>>16685219
>>16685221
>maintenance
You misunderstand, I'm saying maintenance is basically the same or better - the only outlier is nuclear and potentially mismanaged hydro - so it doesn't really drive the savings. The actual long-term cost saving is from zero need for fuel or fuel infrastructure. The low operating cost of wind and solar puts downward pressure on hydro and nuclear energy prices as well, but they are more able to survive those prices because their electricity price isn't tied directly to the value of a physically mined commodity.

And again, this is a long-term view of factors with renewables that fossil fuel electricity just can't compete with. Thermodynamics, chemistry, and geology aren't exactly flexible constraints. The useful idiots these days are somewhat aware of this, but cope by convincing themselves that every solar panel and wind turbine uses a literal ton of gallium arsenide (niche hyper-efficient solar panel tech we don't use at scale) and rare earths per week or something. Nonsensical fairy tales completely detached from reality are the only way to maintain the "renewables will never succeed" conclusion they have become emotionally attached to because they were told to be.

Meanwhile people intellectually capable of doing the math for it, geographically capable of having the space for it (i.e. landowners), and financially capable of buying and installing the parts for it know that the tech just works as advertised - they aren't putting "fake joules" into the grid, after all - and have the tech working as advertised on their properties. I'm personally only at the first two qualifiers (although I cheated the first with computers, as one does), but working on the third.

In terms of medium-term effects on fuel production, though, I think solar is fairly likely to kill biofuel. Biofuel is still subsidized to hell, and still not able to compete with the ROI and operating cost reduction of replacing a biofuel corn field with a solar array.

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What does the future hold for green energy in the next decades?