I'd happily pay today's prices if that means we can stop worrying whether we'll find enough physical space. We still need to fill as much as we can find, but we

I'd happily pay today's prices if that means we can stop worrying whether we'll find enough physical space. We still need to fill as much as we can find, but we're not bound by it. The USA has it easy so to speak. Higher density countries, especially if they don't want to fill literally their whole share of the sea with wind (which is also much more expensive than on land), if they have any sea to begin with... e.g. I heard that southeastern Germany has much less wind because they have a higher minimum distance between villages and wind turbines, but I don't remember where I read that (whether they have less wind installed was a quicker check[2], omw to bed since it's 5am here). They already can't find space to put them and green energy is only at like 5% of their energy need (33% of the electricity[3], which is 15% of the energy need[4]). In fact, if you look at the graph of [3], renewables are so far mostly replacing nuclear production and fossil fuels are still going strong. This just isn't the time to phase fission out, yet, regardless of whether anyone is in favor of building it out. I just think it's silly to exclude many many megawatts of the safest kind of green energy. We're barely scratching the surface of replacing power generation, let alone the other ~90% of fossil fuel usage (e.g. in the Netherlands, 112TWh is electricity versus 900TWh total fossil fuel usage per year[1]). It's like deciding not to bring more oxygen to the international space station, hoping you'll be able to find enough room to grow plants instead. Just that the experiment we're doing is on the scale of a planet and decades ahead with a notoriously hard to predict future. I say we should start building today and, as soon as we then can, turn off the fossil fuel based power plants, replace the lion's share of combustion engine cars, etc. that contribute to killing or impairing millions of people every year[5], rather than (to use the previous comparison) worrying whether oxygen production by vegetation might be cheaper than lifting up some more oxygen. "Will it keep us going strong" is perhaps a better question than "what's the cheapest option that will make it look like we're making good progress to the majority of our voters?" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_Netherlands [2] https://1-stromvergleich.com/wind-power-germany/ https://1-stromvergleich.com/wind-power-germany/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Germany_Electricity_production_1991-2017_(EIA).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution "air pollution causes the deaths of around 7 million people worldwide each year, and is the world's largest single environmental health risk"