Do you want to know why so many of these initiatives fall apart? Because they get sold as pipe dreams. We'll just throw solar cells on every roof (what I was actually replying to) and free energy for all! Yeah! We'll power the entire planet! Disagree with me? Screw you, you are just working for big oil!
No. We need to be realistic. In some regions, solar is the bomb diggety. In others, wind can generate a lot of watts. And pretty much anywhere that has hydro or geothermal as an option do great. And in a subset of those, it is sufficient to handle power needs.
So sell it that way. Don't perpetuate the myth that we are "just about there" because that makes it an easy target. Explain that it is still mostly about supplementing power and lessening dependencies. Because pushing the former just leads to "Your proposal will handle about a quarter of non-peak energy usage. And it will take at least a decade until it might get to 50?"
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Also, you may want to consider reading other branches as most of your points (aside from the accusations of astroturfing...) were already brought up in other branches. And you'll see that I even praise the UK.
No.
I think when many people say "I want clean energy" they're not actually all that bothered.
That's how proposals like the one I mentioned get killed off. Oil/gas interests can gin up a tepid nimby backlash and with a nod and a wink get the government to kill them off in response, and the government pays no political price for it.
Meanwhile, a Chinese run nuclear project that makes NO financial sense gets government subsidies and fracking gets the go ahead largely because of who the Tories are friends with.
This is the reality of green energy these days: it's not market forces keeping it down, it's being kept down by active suppression of market forces.
>Do you want to know why so many of these initiatives fall apart? Because they get sold as pipe dreams.
Are you saying that the Navitus Bay proposal was a pipe dream?
>So sell it that way. Don't perpetuate the myth that we are "just about there"
Price per kwh-wise, we are already there: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/wind-power-now-the-...
No, but wind energy does make sense and the UK already generates rather a lot.
>Believe me, I want clean energy
People say this but it seems rather easy for astroturfers to kill green energy projects in the UK based upon the flimsiest of pretexts (e.g Navitus Bay Wind Farm Proposal).