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derkonigistnackt t1_j6a1jbh wrote

Reply to comment by Regularguy10369 in Hundreds of climate activists were arrested in The Hague after blocking the A12 highway in both ways on Saturday afternoon in protest at government subsidies for fossil fuels such as oil and gas by DoremusJessup

Maybe in 15 or 20 years when/if materials science has figured a way to store this stuff. As it currently is, not only is solar ineffective in most geographies, but the carbon footprint of panels and batteries is faaaaarr from carbon neutral, and the effort it would take to scale it up to every green's wet dream is unsustainable.

Source before I get screamed at https://youtu.be/LtH9rJAHbEA

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WalkerMx t1_j6a45o3 wrote

Batteries will pretty much never be the way to go, but we've had the technology to store energy en-mass for nearly a century.

Store it as hydro. During the day, use the surplus solar power to pump water into a reservoir. At night, when the solar wanes, begin emptying the reservoir and generating hydro power.

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CucumberBoy00 t1_j6a7x7a wrote

There are a lot of ways to store energy we're just not sticking out neck out to build the infrastructure

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CarpetbaggerForPeace t1_j6al8iz wrote

We should do that but it isn't optimal for everywhere. For instance, lack of mountains with areas you are willing to flood. That said, there are other ways to store energy for nighttime.

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AGVann t1_j6bsq06 wrote

Climate change is also a risk factor since hydro of course depends on rainfall, which is going to be changing over this century.

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CarpetbaggerForPeace t1_j6al1db wrote

Solar cells last more than 20 years and definitely are net negative on carbon multiple times on that time scale. Also, energy use is at a maximum when the sun is up. Something about people being awake.

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