I think your articles have progressed towards a truth, thanks for posting, but are not there yet.

I really wish we could dispense with the term "Renewable" when it comes to energy, there is only one, and it comes from the sun. Uting the term renewables only serves to obfuscate things, especially the following:

Something fundamental and incredibly important is missing from most analyses we see, including yours at least until now. That is an acceptance and financial acknowledgement that the Joules of the sun are added to Earth continuously.

When we put those to human use, by gathering by say a solar farm, or even just by heating a humble rooftop water heater, we are adding valuable physical product to the human economy.

That is solid physical product that we do not currently accommodate in our human economy.

We consider all capital as somehow static, that the capital of Earth is a finite store of resources.

By the theory of Austrian Economics, we issue money reflecting physical product. In other words, we need money to buy what is produced.

If we were to honestly reflect what is produced, then we have to issue money for the Joules of energy added that we put to use from the sun.

Since those Joules are donated to us for free from the sun, it is only right that the money should be issued for free.

I've called this "Kardashev Money", for want of a better term, and the Engineering concepts around understanding it are a new specialisation of Systems Engineering, named "Kardashev Engineering", again for want of a better term.

The technical phenomenon which makes it possible to definitively monetise sunlight, is proof of work tokens. Bitcoin is the leading example, but all are capable of doing the task of solar monetisation.

Now with that capability of monetisation, it is possible to interchangeably generate proof of work tokens, and green hydrogen fuel, directly from the raw DC output of solar farms.

Now as we can sell both tokens and fuel, we can redirect a small amount of sales revenue back into maintaining, expanding, and even replicating what I have called a "Money-Fuel Tree" (Again for want of a better term).

So we can see that after investment to create an initial "Seed" Money-Fuel tree, there is no further cost to maintaining, scaling, and even replicating the installation.

All of this is with no real need of fossil fuels or bio-fuels of any kind.

Now for the removal of any doubt as to whether or not this is the "Right thing to do", consider that all work done to date using any kind of fuel (All work prior to solar energy), is actually work done by extracting Joules from those deposited on Earth by historical sunlight.

That work subtracts Joules from the reserves of Earth, and the environmental price is pollution, without exception. It can be nuclear fuel, biofuel, fossil fuel, coal, or even just trees, or wind, or wave, hydro, volcanic, all of it subtracts from the energy of Earth, manifesting in a number of ways, but most measurably by the speed of rotation of Earth.

The leap seconds we insert to maintain synchronicity with nuclear clocks is a direct indicator of the speed of Earth.

And it is slowing down.

A year is now 30 seconds longer than it was in 1970 when leap seconds first began to be insterted.

The standard scientific explanation for this is that the moon exerts friction on Earth, slowing it down.

But the Earth and Moon together are a closed system rotating in frictionless space. There could conceivably be a transfer of energy from one to the other, in which case the moon would speed up, as the Earth was slowing down.

But we see no evidence of any drift in the moons orbits.

So we have to conclude that both Earth and moon are slowing down.

It looks like we really are braking the rotation of Earth, by the accumulated removal of energy.

It follows then that we are also changing the trajectory of Earth.

The centrifugal force which was associated with the Earth's rotation has to be transferred to the trajectory of the Earth's orbit around the sun.

The direction of rotation of both are the same, counter clockwise, looking down on both Earth and sun, at a distance from the Northward side of Earth.

So reducing the speed of Earth results in a straightening out of the orbital path.

Even if only by a very small amount, the accumulated effect, sooner or later is to throw the Earth away from the sun, its only source of energy.

Now consider what effect the natural biomass on Earth has, on the spin of Earth.

In the mornings, the solar starved biomass physically turns towards the direction of the rising sun, to absorb as much of it as it possibly can, until in the afternoon, it has been fed solar energy all day, and is fully "Charged up", therefore its demand for energy is more in the mornings than in the afternoons and evenings.

So there is a difference between the net solar pressure on the approaching side of Earth, compared with the retreating side. More energy absorbed results in less solar pressure, less energy absorbed results in more solar pressure.

So the effect of biomass is to act as a motor, working positively towards accelerating the planetary rotation.

Obviously we are clearing biomass, so the motor force is reducing.

Now consider the same question with solar energy.

The exact same argument applies, solar panels in the morning have to deliver maximum charge to backup hydrogen fuel cells (Or battery) night time backup systems, therefore less solar pressure is exerted on them in the morning than towards the evening, when backup systems are fully charged.

So to simplify the considerations around energy, we need only draw up two distinctions, a right and a wrong way to obtain the energy we use as species.

All work done by solar is positive, by being additive, to the existing Joules of energy of Earth.

Conversely all work done by using any of the stored Joules of Earth is negative, subtracting from the stored Joules of energy of Earth.

Finally, the most controversial part of the jigswaw, when we look at it from the point of view of additive or subtractive work, we realise that all of our business to date has been a kind of Grand Energy Ponzi.

All extraction of energy, all negative work, is actually done driven by profit.

That actually, our financial debt is an energy deficit to our planet, that we can only pay back by judicious use of solar energy.

Eventually, sooner or later, our money has to change to reflect this.

The banks could sort it tomorrow by fessing up.

After all, no-one can be blamed for doing what we thought was best, given the circumstances and knowledge that existed at the time.

What we have to do now is make the best of it, we can have a very different, much better world tomorrow, if the banks short circuit the chaos which will probably ensue otherwise, or we can have the chaos. Their choice, it seems to me, but one way or the other, nature will have its way.