this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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This is economics now, not politics. US can go full crazy Trump, but the grid will just keep getting greener as greener is cheapest. He can rant and rave about global warming being a conspiracy or anything else, but it's unstoppable now.
The infuriating thing to me is, renewable energy is often extremely independent. It means no reliance on foreign oil. That SHOULD be the most American thing, especially for those in the GOP who claim to be anti-government.
Goes to remind you their main product is hypocrisy.
No, the grid won't get greener if Trump is elected because he WILL go full dictator. And he will revert everything that is being done currently.
He'll struggle to make states to buy more expensive energy. If he managed, he'd put the state at a global disadvantage. Even then, he'd have to outlaw solar to stop people installing it at home.
That's what tanking the EPA is for. Without any oversight of externalities, dirty energy becomes cheaper.
Environmental Protection Agency?
Sorry, I don't follow.
Yes the Environmental Protection Agency. The Heritage foundation is taking applications and they vet by looking at whether their social media accounts supports Trump: https://www.project2025.org/
Last time Trump did their best to push responsible people out of government jobs, but that was just a test run. This time around it would be a speed run.
Edit: per Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
Like a lot Trump stuff, that is a whole bag of crazy! Yet another reason to hope he doesn't get in.
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order establishing the EPA was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate. The agency is led by its administrator, who is appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. The current administrator is Michael S. Regan. The EPA is not a Cabinet department, but the administrator is normally given cabinet rank. The EPA has its headquarters in Washington, D.C., regional offices for each of the agency's ten regions, and 27 laboratories.The agency conducts environmental assessment, research, and education. It has the responsibility of maintaining and enforcing national standards under a variety of environmental laws, in consultation with state, tribal, and local governments. EPA enforcement powers include fines, sanctions, and other measures. It delegates some permitting, monitoring, and enforcement responsibility to U.S. states and the federally recognized tribes. The agency also works with industries and all levels of government in a wide variety of voluntary pollution prevention programs and energy conservation efforts. The agency's budgeted employee level in 2023 is 16,204.1 full-time equivalent (FTE). More than half of EPA's employees are engineers, scientists, and environmental protection specialists; other employees include legal, public affairs, financial, and information technologists.^article^ ^|^ ^about^
Still plenty that can be done to stop it. Preventing transmission lines, giving even bigger subsidies to fossil fuels, putting large tarrifs on imported solar panels and wind turbines. Just look at California the power monopoly is in with Gavin Newsom and they created rules that protect their profits above all else and now solar installs is at 20% what it was before.
You mean 120% of what it was? 20% of what it was means way cheaper, and I'm sure you mean more expensive.
Sure but it's self defeating, making things more expensive. Putting that whole state/country at a disadvantage against those who use cheap clean power instead of fighting it.
I think they were referring to installations, not cost.
I think you're unfamiliar with California's new policy it doesn't change the cost to install but how much you pay and make for electricity. Basically now you sell electricity to the grid for 3-5 cents and buy it for like 10-15 but then they tack on like 20 cents in transmission fees. So it has made solar not cost effective anymore in most residential cases. So the total number of yearly installs has decreased to 20% compared to last year. But my point was a radical government can do plenty of stuff to sabotage progress in order to keep themselves and friends in power.
Don't sell to the grid if you can avoid it. Charge a house battery, charge a EV, run all your stuff for the day. Always better to use than sell back to the grid anyway.
But my larger point was that by harming green energy, you harm energy costs and harm the economy. It becomes less competitive to economies who ride reality instead of fight it.
And yes, I don't know California policies. Hand up, I'm a Brit who just champions green energy transitions. I watch https://grid.iamkate.com with glee.
Really? As somebody that works in the power space, how exactly do you figure that? Nuke aside, which people constantly complain about, the NRC doesn't like to renew licenses, doesn't want to grant new ones, that leaves wind and solar, both are money pits, waste more than they generate, and have a horrible environmental impact both from lost land, spent panels that can't be recycled or thrown out as they're toxic as hell, wind farms need never ending maintenance and again, cost more to run than they give back.
Until modular nuke become the norm and coal plants are retro'd, standard nuke plants are the absolute best bet. There's no consiracy to keep older coal plants alive, sorry, that's political stupidity. Every power company on the planet would dump them if they could. They're a nightmare to operate and keep going.
Easier to recycle solar pannels and wind turbines than burnt coal or gas.....
Solar and wind are now the cheapest power. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/ Both can be mixed with other land use. Both are still undergoing material use evolution.
Fission is always going to be an issue because humans aren't grown up enough to handle the waste. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-is-piling-up-does-the-u-s-have-a-plan/
Let alone running them safely. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country So I'm pretty uncomfortable with standardized nuclear modules (sub reactors) being distributed far and wide.
Maybe fusion will be different, but it always seams decades away.
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Worldwide, many nuclear accidents and serious incidents have occurred before and since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Two thirds of these mishaps occurred in the US. The French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) has concluded that technical innovation cannot eliminate the risk of human errors in nuclear plant operation.^article^ ^|^ ^about^
How exactly do solar and wind waste more money than they generate? There is hardly anything that requires less maintenance. I put panels on my roof and just forget about them for 20 years. No space wasted, no maintenance.
Compare that to a nuclear power plant. How long does it take to build one? France is building new ones for I don't know, 5 or ten years? And once it's built, how much land does a NPP require? How much staffing and maintenance? They have massive cooling requirements so they always need to be built close to water. Did you know that France had to power down about half their NPPs in the summer because the rivers didn't carry enough water? You say that solar is toxic as hell, then what is nuclear? What exactly is the plan with waste? Bury it somewhere really really deep and keep fingers crossed for thousands of years that it doesn't contaminate ground water? And what's with all the irradiated parts of the plant itself? How can you recycle them?
Any way you cut it, nuclear is a grandiose, but extremely risky and costly technology.
LOL, you didn't just compare an ignorable amount of low grade consumer panels to a solar site did you? How many millions did you spend to clear land? How much did you spend on hundreds of employees, trucks, fuel, constant oh shit moments over the course of 1-2yrs to build the thing? How many millions in environmental consulting and never ending harassment from the municipality that you're building it in? How about all the legal fees from the lawsuits from the environmentalists that are conveniently the same ones that claim they want green power?
Also, you don't get to claim you get to forget about anything until that 20yrs has passed and your system hasn't shit it's pants, I got a handful of buddies that work for solar contractors and they fuck up all the time. You know how many bad batches of panel there are out there that don't even come close to living their lifespan? Depending on the "Deal" you got, that's not always covered either, espeically when the companies that put them in make the majority of the money from taking the tax credits from it.
Yes, I did. You realize there's a difference between powering down, and downpowering right? Plants downpower all the time for a host of reasons, part of the deal with nuclear.
No, and that's never been the plan. The industry is always working on better ways to deal with the waste, in Nuclear's case, even building pools although a pain in the ass, is safe, including literally falling into the thing.
They're decontaminated and removed. Happens all the time during outage season and during repair. What can't be totally decontaminated is transported to where it can be.
What is toxic in solar panels? While I'd love it if they would actually recycle the silver, copper, and 99.99% pure silicon, most of the time it ends up the same place the fiberglass turbines do: ground into industrial sand for concrete. Also the aluminum is already recycled anyway. There are several recyclers for solar panels popping up as the scale of solar increases to better take advantage of the materials, but they are already fully recycled Also coal plants are shutting down and being edged out by natural gas anyway. I don't know what sources you are using, but they are either out of date or wrong.
Mainly lead and cadmium, and they can be recycled, that's not the problem, the problem is the cost of doing it vs sticking them in a landfill. Nobody wants to spend 5x to recycle something that's dead to them and can't generate income anymore, vs dumping it.
Quick everyone, downvote to oblivion because this guy actually is educated in the subject
That guy sounds more like that pilot I know bitching how noise and pollution regulations make their job now difficult or even take their wings. It's not because they're in the biz they're not biased.
Meanwhile where I live, solar panels and wind turbines are happily recycled.
That sounds pretty different actually. On one hand you have someone talking about being inconvenienced.
On the other hand you have someone in the industry talking about practicality. Biased or not, people that work in their respective areas generally know the most about that same area, as opposed to random people online.
From where I'm sitting is still a random person online. I mean, I worked in a power plant for some time. It doesn't make me an expert for the whole sector.
I actually work in the industry and am definitely educated in the subject and I can say with 100% certainty that guy is not in the industry and is full of shit.
No. No it's not. EOTW in a decade tops. If it ain't hell incarnate then it'll be a virus, bio-, tech-, software, etc., maybe that comet, whatever. Unless you FOSS everything NOW...Goodbye...forever.
This guy frets
He should kindly do the needful and calm the fuck down.
I don't do that. Stop reading emotions in texts. Your not psychic here.
I think I'll ignore this
Can I get that in English?
They can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what they're saying is there are numerous reasons that the world can and will be over in the next decade. The only solution to this, as they see it, is to make everything free and open source. If we don't, we'll all be doomed.
The planet will live. We won't.
No. I only speak in psychedelic and psychic drugs. Inhale some cognitive dimensioner perception accelerator already. Your last chance before...