African countries feature prominently in the White House push to triple worldwide use of both nuclear and renewable energy.
When I first read the titile, I thought that the US is going to have to build A LOT to triple global production. Then it occured to me that the author means the US is pledging to make deals and agreements which enable other countries to build their own. Sometimes I think the US thinks too much of itself and that's also very much part of American branding.
Where are my renewable bros at? Tell me this is bad.
I’m a renewable bro. I wanna see as much money pumped into as much infrastructure for renewables as possible. I wanna see solar on every building. I wanna see off-shore wind and tidal energy production. I’m keenly following development of clean, efficient, and cost-effective energy storage technologies, and much is being done in this space to support a future switch to full renewable reliance.
That won’t change the fact that we need on-demand energy now and we need to stop using coal and gas as soon as possible. We currently don’t have energy storage at scale. We will, but we don’t. So in the meantime, nuclear is probably the best option to pursue for use over the next couple of decades while we continue to invest in, and implement, renewables.
Today, there is 413GW of nuclear capacity globally. Of that, 57GW is in China.
China plans to reach 300GW of nuclear capacity by 2035. Assuming linear growth, that number will be around 550GW by 2050 (more than double the current global nuclear capacity) There are currently 57 nuclear power plants under construction. 21 are in China. 1 is in the US.
Nuclear power isn't bad. I used to be anti-nuclear energy because of the specter of Chernobyl, 3 mile island, and Fukushima. But learning more about it, there haven't been many actual problems with nuclear energy.
Chernobyl happened because of mismanagement and arrogance. 3 mile happened because of a malfunction. Fukushima happened because of mismanagement and failure to keep up safety standards in case of natural events.
These are all things that can be mitigated to one extent or another. it's much cleaner than other forms of energy, outputs way more than solar or wind, and with modern technology can be extremely safe. I think we should be adopting nuclear, at least as a stopgap until renewable tech reaches higher output in efficiency.
Kinda annoyed that these investments are going into foreign countries, when we are one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas. We should be building them here first to mitigate our own ghg contributions, then helping smaller countries build theirs.
I do still have concerns about waste removal and storage tho, but I'm sure we could figure that out if we actually wanted to. But I doubt we do, because "dA cOsTs" or some shit.
Bill Clinton used to do this. Set goals and agreements that were like 30 years away.
He did this alot.
This is not new and is basically a way to look like you are doing something, but you and your administration would be long gone before there can be any accountability.
I’ll believe it when I see it. I’d prefer that they build something modern rather than hauling out the tired old plant designs we’ve been using since the 70s.
What does any of what you just said have to do with the US making a pledge to increase global energy sustainability (energy and fossil fuels specifically being the crux of global catastrophe)
Sometimes I think posters just like to jab for rage bait
I mean this seems like around the time that billionaires have bunkered up and people are roaming the wasteland scavenging for food, shelter, and safety in the blazing heat
Fuck no. Why not real green energy which does not produce nuclear waste that has to be stored safely for thousands of years and where most places dont have a place to store it in?