Comment by bdauvergne
4 hours ago
What kind of civilization is possible on intermittent power ? All western civilization is built on 24/24 7/7 available energy (from direct use of petroleum or electricity). I think we should give two numbers: the raw TWh output and the stable TW output and see where they are coming from. Africa and Asia are rapidly being electrified, but if it does not create an industrial boom outside China by guaranteed available energy it's just more people having intermittent AC and not real development.
A civilization that uses storage to level that intermittency. It's perfectly possible to power industrial world civilization using only renewables, and it would be cheaper than trying to do it with fission (which would require breeder reactors, btw.)
No, it’s not and you have no clue what you are talking about.
There is a reason even Germany is still heavily dependent on coal despite investing hundreds of billions into renewables
It simply does not work without dispatchable energy sources.
Yes, it is possible. You need to penalize fossil fuels with CO2 charges, but that's needed to get a nuclear powered economy too.
Your argument about Germany is obviously BS, basically "it didn't happen yet therefore it can't happen". Solutions must apparently leap fully implemented into the world or else they are impossible, by your logic. Do you apply the same logic to nuclear, since no country gets the majority of its energy from nuclear (not even France)?
Storage can be dispatched, you know (and it's not just batteries.)
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