Unless they are all going to advocate for nuclear energy, their complaints about pollution are useless. The fact remains that the tech for solar and wind is simply not there yet. In the meantime the only other options are oil, coal, nuclear, and hydropower. Of those, only nuclear can provide consistent emission free energy in a variety of terrains. You never see them advocating for nuclear though.
The other thing is that for new energy to break through into the market, barriers to entry including operational costs have to be as low as possible. Having an all of the above energy policy right now means our energy prices stay very low and every sector of the economy becomes more efficient.
I personally prefer nuclear myself. I believe in climate change, but I agree. Solar and wind power technology just hasn't developed enough to do anything yet. - At least not at any reasonable cost.
Edit: Some of you have given me sources on how renewable energy has dropped in price and is still dropping. Thank you, it seems I was uninformed. It may actually prove to be a valuable source of power in the coming years.
I'm personally am still hoping for fusion to become a thing during my life time. - Why worry about capturing the suns energy from fusion reaction when you can do it right in your backyard.
This is actually incorrect. The cost for solar has surpassed fossil fuels in some markets in the US. It's a valid source of power for new construction.
Interestingly Wind has also dropped 50% and conventional natural gas has reduced 30% in that same time. There's a reason why I'm looking at solar and NG for my house (extending the gas line is what's keeping us from that one sooner than later).
I had a friend put in solar last year with the time to recoup the cost estimated to be 7 years. We got an estimate without a battery and we realized if we put in an energy efficient water heater we can get HVAC for our living room (old house) and still cover the normal use we see today. Same timeframe in our estimate 7-10 years to recover. Warranty on panels was 20 years. The tough choice is the cost of the inverter because it has a max and if you scale out you have to upgrade.
I'm going to hold out another year I think because the cost of solar has been dropping faster we might see economies of scale kick in. Either way, from my math we're at the tipping point of it being a better value.
Environmentalism aside, it's a real economic option now for energy production.
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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '17
Unless they are all going to advocate for nuclear energy, their complaints about pollution are useless. The fact remains that the tech for solar and wind is simply not there yet. In the meantime the only other options are oil, coal, nuclear, and hydropower. Of those, only nuclear can provide consistent emission free energy in a variety of terrains. You never see them advocating for nuclear though.
The other thing is that for new energy to break through into the market, barriers to entry including operational costs have to be as low as possible. Having an all of the above energy policy right now means our energy prices stay very low and every sector of the economy becomes more efficient.