Where I live in Scotland about 73% of electricity generated come from renewables (mostly wind and hydro). I’m hugely in favour of this, but the bills keep rising.
I firmly believe the utility companies should be nationalised. I’m not against capitalism per se, but the current setup is a racket.
Yeah honestly even if we were at 100% renewables, the price has been set and people are used to it now. No company is going to voluntarily start discounting unless more competition enters the market to start a price war. So far most of the energy “competition” has gone bust.
Will they really though?
Have you looked at your power bill and seen how much of the bill is not power consumption?
We have also seen multiple times where the wholesale price of electricity is below zero yet consumers are still paying for power during those times.
In the long run, yes. In the short term, the grid upgrades are quite expensive.
One form of government investment is subsidized panels for homes so you rely on utilities less.
Solar is so cheap now, that some people can just build their own solar and battery setup themselves.
Yes, but at scale it is significantly cheaper to build larger and distribute it. It also means people don’t have to over invest in their own set up just to cover their peak usage. There is also a large amount of up front capital required to build with usually years before you get back what was invested. Its also almost impossible for renters or apartment buildings to do it themselves.
Yes I know all of that, I’m saying that solar is so much cheaper than coal power that even private individuals can buy it, so we shouldn’t be wasting money on new coal plants or gas plants.
Same for nuclear. U.S.-Americans are brainwashed on this topic.
First, they pay with their tax dollars for the subsidies that the private for-profit companies use to build the nuclear reactors. After that, they pay again, because the private company charges them extra on the electricity bill for the electricity generated by the very same nuclear reactor so that they can make even more profit.
It’s so stupid and they’re brainwashed to defend it to the teeth. They also always try to deflect from the fact that renewables are cheaper than nuclear and can be owned by them instead of a for-profit company, by pretending that everyone who opposes nuclear energy must be in favour of coal and gas. It’s mind boggling to watch.
Nuclear power is really cool, but my biggest problem with building new reactors isn’t even the money issues you pointed out, it’s the fact that I live in the US and I don’t trust any regulatory agency to build a new nuclear power plant correctly/safely.
Solar panels and wind turbines are monumentally cheaper AND they don’t potentially cause ten thousand year contamination problems.
Nuclear power is really cool Why though? It’s insanely inefficient in terms of costs and really, really dangerous if something goes seriously wrong.
If you install a solar panels with a regulator, it’s running in less than 2 weeks and goes for decades with very little maintenance that almost every idiot can do. Plus, you don’t have to pay for a company’s profit while getting that energy. Now THAT is cool in my opinion.
Or the quicker way: the government nationalises all power companies, and sold electricity for cheap… Because it’s necessary… For society…
Both. Both is good.
Would also be cheaper if the government owned the energy infrastructure and ran at cost.
How would it be cheaper?
How is it so expensive?
That’s not an answer. In my city for example, the water and trash service are public and price duplicated from 2024, water pipes, sanitation and all that is public infrastructure maintained by the city, the only thing private in this whole thing may be the trash trucks.
Energy is also heavily subsidized and we still have to pay a lot.
In my experience government doesn’t make utilities cheaper.
but that’s communism!!!
Ikr? What else is it? A good idea that would benefit people broadly instead of specific people narrowly?
You want elected officials to be competent and follow the will of those whom they represent?
that’s woke nonsense
Pfft caring about anything but myself, what a suckers game.
Empathy? what woke bs is that, as a true Jesus loving Christian I hate my neighbors
China does subsidize their electricity, and are self declared communists. It seems like if it goes to corporations it would be more of a Corporatocracy however.
Yes but how would the fascists get kickbacks and bribes then? That’s a big chunk of their income. Won’t someone think of the oligarchy???
Energy is cheaper where the government has a public alternative. That goes for all utilities and services.
New data centers should have to pay on a sliding scale based on energy availability in the local grid. And if they want to build out generation it should be solar and wind only.
When the price goes up it’s because the renewables don’t produce power when there is no wind and sun (which pretty much sums up January here). Building more of something that does not produce power is not going to help with the price shocks.
We need to figure out grid scale storage, fusion or build nuclear power to get rid of fossil fuels. Until then utility bills will be occasionally more shocking than jamming a fork in the outlet.
Cheaper utilities was never the goal
Spain invested in green energy and I am paying a shit ton on utility bills.
Fun Fact: Doesn’t really work in Winter.
Source: EU countries that don’t have a ton of cheap gas, flowing water or nuclear power and unlimited storage.
Maybe Nuclear, given it can actually support the base load power, except they need to fully deregulate it first so Nimbys and lawsuits balloon the cost. It shouldnt cost more nowadays in inflation adjusted terms than France building them in the 70s.
Your talking points are ten years out of date. The cheapest form of baseload power now is batteries plus solar. For seasonal variations? Nuclear is so expensive that it’s far cheaper to just build enough to meet your winter electricity demand and have abundant power the rest of the year.
Fission is a dead end technology that people mostly support now so they can feel a sense of contrarian intellectual superiority. It’s all just vibes at this point.
Do you have an example of a city that runs on renewables with battery storage with no duplicate backup base load generator?
As far as I was aware there were none, as it is non-feasible outside of areas with hydro dams for power storage.
Do you have an example of a city that runs on renewables with battery storage with no duplicate backup base load generator?
Thankfully cities don’t build isolated power grids.
Remember how now that countries have stopped recognizing US medial science we see cures for cancer coming out of the woodwork? Yeah…
Wut
Generally speaking medical research in the US has been scrutinized due to the incredibly profitable privatized nature of it, so much so that people believe solutions are actively suppressed in favor of more expensive options. In the last few weeks after the US left the WHO a whole bunch of cancer cures started coming up. While probably a coincidence, after the last few months of conspiracy theorists being proven at least to some degree right it’s getting hard to ignore that this may not be a coincidence.
Energy would be so abundant it’d be free, if we’d done Fusion 50 years ago.
