The fact that making money is one of the, if not the most important, considerations in this equation is the main problem with this. It simply should be a public service.
That won’t automatically solve all of the other problems but many of the solutions to this problems aren’t considered because they are not profitable, even though they exist. An easy example being gas turbine plants which are much easier to spin up and down as required. But perfectly meeting the needs of all people means there’s no artificial scarcity and thus lower profits.
Indeed, and the environmental factors aren’t the only problem with gas turbines. I’m not going to pretend I am an expert at what is the best solution but interviews I’ve read with experts that speak about the Belgian context. (Which is so densely built there’s not much room for anything) It was the best way balance the grid if more investments were made in solar and wind energy. The reason it didn’t happen is because it was deemed uninteresting because not profitable enough.
So the alternative that was chosen was doing nothing an extending the life of nuclear plants that are working way beyond their planned life and giving the commercial company managing them guarantees they’ll continue making money. Building new nuclear capacity will take longer than a gas turbine and they can’t just be shut down and torn down for something else when better alternatives come along.
And this is usually cheered on by people who think they’re smart by pointing out that if you’re in favour of renewables you can’t be pragmatic about dealing with it’s current problems. While those people very often are against more renewables and just want unending nuclear as if that’s a magic bullet.
Well, I’m pro renewables and pro nuclear, but anti NG. Accounting for methane released into the atmosphere during extraction, transport, refining, and storage, it has about the same carbon impact as coal. And if shipped across the ocean in the form of liquid natural gas (likely for you, since a large proportion of the worlds NG reserves are in the good ol’ US of A), it is worse. You might as well just keep old coal plants running.
The actual solution (as pointed out elsewhere in the thread) is dynamic pricing. And a carbon tax. When people and businesses receive price signals about the expense of using electricity at any given time, they will naturally use more or less of it when it is more plentiful / more scarce.
The fact that making money is one of the, if not the most important, considerations in this equation is the main problem with this. It simply should be a public service.
That won’t automatically solve all of the other problems but many of the solutions to this problems aren’t considered because they are not profitable, even though they exist. An easy example being gas turbine plants which are much easier to spin up and down as required. But perfectly meeting the needs of all people means there’s no artificial scarcity and thus lower profits.
The “gas” in “gas powered turbines” is natural gas - aka, a fossil fuel, aka, the thing causing climate change.
Indeed, and the environmental factors aren’t the only problem with gas turbines. I’m not going to pretend I am an expert at what is the best solution but interviews I’ve read with experts that speak about the Belgian context. (Which is so densely built there’s not much room for anything) It was the best way balance the grid if more investments were made in solar and wind energy. The reason it didn’t happen is because it was deemed uninteresting because not profitable enough.
So the alternative that was chosen was doing nothing an extending the life of nuclear plants that are working way beyond their planned life and giving the commercial company managing them guarantees they’ll continue making money. Building new nuclear capacity will take longer than a gas turbine and they can’t just be shut down and torn down for something else when better alternatives come along. And this is usually cheered on by people who think they’re smart by pointing out that if you’re in favour of renewables you can’t be pragmatic about dealing with it’s current problems. While those people very often are against more renewables and just want unending nuclear as if that’s a magic bullet.
Well, I’m pro renewables and pro nuclear, but anti NG. Accounting for methane released into the atmosphere during extraction, transport, refining, and storage, it has about the same carbon impact as coal. And if shipped across the ocean in the form of liquid natural gas (likely for you, since a large proportion of the worlds NG reserves are in the good ol’ US of A), it is worse. You might as well just keep old coal plants running.
The actual solution (as pointed out elsewhere in the thread) is dynamic pricing. And a carbon tax. When people and businesses receive price signals about the expense of using electricity at any given time, they will naturally use more or less of it when it is more plentiful / more scarce.