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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

Or we could keep our standard of living and just build more renewables…

We've been building renewables for a while now, has it actually made any significant decrease in fossil fuel consumption?

"Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again," said the president of the UK-based global industry body Energy Institute, Juliet Davenport.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/06/26/wrong-direction-fo...

That was some quick googling on my part, it seems not?

You can produce more energy via renewables and people will simply expand demand to absorb it, in much the same way you can build more roads and car usage will expand to congest it.

But certainly I'm not saying we should stop building more renewables, I just think people will happily use fossil fuels and renewables as much as possible because cheaper energy allows for better standard of living.

Thank you, this is what I mean. They keep saying renewables are the answer, but we all know that more renewables we create the more energy we use. We’re not stopping energy consumption. So all of you who are saying this has been talked about, yeah it’s been talked about but that’s all it’s been done. What I’m saying it’s time to stop talking and time more doing.

Now imagine how much more carbon we would emit without the renewable terawatt hours. Btw in most countries where the renewables are being built carbon emissions do go down. They’re just being outpaced by China and India ramping up coal consumption.

That’s the problem though. China is already building more renewables than any where on the world (probably more than the rest of the world combined). They still have to ramp up coal production to meet demand despite all those growth. The question isn’t about whether to build more renewable, but how.

Well, were I live the hurdles are all purely regulatory.

> Despite further strong growth in wind...

Where exactly ? On the moon ? Because around here, (from central to eastern europe) i haven't seen any "strong growth in wind".

There have been a lot of wind generators built in central to eastern europe over the last decade or so.

The single greatest reduction in carbon emissions in the US has been switching from coal to natural gas power plants.

Wrong!

Methane (the primary component of natural gas) has a global warming potential 21 times higher than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, though methane persists in the atmosphere for much less time (around a dozen years) than carbon dioxide (many decades).

Goal of the power plant is to burn the methane, not release it... so i would say you are wrong here.

Unfortunately we lose quite a bit of methane between the extraction site and the turbine.

I can't wait for a SV startup to make better pipes. /s

You must start somewhere. /s

Works wonder in Germany. Coal is so cool.

"just"

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