I’m 42 and I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t obvious that we needed to phase out fossil fuels. Global warming was already known. The 70’s oil crises had even convinced conservative politicians that “energy independence” was an important goal even if they couldn’t grasp the concept of an energy transition. The Exxon Valdez spill happened when I was in elementary school. (We did a “science experiment” where we put canola oil and water in containers and used different materials to remove the oil.)
Fossil fuels have been obviously awful for at least 5 decades. Imagine how much less CO2 would be in the air if in 1985, we got on the good timeline instead of the “Biff becomes president” timeline.
Have you ever considered that first world nations are just going to use whatever energy source is the cheapest until it is no longer the cheapest?
Then we’d be doing fission. Fossil fuels aren’t required to pay for their externalities the way nuclear is, not to mention that the fossil companies have spent decades lobbying and campaigning to keep from having to be responsible for their own bullshit, as well as campaigning to make other forms of energy seem / be less viable (either through PR messaging or regulatory capture).
Are you saying that nuclear is cheaper than renewables?
Maybe cheaper than renewables and grid scale batteries over the lifetime of the reactor. Perhaps you could correct me, but my understanding is that grid scale battery facilities don’t even exist yet. Given the current state of battery technology, you’d need to replace the batteries at that facility in, what, seven years? Ten is really pushing it, right? That’s not going to be cheap.
Nuclear is 2-4 times more expensive and grid scale batteries (the most costly way of storing power) are already being used.
Grid scale batteries for solar day/night cycles can work. There is no good solution for seasonal fluctuations. Of course, a very large part of Earth’s population lives in close proximity to the equator with far less seasonal influences. It’s just unfortunate that those that pollute most (per capita) do not.
Wind works great at higher latitudes but what we need to be looking at is high voltage DC lines to transfer power over long distances with minimal loss.
In the alternative universe we’d have been building fission power for decades when it was cheaper than renewables, and it would still be running today.
In this universe we didn’t though, I’m not sure why the multiverse is relevant here.
We were talking about power strategies from the 1980s and the person above said it would just be the “cheapest”. If countries really were just building the cheapest, it would not have been renewables back then.
We were already talking about a counterfactual.
I guess. If we’re in this hypothetical alternative universe then those plants built in the 80’s would be at the end of their lives and we’d be looking to spend a fortune to replace them with new nuclear or we’d be saving money by building renewables.
I’m still not sure what this line if discussion is accomplishing though.
