Wind, solar, and energy storage will not be dominant
First, before everyone thinks that wind, solar, and batteries are the future of electricity, everyone reading should know a key statistic against a future where wind and solar are dominant: we've started investing heavily in those three since 2000. We're almost halfway to 2050; yet the wind and solar percentage in the global electricity mix doesn't even make up a fourth of it. If we keep on going like this, we're only going to achieve a dominant wind and solar future at the end of this century. If you aren't convinced, a wind and solar dominant world would require a lot of land to provide for the world's electricity needs, and as they increase, the amount of land covered by wind and solar would only increase. The materials needed to make wind turbines and solar panels would have to be acquired by rare earth mining, which would have to take place in countries like China since the environmental regulations in rich countries would be too much of a blocker.
What this means is that when you are giving other countries like China control of all your electricity, they can play with it all they want and you can't complain about it. This would lead to an economic recession, and you would have to do their bidding. For example, the oil crisis of the 1970s had devastating impacts on the West, which relied so heavily on the fuel. Prices skyrocketed, and the West went into economic collapse. The crisis ended once the West did the Middle East's bidding. If the US becomes a nation that runs on a wind and solar dominant economy, the same thing could happen, except this time it's China with the embargo on the materials required to make the wind turbines and solar panels for a wind and solar dominant US economy. Tensions with China are already increasing. Do we really want China to have this kind of advantage in our current situation?
On top of that, much of the work to mine the rare earth materials for wind, solar, and batteries in the poor countries is done by unpaid and child labor. If you're still not convinced yet, a world where the majority of power generation is by wind and solar, energy prices would only benefit the rich. For example, in Germany, a nation committed to a wind and solar dominant economy, households struggle to pay electricity bills so much that the government has to step in. All these reasons and evidence clearly makes a case that a dominant solar and wind economy clearly isn't the way forward. So then, how should we go about our electricity future?
A picture of a real life solar distopya in California
The replacement to an economy that depends of wind, solar, and energy storage
Enter the reliable sources of clean energy: hydropower, geothermal, and nuclear. Instead of using dirty batteries to store solar and wind energy, use other sources of clean electricity to make up for their absence. Wait ... what about hydropower? And nuclear? Aren't dams bad? My answer to that is yes, dams are bad and harmful for wildlife. However, there are other forms of hydropower like tidal energy, wave energy, and ocean thermal energy. For harnessing electricity from rivers, instead of dams, which are expensive and take years to build, you could build side canals fitted with turbines. These could be controlled by gates which control the flow of water. Since they are on the sides of a river, the impact on wildlife is very minimal. As for nuclear, the propaganda you've heard about nuclear proliferation, safety, and radioactive waste are false, unless you've heard that nuclear power cannot be turned into nuclear weapons, it is one of the most safest energies out there, and nuclear waste is not that bad and is stored in dry cask storage or recycled. If you're still skeptical, check out this video.
Alright, back to our electricity system. Once you've got hydropower figured out, start building geothermal where you can. Now that you've used up all the reliable renewable power, it's time to use nuclear in order to fill in the "gaps", aka the places where there isn't enough power to support the electricity needs of that place. This works because you don't need any magical technology since all of these technologies have been proven to work and be affordable in real world scenarios. For example, take Iceland and France. Iceland gets lots of clean electricity from geothermal and hydropower, and France gets a lot of its own from nuclear. Guess what the end result is? The end result is affordable, clean, secure 24/7 electricity whenever people need it. Oh, and it doesn't involve slave labor in poor countries and the risk of an embargo on the rare earth materials you need for your solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries are obsolete. Essentially, this is the perfect electricity system for countries or states trying to decarbonize like Germany. On top of that, it gives poor, third world countries a chance of being able to feed its population the electricity it needs without adding carbon into the atmosphere. If there is a Holy Grail to decarbonizing, it is this. The resources required for this electricity system are everywhere. Hence, this system can outperform the so called "future" of electricity of wind, solar, and batteries by giving people affordable, clean, secure 24/7 electricity whenever they need it.
However, wind and solar are still an important part of our clean energy future. The sources of hydro, geothermal, and nuclear are centralized energy sources, meaning that they can't be spread out. However, solar, wind and energy storage are decentralized, meaning that they can be spread all around. This gives decentralized energy sources like solar and wind and advantage in places where there isn't much electricity demand per square foot. In these environments, our centralized energy sources of nuclear, hydro, and geothermal simply aren't practical because of the transmission losses and costs. Now, electricity might cost a lot for customers in the short term, but government-built microgrids that get their power by private utilities can minimize short term costs, since there will be a lot of competition between utilities to give customers the cheapest price, since the people getting the electricity will choose the cheapest price, and on top of that, government subsidies and other methods can reduce the price of electricity for consumers. Finally, in the long run, solar and wind microgrids become cheaper for the customer, hence doing away with the affordability problem. On top of that, these microgids bring jobs to the people living in the areas it serves, stimulating the local economy and increasing the investment into rural areas. This clearly gives solar and wind a whole other market with a lot of opportunity. Meanwhile, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear power generate reliable, 24/7, on demand, clean electricity for our cities and suburbs. Also, microgids can be connected with neighboring microgrids, creating a bigger interconnected grid system. Hence, we have devised a feasible and sustainable alternative to the pipe dream that wind and solar will make up most of the energy budget.
The warm water that Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant pours into the ocean is a haven for whales and other sea animals.
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