capacity factors well over 65%. http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/30/how-steady-can-the-wind-blow/ The point at which energy storage becomes an issue is a long way off if you connect the country with HVDC lines. Building such lines would be a great achievement for this fund. However, I guess the political question will get hit at that point: will the government be as keen to let private investors build new power infrastructure as it is for them to build new oil pipelines?

And http://rameznaam.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Nature-Climate-Change-… As soon as we hit $100/kWh in the next year or two, that oil is worthless [1] (Tesla will supposedly hit this target when the Gigafactory is at full capacity). Clean energy investments year over year: https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iWfsqt_Qmf9Q/v1/-1x-1… [1] https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/energy/energy_archive/energy_flow_…

Ramez Naam has done lots of research/writing about "learning rates" for power technology. Here's a writeup from late last year on lithium ion batteries: http://rameznaam.com/2015/10/14/how-cheap-can-energy-storage-get/ There are two different studies, one which shows a 15% and one which shows a 21% learning rate (decreased price due to volume). One thing that's worth noting is that lithium ion energy density (Wh/kg) has not increased appreciably in the past few years (~200 Wh/kg) - we're probably maxed out w/o switching chemistries. Oxis and Sony are targeting 500 Wh/kg Li-S batteries for 2019/2020, but I'll believe it when I see it - most of the Li-S research is super gee-whiz (lots of coated nanotubes, nanocomposites, etc) but that stuff never tends to make it outside of the labs, and if it does, will be quite expensive.

Once home batteries like Tesla's Powerwall become mainstream we may see another up-tick in self-financed systems, especially since those may have an effect on the price of electricity for people without them [1]. This is a lovely article on the latest developments and side-effects [2] [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-24/batteries-pose-sales… [2] http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-big-and-ch…

If you're looking for evidence that non-oil sources will get more profitable, less expensive and widely available in the future, Ramez Naam has a series of excellent blog posts (with lots of cited data) that are a good starting point. The first is from mid-August of 2015, and the last in mid-October, so they are timely as well: 1. http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap-ind… 2. http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/30/how-steady-can-the-wind-blow/ 3. http://rameznaam.com/2015/10/14/how-cheap-can-energy-storage-get/

All great questions. When I look at the "Worldwide growth of photovoltaics" plot at the top of the page you linked, I see the "Green" (European) color dominate from 2008-2013 (maybe 80%+ of installs). Germany purchases, peaking in 2011, where in the heart of when solar price declines occurred. By the same chart, deployments in the rest of the world explode post 2014, after the big price declines. Here's an article from 2011 (concurrent with German deployments) showing the immense price falls at that time: https://rameznaam.com/2011/03/17/expis-moores-law-really-a-fair-compar… Yes, there's a huge 'chicken' v 'egg' question here: deployment vs. price declines from tech learning rates. Someone had to kick-start this process by for huge deployments when it was uneconomical, to then drive scaling in production. Germany footed the bill. Global deployments then soured after those purchases and price declines. Perhaps someone else would have done this later, but I don't really care about the historical counterfactual, I care about who's balance sheet the uneconomic debt, to kickstart the virtuous cycle, sits on. So I credit Germany. Yes, I am attributing a success to the Energiewende that was not part of the initial plan. But I do think it's an important success. Here's reference: https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-4-energiewende/ My understanding of the Energiewende, is that it was never focused on climate. Rather is was a plan to create economic energy…

This is a great long read (if you like log graphs) on how solar prices have dropped more than anyone predicted: https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/ > This incredible pace of solar cost decline, with average prices in sunny parts of the world down to a penny or two by 2030 or 2035, is just remarkable. Building new solar would routinely be cheaper than operating already built fossil fuel plants, even in the world of ultra-cheap natural gas we live in now. This is what I’ve called the third phase of clean energy, where building new clean energy is cheaper than keeping fossil fuel plants running. Even in places like Northern Europe, by the later 2030s we’d see solar costs below the operating cost of fossil fuels, providing cheap electricity in summer months with their very long days in the high latitudes. These prices would be disruptive to a large fraction of already operating fossil fuel power plants – particularly coal power plants, that are far less able to ramp their power flexibly... (hat tip to the Forge the Future newsletter: https://forgethefuture.substack.com/?no_cover=true) I predict a lot of fossil plants will convert to simply providing inertia for grid stabilisation and charge for the service. They won't burn anything any more and may even demolish their stacks and cooling towers. They will just keep their generators and turbines connected to the grid as a big virtual flywheel to dampen spikes in demand / supply and maintain…

The more advanced (Stanford Energy Symposium) research that I've seen suggests that there is only one possible power source that we can look to long term to meet the energy needs of the world, and that is Solar Energy. Nuclear Energy just won't be possible to build out quickly enough, inexpensively enough - even if we could do it safely. In particular, check out Nate Lewis's Solar Energy 101 (https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=3853… - In the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) where he makes a strong case that the only choice is Solar - not because it's a good one, but because there is nothing else out there that can meet our needs (And he spends a bit of time talking about Nuclear Energy, and why it comes up short). The entire series is a gold mine for people who actually want to talk about energy generation and climate change on an informed basis rather than just making guesses to suit their particular world view. With that said, one of my favorite futurists, Ramez Naam, who is a big proponent of Wind and Solar (See: http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/30/how-steady-can-the-wind-blow/ and http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap-ind… still thinks we should invest in nuclear, as it has an important role to play in regions where renewable resources (Solar/Wind/GeoThermal/HydroElectric etc...) are not available, and as a hedge against storage (which is critical for solar/wind) technology not advancing to…

Here's a great recent article about the current and anticipated future prices of energy storage: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-big-and-ch… It's based mostly on a recent paper in nature that estimates "that EV batteries in 2014 cost between $310 and $400 per kwh", but anticipates "It’s now in the realm of possibility that we’ll see $100 / kwh lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles by 2020, with some speculating that Tesla’s ‘gigafactory’ will push into sufficient scale to achieve that." His numbers roughly agree with yours: So we’d estimate that at the following battery prices we’d get the following effective LCOEs (Levelized Cost of Electricity): - $300 / kwh battery : 33 cent / kwh electricity storage - $200 / kwh battery : 22 cent / kwh electricity storage - $150 / kwh battery : 17 cent / kwh electricity storage - $100 / kwh battery : 11 cent / kwh electricity storage All of those battery costs, by the way, are functions of what the ultimate buyer pays, including installation and maintenance.

This book is from 2008, and, while reportedly very good for its time, now out of date. https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/30/l6qcqgoedse1wmjjz87t09… In particular, nobody back then anticipated how quickly solar PV prices would drop. https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/

There's no cheaper electricity source then renewables, by a long shot. Why bother with nuclear? https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-… https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/

To answer your related question, I believe that the answer is yes. As https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/ explains, Wright's law says that while a technology is improving, we generally get a fixed percentage drop in cost every time we double production. Therefore the production increases thanks to subsidies caused those cost drops to come much sooner than they would have otherwise.

If there is anyone on here who works in the battery production, EV, or utility industries, can you comment on exactly what is driving the dramatic cost/kWh declines? Every article I've read seems to imply that the cost declines are just being driven by economies of scale (massive fixed costs of plant construction being averaged out over large production runs) and learning economies (https://rameznaam.com/2014/09/30/the-learning-curve-for-energy-storage… Apart from these two forces, are there any innovations in manufacturing processes or product components+architecture that are partly responsible for the decline? Edit: grammar.

Ramez Naam likes to make predictions like this: http://rameznaam.com/2019/04/02/the-third-phase-of-clean-energy-will-b…

I think it was this one: http://rameznaam.com/2019/04/02/the-third-phase-of-clean-energy-will-b…

Sounds a bit like what Nori plans to do. http://rameznaam.com/2018/09/10/yes-blockchain-can-help-us-solve-clima…

To me, the future seems bright not because of this graph but because the underlying performance of solar and wind energy keeps improving. For example, see: http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap-ind… As to whether the damage has already been done, I guess "bright" is relative. I agree with your statement, I just think that the biggest disaster scenario is that we find no replacement for fossil fuels and just never ever stop burning them, and I think we are likely to avoid that scenario.

"Looking at the bulk of the research, it’s more likely that solar panels, over their lifetime, generate 10-15 times as much energy as it takes to produce them and their associated hardware. That number may be as high as 25. And it’s rising over time." http://rameznaam.com/2015/06/04/whats-the-eroi-of-solar/

The same project published goals last year, for 2030. 2011 goals targetting 2020: $0.09 per kilowatt hour for residential photovoltaics (PV) $0.07 per kilowatt hour for commercial PV $0.06 per kilowatt hour for utility-scale PV 2016 goals for 2030: $0.05 per kilowatt hour for residential PV $0.04 per kilowatt hour for commercial PV $0.03 per kilowatt hour for utility-scale PV This slightly older piece from 2015 make some projections based on a 16% learning rate and suggests various large orgs have estimated similar levels: http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap-ind…

Everything that Elon Musk is doing has a foundation on First Principles: https://medium.com/the-mission/first-principles-and-the-art-of-thinkin… tl;dr -- 1) Reduce the problem to a question answerable by a hard science like physics, chemistry, or biology, and pay attention to the theoretical limits. 2) If you can, find data on related industries and see if you can find long term trends. (Example: http://rameznaam.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Lithium-ion-battery-pr… ) 3) Extrapolate into the future. 4) Think of some way to exploit the information you've uncovered to gain a market advantage. Other helpful techniques: Is there an industry which is subject to some form of bureaucracy which is distorting the market? How can technology be used to disrupt this?

I just started reading the Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam (http://rameznaam.com/nexus/). It's quite good so far, and explores some of these concepts from a sci-fi bent.

Some folks are certainly hinting at it. http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap-ind…

Before getting too excited, realize this is for solar in Abu Dhabi, where umm...they get tons of sunlight as it were :) Though his other graph "predicts" that solar in more temperate climes will equal natural gas in "2020?" http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap-ind…

Not even remotely, off shore turbines are much, much more efficient. Newer turbines already have capacity factors of over 40%, newer off shore turbines can exceed 50%. http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/30/how-steady-can-the-wind-blow/

I've got your prospectus right here: http://rameznaam.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Welcome-to-the-Terrord…

Lithium Ion battery prices have come down 40% since 2010 (see third graph[1]), and that is /caused/ by the increasing demand (it's called a manufacturing learning curve[2] of which Moore's law is just an example). Tesla's strategy is to drive volumes with gradually more affordable cars to bring down battery costs until there is a crossover where gasoline cars are impractical. That also explains the Gigafactory and the wall battery. So far, it's working. [1] http://rameznaam.com/2013/09/25/energy-storage-gets-exponentially-chea… [2] http://www.strategosinc.com/articles/strategy/learning_curves.htm

Hi. I'm the author of this blog post. Happy to answer questions people have, as time allows, on Wednesday. Upcoming posts will look at the future of wind power, the future of energy storage, and what the missing pieces are. If you don't want to wait, you can read my thoughts on energy storage here: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-big-and-ch…