>Even before the AI boom, shouldn't we have a bunch of extra capacity under construction, ready for EV driving, induction stoves and heat-pump heating?
When it comes to the EV, the answer is simple: the EV takeover "by 2030" was 100% wishful thinking - the capacity is nowhere near there, starting from scaling the battery production, never mind the charge capacity.
No, mostly misunderstanding. ~95% of all cars sold in Norway are EV, yet only ~25% of the cars on the road are EV's. Most cars predate the EV transition. It'll take another ~20 years until the 95% of the cars on the road are EV's.
We'll have the battery capacity and charge capacity to allow 100% of cars sold in 2030 to be EV's. We only need 2 capacity doublings for batteries, and currently doublings happen every ~18 months. Charge capacity is even easier, we just need to increase electricity production by 1-2% per year for a couple decades to support the transition to EV's.
>No, mostly misunderstanding. ~95% of all cars sold in Norway are EV, yet only ~25% of the cars on the road are EV's
Norway is a tiny market which had big artificial tax/cost incentives to buy an EV. Norway could be 100% EV and it wouldn't make any dent to global adoption.
Norway is a tiny market that is an example of what most Western nations will look like in 2030 or 2035. Despite ~95% of sales being EV, downtown Oslo is still noisy and stinky because the vast majority of cars are still ICE.
Contrast with China -- downtown Shanghai has the vast majority of cars being EV's despite the EV sales rate in China only being ~50%.
Existence of “2030 deadline” was/ is significant factor by itself. (Current sate would be less electrified without that arbitrary and over optimistic fantasy deadline)
That seems irrelevant to the question. If I took your prompt, my response would be "do you suggest we should run on thin margins of transmission capacity while we watch an explosion of demand coming at us?"
If you forecast 100, build 20, and sell 10, you have oversupply for the caving in of demand, but huge lack of supply compared to the never-arriving extrapolated demand
When it comes to the EV, the answer is simple: the EV takeover "by 2030" was 100% wishful thinking - the capacity is nowhere near there, starting from scaling the battery production, never mind the charge capacity.