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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

We physically can't build enough windmills to replace fossil fuels. They'd take up too much space.

I'm all for having renewables when the technology is ready, but it's not and high energy prices will start killing old people that can't afford to heat their homes.

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That doesn't even pass the napkin math test. "An average onshore wind turbine with a capacity of 2.5–3 MW can produce more than 6 million kWh in a year" (https://www.ewea.org/wind-energy-basics/faq/) "Estonia is the total consumption of 8.80 billion kWh of electric energy per year". (https://www.worlddata.info/europe/estonia/energy-consumption...)

Are you saying there's no space in Estonia for ~1466 wind turbines? That's before we include offshore wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, hydro, and storage... Basically, you're spreading FUD.

I was more thinking of more populated countries like the UK, but it's still a large part of the countryside.

>> That's before we include offshore wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, hydro, and storage... Basically, you're spreading FUD.

Yeah, one of those is not like the other. Not sure how you slip nuclear in there given that Greens are against it. Storage isn't a solved problem either.

They may be against it. They also have a very minor representation in the uk gov, so not that relevant. Storage is practically non-issue. We can dump the waste underground for thousands of years with almost no planning. (still a more healthy solution than what we do with other fuel now) The volume required is basically not worth talking about.

For storage I was talking about holding electricity generated by renewables, not parking nuclear waste.

> I was more thinking of more populated countries like the UK

The UK is solving that problem by putting most of the turbines in the sea. Seems to be working well so far.

Clearly not as energy prices have gone up due to a shortage of supply.

The amount of supply depends on amount of wind turbines built, not the amount we have space for. We have space for a lot more than we've built so far.

Maybe our economic systems have to be rethought? A tree is worth more dead than alive..... European economies have been accumulating wealth for centuries through colonization and exploitation of humans lifetimes... in the end what do you have? inflated real estate prices, overly mechanized agriculture producing basic junk foodstuffs, increasingly authoritarian political policies designed to restrict or bore people from contributing to civil society... this is leading to an existential crisis .... So many good films out there which capture the essence of the problem, that dreadlock guy who works? for Microsoft has a very good quote in "Social Dilemma" (1)

One suggestion would be politicians to be chosen by jury, for periods of say a year to lock them out of having so many fingers in lobbyists pies...

(1) https://files.fm/f/nm8vs6h5g

What gives you that idea? Of course we can build enough windmills and other renewables.

Yep, and at the same time, the "greens" are against nuclear, the only thing that could actually replace fossil fuels and also works during windless nights.

No, they don't. Try doing the math. You'll end up at single digit percentages of land used. You can easily do agriculture around wind turbines, so land use really is not problem at all.

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