Solar refineries: what does it take to get to 1GW / day?

As challenging as such arrangements are, they rely on technically mature (and still improving) solutions—that is, on more efficient PV cells, large onshore and offshore wind turbines, and high-voltage (including long-distance direct current) transmission. If costs, permitting processes, and not-in-my-backyard sentiments were no obstacles, these tec

affordable batteries that could store enough energy for a city—what we call grid-scale batteries, as opposed to the smaller ones that run a phone or computer—and hold it long enough to get through seasonal intermittency. One inventor I admire is working on a battery that uses liquid metals instead of the solid metals employed in traditional batteri

this transition would also require 1,000-fold and often 10,000-fold larger areas under crops than the land claimed by oil field infrastructures, and shifting from coal-fired to wind-generated electricity would require at best 10 times and often 100 times more space

near-shore locations that have strong resources and are practical for energy development range from 40 to 85 TW, far more than is needed to meet future worldwide energy needs even under business-as-usual demand projections.