California to open five natural gas plants to avoid blackouts

Re:California to open five natural gas plants to avoid black... by melling on Thursday September 02, 2021 @07:48AM (#28390893)

Greenhouse gases have fallen in the United States because we have closed a lot of coal power plants and replaced them with natural gas.

Emissions are increasing globally because we are building a lot of coal plants.

The fact remains that we are at least 2 or 3 decades from renewables being able to replace fossil fuels for power generation

That’s half a century of waiting

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Re:California to open five natural gas plants to avoid black... by grey-area on Thursday September 02, 2021 @09:37AM (#28391817)

Not even by your calculations is that half a century of waiting (30 years is not half a century!), but your 'fact' of a 2-3 decade wait are demonstrably wrong and unsupported by the evidence.

Why do you insist on attempting to set renewables and nuclear in opposition?

Scotland for example recently hit generation of 97% of demand from renewables in the year 2020. As part of a larger grid with appropriate balancing and storage, 100% renewables is absolutely doable, and as part of a grid with some base load generated from nuclear (as the US and UK for example already have and is not going away soon), it's definitely doable right now with sufficient will and resources:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56530424

The only reason the US is trailing so far behind other countries is a lack of will to transition off fossil fuels, a chronic lack of investment in infrastructure and a balkanised electricity grid run for profit, all of which is fixable.

[ Parent | on HN ]