Solar and wind to top coal power in US for first time in 2024
Solar and wind power are rapidly becoming cheaper and more widely deployed in the US, to the point where their generation is projected to exceed coal for the first time. Commenters debate how fast this shift can continue, whether renewables plus storage and demand management can reliably replace fossil fuels and nuclear for baseload power, and how metrics like levelized cost of energy can mislead when they ignore intermittency and backup requirements. The exchange highlights tensions between economic trends, technological limits on storage and seasonal reliability, and the role of policy, grid design, and even land use in reaching deep decarbonization.
Adoption trends and forecasts
- Many commenters say wind/solar growth is accelerating, often described as exponential, supported by charts of PV deployment outpacing older IEA projections.
- Others point to long‑term US data showing renewables’ electricity share rising ~1 percentage point per year since 2007, which naïvely implies many decades to reach 100%.
- Several note that predictions about energy mixes have historically been poor; extrapolations are seen as fragile.
- Some argue growth is mostly displacing coal with gas so far, with limited evidence yet that fossil generation is falling overall.
Costs: solar, wind, nuclear, gas, storage
- Broad agreement that new utility‑scale solar and wind are now cheaper than new coal or nuclear, and in many cases the cheapest new capacity.
- Disagreement on nuclear: some call it “enormously” expensive and dependent on subsidies and liability caps; others argue cost overruns are political/regulatory and that nuclear is the only proven 24/7 low‑carbon baseload.
- Dispute over LCOE: nuclear critics cite large cost gaps; nuclear defenders say LCOE understates integration costs of intermittent renewables.
- Batteries are seen as a major cost/constraint; some say even including storage, renewables beat nuclear, others say grid‑scale storage for long durations remains prohibitively expensive.
Grid reliability, storage, and system design
- Consensus that intermittency (night, “Dunkelflaute”, seasons) is the central technical challenge.
- Proposed solutions: mix of solar + wind (often anticorrelated), pumped hydro, hydrogen or synthetic fuels, long‑duration batteries, overbuilding solar, improved transmission (inter‑regional HVDC), and demand‑shifting via EVs, heat pumps, insulation, and smart grids.
- Debate over using EV batteries for vehicle‑to‑grid: some see it as key; others think owners will resist extra cycling.
- Seasonal storage is flagged as particularly hard; long‑range transmission and hydro/wind diversity seen as more realistic than storing months of energy in batteries.
Policy, politics, and markets
- Several emphasize that economics now strongly favor renewables, but policy, grid planning, and incumbent utilities/fossil interests slow adoption.
- Examples include restrictive rooftop solar rules in some states and earlier policy choices that harmed domestic solar manufacturing.
- Others argue a carbon price would be more efficient than many targeted subsidies.
Land use and local impacts
- Concerns raised about solar displacing farmland; responses note large land availability, current use of cropland for ethanol, and possibilities like agrivoltaics and siting in deserts or non‑food land.