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People don't want to pay for it. The cost of the wind/solar project itself is not the full story - you also need energy storage, and that's very expensive. You

People don't want to pay for it. The cost of the wind/solar project itself is not the full story - you also need energy storage, and that's very expensive. You also need to rebuild the electrical grid to handle the peak power output to be able to store it. In EU countries, at least part of these very significant costs are paid for by everyone - not just the company operating the wind/solar projects who profit from it. Some people don't want to have higher taxes just so a business gets profit.

unglaublich 3y ago
People pay billions in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, so we can just move those and leave taxes as they are.
- throwaway60742 3y ago
  Not everyone does. Maybe people in the US, but most EU countries don't have any fossil fuel industry to subsidize. Where I live people are against solar/wind because they want to go nuclear.
  - svnt 3y ago
    Where you live you are subject to disinformation and nuclear is the last effort of delay and distraction. You could put up massive solar and wind farms next year. How long would it be until sufficient nuclear capacity came online?
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Going niclear is such a FUD anti-renewables campaign, it is almost loughable people still fall it. New nuclear plants take decades to build, and are extremely expensive. So no, no significant nuclear capacity increase. All that campaign does, is making it harder for renewables, and thus easier for fossil fuels. Quite ingenious so, if you think about it.
    - throwaway60722 3y ago
      They take A decade, not decades. You're the one spreading FUD. There are successful new nuclear projects built very quickly in EU. The only slow thing about nuclear is regulatory approval - hampered by EU that for many years didn't accept nuclear as "green". Is nuclear more expensive that rebuilding the electrical grid and building enough storage to handle the wind/solar peaks and use the energy later? I don't think it's so clear. The solar/wind power plant itself is not the full cost.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        The Hinkley C site was approved in 2010, it is estimated to go live in 2028. It was laready two years late in May 2022, and already overshot the budget by 50% by then. As of February 2023, the delay increased by another 15 months (resulting in the 2028 go live) and costs increased again to now 32.7 billion pounds. And already in 2020, new wind and solar utility scale projects were cheaper per kWh than Hinkley, withbsolar becoming cheaper and cheaper every year (Moore's law is still valid there). Hinkley C is 3,260 MWe. In 2022 Europe installed a total of 41.4 GW of solar capacity, up from from 28.1 GW in 2021. That means more than 10x Hinkley C in a single year (2022), and cheaper per kWh. Facts to found here: https://api.solarpowereurope.org/uploads/5222_SPE_EMO_2022_full_report_ver_03_1_319d70ca42.pdf?updated_at=2022-12-19T08:21:34.541Z https://api.solarpowereurope.org/uploads/5222_SPE_EMO_2022_f... Nuclear is great stop gap until more renewablea are installed, not more not less. And before ypu start, no, the German nuclear plants couldn't be run any longer (maintenance, fuel, safety), run time has already been extended multiple times, and the last nuclear exit, the badly organized one, was put in place by tze conservative CDU let government (not that you go and blame the Greens for it).
    - unglaublich 3y ago
      "Going nuclear" has been _the_ fossil fuel alternative for decades. It has been the only scalable, proven, safe energy base load generation competitor to fossil fuels. The competition between those forms of energy is going back way before the advent of windmills and solar panels. The fossil fuel industry has a huge interest in spreading FUD around nuclear, and the few accidents have been maximally exploited to hamper the development of nuclear. All the while, it has been known full well that fossil fuels have devastating impact on air quality and climate. Air pollution from fossil fuels alone is estimated at killing >3 million people per year. A great many disasters involving oil and fossil fuels have occurred, killing many more millions. Yet, we act like nuclear is the danger, but we're happy to accept burning fossil fuels in the midst of our societies and offer up millions of lives each year to satisfy the lords of the fossil fuel industry.
kjksf 3y ago
If that's the reason then those people are misinformed. Coal and gas plants are closing because they cannot compete on price with solar/wind + battery storage. The cost advantage is not true everywhere but the future is clear. Coal and gas will not become cheaper. Solar and wind is most expensive today it'll ever be. Storage in particular is so early in the cycle that we can expect the cost will drop at least in half. We've barely started making battery storage, the industry has 100x growth ahead. And this is without pricing the real costs of using oil & coal & gas like all those people who have asthma (or worse) because they inhale the fumes. Even living in a city (cars) has clear statistical link to increased asthma and other respiratory diseases compared to places with less cars.
- throwaway60742 3y ago
  No way they are misinformed, look at German power mix. Germany - the most vocal proponents of wind/solar - is the most polluting country in the whole EU. > Coal and gas plants are closing because they cannot compete on price with solar/wind + battery storage. That did not happen anywhere in Europe. New gas plants are being constructed right now, and coal powerplants had to be restarted when Germans dropped nuclear. > Storage in particular is so early in the cycle that we can expect the cost will drop at least in half. We've barely started making battery storage, the industry has 100x growth ahead. We need to decarbonize today though. People don't want to pay the high prices, so how does the drop happen? > And this is without pricing the real costs of using oil & coal & gas like all those people who have asthma (or worse) because they inhale the fumes. Again, ask Germans about that. Their universal healthcare is going to get expensive soon if they continue on their "green" path. > Even living in a city (cars) has clear statistical link to increased asthma and other respiratory diseases compared to places with less cars. Completely orthogonal, people mostly agree on that, but they (where I live) want to charge the electric cars from nuclear energy.
  - svnt 3y ago
    Germany’s repeated renewables efforts were long subject to the fact that Germany was Russia’s European project to keep fossil fuels going as long as possible. No other European country with as much technical competence has inexplicably failed so hard at renewables over and over. Now Germany is experiencing a transition in market conditions that is uncomfortably quick.

unglaublich 3y ago

People pay billions in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, so we can just move those and leave taxes as they are.

throwaway60742 3y ago
Not everyone does. Maybe people in the US, but most EU countries don't have any fossil fuel industry to subsidize. Where I live people are against solar/wind because they want to go nuclear.
- svnt 3y ago
  Where you live you are subject to disinformation and nuclear is the last effort of delay and distraction. You could put up massive solar and wind farms next year. How long would it be until sufficient nuclear capacity came online?
- hef19898 3y ago
  Going niclear is such a FUD anti-renewables campaign, it is almost loughable people still fall it. New nuclear plants take decades to build, and are extremely expensive. So no, no significant nuclear capacity increase. All that campaign does, is making it harder for renewables, and thus easier for fossil fuels. Quite ingenious so, if you think about it.
  - throwaway60722 3y ago
    They take A decade, not decades. You're the one spreading FUD. There are successful new nuclear projects built very quickly in EU. The only slow thing about nuclear is regulatory approval - hampered by EU that for many years didn't accept nuclear as "green". Is nuclear more expensive that rebuilding the electrical grid and building enough storage to handle the wind/solar peaks and use the energy later? I don't think it's so clear. The solar/wind power plant itself is not the full cost.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      The Hinkley C site was approved in 2010, it is estimated to go live in 2028. It was laready two years late in May 2022, and already overshot the budget by 50% by then. As of February 2023, the delay increased by another 15 months (resulting in the 2028 go live) and costs increased again to now 32.7 billion pounds. And already in 2020, new wind and solar utility scale projects were cheaper per kWh than Hinkley, withbsolar becoming cheaper and cheaper every year (Moore's law is still valid there). Hinkley C is 3,260 MWe. In 2022 Europe installed a total of 41.4 GW of solar capacity, up from from 28.1 GW in 2021. That means more than 10x Hinkley C in a single year (2022), and cheaper per kWh. Facts to found here: https://api.solarpowereurope.org/uploads/5222_SPE_EMO_2022_full_report_ver_03_1_319d70ca42.pdf?updated_at=2022-12-19T08:21:34.541Z https://api.solarpowereurope.org/uploads/5222_SPE_EMO_2022_f... Nuclear is great stop gap until more renewablea are installed, not more not less. And before ypu start, no, the German nuclear plants couldn't be run any longer (maintenance, fuel, safety), run time has already been extended multiple times, and the last nuclear exit, the badly organized one, was put in place by tze conservative CDU let government (not that you go and blame the Greens for it).
  - unglaublich 3y ago
    "Going nuclear" has been _the_ fossil fuel alternative for decades. It has been the only scalable, proven, safe energy base load generation competitor to fossil fuels. The competition between those forms of energy is going back way before the advent of windmills and solar panels. The fossil fuel industry has a huge interest in spreading FUD around nuclear, and the few accidents have been maximally exploited to hamper the development of nuclear. All the while, it has been known full well that fossil fuels have devastating impact on air quality and climate. Air pollution from fossil fuels alone is estimated at killing >3 million people per year. A great many disasters involving oil and fossil fuels have occurred, killing many more millions. Yet, we act like nuclear is the danger, but we're happy to accept burning fossil fuels in the midst of our societies and offer up millions of lives each year to satisfy the lords of the fossil fuel industry.

kjksf 3y ago

If that's the reason then those people are misinformed. Coal and gas plants are closing because they cannot compete on price with solar/wind + battery storage. The cost advantage is not true everywhere but the future is clear. Coal and gas will not become cheaper. Solar and wind is most expensive today it'll ever be. Storage in particular is so early in the cycle that we can expect the cost will drop at least in half. We've barely started making battery storage, the industry has 100x growth ahead. And this is without pricing the real costs of using oil & coal & gas like all those people who have asthma (or worse) because they inhale the fumes. Even living in a city (cars) has clear statistical link to increased asthma and other respiratory diseases compared to places with less cars.

throwaway60742 3y ago
No way they are misinformed, look at German power mix. Germany - the most vocal proponents of wind/solar - is the most polluting country in the whole EU. > Coal and gas plants are closing because they cannot compete on price with solar/wind + battery storage. That did not happen anywhere in Europe. New gas plants are being constructed right now, and coal powerplants had to be restarted when Germans dropped nuclear. > Storage in particular is so early in the cycle that we can expect the cost will drop at least in half. We've barely started making battery storage, the industry has 100x growth ahead. We need to decarbonize today though. People don't want to pay the high prices, so how does the drop happen? > And this is without pricing the real costs of using oil & coal & gas like all those people who have asthma (or worse) because they inhale the fumes. Again, ask Germans about that. Their universal healthcare is going to get expensive soon if they continue on their "green" path. > Even living in a city (cars) has clear statistical link to increased asthma and other respiratory diseases compared to places with less cars. Completely orthogonal, people mostly agree on that, but they (where I live) want to charge the electric cars from nuclear energy.
- svnt 3y ago
  Germany’s repeated renewables efforts were long subject to the fact that Germany was Russia’s European project to keep fossil fuels going as long as possible. No other European country with as much technical competence has inexplicably failed so hard at renewables over and over. Now Germany is experiencing a transition in market conditions that is uncomfortably quick.