- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
dialecticaldispatches.substack.com
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- Surprised you didn’t mention China now starting to build the world’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Yarlung river. Dovetails perfectly with the point you are making here and the other examples you gave. That’s an additional 60GW by 2035, or maybe even earlier. - Great write-up by the way! - Oh yeah, totally forgot about that one, there’s just so much crazy stuff happening in China in now. And thanks, I have an idea for a follow up too. I was reading a bit about how the chips burn out after 2-3 years of use, and you need rare earths for their manufacturing. With China cutting the supply off, the west might find itself with a chip shortage soon. 
 
 - Solar is really the star of the show. It is getting incredibly cheap, increasingly automated, and are expected to last 30-40 years while retaining >80% generation capacity. Funnily enough, the US is losing in this area to India. They aren’t even trying to compete with China at this point. - For sure, solar turns out to be just incredibly cheap to deploy. The really neat part is that solar farms can also be good for agriculture. https://www.statkraft.com/newsroom/explained/agrivoltaics-combining-solar-panels-and-agriculture/ - Even better, you can literally slap a bunch of them in the desert and improve the soil quality and plant diversity. It’s a great way to fight desertification for no additional effort. - yup 
 
 
 




