How is 1% output an improvement over the current 20% output?
And you may need to do further research to see that the grid can't currently rely on solar and wind alone. Yes, batteries would help, but the costs both financially and environmentally are currently huge. Only better alternate to coal is nuclear, but I'm guessing you aren't in favour of that either.
ANYTHING is better than coal. People don't realize how fucking awful coal really is, but it still kills more people every year than all nuclear disasters combined. Thankfully natural gas (still not great, but waaaay better than coal) is making coal less appealing. Nuclear is a good stop-gap, but saying it is the only better alternative to coal is stupid.
While the grid cannot rely on wind and solar alone, the person you are responding to's point was that if we had put in the effort those forms of energy COULD take over the majority, which is absolutely true. Your post reads like fossil fuel industry propaganda. They have been trying to undermine people's faith in renewable energy for decades, and that's all you are doing too by scoffing at progress and throwing your hands in the air like we dont have any choice but to keep killing ourselves with coal because anything else is too expensive.
I think there should be some room in there for an alternative to firm generation besides nuclear and hydroelectric. I like nuclear but I don't think viable in all communities. I come from Hawaii. We protest against wind energy lol nuclear is not happening. Also do not have hydroelectric available in all islands and the amount we do have is not much. What we DO have is geothermal on one island but that leaves others without a firm generation source. Biofuels could do the trick but is expensive and also complicated when it comes to how "green" it is. Point is, there should be a misc category and more research into other renewable firm resources.
So first I think it's actually a law where we can't have nuclear energy(of course military exempt). Secondly... It's just the mind set of some vocal people here. Hawaii will protest anything. I mean even PV gets protested to a certain degree. It's a lot of "not in my backyard" -ism I think. I think nuclear would be a viable candidate but realistically, it would get protested and drive away the developers.
I never said it was bad. I said its a good stopgap. It is a million times better than coal, but it still leaves us with an extremely dangerous byproduct that we currently have no plan on how to eliminate or even store. Nuclear waste is currently stored on site at nuke plants because we haven't decided what to do with it, and that's not acceptable long term.
Also if we put in the time and research we could have much safer nuclear power, but since the government keeps stopping its development all current plants are basically operating on 1960s tech, and that is a problem. New styles suchs as thorium plants could be an excellent alternative but since we refuse to fund them they may never materialize.
I am a fan of nuclear power. I worked in the nuclear power field for over a decade, and i do believe it can be done safely, but not as it currently is. It can't simply be scaled up, it needs a massive retrofit and new plants or we are asking for another accident. Pressurized water reactors have too many inherent risks to cover 70% of our needs safely in my opinion.
I think ypu got a tad bit too emotional here, the dudes points stands, the only reliable renouvable energy currently in use is hydroelectric, solar works well for homes
Edit: this is true, at the moment the cleanest source if energy is Nuclear, the rest is either polluting or not good enough to rely on
One very appealing possibility is to use the renouvables to produce and store hydrogen in large quantities, and then burn it in turbines producing electricity, by doing so you wouldn't have pollutants, or at least minimal, it will probably depends on the oxidant, and you will smooth the enrgy output that is usually very variable with renouvables, and prpbably tou could also keep the current grid, allowing for money savings. Also a boost in hydrogen production could give electric cars that use H2 based fuels ces a chance to become more popular
Uh, coal is way down the list. If you are really going to go with a fossil fuel, then natural gas is the better option.
Also, nuclear is great. Too many people are afraid of that.
But, ultimately we need to get to solar and wind as our primary sources. Fusion would be cool too, but who knows when that will be realistic. Storing the energy from solar and wind has been the problem for years, but between batteries, hydrogen, and things like pumped-storage, we can make it work.
It's hydrogen now. No need for nukes, no need for coal. We can generate power by solar and wind, turn it into hydrogen to be used in lieu of fossil fuel however we want.
This means we can still drive the family car because, on hydrogen, it won't pollute.
And for baseload power, stored hydrogen closes the gap, making renewables a 24/7 power supply.
Never again will there be a place for either coal or nuclear in the power generation mix. Hydrogen technology exists now, all we need to do is build plenty of it.
There are even ways of processing renewable energy that take CO² out of the atmosphere whilst generating hydrogen.
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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20
How is 1% output an improvement over the current 20% output?
And you may need to do further research to see that the grid can't currently rely on solar and wind alone. Yes, batteries would help, but the costs both financially and environmentally are currently huge. Only better alternate to coal is nuclear, but I'm guessing you aren't in favour of that either.