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Solutions to climate change are not behavioral as some suggest here. It’s about incentives. Transitioning to carbon neutral energy is possible at the expense

Solutions to climate change are not behavioral as some suggest here. It’s about incentives. Transitioning to carbon neutral energy is possible at the expense of businesses’ cost structure, ie. less competitive. Same applies to building retrofitting, agriculture and other major carbon emitters. There is no serious conversation about climate change without looking at nuclear energy; it is base load generation (24/7), cheap and carbon neutral. Bipartisan federal mandates to scale nuclear energy is the only real solution to this problem.

VintageCool 5y ago
Renewable energy is the most likely solution to this problem. Wind and solar are ready to scale and take over electricity generation. Wind, solar, batteries, and transmission lines. That is a solution we could deploy today and it is being deployed today. There is a further backlog of wind projects in the US that could be unlocked if we approve transmission lines (like SOO Green) to bring power from the Midwest to the Northeast. https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power The amount of power that we produce from nuclear in the US basically hasn't changed in 20 years. Wind has gone from almost zero to 8.4% of our total production in 15 years. Solar has gone from almost zero to 2.3% in 5 years. I expect that the US will be producing more power from wind than coal in 5 years.
jacquesm 5y ago
"Bipartisan federal mandates to scale nuclear energy is the only real solution to this problem" Where to start? Bipartisan implies 'America', which is not 'the world'. Scaling up nuclear energy implies even more energy consumption rather than to do the obvious: shut down coal and gas fired plants and cap the per capita energy budget to something reasonable. Finally, nuclear instead of solar/wind is going to push yet another problem down to future generations.
- felgueres 5y ago
  Energy consumption correlates to quality of life. Lower energy consumption is politically less feasible to implement, regressive and undesirable. Bipartisan refers to cooperation of two political parties, not 'America'. But sure, few other countries have only two major political factions. More generally I meant to promote nuclear energy in political cooperation. You are right in that the obvious is shutting down coal and gas plants. The less obvious is that natural gas generation is very cost competitive. Solar/Wind are not viable solutions at the deployment velocity we need to achieve targets. Also, they are not base load, so you are assuming storage is available and cost-competitive which seems to be 5-10 yrs from now. An honest conversation of decarbonizing electricity has nuclear front and center.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    You are a couple of years behind the times when it comes to your knowledge of the cost effectiveness of solar and wind. They are $ for $ competitive with nuclear, and are being rolled out at scale. 8 MW onshore turbines are now pretty normal, larger ones are on the drawing board, and in the offshore wind market there are now 15 MW turbines. Base load can be provided through carbon neutral sources, such as the burning of rest-mass left over from crop production. Smart control of appliances is another way in which the need for baseload power could be reduced, allowing for increased consumption to co-incide with periods of higher (or even excess) power generation, and high voltage DC has made it cost competitive to route electricity across larger distances than before allowing an excess in windpower from one location to be moved with relatively little loss to places where there is a shortage. Storage is entirely optional in this scheme, but we already have more and more battery storage coming on-line in the form of the expanding fleet of electric vehicles which can provide a large sink. Energy consumption correlates to qualify of life because that's the society that we've built. But it need not be so, not every source of pleasure or quality of life needs a combustion engine or a plug.
    - felgueres 5y ago
      'Base load can be provided through carbon neutral sources, such as the burning of rest-mass left over from crop production.' This statement is very uncalibrated. Biomass is possible just as much as tidal power but that doesn't make it viable for scale. It's not even part of the conversation. 'Smart control of appliances is another way in which the need for baseload power could be reduced' Wrong. Smart control of appliances is used to shift demand from peak load not base. Storage is not optional to make renewables base load. 'But it need not be so, not every source of pleasure or quality of life needs a combustion engine or a plug.' You are obviously trivializing quality of life. High energy consumption means access to quality products and services in food, transport, education, entertainment and healthcare at minimum. Unfortunately your arguments are uncalibrated so I will stop. Please take a look at the cost-effectiveness of nuclear on this source for future discussion: https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
- VintageCool 5y ago
  The easiest path to reducing our carbon emissions is to electrify everything (notably: transportation and heating) and clean up the power grid. That is going to require doubling the size of the electrical grid in the next 20 years. There's a lot of wind and solar that we're going to need to be bringing online in the next couple of decades!
  - warble 5y ago
    and nuclear hopefully if we have any chance at all.

VintageCool 5y ago

Renewable energy is the most likely solution to this problem. Wind and solar are ready to scale and take over electricity generation. Wind, solar, batteries, and transmission lines. That is a solution we could deploy today and it is being deployed today. There is a further backlog of wind projects in the US that could be unlocked if we approve transmission lines (like SOO Green) to bring power from the Midwest to the Northeast. https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power The amount of power that we produce from nuclear in the US basically hasn't changed in 20 years. Wind has gone from almost zero to 8.4% of our total production in 15 years. Solar has gone from almost zero to 2.3% in 5 years. I expect that the US will be producing more power from wind than coal in 5 years.

jacquesm 5y ago

"Bipartisan federal mandates to scale nuclear energy is the only real solution to this problem" Where to start? Bipartisan implies 'America', which is not 'the world'. Scaling up nuclear energy implies even more energy consumption rather than to do the obvious: shut down coal and gas fired plants and cap the per capita energy budget to something reasonable. Finally, nuclear instead of solar/wind is going to push yet another problem down to future generations.

felgueres 5y ago
Energy consumption correlates to quality of life. Lower energy consumption is politically less feasible to implement, regressive and undesirable. Bipartisan refers to cooperation of two political parties, not 'America'. But sure, few other countries have only two major political factions. More generally I meant to promote nuclear energy in political cooperation. You are right in that the obvious is shutting down coal and gas plants. The less obvious is that natural gas generation is very cost competitive. Solar/Wind are not viable solutions at the deployment velocity we need to achieve targets. Also, they are not base load, so you are assuming storage is available and cost-competitive which seems to be 5-10 yrs from now. An honest conversation of decarbonizing electricity has nuclear front and center.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  You are a couple of years behind the times when it comes to your knowledge of the cost effectiveness of solar and wind. They are $ for $ competitive with nuclear, and are being rolled out at scale. 8 MW onshore turbines are now pretty normal, larger ones are on the drawing board, and in the offshore wind market there are now 15 MW turbines. Base load can be provided through carbon neutral sources, such as the burning of rest-mass left over from crop production. Smart control of appliances is another way in which the need for baseload power could be reduced, allowing for increased consumption to co-incide with periods of higher (or even excess) power generation, and high voltage DC has made it cost competitive to route electricity across larger distances than before allowing an excess in windpower from one location to be moved with relatively little loss to places where there is a shortage. Storage is entirely optional in this scheme, but we already have more and more battery storage coming on-line in the form of the expanding fleet of electric vehicles which can provide a large sink. Energy consumption correlates to qualify of life because that's the society that we've built. But it need not be so, not every source of pleasure or quality of life needs a combustion engine or a plug.
  - felgueres 5y ago
    'Base load can be provided through carbon neutral sources, such as the burning of rest-mass left over from crop production.' This statement is very uncalibrated. Biomass is possible just as much as tidal power but that doesn't make it viable for scale. It's not even part of the conversation. 'Smart control of appliances is another way in which the need for baseload power could be reduced' Wrong. Smart control of appliances is used to shift demand from peak load not base. Storage is not optional to make renewables base load. 'But it need not be so, not every source of pleasure or quality of life needs a combustion engine or a plug.' You are obviously trivializing quality of life. High energy consumption means access to quality products and services in food, transport, education, entertainment and healthcare at minimum. Unfortunately your arguments are uncalibrated so I will stop. Please take a look at the cost-effectiveness of nuclear on this source for future discussion: https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
VintageCool 5y ago
The easiest path to reducing our carbon emissions is to electrify everything (notably: transportation and heating) and clean up the power grid. That is going to require doubling the size of the electrical grid in the next 20 years. There's a lot of wind and solar that we're going to need to be bringing online in the next couple of decades!
- warble 5y ago
  and nuclear hopefully if we have any chance at all.