Re:100% renewables doesn’t equal zero-carbon energy, and the...
by pfdietz on Friday June 07, 2019 @08:05AM
(#20123678)
Renewable hydrogen to cover the last 10-20% would be much cheaper than using nuclear to cover that last 10-20%. We are not using renewable hydrogen now because CO2 emissions have not be sufficiently penalized, but if that happened new nuclear would still not have a place at the table.
"Can" and "are" are very different things though. You've been continually talking about price and the economics being above most other factors. The reason methane is used is economic. Those that tell you that hydrogen is being done with water are selling snake oil. But even using methane it is still expensive, difficult, and dangerous (no one wants to be riding in a vehicle with tens of thousands of PSI under their feet).
To your other point, I agree. It sucks. I'm not going to act like we can just make nuclear plants appear. Building any major infrastructure takes a long time.
> So to me the unproven storage bet is the better bet.
My position is only slightly different. I'm also betting on the unproven storage. But we can't have a high risk portfolio. We should definitely invest in risky avenues, but we also need to invest in blue chips.
The argument here is "We don't have good enough batteries and we don't know when we get them. Let's fund them more. But also in the mean time let's use current technology to make sure that we have some fallback. Because having no fallback is going to leave us in a worse position."
This is a negative sum game. We don't come out positive in either scenario (at least not till we can do real terraforming). We've pushed the buck down the road for too long. Now the game is risk minimization and reduction.
We have very similar positions. We have the same goal. You talk about how we're not unified, well I only see that because it is easier to focus on the differences in positions. But it really looks to me that we have more similarities than difference. So if you want unity, then let's recognize that.