"Climate activists" will destroy this country much sooner than climate change will. Let's stop nuclear energy in favor of coal! Congrats !
This article larges matches what I've been saying for awhile. We are moving away from fossil fuels and while government investment is a big driver the market is playing a large part. We are seeing where regulations are driving private investment and innovation to lower prices and increase availability of clean energy technology. It's a long article and behind a paywall but will post some highlights. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/12/climate/clean-energy-us-fossil-fuels.html The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think The United States is pivoting away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar and other renewable energy, even in areas dominated by the oil and gas industries. .. Across the country, a profound shift is taking place that is nearly invisible to most Americans. The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels. A similar energy transition is already well underway in Europe and elsewhere. But the United States is catching up, and globally, change is happening at a pace that is surprising even the experts who track it closely. Wind and solar power are breaking records, and renewables are now expected to overtake coal by 2025 as the world’s largest source of electricity. Automakers have made electric vehicles central to their business strategies and are openly talking about an expiration date on the internal combustion engine. Heating, cooling, cooking and some manufacturing are going electric. ... The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal. Private investment is flooding into companies that are jockeying for advantage in emerging green industries. “We look at energy data on a daily basis, and it’s astonishing what’s happening,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency. “Clean energy is moving faster than many people think, and it’s become turbocharged lately.” ... Even as the pace of change in the United States is surprising everyone from energy experts to automobile executives, fossil fuels still dominate energy production at home and abroad. And yet, from Beijing to London, Tokyo to Washington, Oslo to Dubai, the energy transition is undeniably racing ahead. Change is here, even in oil country. Corporations are building new coal mines, oil rigs and gas pipelines. The government continues to award leases for drilling projects on public lands and in federal waters and still subsidizes the industries. After posting record profits last year, leading oil companies are backing away from recent promises to invest more heavily in renewable energy. The scale of change required to remake the systems that power the United States — all the infrastructure that needs to be removed, re-engineered and replaced — is mind-boggling. There are major challenges involved in adding large amounts of renewable energy to antiquated electric grids and mining enough minerals for clean technologies. Some politicians, including most Republicans, want the country to continue burning fossil fuels, even in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus that their use is endangering life on the planet. Dozens of conservative groups organized by the Heritage Foundation have created a policy playbook, should a Republican win the 2024 presidential election, that would reverse course on lowering emissions. It would shred regulations designed to curb greenhouse gases, dismantle nearly every federal clean energy program and boost the production of fossil fuels. ... Clean energy entrepreneurs are flocking to Oklahoma, too. Francis Energy, a fast-growing maker of electric vehicle charging stations, is based in Tulsa. Canoo, an electric vehicle start-up, is building a 100,000-square-foot battery factory at a nearby industrial park and a manufacturing plant for its trucks in Oklahoma City, though there are questions about whether the company will have enough funding to realize its plans. And teams from Solar Power of Oklahoma are busy fastening photovoltaic panels to the roofs of homes and businesses around Tulsa. The city is embracing its shifting identity. “We have a tremendous sense of pride in our history,” said Dewey F. Bartlett Jr., the Republican former mayor of Tulsa who was an oil and gas executive but now helps recruit clean energy companies to the region. “But we also understand that energy is energy, whether it is generated by wind, steam or whatever it might be.” Around the country, clean energy is taking root in unlikely locales. Houston, home to more than 500 oil and gas companies, also has more than 130 solar- and wind-related companies. Some of the country’s largest wind and solar farms are in the Texas flatlands outside the city, and a huge wind farm has been proposed off the coast of Galveston. In Arkansas, a planned solar farm — the state’s biggest — is expected to help power a nearby U.S. Steel factory that is undergoing a $3 billion upgrade. When complete, the plant will use electric furnaces to mold scrap steel into new products. That will result in about 80 percent less greenhouse gases, the company says, and set the pace for an industry that has been a major polluter. About two-thirds of the new investment in clean energy is in Republican-controlled states, where policymakers have historically resisted renewables. But with each passing month, the politics seem to matter less than the economics. “We’re the reddest state in the country, and we’re an oil and gas state,” said J.W. Peters, president of Solar Power of Oklahoma. “So it took a lot of time to convince people that this wasn’t snake oil.” ... Today, solar and wind power are the least expensive new sources of electricity in many markets, generating 12 percent of global electricity and rising. This year, for the first time, global investors are expected to pour more money into solar power — some $380 billion — than into drilling for oil.
Have you read the subsidies in the bill? Solar developers can have up to 70% of their expenses covered! Hydrogen subsidies are 35% of cost. Wind subsidies are through the roof. There's no country in the world that comes close to the generous green energy subsidies we are offering. People don't fully realize how much America will boom this decade. We truly have a chance of fixing the trade deficit and make America the hub for manufacturing again
Things like this are very important for a city - especially for a city like Houston that has many things going for it, but is week in existing history saved and architecture. Having lived in Chicago and other cities, I have gotten to see how important a vibrant downtown or midtown is, and the quality of architecture plays a big part of that, that includes saving existing buildings and building future buildings.
This is where I am at now. It has slowly taken awhile to reach this conclusion - and to be clear, nuclear energy isn't perfect and I think it needs to be HIGHLY protected and monitored, but it is the best choice we have at this point and it will cost consumers the least as well.
There is somewhat of a post hoc analysis of nuclear energy lag time. Nuclear energy is extremely safe as its proponents say which I agree with. It is statistically more safe than any other form of mass power generation method we have currently. But it is that safe because of the years of planning to get it to that safety level. Every new proposed site for a nuclear plant is a new structural engineering challenge. So yes we should implement it but I'm not sure it's a solution that can happen fast enough. Like how many nuclear reactors are we looking at in the next decade assuming we are building the safest possible reactors?
You should look at SMRs. Their much safer than traditional nuclear plants and are more flexible. The Biden folks are trying replace every coal plant with a SMR
If it is a true priority - we can likely get a number of them built. My concern from a safety standpoint is terrorism.
The number 1 roadblock to fixing climate is permitting reform!!! We can't build anything in this country anymore cuz of the damn NEPA process. It shouldn't 5 years to do damn environmental study which also helps inflate the cost NIMBYism is destroying this country. We don't build anything anymore in this country
51 new manufacturing plants in the past year of just solar alone. Whether the haters like it or not America is investing in the future for the first time. When @AroundTheWorld installed his there were zero. Haters hate players play
lol I just started re-watching King of the Hill and in this scene from the pilot episode Dale bears an uncanny resemblance to several posters in here. [Whimpers] DALE: Hey, I know what's wrong with your truck. It's your "pollution control. I heard on talk radio you don't even need them. They're just an egghead government plot. Hank: How is cutting down on pollution a government plot, Dale? Dale: Open up your eyes, man. They're trying to control global warming. Get it? Global. Hank: So what? [Thumping] Dale: That's code for UN commissars telling Americans what temperature it's gonna be in our outdoors. I say let the world warm up. See what Boutros-Boutros-Ghali-Ghali thinks about that. We'll grow oranges in Alaska. Hank: Dale, you giblet-head, we live in Texas. [Thumping] It's already 110 in the summer. And if it gets one degree hotter, I'm gonna kick your ass. lol
I'm not against nuclear power in principle but I think there is a lot of distraction regarding nuclear power. New technology has made it much safer than it was before but that doesn't mean building new nuclear power plants is going to happen quickly or cheaply. Further building nuclear power doesn't address some of the other challenges such as building a smart and responsive grid. There is a lot of promise in fusion but we're decades away from commercial viable fusion. At the moment we have the technology, the industry, and now the market to shift to renewables without relying on fission or waiting for fusion.
I'll admit to not knowing that much about SMR but my understanding is that they are small reactors that can be built much faster and for less than large scale reactors. My understanding is that it stands for "Small Modular Reactors". That's not the same thing though as a smart grid of improved transmission lines, that can take and distrubute power from many sources and is both robust and response to changes in demand and supply.
