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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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771–780 of 809 posts

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#771

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The reason Nuclear takes so long is that people are neurotic about it and so the regulations are totally excessive. If we had a standardised reactor, it wouldn't be that difficult to churn them out.

Since you clearly didn't read past the second sentence in my post I'm going to repeat myself. Why doesn't China repeal "excessive" and "neurotic" regulations and build more nuclear instead of solar? Rather than the other way around?

because they sell the solar panels abroad and can't sell nuclear power plants abroad.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#772

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The baseload framing is increasingly outdated. What grids need isn't constant supply - it's flexible supply that matches variable demand. Solar + batteries handle daytime and evening peaks well. Wind fills different gaps. The remaining "firmness" problem (extended low-wind, low-sun periods) is real but smaller than baseload thinking suggests. Most studies show you can get to 80-90% renewables before you hit hard stor…

And HVDC long haul offsets a lot of those problems as well and is more effective than storage.

Yes if we could only build them. I recently learned there was one built from the Columbia river hydro projects to southern California in the early 1970's Has one been built since?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#773
post #56
post #12

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One could hope with improving tech and decreasing regulations we could have decreasing (nominal) energy prices in the future. That would be progress.

> decreasing (nominal) energy prices in the future Hasn't happened ever before, not sure why this time it would be different.

Happened constantly till around 1970. One horse power used to take a horse. Now a very small electric motor for cents per day.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#774
post #513

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Pretty sure your diet is a relatively small part of your carbon footprint.

I think you’re wrong, especially if you consider more the just carbon (eg land use, deforestation, …) https://woods.stanford.edu/news/meats-environmental-impact

That says 14-18% of global GHG emissions is due to cattle, the person I was responding to said "the biggest impact you can have is by eating way less meat, cattle in particular". That doesn't seem like the biggest impact possible. For Americans, their entire diet is attributable to about "5.14 kg CO 2 eq. per person per day" https://habitsofwaste.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2020-CS... (UMich Center for Sustainable Systems). For a family of 2.5, that equates to about 4.5 tons CO2e/year. The average American family footprint is about 48 tons CO2e/year. So slightly less than 10% for their entire diet. Of that, maybe a bit more than half is attributable to cattle, or 5% total.

By comparison, driving a pair of gasoline cars their average of 10k miles/yr is something like 16% of the average American family's yearly emissions, or 3x the beef.

Switching from heating with natural gas to a heat pump would also make a bigger dent for the average American family, let alone if they're living somewhere that gets properly cold, like New England. Or just spending $2,000 on air sealing and a layer of fiberglass, for those living in a leaky house - more impactful than not eating beef.

Looking into it a bit for Italian families, it looks like cattle might a larger proportion, partly because their overall carbon footprint is lower. But it's still a relatively small proportion (Pretty sure if landowners weren't raising cattle, the alternative isn't going to be letting it return to nature and lowering the value of their land, without big government programs that essentially pay them to do that, so that whole thing seems kind of moot.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#775
post #549
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure your diet is a relatively small part of your carbon footprint.

Like everything else, it depends. In the extreme case, if you eat beef every day but use a bicycle for transportation, live in a mild climate with little need for heating and cooling, and rarely fly in an airplane, your diet could be a significant part of your carbon footprint in percentage terms.

Eh, it's just that the entire supply chain that keeps them alive means that their per-capita carbon footprint is almost certainly not dominated by their diet, let alone by beef alone (it's an outsized fraction, but it's just not that significant compared to other stuff). But yeah, hard to talk accurately in broad strokes about a very varied audience.

In this case, they said they live in Rome. Concrete, heavy machinery to make it livable, trash movement, maintaining their public transit, household goods, electricity via nat gas, etc. Sounds like they're making a good effort, though, and in terms of just the discretionary part, they might be right.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#777
post #130

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I agree wholeheartedly, and the technocrats are complicit with the GOP here. It's funny how “free markets” keep producing the most expensive solar prices in the developed world. Don't get me started on Healthcare (I just moved back to the U.S. a couple years ago after 18 years in Canada, what a cluster*ck). Oil and gas buy politicians, foreign oil money buys media influence, and social-media bots keep voters angry at…

If even a Democratically-led California is doing this, how can you point fingers at just the GOP? It's endemic to the system, and not restricted to just one party.

I just can’t with “both sides” when one side is increasingly becoming lawless and reckless.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#778
post #715

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> I'd be happy to pay more in taxes Giving money to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Not sure how it is where you live, but when I pay taxes they don't go to politicians. The taxes go to health care facilities, infrastructure, education, etc. etc. Only a small percentage goes to pay politicians, and it's all in the open - we know exactly how much each of them is getting.

And are those programs where capable of delivery anything on time and on budget?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#779

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> despite successive governments that were (likely monetarily* ) opposed to solar and wind, What are you talking about? > Both were due to government incentives, How can the government be opposed to it, while also providing rebates to rooftop solar? Anyway, it was all a big bait and switch manoeuvre, as the solar feed in tariff per kWh is only a fraction of what you pay, but it didn’t start out that way. That continu…

> What are you talking about? The (now twice dissolved) Coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party > How can the government be opposed to it, while also providing rebates to rooftop solar? I'm pretty sure one government put the incentives in place, whilst another didn't roll them back, but also significantly talked down anything renewable, whilst pulling stunts like bringing a lump of coal into parliament.…

The subsidies given to private individuals and business for roof top solar would have been better off used to build grid scale solar. You get more solar per dollar spent.

Australia silent have around global average electricity costs, we should be a case study in providing the cheapest electricity, given we have the worlds largest known solar reserves (ha!), the worlds largest known deposit of uranium, and we export about the same volume of LNG as Qatar. And there’s the iron ore, the zinc, lead, aluminium, copper, gold.

Why settle for average.

No.

Every Australian citizen should receiver a cheque every quarter for their share of the revenue generated from the proper management of our natural resources.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#780

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> But few cared Few cared that electricity price increases out passed general inflation. I don’t think so.

While I'm sure that it suits some people to connect "Electricity got more expensive" with "The primary generation sources changed" as a primitive post hoc ergo propter hoc argument that doesn't really work out.

If we’ve got data, let’s go with the data.

If all we’ve got is opinions, let’s go with mine.

Name one place where renewables penetration is worth talking about and electricity became less expensive.

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