Technology

Working in the mining sector, I do worry about the ability of metals production to keep pace with demand

If mining can't keep up, recycling will fill in the gaps. We toss a lot of metal into landfill and regularly replace electronics that could easily be repaired. I think we'll be fine.

I think some people underestimate how much work will need to be done on grids before solar/wind can dominate?

I took a team of three electricians about four hours to install solar on my home. They were done by lunch time and did a second home in the neighbourhood the same day, and that included connecting the panels to the grid — most of the power we produce is sold to the grid. It didn't cost much either - the four hours labour was about a third of the cost to give you some idea.

It's a relatively small system, but even on an overcast day they produce more power than we use even under peak load situations. On a sunny day it produces more power than we use in a week.

Obviously we're still drawing power from the grid overnight... but I was happy to learn (after seeing the metrics produced by our new solar system) that we don't use much power overnight and could easily use less - it's mostly just our kitchen fridge which is close to end of life anyway and we will be replacing it with a more efficient one.

Overnight grid power can easily be covered by wind/hydro. NIMBY is definitely a struggle there, but it can be managed. And nuclear is even worse - nobody wants to live near a nuclear power plant. Nobody even wants to live near a road that is occasionally used to transport radioactive materials.

But the real deathblow for nuclear power is it takes an average 7.5 years to build a nuclear power plant. That doesn't compare favourably at all to 4 hours for an adequately sized solar system and anyone building a nuclear power plant runs the risk that by the time they start operations, they might find nobody wants to buy the power they're producing. In seven years time there's a pretty good chance I will have added a battery to my solar system and we'll only be drawing power from the grid if there's something wrong with our own power system. There's no way I'd get behind investing billions of dollars in a nuclear power plant - there's just too much risk.

A huge portion of our overnight power consumption right now is big industry consumers that operate at night because baseload power is really cheap at night. That demand won't last - as more and more solar is installed those operations are transitioning to daytime operations. It's already started, aluminium for example is now about a hundred dollars per ton cheaper to produce with solar than with fossil fuels. Which means the entire industry needs to switch over, and fast, or else they won't be able to find anyone who will buy what they're producing.