Lots of people on HN only talking about solar recently. Solar will not solve all our energy needs.<p>- Batteries are not cheap, nor renewable. Just because there <i>may</i> be advances in the future does not mean batteries are going to always be cheap and freely available. They are also currently quite dangerous to deal with.<p>- A society based on only solar would have to reduce its power needs in winter, or increase its solar generation capacity to account for winter losses. (Winter losses is largely the shorter daylight hours, but also snow in northern climates)<p>- Solar only works under ideal conditions, which is to say, in daylight, without clouds, smoke, ash, snow, etc. Even if you have batteries to account for occasional environmental losses, those batteries probably won't last for weeks on end in the event of the more bizarre weather that climate change is bringing.<p>- At some point, people run out of land to put panels on. Geography and legal/political boundaries around the world vary. Sometimes there just won't be enough land.<p>- A lot of the cheap manufacturing is centered in one or two countries, which creates a political and economic disadvantage to the rest, if they become over-dependent on this energy generation method. Look at what's happened recently from a loss of access to cheap natural gas.<p>- Transmission/distribution/management is still a significant challenge which is not solved; you can have all the solar generation you'll ever need and still have power shortages.