Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded, now they want to silence him

I n my ideal world these people would be prosecuted.

It's sad that this has become so normal, and that they can pressure opponents into silence. I'm wondering if we'll ever get rid of this.

Real answer? Pick a battle and commit to it. That means allying with folks who agree with you—or have an incentive to agree—on your one issue with whom you may strongly disagree on other policy or even moral positions. This doesn’t need to be a permanent alliance, after all, just a transactional one to achieve a goal.

Just the stuff the Heartland Institute does is enough to write a book about and still not a peep from the usual crowd.

If you HONESTLY want to try to convince people that these politicians and industries are a net negative you can not just sit there and call people fucking idiots. It makes a person retreat into their view that much more. You have to just calmly explain things. Sometimes you have to explain that thing a lot.

A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions. Dont give them a reason to double down by calling them fucking mornons. Soft language will win this fight.

and then everyone clapped

The War-for-Oil conspiracy theories are proven correct.

The suppression of 'free energy' is discussed widely as being a result of oil-industry repression.

And on and on.

edit: apart from that, no one is willing to pay for a realistic substitute for the fuel oil (marine) or diesel, so the question is actually moot.

not while there's still oil to be extracted. Rigs (esp. offshore ones) take a lot of initial investment, and takes several decades to fully pay out. It's not hard to imagine that those investments hadn't fully matured and so they'd want the demand for oil to continue.

It doesn't really prove war for oil, war tends to mess up production and also we have a huge amount of domestic production. But that depends on what exactly the claims are.

"Free energy" doesn't exist so that just goes back to them barking up the wrong tree. It's taking a real villain and blaming them for nonsense instead of something they actually do.

i dont believe this to be the case. If they have such a reason, then surely they would've already examined it much earlier and came to a conclusion under which they won't have been a right wing voter in the first place.

So there's something else at play, such as preconceived notions, or the inability to sort out facts from fiction (being presented as fact on TV), that makes them behave the way they did.

If only

However, there's also a trend that giant corporations are kind of like giant oil tankers (no pun intended). It takes a humongous amount of energy to change a company's fundamental core business. Oil companies are in the business of oil. Even if they expand to becoming an energy company, it takes a long time for them to change their "oil DNA". Based on that, I can imagine that certain oil companies - though not all oil companies - elect to maintain the status quo.

I don't think this is unique to big oil. It's unique to big {pharma, tech, oil, *}. What I find harder to find out is what the "weights" are for both sides and how they are influenced.

This.

Sometimes I think I want people to change their minds extremely and instantaneously. When I look at the micro-changes they make, and have the endurance to see these changes over time, they can actually make extreme changes and in a short period of time. It's just rarely instantaneously extreme.

There is, of course, a debunking video response (14 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKVNFqqzvP4

NIMBYism (destroying the beautiful views from my golf course) and "Think of the birds" also feature high on the list.

Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.

Well, if they were entirely sincere in their concern for the view, the birds, and the noise, only one of those concerns would apply to offshore drilling.

Considering "preventing industrialization" to be an end in itself is something different, usually associated with being pro-wind-power.

The only way to stop those people is boots-on-the-ground political, social, and cultural activism. No, writing mean tweets and just taking part to that fancy "guess your next leader" powerball variant you do once every four years is not remotely enough.

e.g.

- Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.

- Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.

I won't pretend to know enough to state whether they are valid arguments or not. But they are potentially much stronger arguments against wind power than the others frequently made.

https://www.treehugger.com/the-marketing-of-gas-stoves-never...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-06/what-australia-can-le...

> For the first time ever, California's batteries took over gas as the primary source for supplying evening power demand in April, providing "akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors" one evening, according to the New York Times.

- How many kWh the grid has to provide in exchange.

- How many kWh are obtained from other sources in order for this kWh to have been produced.

- How much CO₂ will be released for that kWh, considering the entire lifecycle of the source.

So that we can identify which other electricity production means would have been preferable (both in terms of total energy expenditure, and total CO₂ released).

At the moment, "net negative energy involved" seems like a proxy metric to me, and I don't know a proxy for what precisely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National...

Because it hasn't. The "free energy" stuff is way off the mark and pales in comparison to absolute kookery of weather machines being responsible for things climate change is actually doing.

They don't have a solid grasp of reality and it shows in how they're unaware about the specific things the oil industry is doing. Much of their rhetoric is big oil propaganda being repeated anyway.

War for oil isn't a conspiracy - it's such obvious public knowledge that there are memes about it. Yes, the country that is a major oil producer and in the currency of which most if not all oil transactions are done uses its military might to preserve the status quo - that's hardly a secret.

Two argument seem to be to "claim damages from the visual impact of offshore with projects located off their coasts" and "invoking the federal environment legislation such as the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act".

Those mediums let arbitrary people post arbitrary non sense. Show me scientific studies, peer reviewed and published. And yes, even those can be bad, but at least I can read about their methodology how they conducted their study, the way they analyzed it, and then I can judge if it’s a good study.

Those links are borderline flat earth material.

For the past year in the UK the average is ~30% generation from wind. https://grid.iamkate.com/

So seems it's possible. Swings in generation are dealt with via inter-country interconnects, pumped storage and gas turbine generation. Nuclear adds a steady base.

This as opposed to a tweet about someone who 'read a life cycle analysis article in some engineering journal like 10 years ago'.

Please don't spread misinformation.

I am no expert on this topic but the first reasonably sciency and recent paper I found claims that all energy costs of a wind turbine are compensated after 6-16 months.

https://www.hb.fh-muenster.de/opus4/frontdoor/deliver/index/...

What I think is really weird in the world today is the power companies don't seem interested in selling more power. A parallel branch of Wind and Solar companies are doing all the installations and running the power but not to the extent of bringing new capacity online, its all purely for replacing the old coal and gas systems. Quite a lot of companies are having to buy their own installations and run them so they can have their new data centre.

e.g. I listen to a guy that goes exposes the conmen in the UFO community. The reason the guy focuses on UFOs is because he believes that when he was younger he saw a UFO. Over time he slowly realised over time that he had been lied to by these conmen. He isn't interested in the truth about the oil industry, he cares about the truth around UFO encounters because that is what he cares about.

Have you looked at the government subsidies for nuclear in the UK and the massive lifetime cost? In terms of offshore wind - initially it was subsidized to get it up and running - but now it's established those have dropped and dropped.

> Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.

Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument. The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!

One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!

You'll notice in your article they are almost always talking about power instead of energy because energy is the problem.

We still need about 100 - 1000x improvements to rely on batteries without reliable power plants, depending on how much the generation capacity is overbuilt.

So Hill Farmer Bob can just put a turbine up on the big hill and get "free" electricity. If there was magically Oil everywhere, and Bob was legally allowed to just drill for it, that's what he would obviously do, but in most places there is no oil and oil companies ensured they control the rights so Bob couldn't drill.

This is what capitalism is about, you own stuff therefore you get free money forever. But you don't own the sun or wind.

that's literally how lobbying works and same is being applied to spread misinformation against renewable energy projects.

  What I think is really weird in the world today is the power companies don't seem interested in selling more power.

China has to import 70% of its oil so it needs to focus on renewables. If the US doesn't produce enough oil for its own needs, it too would be building solar and wind at scale I presume. But the US is a net oil exporter.

I'm wondering if the current governmental backlash to wind is just a prelude to getting "wind rights" of vast geographical areas sold to some properly bribing oil corporation.

Then the company can totally control the transition from oil to wind in such a fashion as to extract maximum revenue without having to care about any external competition.

I said I don't know. I said had heard the argument and these are examples of better arguments against wind IMO if they are true.

I don't know what to believe. I am dubious of any reporting on these issues.

> Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument. The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!

Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.

> One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!

I don't remember this. I am sure people will point the finger elsewhere rather than themselves.

I blame the high prices on fuel duty and taxes. Fuel Duty is 52.95 pence per litre and then you have to add VAT. The current diesel price is ~£1.40 per litre at the local Tesco filling station. So that is ~50% of the cost if I am understanding this correctly.

https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/fuel-duty

Once a better solution has been found, the land can be freed for the nature to take over again.

We have no issues with stealing a couple of square miles of nature in order to pave it for our cities or to use it for farming.

Once you remove the wind turbines, the harm you've done to the nature was minimal: production of the turbines, used area and generated noise, minimal pollution of the area, the troubles of recycling them. That's mostly it.

You don't have this with oil, nor with current-age nuclear.

Also, we've already accepted the noise of cars, trucks, motorcycles and planes.

So I really don't get what they are protesting about, specially in Germany.

Lobbying doesn't work like this: someone donates to someone else for reason A, who hires a lawyer for some unrelated reason B, and that lawyer has totally different customers who have hired them for reason C.

They'd rather see world go through an energy crisis which will make their profits skyrocket, before we eventually de-fossilize.

It would be nice if oil, gas, electricity and auto companies did in fact fund people like me to point out all the things climate activists say that aren't true. Pointing out misinformation is valuable on its own, and getting paid to do it would be a double benefit - getting paid to make the world better! I would thus accept that money happily.

Unfortunately they don't. Only the left do that. So people who investigate and reveal climate lobbying misinformation tend to be retirees. They can afford the time to do it as a form of charity work.

I don't think anyone is expecting wind farms to supply anywhere near 100% of energy production. Probably not even 50%.

On the other hand, they seem to have rather 'anti-woke' views. They already posted the same stupid (sorry) Twitter link in another thread and got similar responses, by the way.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43167067

So, they are certainly no bot by any sensible definition but rather someone whos is hindered by their strongly-held views and limited will or ability to critically evaluate sources. I wish them the best.

> Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.

* https://www.instagram.com/tbtoro/p/B_SdEVThgCr/

* https://www.insidehook.com/culture/story-tom-toro-new-yorker...

Also why does this feel like cult-like conditioning of, “we the righteous ones against the evil anti-us false opposition”? It is “they hate you, but I love you, and they want to use the state to take your babies away from you so you better come live in my compound” vibes.

That’s propaganda and abuse, especially when “scientists” is used like some kind of omnipotent deity. “The great and wonderful scientists have revealed the truth to us!”

If they are supporting “anti-wind”, who wouldn’t expect oil companies to support opposition? Are people not allowed to oppose your thing? It’s being treated like some kind of heresy against the corrupt church, and only if you support the subsidized, corrupt wind turbine industry that has politicians on the payroll to push selling wind turbines at public expense, are you righteous believers.

The problem is that all industries and all of our governments are massively corrupted and rotten, and everyone wants to get the other-peoples-money the corrupt politicians have to hand out like the despotic kings or lords they effectively have become.

“Oh yes, lord, you are the most gracious lord of all lords for bestowing upon me the lands and peasants that work them”

In the case of America, where do you think much of that $32 Trillion dollars in national debt deficit spending went in the last 25 years?? If you spend any time in the circles of the 0.1% it will become apparent where that money went, even if you can’t understand that it also went into your 1% pockets.

If you’re having a hard time or will never get access to the top 0.1%, reference the graph of the wealth of the richest people.

In the case of Europe and Germany especially now, they’ve been trying to get at the national “savings” of the German people for decades now, and it seems that BlackRock Merz has finally cracked the vault and he’s going to let the thieves plunder Germany and Europe, as he commits $9 billion annually to the Ukraine for absolutely no rational reason and funding the whole EU project to plunder the German savings, while he tells German pensioners that they can’t get what they worked for all their lives because foreigners that have invaded their country need to be prioritized.

I know regular, grounded people who are in “anti wind” groups they themselves founded, who are clearly not “oil funded” and simply oppose “wind” in their local community because they have heard from others about the impacts. They just don’t like deforesting tracts of woodland and natural habitat, putting in massive concrete foundations, digging up orchards, killing thousands of birds, the noise pollution of the turbines son at all, and the massive corruption due to kickbacks, subsidies, and political aspirations; to build wind turbines where there is basically no wind at all and the turbines won’t pay for themselves even with massive price distorting subsidies. They’re not opposed to “wind” in general, just not the corrupted kind that makes no ecological or business sense, to enrich individuals at the public expense.

I personally think the best solution to these things is that supporters not only get signed up to pay for what they support, but they also get bonded to the projects doing what they promised they would do. You support “wind”; ok, great, you get taxed another 10% to pay for the cost and compensation to anyone affected, and if the turbines don’t produce what you said they would, then you pay for full removal, ecologically sound disposal, and ecological restoration.

But it’s always so allowing to be con artists to trick others out of their money instead.

Heats faster, doesn’t crack etc.

There are farms that are nearing completion and now are just in limbo.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/26/business/wind-project-can...

Remember - that's the core issue. Development of housing or green energy projects or industries with low externalities should be by-right.

Firming argument is valid, but UK deploys nuclear/gas anyway. You can start feeling real challenges past ~70% ren generation - firming becomes more expensive due to opex but you still need it and gas opex is smaller vs nuclear in this low utilization area. So now you are in a moral dilema- ditch nuclear and build gas firming or reorganize capacity market so that nuclear has some CFD or is compensated for firming&grid stabilization (not all nuclear can operate in island mode so that's another factor)

Germany choose the path of gas expansion if you read Fraunhofer. UK is still in a mix. Nordics are lucky with hydro so they can expand basically all low carbon tech

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

I recommend you put that one on your list instead because Instagram is very hostile to people trying to see anything without an account. The one on The New Yorker website is open to all and on the Internet Archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250808141700/https://www.newyo...

Thank you for sharing the interview. I hadn’t come across it before. The cartoon is more popular than I realised, which makes me glad.

The need for backup is not an argument against wind in itself. But it is important to consider the full system costs of wind generation, which includes the backup costs as well as the additional transmission infrastructure.

They aren't particularly dangerous, and they don't leach contaminants. So you just bury them so no one can access them too easily. But it does require leaving the sealed reactor buildings in place - even if you can reuse the rest of the land and the exclusion area.

The person didn’t ask if you know, they asked if you had looked at reports. You cannot for once believe there weren’t subsidies as these endeavors are very time consuming with hundreds of regulations that need to be met.

> Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.

What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.

The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.

In the meantime how many GWh of wind, solar, and battery storage can they install without waiting?

A recent detailed CSIRO report on exactly this considered nuclear modular reactors to be a dud option that kicked the can down the road while continuing a reliance on fossil fuel for power generation.

Renewables were judged the pragmatic best bang for the buck in a multi decade near timeframe.

Some countries may have postponed decommissioning because it's cheaper to wait a bit Some countries allow recycling of some stuff, even concrete, like Italy

[1] https://www.base.bund.de/en/nuclear-safety/nuclear-phase-out...

I mean, is it really surprising that a law company with expertise in the energy sector would handle energy clients? And is it really surprising that a publication with clear bias harming the reputation of its clients would elicit a legal response?

How did the publication even get through peer review in the first place without a reviewer requesting the equivalent links for other energy sources to ensure this wasn't effectively p-hacking?

And wind, even if it was not a pipe dream, does not escape this. Norway cannot make wind power feasible at all, it will never be able to do that, because even if it could in theory be feasible, which I doubt, our regulation makes it impossible even after the government has thrown billions of dollars of our tax money after it.

We do not need wind, wind is not faster, it's not better, it's not going to fix Europe's energy crisis. Nuclear can and will, but the impediment there is not the nuclear industry, its the crony European politicians that run our economy in China's favour.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...

In reality we will still have a lot of fossil generation which will make it 'easier'.

For now they have sufficient power, but considering nuclear timelines, you better start now

Enhanced geothermal could play a role here, but for now it's debatable.

Your disdain for the conspiracy theorist scene is mirrored in that scenes disdain for justice.

In the case where there is actionable justice that can be achieved, the conspiracy theory is no longer a theory - the conspiracy is prosecuted in the courts of our proud nations' democratic institutions.

The UK's prices are a political choice due to the mapping of voters over the energy generation distribution.

Our current system makes it much too easy to hold on to profits even when direct negative externalitites cost millions of human life-years.

You probably don't even need to remove the turbines if you don't want to? I imagine nature would take over just fine with them left there.

Have you heard of Fox News, Newsmax, or OAN?

Industrial capitalists make mass produced LED lights and cheap solar panels. Eco-activists push for anti-nuclear laws and plastic straw bans.

It's pretty telling that oil lobbyists resort to non-market methods like bribing politicians to stall renewables. They know the time is running out - with all the new power generation and storage tech that's in the pipeline, fossil fuels just aren't going to be economically viable forever. Renewables are rising, and there is no moat - all the existing oil assets those companies hold are going to be increasingly useless as more and more of the world's power comes from non-fossil sources.

"Stall" is about the extent of it though. You can't fight economic forces off forever.

Nuclear is still needed since expanding hydro isn't an option. And it's great for district heating in the north

You are right about regulations but even if you fix em now, framatome and whouse are just some shadows of what they've been in the past compared to current rosatom/chinese nuclear. Ramping up to the past lvl will be hard.

Fyi, I'm not sure but I think the statement about funding Ukraine is a bit misleading because EU as a whole and each EU country have different funding and budget mechanisms. Maybe I'm wrong but I remember I've read something about this in the past

I don't spread misinformation nor lies. Just truths that the climate lobby don't want people to know about.

With gas you also have to worry about proper ventilation, and most homes don't actually have that. Not to mention that gas leaks are a risk as well.

The financial modeling also relies heavily on the assumption of government preference (hard if there is a huge lobby who hates your guts) and wind speeds holding constant (wind speeds are falling and this is blowing holes in wind farm finances).

I have never understood this complaint about solar and wind. If we could have our electricity 100% generated by green sources most of the time and then rely on other sources (even natural gas) to supplement when there isn't enough being generated by solar and wind I would weep with joy. That'd be an astonishingly huge victory in the fight against climate change. I wouldn't even care if we needed significant government subsidies to ensure that the gas plants stay profitable while their demand is unpredictable.

   - Unclear maintenance - there's no clear way what to do with dysfunctional mills on land. 
     Just letting them rot seems to be a thing. Offshore maintenance is surely no fun, too. How long do they last?

   - Pollution - there's a lot of abrasion and this stuff is pretty unclear, 
     it's even going into places where clean water is collected. Does anybody care about this?

   - Ecology - there are a lot of trees that get cut down for wind. Maybe keeping those trees would be better. 
     Kills birds and bats is also part of the argument

   - Economy - a lot of energy is produced at the wrong time. So much that it's even expensive to dump.
     How much energy goes into producing the mill, and how long will it last?
     Does this break even if you subtract subsidies, maintenance and value the dumped excess-energy realistically? 
     Is there any good storage solution coming - or will this remain to be a myth?
 

And you'll notice that even despite keeping that basic tenet of journalistic integrity alive, they get attacked for bias constantly. We're told that the AP is a credible news source and Fox isn't, even as AP launders stories written by teams of full time lobbyists.

Read the AP story where they admit to this practice. The journalist writing it clearly feels uncomfortable, knows what they're doing is wrong and knows he's trying to defend the indefensible. Show me where Fox puts itself in the same situation.

The way I understand it, Germany had a horrid mix of anti-nuclear eco-activists, local coal lobbyists and Gazprom's natural gas lobbyists. The politicians not included in any of the above were too toothless, and couldn't fight through this bullshit and secure good outcomes regardless.

The far, far easier (at that end of things) way to solve our problems would be to shift our economic policies to favor the poor at the expense of the very wealthy, because a huge share of the cause of their stubborn stances is economic insecurity. But unfortunately, that...probably requires getting them on board, at least to some extent. (Not to mention actually having a free and fair election again, which...looks pretty dodgy at the moment.)

Obviously there are very good reasons to get rid of coal, but it leads to higher prices. Reducing fossil fuels in the grid will be expensive and I worry that the lack of candor from politicians on this will end up making the transition more difficult politically.

https://ibb.co/gMCPwzg5

https://postimg.cc/RNsT6bJJ

https://freeimage.host/i/tomtoroplanet.K2WBfYN

https://imgur.com/a/D4nEijI

There are numerous camps with strong impassioned and conflicting arguments as to cause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou...

Off-shore definitely. The UK already had a bunch of decaying archaic man-made structures off shore because of World War II, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts which I went to look at a few weeks back. Pieces of the forts clearly break off and disappear into the sea without incident.

As an example I feel even Gas electricity LCOE equivalent is calculated as Capex + Opex where Capex amortisation over lifetime depends on capacity factor of Gas turbine plant. With more renewable penetration even in a competitive market like ERCOT the LCOE equivalent costs for Gas increases although technically this should drive overall electricity lower and should work for everyone.

This completely creates a significant issue for Natural Gas future too which I think was unthinkable for US Gas producers as it was the safest bet decades into the future.

Not too talk about what even a 3-4% Oil demand destruction in Oil for transportation due to EVs can do to the oil markets.

All this seemed theoretical before but now the tides are finally changing led by China and most of the world has a vested interest in reducing Oil and Gas dependency as most of the world are net importers too.

So all these plays are essentially trying to maximise the cash producing life of the current assets whether it can be achieved by FUD or whatever other means necessary.

I'm not even antioil in general but I am pro diversification, and think it's absurd to bring up government in that way when a major point of government should be to represent value for the citizens, that might not be represented in the market otherwise.

Some of those critics focus on nuclear (Like AfD: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/populist-afd-sand-gears...) and some of those pretend to be angry about the slowness of Germanys transition but it doesn't really add up to anyone who pays attention to the local facts. It's just a meme to get people angry at the left and/or environmentalists, while the right openly and continually sabotage progress.

Obviously not. I said as much. I've listened to good arguments for and against it and I don't know what to believe.

My comments were simply about the fact that you could make better arguments than the ones that were presented.

> What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.

It isn't free electricity. There is a cost to constructing them, maintaining them and decommissioning them when they become EOL.

If the wind doesn't blow, they don't generate electricity. This means that there is more demand on other sources. So price is driven by supply and demand. All of this the energy company will factor into your tariff. So obviously it is going to affect the price of electricity.

> The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.

Understanding a basic tax calculation that is listed on a government website is relatively easy and took a few seconds for me to guestimate. It is much more difficult for layman (like myself) to understand the Total Cost of Ownership of a Wind Turbine, it ROI and understanding whether that maybe a good investment.

I wasn't arguing for or against wind. I was saying there are arguments against wind that might be better than the ones are often highlighted. You are mistaking me highlighting there are potentially better arguments, with agreeing with those arguments.

It's kind of a more modern, more legal take on "send some mobsters to mess them up". You find (or make) an activist group opposing a certain development - and then covertly funnel funding and support to them so that they can do as much damage as possible and stall your competition for as long as possible.

This is a lie - I have never had an instagram account and I was able to hop on there and copy the image.

(it might be of interest to some that the image shared by the artist on Instagram has the text justified how the artist intended and the New Yorker's text caption can look different depending on the device, but I can't pretend that I care too much about that...)

> Take your pick.

Why did you bother? I'm fully capable of googling a famous image and I'm sure everyone else reading this stuff is.

It is bizar to listen to.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that windmills had killed 100+ whales. I tried to find out what he referred to, but couldn't find anything but articles debunking any claim that windmills affect whales (after construction).

He also claimed that the price per kWh of wind energy is above $0.30, which is quite a bit from the $0.03 ($0.12 offshore) price per kWh listed in Wikipedia [1] for United States.

At the same meeting Trump stated that the only viable solution is fossil fuel."... and maybe a little nuclear, but mostly fossil fuel.". And that wind is about 10x more expensive than natural gas (again contradicting the prices listed in the Wikipedia reference where the prices for onshore wind and natural gas are almost identical).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

1. https://globalwindatlas.info/en/

One political idea in the UK is to give people locality based energy pricing, so, if there's a wind turbine right near your community, sure, that's a bit annoying (they're loud because that wind is moving huge spinning blades, and maybe you like horizons, which are horizontal, the wind farm breaks that up) but hey, your electricity is super cheap. The idea being that's a direct incentive to welcome on-shore turbines and it's an effective subsidy to move electrical load nearer to production.

Today with national pricing that Wind Farm wants to be on the Scottish coast where it's windy, and the Energy Intensive industry wants to be in England where there are loads of people already, and then you have to move all that power across half a country to make it work, which is further expense and delay. Why not just move the industrial users, and to nudge them offer lower prices ?

> Europe estimated to have bought €22bn of fossil fuels from Russia in 2024 but gave €19bn to support Kyiv

Norway was never anywhere near having drought problems and what the Labour Party did has not reduced water usage by Hydro at all, they made it worse.

Seems like a myopic strawman to me. The main eco-activism that I remember for the last couple of decades has been for reduced fossil-fuel use. This is now being translated into policy in Europe especially, which has massively increased the market for renewables that the "industrial capitalists" can take advantage of.

Same reason why agriculture is - too vital of an industry. Which might make sense from a national security standpoint - but it also gives the oil industry yet another reason to fight tooth and nail against anything that can diminish the importance of oil.

If oil ever became non-vital to the country's infrastructure and economy, those subsidies would stop, and the entire industry might go the way of British coal.

Now, banning onshore wind in England for a decade when it was the cheapest source of energy available. That's just plain stupid (or a corrupt gift to your mates in gas companies).

It's not the most expensive form. Some current builds are expensive, but it generally can provide for very cheap. Check out Goesgen open data for Switzerland

Today, the best alternative to fossil fuels is renewables - but 40 years ago, it was nuclear. If eco-activists made sensible decisions, fossil fuel power could have been curbed back then.

Instead, we got what we got. Eco-activists, being what they are, made vibe-based policy decisions, and the vibe of nuclear power was Very Bad and Glowing Acid Green and Way Too Industrial. So nuclear power was strangled with activism and overregulation in many countries, if not banned outright.

So we had to sit on fossil fuel power for those 40 years - until the economics of renewables finally became more favorable. Which, again, happened not because eco-activists willed it into existence - but because industrial capitalists developed the relevant technologies and pushed them into mass production.

What would have happened in an alternate world where renewables just weren't economical? Would the world sit on fossil fuels for another 40 years, until fusion power actually materialized?

Leaving nuclear in place would be good, going heavily into renewables would also be good, but doing neither would be idiotic, and somehow that's what they did.

As for being cost effective, onshore wind is probably the cheapest option, and I think it's hoped that offshore will come close to that once more of the learning curve has been traversed. Perhaps fossil gas from the North sea is still cheaper for now, if you ignore the external cost.

I think solar power is even cheaper, but doesn't deliver much in the winter so far up north.

Backup: Batteries are cost effective for short term shortages. For long term shortages, you'd fire up thermal plants, either biomass or biogas (fossil gas for now).

It doesn't make sense to back up wind with nuclear. Nuclear has a high capital cost and relatively low running costs, so you don't save much from being standby but you still need to pay back the loans.

It's almost as if the outrage was astroturfed into existence by the nuclear lobby using similar tactics to the oil lobby.

Norway does definitely have problems to takle

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/08/20/n... https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/southern-norway-...

Former East German political agents still working for Russia.

This time you were. I get sent Instagram links semi-regularly and it’s a gamble when they’ll work. And there are two other people on this thread who replied directly to you, before your comment, saying they wouldn’t have bothered to even try.

> it might be of interest to some that the image shared by the artist on Instagram has the text justified how the artist intended

Is it, now? Then why is the text justified entirely differently on their own website, their Etsy store, and their official link on Cartoon Collections?

https://tomtoro.com/cartoons/

https://www.etsy.com/listing/510225080/signed-print-of-my-ne...

https://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoon?searchID=CC137952

And look at that, it’s the exact same crop I chose for my screenshot. Almost as if I tried to respect the author’s choice, even though I very much doubt they are anal-retentive about how the text is laid out. They likely changed it for Instagram to fit better into the obligatory square.

> Why did you bother?

Perhaps cut it a bit with the hostility? It’s not like my screenshot harmed you in any way.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-russian-officials...

The electricity grid is not "forced" to accept anything. Places like Texas show that economic incentives work for renewable energy. In fact, economic incentives are stronger than disinformation.

When the conservatives regained power, they vowed to cancel and stop the exit timeline, but then came Fukushima and an irrational media panic - and Merkel did what she does best.

Demand response is basically - please don't use power because we don't have enough or because it's expensive. That's not an appealing option.

Smart grid management is good but it'll take years to reach good condition - you need to expand/upgrade transmission and distribution systems with proper equipment.

Germany has it's own path that's more or less stable for a long time- coal+gas firming, tons of ren and major transmission expenses, to the point govt will start subsidizing them

It goes well beyond that though. I always like to tell the story of Steven Donziger to show just how corrupt this system is.

Ecuador of course has less regulation than the US and oil company went down there and made a total mess. Steven Donziger, an American lawyer, went down there and helped the people and the governemnt sue Chevron and won a $9.5 billion judgement in 2011 to clean this up.

Chevron didn't like this, withdrew their assets from Ecuador and went back to the US and sued Donziger in federal court. The judgement was deemed to be fraudulent (based pretty much on a video tape where Donziger and a minister were at the same event years earlier).

But it didn't end there. Donziger was disbarred for this. Chevron made a complaint to the Department of Justice to criminally prosecute Donziger. The DoJ declined.

But it didn't end there. The federal judge appointed a private law firm that served Chevron to criminally prosecute Donziger for not turning over a computer and other work products that were absolutely covered by attorney-client privilege. This is a little-known and little-used law for private prosecution.

Donziger was placed on house arrest with an $800,000 bail for years for contempt of court.

Donziger claims Chevron has spent in excess of $2 billion in legal fees on all this.

Don't doubt for a second that the courts don't work directly for the interests of corporations and capital owners. In fact, this is about the best way to determine how the Supreme Court will rule on key matters: what benefits the wealthy. It's not strictly true. There are exceptions but it's amazing how often it's correct.

The courts have now been packed with Christian Nationalists who will absolutely weaponize the bench in future years against climate activists and probably get them declared terrorist organizations. That's just the reality we live in now.

I ran the numbers like a good nerd. It is mind-bogglingly inane how wrong that idea is. I also learned new things about how ridiculously polluting coal plants are.

These bad ideas come from somewhere (presumably cable news). Or they were bots.

Poland is building nuclear power now though, after decades of burning epic amounts of coal (~85% of their electricity output).

This is most likely coz it provides a route to creating a nuclear weapon in a hurry "just in case". It isnt cost effective for them for any other purpose.

Greenpeace did great work on the peace front, but wrecked 50 years of carbon progress on the nuclear power front.

Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Largest marine oil spill in U.S. history. BP paid over $20 billion in fines and compensation.

Love Canal: Occidental Petroleum dumped toxic waste into the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, resulting in pollution causing birth defects. $130 million in settlements.

Exxon Valdez oil spill: Alaska’s Prince William Sound contaminated with 11 million gallons of crude oil. Exxon paid over $1 billion in cleanup and compensation.

DuPont Chemical leak: DuPont contaminated the drinking water of over 300,000 people. $670 million in settlements.

Hinkley Groundwater Contamination: PG&E contaminated groundwater with chromium-6 in California. $333 million in settlements.

Volkswagen Emissions Scandal: Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests. $25 billion in settlements.

Kingston Fossil Plant Coal Ash Spill: A retention pond breached, releasing over 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge into the surrounding area. Cleanup cost over $1 billion.

Greens were in a coalition with the Social Democrats led by Chancellor Schroeder; Schroeder agreed to the Greens’ demands for nuclear exit and negotiated a board role at Gazprom for himself after his political career.

Merkel initially wanted to reverse or freeze the exit timeline but bowed to public opinion to continue it once the tsunami hit Japan.

Wow, those cheap solar panels were done entirely by the private sector? Without decades of government-backed research on how to make solar panels viable to mass-produce?

Without eco-activists lobbying for government-funded research on solar panels, there would be no mass production, because nobody is paying $100k/kW.

And making cheap LEDs doesn't necessarily reduce energy use, thanks to the rebound effect - we've known this since Lord Jevon noted that James Watt's new ultra-efficient steam engine increased demand for coal instead of reducing it, because it made steam engines cheaper to run. If you look at car headlights, you'll find that instead of using LEDs to reduce power use, car-makers instead used them to crank up the lumens as far as humanly possible. They only save power on paper, when underwritten by implicit environmental optimism.

Note that I'm not opposed to "creating value for shareholders"; they made cheap solar panels possible. I'm saying that powerful economic forces require far more precise alignment than you'd think for them to be useful, and they are almost never conveniently placed in the right spot by chance.

Unfortunately, similar to 'Yellowstone', much of the rabid viewing audience take this conservative land-right pornography at face-value as a source of truth for the state of the nation.

By breaking the country in to zones, where the electricity that's bought can actually reach the users they then apply the actual economics of the system properly, and encourage suppliers to build where the demand can be satisfied by them.

You mean f_ck up safety and security of whole Old continent for decades to come, for some ego polishing, personal weaknesses or similar noble reasons?

She still admits no failures nor missteps during her reign in many topics where she clearly failed badly, despite journalists asking very direct questions about this. I wonder when will German population realize how much long term damage she has done, if ever.

https://youtu.be/7D_eAtU4_DA?si=Ynafg1d_G-GRo5vM

You have posed a potentially interesting (and well researched!) question that would probably be more fruitfully targeted at someone who did not make the effort to state "but I can't pretend that I care too much about that..."

There is no farmed tuna, its all wild caught from the big blue oceans. Why does tuna have mercury? Because it eats things that have mercury in them. Where did they get the mercury from? Rain. Where did the rain get it? Coal emissions! Coal has mercury and when you burn coal, it goes into the atmosphere and then, eventually, into the ocean. So much mercury has been released by coal burning that the ALL THE OCEANS are contaminated to the point where predator fish have levels in their flesh high enough to warrant health warnings.

At best, you can make a claim that because of Germany's push, renewables got to today's price point a few years sooner. Which is quite valuable, but not a make-it-or-break-it difference.

Deconstructing a wind turbine is far from simple and cheap.

Situation is very similar in Germany - most industry is concentrated in the south while most productive wind in the north. In the past it didn't matter since prices were similar with coal. But now, since you can't magically create wind in low wind/unproductive areas, the options are either split zones and kill part of industry, which Germany doesn't want, or to keep a single zone and build expensive transmission like sudlink.

There's always of course the bad faith accounts that spit out cherry picked facts and half truths, but they also don't seem interested in doing any actual discussion other than arguing.

The thing which seemed to make them shut up was doing the math showing that the total weight of just coal ash from a coal plant running for a year is comparable to the entire weight of materials for a similar capacity wind farm (which is rated for ~20 years of use). I assume similar or less for solar (numbers harder to find).

It's pretty clear that people didn't replace their 100W incandescent bulbs with 200W worth of LEDs. Modern LED lights sit in a range of 6W to 20W - which is a factor of 5 reduction in power draw no matter how you cut it.

The only sense in which there are conflicting arguments, is that the leftist Spanish government read the above report and concluded that it was the fault of the gas plants for not being available when they were needed. Because they were switched off. Because of their own policies. This is not an argument that deserves genuine consideration.

Wind power is however not comparable to fossil fuels or nuclear power. Denmark is a prime example of a country that did commit fully to wind power in a very strong and consistent way, and do produce more total energy through wind that they consume. That energy however is not produced when people want to consume it, so as a practical matter, they import around 50% of their energy that they do consume, energy which is not wind since when the wind blow they export the excess energy. They could produce 500% or even 1000% more wind energy, and they would still need to import a large portion of their consumption from non-wind power. Producing that much excess power would mostly just effect exports and not in a good way for the producers since overproduction mostly just lead to lower prices. 50% consumption seems to be around the maximum of what you can do with wind (for now), and when the wind do not blow you still need 100% of the capacity from other sources in order to fill in the gap. Overproduction of nuclear or thermal energy does not have this issue, but rather carries completely different problems.

- This increases demand on other sources of energy. If there is a sudden change in demand you have a price spike. This leads to an increase in price to consumers.

- If the grid also has to be re-balanced. This has a financial cost in of itself. If the grid can't be re-balanced you can have blackouts. Blackout can potentially kill people, it effects business etc.

- If you are getting it from other countries, this means you are reliant on another nation for your energy needs. This is a security issue. e.g. Norway threatened to ration energy exports back in 2022. This would of course increase the price.

- Energy prices have a knock affect to everything in the economy and are a significant driver of price inflation. This obvious has an adverse affect on the economy.

Subsidies are paid for via taxation. At the moment the UK is likely to increase taxation again in October as they were unable to cut benefits earlier this year. The larger the subsidies a government are paying the more money they need collect in taxation, or you have to borrow. The UK is unlikely to be able to collect much more tax, and we are borrowing a huge amount of money as it is.

The featured article states where they come from - the oil lobby (unsurprisingly).

https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/poland/

They keep putting their nuclear switch on date backwards (2040 now I think?) but renewables have been taking big chunks out of the problem and will continue to do so.

The "left" (by your definition) also opposes fossil fuels but we're nowhere near eliminating those. Why haven't they succeeded?

Surely mere "opposition" isn't enough.

It's about the money. "Eco-activists" can't achieve shit if there's no money in it. Think about all the other things they've been trying to kill - meat, fossil fuels, jet travel - and are nowhere near succeeding. Why do you think that is?

Fossil fuel interests killed nuclear. "Eco-activists" took the rap. And everyone else fell for it.

From the IEA report: "Substantiated by in-depth case studies, this report infers that, almost anywhere on the planet, nearly 100% VRE power grids firmly supplying clean power and meeting demand 24/365 are not only possible but would be economically viable, provided that VRE resources are optimally transformed from unconstrained run-of-the weather generation into firm generation."[1]

However, propagandists routinely spread misinformation on firming. For example, they might cite the absolutely absurd LFSCOE which is funded by the energy sector's equivalent of the Center for Indoor Air Research[2][3][4].

[1] https://iea-pvps.org/key-topics/firm-power-generation/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

[3] https://www.desmog.com/2016/01/10/rice-university-s-baker-in...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Indoor_Air_Research

You never hear someone complain about Germany's nuclear exit and then pivot into "but at least they're doing well with renewables and they should do better and go faster on EVs and electrification of heat" which would make sense for someone who had a strange affection for nuclear tech, particularly those last two which work great with nuclear.

What you do see is people absolutely seething about leftists and environmentalists and renewables who only have one just barely socially acceptable outlet to attack Germany on.

But they attack them not because their decarbonisation is slow but because they were clear leaders in the tech that threatens fossil fuels around the globe.

Making it seem like a failure is a good way to slow down that transition in other countries too.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/big-oil-donations-trump

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4961820-oil-bi...

https://climatepower.us/news/new-report-oil-and-gas-industry...

https://truthout.org/articles/big-oil-spent-445-million-to-i...

https://bwo-offshorewind.de/category/offshore-windenergie/na...

Which is funny, given its moniker

Wind works well, especially offshore: there are 1133 GW of installed wind capacity globally in 2024, so it seems to be working for somebody. This is compared to 377 GW of nuclear globally.

The recent moves by the feds to limit wind makes no sense. If a farmer wants to lease some small plots of likely unusable planting property to a company that generates electricity via wind who the fuck cares? While the feds can stop land use options as they see fit, the way it’s worded makes it seem as if it’s not a good thing for farmers to use their land as they see fit—something that’s likely intentional.

The oil companies do.

It wouldn't actually make sense to put turbines in Chicago because it's a city, the wind force is disrupted by the human structures littered everywhere in a city - but obviously you'd expect a windy area to have a lot of turbines outside the city and not ordinarily need to import wind energy from hundreds of miles away.

I'm in the PNW so I'll use timber and logging as my example but one can find similar stories in coal and oil.

Conservatives used environmental causes as a means to distract workers. What do I mean? Back in the 70s and 80s loggers were looking to unionize and get more pay. So what happened? The spotted owl, land rights, environmentalists, etc. Now we have campaigns like Timber Unity which resulted in more gates on lands, less loggers in general(automation) and lower pay/benefits for those workers.

Now, rural Americans fly banners of campaigns that have stripped them of money. They eagerly proclaim their timber unity while they lose their jobs, acting as if they're battling this environmentalist boogieman.

While the low paid workers hit their chests and declare unity against environmentalists, their employers lower their pay, cut benefits, etc while blaming an owl.

It's mind boggling how hoodwinked they let them selves be. You can see this repeated in other industries that use environmentalists as scapegoats.

I know a bunch of farmers who have started installing solar in their fields..

If so, then you are at odds with (at the very least) then president George W. Bush, and then prime ministers Tony Blair and John Howard.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, either the conspiracy theorists do include oil-motive conspiracy theorists, or heads of state have little influence over what is considered an acceptable, non-conspiratorial idea in public discourse.

It's performance is actually a huge risk point as well, since it's so periodic.

Not many whales around here unfortunately, but I'm amazed what kind of extinction-level dangers they apparently pose for birds, forests and generally wildlife.

And then there is the lasting psychological damage caused by the sounds and moving shadows of the rotor blades...

I mean not always, they put feed in tarifs for solar in law at the end of the 90s. This led to a huge boom in solar production and it made the Germans very big in solar panel production. Unfortunately, like all other countries they were eventually outproduced by china.

This model has been copied in a lot of places afterwards and only when a mature market for solar exists does it stop working (it becomes a subsidy for people that produce paid for by people that don't).

The German antinuclear movement started as a local aspect of the 68s civil rights and environmental movements. Then, when Chernobyl hit, West Germany enacted restrictions in daily life to cope with the risk of radioactive fallout and contamination. The daily experience of many Germans was probably not too dissimilar from the Covid time. (The restrictions were less severe but the mood was similarly apocalyptic)

This experience made a nuclear-free Germany an absolute core part of the progressive movement here. It's part of the founding story of the Greens.

Other flashpoints were plans for "eternal storage" facilities for nuclear waste. The conflict around the Gorleben facility was going on between government and local population for several decades and had given rise to entire protest communities.

It's a partisan topic like maybe abortion in the US.

The only aspect of Merkel's decision that was surprising was that she did it. She seemingly switched political sides and enacted several parts of the progressive agenda (also gay marriage and "wir schaffen das" - the famously liberal stance on refugees) - as head of the conservative party. Her party and voting base were not happy with that...

“In 2019, California had 770 megawatts of battery storage. Now, it's 14 times higher, at 10,383 megawatts, and by the end of this year, it expects to add another 3,800.”

We saw the same curve with solar and wind. 20-30 years worth today will be peanuts in the near future. You’ve outlined a very achievable goal.

Cheap solar panels were subsidized by governments to get the costs down. I know eco-activists that are pro-nuclear.

More generally: a lot of these things were done to reduce costs and due to price pressures. There is currently no mechanism to put a price on climate change that is directly noticeable by the general consumer. (Only 'indirect' costs due to climate inaction, like higher insurance premiums due to more extreme weather events.)

Perhaps if the O&G folks and others would stop trying "create value for shareholders" of the fossil fuel companies we could use The Market™ to properly price in climate change instead of subsidizing climate-damaging actions and subsidizing the operations of these companies.

People like using stuff, and if someone tries to take away their QoL, they'll oppose it strongly - and rightfully so. Which is a very basic thing that, somehow, almost no environmentalist seems to grasp.

Almost all of the post-Iraq oil contracts went for Chinese companies. The US made very little of it.

These clowns are just lying. The fact we have to contort ourselves to try to find a kernel of truth in what they say is disappointing.

In 2024, the cost for storing nuclear waste just up until 2100 was estimated to be 170 Bln. [1]

This cost is always, without exception, excluded in the calculation of the cost of generating a MWh. It's externalized, paid for by the next generations of taxpayers.

Gösgen's open data, just like all the other data, does not include waste management cost.

Gösgen is a perfect example for how brittle and outdated the technology is. The nuclear plant is off the grid since May 2025 and will remain down until at least February 2026 [2]

Just like the newly-built Flamanville 3 (12 years late, 10+Bln over budget), it's off the grid until further notice. [3]

The world is phasing out nuclear.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endlagersuche_in_Deutschland

[1] https://www.zeit.de/wissen/2024-08/atommuell-endlager-suche-...

[2] https://www.schwarzwaelder-bote.de/inhalt.akw-faellt-aus-ker...

[3] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

1 - https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1396961964190961665

2 - https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-obsession-cri...

3 - https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/nixon-silent-majority-spee...

4 - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/05/19/americans-an...

Which would be weird if they weren't misrepresenting their concerns. Or at least trying to. It's all very transparent.

It's a strange double standard. As is the building of expensive pumped hydro storage for use with nuclear.

THE UK gets 30% of its electricity from wind and another 5% from solar; Denmark gets 70% from renewables, mostly wind. Iowa gets 65% of its electricity from renewables, mostly wind; California, whose economy is larger than that of most countries, gets 38%, mainly from solar.

But some lobbyists are trying to kill momentum, especially those who see nuclear as a silver bullet. It is not.

That aside, Mr Inbetween is far, far away from both, has some appeal for those that like guns, and is worth the watch for the uniqueness and storytelling.

What they do is essentially being the energy trading market for Northern Europe. Buying the cheapest available from UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Norway.

As storage gets built out they will be able to arbitrage this positions and their better, likely allowing them to start phasing out thermal capacity as long as the stability of the grid is ensured through empirical evidence.

Attempting to fit nuclear power with its extremely high CAPEX and acceptable OPEX in our zero marginal cost renewable and near zero marginal cost storage future is a near impossible task.

The company supposed to build them held a tender for first SMR, then pivoted to large scale reactors and shortlisted three options. Then that tender disappeared and now they have shortlisted 2 SMR options.

What is happening is a no one wanting to admit the absolutely ludicrous costs and hope the question will fizzle out.

Which as we all know are paper products which rely on ”scale” to achieve anything. No one seems to talk about who will buy the couple hundred SMR prototypes to achieve said scale.

2- It's covered by kenfo, auto reinvested fund paid by operators. It has about 24bn. In comparison Onkalo in Finland did cost 1bn to build. A similar repository is built in Sweden in Fosmark

3- Goesgen data does include the tax for both waste handling and decommissioning, didn't you read the data?

4- you don't seem to understand why Goesgen is offline. It's not about being brittle. They installed new equipment that performed too good and they need to upgrade other connected components

5- Flamanville did cost merely ~a single year of German EEG subsidies for renewables

6- 2024 was record TWh from nuclear, for like, ever. It'll grow more, mostly due to Asia unless Hitachi/Whous/EDF will do something

what you described with demand response is equivalent of rationing- use power when weather is good because otherwise you'll not afford it

Don't confuse transmission needed for 1GW of nuclear vs 10GW of solar with 10% cf and more redispatching requirements

”Get something on the grid” when the mangled number put out in PR communication is 2035.

So realistically early to mid 2040s. Why not just build renewables and storage and have ”something on the grid” counted in months and years instead of decades?

renewables cover different aspect of demand. What you do if you don't have enough firming power? Hope neighbors will have spare power? That's why you start planning nuclear now, or you'll start planning gas later, just like Germany

Anti subsidy reports in 2019 [1] landed on a what was seen as a worryingly large €10B for the entire Swedish market based subsidy system over the period from 2003 to 2045. 2018 the actual costs landed on €300m.

In 2021 the price of the system went to zero and was subsequently phased out for new producers. You know; market based subsidies.

In other words, much less than €10B will ever be spent on it.

Please stop making stuff up because you can’t bring yourself to accept how horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power is.

Are suggesting that we should build peaking nuclear power plants to solve firming? Because that is Sweden’s problem. Managing a January cold spell coupled with low wind is what is used to calculate the resiliency.

What capsize factor should we calculate? 20%? That is way higher than a January cold spell but let’s go for it.

Running Vogtle at a 20% capacity factor leads to 80 cents per kWh electricity.

What you are suggesting is completely batshit insane when actually putting a number on it.

Who cares if the final bit of firming is fossil based with possibility to be decarbonized through synfuels, biofuels or hydrogen when we still have large portions of the economy to deal with?

Don’t let imaginary perfect be the enemy of good enough.

[1]: https://timbro.se/miljo/ny-rapport-subventioner-till-fornyba...

Take cars, for instance. When someone buys an EV rather than ICE, do you think the EV uses the same amount of energy than the ICE car?

> what you described with demand response is equivalent of rationing- use power when weather is good because otherwise you'll not afford it

Sure, what do you think that needs to be done when there is a limited resource such as electricity? Yes, more production, but until then, what should the grid do if the demand is growing?

> Don't confuse transmission needed for 1GW of nuclear vs 10GW of solar with 10% cf and more redispatching requirements

It is two different models, one is centralized (nuclear) and the other is distributed (solar). The planning is essentially different.

Yes, you need vastly more transmission for a distributed ren grid. Both for deployment and for avoiding curtailment

Hydrogen firming is extremely expensive per Lazard, it's strange you are bringing it up while complaining about nuclear. Needless to say their numbers are for US. For europe it'll be more similar to Germany https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/shipping-green-hydrogen... https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/eu-report-says-making-g...

Nuclear can achieve this and you can reform capacity market to guarantee 60%cf if you need, because you know, you still need firming power and maybe you want to avoid too high transmission expansion and grid forming inverters.

If ren strategy alone can't achieve this due to gas firming, then you deploy less ren. Sweden can expand ren as long as hydro can firm it. Past that, you don't have other realistic option than nuclear if you want to phase out fossils entirely

Solar panels in rooftops can decrease the saturation of the grid, so more transmission is not necessarily needed.

Willing to waste 10x as much resources and money because 99% is not 100% even though we still need to decarbonize shipping, aviation, agriculture and industry. Laser focused on one sector ignoring all else.

That sounds like a juvenile position coming from an ideologist rather than someone vying for the quickest possible decarbonization of our entire society.

I’m not sure why you latched on to hydrogen? Maybe because that is the one you could hope to ”debunk”?

We of course also have biofuels, the ethanol blend in for US gasoline is enough to run the entire grid without help for 16 days.

Just repurpose that, while ensuring the inputs also decarbonize, as we switch our transportation fleet to BEVs.

This does not have to be solved today, it is a problem for the 2030s so let’s not jump ahead of ourselves when Poland still runs 70% on fossil fuels.

What you are saying is that we should force the market to build nuclear power despite the insane cost through subsidies. Vogtle running at 60% is still a completely insane 30 cents per kWh excluding transmission costs.

Please do explain what is scary with grid forming inverters? In the latest Chinese auctions the lots with grid forming inverters added ~$20/kWh to the storage price.

And then you circle back to the completely binary world. You do know that Sweden has a huge oil power plant running a few hours per year in a capacity reserve? It just never gets called in due to not being needed.

With your logic nothing is worth doing until that power plant is entirely phased out even though it runs for a fraction of a percent per year?