Without a downvote option available to me I will try to explain instead.

This statement - 'I'd rather pay more for electricity than die on an uninhabitable planet.' is in question.

Who wouldn't do that?? If it was as simple as that - logic would dictate that is the only valid option!

Unfortunately in the world of facts there is only incidental and anecdotal evidence that paying more for electricity would have even a small effect on the habitability of our planet.

To summarize - while it is possible to suggest it may have a positive impact; it is a huge leap to state this as fact in any way (and the largest disagreement I have personally).

To turn your logic on its head - if you believe this then maybe you would let me re-sell you your local electricity at 2x or 3x the price?

> Unfortunately in the world of facts there is only incidental and anecdotal evidence that paying more for electricity would have even a small effect on the habitability of our planet.

Huh? You're not really making sense here, and that's not what I've said. I'm not saying that the simple act of paying more for electricity will solve our climate-change problem. I'm merely stating that continuing to use non-renewable, polluting means of energy production is wrecking the planet.

If renewable energy is one thing we need to adopt to slow/stop/reverse that trend (available literature seems to point in that direction), and renewable energy is more expensive (as some people here are claiming), then I'm ok taking that hit.

> To turn your logic on its head - if you believe this then maybe you would let me re-sell you your local electricity at 2x or 3x the price?

That is a complete non-sequitur and has nothing to do with my position or the discussion at hand.

Put up 100 gigafactories, install turbines and/or solar everywhere, and buffer the off times with huge on premises batteries. I’m not sure if a 2-3x price increase will buy this in the short term, but going into this direction will have a positive effect.

Oh and that’s not my idea, it’s someone else’s ;)

Since price is a signal, I would not simply charge 2-3x more for local electricity, but instead switch to 30m charge windows for end customers. Prices change every 30m, and the consumers (or rather, their smart homes) decide whether to charge that Tesla right now, or wait until price goes down. Consumers will buy batteries to store electricity when it’s cheaper, giving an incentive to buy solar panels to match.

I’m glad you don’t have a downvote button, because having a conversation is so much more productive.

EDIT: Added paragraph before last.

Some countries do allow citizens to buy spot priced electricity. You may get it cheap for a while, but may also pay through your nose e.g. in case there's a disturbance in a cold winter day.

I know people who follow the spot electricity price and choose to warm up their wood stove when it makes economical sense.

That, of course, is worse for the environment but luckily unlikely to catch any wider usage.

> of course

This is not immediately obvious to me. Care to elaborate?

Inefficient wood burning for heat (in terms of compared to that generated by larger installations). There are some fairly efficient wood stoves, and they are more efficient than retail energy changed to heat... but they're still less efficient in terms of combustion than gas.

The less efficient than gas for combustion means an increase of soot and smoke. The soot leads to a reduction of albedo and an increase of heat capture in the environment.

While not always the case, many times, the design of the heating system for wood often has a significant portion of the heat escape the house (compared to a forced air gas furnace). This again reduces the overall efficiency of the system compared to other options.

With both gas and wood it is often the case that this is a whole house solution - not just heating the current room the person is in. There are many approaches to heating the person rather than heating the room (or house). I found http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not-sp... is an interesting read - the chairs and beds of old make a bit more sense in their design.

Small scale wood burning releases a lot more emissions than a purpose built power plant. Individual burning of wood and coal, either for cooking or heating purposes, is the culprit for a big part of the pollution in e.g. India and China.

"The cost of renewables will certainly go down as scale increases"

I think you have it somewhat backwards: the ordinary expectation would be increased per-unit costs with increased scale; but renewables are special because they are a hot technology field, so we are likely to see per-unit cost reductions as technology improves.

The reason that per-unit costs typically rise with scale (as illustrated with an upward-sloping supply curve) is because inputs become more scarce. For instance, the best wind and hydro locations are already taken, so new locations will be slightly worse, leading to higher production costs.

"Economies of scale" are an exception early in the supply curve where it slopes downward (due to better utilization of capital, etc.). We are probably past that point because the scale is already quite high, so the supply curve for a given product using a given process is probably upward-sloping, and there are no more economies of scale to be had.

The higher scales will finance technology improvements (in processes and products) so I agree with your overall point that prices will drop. But the reason for the price drop is technology (the R&D for which may be financed by the higher scale) not the scale itself.

I believe this distinction is important because it means we need to watch the R&D budgets, not the scale. R&D budgets will be flush when firms see a lot of improvements to be had, and will dry up when they don't see much more (even if scale remains high).

I don't think we're anywhere near that inflection point. The "best" locations for hydro may be taken (I don't know anything about hydro availability so I have no opinion there), but it's laughable to suggest that's the case (or nearly the case) for wind and solar.

I agree with you that once we run out of viable locations to put our renewable infra, it'll become more expensive, but I think you vastly underestimate the amount of space we have for that sort of thing.