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Comment by silverFork | Hacker News Reader

Europe has one of highest wind energy potentials instead. They can harvest wind energy in the winter when they need it most.

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https://globalwindatlas.info/en/

And Europe has historical expertise and European companies that they can subsidize.

Nice wind energy map there. Surprised that some places are good for both wind and solar. There is also Geothermal.. valleys have higher potential for geothermal

Europe geothermal. There are probably better maps than this:

https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/project-innerspace-completes-...

Wind energy, or any any energy, should not be subsidized. This is only hides the real costs from the customers, moves the energy costs to tax payers or government debt.

Maybe governments should support energy with cheap loans. This is not a subsidy, as loans have to be payed back.

The question is how many people for how many decades should be dislocated and murdered or defrauded for the sake oil? somebody is always paying the price. Energy is always subsidized, its just different people that pay the price. A barrel of oil is cheaper than equivalent in retailed bottled water. In effect the profit from water bottle is higher than oil.

It's not really easy to build wind energy in Europe as current windmills are 300 meter tall and the windier parts of Europe are often the dense parts. People don't want a 300 meter structure near them.

The recently built tallest is 300m at the hub, 365m at the top of the blade.

However that is specifically designed to be sited to catch air above existing wind turbines to get to a second layer of wind.

Standard ones are half that size and more cost-efficient currently.

In general bigger means cheaper per KWh but you start to hit various bottlenecks as size increases.

You're right pointing out most aren't this tall, still people don't really want +- 200m tall structures anywhere near them, which is a big problem in dense areas.

Whether they like it or not material. There are a lot of things that many people don't like but have to live with. Do they like the oil wars? would they like to send their kid to fight for resources?

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