I know I always seem like I'm really negative when it comes to renewables, but it's more like I'm skeptical because we need to build things that actually work so you need to keep an eagle eye on proposals.
Just imagine here: a billion dollars of parts, of people, of land, and all so they could turn it on then turn it right back off. It all looks great in the renders, but the reality of TCO kicks in. The energy is free, but nothing else is so that needs to be taken into account.
There's a lot of great renewables on the table that aren't being pursued because they're boring technologies like hydroelectric or geothermal. They're no good -- they don't even have really cool looking 3d renders of them running without maintenance!
In 1900, horses were the main form of transportation. They were replaced with automobiles, which were considered more environmentally friendly because we couldn't see the pollution the cars produced. We're doing the same today with a lot of these. We outsource the pollution to elsewhere, but the pollution still happens.
Similarly, a new tech that's never been successfully used before will always look better than an established tech because reality hasn't set in yet about what something looks like at an industrial scale.
Finally, sustainability needs to be holistic. The video asks at the end if taxpayer dollars should be used to help fund renewables. I think they should -- but the keyword is "taxpayer dollars". Right now the practice of spending massive amounts of debt instead of money taxed is totally unsustainable, and we're going to leave our kids and grandkids the slaves of bankers.
ex_06@slrpnk.net 2 years ago
Reading the comments, just looks like another failure made by businesspeople and management…
sj_zero 2 years ago
That's the problem with decisions like this being made by businessmen and congressmen...