Aug. 9, 2023

The Red Knight and the Dawn of the Solar Dragon, Part 3

On the next Probably True Solar Stories, we conclude the Red Knight and the Dawn of the Solar Dragon. The evil King Maxwell and his Red Knight, Goran, have started the Second Dragon War, trying to replace the moody, but docile energy dragons with fossil fuels. The dragons fight back with their fire breath. But can they win the war without the help of solar power?

True Solar Takeaways

  • The world needs more solar and clean energy workers. Transitioning to clean energy will create more jobs than the jobs lost from winding down fossil fuels. In fact, The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that the clean energy transition is expected to create 10.3 million net new jobs by 2030, which will offset the 2.7 million expected to be lost in the fossil fuel industry.
  • Yes, converting the world to 100% solar and renewables has some challenges. As mentioned, they include the need for:
    • More batteries for short and especially long-duration storage
    • New transmission lines and related infrastructure, and new utility interconnection infrastructure must be built
    • Excessive and non-standard permitting regulations increase costs and are slowing down the solar and wind deployment.
    • The Duck Curve, which is actually an energy wonk graph. It shows that as solar becomes more dominant on the grid, its share of grid power goes down dramatically as the sun sets. As a result, the need for batteries or other power ramps up dramatically from 4pm to 10pm.