Comment by jillesvangurp
2 days ago
North south connections enable solar power from Africa to be used around the year. And while solar is down in the winter, wind production usually peaks. If you have thousands of km of cable, there is a lot of power that can be moved around.
Ah yes, what Europe needs once more is to become existentially dependent on a region that is both culturally and geographically distant and where Europe has very little ability to enforce and police it's interests.
Have we learned nothing from the 2022 energy crisis? The number of starry eyed suggestions here about distributed worldwide power networks and load balancing is astonishing given the realities that we actually live in.
The "realities" are a direct result of a fossil economy which is still stuck in the 19th century.
Oil and gas have caused far more wars than electricity has.
Yep pretty much stupid.
The best interpretation you can give is that they are naive idealists, stuck in the mental state of a kid (even though their intelligence is fully developed).
But as I'm getting older, I'm more inclined to say that they are clearly stupid, some form of "intellectual yet idiot".
I always roll my eyes when I read that ultra optimistic report about renewables because it doesn't really match reality. Not only do they always grossly exaggerate the benefits but they also systematically bury the problems that have to be solved for it to be a long-term solution (manufacturing in a sovereign way, recycling and grid balancing are largely unsolved problems).
And then you have idiots who come in and propose some grandiose "solution" that would require multiple countries/culture to not only collaborate economically but also accept de facto power imbalance and stuff like that. It's almost like believing in Santa; but it's cute up to a 10-year-old, after that it's more hopeless than anything else.
buckle may be referring at least partly to the north-south landmass imbalance.
inb4 someone tries to invent floating solar farms to try to fill the Pacific with, lol.
China already has more than 1GW of floating solar PV in the Pacific.