The bimonthly open thread focused on climate solutions, mitigation and adaptation. Please keep this focused.
Reader Interactions
301 Responses to "Forced Responses: May 2018"
Al Bundysays
Kevin: milestone for renewable energy in the US
AB: Thanks. But I’ve got to note that it was freaking painfully achieved and way too slow. Plus misleading since electricity ain’t everything. Houses last a long time and retrofitting efficiency is neither easy nor cheap. Gas furnaces, gas stoves, gas water heaters… why are we still building housing without passive solar, without solar hot water, without super-insulated walls? Seriously, sane buildings and hybrid cars are easy and give way better bang for the buck than “cool” stuff like EVs, PV and turbines. Instead of tossing thousands at each EV we should have been tossing a few hundred at each hybrid and requiring that all taxis (including Uber and Lyft) get at least 45 MPG. We should have used feebates to get auto manufacturers (and all other industries) to eat each other’s lunch in a big scrum focused on increased efficiency. (If you have to pay your competitor because their cars get better mileage, well, that’s worse than eating your veggies, eh?) We should have been raising building codes through the roof. We shoulda, coulda, woulda….
We’re focused on a relatively small slice of the US carbon pie. Assuming my decimals didn’t wander:
3900,000,000,000 Kwh = 1.4 x 10 to the 19 joules
2200,000,000 metric tons of oil equiv (total energy use) = 1 x 10 to the 20 joules
Kevin: milestone for renewable energy in the US
AB: Thanks. But I’ve got to note that it was freaking painfully achieved and way too slow. Plus misleading since electricity ain’t everything. Houses last a long time and retrofitting efficiency is neither easy nor cheap. Gas furnaces, gas stoves, gas water heaters… why are we still building housing without passive solar, without solar hot water, without super-insulated walls? Seriously, sane buildings and hybrid cars are easy and give way better bang for the buck than “cool” stuff like EVs, PV and turbines. Instead of tossing thousands at each EV we should have been tossing a few hundred at each hybrid and requiring that all taxis (including Uber and Lyft) get at least 45 MPG. We should have used feebates to get auto manufacturers (and all other industries) to eat each other’s lunch in a big scrum focused on increased efficiency. (If you have to pay your competitor because their cars get better mileage, well, that’s worse than eating your veggies, eh?) We should have been raising building codes through the roof. We shoulda, coulda, woulda….
We’re focused on a relatively small slice of the US carbon pie. Assuming my decimals didn’t wander:
3900,000,000,000 Kwh = 1.4 x 10 to the 19 joules
2200,000,000 metric tons of oil equiv (total energy use) = 1 x 10 to the 20 joules
And I fixed your wrong-thread-problem.