4 ms·
Let me arrogantly simplify the problem a bit and offer a solution: 1) bet everything on renewables - solar and wind. more scale means lower and lower productio
by simonebrunozzi 5y ago
Let me arrogantly simplify the problem a bit and offer a solution:
1) bet everything on renewables - solar and wind. more scale means lower and lower production/maintenance costs over time.
2) bet on the cheapest, most effective, least polluting energy storage solution, and add huge scale to it, hence vastly reducing costs over time.
Cheap and clean energy storage makes the intermittent production problem of most renewables go away.
No nuclear meltdowns. No waste disposal.
And no coal, no gas, no pollution from burning that stuff.
Ok, end of arrogant rant.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoNo waste disposal is wrong. For both solar cells and wind power. The panels are hazardous waste, and the carbon fiber blades are so far not economically recycleable, thus land fill material. Both last no longer than about 10 years, after that they are degraded too much, blades of wind turbines sometimes degrade even faster. Furthermore you can't put a wind turbine into the ground like a toothpick, especially not one about 200 meters high. They need massive concrete foundations, and if in a forest, broad ways to deliver and maintain the stuff. Guess what producing all that shit at scale means? More emission of the stuff you want to counteract the atmospheric effects of. Never mind, shit happens. Also stuff at sea degrades faster, and usually needs a shitload of continous maintenance to counteract that degrading. There is no cheap and clean storage at the scale needed, at least if you don't play stupid externalization games. The needed stuff does not grow on trees and needs to be produced in energy-, material- and transport-intensive ways, emitting even more of the stuff whose atmospheric effects it is supposed to counteract. Where were we?