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Alexander had a disease that Anatole France called, “The Long Desire.” It’s where you simply have to see what’s on the other side of that mountain. More than being one of history’s greast conquerors, Alexander, in my opinion, was the first great explorer whose goal was to reach the Great Eastern Sea, the Pacific Ocean to you and me.He needed an army to clear the path for his eastern voyage and when his army finally said “enough!” he returned back to Babylon where, if he hadn’t died of fever, (or poison, perhaps? Hmmm….But for another answer,) I believe he would have tried to raise another army using more Macedonians, some from home, some from his old army paid huge re-up bonuses, Persian forces and perhaps even paid Bactrian mounted archers.He was simply never going to stop, even if it killed him…and his army…and anyone foolish enough be living innocently in their own country who stood in his way. Who can say how many died in his personal quest? Hundreds of thousands for sure. Alexander was a military genius, but as a person he was probably a monster. But, hey, you can’t conquer the known world without “breaking a few eggs!”There was no “quit while he was ahead,” because the “while he was ahead” would have been him standing on the beach at the Great Eastern Sea. And even then he would have basked in the glory and excitement of it for exactly 8 seconds and then turned to his men and said, “I wonder what’s across this big ocean? OK, Boys, start making boats!”Napoleon’s first battles were to fend off the other European countries efforts to push back the scary (to their kings and nobles,) reforms and gains of the Revolution.But he didn’t stop there after defeating those allied armies; he had a dream of a unified Europe, from Moscow to Barcelona, all following the tenets of personal liberty the Revolution promised.But he blew it in his poor strategic thinking (Egypt, no navy to combat the Brit’s, Russia, Spain, fighting the same allied armies again and again) and, when he declared himself emperor, he lost friends across the continent, and betrayed the Revolution himself. (Beethoven dedicated his incredible 3rd symphony, “Eroica,” to Napoleon in praise of his efforts to defend the Revolution, but hearing that Napoleon had just declared himself emperor, he took his pen and crossed out his name with such violence it ripped the paper.)“Hey, Boys, I’m back! Who wants to head north with me to a little place I know called ‘Waterloo?’ Wikipedia says that 41,000 of you will get killed or maimed and it won’t accomplish anything! But It’ll be FUN! C’mon, I’ll lead the way…!”By then he had made too many enemies and there was no place to “quit while was ahead” to quit too. He was put into exile, but he wasn’t the kind to lay down and play dead, and, of course, returned. And he rode the whirlwind of Waterloo, and tens of thousand of men died terribly for his ambitions. A total of 5,000,000 died in his wars, mostly from France. That’s a lot of people in the 18th-19th century. He was an interesting man with a gift of tactical insight. Personally he was a monster.Hitler was a demagogue, a snake-oil salesman, plain and simple, who told the German people just what they wanted to hear. He told them what and who they hated and feared: internally, the Jews. People who didn’t belong, who bred like rats, who were foreigners, who with every job they took were stealing a job from you, people who he would legislate against and get rid of.Externally he told them who they hated and feared: the Communists, godless men who wanted to spread terror, who were waiting to attack and destroy them from outside.Half of Germany was sickened by him, the other almost worshipped him. They would attend huge rallies and chant his slogans for hours. They believed that he “spoke for them”, finally, and would swear on their graves he was sincere. That oath too often came true from 1939–1945.He promised a huge construction project for the nation, the Reichsautobahn. He promised huge budget increases to the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. He promised the German people that the other nations wouldn’t push Germany around anymore.He attacked the media who reported that he was dangerous. He called them “enemies of the people,” and had a special term for them that his worshippers chanted: “Lügenpresse”, “lying Press”. “Critics of Adolf Hitler's regime were frequently referred to as members of the “Lügenpresse apparatus.””-Wiki. Hitler passed legislature that silenced the vast majority of German newspapers and the Nazis took them over.He needed resources, especially oil to fuel his larger army and construction projects. Germany had come too late to the game of colonization, and most of the Asian, African, South and Central American countries worth a damn had been taken. But one target remained, almost under his guns, and every move he first made was to the east, towards the Soviet Union.Hitler coveted the Soviet’s Ukrainian grain fields and hydro-electric dams, the oil reserves of the Caucasus Mountains, the “lebensraum”, “Living/elbow room.” He wanted the Ukraine and much of Russia to be Germany’s “colony”, like Britain’s India, its “Jewel in the Crown.”In the summer of 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, having no real idea what he was getting into, the size and scope and primitiveness of the land itself, the dust, the heat, the cold, the snow, the iron will of the people and their ability to self-sacrifice all confounded him.“Know (not) your enemy and know (not) yourself and in a hundred battles you will never be (victorious) defeated.”-Sun TzuHe grabbed a “tiger by the tail”, and the Americans soon grabbed HIM by the tail. Hitler couldn’t shake the Americans and British off his tail and he could not let go of the Soviets, and he and Germany and the world itself were dragged all the way to Berlin and armageddon. 60,000,000 dead worth. He was a textbook demagogue, he had no redeeming qualities except a fierce ambition, a talent for coercion and an almost animalistic instinct for survival. He was a monster.There was no “quit while he was ahead”. His “Head” was, since Poland, 1939, by his own doing, stuck in the “tiger’s mouth”.Choose so carefully the character of the men you follow. Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.

Yes, I think it is plausible that it can pay for itself. There are some ways in which it clearly does save a lot, and the renewables are bound to have a big upfront cost that then is paid back over the 15 years of the project. He identifies various sectors where it will save money and other sectors where it will generate revenue. He has this summary of how it pays for itself:As for the details then it needs economists to check it. If he becomes president, any of these plans of course would have to go through a stage of rigorous examination and pass Congressional approval before it became policy and law.It is easy to see that renewable power requires larger investment upfront for the same amount of power as a coal fired powerstation but it pays for itself back more easily because there is no need to buy any fuel. Once it is built all you have are the maintenance and replacement. This has been the main barrier to adoptation, in places like India especially where local people do not have easy access to capital and loans for such projects even if they would pay back in the middle term.He says the renewables will collect revenues from 2023 to 2035 and then after that the electricity will be virtually free apart from operations and maintenance costs.Since renewables are already profitable in the US there seems to be nothing wrong with this aspect of the plan. If you invest this much in renewables it is a sure bet that it will generate a steady stream of revenue from then on.Then he says that there will be a saving in the use of military to maintain the US global oil dependence. There again it seems reasonable. The US military spends at least $81 billion a year protecting oil supplies. It could easily be more like $216 billion a year by a more extensive analysis. See: The Military Cost of Defending Global Oil Supplies - Securing America's FutureOver 15 years that saves $1.2 trillion to $3.2 trillion depending on whether you go to the lower or higher estimate.The US defence is very expensive, largest in the world, estimated budget from 2019 to 2020 of $989 billion. It’s not too surprising that possibly a tenth of that or more, maybe even more than a fifth is used to protect global oil supplies.Why Military Spending Is More Than You Think It IsAs for fossil fuel subsidies, again we have huge subsidies. Worldwide $370 billion is spent in support of fossil fuels, compared to $100 billlion for renewables. Swapping those fossil fuel subsidies to support renewables would help kickstart the renewables revolution.A 2018 report recommends that“Following subsidy reforms, governments can increase taxes on fossil fuels to continue to generate fiscal resources for clean energy while simultaneously reducing carbon dioxide emissions.”Fossil Fuel to Clean Energy Subsidy Swaps: How to pay for an energy revolutionThis is what Bernie Sanders is proposing to do. It’s not that revolutionary. The report looks into four countries that have already done it, India, Indonesia, Zambia and MoroccoFor example, when Indonesia reformed gasoline and diesel subsidies in 2015, the fiscal savings were estimated to be USD 15.6 billion, over 10 per cent of state expenditure. These savings were reallocated to fund a wide range of economic development and infrastructure investments Fossil Fuel to Clean Energy Subsidy Swaps:How to pay for an energy revolutionThat’s a saving of $300 billion over 15 years.If you take account of the hidden costs of fossil fuels, like global warming, pollution effects on health etc, the costs are far higher, worldwide an estimated $5.2 trillion a year according to the International Monetary Fund.Fossil fuels are underpriced by a whopping $5.2 trillionAs for the amount the US spends, then from 2015–6 the US federal government provided subsidies of $14.7 billion a year to the fossil fuel industry, and individual states provided $5.8 billion for a total of over $20 billion a year direct payment. See report from Oil Change InternationalHe uses a figure of “almost $15 billion” in the report.He will also massively raise taxes and enforce penalties for polluting.Then in addition to that he has:Income tax revenue from the 20 million new jobs.Reduced need for state and federal safety net spending because of the new jobs.Making wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.His report doesn’t seem to have a detailed break down of how it would be funded. It is for economists to check it out and make sure all the numbers add up, but he says experts have checked the costing and it’s not surprising to me that he could pay for a multi-trillion dollar program over 15 years by such methods.He will also be investing $200 billion in the Green Climate Fund for “equitable transfer of renewable technologies, climate adaptation, and assistance in adopting sustainable energies”.We all benefit from a world where third world countries have lower CO2 emissions, greater resilience, no climate refugees, and are more self sufficient in power and less poverty. A richer, more secure third world will benefit everyone.He also says inaction will lead to a loss of $34.5 trillion in economic activity by the end of the century and he says that his plan can save $2.9 trillion over 10 years, $21 trillion over the next 30 years and $70.4 trillion over 80 years.Of course none of this is any good if it doesn’t work.However much of it is a sure investment, especially renewables. We know for sure that it’s possible to build renewable powers stations that are cost competitive with coal.It doesn't have a detailed costing in the released statement as far as I can see.COST OF RENEWABLES FALLING RAPIDLYThe cost of renewables is falling rapidly. This is for the UK, 50 - 60 degrees North and even here the cost of solar -PV power generation has reached the same levels as the most efficient fossil fuels and is predicted to fall below them in the next few years. Onshore wind is also equal or below the best fossil fuels.The price drop for solar is especially remarkable, a drop from 2012 to 2022 from 27 to 4 cents per kilowatt hours.Before 2015, only four years ago, solar power couldn't compete even with the most expensive of fossil fuels without government subsidies.Over most of the US then renewable power stations are already competitive with fossil fuels on cost.I won’t discuss the politics of all this. In the UK then Bernie Sanders’ politics would seem centrist not left wing at all. Many of the things he propose that seem so radical to Americans are things we have here already - such as our National Health Service here in the UK where I live.However, so many journalists are getting the science all wrong and it’s the science that is making / will make it possible, so I want to focus on that most of all.SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGESElectric vehicles and aviation are the biggest challenge. His proposal is an Apollo Moonshot type investment, not to get to the Moon but to transition to renewables. The cost of batteries for instance has come down hugely in just the last decade, at a rate of a remarkable nearly tenfold drop per decade.A Behind the Scenes Take on Lithium-ion Battery Prices | BloombergNEFThis is a projection through to 2030 from those figures by BloombergNEF based on its ninth battery survey in 2018:A Behind the Scenes Take on Lithium-ion Battery Prices | BloombergNEFIt’s that price reduction that is starting to make electric cars affordable and he is proposing a major public finance initiative to push it even lower even faster.This is just through foreseeable near future tweaks in existing lithium ion battery technology and economies of scale, not taking account of any possible major breakthroughs.Bernie Sanders says he will:"invest in public research to drastically reduce the cost of energy storage and electric vehicles, and make our plastics more sustainable through advanced chemistry".With this background then it is clear that massive investment would yield results.The nay sayer are saying we can’t transition to 100% electric vehicles because we don’t have the charging points yet and don’t have the batteries for long trips without recharging. Well, build a charging network then!He will invest in an open access national elecrical vehicle charging infrastructure.The main problem with electric cars is not so much the range, as the cost that goes along with achieving that range. Electric car batteries could drop in cost to below $100 per kwh by 2020. That would be a game changer as that’s the point at which people would start to switch to electric vehicles just on the basis of cost alone, that they cost less than petrol based cars.Many industry analysts believe a cost of $100 per kwh is the point where battery-electric cars become cost competitive with internal combustion.Electric-car batteries: $100 per kwh before 2020, $80 soon after?If we are to have all electric vehicles by 2030 it is not enough to make sure all cars sold are electric by then, because the typical lifetime of a car is 15 years. Even if all cars sold were electric in 2021 it wouldn’t be until the mid 2040s that most cars on the road would start to be electric.So, he is going to provide grants to purchase new ones, and a trade in program for low to moderate income families and small lbusinesses to trade in a old cars for an American-made electric vehicle.For shipper trucks then the trade in program will cover everyone including the largest fleets.In a survey by Yale university, the percentage support for funding more research into renewable energy sources such as solar and power is 86% of registered voters as: 96% of Democrats, 75% of Independents, and 77% of Republicans.Politics & Global Warming, April 2019Whether they will go for such a major investment program as this, at lesat there is a stomach for more investing than at present.We are getting remarkable advances in technology every year. Both cost and power density. Until recently the idea of an electrically powered plane was inconceivable, it would weigh too much to take off.This is Eviation’s first all elecric aircraft for shorthaul flights of 9 passengers up to 1000 km which they expect to release for commercial use in a few years. He expects a cost per passenger / mile similar to a train.Take a seat in the world's first all-electric planeEvision sees a future where we have numerous small planes flying between the many small local airfields, carrying passengers on short haul flights.Norway is likely to be an early adopter of electric planes as it has lots of flights over short distances as you can imagine. There is a company there that is already working on electric planes. This is a small two seater plane that took off and flew around Oslo airport.It works only for small planes at present but those ones with maybe half a dozen passengers are often used in remote rural places. They hope to start commercial flights by 2025 Norway's plan for a fleet of electric planesWe probably have to use carbon offsetting for long haul flights, or e-fuel (like Audi’s e-gas for cars). But short haul flights can be all electric within a few years.We can also increase high speed trains, and provide more efficient public transport, and that’s part of Bernie Sanders’ plan“High speed rail and public transit services reliable, affordable and accessible to everyone including seniors, those with disabilities and rural communities.”MAJOR BREAKTHROUGHS MAY ALSO BE ON THE HORIZONIn the intro I talked about where we are headed at present with improvements on existing technology mainly lithium ion batteries. But it’s possible we get some major breakthrough too.These only exist in the labs or small scale pilots at present, but that is how most breakthroughs start. There are many battery technologies that exist in labs but not yet scaled up to commercial use. Including ways to improve the lithium ion batteries even further, some of them described here:How we get to the next big battery breakthroughThen there is the possibility of something really major coming. It would be a huge difference if we can crack the “lithium air” battery as that would have storage capacity similar to gasoline in theory.“There’s a lot of polarized views about if lithium-oxygen could be promising, but I always remember that scientists are allowed to dream,”Y. Shirley Meng, professor at University of California, San DiegoThe Future of Batteries: From Li-oxygen to Sodium-ionThe theoretical specific energy of Li-air batteries is calculated as 5,200 Wh/kg, or equivalently, 18.7 MJ/kg including oxygen. Since oxygen is constantly drawn from air, specific energy is often quoted excluding oxygen content.This theoretical specific energy is calculated to be 11,140 Wh/kg, or 40.1MJ/kg which is close enough to that of gasoline, around 46MJ/kgLithium-Air Batteries: An OverviewBy way of example, this is one recent research breakthrough in Lithium air batteries from 2018By storing O2 as lithium oxide (Li2O) instead of lithium peroxide (Li2O2), the battery not only maintained excellent charging characteristics, it achieved the maximum four-electron transfer in the system, thereby increasing the theoretical energy storage by 50 per cent.“By swapping out the electrolyte and the electrode host and raising the temperature, we show the system performs remarkably well,” said Nazar, who is also a University Research Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Waterloo.Chemists make breakthrough on road to creating a rechargeable lithium-oxygen battery | Waterloo NewsIt potentially can store ten times as much as lithium ion. This is a good overview of it:It’s potentially 15 years away from commercialization. But perhaps that 15 years can be speeded up with rapid investment?Scientists deliver a longer-lasting lithium-oxygen batteryThere are many other technologies in the labs that we can work on. There are the hydrogen fuel cells. Then there are the “flow batteries” which are a kind of hybrid between the two. The idea is that you go to a refilling station to swap out the spent electrolyte of your battery for new electrolyte. The energy is stored as the electrolyte instead of in the terminals.A flow battery is a type of rechargeable battery where rechargeability is provided by two chemical components dissolved in liquids contained within the system and most commonly separated by a membrane. This technology is akin to both a fuel cell and a battery - where liquid energy sources are tapped to create electricity and are able to be recharged within the same system.One of the biggest advantages of flow batteries is that they can be almost instantly recharged by replacing the electrolyte liquid, while simultaneously recovering the spent material for re-energization.… The fundamental difference between conventional batteries and flow cells is that energy is stored as the electrode material in conventional batteries but as the electrolyte in flow cells.Flow Batteries | Energy Storage AssociationPotentially flow batteries could have a huge range. This is one that produces both electricity and hydrogen from the same battery. It’s at an early stage being tested at Purdue university to power golf carts, but they think they will be able to achieve a range of 3,000-3,600 miles (about 4,800-5,800 km)New "refillable" battery tech could allow electric cars over 5000km range | The DrivenThere are so many ideas out there, and some of them may be the next big breakthrough.WHAT WOULD HE SPEND IT ONHe has many plans but they include:$30 billion "StorageShot" initiative to commercialize technologies that can store energy for 24 hours to multiple days at capital cost less than $1,000 per kw hour$100 billion to reduce the cost of a new electric car to $18,000. $500 billion into research to decarbonize industry$500 billion to decarbonize industry$150 billion to decarbonize aviationHe also plans to spend a lot on public transport$607 billion regional high-speed rail system$300 billion public transport systemAlso on replacing petrol by electric vehicles$216 billion replace all long haul deisel tractor trailer trucks with fast charging long-range trucks$407 billion to replace all school and transit buses with electric buses$85.6 billion national electrical vehicle infrastructure network.$681 billion vehicle trade in scheme for low to moderate income families and small businesses.$2.09 trillion to help low to moderate income families buy electric vehicles.Many other things, for instance to support agriculture including small farmers.KENNEDY’S SPEECHHere is Kennedy’s speech about going to the Moon:Remember when Kennedy made his Moonshot speech the Saturn V did not exist, not only that, we did not know how to build one of these:The nay sayers are like people responding to Kennedy's speech saying"We can't go to the Moon because we do not have rockets anything like powerful enough to do it, and don’t even know how to build such a rocket".Here is an example of one of those many nay sayers who have weighed in on Bernie Sanders’ plan in the press:Yes, we could consider Sanders’ plan. But the we would live in darkness. Most of us would never travel. We would be hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Most of us would not have access to electronics. Our landscapes would be filled with solar panels and windmills that kill birds. Our rivers would all be dammed. And many of us would starve.Bernie Sanders’ Green Energy Dystopian FantasyThat is very ill informed. Passive homes are designed to keep us warm in winter and cold in summer with minimal power use - they will not make us cold in winter or too hot in summer - that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the idea.Our power grids can be balanced with peaking power from hydro, also with long distance HVDC cables.For instance there’s a UHVDC line between Norway and the UK under construction that will permit load balancing between the UK and Norway.Project SheetThe dots show new storage capacity, e.g. pumped hydro - planned, proposed, under consideration, under construction etc.This is a 2016 paper about the value of HVDC transmission for reducing US CO2 emissions.Future cost-competitive electricity systems and their impact on US CO2 emissionsThe US has one very long HVDC line ready to go from windy Oklahoma through Arkansas to Tennessee and elsewhere in the South East but it is on hold because of opposition in Arkansas and not enough demand yet. The president of the company, Skelly, said:“I think that over time, the south-east utilities will want more renewables; they’re just not there yet."Too many hurdles could kill off US's first HVDC line in 20 yearsThat would be an obvious first project to prioritize.YES 100% RENEWABLES IS POSSIBLEMany articles say that renewables can never produce more that x% of energy when there are already countries producing close to 100% power from renewables. They make their arguments by just not mentioning these countries.The best answer I think is the energy map which shows many districts and some entire countries in the world that are already 100% or mainly renewable for electricity - which according to many of these pages should be impossible. - all the areas dark green on this map:Live CO2 emissions of electricity consumptionTry searching the page for Iceland, or Costa Rica, for instance.Those who say 100% renewables is impossible don't mention them as it would spoil the story. Or UK's projection of 100% electricity generation by renewables by 2025 or California currently about 50% and aiming to be 100% carbon zero electricity by 2045. Or Scotland committed to carbon zero by 2045 for the whole economy or UK’s commitment to carbon zero by 2050 all with a fully worked out study to show it is possible.If a story like this doesn't mention these inconvenient facts something is fishy about it. And they give the same old tired arguments.You sometimes see arguments like this for use of hydro to smooth out the fluctuations for peaking powerThe best option is to use electricity to pump water up into dams, then generate with this later. This works well, but the capacity is very limited. World hydro generating capacity is about 7 – 10% of electricity demand, so there would often be times when it could not come anywhere near topping up supply.Duh. The idea isn't to have hydro power for the whole country, it's to have hydro resevoirs in pairs as a kind of "battery" you pump the water up to the higher reservoir to store power, let it flow back to the lower one to return it and repeat over and over whenever there is a surplus. It doesn't actually generate any power, actually loses 13% with each round trip but it does the peak balancing.There are many options but hydro is the most cost effective when available.Hydroelectric power is cost effective and does not suffer from intermittency, but have been linked to impacting on the ecosystems in which they are installed and affecting settlements and livelihoods.The siting is important but the two reservoir system does not need to involve damming any rivers. If you already have a hydro project then it makes sense to used it as a “battery” as pumped hydro which can more than double the effective output of the project. But if you don’t, you probably won’t be damming any rivers.More on this under “Peaking power” below.Other nay sayers will say that you can never have enough renewables because they take up so much more land area. How much agricultural land do solar panels on roofs take up? California could generate 75% of its electricity through solar power from roofs alone.The potential of rooftop solar energy: 40% of total U.S. electricity generation is possiblePaper here.Or on brownfield sites, like disused airports and disused opencast coal mines? Or covered car parks and roads? Or floating solar panels on canals, hydro projects and at sea? We now have a few off shore solar projects, and this is a growing trend.You can mix solar panels with conventional agriculture too, here are some sheep mixing happily enough with solar panels in Belgium:Solar panels with sheepDeserts are amongst the most likely places for large future solar photovoltaic for power plants, like the vast new ones in China. There are many areas of desert that are not high conservation value.Indeed, in semi-arid regions the solar panels can actually be a benefit to agriculture. The grass grows better in partial shade in these regions, helping to increase the grass available for the livestock .Solar panels increase grasses for sheep and cows by 90% (of course many of the best places for solar panels are sunny semi-arid regions).Then wind turbines take up almost no land, mixing with agriculture with just a few posts here and there for tractors to drive around. Offshore wind takes up none at all.Hydro projects are often in deserts, as many rivers flow through deserts, and then the water pooling behind the dam takes up no agricultural land either - indeed that’s precisely the reason that deserts are popular sites for hydro power.Yes the US has plenty of space to run it on 100% renewables.Do renewables for power generation take up more land area than fossil fuels? Well - not really!COMPARISON OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL WITH THE UK AND GERMANYHis aim is zero emissions by 2050, as for the 1.5 C Paris goal. This is the same end goal as, say, the UK in its recent commitment to zero emissions by 2050, or California, which has committed to a similar goal - but the way he plans to do it is especially ambitious with a lot of early upfront payments by the government itself, borrowing on the future paybacks from the power plants it builds.You don’t have to do it this way. The UK and California plan to do it through a gradual transition with more and more renewables installed as time goes on, by encouraging commercial power plants.It is possible to encourage renewables too soon. The nay sayers often bring up comparisons with Germany. But Germany perhaps adopted renewables too soon too fast. They installed renewables with use of subsidies before it was commercially viable. This gave them early experience of the technology but a legacy of many expensive solar power panels and wind trubines to pay off.China and India are using the opposite approach of Bernie Sanders. They built lots of coal fired power plants. They needed them to do the fast industrialization - they need a way to keep the lights on and power running for their industry. But these have low start up costs and high on going costs. As renewables become more cost effective the coal plants can run at less and less capacity and then be retired early. China is already building vast solar panel based power plants and will build more and more, and their peak phase of building will be in the 2020s with lower cost renewables than today. Same also with India.New study does NOT conclude that we have too many fossil fuel power plants and vehicles to stay within 1.5°CBernie Sanders says to do a massive investment in solar, and a government investment starting right now. Which then is paid back through revenue in 2023 to 2035.You can’t really say that any of these strategies is intrinsically best. It’s a trade off. When is the best time to build your solar plants? To do it now means faster adoption of the renewable technologies, and they are already cost efective compared to solar.So which is best?RENEWABLES DO NOT KILL BIRDSSolar panels do not kill birds. The big mirrors for solar concentration plants did kill them when in standby but this has been largely fixed. It is old technology now anyway - solar photovoltaic is more cost effective for new plants than those concentrating mirrors and have no risks at all for birds.As for wind turbines (not “windmills”) that kill birds, that is about early power stations that were built before the potential problems for wildlife were well understood.If you want to protect birds, and have a pet cat, you can make a huge difference by putting a cat safe collar with bells on it on your cat to alert birds if it tries to catch them.Or you can use a brightly coloured collar, similar in effectThis is the study they refer toBirds be safe: Can a novel cat collar reduce avian mortality by domestic cats (Felis catus)?Also put stickers on your windows to stop them colliding into them, and place bird feeders well away from them. For more on this:Wind farms and solar farms need to be sited carefully to protect wild birds, bats and insects - but biggest risk by far is … the domestic cat! Responsible for 63 extinctions, wind farms for 0 extinctionsMeanwhile solar photoelectric panels are harmless to birds. They don’t fly into them and can’t be harmed by them.One obvious place to invest in is zero carbon emission concrete.ZERO EMISSION CONCRETECO2 is emitted in the process of making cement because it is done by converting calcium carbonate to calcium oxide, driving off CO2, and also because it requires use of energy which is usually fossil fuel based.Cement - Wikipedia (Cement - Wikipedia)The COSIA Carbon XPRIZE Challenge (Carbon XPRIZE)) is a competition to convert CO2 into products with highest net value from either a coal or gas power plant. In April 2018, ten finalists were given $5 million each to demonstrate their technologies large scale in the real world. The winner gets a $7.5 million grand prize announced in March 2020.Five of the ten are focused on carbon minerallization technology. One of them is a team from Aberdeen that hopes to use CO2 capture to make the entire concrete industry carbon negative. The Carbon Capture Machine precipitates it into calcium and magnesium carbonates (much like stalactites in caves) as a carbon negative replacement for ground calcium carbonate (GCC) which is needed for concrete. If this works on a commercial scale it can decarbonize the concrete industry, or 6% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions. If they can make it commercially viable, GCC has a market value of $20 billion.This project seems to be a similar ideaThere the geomass refers to “common rock waste and/or industrial waste materials that contain available alkalinity, which recharges the capture solution, and metal ions such as calcium, magnesium, and iron”.Carbon Upcycling makes new CO2ncrete from CO2 and chemicals, competing directly with the $400 billion concrete industry - in places like California with a carbon tax and mandate for low carbon building materials.CarbonCure Technologies injects CO2 into wet concrete while it is being mixed. They are aleady in commercial use with 100 installations across the US, retrofitting concrete plants for free then charging a licensing fee. It may take up to 20 years to be used on scale for reinforced concrete, because that’s needed as a durability testing period.For more on this see Between a Rock and Hard Place: Commercializing CO2 Through MineralizationEND OF NUCLEAR POWERFor nuclear power plants, he is going to stop renewing licenses, stop building new ones and find a real solution to the nuuclear waste problem.This contrasts with Yang’s plan which is to increase nuclear power including thorium fission and research into new fusion power.PEAKING POWERCoal and nuclear produce a steady base load and can’t easily ramp up and down. But to deal with the fluctuations of renewables we need a power source that can ramp up and down at short notice.For hydro, then what you need is pumped storage. This does not have to involve damming rivers. More generally it requires two reservoirs one above the other, can even be in abandonned mines underground, and the ability to pump water from one to the other to store power like a battery, then let it run back again to release the power. This has a round trip efficiency of 87% in the best most modern pumped hydro storage systems.Typical PHS (Pumped Hydro Storage) systems' RTE (Round Trip Efficiencies) range between 65 and 80%, depending on the technical characteristics of their equipment. Naturally older stations have lower RTE, while technological breakthroughs of the last 25 years have resulted in modern systems with RTE up to 87%Pumped hydroelectric storage utilization assessment: Forerunner of renewable energy integration or Trojan horse?Open and closed loop pumped hydro from: Pumped-Storage HydropowerYou can do this anywhere, needs no constant supply of water, just two reservoirs with a large enough height difference between them. A natural place for instance is inside a disused mine where you can use two galleries as the reservoirs.It's used for load balancing. It's like electric battteries. When there is too much renewable power from solar or electric you then take that power from the grid and use it to pump the water to the higher of the two reservoirs. Then when there is too much demand and not enough power, you then let the water flow down from the higher reservoir to the lower one. It responds very fast within minutes to a power demand.It can store power for as long as you like, hours, days or weeks, while it's hard for batteries to store power for long periods of time. It is much lower cost than batteries.The main downside is the length of time it takes to construct PHS, some years of work. But you get a huge amount of power stored for much less cost. The bigger the difference in height between the two reservoirs the more you can store which is why e.g. in Australia old gold mines are a great site for PHS.Another new idea is to use the sea as the lower reservoir. This is especially useful in countries with little by way of fresh water, and a sea coast with cliffs, like southern Australia, for instance.Okinawa pumped hydro using sea water. Photograph: Roger Dargaville/Agency of Natural Resources and Energy JapanSeawater could provide the solution to South Australia's power woesAnother way to do it is with molten salt energy storage. This is especially suited for systems where tracking mirrors (heliostats focus heat on a tower.Australia green-lights molten salt energy storage projectThen electrical vehicles as they become more common can be charged when energy is abundant and power demand low, and they can be set up to sell electricity back to the grid when there is a demand for power so constantly earning an income for the car owner when parkedBase load power: the factsCONVENTIONAL HYDRO POWER PEAK POWER BALANCINGConventional hydro dams can also do peak power balancing by the simple method of reducing the power output when the solar power or wind power is high and increasing it when it is low.That can double the power output of a hydro dam if you pair it with an equal power solar plant such as floating solar panels floating on the dam.The Chinese build solar plants floating on lakes. China has dozens of collapsed coal mines. They were used until recently but once they fell into disuse, they subsided and flooded.These disused coal mines form vast lakes on the surface in China, which are ideal for floating solar power - where they take up none of the valuable agricultural land in China. The power plants can also can employ the former coal miners who are now out of work.That’s why China is developing large scale floating photovoltaic rapidly, which is also increasing rapidly worldwide. It has a very large floating solar panel project the largest floating solar farm in the world, video here (🇨🇳 China builds largest floating solar farm in the world).So far, the largest system to combine solar and hydro power is in China, though this is for use on land. The Longyangxia hydropower plant can produce a total of 1.28 gigawatts of power. The associated Gonghe solar plant is 30 kilometers away with a capacity of 850 megawatts which is directly connected to the hydropower plant through a reserved 320 kV transmission line.The world's largest solar farm, from spaceThe 850-megawatt Longyangxia Dam Solar Park. It is built right next to a big hydropower dam - because then in the day when the sun is shining the power comes from the solar powers and the dam ramps down. At night then the dam then releases the water it held back during the day.Hydropower is the world’s lowest cost way of storing power, far less cost than the vast numbers of Tesla batteries you’d need to back up something like this. The two of them together are able to supply power to the Chinese power grid 24/7 with no curtailment - they never over-deliver. The UK is going to use the same system for its renewables, also Australia and many other places - it’s a natural partnership.Typically the hydro is reduced in the daytime from 11 am to 4 pm, when the sun is high, and the saved power is delivered in early morning or late night. With Longyangxia , all the power from the hybrid system is fully absorbed by the grid, with no curtailment.Floating solar has taken off in a big way in just a few years.Where Sun Meets Water: Floating Solar Market Report - Executive SummaryIn the US there are several large dams, e.g. the Grand Coulee dam, which generates a peak of 6.809 gigawatts and a peak capacity of 2.3 GW. It created two lakes, Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake - Wikipedia with a surface area of 125 square miles and Banks Lake - Wikipedia with a surface area of 42 square miles for a total of 167 square miles, or 432 square kilometers.Or for one further south, Oroville Dam in California, which created Lake Oroville, surface area 15,810 acres or 64 square kilometers.California, with its sunshine, is an obvious place for floating solar. It’s already being used for water treatment plants, to power the plants. California has potential to supply at least 10% of its total power from floating solar.One big target there is the California Aqueduct. It’s a canal 400 miles long in a region of the state with constant sunshine, the San Joaquin Valley.On an anual basis this canal loses as much water by evaporation as the entire capacity of Lake Oroville. A University of California, Davis study in 2015 found that covering a single 80-mile stretch with solar panels could save $1 million worth of water losses every year. Adding in energy production they found it would generate $7.9 million annually with a net benefit over 25 years of $484,389 per year. That was with solar panel prcies in 2015, and they have gone down since then.Floating Solar Power: A New Frontier for Green-Leaning Water UtilitiesThey can also be built floating on the sea. This is much more of a challenge but it has already been used in Norway to power a fish farm:This is sure to expand.One idea is to use floating solar farms much like floating fish farms in areas of the world where the sea tends to be calmer, but where there is lots of sunlight, such as the Red Sea for instance - and use them to make methanol, which can be used for jet fuel. It is one way to make our planes carbon neutral in the future. They would use CO2 from the water, the water itself and sunlight to make methanol which can be used as fuel.Red Sea - a perfect place for floating solar farms in the sea, with easier conditions for building them than the open ocean.Giant Floating Solar Farms Could Make Fuel and Help Solve the Climate Crisis, Says StudyYou can also use floating wind turbines. It is early days yet, but off shore wind farms could become easier to build if we can roll out floating wind turbines like these. They would be situated close to the shore and connected to the shore directly via cables, much as oil platforms are connected with pipes.The Future is Bright for Floating Wind Turbines - StormGeo - Freedom to PerformOn the land taken up by renewables, there is a lot of "brownfields" e.g. from open cast coal mining, and from abandoned air fields and so on.Many coal miners have skills that are relevant to renewables. Then in the states tht used to employ coal miners, many of the coal mining brownfield sites are also excellent for solar panels.This suggests that former coal miners could be employed to build solar panels on brownfield sites. This would employ thousands of former miners to build the solar panels for as long as it takes to complete the project which would take many years. Each power station would take only months to complete but unless you do them all in one go you'd have a large work force that moves from one solar panel project to the next building them on all the suitable brownfield sites, and other sites as well, for as long as that continues.West Virginia is a coal mining state, and there is an estimate here, there is enough by way of brownfield sites from disused coal mines in West Virginia to build 10,592 MW of solar power using half of the degraded land.That is enough to offset 10% of the emissions of West Virginia.Prospects for Large-scale Solar on Degraded Land in West VirginiaIt would employ 70,000 people for 16 weeks to build the plants, which could be spread out as fewer people over a longer period of time, e.g. 20,000 for a year, or 2,000 for a decade by staggering the construction. It would likely add 2,000 new full time jobs to keep the plants running, and many former coal workers would have the right skill sets to do this.That is just solar panels on brownfield sites, and of course you have many solar panels on other sites as well. Including people installing solar on their own houses which needs people to install them for them. Those retrained coal miners would have plenty of jobs to do.They give several examples of large sale solar farms in West Virginia already. For instance Amazon are constructing solar plants to generate 170 gigawatt hours of solar power a year.It has detailed assessments of the solar power potential for each site e.g. Jack’s Branch has a potential for 150-MW though it’s likely it has to be smaller because of the steep hills:Going through all the open case mines case by case they come to this figure of over a gigawatt of installed capacity based on half of the available land.Prospects for Large-scale Solar on Degraded Land in West VirginiaThis is about an example of a Massachusetts brownfield solar on a disused airfield.From brownfield to solar field: A case study | Solar United NeighborsWIND POWER IS OFTEN AVAILABLE AT THE RIGHT TIME TO USE ITIn Tehachapi, California, the wind is strongest in the afternoon from April through to October. In Montana, then the strongest winds are in winter. These match the peak electricity demand in these two states fortuitiously. Californians use most electricity in the afternoon in summer. In Montana they use most in winter.These are the top states for wind power:Where Wind Power Is HarnessedOffshore wind especially is strongest in the day time at times when energy use peaks.Offshore winds are typically stronger during the day, allowing for a more stable and efficient production of energy when consumer demand is at its peak. Most land-based wind resources are stronger at night, when electricity demands are lower.Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Offshore Wind Energy (US gov)Ts is a typical windfarm.Black Hill Wind Farm (C) Walter BaxterThough it may not seem it ,they are bunched together optimally about as close as they can go because if they are closer they take away some of each other's wind.It has no impact on farming except the little pillar that supports the wind turbines themselves. We have many of those wind farms now in the UK. In their figure those occupy five million hectares but as far as impact on agriculture, or any other use, almost zero. Only the visual effect.Any offshore wind clearly has no effect at all on land usage competition.For more about this:Do renewables for power generation take up more land area than fossil fuels? Well - not really!And yes, we can run an economy on renewables and we can keep an electricity grid running on renewables. The US at present has no leadership from the top.FOCUS ON THE US - HOW IS IT DOING WITH NO LEADERSHIP FROM THE TOPUnder Trump, the government in the US is so against climate change action they have actually archived and stopped updating the central website they used to have on the effects of climate change.What is left is mainly about topics like air quality, water management and public health.EPA’s Website Overhaul Continues: Climate Resources Left Out of the Update to the “Climate and Energy Resources for State, Local, and Tribal Governments” Website – EDGIThere is no longer anything there about the effects of climate on the US as a whole,Instead it now says“EPA's work on climate change adaptation is limited in scope by our statutes. Visit the links below to see how climate change can affect its programmatic responsibilities.”Implications of Climate Change | US EPAHowever even with this complete lack of any central leadership from the top, overall so far it is not far off tracking the CO2 emissions reductions it pledged. Individual states and cities still have their climate change plans and their projections for the effects of climate change and their flood prevention barrier assessments etcThe US CO2 emissions had a big uptick in 2018. That uptick was due to cold weather and people needing more heating in winter plus upturn in the US economy leading to more emissions but it is only a bit above the level it should be for the Paris pledge. No reason to suppose it is the start of a new trend upwards.What happened? An unusually cold spell last winter led people to turn up their furnaces. And after years of modest growth, the U.S. economy picked up in 2018. There were more planes in the air, more trucks delivering packages, more offices cranking air conditioners, and more factories burning fossil fuels.In 2017, California had a relatively wet year, and was able to run water through hydropower turbines when the sun set over solar panels. There was less water to spare last year, so the state turned to gas plants in place of dams.It was a bad year for carbon emissions, even in CaliforniaWhen it comes to the US internally, the top ten states emit half the total emissions12.7+7+4.5+4.2+4.1+4+4+3.5+3.2+2.9 = 50.1List of U.S. states and territories by carbon dioxide emissions - WikipediaCalifornia’s economy would count as the fifth largest in the world if it was a separate country.It shows that population and GDP can increase while decreasing emissions:It’s biggest challenge is transportation which for California produces most of their CO2 emissions and is actually increasing, while CO2 emissions from electrical power generation is down 40% and they are committed to reach net zero electricity power generation by 2045They need to focus on moving away from petroleum based carsCalifornia Zero-Emission Vehicle ProgramThey are not only committed to zero emissions electricity by 2045. Brown signed in an exectutive order to target total net zero emissions by 2045.Another one targets 5 million electrical vehicles on the road by 2030.This shows the slice of the pie for emissions in 2016, 41% is transportationThe electricty now has very little emissions - not because they don’t use much, but because they have been transitioning towards renewables for many years.California plans to show the world how to meet the Paris climate target | Dana NuccitelliAbout half of their electricity now comes from renewables (34% smaller projects, 15% from the large hydro dams)The Golden State is officially a third renewable, and it’s not stopping thereRENEWABLES TAKING OFF AROUND THE WORLDRenewables are growing strongly. Currently they represent 45% of world electtricity generation growth.25% of global power is now produced by renewables.TCEP: Renewable powerGlobal Energy & CO2 Status Report: RenewablesRENEWABLES GROWING FASTER THAN ANY OTHER FUEL IN HISTORYHere are some charts showing the rapid growth in renewables:Renewable EnergyRenewables are penertrating the global energy system more rapidly than any fuel in history according to BP. They do two a number of scenarios to guide their policy planning. The Rapid Transition (RT) is a 45% fall in emissions by 2040 while Energy Transition (ET) is what happens if we do nothing to combat climate change, emission grow but slowly because of growing population and increasing industrialization but offset by increasing natural transition to renewables.Their RT is roughly equivalent to the 2 C Paris goal.For details see BP Energy Outlook 2019 editionHowever the UN and many countries are moving to target 1.5 C, and also want to follow the easiest route to get there.The transition to renewables seems likely to continue at that rapid rate, faster than any fuel in history except nuclear - and soon to exceed the growth rate of nuclear - but that doesn't mean it is impossible.You could have used the historical growth rate for oil, gas and coal to prove that nuclear power would take a long time to take off, but it didn’t. There is no reason why renewables can’t grow faster even than nuclear power (which had various things that limited its growth rate such as proliferation concerns and nuclear waste disposal issues).OTHER COUNTRIES SHOW THAT TRANSITION TO RENEWABLES FOR ELECTRICITY POWER CAN BE DONENay sayers often say that it is impossible to run a country on 100% renewables and often go further and say you can only have a few percent of total power from renewables. But many countries are proving them wrong by doing it:Iceland runs on close to 100% all the time.12 Countries Leading the Way in Renewable EnergyThe UK expects to have 100% zero emissions electricty by 2025 (that also includes nuclear). It recently ran for a week without coalHere is where the National Grid Electricity System Operator director Fintan Slye says that he beleives that by 2025 it will have a zero emissions electricity grid.Britain goes week without coal power for first time since the industrial revolutionCosta Rica ran on 100% renewables for two months and plans to transition to 100% renewables by 2021.]Costa Rica Has Been Running on 100% Renewable Energy For 2 Months StraightOil is still needed for the transition but the time is over soon, peak oil demand likely to be some time in the 2020s.Meanwhile we need to stop the fossil fuel subsidies as we no longer need to encourage growth of fossil fuels.Robert Walker's answer to What things are going to be Peak X?BERNIE SANDERS’ PLANBernie Sanders' plan is here:The Green New DealHopefully this gives you enough information to evaluate it better than these sensationalist journalist articles by numskulls who do not even bother to do a few minutes of a google research into his proposals.See alsoHow well are countries doing with their 2015 Paris pledges?SEE ALSORobert Walker's answer to What things are going to be Peak X?We can feed everyone through to 2100 and beyondThere is lots of good news here, things we are doing, things we can do in the future.Yes our generation’s children are headed for a world with nature and wonder in it - and their children tooPositive news - conservation projects in Australia24 ways the world is getting better - good news journalists rarely sharePositive side of climate change facts, after two years of climate change action, heading for 3°C with 1.5°C well within reachLet’s save a million species, and make biodiversity great again - UN report says we know how do it

In answering this question I must preface my comments with the qualifying statement that, while I spent my entire career in the conventional power generating industry, as it relates to power plants utilizing gas and steam turbine generators (conventionally generated steam, as well as geothermal) I am in no way an expert with respect to wind and solar power. In this context I offer my comments from the perspective and observations of a casual observer, and from my digestion of information available throughout the various forms of media available to all who have a related interest, and enjoy access to printed press and the internet. My opinions are formed from my own informal research and in the context of what I know to be practical economics when it comes to investmemnts in power generation, and I freely admit that my opinions may well be biased as a result of my former career. I ask the reader to give due consideration to this qualifier as he or she reads on.What is abundantly clear is that not all “Natural” power sources present commerical/economic opportunities of equal magnitude. For whatever reason, those upon which the most energetic support and taxpayer funded financial backing from the political establishment has been bestowed are also arguably those in relation to which the corresponding benefits are the most meagre.GEOTHERMAL POWER - Where it has been exploited to any seriously committed extent, georthermal power - which is relatively seldom referred to in the media, and almost totally obscure to the public eye, has proven a most viable and abundant means of generating electricity or as a source of heat for industrial processes. As a natural power source, geothermal power is perhaps the most widely available, economically viable and easily accessed of all those presently known. To top off its resume as a natural energy source, it is also virtually inexhaustible.Geothermal power generation projects have become scattered throughout the developed world, from initial projects in Italy, to North America, and plants throughout the Pacific Rim, in countries such as New Zealand, and the Philipines. Relying upon steam generated in the earth’s crust, the energy source is practically inexhaustible, being fueled by the heat energy trapped within a sphere about 7000 miles in diameter, the core of which is molten iron. The environmental impact of operating geothermal power plants is as close to zero as is conceivable, and are typically confined to the occasion smell of rotten eggs from low level emissions of hydrogen sulphide, and the almost certainly localized effects of plumes of pure, clean steam that emanates from circulating water cooling towers.Yet - to my knowledge geothermal power projects are typically private corporate ventures, receiving little if any financial support from any taxpayer funded programs.As a natural power source, hydro-electric power is well established, and has been responsible for a significant proportion of all electricity generated by humankind over the past 140 years or so, so I won’t belabour it here. Nuclear power also, is well proven and established. From what I have learned about nuclear power technology, the impediments to its evolution and growth in the marketplace are quite evidently much more political rather than technical in nature.Wind and solar power, which have somehow become the darlings of the politically correct establishment, and so motivated government agencies, are also the most contentious when the debate turns to the issue of cost versus benefit.Certainly there must be isolated instances where cost effective natural power sources exist, but personally I have never observed one. Tidal generators have been operating in hydraulically favourable bodies of water such as the Bay of Fundy in Canada for decades, though one seldom hears a peep about them.But, aside, as wind and solar power generating plants must rely upon the real time intensity and duration of natural forces to generate electricity - their commercial success must be hugely dependent upon their location. And in the best possible scenario, the most ideal circumstances imaginable, their production rates are meager, as compared to the performance of their conventional counterparts. By comparison, consider for instance, the solar plant as a babbling mountain brook, and a coal or gas fired steam generating power plant, which generates super heated, or even super critical steam, enabling the plant to pack the sort of punch that mother nature stores up in reserve for millenia, and only occasionally releases by way of volcanoes.Yet wind turbines seem litter the landscape far and wide around my home in Western North America, and have cropped up everywhere you look these days. Often one can see a thousand or more, (Cabazon, in the Coachella Valley in Southern CA) lined up in rank and file like Napoleonic soldiers readying themselves for their march to a final recokining at Waterloo. Most often just a few among them are moving, ticking over idly, as though pondering whether they should work that day, or take yet another day off to polish their kit.Among the few things that one can ever be certain about, one is that turbines upon which one relies for revenue and that are idle most of the time will never present an economically viable prospect, unless the electricity they generate is sold at a correspondingly higher price than conventionally generated kiloWatts.As for solar power, its immediate drawback is that in the absolute best business case, perhaps out in the Mohave Desert, along the I-15 a hundred miles or so West of Las Vegas, Nevada, a location which perhaps enjoys the longest hours of sunshine in the Western Hemispere, any solar farm irrespective of how expansive, is stone cold idle in inky blackness for about 12 hours a day. Also - the power density of solar panels (power generated per square inch of surface area) is low, compared to a conventional power plant. Thus, and also as they cannot be stacked vertically as each would overshadow those beneath, vast areas of real estate are required to compile sufficient surface area to generate meaningful amounts of power, with what must be correspondingly expansive arrays of low voltage electrical interconnections that gang these panels into collective grid. Transmitting power at low voltages has its own issues that adversely effect economic viability.So - I suspect that by this point we have inadvertently stumbled together upon the reason why most, if not all such that these farms are all taxpayer subsidized, as only low information taxpayers with bottomless pits for pockets and no say in how their tax dollars are spent, can be drawn into such hare brained schemes as typified by the wind and solar farms I have seen.If there is one thing I learned from my career in the steam turbine generator business it is that in the corporate jungle, only the fittest survive, and survival is based upon reasonable assurance of long term financial viability. Perpetual downtime for money-making machinery is akin to a poison dart right in the heart, as the effect is to cut directly into profits, which can be razor thin even in powerplants that operate at their nameplate rating for greater than 98% of the time, year ‘round, 24–7.So, the short answer to the initial question, and excepting geothermal steam and hydro-electric and nuclear power - thus narrowing our focus upon on wind and solar power only - “There must be.” But where? “I have no idea.”The truth about all of this is somewhat elusive, the effect of which is to lead one to doubt one’s own lying eyes. Is the truth hiding in plain sight?This discussion has brought to mind for me a few words of the lyrics of the great and inimitable Johnny Cash’s mega-hit “The Boy Named Sue””I know that I’ve fought tougher men, but I really don’t remember when.”