Is this true? It contradicts everything I know about energy. Can you post some evidence?

Here's a paper that is the best single source of quantification of learning curves that I know of:

https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/publications/no-2021-01-empiricall...

With a detailed podcast episode here:

https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-159-the-cost-of-d...

But any single paper in the literature shouldn't be trusted on its own. So I would encourage anybody who is interested to look for themselves at cost curves over time for solar wind and storage, and notice how they all follow Wright's law very well. And then look at the ever-increasing cost of fossil fuel extraction, as we need ever more sophisticated techniques to continue matching supply to demand as the easier sources are extracted.

Wind solar and storage behave like proper technologies. Fracking did to some extent, but it is technology for making something that was impossible into the possible; and there's finite amounts of frackable resources. Oil and natural gas have price floors set by these fracking costs, which have not dropped precipitously in the past 10 years.

We have not yet reached the inflection points on wind water and solar where the logistic curve switches to the linear phase. So we likely have decades of similar cost reductions for these technologies, almost certainly. If you look at where that leaves us for an energy future, it's unbelievably rosy. That is, as long as we invest in the tech.

The technologies you mention are all intermittent, though.

Storage is not intermittent, and it's on there.

Distributed solar with storage is baseload technology.

During the winter, and in storms like this, solar and wind is almost nil. Upstate NY gets very cold. And they are mandating people transition away from oil or gas into using heat pumps. Heat pumps are next to worthless in subzero weather. Oh, and they are also trying to phase out nuclear.

I think the ultimate combo will be air source heat pumps and pellet stoves.

Pellet stoves should keep the insurance companies happy. Semi-renewable fuel. Semi-automated operation with minimal fire risk.

Not much more expensive than nat gas, much cheaper than oil and propane, and most importantly: no nat gas network/connection/account/delivery charge.

How are pellets semi-renewable? Pellets are still burned up. Are the ashes re-used?

Of course you re-use the ashes. Great source of potassium for the garden. The modern day fertilizer potassium-source isn’t called “potash” for nothing.

Improves traction on ice, and could melt snow if it’s close enough to freezing.

Could also make soap with it if you wanted to get really creative. Or bricks or mortar (or a concrete supplement).

Pellets come from atmospheric CO2.

* * *

The end state is great. It's people dying during the transition that worries me.

Why would anybody die during the transition? Especially if we do the transition as quickly as possible, we will be adding new resources to the grid while existing fossil fuel resources are still there.

In the US the grid problems are generally from having inadequate grid resources, and adding more will only help.

Have you not seen energy prices lately? I feel like when we discuss energy transition we get into a no-true Scotsman argument.