Which form of energy will be the most dominant in the future?
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Near future? What u/NumerousKangaroo8286 said
Turn of the next century? Fusion.
Unless Fusion takes its form in small modular reactors, it will not likely be able to compete with solar on cost per kilowatt hour. The fixed cost of building reactors relative to the fixed costs that solar benefits from economies of scale is already leagues apart.
The good news is Solar will fulfill all human energy needs in the next 10-15 years on the current trend line.
How it can fulfill heating in winter in central or northern Europe? There is no way to store such amount of energy. And heating is one of the largest energy consumptions.
Short term storage through batteries is getting cheaper - but capacity only holds for 5-7 days. Which may be the limitation you may be referring to.
However, Solar energy can be stored indefinitely as hydrogen and real innovation is happening around long-term storage. You could collect PV energy on low-cost land during Summer months and store as Hydrogen through the winter - convert back to short term storage for practical purposes as demand increases. This could be built in parallel and scaled. Generation, transmission, and storage would all benefit from economies of scale.
On a wide enough scale (continent-level), solar energy is averaged out very well. HVDC lines are amazing transporting ridiculous amounts of power over large distances and they are getting better and cheaper as technology advances.
All humanity needs to do is stop hating each other because of invisible lines on our maps and we have a perfectly working solution for a constant energy supply using wind and solar without needing any battery storage.
(a) if you build or retrofit houses to be passiv haus standard you need little to no energy to heat the house using a heat pump.
(b) Northern and central Europe have the potential for a huge amount of wind power from the north sea which is most active in winter. 300GW capacity is the target for 2050.
(c) There are ways to store that energy, whether long term in pumped hydro (or hopefully iron-air batteries - first grid scale installation comes next year in the USA) or short term in chemical batteries esp. home and vehicle batteries.
(d) Add in smart systems so you'll heat your house at points in the day/night when there is excess electricity reducing the need to do so when you need it and the grid doesn't have spare - or if not heat your house charge up your battery to use later.
If I've understood this correctly then
"Production of derived heat from solid fossil fuels continued its long term decreasing trend into 2021: since 2000 it decreased by 40.5 % to 125 TWh"
125 TWh is what the EU still needs to cover - note the existing decrease which is likely to be due to more energy efficient homes, and we'll continue to see gains in that area though I've no idea how much more is to come
Also heat pumps are 3-4 times more efficient than gas etc boilers so I think we can knock that down to sky 45TWh.
At 40% capacity factor that north sea is going to produce a bit over 1,000TWh each year, mostly in winter when heating is needed.
TLDR is “pure solar will NOT fulfill all energy needs”. Renewable energy sources might
and we'll continue to see gains in that area though I've no idea how much more is to come
A lot. There are still mass savings possible by retrofitting tens of millions of houses. Very efficient way of reducing energy needs.
Yeah that's fair and I forgot the OP has said solar will meet all needs but that's not how things are actually being built.
I know there's still lots more housing to be worked on in the UK, I suppose it's good to hear that's the case more widely too, reducing energy demands is definitely a big part of the equation especially with heating/cooling homes
Technically, that is a trivial problem. Solar is getting so stupid cheap it's better to just make tons of hydrogen or synthetic methane during the summer and just store it for winter. Our food supply is grown in a seasonal manner. There is no reason our energy supply can't also be a seasonal affair.
Sure, but there is no mass hydrogen or methane production as of now.
You think if they end up spraying particles into the atmosphere to block the sun and cool the earth that might impact the ability of solar to meet energy demands?
No. The Sun delivers 10,000 times the worlds energy demands every day. We could reduce UV exposure on the surface of earth by 99% and there would still be enough energy hitting the earth every day to power all of humanity's energy demands for a millennia.
And we are learning how to capture it more efficiently and store it more efficiently every day.
Nice. So why isn't it being done already? Are we waiting for technology to advance, or what's the hold up?
It is being done. Solar has been on an exponential curve since its introduction. However, only in the last 15 years have we seen that curve begin to turn vertical and the cost-effective solutions fall by the way side.
I do not agree that oil purposely made solar a less desirable option. Solar was simply not cost-effective relative to non-renewable sources.
However, the price per kilowatt per hour per constant dollar is dropping exponentially. The economies of scale have tipped and nothing will come even close to Solar going forward.
Page 9 and 10 of this report makes the comparison stark: https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf