As I see the devastation caused by hurricane Helene I can't help but remember that no country on earth is doing more to intentionally slow progress on the shift to renewables than the United States.
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Jenniferreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke my parents bought solar panels for our house in the 1970s to power our hot water heater. I fully expected to be able to run my entire home on solar when I grew up, but it's wildly unaffordable. Our economy would have done great if we'd chosen to pursue renewables in the 70s, but sadly politicians decided those sweet $$ from fossil fuel lobbyists were more important than our future. I often wonder what our society would be like if big corporations didn't control our politics.
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@Jennifer @mekkaokereke tbh, Europe wouldn't have had its gas crisis the past few years if we'd installed solar thermal and heat pumps on all our buildings.
We had solar hot water on my childhood home, and even though we had gas backup we rarely needed it because even on the coldest overcast days the solar thermal could still heat water hot enough to shower under.
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@thisismissem @Jennifer @mekkaokereke I don't think this is fully true. Most of Central and North Europe is very gloomy in the winter, solar power does not help much at that time.
Meanwhile, about those perfectly functional nuclear power plants that Germany decided to shut down just because they could...
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
The US subsidized the hell out of corn, enabling "innovations in corn growing technology" (real term, not kidding), and then we were like "Oh no, we have too much corn! So. Much. Corn!"
So we started pumping out corn syrup, so we could drink corn, and we convinced cows to eat corn, and we shove corn everywhere we can, and export it, making corn cheap around the world...
So we do understand the concept of cheap solar.
The difference is that the world needs cheap, clean energy, not diabetes.️
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Talya (she/her) 🏳️⚧️✡️replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke
if you can't criticise your country and don't want the lives of people to improve, you don't love your country you just love the status quo and the people in power. -
Philip Mallegol-Hansenreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke I also would like to add, having worked with the utility industry for the past year:
It’s not enough to keep making solar cells and EVs, we need a grid that can handle the new load characteristics (Distributed vs. centralized generation, larger demands at home for charging as well as electric appliances). Right now we don’t have that, and building new transmission has long lead times.
Not an excuse, because there are none, just another thing we need to get going on!
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We desperately need these transmission lines, but landowners have rights too.If we could get some breakthrough in the cost to do underground transmission maybe that's the solution.
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@friz @mekkaokereke Yeah I don’t have the answers either, just wanted to bring it up as a point that’s often not talked about. To Mekka’s example about California solar: One of the problems is, on a sunny CA day, we’re already maxing out what the North-South transmission up to OR and WA can carry. Which effectively means more solar in CA is at this point a “waste”. There’s more generating potential, but it can’t be brought to the customers who could benefit due to transmission constraints.
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Philip Mallegol-Hansenreplied to Philip Mallegol-Hansen last edited by
@friz @mekkaokereke If more transmission was possible, a sunny day in CA could mean we turn off the gas plants up north. Good for the environment, good for the rate payer because solar is cheaper, but we just can’t import enough of it. It’s a real shame.
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Philip Mallegol-Hansen last edited by
All facts! But what's an easier engineering, political, financial, and social problem:
A) Increasing transmission capacity, and generating even more power closer to the source where it's needed (eg, more solar and wind in Oregon and Washington).
Or
B) Dealing with the increased severe weather and flooding, heat related excess mortality, forest fires, abandonment by the insurance industry, change in insect patterns (hello big borne diseases), loss of habitat, etc.
I think A)
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
Build an oil pipeline from Alaska to Texas:
* Eminent domain! Yoink!
* Who cares? It's only *checks notes* 87 families. Stop crying!
* Oil spill? Oops! Just put some sawdust on it!Building a freeway through a Black neighborhood:
* Why are we even having this conversation? They're Black.Building a power line from California to Oregon:
* We tried! The farmer said no. We have no options.
* Look he says his cows don't like to see the towers. Who am I to question his cows?