Actually, the bill's coming do for this terrible fad. Even brainless types like say, little Benny Sovacool are discovering that they have to rip every damned mineral out of the planet - and fuck it if wilderness is in the way - to support their big time fantasy.
The IEA published an account of just this week detailing how much metal has to be refined to be "green." I haven't had a chance to go through it yet, but I may write about it here if I find time.
As for "dunkelflaute," in the very same issue of Environmental Science and Technology as this one from which this paper comes, which I just completed surveying, there was another Dunkelflaute, paper, this one, about that so called "renewable energy" paradise, California: Wind and Solar Resource Droughts in California Highlight the Benefits of Long-Term Storage and Integration with the Western Interconnect (Katherine Z. Rinaldi, Jacqueline A. Dowling, Tyler H. Ruggles, Ken Caldeira, and Nathan S. Lewis, Environmental Science & Technology 2021 55 (9), 6214-6226)
The solution? Dig lots of copper for interconnects, keep the cobalt market hot for warlords in the DRC, and build a pile of batteries to rival Mt. Whitney.
It's getting through, but it's probably too little, too late.
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