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I think that efficiency does matter. If a government/utility company/whoever wants to spend 100M on fixing climate change, they have a choice between building a
by viknesh 4y ago
I think that efficiency does matter. If a government/utility company/whoever wants to spend 100M on fixing climate change, they have a choice between building a new solar farm or building a new nuclear reactor. One of them will be able to displace more fossil fuel burning than the other.
Efficiency also matters for costs. If we use inefficient methods of generating electricity, the electricity will cost more. This affects us as direct consumers of electricity, but also in consumer prices in general, since everything costs energy to make & transport.
- Gwypaas 4y agoFor 100M you get huge solar farm ready to go in a couple of years or 1/100th of a nuclear plant which might come online in 15. Investing in Nuclear is in reality prolonging our reliance on fossil fuels.
- mrtksn 4y agoEfficiency matters of course but it's just one of the variables in the equation. The thing about solar energy is that the source is so powerful and abundant that the dominant factor for its economical viability is our ability to produce devices to capture it. When nuclear is getting more expensive over the years(as the completely safe reactors prove to be not that safe and more safety is introduced), the devices used to capture the solar energy have been getting cheaper and cheaper. So it doesn't matter if solar is half the efficiency of something else if we can make the devices to capture the solar 10x cheaper. Solar has already become very cheap, what we still need to do is to figure out the storage. So far the success is limited but because all life on earth is doing it already, I think it's a solvable problem.