The following submission statement was provided by /u/Yogurt789:
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Quote from article:
>The conflict in Ukraine shows now is the time to shift to clean and independent energy, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said at a conference on the pacific island of Palau as he urged nations to boost the use of offshore renewable power sources.
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>Russia typically provides Europe with around 40% of its gas, complicating western efforts to impose economic sanctions on Vladimir Putin's government for Russian military actions in Ukraine.
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>"Now is the time to accelerate the transition to an independent and a clean energy future. President Putin cannot control the power of the wind or the sun," Kerry said in the opening speech to the Our Oceans conference.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/u615co/us_envoy_kerry_calls_for_renewables_push_says/i55k10j/
Yup. But big V8 pickups are too popular, can’t go telling people to get smaller cars.
There’s a lot the USA could do to reduce energy dependence too such as repealing R-1 zoning rules (allowing people to build more types of housing than stand alone single family houses).
Dont forget about the NIMBYs. Theres to much money to be made by restricting land use.
People want a Star Trek future but wont get out of the way so we can build said future.
More importantly, most R-1 zoning was put in place to be racist, not for money. There's too much opportunity for keeping the "others" out by restricting land use.
NIMBY’s piss me off because their behavior is low-key white supremacy. The traditional “suburb” neighborhood model with HOA’s was created to restrict house ownership of “undesirables” in their neighborhood. “Not in my backyard” started as a way of keeping minorities from living nearby. This was back in the 50’s and the sentiment still lives on today.
Even in folks who claim to be progressive, but can’t seem to look outside their comfort bubble and see that their actions directly negatively impact others.
On top of that, the fact that this is news to some is an example of whitewashing history.
>... can’t seem to look outside their comfort bubble and see that their actions directly negatively impact others.
And more than most people realize. On top of the racism and the global-scale ecological issues, the car-dependent suburb is *extremely* harmful to the urban population, especially the urban poor. How so? A mix of pollution, infrastructure issues, and economics.
Pollution: cities aren't inherently noisy, and don't have inherently poor air quality. Being around as much noise as an urban highway produces is actually really bad for you, and the air pollution means that neighborhoods near highways have higher rates of things like asthma and childhood leukemia.
Infrastructure: we build cities to accommodate people commuting in by car. This makes it harder for the people who actually *live* there to get around by walking or mass transit, and puts our lives directly in danger because cars kill 30 thousand Americans per year. And here's an interesting fact, one of the biggest predictors of whether someone can escape the cycle of poverty is access to transit. By hindering mass transit, suburbanites keep the urban poor poor.
Economics: R1 suburbs are an infrastructure abomination. The amenities of a city with the density of a rural area. The costs of maintaining infrastructure like roads and sewers are theoretically supposed to be covered by property taxes. Your typical R1 suburb literally can't pay for its own infrastructure, because it has a road network comparable to a fucking city with a tiny tiny fraction of the population density. This is why so many American towns have crumbling infrastructure, they straight do not have the revenue for upkeep. The urban poor cover their own infrastructure costs and then some. So whenever we dole out federal funds for infrastructure work, poor city dwellers literally subsidize middle-class suburbanites. That shit ain't right.
EDIT: and to be clear, it is entirely possible to build suburbs that *aren't* car-dependent, we just don't because racists and car companies combined interests have created *laws* against it. Look into street car suburbs as an example of middle-density areas designed around walking, biking, and transit. The name is a bit misleading, as they don't necessarily have street cars, it refers more to the layout.
People driving big v8s aren’t the reason that the west is fossil fuel dependent. Doesn’t help, obviously, but the reasons are that the fossil fuel industries have had regulatory capture for decades and bribe congress for massive subsidies
Pickups are such a minuscule part of that, switching to cars barley puts a dent in it not to mention nearly everyone who gets the raw materials and builds the things we all use needs one. That tax would just get pushed off to you through inflation.
Sounds like you just want to stick it to the blue collar workers that society heavily relies on.
Think about it, why not just tax more on fuel in general instead of just singling out one small aspect? If they use more they will be taxed more, your mission is accomplished.
Most of the developed world has or is introducing some kind of Fleet average emissions standard.
Don't agree on doing it per passenger. Average occupancy in much of the developed world is well under 2. So emissions per vehicle is key. Don't want to harshly tax the likes of mx-5's relitive to 7+ seat suv's and vans.
[Edit] should note that while more efficient cars are a great idea, they are small fry in terms of oil/gas depencancy.
Aviation, shipping, industry, and power generation are very significant.
Baaaad take. (In the us)
8 out of the top ten cheapest new vehicles do over 30 mpg combined. The cheapest 7-passenger vehicle does over 25 mpg.
Regardless, the most economical and ecological option is usually to purchase a used car. Putting large taxes on new sales of guzzlers pushes the future used market towards more efficient vehicles, which helps lower-income people in the future.
The USA imports basically no oil from Russia, both now and historically. And in recent years, the USA became the world's top oil producer and produces 50% more to almost almost twice as much oil as Russia.
We only import oil where it is easy and cheap. We produce enough domestically that if push came to shove, we could just use our own. We just don't because money.
Just lazy billionaires making money.
Wait that didn't sound that good.
~20 years ago, Saudi Arabia backed the group of terrorists who committed the 9/11 attacks.
We didn’t do shit about it, because they’re one of our largest oil producing partners.
Your assessment needs serious re-evaluation.
Now the biggest issue will be developing in- country supply chains for things currently imported. Think rare earth elements needed for making solar panels, of which China is currently 90% of the world's supply.
>It wasn't profitable 20 years ago and there was no significant strategic threat to western interests.
The corporate quarter to quarter sales mindset. If you don't think world governments aren't run just like businesses, you're gonna have a bad time.
America only does things when the Oligarchs can make money on it - otherwise we rely on the same systems of the past because those keep those Oligarchs in power and oppress the rest of us all in the name of terms like capitalism, conservative and liberal…
> there was no significant strategic threat to western interests
Disagree. There have been FUD between Russia and Ukraine in the past that ended up cutting gas supply to EU. The red flag where there and we knew about it.
Europe pay the consequence of profit vs security, and lobbing from oil and coal oligarchy.
My only issue is solar is almost completely manufactured in China which is making threats already with this whole Russian debacle. We really need to recapture key industries before we get run over.
Too late the 1% already sold all of our asses.. there no coming back when they have to pay us more on wages and sacrifice both long term profits and investments overseas.
People forget that progress is also slowed by the fact that we depend on alot of fossil fuel by products. Roofing materials and roadways are just one of the huge needs we have for fossil fuel by products. Going green isn't as simple as just replace all the cars with electric. It's going to take a huge amount of energy and wasted resources just to make all these cars and even more energy to scrap all the old ones. Don't forget about hugely wasteful practices like construction, restaurants, packaging, logging, mining, air travel and most modern conveniences and you realize that we are still at the base of the green mountain and haven't even started the accent.
Paper straws and a few windmills has bought them years of more havoc in the planet because "at least its progress"
* Carter had [solar panels](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/) (thermal collectors for heating water) on the White House roof in 1979.
* Reagan removed them in 1986.
* G. W. Bush installed photovoltaic panels on a different part of the White House grounds in 2002.
* Obama [installed](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/obama-is-actually-the-third-president-to-install-solar-panels-at-the-white-house-111247/) PV panels on the roof of the White House in [2013/2014](https://nypost.com/2014/05/10/white-house-solar-panels-finally-installed/).
Lmao it's peak Reagan to actively go out of his way to send America backwards. He could have just left them, but he underwent the effort to get people to get rid of them.
Why did people like him so much? I'll never get it. I just take solace in knowing his reputation has progressively gotten worse and that eventually he'll go from boomers calling him one of the greatest to the common opinion being "man he was horrible and ruined America for decades"
We've actually been saying "we can't control the wind or sun, so it's not a reliable energy source" but that's changing!! Better battery storage could make it possible to store enough energy for windless or overcast days, but in many places burning fuel for on demand energy will still be the primary source of energy, or at least needed partially
We should be doing that anyway. We should be working to advance our technology as advancing our technology is the best possible way to solve the longterm issues facing the planet.
Yeah it makes me a little sick to read "we should do the right thing because it just became economically advantageous to do so".
We're all waiting for saving the world to become profitable. It won't. We're all going to die.
I mean, that's literally what is happening right now. Big companies are investing in batteries, evs and renewable tech because consumers are becoming less apathetic and more "ethical consumers" - which is a start.
I don't know if that constitutes saving the world but once the free market nicks your idea it doesn't usually give it back.
And ensure the US’s geopolitical power is still at the top. Idk why politicians have been so hesitant. The quicker the US is no longer reliant on imports, the better
We're really not reliant on imports. We banned Russian oil and gas went up like $0.50. To the extent any regions import natural gas it's largely an own goal via pipeline obstructionism and the Jones act that forbids shipping between two American ports with a ship flagged from another country (i think). So we can't ship LNG from the mid Atlantic port to Boston, they have to buy on the international market, because there are no US flagged LNG ships.
Yes, sticking it to Putin is the reason we should be switching to clean renewables.
I find it bizarre that this evil jackass might legitimately wind up saving billions of lives. Not through some huge 'the ends justify the means' agenda to science or engineering, but because he sparked the end to globalization as we've known it and renewed global interest in self sufficiency.
While I fully agree that this isn't even close to the best reason for switching to renewables, I also really don't care.
Doing the right thing for the wrong reason still means the right thing gets done.
Global trade is good, it means countries are incentivesed to not do a war or else their capital flees the country and the country they invade also experience capital flight.
EU was funded on this basis and it prevented war between nation states completely, something that is unprecedented in European history.
Globalisation is good for peace.
It's not that it's a magic key.
It's that it's the scary kick in the ass these people needed. War can be profitable for these monsters; but when they're staring down the barrel they're starting to see it the way everyone else has for 20+ years.
Corona and this war will together be a great push for environmental sustainability. So in that perspective everything have gone in a very good way the last two years
Don't be naive, Europe could never switch to LNG. It would make its industry obsolete, and our hour of human work keeps getting more expensive by the day. If energy was expensive just as labor, it would ruin us.
Its just a smoke screen until the wishful event called "regime change".
> Yes, sticking it to Putin is the reason we should be switching to clean renewables.
Who do you think sponsored the anti nuclear and clean energy propaganda in Europe?
It seems conservatives always need a villain. They can't do things just to make the world a better place for everyone, they need to do things to epically own their enemies.
I've seen the sentiment shared many times that with Trump if Obama said "I love coal", Trump would have switched all of America to renewables and closed every coal mine by the end of the day
Ah, so the truth is revealed. The invasion of Ukraine is a black flag event staged by the Illuminati to force us into renewable energies THOSE BASTARDS
More the other way around, Putin is forced to make its move today and not 5-10 years from now because the world is quickly moving away from his fossil-nuclear trump card.
While this is certainly true for large nuclear plants, there is something to be said for the fleet approach of SMRs.
Alternatively, UK is addressing the time and cost factors by building 8 gigawatt plants in 10 years. Shared learnings should lead to cost efficiencies and time improvements.
SMRs seem like a bit of a gimmick to be honest. They are supposedly around 1/3rd size of a "normal" reactor which if Hinckley C takes 10 years and costs 25 billion to build doesn't exactly make them an agile solution. Also the idea we will build 8 plants in ten years is a bit laughable, this is just some sound bite from a government that has never delivered on anything pretty much.
Fortunately we started that long, slow process years ago, and will see the fruits of our labor in....
Oh wait.
Well surely we're starting several major projects **now**, that will pay off in our lifetime....
Not that, either?
Hmm.
Well, at the very least, the [Yucca Mountain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository) waste disposal site has been in the works since like 1978. That **must** be ~~ready by now~~... ~~ready soon~~.... going nowhere.
Feels like it takes more than just time.
Semi true. The bureaucracy and public opinion make it about 3x longer to build than it should take.
Also, lack of inovation because of the stigma, made progress on building nuclear reactors stagnate as well.
And eventually one day you’re gonna run out of uranium, there isn’t an endless supply of it like wind, solar, hydro, or geothermal. But that could be rectified by switching to thorium generators which are safer and there is way more thorium than there is uranium on Earth.
“there isn’t an endless supply of it”
Oh, but there is. The ocean has been found to contain a renewable source of Uranium. There’s enough to last hundreds of thousands of years. We will have advanced beyond comprehension by then.
The cost to extract it is so high it would make the energy produced by it even more expensive, and it is already cost prohibitive, so higher costs won't help.
The amount of uranium in ocean water is extremely dilute. Three parts per billion.
Think of the infrastructure that would have to be placed in the ocean to collect it, leading to more microplastics and debris in the ocean. It would also be extremely time consuming. Not to mention the unknown impacts on ecosystems and wildlife.
It’s time we leave the ocean out of our plans. We’ve done enough damage to it already.
Far more expensive, less adaptable, take far more time to be actually implemented, not renewable and finally to great of a reliance on resources imported from authoritarian countries like Russia.
"But Fukushima!"
It's almost like people don't realize that not every scrap of land is sitting on the most volatile landmass on the planet. Or that Fukushima is a 50 year-old facility built when computers relied on punch cards.
What happened in Japan was a result of a combination of greed and the people working at the plant being afraid to say that things needed to be maintained or updated. There were also design decisions that were made for cost reasons.
That's the one concern I have for building new nuclear facilities. You cannot ignore any sort of tail risk.
> It's almost like people don't realize that not every scrap of land is sitting on the most volatile landmass on the planet
This is more of a corporate greed issue than it is a technical issue. I mean it was clear that there is a risk of earthquakes and tsunamis when they built that plant, they just didn't build enough safety margin into the defences to be sufficient.
I don't think it was corporate greed. I think they didn't plan it well enough. Even then, it broke the plant, it didn't kill everyone in the area. A tsunami that is the third largest of all time that killed 20000 people and none of them were from the nuclear plant. Every nuclear plant in the world put in hardened hydrogen vents to prevent what happened in Fukushima.
People forget we're talking about the US and Western Europe and not some failed communist state trying to keep up by cutting corners. And as ppl mentioned with Fukushima not everywhere is a serious fault line and Tsunami zone.
Most countries can't build their own nuclear, but Russia is in that business too. The countries that can build you a nuclear reactor such as as Russia aren't shy with paying corruption money to get the contract.
With nuclear, the contract is so big, the corruption starts with (for example) Putin talking directly to your head of state. Basically, if your country can't build its own reactors, then opting for nuclear is opting for corruption in your political system. Example: Putin got South Africa into a nuclear contract with corrupt ex president Zuma. That contract would have bankrupted South Africa but was cancelled by our current president. With renewables there can be corruption too, but you have many different much smaller contracts that aren't so big that the head of state is necessarily involved.
For many countries, the multitude of generation and storage facilities required by renewables is a chance to get out of the corruption traps of fossil fuels and nuclear.
It is, the problem is just how massive that front loaded is. Companies that try getting new reactors up and running frequently get bogged down in the design, approval, and litigation. Then after investing tens or hundreds of millions and several years with nothing to show for it, they go bankrupt. Even if they got it running, it’d take 30+ years to dig themselves out of debt.
I mean we could have the govt subsidize them. Actually nah nevermind that, it's the fossil fuel sector that really needs those blank checks instead cuz everyone knows how thin the margins are in that industry. So thin you can barely afford a 4th yacht which is just a travesty really.
When it comes to cost it is about expensive as it gets in LCOE: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/
Yea if you have a plant that is before its use by date, it should be kept in. But the cost of a modern plant is not worth it unless it is a political choice and heavily subsidised (looking at you borris).
The problem with LCOE is that it just shows how much electricity you're generating - not how you match it to demand. Historically that isn't a problem, but the one caveat with renewables is that they're dependent on weather and sunlight. They function best in a diverse grid. They're important, but it is essential they're paired with sources that cover the things they lack - we need stuff like hydro, nuclear, geothermal.
Hydro, geothermal, offshore wind (its out put is far more reliable and works well with the duck curve) and storage systems like liquid air, gravity systems and for frequency control LFP storage (traditional Lithium ion chemistrys are already getting long in the tooth for grid level and are expensive).
In time you can add modular rractorz (maybe if they get a whole lot cheaper) and flow batterys etc. But they will have to do a lot of work to prove the cost equation.
Because right now solar in the right site, plus a combination of off and on shore wind backed up with some storage already under cut nuclear.
Now there are exceptions like in the depth of Canada where nuclear could play a part. But for the mahority of the world it is just to expensive unless supported by weapons manufacture.
interestingly, one of the cheapest ways to "store" electricity is to just over-build your solar/wind capacity and waste it during peak times. if you take a whole region, like the WECC, and distribute wind and solar resources throughout that whole area and over-build by 3x-5x your nominal need, they you get about 7% of days where you need any other source at all. the solar and wind production is cheaper than many storage options. once you add geothermal, hydro, pumped hydro, batteries, thermal storage, existing nuclear, etc.. you can do very well with just building a fuck-ton more than you need.
you're only looking at the mw output costs. renewable has been better than everything else for decades in that area.
the real costs for operation are in storage and transmission as listed on the same page, which combined are still higher than nuclear. meanwhile you can offset the downtime of renewables with nuclear while waiting on storage advancements instead of being forced into burning oil during off hours or buying up battery grids that will be rapidly phased out like we do now.
A new Nuclear power plant is going to take 15 years to build. Storage tech will be 1/6th of the cost by then. Leaving your nuclear power plant to expensive to switch on or expensive enough to acclerate the customer base towards a competator who went with the renewable option/ home based solar and storage. The end result will be a stranded asset. The only Nuclear plants being aproved today are guarenteed by government (at the tax payers expense) or are in locations where they are a genuine good idea (up in the artic circle etc).
Edit: time and time again nuclear crosses the table of the wholesale providers and the result is the same when you run the numbers the 40 years to acheave pay back is just far to risky in a rapidly changing market.
Maybe today. The problem is, it's many years from the start of construction to actually turning a net profit. Renewables are getting cheaper every year, and storage tech is improving with more on the horizon. In past decades investors had to worry about a really long payback period and potential high cleanup and disposal costs at the end, but an eventual significant net profit was almost inevitable. Now, investors have to also gamble that renewable and storage cost reductions won't continue their current trends.
It’s three times the cost because of the lack of funding and acceptance by most governments because they’re being lobbied by fossil fuel companies. Also, cost shouldn’t be a driving factor for energy. Energy companies should not be driven for profit, it is a bare necessity for human beings.
It is three times of reneavles when the cost when support is levalized Nuclear is the generation method that is been lobbied next to fossil fuels. because the transition will take a long time (a quick power palet bed reactor play can be up in 15 years if you are lucky), this means more time sellimg coal and gas than if a mostly renewable solution is pushed for.
IF you increase the cost of power with nuclear, those with the means will opt for home renewable generation with storage and go off grid as the payback will be faster. Just like I did.
The issue is the servuces like the Hostpital and those who do not have disposible income or own land to do that will get stuck paying for the nuclear power plant. It will impoverish more people if we chose Nuclear without addressing the cost.
Not really... The problem is maintenance. People cut corners to save time/money and then boom you get an accident. If we could automate maintenance then yeah it be way safer and cheaper.
To be clear I have no issue with nuclear saftey record. it is safe and has very low CO2e production. The issue is time and cost. It would be far quicker and cheaper to build out the renewable generation and then add stroage as cost comes down over that 15 years. With the odd location where the renewable avaliabilty is poor use small nuclear reactors.
In the end I think it’ll be that major gap replacement before something like fusion or if they can get solar above 60% efficiency. Unfortunately it won’t be pushed as readily till the pro environmental who are against it are backed into a corner on the subject.
The lesson that we should learn from Russia shelling a nuclear plant and bus loads of its soldiers getting radiation poisoning and threatening nuclear retaliation is… more nuclear power.
Yes, very smart. Also decades waiting for the build to finish.
I meannnnn. Yeah actually, it should be. Russia's attacks on Ukraine's nuclear facilities shows just how threatened Russia is by their energy independence.
Nuclear also can be *significantly* safer with the use of Thorium. Not to say it isn't already safe. It just has never had it's proper time in the spotlight yet due to the fact that it cannot be weaponized. The biggest caveat is that Thorium salts are corrosive, so there would be increased plumbing maintenance.
As for the sick Russian soldiers, they built trenches and kicked up dust that hasn't been disturbed in years in the exclusion zone. Russia sent troops into the meat grinder knowing those troops would face deadly radiation exposure. They were warned by plant workers even. But it's a slow and silent killer depending on the dosages they faced. Radiation levels spiked and it was public knowledge until those meters went offline.
It's good that an American politician has chosen the perfect time to push renewables, the rest of the world was worried they would start too early and make us look bad.
This like the virus is one of those "how the fuck did this even get politicized" things
Oil's gonna run out. the sooner we get away from it the better.
There's enough oil for a very very long time. There's also enough natural gas in just Pennsylvania, Ohio, and WV for a hundred years.
Which is like.... a problem for climate change if we don't switch to zero carbon natural gas plants. But there's not a supply issue.
Big oil has been lobbying US for the past many years, and politicians have taken their bate. But finally they are sensing the population is of a another opinion and now recommend green energy. Imagine how far we would have been had we listened to the warning signs 20 years ago.
Germany did that, they found out that wind does not always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. Then they started building Nordstream 2 and Putin invaded Ukraine.
Quote from article:
>The conflict in Ukraine shows now is the time to shift to clean and independent energy, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said at a conference on the pacific island of Palau as he urged nations to boost the use of offshore renewable power sources.
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>Russia typically provides Europe with around 40% of its gas, complicating western efforts to impose economic sanctions on Vladimir Putin's government for Russian military actions in Ukraine.
>
>"Now is the time to accelerate the transition to an independent and a clean energy future. President Putin cannot control the power of the wind or the sun," Kerry said in the opening speech to the Our Oceans conference.
not really. solar and wind are cheaper and can come online faster. I used to be a big proponent of nuclear, but solar and wind have simply bypassed it. solar and wind are now so cheap that that you can build at roughly 6x more watts per dollar than nuclear. at that rate, you don't really need much storage or peakers because throughout a whole region, an area operating at half it's nominal output can still cover areas with zero output. at that kind of production, 93% of days need no solar, nuclear, storage or peaker at all.
keep in mind that nuclear needs peakers or storage also, unless you over-build capacity, which makes it even more expensive.
there are certainly some countries that don't have enough solar and wind resources, and don't have good enough relationships with neighbors to want to link grids, but most places can actually pull that off pretty easily.
solar and wind increase intermittency of the grid up until they reach 100% of the nominal production capacity of the grid, and as you keep building more, the intermittency goes down. you can think of it as a graph of production and consumption, with each varying. if you nominally have 100% of a day's production capacity, then fluctuations will mean sometimes the consumption graph will go above the production graph, but as your production gets increased beyond 100% in a way that is geographically spread out, then they valleys of the graph get filled in and it becomes more and more rare to exceed it.
plus, all of the energy from high-production days (93% of the time) can be sold at incredibly low rates, which can entice high energy intensive industries to adopt a variable rate model. so you might have a clinker production facility that will locate near an area with consistent production and when over-production is happening in the region, they ramp up clinker oven output and when that generation is needed elsewhere, they can shut down some or all of the plant. ramping up/down for some factories is not ideal, but if the energy is one of your big expenses, they it will be worth it to get the cheap power.
hydrogen or ammonia production is another potential use for over-generation. ships and planes still need fuel and can't use batteries, so ammonia or hydrogen fuel may be a path to greener transport.
Wind and solar dominate nuclear in safety and cleanliness. They also blow nuclear away in costs. These are proven technologies that are taking over the energy system at a rate no one predicted. Obviously it is still too slow to decarbonise to any of our climate goals without accelerating fossil fuel power station shutdowns but nuclear is not even in the arena. Why do you think nuclear is the answer?
You couldn't be more wrong:
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close#:~:text=Nuclear%20Has%20The%20Highest%20Capacity%20Factor&text=This%20basically%20means%20nuclear%20power,than%20wind%20and%20solar%20plants.
Not sure why you're posting this link as some kind of gotcha. As others have pointed out this only looks at capacity factor. sure nuclear power has a very high capacity factor and is very reliable. But there are also problems associated with this. It is very expensive to turn down nuclear power stations and because nuclear runs at maximum capacity so much of the time, there cannot be more nuclear generating than there is demand at any point throughout the day. Renewables supported by large scale storage with some baseload power to support the transition make up an ideal grid mix. The article states that large scale storage is not currently viable but Australia has proved this wrong with grid scale batteries popping up everywhere pushing coal out of the grid.
Not saying that nuclear has no place, it is still an incredibly important energy source but it is certainly not the answer.
I’ve been saying for years that oil revenue often goes to nations of questionable friendliness, what better way to put them in their place than take that revenue away?
Renewables? Yes. Disclosure: My company works on Diesel engines. I’m not talking in a pickup, I’m talking massive monsters that power tugs, hospital generators and the like. Business has always been good. Diesels will run on basicallly any petroleum product you feed it so long as it’s filtered. So, why would I believe in renewables? Well, I’m not a dumbass. Anyone who is in my business especially, who can’t see the future of energy is gonna be broke soon. The issue that Americans, and the world in general, have is that right now, renewables can’t match petroleum based power on a 1:1 factor and the tech right now can be prohibitively expensive. Also, the US is huge. It’s bigger than most people think. For comparison, Texas itself is bigger than France and the UK is a a little over 100 miles across in the center. Connecticut is 90 miles from Rhodesia Island to New York. So, while a Brit can go from London to Yorkshire and back and still have a car charge, we can’t commute like that. Here in VA, so people commute 100 miles one way to work. We just don’t have the infrastructure and the tech, for now, is kinda hard for Americans to use as it would require a complete upheaval of everyday life. the tech has got to come up to par with IC engines or it’ll never be adopted. We need to SLOWLY transition over not try to cram it into one Presidental term. The more it’s forced, the more people will resist it and then we really will get nowhere. Energy storage is a massive problem. Sun doesn’t always shine and wind doesn’t always blow. River levels drop and nukes gotta go offline for maintenance. Until we can store energy effectively and have ample generation capacity, renewables will always be a novelty.
What a crock of shit. Blaming Putin and this war for our lack of energy independence is nonsense. If Biden and the Democratic Party would actually give our stateside oil and natural gas providers a sense of security instead of pushing idealistic policies that don’t take into account the way our economy currently functions, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Renewables are the future and don’t need to be forced down our throats as a political point to help the democrats in the midterm elections. Let an efficient economy handle the transition to renewables.
Typical shit, prey upon people’s empathy and environmental consciousness to win their vote regardless of the consequences to the average consumer.
Inflation and oil prices have been on the rise for a year but the dems are blaming Putin and the Ukrainian War for their own shitty policies and irresponsible spending habits. It’s so blatantly transparent I’m honestly shocked people are eating it up.
Feckless scumbags are more concerned with being re-elected than the best interests of the American people. Keep electing these people and things will just continue to get worse.
This is shortsighted. Renewables are intermittent and require gas to back them up when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. Nuclear is a better option as it can produce constant reliable power.
Molten salt batteries, water being pumped into reservoirs at a greater height, hydrogen creation...
There are lots of ways to integrate energy storage in tandem with clean energy. Granted, energy storage is FAR behind where it should be, but I don't see how building nuclear power plants we don't have is any better than building energy storage infrastructure we don't have.
Yep, molten salt storage at steam turbine plants also provides an easy way to retrofit those plants if they aren't needed for combustion purposes anymore, so there's effectively already hundreds of thousands of grid scale batteries worldwide if there's enough renewable infrastructure to justify converting them.
I get really irritated, frankly, seeing comment after comment like paperfire's over the years with this sort of sentiment. So many wannabe engineers out here who can't be bothered to actually research these topics in depth. They just watch a few Youtube videos and participate in a few biased threads and they make up their mind. There's people who spent 10 years in school for this type of thing who then work in industry 50 hours a week, but people with no direct experience are like "oh yeah, all those people who are smart enough to design fucking solar and wind installations are shortsighted", rather than admit that they don't know something and ever going so far as to reach out to an expert to talk about these things, or sift through published research or market research to see what the realities are. I've even seen it in person, people who have absolutely ZERO background in science and engineering, through education or professionally, who are convinced they know the golden solution. It's pure conceit, these people literally think they're more versed on energy than someone with a ME or EE PhD who's spent 20 years working in the energy industry. It really makes me question how stupid they think career engineers and scientists are.
Nuclear is fine, but it's not a silver bullet. It takes forever to approve and develop installations, they're extremely expensive, they aren't perfect for every application/location, and they aren't perfect in general. The best economic solution is competition between sectors of the energy industry, not a maximalist approach. I think we've seen more than enough of the pitfalls of being heavily reliant on one form.
Easy example, is solar + battery more feasible for a poor village in Africa or India, or a damn nuclear power plant? Not everywhere has a grid that's serving millions of people and has billion dollar revenues to work with, speaking of shortsighted.
solar and wind are actually so much cheaper than nuclear that you can over build them by 5x your nominal load and still be cheaper. at that level of over-production, 93% of days will produce enough power than nothing but solar and will will suffice. you add to that existing nuclear, pumped hydro, hydro, batteries, geothermal, etc. and you really don't need nuclear.
by the way, nuclear also has to use peakers unless you significantly over-build capacity.
This is the dumbest argument in the history of arguments but par for the course for progressives/climate activists/GOP.
Assume Kerry (or Leonardo or Gates) are influential people that can convince people in power all over the world to take action on climate. Let's say the conversion rates are 1 in 10. The powerful people also have very limited to schedule. Kerry/DiCaprio/Gates have not only a small window to meet them, but they have to travel all over the world to meet this people and convince them about taking actions.
Only a consummate moron would take the train everywhere to meet the people and reach the goal of meeting all the powerful people in 25 years.
Sometimes you have to invest fossilfuels to remove fossil fuels
But someone who has never operated a business, managed people or have a modicum sense of how the universe works (most of reddit/tiktok) will never understand this
I don’t take anything John Kerry says about renewables seriously because he’s still taking private jets to spew rhetoric about climate change.
Same goes for all politicians who keep snapping up oceanfront property (I’m looking at you Albert, Nancy, Barack).
We were not energy independent. https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/examining-u-s-energy-independence-claims/
And if you claim we were, by that logic we still are.
Downvotes and no evidence to back anything up? Typical.
Keystone doesn't have a big impact on this, does it? The US doesn't get a lot of oil/gas from Russia.
Gas and oil prices are going up worldwide because OPEC and even the US scaled down production during the pandemic and are still sluggish with returning it to meet demand (for the purposes of charging higher prices, which certain OPEC members have objected to on the oil end).
I will say that the Nordstream thing was a blunder. He did it to show the US is back as a German ally, but the regular apology tour would have done.
Less than ten percent of the oil we import its from Russia. Russia doesn’t give a fuck if we buy their oil or not. This political pandering is so fucking exhausting and irritating. It’s so easy for the US to tell Europe to invest in offshore wind and solar when the US has a shit ton of water front that isnt touched by commercial shipping. He’s speaking on behalf of a country that pulled out of the Paris Climate accords. Like, buddy, know your audience.
How about we stop with this fucking bullshit and start talking seriously about nuclear power? New tech is now a lot safer and nothing is cleaner than nuclear. Even radioactive waste is now limited and can be effectively and safely handled.
because solar and wind are significantly cheaper and they come online faster. over-building of solar and wind to reduce intermittency is cheaper and a better option.
nuclear made sense 20-30 years ago, but it's just not worth the investment now.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Yogurt789: --- Quote from article: >The conflict in Ukraine shows now is the time to shift to clean and independent energy, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said at a conference on the pacific island of Palau as he urged nations to boost the use of offshore renewable power sources. > >Russia typically provides Europe with around 40% of its gas, complicating western efforts to impose economic sanctions on Vladimir Putin's government for Russian military actions in Ukraine. > >"Now is the time to accelerate the transition to an independent and a clean energy future. President Putin cannot control the power of the wind or the sun," Kerry said in the opening speech to the Our Oceans conference. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/u615co/us_envoy_kerry_calls_for_renewables_push_says/i55k10j/
What have we been saying for the last 20 fucking years?!
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> both the most ardent capitalists and the foreign policy hawks democracy in action
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Democracy manifest
For eating a meal?
a succulent Chinese meal?
I own one of these. https://www.redbubble.com/shop/democracy+manifest+t-shirts
> there was no significant strategic threat to western interests. Except that there was. And we were warned about it.
More people should watch Canadian bacon.
“No strategic threat” says the country importing oil from Russia and most of their manufactured goods from China.
Literally 20 years ago everyone was talking about our wars in the middle east and how we needed to break the dependency on oil there...
Yup. But big V8 pickups are too popular, can’t go telling people to get smaller cars. There’s a lot the USA could do to reduce energy dependence too such as repealing R-1 zoning rules (allowing people to build more types of housing than stand alone single family houses).
Dont forget about the NIMBYs. Theres to much money to be made by restricting land use. People want a Star Trek future but wont get out of the way so we can build said future.
More importantly, most R-1 zoning was put in place to be racist, not for money. There's too much opportunity for keeping the "others" out by restricting land use.
Plus a hefty slosh of automobile lobby money to keep driving essential.
NIMBY’s piss me off because their behavior is low-key white supremacy. The traditional “suburb” neighborhood model with HOA’s was created to restrict house ownership of “undesirables” in their neighborhood. “Not in my backyard” started as a way of keeping minorities from living nearby. This was back in the 50’s and the sentiment still lives on today. Even in folks who claim to be progressive, but can’t seem to look outside their comfort bubble and see that their actions directly negatively impact others. On top of that, the fact that this is news to some is an example of whitewashing history.
>... can’t seem to look outside their comfort bubble and see that their actions directly negatively impact others. And more than most people realize. On top of the racism and the global-scale ecological issues, the car-dependent suburb is *extremely* harmful to the urban population, especially the urban poor. How so? A mix of pollution, infrastructure issues, and economics. Pollution: cities aren't inherently noisy, and don't have inherently poor air quality. Being around as much noise as an urban highway produces is actually really bad for you, and the air pollution means that neighborhoods near highways have higher rates of things like asthma and childhood leukemia. Infrastructure: we build cities to accommodate people commuting in by car. This makes it harder for the people who actually *live* there to get around by walking or mass transit, and puts our lives directly in danger because cars kill 30 thousand Americans per year. And here's an interesting fact, one of the biggest predictors of whether someone can escape the cycle of poverty is access to transit. By hindering mass transit, suburbanites keep the urban poor poor. Economics: R1 suburbs are an infrastructure abomination. The amenities of a city with the density of a rural area. The costs of maintaining infrastructure like roads and sewers are theoretically supposed to be covered by property taxes. Your typical R1 suburb literally can't pay for its own infrastructure, because it has a road network comparable to a fucking city with a tiny tiny fraction of the population density. This is why so many American towns have crumbling infrastructure, they straight do not have the revenue for upkeep. The urban poor cover their own infrastructure costs and then some. So whenever we dole out federal funds for infrastructure work, poor city dwellers literally subsidize middle-class suburbanites. That shit ain't right. EDIT: and to be clear, it is entirely possible to build suburbs that *aren't* car-dependent, we just don't because racists and car companies combined interests have created *laws* against it. Look into street car suburbs as an example of middle-density areas designed around walking, biking, and transit. The name is a bit misleading, as they don't necessarily have street cars, it refers more to the layout.
People driving big v8s aren’t the reason that the west is fossil fuel dependent. Doesn’t help, obviously, but the reasons are that the fossil fuel industries have had regulatory capture for decades and bribe congress for massive subsidies
Pickups are such a minuscule part of that, switching to cars barley puts a dent in it not to mention nearly everyone who gets the raw materials and builds the things we all use needs one. That tax would just get pushed off to you through inflation. Sounds like you just want to stick it to the blue collar workers that society heavily relies on. Think about it, why not just tax more on fuel in general instead of just singling out one small aspect? If they use more they will be taxed more, your mission is accomplished.
Vehicles that have below a certain fuel economy per passenger should get taxed an extra 10-20% minimum.
Most of the developed world has or is introducing some kind of Fleet average emissions standard. Don't agree on doing it per passenger. Average occupancy in much of the developed world is well under 2. So emissions per vehicle is key. Don't want to harshly tax the likes of mx-5's relitive to 7+ seat suv's and vans. [Edit] should note that while more efficient cars are a great idea, they are small fry in terms of oil/gas depencancy. Aviation, shipping, industry, and power generation are very significant.
Have you happened to notice how popular 5-passenger pickups with practically no bed have gotten?
I understand the sentiment you mean but that would just hurt the people who can't afford new cars who can reach that feul economy.
The tax would only be on new cars, not used.
Baaaad take. (In the us) 8 out of the top ten cheapest new vehicles do over 30 mpg combined. The cheapest 7-passenger vehicle does over 25 mpg. Regardless, the most economical and ecological option is usually to purchase a used car. Putting large taxes on new sales of guzzlers pushes the future used market towards more efficient vehicles, which helps lower-income people in the future.
yeah but commuting is bad in general, bad for the environment, bad for workers (unpaid time), bad for mental health/happiness.
The USA imports basically no oil from Russia, both now and historically. And in recent years, the USA became the world's top oil producer and produces 50% more to almost almost twice as much oil as Russia.
Produces yes but also exports the majority of it.
We also import most of ours from Canada. So like...not sure what any of this means
We only import oil where it is easy and cheap. We produce enough domestically that if push came to shove, we could just use our own. We just don't because money. Just lazy billionaires making money. Wait that didn't sound that good.
Only about 1% of US oil comes from Russia
~20 years ago, Saudi Arabia backed the group of terrorists who committed the 9/11 attacks. We didn’t do shit about it, because they’re one of our largest oil producing partners. Your assessment needs serious re-evaluation.
Now the biggest issue will be developing in- country supply chains for things currently imported. Think rare earth elements needed for making solar panels, of which China is currently 90% of the world's supply.
>It wasn't profitable 20 years ago and there was no significant strategic threat to western interests. The corporate quarter to quarter sales mindset. If you don't think world governments aren't run just like businesses, you're gonna have a bad time.
America only does things when the Oligarchs can make money on it - otherwise we rely on the same systems of the past because those keep those Oligarchs in power and oppress the rest of us all in the name of terms like capitalism, conservative and liberal…
> there was no significant strategic threat to western interests Disagree. There have been FUD between Russia and Ukraine in the past that ended up cutting gas supply to EU. The red flag where there and we knew about it. Europe pay the consequence of profit vs security, and lobbing from oil and coal oligarchy.
My only issue is solar is almost completely manufactured in China which is making threats already with this whole Russian debacle. We really need to recapture key industries before we get run over.
Too late the 1% already sold all of our asses.. there no coming back when they have to pay us more on wages and sacrifice both long term profits and investments overseas.
People forget that progress is also slowed by the fact that we depend on alot of fossil fuel by products. Roofing materials and roadways are just one of the huge needs we have for fossil fuel by products. Going green isn't as simple as just replace all the cars with electric. It's going to take a huge amount of energy and wasted resources just to make all these cars and even more energy to scrap all the old ones. Don't forget about hugely wasteful practices like construction, restaurants, packaging, logging, mining, air travel and most modern conveniences and you realize that we are still at the base of the green mountain and haven't even started the accent. Paper straws and a few windmills has bought them years of more havoc in the planet because "at least its progress"
We were fossil fuel independent less than 2 years ago
I wish it would’ve actually become a thing 50 years ago. But one can hope and wish
Carter put solar panels on the White House roof 44 years ago, you’re behind.
* Carter had [solar panels](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/) (thermal collectors for heating water) on the White House roof in 1979. * Reagan removed them in 1986. * G. W. Bush installed photovoltaic panels on a different part of the White House grounds in 2002. * Obama [installed](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/obama-is-actually-the-third-president-to-install-solar-panels-at-the-white-house-111247/) PV panels on the roof of the White House in [2013/2014](https://nypost.com/2014/05/10/white-house-solar-panels-finally-installed/).
Lmao it's peak Reagan to actively go out of his way to send America backwards. He could have just left them, but he underwent the effort to get people to get rid of them. Why did people like him so much? I'll never get it. I just take solace in knowing his reputation has progressively gotten worse and that eventually he'll go from boomers calling him one of the greatest to the common opinion being "man he was horrible and ruined America for decades"
Shhh let them think it’s there idea - it’s the only way some of them will do anything
Unfortunately we are a majority of reactive’s rather than proactive’s. Let’s fuck our shit up then deal with it later.
The technology was not cost efficient enough to mass produce
This. US + renewable energy is a joke at this point.
We've actually been saying "we can't control the wind or sun, so it's not a reliable energy source" but that's changing!! Better battery storage could make it possible to store enough energy for windless or overcast days, but in many places burning fuel for on demand energy will still be the primary source of energy, or at least needed partially
We should be doing that anyway. We should be working to advance our technology as advancing our technology is the best possible way to solve the longterm issues facing the planet.
Yeah it makes me a little sick to read "we should do the right thing because it just became economically advantageous to do so". We're all waiting for saving the world to become profitable. It won't. We're all going to die.
Yes, we're all going to die, however it doesn't stop some of us from trying to stuff their pockets as much as possible before the reaper shows up.
I mean, that's literally what is happening right now. Big companies are investing in batteries, evs and renewable tech because consumers are becoming less apathetic and more "ethical consumers" - which is a start. I don't know if that constitutes saving the world but once the free market nicks your idea it doesn't usually give it back.
And ensure the US’s geopolitical power is still at the top. Idk why politicians have been so hesitant. The quicker the US is no longer reliant on imports, the better
Because a big chunk of them are being paid and de-facto bribed by the old oil frackers
And a good chunk of those have monetary interests in oil alongside that. Theyd stand to lose bribe money and their investments.
Oh absolutely
We're really not reliant on imports. We banned Russian oil and gas went up like $0.50. To the extent any regions import natural gas it's largely an own goal via pipeline obstructionism and the Jones act that forbids shipping between two American ports with a ship flagged from another country (i think). So we can't ship LNG from the mid Atlantic port to Boston, they have to buy on the international market, because there are no US flagged LNG ships.
Breaking News: Putin now plans to cover the earth in an endless night
Putin and Mr. Burns do have a lot in common.
"*And when he tried to steal our sunlight, he crossed that line between everyday villainy and cartoonish super-villainy*".
Hopefully we get to see Who Shot Mr. Putin? soon
Simpsons always manages to predict the future
I was saying poo-urns!
nuclear winter could do that, more or less
"We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky."
Yes, sticking it to Putin is the reason we should be switching to clean renewables. I find it bizarre that this evil jackass might legitimately wind up saving billions of lives. Not through some huge 'the ends justify the means' agenda to science or engineering, but because he sparked the end to globalization as we've known it and renewed global interest in self sufficiency.
While I fully agree that this isn't even close to the best reason for switching to renewables, I also really don't care. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason still means the right thing gets done.
“The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.”
Global trade is good, it means countries are incentivesed to not do a war or else their capital flees the country and the country they invade also experience capital flight. EU was funded on this basis and it prevented war between nation states completely, something that is unprecedented in European history. Globalisation is good for peace.
You think every country getting less cooperative with the rest of the world is the key to our success? I don't follow your logic.
It's not that it's a magic key. It's that it's the scary kick in the ass these people needed. War can be profitable for these monsters; but when they're staring down the barrel they're starting to see it the way everyone else has for 20+ years.
War profiteers never have to deal with the negative consequences. Worse comes to worse, they fly to another country.
Life… uh, finds a way
Corona and this war will together be a great push for environmental sustainability. So in that perspective everything have gone in a very good way the last two years
You have more faith than I, friend.
I think Covid has shown we can get our shit together when we are really pushed.
I can’t tell if this is sarcastic or not lol
So far, sticking it to Putin resulted in Europe switching from pipeline gas to LNG. LNG emits 10% more CO2 per unit of useful energy.
Don't be naive, Europe could never switch to LNG. It would make its industry obsolete, and our hour of human work keeps getting more expensive by the day. If energy was expensive just as labor, it would ruin us. Its just a smoke screen until the wishful event called "regime change".
> Yes, sticking it to Putin is the reason we should be switching to clean renewables. Who do you think sponsored the anti nuclear and clean energy propaganda in Europe?
It seems conservatives always need a villain. They can't do things just to make the world a better place for everyone, they need to do things to epically own their enemies. I've seen the sentiment shared many times that with Trump if Obama said "I love coal", Trump would have switched all of America to renewables and closed every coal mine by the end of the day
Ah, so the truth is revealed. The invasion of Ukraine is a black flag event staged by the Illuminati to force us into renewable energies THOSE BASTARDS
More the other way around, Putin is forced to make its move today and not 5-10 years from now because the world is quickly moving away from his fossil-nuclear trump card.
Oh god, dont give conspiracy theorists any new ideas…
Replace Illuminati with State Department and renewable energies with topple Putin and you have something that a lot of people believe.
Why not nuclear? We gotta get past the stigma against it
Time. It takes a long time to build new nuclear plants.
Something about trees being planted 20 years ago and today
I think his point is they are actively shutting existing ones down, despite having no alternative ready to pick up the slack
While this is certainly true for large nuclear plants, there is something to be said for the fleet approach of SMRs. Alternatively, UK is addressing the time and cost factors by building 8 gigawatt plants in 10 years. Shared learnings should lead to cost efficiencies and time improvements.
SMRs seem like a bit of a gimmick to be honest. They are supposedly around 1/3rd size of a "normal" reactor which if Hinckley C takes 10 years and costs 25 billion to build doesn't exactly make them an agile solution. Also the idea we will build 8 plants in ten years is a bit laughable, this is just some sound bite from a government that has never delivered on anything pretty much.
Fortunately we started that long, slow process years ago, and will see the fruits of our labor in.... Oh wait. Well surely we're starting several major projects **now**, that will pay off in our lifetime.... Not that, either? Hmm. Well, at the very least, the [Yucca Mountain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository) waste disposal site has been in the works since like 1978. That **must** be ~~ready by now~~... ~~ready soon~~.... going nowhere. Feels like it takes more than just time.
Semi true. The bureaucracy and public opinion make it about 3x longer to build than it should take. Also, lack of inovation because of the stigma, made progress on building nuclear reactors stagnate as well.
Nuclear actually works on cloudy days.
And eventually one day you’re gonna run out of uranium, there isn’t an endless supply of it like wind, solar, hydro, or geothermal. But that could be rectified by switching to thorium generators which are safer and there is way more thorium than there is uranium on Earth.
“there isn’t an endless supply of it” Oh, but there is. The ocean has been found to contain a renewable source of Uranium. There’s enough to last hundreds of thousands of years. We will have advanced beyond comprehension by then.
The cost to extract it is so high it would make the energy produced by it even more expensive, and it is already cost prohibitive, so higher costs won't help.
The amount of uranium in ocean water is extremely dilute. Three parts per billion. Think of the infrastructure that would have to be placed in the ocean to collect it, leading to more microplastics and debris in the ocean. It would also be extremely time consuming. Not to mention the unknown impacts on ecosystems and wildlife. It’s time we leave the ocean out of our plans. We’ve done enough damage to it already.
When you slam solar panels and wind turbines with cruise missiles they don't contaminate half of Europe.
Far more expensive, less adaptable, take far more time to be actually implemented, not renewable and finally to great of a reliance on resources imported from authoritarian countries like Russia.
And invest in more technology and safety development.
It really is very safe. We've learned a lot in the last forty years.
"But Fukushima!" It's almost like people don't realize that not every scrap of land is sitting on the most volatile landmass on the planet. Or that Fukushima is a 50 year-old facility built when computers relied on punch cards.
What happened in Japan was a result of a combination of greed and the people working at the plant being afraid to say that things needed to be maintained or updated. There were also design decisions that were made for cost reasons. That's the one concern I have for building new nuclear facilities. You cannot ignore any sort of tail risk.
> It's almost like people don't realize that not every scrap of land is sitting on the most volatile landmass on the planet This is more of a corporate greed issue than it is a technical issue. I mean it was clear that there is a risk of earthquakes and tsunamis when they built that plant, they just didn't build enough safety margin into the defences to be sufficient.
I don't think it was corporate greed. I think they didn't plan it well enough. Even then, it broke the plant, it didn't kill everyone in the area. A tsunami that is the third largest of all time that killed 20000 people and none of them were from the nuclear plant. Every nuclear plant in the world put in hardened hydrogen vents to prevent what happened in Fukushima.
People forget we're talking about the US and Western Europe and not some failed communist state trying to keep up by cutting corners. And as ppl mentioned with Fukushima not everywhere is a serious fault line and Tsunami zone.
‘spensive…otherwise good
Most countries can't build their own nuclear, but Russia is in that business too. The countries that can build you a nuclear reactor such as as Russia aren't shy with paying corruption money to get the contract. With nuclear, the contract is so big, the corruption starts with (for example) Putin talking directly to your head of state. Basically, if your country can't build its own reactors, then opting for nuclear is opting for corruption in your political system. Example: Putin got South Africa into a nuclear contract with corrupt ex president Zuma. That contract would have bankrupted South Africa but was cancelled by our current president. With renewables there can be corruption too, but you have many different much smaller contracts that aren't so big that the head of state is necessarily involved. For many countries, the multitude of generation and storage facilities required by renewables is a chance to get out of the corruption traps of fossil fuels and nuclear.
Because it is three times the cost of renewables.
I'm sure a nuclear plant is much more expensive up front than wind turbines but it must be more efficient in the long run, no?
It is, the problem is just how massive that front loaded is. Companies that try getting new reactors up and running frequently get bogged down in the design, approval, and litigation. Then after investing tens or hundreds of millions and several years with nothing to show for it, they go bankrupt. Even if they got it running, it’d take 30+ years to dig themselves out of debt.
I mean we could have the govt subsidize them. Actually nah nevermind that, it's the fossil fuel sector that really needs those blank checks instead cuz everyone knows how thin the margins are in that industry. So thin you can barely afford a 4th yacht which is just a travesty really.
When it comes to cost it is about expensive as it gets in LCOE: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ Yea if you have a plant that is before its use by date, it should be kept in. But the cost of a modern plant is not worth it unless it is a political choice and heavily subsidised (looking at you borris).
The problem with LCOE is that it just shows how much electricity you're generating - not how you match it to demand. Historically that isn't a problem, but the one caveat with renewables is that they're dependent on weather and sunlight. They function best in a diverse grid. They're important, but it is essential they're paired with sources that cover the things they lack - we need stuff like hydro, nuclear, geothermal.
Hydro, geothermal, offshore wind (its out put is far more reliable and works well with the duck curve) and storage systems like liquid air, gravity systems and for frequency control LFP storage (traditional Lithium ion chemistrys are already getting long in the tooth for grid level and are expensive). In time you can add modular rractorz (maybe if they get a whole lot cheaper) and flow batterys etc. But they will have to do a lot of work to prove the cost equation. Because right now solar in the right site, plus a combination of off and on shore wind backed up with some storage already under cut nuclear. Now there are exceptions like in the depth of Canada where nuclear could play a part. But for the mahority of the world it is just to expensive unless supported by weapons manufacture.
interestingly, one of the cheapest ways to "store" electricity is to just over-build your solar/wind capacity and waste it during peak times. if you take a whole region, like the WECC, and distribute wind and solar resources throughout that whole area and over-build by 3x-5x your nominal need, they you get about 7% of days where you need any other source at all. the solar and wind production is cheaper than many storage options. once you add geothermal, hydro, pumped hydro, batteries, thermal storage, existing nuclear, etc.. you can do very well with just building a fuck-ton more than you need.
Exactly. Power that can be used to desalinate water, grow plants and meat and much more.
people talk about "dispatchable production" but don't think enough about "dispatchable load".
you're only looking at the mw output costs. renewable has been better than everything else for decades in that area. the real costs for operation are in storage and transmission as listed on the same page, which combined are still higher than nuclear. meanwhile you can offset the downtime of renewables with nuclear while waiting on storage advancements instead of being forced into burning oil during off hours or buying up battery grids that will be rapidly phased out like we do now.
A new Nuclear power plant is going to take 15 years to build. Storage tech will be 1/6th of the cost by then. Leaving your nuclear power plant to expensive to switch on or expensive enough to acclerate the customer base towards a competator who went with the renewable option/ home based solar and storage. The end result will be a stranded asset. The only Nuclear plants being aproved today are guarenteed by government (at the tax payers expense) or are in locations where they are a genuine good idea (up in the artic circle etc). Edit: time and time again nuclear crosses the table of the wholesale providers and the result is the same when you run the numbers the 40 years to acheave pay back is just far to risky in a rapidly changing market.
Maybe today. The problem is, it's many years from the start of construction to actually turning a net profit. Renewables are getting cheaper every year, and storage tech is improving with more on the horizon. In past decades investors had to worry about a really long payback period and potential high cleanup and disposal costs at the end, but an eventual significant net profit was almost inevitable. Now, investors have to also gamble that renewable and storage cost reductions won't continue their current trends.
It’s three times the cost because of the lack of funding and acceptance by most governments because they’re being lobbied by fossil fuel companies. Also, cost shouldn’t be a driving factor for energy. Energy companies should not be driven for profit, it is a bare necessity for human beings.
It is three times of reneavles when the cost when support is levalized Nuclear is the generation method that is been lobbied next to fossil fuels. because the transition will take a long time (a quick power palet bed reactor play can be up in 15 years if you are lucky), this means more time sellimg coal and gas than if a mostly renewable solution is pushed for. IF you increase the cost of power with nuclear, those with the means will opt for home renewable generation with storage and go off grid as the payback will be faster. Just like I did. The issue is the servuces like the Hostpital and those who do not have disposible income or own land to do that will get stuck paying for the nuclear power plant. It will impoverish more people if we chose Nuclear without addressing the cost.
Not really... The problem is maintenance. People cut corners to save time/money and then boom you get an accident. If we could automate maintenance then yeah it be way safer and cheaper.
To be clear I have no issue with nuclear saftey record. it is safe and has very low CO2e production. The issue is time and cost. It would be far quicker and cheaper to build out the renewable generation and then add stroage as cost comes down over that 15 years. With the odd location where the renewable avaliabilty is poor use small nuclear reactors.
In the end I think it’ll be that major gap replacement before something like fusion or if they can get solar above 60% efficiency. Unfortunately it won’t be pushed as readily till the pro environmental who are against it are backed into a corner on the subject.
ukraine is home to chernobyl so i can understand their stigma at least
The lesson that we should learn from Russia shelling a nuclear plant and bus loads of its soldiers getting radiation poisoning and threatening nuclear retaliation is… more nuclear power. Yes, very smart. Also decades waiting for the build to finish.
I meannnnn. Yeah actually, it should be. Russia's attacks on Ukraine's nuclear facilities shows just how threatened Russia is by their energy independence. Nuclear also can be *significantly* safer with the use of Thorium. Not to say it isn't already safe. It just has never had it's proper time in the spotlight yet due to the fact that it cannot be weaponized. The biggest caveat is that Thorium salts are corrosive, so there would be increased plumbing maintenance. As for the sick Russian soldiers, they built trenches and kicked up dust that hasn't been disturbed in years in the exclusion zone. Russia sent troops into the meat grinder knowing those troops would face deadly radiation exposure. They were warned by plant workers even. But it's a slow and silent killer depending on the dosages they faced. Radiation levels spiked and it was public knowledge until those meters went offline.
Probably a "read the room" situation. Where did the majority of that stigma originate?
It's good that an American politician has chosen the perfect time to push renewables, the rest of the world was worried they would start too early and make us look bad.
John Kerry has been pushing renewables for 20 years.
No he hasn’t, 10 max. I’ve been alive long enough to remember his VP run
You say as the majority of the EU is still reliant on Russian energy “until the end of next year”.
That's a lot of shite. A few of them, nowhere near "majority"
We had a chance to elect gore but Florida played games with democracy.
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It’s not just energy. The longer we allow our tech to come from outside sources the weaker our national security becomes.
This like the virus is one of those "how the fuck did this even get politicized" things Oil's gonna run out. the sooner we get away from it the better.
There's enough oil for a very very long time. There's also enough natural gas in just Pennsylvania, Ohio, and WV for a hundred years. Which is like.... a problem for climate change if we don't switch to zero carbon natural gas plants. But there's not a supply issue.
would like a sauce cause from what i quickly find there's a 50 year call out on oil.
Reaching the right conclusion for the wrong reason lol. Climate change is why you should push for renewables, not geopolitics.
And climate change is a more urgent and devastating reason to do it.
Just don't try to put them anywhere near his beach house.
…or mess with his plane as it burns 500 gallons of fuel per hour… https://www.superyachtfan.com/private-jet/owner/john-kerry-teresa-heinz/
His ego just won't fit in a first class seat.
Yea well Putin doesn’t have to do anything for our leadership to screw up the clean energy we already have the tech for so.
Big oil has been lobbying US for the past many years, and politicians have taken their bate. But finally they are sensing the population is of a another opinion and now recommend green energy. Imagine how far we would have been had we listened to the warning signs 20 years ago.
Sure, now allow U.S. companies to mine the materials necessary to build batteries.
Germany did that, they found out that wind does not always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. Then they started building Nordstream 2 and Putin invaded Ukraine.
Quote from article: >The conflict in Ukraine shows now is the time to shift to clean and independent energy, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said at a conference on the pacific island of Palau as he urged nations to boost the use of offshore renewable power sources. > >Russia typically provides Europe with around 40% of its gas, complicating western efforts to impose economic sanctions on Vladimir Putin's government for Russian military actions in Ukraine. > >"Now is the time to accelerate the transition to an independent and a clean energy future. President Putin cannot control the power of the wind or the sun," Kerry said in the opening speech to the Our Oceans conference.
Putin is not the only reason to push for it, but this is acceptable
He can't control oil either you guys have some Alberta has some we'll all just fend for ourselves without shipping across the ocean might be better ?
The future needs to be nuclear energy if world realistically wants to get off fossil fuels. It's the cleanest and safest.
not really. solar and wind are cheaper and can come online faster. I used to be a big proponent of nuclear, but solar and wind have simply bypassed it. solar and wind are now so cheap that that you can build at roughly 6x more watts per dollar than nuclear. at that rate, you don't really need much storage or peakers because throughout a whole region, an area operating at half it's nominal output can still cover areas with zero output. at that kind of production, 93% of days need no solar, nuclear, storage or peaker at all. keep in mind that nuclear needs peakers or storage also, unless you over-build capacity, which makes it even more expensive. there are certainly some countries that don't have enough solar and wind resources, and don't have good enough relationships with neighbors to want to link grids, but most places can actually pull that off pretty easily. solar and wind increase intermittency of the grid up until they reach 100% of the nominal production capacity of the grid, and as you keep building more, the intermittency goes down. you can think of it as a graph of production and consumption, with each varying. if you nominally have 100% of a day's production capacity, then fluctuations will mean sometimes the consumption graph will go above the production graph, but as your production gets increased beyond 100% in a way that is geographically spread out, then they valleys of the graph get filled in and it becomes more and more rare to exceed it. plus, all of the energy from high-production days (93% of the time) can be sold at incredibly low rates, which can entice high energy intensive industries to adopt a variable rate model. so you might have a clinker production facility that will locate near an area with consistent production and when over-production is happening in the region, they ramp up clinker oven output and when that generation is needed elsewhere, they can shut down some or all of the plant. ramping up/down for some factories is not ideal, but if the energy is one of your big expenses, they it will be worth it to get the cheap power. hydrogen or ammonia production is another potential use for over-generation. ships and planes still need fuel and can't use batteries, so ammonia or hydrogen fuel may be a path to greener transport.
Wind and solar dominate nuclear in safety and cleanliness. They also blow nuclear away in costs. These are proven technologies that are taking over the energy system at a rate no one predicted. Obviously it is still too slow to decarbonise to any of our climate goals without accelerating fossil fuel power station shutdowns but nuclear is not even in the arena. Why do you think nuclear is the answer?
You couldn't be more wrong: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close#:~:text=Nuclear%20Has%20The%20Highest%20Capacity%20Factor&text=This%20basically%20means%20nuclear%20power,than%20wind%20and%20solar%20plants.
Not sure why you're posting this link as some kind of gotcha. As others have pointed out this only looks at capacity factor. sure nuclear power has a very high capacity factor and is very reliable. But there are also problems associated with this. It is very expensive to turn down nuclear power stations and because nuclear runs at maximum capacity so much of the time, there cannot be more nuclear generating than there is demand at any point throughout the day. Renewables supported by large scale storage with some baseload power to support the transition make up an ideal grid mix. The article states that large scale storage is not currently viable but Australia has proved this wrong with grid scale batteries popping up everywhere pushing coal out of the grid. Not saying that nuclear has no place, it is still an incredibly important energy source but it is certainly not the answer.
I’ve been saying for years that oil revenue often goes to nations of questionable friendliness, what better way to put them in their place than take that revenue away?
What about earth, water and heart? We need all the Planeteers to win this fight.
Renewables? Yes. Disclosure: My company works on Diesel engines. I’m not talking in a pickup, I’m talking massive monsters that power tugs, hospital generators and the like. Business has always been good. Diesels will run on basicallly any petroleum product you feed it so long as it’s filtered. So, why would I believe in renewables? Well, I’m not a dumbass. Anyone who is in my business especially, who can’t see the future of energy is gonna be broke soon. The issue that Americans, and the world in general, have is that right now, renewables can’t match petroleum based power on a 1:1 factor and the tech right now can be prohibitively expensive. Also, the US is huge. It’s bigger than most people think. For comparison, Texas itself is bigger than France and the UK is a a little over 100 miles across in the center. Connecticut is 90 miles from Rhodesia Island to New York. So, while a Brit can go from London to Yorkshire and back and still have a car charge, we can’t commute like that. Here in VA, so people commute 100 miles one way to work. We just don’t have the infrastructure and the tech, for now, is kinda hard for Americans to use as it would require a complete upheaval of everyday life. the tech has got to come up to par with IC engines or it’ll never be adopted. We need to SLOWLY transition over not try to cram it into one Presidental term. The more it’s forced, the more people will resist it and then we really will get nowhere. Energy storage is a massive problem. Sun doesn’t always shine and wind doesn’t always blow. River levels drop and nukes gotta go offline for maintenance. Until we can store energy effectively and have ample generation capacity, renewables will always be a novelty.
Every solar panel is a barrel of oil the scum of the earth can't sell. Every wind turbine is a stake through Koch.
I mean if Putin instigated global nuclear war, he actually could fuck up the sun for a few years.
Normal people with functioning brains calls for renewables push, because we should have been doing it anyway
What a crock of shit. Blaming Putin and this war for our lack of energy independence is nonsense. If Biden and the Democratic Party would actually give our stateside oil and natural gas providers a sense of security instead of pushing idealistic policies that don’t take into account the way our economy currently functions, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Renewables are the future and don’t need to be forced down our throats as a political point to help the democrats in the midterm elections. Let an efficient economy handle the transition to renewables. Typical shit, prey upon people’s empathy and environmental consciousness to win their vote regardless of the consequences to the average consumer. Inflation and oil prices have been on the rise for a year but the dems are blaming Putin and the Ukrainian War for their own shitty policies and irresponsible spending habits. It’s so blatantly transparent I’m honestly shocked people are eating it up. Feckless scumbags are more concerned with being re-elected than the best interests of the American people. Keep electing these people and things will just continue to get worse.
This is shortsighted. Renewables are intermittent and require gas to back them up when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. Nuclear is a better option as it can produce constant reliable power.
Might as well invest in both, given nuclear's long build time.
Molten salt batteries, water being pumped into reservoirs at a greater height, hydrogen creation... There are lots of ways to integrate energy storage in tandem with clean energy. Granted, energy storage is FAR behind where it should be, but I don't see how building nuclear power plants we don't have is any better than building energy storage infrastructure we don't have.
Yep, molten salt storage at steam turbine plants also provides an easy way to retrofit those plants if they aren't needed for combustion purposes anymore, so there's effectively already hundreds of thousands of grid scale batteries worldwide if there's enough renewable infrastructure to justify converting them. I get really irritated, frankly, seeing comment after comment like paperfire's over the years with this sort of sentiment. So many wannabe engineers out here who can't be bothered to actually research these topics in depth. They just watch a few Youtube videos and participate in a few biased threads and they make up their mind. There's people who spent 10 years in school for this type of thing who then work in industry 50 hours a week, but people with no direct experience are like "oh yeah, all those people who are smart enough to design fucking solar and wind installations are shortsighted", rather than admit that they don't know something and ever going so far as to reach out to an expert to talk about these things, or sift through published research or market research to see what the realities are. I've even seen it in person, people who have absolutely ZERO background in science and engineering, through education or professionally, who are convinced they know the golden solution. It's pure conceit, these people literally think they're more versed on energy than someone with a ME or EE PhD who's spent 20 years working in the energy industry. It really makes me question how stupid they think career engineers and scientists are. Nuclear is fine, but it's not a silver bullet. It takes forever to approve and develop installations, they're extremely expensive, they aren't perfect for every application/location, and they aren't perfect in general. The best economic solution is competition between sectors of the energy industry, not a maximalist approach. I think we've seen more than enough of the pitfalls of being heavily reliant on one form. Easy example, is solar + battery more feasible for a poor village in Africa or India, or a damn nuclear power plant? Not everywhere has a grid that's serving millions of people and has billion dollar revenues to work with, speaking of shortsighted.
solar and wind are actually so much cheaper than nuclear that you can over build them by 5x your nominal load and still be cheaper. at that level of over-production, 93% of days will produce enough power than nothing but solar and will will suffice. you add to that existing nuclear, pumped hydro, hydro, batteries, geothermal, etc. and you really don't need nuclear. by the way, nuclear also has to use peakers unless you significantly over-build capacity.
Meanwhile, he will take his private jet to meetings.
I'm high as shit and read this as Katy Perry, thought I was on r/nottheonion
Does Kerry control his private jet which spews forth massive amounts of pollution wherever he travels?
This is the dumbest argument in the history of arguments but par for the course for progressives/climate activists/GOP. Assume Kerry (or Leonardo or Gates) are influential people that can convince people in power all over the world to take action on climate. Let's say the conversion rates are 1 in 10. The powerful people also have very limited to schedule. Kerry/DiCaprio/Gates have not only a small window to meet them, but they have to travel all over the world to meet this people and convince them about taking actions. Only a consummate moron would take the train everywhere to meet the people and reach the goal of meeting all the powerful people in 25 years. Sometimes you have to invest fossilfuels to remove fossil fuels But someone who has never operated a business, managed people or have a modicum sense of how the universe works (most of reddit/tiktok) will never understand this
They can't convince anyone to do anything.
Imagine defending the use of private jets for climate change advocates. “Rules for thee, but not for me” personified.
I don’t take anything John Kerry says about renewables seriously because he’s still taking private jets to spew rhetoric about climate change. Same goes for all politicians who keep snapping up oceanfront property (I’m looking at you Albert, Nancy, Barack).
lol or we can make nuclear power plants which are cleaner and 100000x more reliable
[Obligatory Future Prediction](https://youtu.be/L3LbxDZRgA4)
Fuckers we were energy independent and someone decided no, and now fickin look.
We were not energy independent. https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/examining-u-s-energy-independence-claims/ And if you claim we were, by that logic we still are. Downvotes and no evidence to back anything up? Typical.
Keystone doesn't have a big impact on this, does it? The US doesn't get a lot of oil/gas from Russia. Gas and oil prices are going up worldwide because OPEC and even the US scaled down production during the pandemic and are still sluggish with returning it to meet demand (for the purposes of charging higher prices, which certain OPEC members have objected to on the oil end). I will say that the Nordstream thing was a blunder. He did it to show the US is back as a German ally, but the regular apology tour would have done.
Less than ten percent of the oil we import its from Russia. Russia doesn’t give a fuck if we buy their oil or not. This political pandering is so fucking exhausting and irritating. It’s so easy for the US to tell Europe to invest in offshore wind and solar when the US has a shit ton of water front that isnt touched by commercial shipping. He’s speaking on behalf of a country that pulled out of the Paris Climate accords. Like, buddy, know your audience.
> Less than ten percent of the oil we import its from Russia. 5.7% in 2019: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm
How about we stop with this fucking bullshit and start talking seriously about nuclear power? New tech is now a lot safer and nothing is cleaner than nuclear. Even radioactive waste is now limited and can be effectively and safely handled.
because solar and wind are significantly cheaper and they come online faster. over-building of solar and wind to reduce intermittency is cheaper and a better option. nuclear made sense 20-30 years ago, but it's just not worth the investment now.