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Even if the electric car cannot replace the ICE one, I cannot think of a good reason to burn fossil fuel for base load generation. We have hydro, we have nuclea
by Aloha 4y ago
Even if the electric car cannot replace the ICE one, I cannot think of a good reason to burn fossil fuel for base load generation. We have hydro, we have nuclear, we have solar, and we have wind - at least two of those are dandy at base load generation, the other two act as good peaking sources.
Cheaper is no longer good justification.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fomine3 4y agoSmall islands far from continents/big islands? Maybe no space to hydro, nuclear isn't an option, solar and wind is not stable.
- gjulianm 4y agoHow much energy do islands spend compared to the rest of the world? Of course there will be some places where fossil fuels will be the only alternative. But using that as an excuse for inaction in the parts where we do have alternatives does not make sense.
- fomine3 4y agoYes fair point.
- adrianN 4y agoSolar+wind+storage is stable.
- nradov 4y agoOnly with huge amounts of storage. So far there are no large, industrialized areas which have managed to build enough storage to maintain base load through multiple days of little sunshine or wind. It's a nice idea in theory but costs will have to come way down before we can afford to deploy storage at scale (especially in areas where the geography makes pumped hydroelectric impractical).
- adrianN 4y agoCurrently we're talking about small islands. But why would an industrialized area built enough storage now if we don't have enough supply? Germany for example gets about 40-50% of its electricity from renewables (averaged over a year), with hardly any storage. Yet only a few percent of the renewable supply are wasted. We're very far away from getting 50% of our primary energy from renewables, so we could plausibly wait with building storage until that goal is achieved. If we had a proper carbon price, we could let the market figure out when it is most economical to start building storage for multiple days...