The USA should be making China-level investments in solar. They should be building their own companies and more tax dollars should go to solar than weapons.
What are modern wars fought over? Energy.
and batteries for charging the cars at night
I mean, the solution seems to be right there... Cars are batteries. And many (most?) cars don't need their 100%, so just let the cars that happens to be charged sell some of it back during the night?
Or just have tons of chargers and offices and whatnot so they can charge during the day when the sun is out.
Honestly investing in just one type of green energy isn't smart specially solar, they should go with all of them in case scientific development proves one is superior to the other and to diversify. Primarily nuclear but I assume they are going the solar way because it can generate more consumption because individuals need to buy their owm panels unlike nuclear where the State builds a plant. It is similar to the trains versus cars scenario.
Fukushima.
What does Japan have to do with the US?
Exactly. I live in a land-locked state that exports energy to a coastal state, and there's a lot of unoccupied space between us and that coastal state. So it would be really easy to build a nuclear plant and bury the nuclear waste in an unoccupied area (we have a lot of that in the US). But we don't because of FUD, which is super dumb.
I really like renewables like solar and wind, but we need a solid base that can run constantly. It's a lot easier and probably way more environmentally friendly to generate nuclear power than try to store a ton of excess power from renewable sources.
Nuclear power is by far the best source of renewable energy, if you look at China's plan to reach zero net emissions, for example, the want to use basically 40% nuclear and 40% solar, with the rest of the 10% from other various types (this of course can change if there are developments in some area) but nuclear right now is safe and effective. The only thing you need is to keep those plants in very good conditions, most nuclear disasters where caused by not having everything in the state it should and the technology of its time, we have much better knowledge now. The FUD is obviously propagandised by big oil companies because they know nuclear can replace them in the blink of an eye if we wouldn't have useless politicians in place that leech off of lobbying in the congress.
More investment, for sure. That's why I was so surprised with the green new deal, I had no suspicions that the US was actually going to start investing in its infrastructure and energy again.
I don't know what you mean by modern wars are fought over energy?
The Russian-Ukraine war is about pride, territory and farmland, the genocides going on right now around the world are about race/pride, a lot of conflicts in sub-Saharan African countries about who gets to be the leader, which wars are you referring to specifically with regard to energy and what type of energy are you talking about?
I think they are referring to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, etc. the past few wars the U.S. has been in have largely been fought over oil.
I guess. They did say all modern wars, and those are a few wars that aren't very modern, so I was wondering if there was some other situation they were referring to.
I swear someone said something very like that in amovie I saw recently, but I cannot remember what the movie was.
Ahh, let me revise; I meant resources not just specifically energy.
So in global political economic theory, wars over race/pride/territory are the superficial reasons for the war. The underlying cause is usually due to resources, or scarcity of. Consider that the people who start these wars are usually starting them because they want more resources. Russia invaded Ukraine because they want that territory in their sphere of influence, not the west's. But there are a couple pipelines that run through Ukraine that generate several billion dollars a year in transit revenue for both Ukraine and Russia.
Syria for example, the US instigated the Arab spring in that country and still occupies the eastern part so they can extract oil. The attempted coups in Bolivia was for Lithium mining rights. African ethnic rivalries are often over resources, etc.
If everyone had enough, most people would be happy, and if they're happy they wouldn't be fighting wars.
Will this make the tech get cheaper or more expensive? I could see it going either way
It'll make energy cheaper, but asking if solar power will make technological gadgets cheaper is kind of like asking if having a faster computer makes you a better writer. They're just different fields. Energy and energy infrastructure will become cheaper and simpler to maintain.
That said, I don't think prices will go up overall because energy is just part of the picture.
Some technology might become more expensive at a rate we probably wouldn't notice anyway(not solar panels apparently, cheaper everyday) as infrastructure, battery tech, compatible alloys and everything catches up with solar panel technology, but comprehensively, I can't see how solar technology could push prices up.
I think about it like motorcycles versus electric bikes. There's the up front cost, which can be similar only because batteries are so expensive right now, even though they're getting cheaper every year.
But after that up front cost? You have one motor with two parts vs an ICE with what 200 moving precision parts? That are being kicked by micro explosions multiple times a second to move the vehicle?
No oil changes. No coolant; aside from brake fluid, no fluid or fluid changes required for the life of the electric vehicle. You don't have to change any air/oil/fuel filters, no pumps, no cracking hoses, spark plugs, there's just no maintenance cost with an electric vehicle compared to a fuel driven vehicle. Even if the battery degraded after a decade, the cost of that versus just the regular maintenance cost of an ICE motorcycle over a decade is maybe 20 percent, maybe a top of the line $2,000 new electric battery versus $10,000 easily spent as $1,000 per year on parts and labor, regular wear and tear.
Maintaining an electric vehicle versus a fuel driven vehicle saves so much money on top of saving you time, which saves you more money.
So when I use a technology like solar panels, just the no moving parts alone constitute such a savings that, coupled with the rapidly decreasing cost in watt per dollar for PV, convince me that overall the price of energy will go down the more countries invest in solar technologies.
Those savings of money and I think more importantly, time, could not directly drive prices up.
The solution to cars is obviously to make them illegal or tax them out of existence. Trains and busses can runonn grid-tied electric no problems. No batteries needed.
I don't want to outlaw gasoline cars. Actually that isn't true, I do want to outlaw gasoline cars but I don't think that it would be fair. Taxes on the other hand, I am all in favor of. Just like cigarettes, tax, gasoline, cars proportionally. To studies on the toll on the environment and society gasoline cars cost versus EVs, and tax them accordingly.
And man I could not be stronger on the side of trains. I travel a lot, and when I came back to the states for a visit I couldn't the possity of the u.s mass transportation infrastructure.
I really think it's holding the US back just an opportunity costs of students not going to school or they want to or moving to a city that welcomes them, they have to struggle against a crappy situation just because they can't afford the ticket to leave.
Even in China, if you work 100 mi away from where you live, which is very common there, that's a 30 minute commute to work. No traffic jams or popped tires or any of that crap.
I mean sometimes trains in China crash into subway walls and a bunch of people drown because the subway's underwater(https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1008196) But we can use Austria as an example instead. I know people in austria who commute to different countries for work everyday on trains.
Mass transportation for the win.
If there's more demand for solar panels and the supply can't keep up, it would cause the price to go up
Oh sure, that just doesn't seem likely from a practical point of view with how rapidly the technology is advancing and the constantly novel materials there using to construct the panels.
Running out of solar panels today is akin to saying that we'll run out of engines because so many people bought cars 100 years ago.
We won't run out as demand increases, we'll figure out how to make them cheaper and more accessible with alternative materials.
We definitely need to be investing in power-to-gas for better storage and transport of all this renewable energy
I don't know about power-to-gas, can you break it down for me real quick and then I'll look up specifics later once I know what you're talking about?
Always interested in learning something new.
You take renewable energy and make a high density gas. Typically you make hydrogen (easy) then methane. Methane, unlike hydrogen, is highly dense and can be sent with existing gas pipelines.
It's a way to store and trsnsport enormous excess energy usage thats far better than electrical butteries.
It's already in use, but further research would only make it more efficient.
All natgas infra can deal with hydrogen blends and some with pure hydrogen. All new infrastructure should be made hydrogen-proof.
Another great option is synfuels like methanol which are also an universal chemistry feedstock.
Hydrogen is the least dense fuel possible. And it fucks up tanks (with pitting) so it has to be replaced often.
Yup, "hydrogen-proof infrastructure" doesn't exist. I like the idea of hydrogen, but it's just not a nice gas to work with and transport.
Yep, that's why you convert it to methane
That's awesome, I don't think I have heard of that. I'm going to look into that for sure, thanks for the quick explanation.
That reminds me of that idea of a solar panel farm that uses its excess energy to lift a boulder during the day and then during the night the boulder falls and turns alternators that create electricity from the weight of the boulder slowly falling back down overnight
Yes but I think methane is far more practical
Google "synthetic methane"
Ah, I have. Yes, I see what you mean. That is a useful technology.
Is that specific field still very prototypical? I can't find any real-world applications yet.
Can it scale or has it only been experimented within laboratory settings so far?
Oh wait, Japan of course, what's going through with trials. Cool
There's a huge plant in California and France. theres a lot.
News from around the world!
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc