7 ms·

I predict an uptick in the number of parking lots that can park exactly 79 cars.

ISL 4y ago
And a bunch of people working hard to show that, indeed, there ought to be eighty parking spaces, but one of them isn't marked, so the owner will need to retroactively install solar panels at great cost.
- gruez 4y ago
  >but one of them isn't marked, so the owner will need to retroactively install solar panels at great cost. Just pave over that space with grass?
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    Call it a nature preserve.
prottog 4y ago
Precisely. France already has precedent for this, with their 49-employee companies: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-03/why-france-has-so-many-49-employee-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-03/why-franc.... On the surface, covering parking lots with solar panels seems like a good idea since it would both generate electricity and provide shade for the cars, but I'm not sure if the same resources won't be better spent on building more nuclear plants, which is something France already leads the world in. As a driver I certainly wouldn't complain about the shade, but were I a French taxpayer I would perhaps ask more questions.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  These are the same nuclear power plants they have a challenge maintaining adequately and building new ones, yeah? And take a decade to build? And solar and batteries are cheaper than nuclear on a levelized per kWh basis. So slap the panels on top of mandatory carports and call it a day. > That’s 11GW of new solar (same as 10 new nuclear reactors) powering millions of home - zero new land needed 11GW of generation on top of land already utilized and distributed. If I were a French taxpayer who just paid €10B to nationalize EDF, I would absolutely ask why you’d prioritize nuclear. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-pay-nearly-10bn-to-fully-nationalise-edf https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-p...
  - IanCal 4y ago
    > So slap the panels on top of mandatory carports and call it a day Particularly given that one of the new and growing consumers of large amounts of electricity is cars.
  - prottog 4y ago
    > And solar and batteries are cheaper than nuclear on a levelized per kWh basis So I would expect to see countries with higher share of solar generation and less nuclear would have lower wholesale electricity prices than ones with less solar and more nuclear? This data isn't easy to find for a layperson like myself, but I'd be surprised if such a correlation existed. > If I were a French taxpayer who just paid €10B to nationalize EDF EDF was state-owned to begin with, and was only partially privatized in 2004 with the French state still retaining 80%+ ownership. The recent re-nationalization was only an acquisition by the state of the remainder. The French taxpayer was paying for it all along.
    - Kon5ole 4y ago
      You will not see lower prices because the true costs of nuclear are hidden in centuries to come and not included in the costs shown today. Nobody presents the actual cost of nuclear because nobody knows. Estimating costs even decades in the future is impossible, let alone centuries. EDF had 50 bn euros in debt and also needs to spend unknown bns more to fix aging plants. This means that nuclear power in France has operated with an average of at least 1 billion euros in losses per year for as long as it has existed. The costs per kWh for French nuclear power have never been correct, since they have obviously not covered the actual costs. You are correct in that the taxpayers pay for nuclear, and this is on top of and in addition to what they directly pay for the electricity. What they pay for the actual electricity is way too little to cover the costs of nuclear. The rest of the costs are hidden in general taxes. Everybody pays for nuclear in France, and they will pay for as long as they live and as long as their children live and so on for generations. The same is true for coal and oil etc of course. We have no idea how much it actually cost humanity to release fossil carbon into the atmosphere, but it's pretty clear by now that it was much more expensive in reality than what we paid when it happened.
    - 4y ago
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  On the surface this will not cost anything to the taxpayer since the cost will be borne by the carparks' owners. But this being France, my cynical side thinks that the next step is lobbying and complaints by businesses until the government comes up with subsidies. On the other hand, that's not completely unreasonable since this new law means businesses will have to shell out hundreds of thousands of euros...
- pydry 4y ago
  >I'm not sure if the same resources won't be better spent on building more nuclear plants Who doesn't love spending 5x as much per megawatt hour and getting it delivered in 20 years instead of 3 months? The answer is usually somebody who wildly overestimates how much storage is needed and wildly underestimates the feasibility of delivering that.
- tzs 4y ago
  > but I'm not sure if the same resources won't be better spent on building more nuclear plants Which same resources?
- lumost 4y ago
  also, there is a presumption that all parking lots make good solar installations throughout all of France. I'm sure there are a number of "parking lots" which are little more than dirt fields for events in remote locations.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    And there are rainy parts of France. Been in Paris in January… didn’t see the sun for 2 continuous weeks. Would make more sense to install panels in the south where days are longer and sky is clearer instead of sprinkling them around where the parking lots are.
- Glawen 4y ago
  Why not both? Here it is the company owning the parking lot which is impacted, and it will generate money in three long run for them. There is no relation with a budget required to build a nuclear reactor
ct0 4y ago
Time to get in the line painting business in france. Parking spots will be much much larger. They should have used Sq/ft or Sq/meter as the determining factor.
- isoprophlex 4y ago
  That will just make the parking spaces smaller, right?
  - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
    No the suggestion is the lot owners would make the spaces larger to have fewer spaces to avoid the cost of installing the panels.
    - stonemetal12 4y ago
      I think he meant the other option, if done by square meter. Then suddenly you have what would have been an 80 spot lot, is now a 90 spot lot, and a lot of dinged doors.
      - isoprophlex 4y ago
        Exactly! Any target metric can be gamed ;)
    - smcl 4y ago
      Think GP is saying that if lot owners are forced to bear the cost of installing solar panels, this could encourage them to squeeze more spaces in. It could be that France has some regulations on car parking space size which would prevent this, however
nicoburns 4y ago
Perhaps, but this is probably aimed at really big car parks like shopping malls that have a capacity of far more than 80 cars. They won't be able to get around this so easily. Presumably companies that build these solar panels will be paid for any electricity generated, so it might work out quite well for them in the long term.
- gruez 4y ago
  > Presumably companies that build these solar panels will be paid for any electricity generated, so it might work out quite well for them in the long term. If it's actually profitable for them already (from a risk adjusted basis), then you wouldn't need a law mandating it. The fact that there aren't many takers suggests that it won't work out well.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Companies are surprisingly good at avoiding opportunities they're not familiar with. If it is actually profitable for them already, but they're not doing it, then a law mandating it may still be a good idea.
    - passwordoops 4y ago
      Recall that Texas of all places leads the US in renewables integration. It's definitely not because of mandates, it's because their environment makes wind and solar profitable for the energy companies... Provided there's no major winter storms to break their back up generation
    - gruez 4y ago
      >Companies are surprisingly good at avoiding opportunities they're not familiar with They don't need to. In the sunnier parts of the US, it's common for companies to install solar panels for free, in exchange for a cut of the generated revenue. >If it is actually profitable for them already, but they're not doing it, That's why I specifically mentioned risk in my previous comment. For instance, generating 10%/year ROI today might sound good, but if there aren't any price guarantees from the government it's possible that might drop to 1-2% a few years later. I'm not sure what the regulatory regime/economics for the solar industry France is like, but absent any evidence to the contrary I'm inclined to believe that there isn't free money lying around that companies are passing up.
sottol 4y ago
I would hope that's pretty obvious and a desired side-effect. Don't waste space on parking lots, but if you have to slap some solar over it.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Just create a parking lot tax and let the problem sort itself out. Cut income taxes with the savings and nobody will fight it.
  - Tiktaalik 4y ago
    This would be the best approach, but sadly in reality people will elect politicians with their sole aim of reducing any and all taxation, no matter how reasonable and needed. Even an imagined threat of proposed new parking/driving taxes contributed to sinking Vancouver's Mayor Kennedy Stewart in the most recent election (even though he voted against new parking fees earlier in the year).
Tiktaalik 4y ago
The good thing is that incentivizing a lid on the size of parking lots is also good for the environment.

ISL 4y ago

And a bunch of people working hard to show that, indeed, there ought to be eighty parking spaces, but one of them isn't marked, so the owner will need to retroactively install solar panels at great cost.

gruez 4y ago
>but one of them isn't marked, so the owner will need to retroactively install solar panels at great cost. Just pave over that space with grass?
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  Call it a nature preserve.

prottog 4y ago

Precisely. France already has precedent for this, with their 49-employee companies: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-03/why-france-has-so-many-49-employee-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-03/why-franc.... On the surface, covering parking lots with solar panels seems like a good idea since it would both generate electricity and provide shade for the cars, but I'm not sure if the same resources won't be better spent on building more nuclear plants, which is something France already leads the world in. As a driver I certainly wouldn't complain about the shade, but were I a French taxpayer I would perhaps ask more questions.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
These are the same nuclear power plants they have a challenge maintaining adequately and building new ones, yeah? And take a decade to build? And solar and batteries are cheaper than nuclear on a levelized per kWh basis. So slap the panels on top of mandatory carports and call it a day. > That’s 11GW of new solar (same as 10 new nuclear reactors) powering millions of home - zero new land needed 11GW of generation on top of land already utilized and distributed. If I were a French taxpayer who just paid €10B to nationalize EDF, I would absolutely ask why you’d prioritize nuclear. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-pay-nearly-10bn-to-fully-nationalise-edf https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-p...
- IanCal 4y ago
  > So slap the panels on top of mandatory carports and call it a day Particularly given that one of the new and growing consumers of large amounts of electricity is cars.
- prottog 4y ago
  > And solar and batteries are cheaper than nuclear on a levelized per kWh basis So I would expect to see countries with higher share of solar generation and less nuclear would have lower wholesale electricity prices than ones with less solar and more nuclear? This data isn't easy to find for a layperson like myself, but I'd be surprised if such a correlation existed. > If I were a French taxpayer who just paid €10B to nationalize EDF EDF was state-owned to begin with, and was only partially privatized in 2004 with the French state still retaining 80%+ ownership. The recent re-nationalization was only an acquisition by the state of the remainder. The French taxpayer was paying for it all along.
  - Kon5ole 4y ago
    You will not see lower prices because the true costs of nuclear are hidden in centuries to come and not included in the costs shown today. Nobody presents the actual cost of nuclear because nobody knows. Estimating costs even decades in the future is impossible, let alone centuries. EDF had 50 bn euros in debt and also needs to spend unknown bns more to fix aging plants. This means that nuclear power in France has operated with an average of at least 1 billion euros in losses per year for as long as it has existed. The costs per kWh for French nuclear power have never been correct, since they have obviously not covered the actual costs. You are correct in that the taxpayers pay for nuclear, and this is on top of and in addition to what they directly pay for the electricity. What they pay for the actual electricity is way too little to cover the costs of nuclear. The rest of the costs are hidden in general taxes. Everybody pays for nuclear in France, and they will pay for as long as they live and as long as their children live and so on for generations. The same is true for coal and oil etc of course. We have no idea how much it actually cost humanity to release fossil carbon into the atmosphere, but it's pretty clear by now that it was much more expensive in reality than what we paid when it happened.
  - 4y ago
mytailorisrich 4y ago
On the surface this will not cost anything to the taxpayer since the cost will be borne by the carparks' owners. But this being France, my cynical side thinks that the next step is lobbying and complaints by businesses until the government comes up with subsidies. On the other hand, that's not completely unreasonable since this new law means businesses will have to shell out hundreds of thousands of euros...
pydry 4y ago
>I'm not sure if the same resources won't be better spent on building more nuclear plants Who doesn't love spending 5x as much per megawatt hour and getting it delivered in 20 years instead of 3 months? The answer is usually somebody who wildly overestimates how much storage is needed and wildly underestimates the feasibility of delivering that.
tzs 4y ago
> but I'm not sure if the same resources won't be better spent on building more nuclear plants Which same resources?
lumost 4y ago
also, there is a presumption that all parking lots make good solar installations throughout all of France. I'm sure there are a number of "parking lots" which are little more than dirt fields for events in remote locations.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  And there are rainy parts of France. Been in Paris in January… didn’t see the sun for 2 continuous weeks. Would make more sense to install panels in the south where days are longer and sky is clearer instead of sprinkling them around where the parking lots are.
Glawen 4y ago
Why not both? Here it is the company owning the parking lot which is impacted, and it will generate money in three long run for them. There is no relation with a budget required to build a nuclear reactor

ct0 4y ago

Time to get in the line painting business in france. Parking spots will be much much larger. They should have used Sq/ft or Sq/meter as the determining factor.

isoprophlex 4y ago
That will just make the parking spaces smaller, right?
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
  No the suggestion is the lot owners would make the spaces larger to have fewer spaces to avoid the cost of installing the panels.
  - stonemetal12 4y ago
    I think he meant the other option, if done by square meter. Then suddenly you have what would have been an 80 spot lot, is now a 90 spot lot, and a lot of dinged doors.
    - isoprophlex 4y ago
      Exactly! Any target metric can be gamed ;)
  - smcl 4y ago
    Think GP is saying that if lot owners are forced to bear the cost of installing solar panels, this could encourage them to squeeze more spaces in. It could be that France has some regulations on car parking space size which would prevent this, however

nicoburns 4y ago

Perhaps, but this is probably aimed at really big car parks like shopping malls that have a capacity of far more than 80 cars. They won't be able to get around this so easily. Presumably companies that build these solar panels will be paid for any electricity generated, so it might work out quite well for them in the long term.

gruez 4y ago
> Presumably companies that build these solar panels will be paid for any electricity generated, so it might work out quite well for them in the long term. If it's actually profitable for them already (from a risk adjusted basis), then you wouldn't need a law mandating it. The fact that there aren't many takers suggests that it won't work out well.
- mcv 4y ago
  Companies are surprisingly good at avoiding opportunities they're not familiar with. If it is actually profitable for them already, but they're not doing it, then a law mandating it may still be a good idea.
  - passwordoops 4y ago
    Recall that Texas of all places leads the US in renewables integration. It's definitely not because of mandates, it's because their environment makes wind and solar profitable for the energy companies... Provided there's no major winter storms to break their back up generation
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Companies are surprisingly good at avoiding opportunities they're not familiar with They don't need to. In the sunnier parts of the US, it's common for companies to install solar panels for free, in exchange for a cut of the generated revenue. >If it is actually profitable for them already, but they're not doing it, That's why I specifically mentioned risk in my previous comment. For instance, generating 10%/year ROI today might sound good, but if there aren't any price guarantees from the government it's possible that might drop to 1-2% a few years later. I'm not sure what the regulatory regime/economics for the solar industry France is like, but absent any evidence to the contrary I'm inclined to believe that there isn't free money lying around that companies are passing up.

sottol 4y ago

I would hope that's pretty obvious and a desired side-effect. Don't waste space on parking lots, but if you have to slap some solar over it.

Scoundreller 4y ago
Just create a parking lot tax and let the problem sort itself out. Cut income taxes with the savings and nobody will fight it.
- Tiktaalik 4y ago
  This would be the best approach, but sadly in reality people will elect politicians with their sole aim of reducing any and all taxation, no matter how reasonable and needed. Even an imagined threat of proposed new parking/driving taxes contributed to sinking Vancouver's Mayor Kennedy Stewart in the most recent election (even though he voted against new parking fees earlier in the year).

Tiktaalik 4y ago

The good thing is that incentivizing a lid on the size of parking lots is also good for the environment.