Wind power is paid for if it is used or not.

It could be a lot cheaper up in Scotland where it is often wasted. If it's cheaper up there more industry will move up there and use more of that cheap electricity and it will mean less is wasted.

But this would benefit Scotland at the expense of England so it's not going to happen. As such electrical prices are same around country which keeps jobs down south and electricity expensive.

The majority of ethanol based crop production comes from growing corn in the Midwest, specifically Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana.

My argument was never that we "should" replace all our ethanol corn crops with solar panels. Just that we could. And we could still theoretically make it work with enough money and gumption (and moving energy intensive industries inland to reduce the need for transmission).

I’m not arguing that they aren’t recyclable but rather they aren’t accessible at the volume needed.

Lithium supply is a concern. We don't have enough in the world to support the green transition and there's no clear solution. A few that come to mind are:

• New battery technologies that have been in the pipeline for a while.
• Overbuilding renewable electricity to account for a lack of batteries.
• Building a diverse range of renewable power sources.
• Peak pricing, and load shedding when there's not enough supply.
• Interstate power connections to share surplus and deficits.

I think this is a fair and nuanced point. In my opinion the solution is not one singular option, such as 100% solar, but a mix of options which might include some percentage of non-renewable energy. I think reduction of non-renewable should be the goal, but switching 100% to renewable does not seem feasible to me.

I think we should use a small amount of methane to supply power in the event of an emergency, instead of building enough batteries to supply us for an entire year of cloudy weather and stagnant air. In the first place the thought experiment was about 35 million acres of solar, not about a 100% renewable grid. That's a separate discussion to be had among engineers.

I’m just not going to watch

Finland has done something like this and the few days of winter where it's very cold and no wind are kinda rough. There was a day recently where I spent 50 euros on electricity alone. And I have somewhat efficient heating tech like a geothermal heat pump.

Just say it's better for AI and they're all for it

That's just solar with extra steps!

Nuclear Energy because green energy is really expensive too

Well maybe, but only if they owned the infrastructure themselves.

As it stands, the price paid to renewable energy suppliers tracks the amount paid to fossil fuel suppliers.

There's a reason every farmer wants to fill their fields with solar panels, and it's got little to do with making electricity cheaper for the end user.

That said, there's no reason not to do it anyway, at least if we want more than a few more hundred years of humanity. A tough ask in a time where every decision is made based on an election that happens in the next 4 years by people who won't live another 20.

Guys, Gals...hear me out: I can easily half all the numbers in your calculations: do something about the energy efficiency and get to the same per capita consumption as e.g. France and Germany.

Boom, instant less area consumption.

Won't be enough to resolve the fact that we just don't have enough lithium.

And housing would be cheaper if it wasn't treated as a value-retaining investment.

Wrong

This conversation chain is hilarious. The guy in the video does a great job, but you don't want to watch 90 minutes - then watch the first 30 minutes at the very least without skimming. Okay, but then I see you go do long replies - how long did all of that take you in total? an hour? 90 minutes? for what? But it appears that you prefer it presented as a Coles notes version so maybe you learn differently.

To put it in simpler terms for those that still haven't gotten it, if you were min-maxing for the long game, which one would ultimately come out on top? You must consider the cost of not only capital, but also environmental impacts and how this will affect the general economy as as a whole (agriculture for example rely on stable weather patterns). I am sure the long view is to go for the one that is long term sustainable with minimal drawbacks.

The only common ground that we can agree on is that the best we can do right now is to have a hybridized system. But we need to start transitioning where possible - and fast. The solar tech mentioned in the video has vastly improved since its inception. This isn't going to happen overnight, nor in 5 years or 10 years. This is an ongoing project for humanity as a whole. Producing usable and store-able energy without killing ourselves in the long term is one of the biggest hurdles we have to face as humans.

Energy would be so abundant it'd be free, if we'd done Fusion 50 years ago.

What's more important? Cheap power for the whole country? Or the pockets of the people in charge?

Its still crazy how great solar can be when doing the maths based off his states solar farms. Imagine how great the numbers would be if the sunny parts of the world did solar too

Brother in christ, i work with energy companies that do renewable energy and trust me, that stuff is really expensive to maintain for the amount of power you get out of it, Even the amount of environmental disturbance those wind turbines cause alone, un healthy for people, unhealthy for animals(Look it up).
Nuclear power is very safe these days and there are storage places like Onkalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
Which make storing the waste super easy and viable as well as secure for even post human civilizations.

The only thing green energy is good for is politics

Well turbines kill birds. Just 10000 times less than cats. Good luck aligning budget for 10 - 20 years with this volatile economy. I can sustain myself and my family with solar easily

And i cant remember when was the last time solar panels poisoned the land for 10000 years

Educate yourself on Nuclear power, you already got 50% of the work done, Renewable energy needs nuclear power to kick out fossil fuel.

Its not a this or that its the combination of both that will make us carbon neutral

https://rewi.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/REWI-Solar-Energy-Wildlife-Interactions-Summary-2023.pdf Interesting read on fatalities in north america though they mention they could not find a root cause yet due to lack of data

https://sistinesolar.com/solar-panels-and-wildlife/

• Depending on the kind of setup, if a central tower is used to concentrate the light to boil water the concentrated light become a death trap to birds and insects
• These plants can appear as lakes due to the reflection and colors(Especially in deserts where these are build confusing wild life
• The floating solar power systems disrupt fish activity and affect water quality
• It also messes up migrations of birds(Wind turbines can do this too)

It is still infidelity better than carbon in the skies but if you put this against nuclear energy and treat the MAN MADE NUCLEAR DISASTERS for what they are MAN MADE then you can see that nuclear power in this day and age is very very safe because we have years of safety development.

People who do not understand this are still stuck in the past or follow a global anti Nuclear rethoric without putting in the time to actually understand the technology.

Meltdowns are a thing of the past when thorium salt reactors become mainstream because those reactions dont run away they halt the moment you remove the fuel,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor

MSRs eliminate the nuclear meltdown scenario present in water-cooled reactors because the fuel mixture is kept in a molten state. The fuel mixture is designed to drain without pumping from the core to a containment vessel in emergency scenarios, where the fuel solidifies, quenching the reaction. In addition, hydrogen evolution does not occur. This eliminates the risk of hydrogen explosions (as in the Fukushima nuclear disaster).[2] They operate at or close to atmospheric pressure, rather than the 75–150 times atmospheric pressure of a typical light-water reactor (LWR).

Nuclear power is really cool and i highly suggest you give it a chance at least in researching it, there are tons of awesome videos on YouTube to help with this which gave me a ton of insight and storage facilities like:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Power_Generation's_Deep_Geologic_Repository
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Management_Organization_(Canada)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Asse_II
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repository_for_radioactive_waste_Morsleben
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_dome_Gorleben
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Konrad
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolseong_Low_and_Intermediate_Level_Radioactive_waste_Disposal_Center
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_repository_for_short-lived_radioactive_waste
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant
  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository to name a few give me hope that this nuclear waste has plenty of places to go to sit out their long half time by the end of it becomes inert

I see 2 problems
First - human error and human greed.

Second - we solve problems only after we face a disaster, we never know if the system is flawless right now.

And Id rather live near solar grid that might malfunction sometimes and requires maintenance every decade.

But I respect your anti ff point of view. I also understand everything you talking about. I wasted too many years learning chemistry, engineering

Second - we solve problems only after we face a disaster, we never know if the system is flawless right now.
This is why the tech is tested in a controlled matter, This counts for everything including wind turbines, solar panels and the food you eat.

human error and human greed. Funny enough this is the exact thing working against nuclear energy, there is big money in Green Energy because it creates a ton of jobs, Nuclear energy is so efficient the surplus of energy would fuck over most fossil power companies thats human greed for you.

I would rather live in a city that has a respected and well maintained nuclear power plant so there is more area for nature than to cut down a forest so we can win some power, Molten Salt reactors are the future and its going to be a whole different world compared to traditional reactors, China is ahead in this because they dont have anything blocking this development.

But with projects like ITER i am convinced its only a matter of time before nuclear is in again, Its going to be a combination of Tidal/Hydro, Solar/Wind and Geothermal plus nuclear to phase out fossil fuel, these cannot do that on their own, even nuclear power.

If we want to rid ourselves of the cancer that is gas/oil/coal then we have to embrace the alternatives not fight against them with a mindset from the 1980's (Fukushima was engineered against twice the highest recorded tsunami, The sendai earthquake tsunami was a freak show) That said it was TEPCO that fucked up royally by sticking with General Electric design which placed the backup gens below sea level(The engineers of TEPCO warned against this vulnerability but TEPCO sided with GE instead) this is why those gens failed.

That said if they had a Molten Salt reactor(Thorium) the reaction would have halted on its own before triggering a meltdown which would have prevented:

• The need to vent radioactive steam into the atmosphere
• The sacrifice of the 50 who stayed behind to halt the reaction
• Marking Fukushima as dangerous

I agree fully that traditional nuclear power has its dangerous if not handled correctly, The future will eliminate most of this danger and compared to other energy(non fossile) Hydro and Nuclear have to be the most mature oldest ones

Btw since you are an engineer too i highly recommend checking a few videos on Fukushima, their reactor design is super cool and has multiple failsafes which prevented the disaster from being worse such as the cooling ring / pool with steam vents to prevent over pressure or cool down fuel in case a meltdown is about to happen.

The movie Fukushima Daiichi is also super awesome and has some famous japanese actors in it, they sticked very close to the actual events, was a thrill to watch :D

Also thanks for keeping an open mind, i respect that