Comment by nradov
4 days ago
How would you define "commercially successful"? The first fusion power plants will only get built with huge government subsides. Some governments like China look at this as a strategic, existential issue and will pay whatever it costs to make it work. They don't like being dependent on foreign fossil fuel supplies that the USA could easily interdict.
I’m in the USA and don’t like being dependent on foreign fuel supplies!
I think there was (maybe still possible?) a real missed opportunity to pitch green energy in a national security or America First way. I don’t think the average republican voter wants us to be as tied to OPEC the way we are.
We could still product as much—or more!—oil in Texas while reducing our care for anything in the Middle East.
The US is a net fossil fuel exporter at this point. In 2023 we inported $283 billion in fossil fuels and exported $361 billion (sauce: https://oec.world/en/profile/country/usa?yearlyTradeFlowSele...)
The real missed opportunity IMO is one of not communicating how well we are doing.
Whether it's a net importer or net exporter is a red herring. If something unsavory happens in Iran, the price of gas is going to move.
National security arguments also don't work in cases like this, because "national security" isn't the real reason the government does a thing, it's the excuse given to the public when Republicans want an unconstitutional boondoggle. But fossil fuel companies are a Republican constituency so it would typically be the Democrats advocating for something like that and their excuse calendar uses different phrases.
If you want to get Republicans to support it you either need to bring it within their cultural norms to want it, e.g. American-made Cybertruck can stomp their old truck in a drag race and the Tesla guy is their friend now, or it just needs to be more profitable so they want solar on their roof to save on electricity.
You can also use different methods when appealing to people with different values. Typical plan from the left is to subsidize it with tax dollars, but you can also ask things like, what makes solar installations expensive? Are there ways to make it easier for homeowners to do it themselves to avoid costly professional installation? Is there some kind of regulatory capture causing things like inverters and transfer switches to cost two orders of magnitude more than the price of their raw materials? Try thinking like the people you're trying to convince if you want to get them on your side.
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worth noting that california is still dependent on OPEC iirc. i suppose in a pinch they could get their fuel from the rest of the states
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Green energy has its own fundamental economic advantages over any petroleum energy generation. You know, barring grid and storage adaptation.
I believe the trend in Lazards is that storage+wind or storage+solar will drop under natural gas combined cycle this year or next year on a LCOE basis.
> first fusion power plants will only get built with huge government subsides
This is true of every energy system ever.
I believe that was actually their point. To say that it is still a long way before a functioning fusion reactor will be build, let alone the first that will be built as commercially viable standalone without subsidies.
Something requiring huge government subsidies has no bearing on its timeline. (Source: the literal Manhattan Project.)
> let alone the first that will be built as commercially viable standalone without subsidies
The entire enterprise is practically government subsidies. The recent advent of VC is a rounding error.
I just meant “they generate power and sell it”, which, I realize now isn’t exactly what I said / what I said wasn’t exactly what I meant.
I mean I could generate power and sell it by burning antique furniture but that doesn't make it commercially viable. At some point any new power source will have to show a positive return on investment by some reasonable accounting measure.