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You seem to advocate for some holier than thou perfect path rather than the messy reality that is a transition of the entire energy system to a new cheaper sour
by ViewTrick1002 1y ago
You seem to advocate for some holier than thou perfect path rather than the messy reality that is a transition of the entire energy system to a new cheaper source while upholding our modern society.
Let’s look at the area under the curve?
You know, we need to decarbonize agriculture, construction, transportation etc. as well.
Let look at what the UK has done:
- Coal has gone from 150 TWh to zero.
- Fossil gas from 175 TWh to 85 TWh.
- Nuclear from 80 TWh to 40 TWh.
Would you say this reduction in fossil fuel usage is insignificant because they obviously aren’t done yet?
- belorn 1y agoIf we want to talk messy reality, then the only realistic way to prevent critical point in global warming is to build everything that is non-fossil fuel, that being renewables, nuclear, experimental storage and so on, while at the same time utilizing market forces and use risk-benefit analysis for each government intervention in order to spend government subsidies as cost effective as possible. Everything is needed in order to do as much as possible to reduce emissions. For EU regulation that requires lower emissions and environmental issues with hydro power, the messy reality is also that the cost of breaking the law and paying the fines are currently cheaper than the economical and political costs of complying with the law. So that is what the Swedish government are doing. The Paris Agreement is just a goal and clearly there is a lot of voters who see it as incompatible with modern society. It is also the messy reality that many current governments in EU got their votes in the last election because they bailed out the citizens when the power crisis happened and paid the power bills through taxes, causing major harm in the market and further inflated prices. Building out more natural gas power plants will reduce the cost of the next crisis, which is also the stated goal of the new one that got built in Sweden.
- ViewTrick1002 1y agoYou still haven’t been able to answer why we should waste money on new built nuclear power. It costs 5-10x as much, does not integrate well with renewables due to the capital structure and takes 15-20 years to build from political decision to operational plant. We need to decarbonize now. Not extend the life of fossil assets for decades waiting for nuclear power to come online. With this nuclear power producing a fraction of the TWh compared to if the same money went into renewables and storage. Wasting money on enormous handouts to the nuclear industry is not ”doing as much as possible to reduce emissions”. It is a dogwhistle from climate change deniers to extend the life of fossil assets to stymie their disruption by renewables. I don’t think you’ve kept up with the renewable industry. The absolute explosion we are seeing is because renewables and storage today are cheaper than fossil fuels. It started as feelgood moonshot decades ago. Today companies and countries are at a competitive advantage if they can retool their fossil dependent processes and systems to renewables.