Solar and wind are coming. And the power sector isn’t ready
My favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"I have a startup in cleantech software, and often I feel very alone on HN. Every time the energy transition or climate change comes up on HN, it seems like most of the replies are either armchair-quarterbacking ("What they should do is..."), dismissive ("They don't take into account..."), or futile ("This isn't going to be fixed because...").What I don't see is gravity for the magnitude of what's going to happen in the next few decades. Over 80% of the world's energy currently comes from fossil fuels[1], and the vast majority of that will switch to clean sources within our careers. It's a $10.2 trillion dollar transition that will happen in just a few decades[2].So why the the lack of interest from "high growth" HN crowd? There's fuck ton of money to be made in the energy transition, and I'm betting that much of it is going to be in software. Intermittent solar/wind generation + storage requires a ton of software to (1) deploy enough to displace fossil sources and (2) actually work reliably. The energy transition isn't a research problem anymore, it's a scaling problem, which means software opportunity.Maybe it's the assumption that salaries aren't competitive? Maybe it's because most business models in energy tech aren't compatible with VC? Maybe it's because you have no idea what specific problems there are that need solving? Maybe the assumption is that energy is super slow and bureaucratic?Anyway, it's always sad to see the 2nd largest industry in the world (the 1st largest is killing people over energy) always get so categorically poo-pooed on HN. I'll keep posting[3][4] and hoping that attitude will eventually change, because we could very much use your talent in making this transition happen.Because it really is too late.[1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11951[2]: http://sdg.iisd.org/news/investments-in-renewable-energy-to-...[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250336[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154