This also applies to renewable energy btw. Some people seem to think we can’t start with the energy transition before we’ve figured it all out, including storage for the winter and at night.
Let’s just build solar panels and wind mills and see how far we can go with that :D much more productive that way.
Oh, absolutely. While there’s quite a few things to worry about with nuclear, going to coal instead (which is what happened in many places) is a far more destructive thing.
Solar and batteries are here today. They can be installed today. The only thing missing is the political will to make the fake valuations of the fossil fuel companies, which ignore externalities, diminish.
And electric vehicles. Series hybrids with 30-50 miles of range of battery and a gas engine for further (Prius Prime, Volt, Clarity) were disliked by gas car people (usually being ignorant about how it works at all, and all made up EV problems), and also disliked by EV purists (not a real EV, hauling around a whole engine, still uses gas, etc)
I’ll admit to being one of those EV purists, but your comment snapped me out of it. Hauling around a whole engine isn’t bad if your electrical grid is clean enough.
The volt was awesome for its time (aka. Opel Ampera in the EU). Even with quite a lot of highway driving we got 1L/100km (~235mpg) with it over its lifetime around 2014. That’s with charging at home of course, but still, it’s at minimum a fivefold reduction in fuel consumption.
And that with a 15kWh battery pack, which is a lot smaller than full EVs, making it less resource intensive.
This also applies to renewable energy btw. Some people seem to think we can’t start with the energy transition before we’ve figured it all out, including storage for the winter and at night.
Let’s just build solar panels and wind mills and see how far we can go with that :D much more productive that way.
Yeah, the “only nuclear will solve the problems” people really just seem to be working to keep fossil fuels at this point.
And so do the “avoid nuclear at all costs” people
Oh, absolutely. While there’s quite a few things to worry about with nuclear, going to coal instead (which is what happened in many places) is a far more destructive thing.
Solar and batteries are here today. They can be installed today. The only thing missing is the political will to make the fake valuations of the fossil fuel companies, which ignore externalities, diminish.
And electric vehicles. Series hybrids with 30-50 miles of range of battery and a gas engine for further (Prius Prime, Volt, Clarity) were disliked by gas car people (usually being ignorant about how it works at all, and all made up EV problems), and also disliked by EV purists (not a real EV, hauling around a whole engine, still uses gas, etc)
I’ll admit to being one of those EV purists, but your comment snapped me out of it. Hauling around a whole engine isn’t bad if your electrical grid is clean enough.
The volt was awesome for its time (aka. Opel Ampera in the EU). Even with quite a lot of highway driving we got 1L/100km (~235mpg) with it over its lifetime around 2014. That’s with charging at home of course, but still, it’s at minimum a fivefold reduction in fuel consumption. And that with a 15kWh battery pack, which is a lot smaller than full EVs, making it less resource intensive.