The external costs of energy storage are enormous and further lower the already appallingly low energy to mass ratio of so called "renewable energy."
When you store energy you waste it. This is a function of the second law of thermodyamics, which cannot be repealed by wishful thinking. Given that the solar and wind industries on this planet remain, after half a century of mindless cheering, trivial sources of energy, attempts to store it will make it even less useful than it is now, and it isn't useful at all.
From my perspective after 30 years of study of energy issues in the primary scientific literature, I've come to the conclusion that the enthusiasm for increasingly tortured Rube Goldberg schemes to make was does not work seem to work is tantamount to embracing the environmental benefits of gasoline.
Most people don't know this, but when the automobile was invented most people were wild with enthusiasm because it would solve the "problem" of horse manure on city streets.
Divorce you car
The car was also thought of as a wonderful way to break the power of the "railroad robber barons" who dominated the late 19th century American economy.
The result has been a huge contribution to the complete destruction of the planetary atmosphere, as well as water supplies, and huge stretches of the earth's crust.
The disastrous and intellectually inexplicable enthusiasm for so called "renewable energy" is exactly like the enthusiasm for the automobile, the automobile being the first and most noxious example of "distributed energy" writ large.
It's a Santayana moment, "those who do remember the past..."
The "renewable energy" fantasy has not worked, it is not working, and it will not work. The reason, to repeat, is the energy to mass ratio.
Have a nice Saturday afternoon.
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