houseofleft
@houseofleft@slrpnk.net
- Comment on UK homes install subsidised heat pumps at record level - BBC News 4 weeks ago:
That’s awesome! There’s a lot of work to do to make renewable heating more of an option though- even with the £7,500 grant, British Gas estimate most of their installations cost an extra £5,000 due mainly to plumbing and radiator reworks. That’s sadly a lot more than installing a new combi-boiler, so most households won’t touch it.
I don’t have any suggestions, but if the UK wants to make really strong progress, we need to tip the balance so that clean heating is a more economic choice than doubling down on gas.
- Comment on U.S. leads countries where golf courses occupy more land than solar, wind plants 5 weeks ago:
How meaningful is the golf vs renewables comparison? Wind and solar require different ammounts of land, especially factoring in offshore wind? Also, Sweden has one of the cleanest energy make ups, but a comparitively high amount of golf courses, so like, I dunno?
- Comment on China renewables capacity additions soared in 2023, growing more than four times faster than the G7 1 month ago:
Sharing this here as it’s exactly what you mention!
ourworldindata.org/…/carbon-intensity-electricity
CO2g per KWh is the standard metric for “how much a countries electricity pollutes”.
Tldr China’s is 580 and improving. USA is 370 and improving at a similar rate (this obviously might change under the current administration).
Others worth pointing too is Sweden (40gCO2) which is a good marker of what’s possible for a wealthy country and India (700gCO2) because as a country with a lot of economic development and recent historic poverty, it shows why China’s improvement is worth noting.
- Comment on ‘Net zero hero’ myth unfairly shifts burden of solving climate crisis on to individuals, study finds 2 months ago:
Agree a gazzillion percent!! On the plastic front, there’s some progress being made towards a UN plastics treaty which would legally bind countries to legal targets for plastic reduction. It’s not perfect at all, and it’s likely the US under Trump will ignore it, but would be a big win for plastic regulation (Green Peace and a bunch of other groups are campaining for its support- worth searching for local petitions if you’re interested)
- Comment on Norway on track to be first to go all-electric 2 months ago:
What are you thinking makes them hypocrites? Doesn’t seem like doing something bad for the planet, then improving things is hypocritcal unless they start claiming they’ve always been perfect. At any rate, veats doubling down on petroleum like the US are currently doing.
- Comment on Vegan drink Oatly can’t call itself ‘milk’, judges rule 3 months ago:
I find this whole “it’s not milk if it’s not dairy” argument really hard ti take in good faith.
I’m not an expert at all, but when I’ve heard people talk about these kind if decisions, it sounds like it’s normally meant to come down to consumer benefits.
Who’s gaining here (aside from dairy lobbies)? I don’t think there’s any reasonable argument that UK citizens are confused by the term “oat milk”, and buying it because they were tricked into thinking it was a dairy product.
- Comment on Solar panels between railway tracks? 5 months ago:
A lot of the comments here are, pretty fairly, sceptical if whether this is a viable idea.
My question is, what’s the advantage meant to be over just having an electrical railway and seperately some solar panels plugged into the grid? Especially since the article mentions the solar railway would be grid connected?
- Comment on Sweden switches on largest battery energy storage system in the Nordics - Energy Storage 5 months ago:
I don’t know specifics on this battery farm, but almost all are essentially fleets of shipping containers filled with smaller batteries, rather than some super-cool-mega-battery, so it’s probably a safe assumption that this is a landmark project in scale, rather than in technology specifics.