Plans To Capture CO2 From Coal Plants Wasted Federal Dollars, Watchdog Says (theverge.com) 291
The Biden administration wants to shove more money into projects that are supposed to capture CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial facilities before they can escape and heat up the planet. But carbon capture technologies that the Department of Energy has already supported in the name of tackling climate change have mostly fallen flat, according to a recent report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office. From a report: About $1.1 billion has flowed from the Department of Energy to carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects since 2009. Had they panned out, nine coal plants and industrial facilities would have been outfitted with devices that scrub most of the CO2 out of their emissions. Once captured, the CO2 can be sent via pipelines to underground storage in geologic formations. That's not what happened. The DOE doled out $684 million to coal six coal plants, but only one of them actually got built and started operating before shuttering in 2020. Of the three separate industrial facilities that received $438 million, just two got off the ground. Without more accountability, "DOE may risk expending significant taxpayer funds on CCS demonstrations that have little likelihood of success," the GAO says.
Government spends money poorly. I'm shocked (Score:2, Redundant)
/sarcasm
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Yeah, government spending is mostly wasted and not thought-through. News at 11...
Re:Government spends money poorly. I'm shocked (Score:5, Informative)
As pertinent is the fact that carbon capture is little more than vaporware touted by big emitters as a means of whitewashing their contributions to climate change.
Fake-out by fossil fuel companies (Score:5, Insightful)
As pertinent is the fact that carbon capture is little more than vaporware touted by big emitters as a means of whitewashing their contributions to climate change.
Exactly.
For the most part, this is a fake-out by the fossil fuel companies. They want to delay decommissioning of fossil-fuel plants with switching to low- or zero-emission energy sources for as long as possible, so they are putting forth the illusion that coal can be clean, by pretending that they can capture and sequester forever the carbon dioxide emissions, and thus can transition fossil fuel energy over to zero emissions.
They have no intention of actually doing this.
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Up here in Canada, O&G companies actually want a tax credit for using the currently all but non existent technology.
Re:Fake-out by fossil fuel companies (Score:5, Informative)
It would be nice if you even bothered to read the summary
"The DOE doled out $684 million to coal six coal plants, but only one of them actually got built and started operating before shuttering in 2020. Of the three separate industrial facilities that received $438 million, just two got off the ground. Without more accountability, "DOE may risk expending significant taxpayer funds on CCS demonstrations that have little likelihood of success," the GAO says."
The point is that the operators themselves are shutting down their efforts, NOT that anybody else is poo pooing their science.
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Decarbonizing a product that is literally carbon doesn't make sense. It never did, it never will.
"Clean Coal" and "Carbon Capture" simply greenwashing tactics which are used by politicians to pander to the coal and fossil fuel lobby. Even if it is theoretically possible to do this, the money would be better spent building cleaner energy sources. The fact that the money was wasted should surprise absolutely no one -- they themselves know this is not real.
It may, at some point, make sense to look into CO2
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So why doesn't the federal government know better than to shovel money in the direction of vaporware?
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Why? [Re:Government spends money poorly...] (Score:5, Insightful)
So why doesn't the federal government know better than to shovel money in the direction of vaporware?
Because a candidate who was campaigning for the presidency four and a half years ago (and who since became president) promised that he would bring coal mining jobs in West Virginia back.
The opposition candidate said "the way things are going now, they [coal miners] will continue to lose jobs" and wanted "to create new economic opportunities for current coal workers, possibly spurred by clean energy development."
Do you want to be lied to by somebody who says what you want to hear, or hear the uncomfortable things that happen to be true. Coal jobs are not coming back to West Virginia.
But, turns out, most people prefer the lie.
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Because well funded fossil fuel PACS give money to republicans (and Manchin-like dem outliers) to write legislation that gives the fossil fuel industry money to green-wash their pollution
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Please remind us, are these grants or loans or whatever issued by the legislature or by the executive branch? Who was in charge of those branches in 2009 when these programs started?
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As pertinent is the fact that carbon capture is little more than vaporware touted by big emitters as a means of whitewashing their contributions to climate change.
Everything is vapourware until it works. We're only kicking up a stink because it didn't. Science and engineering sucks like that, but that is precisely why you attempt to build pilot plants.
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Actual technological failures are likely the reason that the operators have already shut down carbon capture operations at 5 of 6 coal power plants.
Either that or it was just a farce they have been playing out on the taxpaying public
Re:Government spends money poorly. I'm shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
No one has produced a scalable sequestration technology. The whole carbon capture fiasco has got to the point where some folks have suggested "hey, let's shove the carbon in the ocean", as if the oceans aren't already absorbing excess CO2, and fucking up the pH balance in the process, with significant threats to marine ecospheres as a major consequence.
Carbon capture is bullshit. It doesn't make sense from a thermodynamic point of view, since it's going to require an enormous amount of energy to capture the excess emissions. It's basically the 21st century equivalent of trying to market a perpetual motion machine. If we have sufficient non-emitting energy sources to commit to pumping the excess CO2 somewhere, then we've already solved the energy problem and don't need GHG-emitting fuels at all.
Re:Government spends money poorly. I'm shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
It's basically the 21st century equivalent of trying to market a perpetual motion machine. If we have sufficient non-emitting energy sources to commit to pumping the excess CO2 somewhere, then we've already solved the energy problem and don't need GHG-emitting fuels at all.
Thank you. I have been angrily yelling this at my screen whenever I see shit like this: https://reneweconomy.com.au/ch... [reneweconomy.com.au] *
This is high school science. Hell, it's common sense - you don't get something for nothing, especially when thermodynamics is involved!
And it greenwashes the problem - voters see "billions of dollars" and "clean coal" which reassures them that "something is being done" so they don't need to change their lifestyle. Meanwhile REAL research is starved of funds. The news in this article is welcome and I hope the .au government follows suit. They have a history of blindly doing whatever America tells them to do, so it might even happen.
*Note that even if this project HAD worked (which, to be clear, it didn't) it wouldn't even have come close to sequestering the emissions of the project, let alone the emissions when that natural gas was burned.
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Powered by a geothermal powerplant nearby...
Thermodynamics reigns supreme. You can't just magically absorb CO2, and to do so in a conventional fossil fuel power plant would require a huge amount of the power plant's output. So Iceland is using its significant geothermal generating capacity, but unless you're proposing build wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric or nuclear facilities to power these sequestration systems, it's basically claiming to have invented a perpetual motion machine. And if you have bu
Politicians only care about perception ... (Score:2)
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Which is really the voters fault, since we elect politicians based on their having the "correct" position regardless of whether they actually achieve results.
If the alternative is to vote for a politician that is known for following through on his position, but his position is counter to yours, is it in your best interest to vote for him instead? Someone promising the changes you want and failing is still better to your goal than someone successfully blocking the changes you want.
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Which is really the voters fault, since we elect politicians based on their having the "correct" position regardless of whether they actually achieve results.
If the alternative is to vote for a politician that is known for following through on his position, but his position is counter to yours, is it in your best interest to vote for him instead? Someone promising the changes you want and failing is still better to your goal than someone successfully blocking the changes you want.
And such thinking will be the death of your party. The problem is not simply an external problem, us vs them. It is also an internal problem, your party should be selecting candidates based on their ability to deliver. That will motivate the other party to also do that. All boats rise. Ineffective posturing idiots is a death spiral.
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Which is really the voters fault, since we elect politicians based on their having the "correct" position regardless of whether they actually achieve results.
If the alternative is to vote for a politician that is known for following through on his position, but his position is counter to yours, is it in your best interest to vote for him instead? Someone promising the changes you want and failing is still better to your goal than someone successfully blocking the changes you want.
What you just said is "I like being lied to."
That is the problem with America right there.
Because your perception that the opposition wants to "block the changes you want"... is almost certainly a lie as well. Because the guy telling you what you want to hear will also tell you what he wants you to believe.
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There is a theory that 'power perceived is power achieved,' especially with weak governments. The US overthrow of of Guatemala is a good counter-example: the CIA made a reasonably stable government look liked it was about to collapse--leading to defections and collapse.
Mother nature is not so easily fooled.
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There is a theory that 'power perceived is power achieved,' especially with weak governments. The US overthrow of of Guatemala is a good counter-example: the CIA made a reasonably stable government look liked it was about to collapse--leading to defections and collapse. Mother nature is not so easily fooled.
As you are implying it only works on the small scale, where a large power can prop up an incompetent small power. Unfortunately no one is large enough to prop up the US government nor the environment. Both require competent policies and leadership.
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...To career politicians like Biden "greenwashing" is just as good as "going green", both get you the votes.
I do remind you that the failures being discussed happened before Biden won the presidency.
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Carbon capture is stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
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You don't seem to understand. It doesn't matter what is smart or stupid. You must adhere to the religion, no matter what. Heresy is punishable by death.
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Thankfully the ancient flower power hippies who protested endlessly about nuclear power right into the 90s and deliberately conflated it with nuclear weapons in order to scare Joe Shmoe are slowly going to meet their maker and a slightly saner type of green is emerging.
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Nuclear plants aren't worth it for the price tag alone.
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Technology hasn't exactly taken the piss where nuclear power is concerned. We need to allow it to evolve along with all the other alternatives.
There are a lot of solutions that are becoming available over the next few years, so it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg with all the risks of second gen nuclear power.
Re:Carbon capture is stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
Take the construction schedule and double it, same thing with the budget. You'll have a working plant in 15-20 years. Watts bar was projected to cost $2.5 billion but bloated to $6.1 billion by the end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Carbon capture is stupid. (Score:2)
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We need to bring the next generation of fission reactors online ASAP while we wait another 30 years for Fusion.
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There are nuclear plants under construction in various European countries - it is purposely kept out of the news though.
Hahahaha, no. What is actually under construction is well-known.
Re:Carbon capture is stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Build more nuclear power plants. Be like the French. The French aren't cowards.
So you want to build a government owned and run nuclear power industry? Don't get me wrong, I am more than fine with that, but every nation in the world with an active program building nuclear power plants, and every nation (but one) with a substantial nuclear power grid required a government run industry to do it.
The sole exception, which remains an historical anomaly, is the U.S. during the period or roughly 1965 to 1980, 15 years, which ended 40 years ago, when nearly all of the nuclear power plants not built by the government were started. It was an anomaly that occurred due to (at the time) at 5% annual growth rate in electricity consumption - growth that came to an abrupt halt in 1980, and has been flat ever since. At that time utilities were throwing money at the problem of building up capacity since it was growing so fast. That time is long gone.
In the last 20 years the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry attempted several plant starts but only two units at one facility (Vogtle) are being completed (at double the planned cost) all of the other half dozen projects failed for financial reasons. So it isn't that you can't get a license and government support (which pays for half of the licensing cost and guarantee the money borrowed for the plant, as well as providing insurance), it is that the private U.S. nuclear industry could not build the plants they designed. Westinghouse, the last vendor standing, went bankrupt three years ago.
What is the magic wand that will create a new and competent nuclear power industry?
Be brave and say it: "We need the government to start a government owned and run nuclear power industry like France, South Korea, China, Russia, India and Canada". You're not a coward are you?
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The magic wand would be the US government deciding that electrical power generation is a national security issue and nationalizing nuclear power generation
I would be 100% for letting the US Navy run nuclear power generation in the US
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Nuclear remains necessary regardless of the number of 'other' non carbon dioxide generating power sources because it is not dependent on the sun shining or the win blowing
Renewables plus battery storage are cheaper than coal, let alone nuclear.
I would invite you to reconsider your anti-nuclear positions
No, I'm not a fucking idiot.
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Build more nuclear power plants. Be like the French. The French aren't cowards.
The French, on the other hand, have an unstable and excessively expensive electrical grid. Do you really want that? Or are you just a mindless fanatic that wants his nuclear fetish, no mater what the actual facts are?
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The French have the cheapest electricity rates in the EU.
Nope. Currently their electricity is so expensive that it drives prices up all over the EU.
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"Maybe we should instead focus on sustainable, decentralized and localized energy sources instead..."
Maybe coulda shoulda etc etc.
Give us your ideas then for a green base load producer - something thats reliable 24/7/365 no matter what the conditions. ie not wind or solar obv and hydro is somewhat limited to where there's rivers.
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Re:Carbon capture is stupid. (Score:4, Funny)
So they assume 30 years of imaginary grid-scale batteries, and discovered that wouldn't work, so they also assume generous "demand response". So, sure, if you allow the power companies to turn off your A/C and idle your workplace, you can use all renewable energy.
It reminds me of the joke: What did socialists use before candles? Electricity!
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So they assume 30 years of imaginary grid-scale batteries, and discovered that wouldn't work, so they also assume generous "demand response". So, sure, if you allow the power companies to turn off your A/C and idle your workplace, you can use all renewable energy.
"For the 50 states separated into eight grid regions (WECC, MRO, TRE, RFC, SERC, NPCC, ASCC, HICC), they are a combined 29.8 TWh."
This year about 2.5TWh of batteries have been build into cars. Up 70% from last year [https://cleantechnica.com/2021/12/31/the-top-electric-vehicles-in-world-during-record-sales-month/ ]. This trend will continue. Once the cars get old the batteries will get a second life in storage, since requirements are much lower.
Why are 29.8 TWh unrealistic in 30 years time? is currently
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Give us your ideas then for a green base load producer - something thats reliable 24/7/365 no matter what the conditions. ie not wind or solar obv and hydro is somewhat limited to where there's rivers.
So you discount all renewables and then ask for other ideas? Not like nuclear plants need water for anything...
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Give us your ideas then for a green base load producer - something thats reliable 24/7/365 no matter what the conditions. ie not wind or solar obv and hydro is somewhat limited to where there's rivers.
There is _no_ energy source that is "reliable 24/7/365 no matter what the conditions". In particular nuclear does not qualify. Too hot? No electricity. Too cold? No electricity. Plant feels not like performing? SCRAM without any warning and months of downtime with no electricity.
Seriously. Are you people stupid or just fanatics? Because you sure are unable to see facts.
Re: Carbon capture is stupid. (Score:5, Informative)
In the end, the French will likely settle for a nuclear production of 30 percent in their electricity mix, which actually means increasing their nuclear capacity. The rest will come from renewables, mainly wind and solar.
You can read the reports https://www.rte-france.com/ana... [slashdot.org]>here, they are quite interesting. Of course, they are in French, so you will need to translate them with your favorite tool.
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The French are moving away from nuclear. It became corporate welfare for EDF. Too expensive.
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gimme a break anything that greenpeace publishes is tilted against nuclear
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gimme a break anything that greenpeace publishes is tilted against nuclear
Repeating what I just posted, the report linked is from the International Panel on Fissile Materials [fissilematerials.org]. I can't find any connection to Greenpeace; if you think they have one, give a citation.
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Someone's having a laugh. The first is just a blog post masquerading as a journal article that hasn't been peer reviewed or published in any actual journal. Hiding behind researchgate doesn't give it any more veracity. Out of your "thoroughly sourced" sources, almost all are either to other Greenpeace self-published articles or similar non-scientific sources. You may be right in your assertion about the French nuclear industry, but this isn't the way to get anyone to take you seriously.
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- Material is being stored in shafts not intended for those materials.
Well, humanity at work. Rules never ever stopped everybody.
- Exports for reprocessing to russia
I read somewhere that russia has the full cycle. It is mainly hearsay. But this could be interpreted as another sign it might be true.
- Areva/Framatome construction delays:
Politics. As I understand the story: the constructors were not the designers, and stuff got complicated. I could use this as an example against the free market.
As an analogy I
Reprocessing [Re: Carbon capture is stupid.] (Score:2)
...
Reprocessing has failed to be the silver-bullet solution to nuclear waste management advocates claim it to be [fissilematerials.org] (PDF)
Reprocessing is to the nuclear industry as CO2 capture is to the fossil fuel industry; great in concept, utterly failed in execution.
An interesting report, but it says "an official report commissioned by the French Prime Minister concluded that the choice of reprocessing instead of direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel for the entire French nuclear program would result in an increase in average generation cost of about 5.5 percent."
5.5% is in the noise; I wouldn't call that "utterly failed".
One way or another, spent fuel reprocessing would eventually be necessary if nuclear electrical production is to be a long-term contributor to the
Coal Power vs Industrial (Score:5, Interesting)
The CCS projects applied to industrial plants seems to have been a success. It's only the coal power plants that failed and that seems to be because coal power itself is a dying technology and a bad place to invest, CCS or not.
As long as they stay away from coal power plants there's no reason to think future CCS project are going to be destined for the same failure rate.
This isn't vaporware; it's Manchinware (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have technologies that prevent carbon emissions from burning coal.
They're called solar panels, nuclear reactors, wind turbines, and geothermal plants.
They don't achieve the true goal of coal CCS, though, which is to throw a bone to the buggywhip-manufacturing coal miners and try to get them a place in an economy that has no need for what they are selling.
Re: This isn't vaporware; it's Manchinware (Score:3)
The technology itself may have value even in a future where energy production is entirely decarbonized. There are industrial processes, like biofuel production, that could become net carbon negative with CCS. The materials harvested need to be grown without fossil derived fertilizer and harvested using electric implements, but if you believe the hype around green technology that should be the future we're heading towards. One can imagine a future where something difficult to decarbonize like aviation fuel i
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Not quite. CCS has large applications beyond the coal industry, many of which can't be countered by simply putting a solar panel on a wind turbine and calling it a day.
The only reason they start with coal is that's where the largest potential gain is, they are the biggest concentrated carbon sources, and therefore the best place to attempt to sink.
So you are saying then ... (Score:2)
So, much as the government space program couldn't get space vehicles back in the air, you are saying that we should probably turn to Elon Musk to get carbon capture working.
I can get on board with that :)
Re:So you are saying then ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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paypal.. - FTFY
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Musk won't make CCS work for you because he'll (correctly) point out to you that the best approach is to avoid the emissions in the first place. Not quite sure why you expect Musk to willingly work on solutions generally understood to be inferior.
Carbon capture is going to need to happen. If government can't do it, the private sector will have to.
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Have they been watching the Australien Govt. ads? (Score:2)
Haha. (Score:2)
Shocked. shocked.
As soon as a big bundle of fed money is set out on the porch, all the porch pirates come 'round to grab a handful. Like always.
Maybe pay to fix plants outside the US? (Score:2)
Years ago, there was a report about how much it was going to cost to clean the exhaust from power plants ... and as expected, you can do a half-assed job relatively cheaply, or pay more for a better job.
And I thought 'it might be cheaper to just give away the half-assed technology to other countries'
So how much would it cost to improve all of the power plants in China or India so they're at a similar standard to existing US ones? It might not help the people immediately near the US pollution sources, but m
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I agree. If the goal is global CO2 emissions then we should look at the low hanging fruits. Things like inefficient power plants in other countries or even stopping naturally occurring CO2 emissions like the Darvaza Gas Crater or other runaway C02 emissions that have no benefit.
Another novel solution for carbon capture would be switching back to non-biodegradable and non-recyclable plastics. Even if it ends up in a landfill, it locks away a large amount of carbon for thousands of years. If you create th
We will build more nuclear power plants. (Score:3, Insightful)
At some point all these failures to produce energy with low costs and low CO2 emissions will bring people around to nuclear fission. What's likely to happen is that CO2 emissions won't factor in to the decision to look at nuclear power. People will want energy sources that are safe, reliable, take minimal resources, gives high energy return on energy invested, and is domestically sourced.
We will build more nuclear fission power plants because given that the alternatives are global warming or seeing the lights go out nuclear power is the least bad option.
That's not saying we will use nuclear power to the exclusion of all other energy sources. Onshore wind, hydro, and geothermal are low cost and low CO2 options where the climate and geography are favorable. Because we need hydrocarbon fuels for transportation we will need a means to synthesize hydrocarbons to avoid the need for drilling for petroleum. Because the most efficient processes on producing hydrocarbons require high temperature heat sources that makes nuclear power a necessary part of our future energy supply. Because the lowest cost options for storing energy is thermal energy storage that also makes nuclear fission ideal. It's possible pumped hydro will be lower cost than thermal energy storage but that only happens in times and places where the geography and climate allows for it. We will likely see some use of batteries for energy storage but given the demand for batteries in portable electronics, electric vehicles, and possibly other applications, we can't expect batteries to remain competitively priced for all of our grid scale energy storage.
Oh, I almost forgot, "Nobody wants nukes!" Okay then, I guess it's settled, we won't build more nuclear power plants. What's going to keep happening is people going around and around looking for ways to keep CO2 emissions low, keep energy costs low, and keep the lights on. People will eventually have to choose the least bad option, global warming, freezing to death in the dark, or nuclear fission power. Until we can come up with some additional option those will be our choices. That means we build more nuclear power plants as that is the least bad option.
Let's run down some of the most common objections to nuclear power...
Nuclear power costs too much. => Irrelevant. On a cold dark windless night there's only the option to pay what it takes for nuclear power or freeze to death.
Nuclear power produces radioactive waste. => Irrelevant. It's nuclear power or freezing to death. We will have to solve global warming some other way or resolve the far more trivial issue of radioactive waste disposal.
Nuclear power is not safe. => It's safer than global warming or freezing to death in the dark.
Nuclear power is a weapons proliferation risk. => We will have to try to solve global warming without nuclear power, freeze to death, or resolve the far more trivial issue of people trying to weaponize nuclear power.
We need a reliable supply of nuclear fission fuel. => There's no real shortage of uranium, and even if uranium was difficult to find we know how to use the far more abundant thorium as fuel.
Then candidate Joe Biden made growth in the nuclear power industry part of his campaign promises before being elected as POTUS. The Democrat party platform includes nuclear fission as part of their "all the above" energy policy. If we have have exhausted all other options then we need to pick one, global warming, freezing to death in the dark, or nuclear fission. Nobody want nuclear power, but it is what we are going to get. It's the least bad option.
Re:We will build more nuclear power plants. (Score:5, Interesting)
There has never yet been a nuclear plant built that delivered electricity at the promised rate. And although accidents are rare, no insurance company will insure a nuclear plant unless there's a clause in the contract leaving taxpayers on the hook for 90% or more of the cleanup cost if anything goes wrong.
Fission is for fools.
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1) Not delivering on promised rate is irrelevant. That's a really stupid metric. It entirely depends not on the technology, but on the sales tactics used to convince people to build. The question is, is it profitable. Nukes are profitable, more so than any existing fossil fuel.
2) Every single fission plant built for US government purposes - i.e. nuke ships (submarines, careriers), and nuke satelites, has been a huge success.
3) The idea that because insurance companies will not insure, that therefore som
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Those military nuclear reactors are a totally different animal; for example they run on HEU. More importantly, they were never built to provide cheap electricity and they have never been judged by their economic efficiency -- at least not by us.
Cost sensitive countries don't build nuclear navies. In fact, neither have we; our aircraft carriers are nuclear, but we gave up on nuclear guided missile cruisers as too expensive to build and run, even though those cruisers are an integral part of a carrier strik
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Fission is for fools.
Indeed. Unfortunately, there are a lot of fools around.
Re:We will build more nuclear power plants. (Score:4, Insightful)
There has never yet been a nuclear plant built that delivered electricity at the promised rate.
Then we should keep trying until we learn how to build them on schedule and under budget.
We are going to build more nuclear power plants. We will do so because we have run out of options. All your arguments against nuclear power mean nothing when the alternatives are freezing to death in the dark or global warming. Nuclear power is far from ideal, it's merely the least bad option we have right now.
Trying again and again in the presence of solid evidence that something does not work is a sure sign of insanity. Some tech cannot be made to work well. And no, we are not doing anything about global warming by trying to build more nukes. That actually makes global warming worse, because they will be commissioned far too late, in too low numbers, will be too unreliable (look at France, for example) and they will take money and resources away from far more effective renewables.
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You are telling me we solved global warming. I agree. We just disagree on how we got there.
Re:We will build more nuclear power plants. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then we should keep trying until we learn how to build them on schedule and under budget.
Costs are costs. How do you propose to make materials cheaper and faster? The fact that plants can't even stay in business without government subsidies says it all.
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Warning! You've been noted attempting to use logic in an issue that must only be argued on a shallow emotional level by law. Any more infractions will result in you being banned from all safe spaces!
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Warning! You've been noted attempting to use logic in an issue that must only be argued on a shallow emotional level by law. Any more infractions will result in you being banned from all safe spaces!
That's fine. I've already been banned from all safe spaces, they can't ban me twice.
We will deregulate safe renewables (Score:2)
Nuclear is absolutely part of the mix, but I'd argue it should be focussed on high energy consuming manufacturing processes.
Renewables can easily provide power for most homes, if there is significant deregulation - and sure, that means more lax planning permissions.
It can mean more decentralised grids, where communities can get together to finance a wind turbine or a medium sized solar plant, without having to go through a ton of red tape.
A lifestyle change is also desperately required. Working from home, f
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A lifestyle change is also desperately required.
No, a lifestyle change is not required.
The idea of needing to lower our standard of living to lower CO2 emissions is just self flagellation. Nuclear power is safer than fossil fuels, has a higher EROEI, is reliable, abundant, has lower CO2 emissions than wind or solar, and costs less. That's as the technology stands today. Future developments will only make nuclear power better.
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A lifestyle change is also desperately required.
No, a lifestyle change is not required.
The idea of needing to lower our standard of living to lower CO2 emissions is just self flagellation. Nuclear power is safer than fossil fuels, has a higher EROEI, is reliable, abundant, has lower CO2 emissions than wind or solar, and costs less. That's as the technology stands today. Future developments will only make nuclear power better.
Right.
So those who use ten times more resources than others, need not examine their consciences?
Fair enough - law of the jungle, luck of birth - all good.
There is, unfortunately, other aspects of modern life besides Climate Change, that are destroying our habitat.
A consumer culture that is virtually uncontrollable - the continuous cycle of "buying more shit" to try and fill a void.
I'm just as guilty as the next person - and I do consider it guilt - just waste. I have 8 computers, ffs.
I have a cupboard full
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Indeed. I life in a minimum energy house. Heating cost is exceptionally low. Building cost is not that much higher (I have seen the calculations, because here they need to justify the rent from the cost of construction, so I have all the numbers.) and nicely pays off in a decade or so. Of course the building has a much longer life expectancy.
Another thing (not yet implemented) is that with something like this and a smart grid, you can shift the more energy consuming things to times when there is plenty. The
Biden: "whether it is true or not" (Score:2)
""I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban," Biden told Ghani during the 14-minute phone call. " And there’s a need, whether it is true or not,
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That's literally all politics is. Every politician that's ever existed lives in a partial fantasy world where they project what they want reality to be and hope that somehow whatever they are projecting will be real.
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That's literally all politics is. Every politician that's ever existed lives in a partial fantasy world where they project what they want reality to be and hope that somehow whatever they are projecting will be real.
Only to the extent that voters allow. We used to be better about noting whether politicians succeeded or not in achieving their goals. All talk and no results used to end careers.
Re: Biden: "whether it is true or not" (Score:2)
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So, a propaganda message was asked for. In the end reality took over.
As it did for various green initiative from the Obama/Biden era. And that era had smarter people than the Biden/Harris era.
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You apparently do not realize that you cannot honestly attribute program failures in the period 2009-2020 to the Biden Administration that took office in 2021.
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You apparently do not realize that you cannot honestly attribute program failures in the period 2009-2020 to the Biden Administration that took office in 2021.
No such attribution is being made. The failure of the Afghan government is not the issue here. It is that Biden cared about the perception of events, not the truth. With such thinking greenwashing is a valid goal, manufacturing the perception of progress on the environment being what is important, not actual progress on the environment.
Fixed it. (Score:2)
"Without more accountability, the Federal Government will spend us all into a hole and where will our Carbon Capture be accounted for?" - FTFY
Wasted? (Score:2)
Trying and failing isn't (necessarily) wasting money; how one tries (or doesn't try) may be the issue here. From TFA:
The GAO report also recommends that the DOE do a better job of choosing which projects to fund and that the DOE should establish more consistent “scopes, schedules, and budgets” for projects.
It's not the "plans" (per se) it's how they were implemented and evaluated -- or *not* in these cases.
Greenwashing was the point in the first place. (Score:2)
Fracking has done more to displace coal than anything else, but the coal industry owns the government so expecting government to make progress is mentally retarded.
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The federal government is a money-burning machine. I think if we look at it from the amount of Hot Air and CO2 produced just by congress alone we could reduce our emissions by an additional 90%
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The fact that you have "progressives" marking this down to "Troll" is because there are those who don't give a shit about how hard you work as long as you give most of it to the "greater good."
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Personally I have no issue paying taxes for things I get use of Roads, Police, Fire, Keeping the streetlights on
All of those (even roads if you are talking about local roads) are paid for almost entirely with state or local taxes. Interestingly, those are also the first ones that state politicians threaten to cut first when they have a budget shortfall. As you aptly point out, the stuff that citizens want to spend money on and politicians want to spend money on are sadly not usually aligned. Maybe a solution would be to allow taxpayers to direct their tax revenue to the department they think needs it most. So e
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And down here in the actual world, that might work if we had 1000 years to address the problem. We do not. We are already past the point were urgent measures are needed.