> This is true - however we also need to recognize the technology is not ready today. It might be tomorrow, but throwing everything out and going full-in on green tech today is foolhardy.
It is ready today. Look at Denmark. It's more expensive than coal but it's cheaper if you factor in the externalities, and it's cheaper than nuclear. Therefore, it's ready. Also, your second sentence is a non-sequitur. If it really was true that it wasn't ready, that's all the more reason to throw even more money at it in order to figure out how to make it ready.
> That will just burn developing nations and make them less likely to trust us next time we come up with some amazing new solution to all their problems...
How are you burning developing nations by subsidizing their energy such that they are financially better off doing it than not doing it? This reasoning does not make sense.
> It's more expensive than coal but it's cheaper if you factor in the externalities
Developing nations do not care about your supposed externalities. Caring about these things is a luxury they cannot afford in the literal sense.
> and it's cheaper than nuclear.
This is almost entirely the fault of deliberately crushing regulation... but that's a political choice not a technical one.
> Therefore, it's ready
Hardly. Nobody as-of yet has developed a reasonably priced, long-lived and efficient means of storage. Without this missing key, all the wind farms in the world will not keep the lights on when the wind doesn't blow...
> This reasoning does not make sense.
You'd have burned them pretty badly if you compelled them to install solar even 10 years ago because of how inefficient it was compared to other cheaper means of energy production. Even in the past 10 years solar tech has come so very far... that is my point about it not being ready yet. We still have a long ways to go in renewables before they can realistically replace energy production in mandatory environments, ie. environments that don't have the luxury of trying out new expensive unproven tech and changing it as the technology develops.
> Developing nations do not care about your supposed externalities. Caring about these things is a luxury they cannot afford in the literal sense.
Then WE (the west) pay for the cost to eliminate the externalities. We will pay for them either way and the only reason they can't afford it is we stole all their shit.
> You'd have burned them pretty badly if you compelled them to install solar even 10 years ago because of how inefficient it was compared to other cheaper means of energy production. Even in the past 10 years solar tech has come so very far... that is my point about it not being ready yet.
Utter nonsense. Slap in a combined CSP + PV station and call it done. Where >50% of the people live it's more reliable than coal or nuclear, the marginal costs stay in the local economy rather than going to rio tinto and paying half (unconditionally, no loan) costs significantly less than the externalities that reach us from a coal plant.
There are areas where this doesn't work, but 1 coal, 1 wind, and 2 solar is cheaper than 2 coal, and having ~2 units of constant power and 1 unit of intermittent has more uses than 2 units of constant.
Developing nations don't need to care about externalities if wealthy countries subsidized their transition. I also note that we've pivoted from "problem countries", which I assumed to mean large countries like China or India, which themselves are fairly poor on a per-capita basis, to exclusively extremely poor countries, which excludes China and India probably because it's inconvenient for the narrative that they're transitioning by themselves.
> Nobody as-of yet has developed a reasonably priced, long-lived and efficient means of storage
You don't need storage to get the grid to 80%+ renewables. Storage as a blocker is a political talking point that is not substantiated and not true. Denmark is the case study that shows why. Also, storage costs are linear decreasing on a log scale.
> You'd have burned them pretty badly if you compelled them to install solar even 10 years ago because of how inefficient it was compared to other cheaper means of energy production. Even in the past 10 years solar tech has come so very far... that is my point about it not being ready yet. We still have a long ways to go in renewables before they can realistically replace energy production in mandatory environments, ie. environments that don't have the luxury of trying out new expensive unproven tech and changing it as the technology develops.
You're repeating the same things that I've already addressed. You're not "burning" poor countries if you're paying for it. You can't "burn" a country by making them financially better off. It is not a logically coherent point. Also, the tech is proven -- in actual practice, in reality, today, already implemented -- after you factor in the costs of externalities. And that picture will only get better and better as more money flows into R&D and the cost curve continues to decline as a direct consequence of that funding.
It is ready today. Look at Denmark. It's more expensive than coal but it's cheaper if you factor in the externalities, and it's cheaper than nuclear. Therefore, it's ready. Also, your second sentence is a non-sequitur. If it really was true that it wasn't ready, that's all the more reason to throw even more money at it in order to figure out how to make it ready.
> That will just burn developing nations and make them less likely to trust us next time we come up with some amazing new solution to all their problems...
How are you burning developing nations by subsidizing their energy such that they are financially better off doing it than not doing it? This reasoning does not make sense.