'[H]ere are what I believe to be the main problems with the work:
The principal driver of the whole thing is a forecast of rapid and continuous declines in the cost of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. The assumption is that costs of these things will continue to decline exponentially without limit indefinitely into the future. From the “Results” section: “We know of no empirical evidence supporting floor costs and do not impose them . . . “ Of the three technologies at issue (wind, solar, and batteries), the one I know the most about is batteries. Here is the Way, et al., chart of price history of batteries and the projection they use for the future:
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As to continuing rapid declines in the prices of wind turbines and solar panels, I’ll believe it when I see it. Yes there have been substantial declines to date. But at this point these strike me as mature technologies. The main issues in getting them built and operational are mining and processing huge quantities of metals and minerals, forming the metals and minerals into the devices, transporting the (very large and heavy) devices to their sites, and installing them. How are those things going to get cheaper by any substantial amount, let alone another order of magnitude?
The treatment of the energy storage problem in this paper is wholly inadequate, and bordering on the fantastical. The cost fantasies as to short-term storage are discussed above. As to longer term storage, from the Supplemental Information, pages 38-45, it appears that the proposed solution is almost entirely hydrogen, supposedly to be produced by electrolysis from water. (Here, they mostly.call the proposed storage medium “P2X fuels,” somehow implying that it might be something other than hydrogen, much like with New York and its “DEFR” fantasy.). There is currently essentially no existing prototype or demonstration project of this so-called “green hydrogen” anywhere in the world from which realistic cost projections can be derived. (From the 2022 JP Morgan Asset Management Annual Energy Paper, page 39: “Current green hydrogen production is negligible. . . .”). Way, et al., do cite some costs of existing electrolyzers, but I can find no discussion in the paper of the issue that producing hydrogen on a scale sufficient to back up the entire world electricity system is going to require electrolyzing the ocean. And the millions of tons of toxic chlorine gas thereby produced are going to go — where? The problems of dealing with enormous amounts of hydrogen — like explosiveness, embrittlement of pipelines, and the like — are dealt with with a wave of the hand. The creation of a massive green hydrogen infrastructure as the backup for wind and sun hasn’t even been begun by the most fanatical of the green energy crazies like Germany, California or New York. They take one look at the real costs and balk.'