Comment by ben_w
5 days ago
European markets could fund it if they wanted to, and so could several governments; the question, as is always the case at this scale, is what else could they invest in instead?
Looking at capital markets, one common thing in the EU is how often our investments go to businesses outside our market, while the current issue with the US is all the money is flowing to anything with "AI" in the prospectus.
When it comes to "yes, but what else could we spend this money on?", I think EU governments may be interested in rockets to the extent they're dual-use military assets, but not much beyond that. We do, after all, also want to rapidly shift a few hundred gigawatts of power supply (mostly for heating and transport, but also electricity) away from fossil fuels and towards something less prone to global geopolitical nonsense like Hormuz.
> We do, after all, also want to rapidly shift a few hundred gigawatts of power supply (mostly for heating and transport, but also electricity) away from fossil fuels and towards something less prone to global geopolitical nonsense like Hormuz.
If this was the case, electricity wouldn't be taxed much higher than gas and phasing out coal wouldn't be the number one priority. You describe China's energy policy, not Europe's.
Arguments about the effectiveness of the policy are independent of noting what goals the EU (and member states) have.
That said, I'm giving a rank ordering here, that energy policy is more important than rocket policy, not saying what's on top in general, e.g. for most politicians the economy is the core issue because it generates the tax revenue to spend on all the things that make the public want to reelect them, raise taxes on things people currently use too much/too fast you put brakes on whole economy rather than encouraging transition.
Also, EU policy explicitly regards energy security, decarbonisation and affordability as connected objectives: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/strategy/repowereu-phase-out-rus...
Also also, phasing out coal isn't inherently at odds with energy security, the stuff is a limited resource. Nuclear power would be a better example to question here, but again, that energy security is more important than rockets doesn't change the fact that in e.g. Germany nuclear power has a very strong political taboo.