Batteries: How cheap can they get?

Re:Batteries: How cheap can they get? by Gibbon1 on Friday July 05, 2024 @12:59AM (#40879944)

I've read some heretic economists that say that instead what orthodox economists claim that energy contributes 10% to GDP it's much higher closer to 100%. You get outside economics into accounting and as you chase the supply costs down you run into energy and scarce resources as the driver of cost.

Maybe 20 years ago I had the thought that ever never was enough supply of fossil fuels to lift the remaining 2/3rds of humanity out of poverty[1]. But there is enough solar and wind to give people a low energy middle class life. And the cost reduction since I think can do better than that.

[1] China I think burned half it's coal reserves in last 40 years. Modern China is basically built on coal. And much of the world doesn't have anything like that.

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Re:Batteries: How cheap can they get? by defrost on Friday July 05, 2024 @01:15AM (#40879998)

> China I think burned half it's coal reserves in last 40 years.

As a point of nomenclature isn't that always the case for any resource?

Given that "reserves" are drill tested known quantities that are tested, proven, modelled, and queued up for mining .. most reserves having been taken past "economic feasibility".

Hasn't the usual pattern in mining for some three thousand years since the oiriginal Rio Tinto Gold Mine been that reserves are mined and as they are exhausted, an exploration phase ramps up to prove inferred resources and raise them to reserve status?

eg: https://www.ga.gov.au/digital-publication/aimr2021/australia...

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Re:Batteries: How cheap can they get? by Workaccount2 on Friday July 05, 2024 @10:58AM (#40883361)

Everything society does is aimed at (locally) reducing entropy, and energy is the only way to do that.

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