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Ramez Naam Profile picture
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7 May, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Today's a big day for long-duration (12 hour+) energy storage. ESS Inc (@ESS_info) - which makes a low-cost, iron-sodium flow battery with unlimited cycle life - is going public via a SPAC merger, with $465m of fresh capital to help them scale. essinc.com/2021/05/07/ess… 1/n
I'm personally very excited. One of the very first angel investments in clean energy I made was to ESS, at the time a tiny company in Oregon, who had technology that showed promise to bring the cost of 12 hour storage down to pennies per kwh. 2/n
Based on what they showed me in 2015, I believed that ESS could make grid energy storage cheap enough to solve the day/night cycle - that some combination of solar, wind, and ESS's flow batteries would be cheaper than coal or gas almost everywhere. 3/n
That future of cheap 12 hour storage, coupled w cheap solar/wind, is now being realized. There are still hard storage problems to solve (like multi-day), but this is a very substantial step forward for decarbonizing electricity.

Congrats @ESS_info! essinc.com/2021/05/07/ess…

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More from @ramez

Ramez Naam Profile picture
26 Mar
The US Department of Energy has new solar cost targets: 2 cents / kwh in average locations (Kansas City, MO) by 2030. This is a phenomenal goal, welcome additional investment in advanced solar R&D, and also very plausible. A short thread. 1/n
Achieving DOE's target of 60% cost reduction of solar by 2030 would make solar the cheapest source of electricity over most of the US. 2/n
Hitting DOE's 2030 solar cost target would also mean that new solar electricity would cheaper than the operating cost of *existing* coal and natural gas plants (at least during daylight hours). I talked about this as the 3rd Phase of Clean Energy: rameznaam.com/2019/04/02/the… 3/n
Read 8 tweets
Ramez Naam Profile picture
16 Aug 20
@WiedenhoferD @jasonhickel @DrSimEvans That's a very good & important question.

I'm concerned about & oppose telling people that solving climate change requires them to reduce their consumption because the evidence is that it alienates people & generates political blowback, making it *harder* to get climate action.
@WiedenhoferD @jasonhickel @DrSimEvans There is evidence from numerous studies & the real world that messages that tie climate action to a requirement to reduce consumption have the effect of:
1. Reducing belief that climate change is human-caused and/or serious.
2. Pushing moderates and "less concerned" away. 2/n
@WiedenhoferD @jasonhickel @DrSimEvans On the flip side, messages *and* policies that focus on scaling clean solutions and on innovation to make clean technologies better:
1. Test far better in lab studies.
2. On the policy side, have been far more likely to be passed. 3/n
Read 7 tweets
Ramez Naam Profile picture
8 Aug 20
@chrisnelder @gnievchenko @JustinHGillis @SEANC @Gimon @cody_a_hill @leahstokes @cleantechsonia Here's how I see it. There are three categories for green hydrogen economically:
1. Already cost competitive w fossil.
2. On path to be cost competitive with fossil w/o subsidies.
3. Might never be cost competitive w/o subsidies, but might be cheapest clean option w policy. 1/n
@chrisnelder @gnievchenko @JustinHGillis @SEANC @Gimon @cody_a_hill @leahstokes @cleantechsonia Green hydrogen category 1: Already cheaper than fossil or brown hydrogen.

Very little here. Yet.

2/n
@chrisnelder @gnievchenko @JustinHGillis @SEANC @Gimon @cody_a_hill @leahstokes @cleantechsonia Green hydrogen category 2: On path to be eventually be cheaper than fossil or brown h2 w/o subsidies:

Quite a bit here. Basically everything we use brown h2 for. $140B market. Ammonia for fertilizer. Refineries (ironic). Semiconductor plants.

Gniewomir's work here.

3/n
Read 5 tweets
Ramez Naam Profile picture
14 May 20
THREAD: Solar is plunging in cost faster than anyone, including me, predicted. Today I'm publishing an update of my solar cost forecasts from 2015, with more data & improved methods. Tl;dr: Solar is on path to become insanely, world-changingly cheap. rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/sol… 1/20
Over the last decade, from 2010 - 2020, the unsubsidized cost of solar electricity from utility scale projects has dropped by a factor of 5 or more. That's consistent in global average data, and in the US, India, & China. Solar is now often competitive with new coal or gas. 2/20
Solar has dropped in cost far faster than any forecaster expected. Solar prices in 2020 are half of what I projected in 2011. They're a quarter of what the IEA projected in 2010. 3/20
Read 20 tweets
Ramez Naam Profile picture
3 May 20
Okay, energy twitter. Solar costs are coming down faster than just about anyone, including me, forecast. So I'm committing to publishing an update of my solar cost forecast this coming week. Spoiler: It shows a rather stunning pace of solar decline. Many won't believe it. 1/4
In addition, I'm going to publish an analysis of why my previous forecasts (while being perhaps the most optimistic out there) were still too conservative.

A single conceptual issue explains about 2/3 of the forecast miss from 2015. 2/4
I did that analysis because I needed to understand for myself the reason for the forecasting error. And because I think forecasters have an ethical obligation to assess the accuracy of their previous forecasts, and to improve their methods using that data. 3/4
Read 4 tweets
Ramez Naam Profile picture
19 Mar 20
How will coronavirus affect clean energy? One point I haven't seen made: By lowering interest rates (and probably keeping them low for years to come), coronavirus will help the competitiveness of clean energy. Brief thread. 1/7
Low interest rates are a blessing to renewables and storage. Why? Because fossil electricity costs are a mix of capital cost (building the powerplant) and fuel costs (the coal or gas going into the plant).

Renewables, with no fuel, are almost entirely capital cost. 2/7
Fuel costs are something you pay as you operate the plant.

But to build a powerplant, you have to borrow the capital to construct it. Interest rates matter.

Thus, the cost of solar, wind, & storage (all capital, no fuel) are much more sensitive to borrowing costs. 3/7
Read 7 tweets

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