231–240 of 305 posts
100% renewable...but not 100% green by the new standards. Hydro is only renewable for "low impact small sources". Considering a majority of their electricity is coming from hydro I would say it's not from "low impact small sources". Still a great feat though, but the bar keeps moving higher.
The update is telling: > Update 3/17/2021: Our original article stated "Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Energy for 299 Days." It was pointed out to us that while Costa Rica's electric grid does run primarily on renewable energy, a better title would have been "Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity". Below the article says that the government had not burned any oil to power the country, but this would…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously not. Germany noticed lines have ends, and just went around.
So you're saying that a nation without a large standing army can build a new force well suited to exploiting weaknesses of its adversaries who spend substantially on maintaining investments in defense which contain those exploitable weaknesses? One might go so far as to say that not having a strong standing army for an extended period of time actually proved militarily advantageous for the Germans in 1940 when their…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, in this scenario someone made an army and conquered you, and now they own you and your resources.
> but what happens if nobody has a standing army? The moment someone has a standing army, we are, by definition, no longer in a situation where nobody has a standing army. If someone can magically instantaneously create an army, then Costa Rica should just do that the moment they're threatened.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Is there an easy answer as to why Costa Rica is doing so well? Yes. Anytime you see an article that says "X country runs on 100% renewable" ... it's hydro-electric power every time. So if your country is blessed with a type of geography that makes hydro electric power viable, you're golden! Solar and Wind cannot power a modern economy without fossil fuel back-up.
France at least has a huge amount of nuclear power. I wish we saw more reactors built in the U.S., it would certainly kill a lot of birds with a single stone.
100% renewable...but not 100% green by the new standards. Hydro is only renewable for "low impact small sources". Considering a majority of their electricity is coming from hydro I would say it's not from "low impact small sources". Still a great feat though, but the bar keeps moving higher.
For global warming purposes, I'm personally okay with local ecological disruptions from hydro.
Is there an easy answer as to why Costa Rica is doing so well? They seem to be a bit of an exception in Central/South America. EDIT: From Wikipedia "It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, and for its highly educated workforce, most of whom speak English. The country spends roughly 6.9% of its budget (2016) on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once heavily dependent on agri…
The book "Why Nations Fail" and the followup by the same authors "The Narrow Corridor" paints a fairly convincing picture that the success or failure of many modern Latin American countries is directly correlated with the extent to which the Spanish colonialists were able to enslave/subjugate the indigenous population, and the types of societies and institutions that followed that initial seed. For example, in modern…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>but Scotland is ~97% renewable ... They aren't. The 97% renewable claim is misleading. Scotland can generate huge amount of wind/solar energy at certain times of day that they cannot use, and therefore they have to rely on fossil fuels for evenings and nights and any time sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing. Their actual renewable *consumption* is on the order of 30%.
Do you have a source? I would love to read more about that. FWIW I currently live in Norway which is ~100% renewable but that's mainly hydro and a very different situation with the amount of potential energy that hydro gives the 5M population.
51.7% of electricity generated in Scotland was generated by renewable technologies, compared to just 29.3% for the UK as a whole (or 25.6% for the rest of the UK, excluding Scotland). [1]
The 97% figure quoted earlier is a gross figure [2] that is worked out on the basis of total renewable generation compared to total consumption. The problem is that the two don't always line up and we don't have large scale gird storage to handle it so it doesn't get used. Instead more polluting electricity is imported from England.
1. https://www.gov.scot/publications/annual-energy-statement-20...
2. https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publ...
The update is telling: > Update 3/17/2021: Our original article stated "Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Energy for 299 Days." It was pointed out to us that while Costa Rica's electric grid does run primarily on renewable energy, a better title would have been "Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity". Below the article says that the government had not burned any oil to power the country, but this would…
There's an interconnection. As the world electrifies, it will become easier for manufacturing to electrify, too.
Is there an easy answer as to why Costa Rica is doing so well? They seem to be a bit of an exception in Central/South America. EDIT: From Wikipedia "It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, and for its highly educated workforce, most of whom speak English. The country spends roughly 6.9% of its budget (2016) on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once heavily dependent on agri…
Costa Rican resident here. Costa Rica invest a lot in renewables. Tourism is a huge income. There are lots of places to visit. Hundreds of volcanoes, 7 active. The climate, it can rain and then sunny...several times a day. Costa Rica exports technology. Intel, MS,Google...Several start ups...lots of outsourcing jobs.