21 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

People who are moving out to the suburbs aren't moving right just because of that, though some will be influenced by their surroundings that way.    What seems to be moving them right is the raising families part.   They are not moving from left to right they are moving from apolitical to right.   I have a lot of FB friends in the 35-45 age group because of working at the bar and/or from them knowing Holly.  This was not a politically defined group when I met them, but they are increasingly posting conservative stuff.   One of my more politically strident friends is a 40 year old woman, recently married, who I met when she was a 23 year old party girl.   While I know this is anecdotal, I believe its at least somewhat representative.  After all, I've seen this before.  My generation gave the "hippies" a rude awakening.  And as for the youngest cohort, my 11 year old and her cousins all love Trump.

 

What is that saying about anecdotes… 

 

Let's keep this discussion on topic.

3 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

I grew up in Maple Heights so our backgrounds are the same.   How do you plan to gain support there?   I can tell you how not to.....

 

Biden won Maple Heights easily. In some precincts he got 90% of the vote. 

Op-Ed from ColumbusUnderground

 

NEXT: The Metropolitan States of America

 

There is a lot of chatter today about “secession.” Believers imagine modern day secession looking like a replay of the Civil War, with states rebelling against the federal government and voting to leave the union. In 2021, Texas State Representative Kyle Biedermann introduced a bill that would propose a referendum for the citizens of Texas asking if they wish secede. These and similar sorts of bills often surface when a Democrat occupies the White House. 

 

On the west coast, there have been calls over the last two decades for California to be split into a number of smaller states. More recently, some activists have called for Northern California to join Oregon and Idaho, a “Move Oregon’s Border For a Greater Idaho” initiative.  

...

I am not envisioning cities seceding from the Union—although that is certainly a possibility. The city-state has a long history, a persistent and durable political form. Both Plato and Aristotle maintained that the Greek city-state, the polis, was the ideal political system. Singapore is perhaps the most noteworthy contemporary example of a thriving city-state.  

 

Instead, I refer to American cities seceding from their states, to in effect become additional states to the Union. It has long been debated whether Washington D.C. should be granted statehood. What if other metropolitan areas similarly wished to assert their statehood? If a city like Columbus were to secede from Ohio, that new state would demand representation in Congress: two senators and, probably, one representative. If the idea that an entity as small as a city would deserve representation, consider that the population of the Columbus Metropolitan Statistical Area is about 2 million. That would be double the size of South Dakota (population 884,659), two and a half times the size of North Dakota (population 762,062), and three and a half times the size of the state of Wyoming (population 578,759). In this scenario, the State of Ohio would lose representation (because its population would have decreased.) If cities like Columbus and San Francisco and Austin and New York and Charlotte and Indianapolis were to decide to assert their own sovereignty, might we see a future U.S. flag with seventy or eighty stars on it?

 

The idea of cities demanding sovereignty seems like a fringe idea. But as the last decade of American culture and politics has demonstrated, the fringe idea can suddenly and disconcertingly become mainstream.  

 

More below:

https://columbusunderground.com/next-the-metropolitan-states-of-america-ds1/

 

13 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

It also sets a very dangerous precedent.

Most definitely.  Get that initial amount of Great Lakes water and the southwestern states will come back for more.  Once the "faucet" is turned on for Great Lakes water, it will be opened more and more.

1 hour ago, LifeLongClevelander said:

Most definitely.  Get that initial amount of Great Lakes water and the southwestern states will come back for more.  Once the "faucet" is turned on for Great Lakes water, it will be opened more and more.

Right.

 

Fuggetaboutit.

 

 

 

On 4/16/2022 at 6:04 PM, KJP said:

Want Great Lakes' water? You're welcome to move here or to pry it out of our cold, dead hands

 

More about water...

 

Interesting article about "Urban Villages" with proposed metrics for walkable neighborhoods:

 

Quote

These features allow people to reach common destinations without driving, but to achieve potential infrastructure savings, and reduce congestion, crashes, and emissions, it is also necessary to provide incentives to use the most efficient mode for each trip: walking and bicycling for local errands, public transit when traveling to other urban neighborhoods, and driving only when it is truly the most cost-effective option for a particular trip.

https://www.planetizen.com/blogs/116953-urban-village-planning-checklist

A similar description can be applied elsewhere, too

 

6 hours ago, KJP said:

A similar description can be applied elsewhere, too

 

 

Cleveland is brought up further down in his thread... we're even worse than Baltimore according to the stats. A similar argument can be made with crime stats too. I try explaining to so many people that Cleveland isn't as dangerous as the crime stats would let you believe but I can never seem to make the argument persuasive enough.

On 4/24/2022 at 7:44 PM, KJP said:

 

More about water...

 

I'm blown away by how people continue to talk about this problem, for instance:

 

Quote

If Lake Mead falls below 1,050 feet—which officials said was likely to happen in the next few years—it would trigger a Tier 2 shortage in which Arizona’s overall cutback will increase to 21% from 18% and cities will be significantly affected.  Nevada and Mexico’s allocations from the Colorado River, which are already starting to be trimmed, also will fall further.

 

"in the next few years" ? Lake Mead will be below 1050 feet before summer, probably in May. Just look at the trend line and it's obvious. With the holdback from Powell that was just decided on, it's likely Lake Mead will be below 1025 feet next year. It seems nobody is willing to confront just how immediate this crisis is.

 

It's like the firefighters show up and your house is burning down and they say "Well, we anticipate your house will burn down within the next several days. But don't worry, we've been planning for this situation for a long time."

21 hours ago, dastler said:

 

Cleveland is brought up further down in his thread... we're even worse than Baltimore according to the stats. A similar argument can be made with crime stats too. I try explaining to so many people that Cleveland isn't as dangerous as the crime stats would let you believe but I can never seem to make the argument persuasive enough.

Obviously, local news has a big role to play in overexposing people to crime rates but now we have the Citizen app which is a whole new level of fearmongering.

City-Data users' favorite new app

30% Of Americans Are Moving Because Of Climate Change In 2022

https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/features/americans-moving-climate-change/

 

Two reports....

 

Americans are moving out of urban counties like never before

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-moving-urban-counties-141924038.html

 

 

We’re in a historically overvalued housing market, and these cities could see home prices drop 10%, Moody’s says

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, believes some of the nation’s most overpriced housing markets could see home prices decline up to 10%.

https://fortune.com/2022/05/02/home-prices-in-these-markets-could-fall-moodys-says/amp/

^ Interesting....Cleveland-Elyria 8% and Columbus 27% "overvalued" according to Moody's.  

41 minutes ago, KJP said:

Americans are moving out of urban counties like never before

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-moving-urban-counties-141924038.html

Quote

As counties farther out from city centers grow their populations, city centers become hollowed out due to departing residents.

 

This will be an interesting trend to watch.  Looking at the population trends at the county level means that Cuyahoga County's population is decreasing, while the population of surrounding counties is increasing. That does seem to be true.  But downtown Cleveland is gaining population, and the best-loved neighborhoods from Tremont to Ohio City, Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights -- also are either stable or gaining population -- so where are the losses coming from? 

 

I'm guessing it's the older outer-ring suburbs losing out to even further-out suburbs in adjacent counties.  Westlake and North Olmsted moving to Avon and Avon Lake?  Maple Heights and Garfield Heights moving to Twinsburg?  Euclid and Mayfield moving out to Mentor?

 

25 minutes ago, Foraker said:

 

This will be an interesting trend to watch.  Looking at the population trends at the county level means that Cuyahoga County's population is decreasing, while the population of surrounding counties is increasing. That does seem to be true.  But downtown Cleveland is gaining population, and the best-loved neighborhoods from Tremont to Ohio City, Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights -- also are either stable or gaining population -- so where are the losses coming from? 

 

I'm guessing it's the older outer-ring suburbs losing out to even further-out suburbs in adjacent counties.  Westlake and North Olmsted moving to Avon and Avon Lake?  Maple Heights and Garfield Heights moving to Twinsburg?  Euclid and Mayfield moving out to Mentor?

Overall, Cuyahoga County's suburban population increased by 8,886 from 2010 to 2020 while Cleveland's population dropped by 24,191 during the same period.  For the entire county, the population dropped by 15,300.  Cleveland's drop is for the whole city.  Downtown and the best-loved neighborhoods have probably lessened the impact of losses in lesser-desirable neighborhoods.  I would have expected a drop in population for Euclid, but it increased by 720.  Mayfield Heights increased by 1200.  Maple Heights increased by 520.  Garfield Heights increased by 930.  Shaker Heights increased by 1000.  Cleveland Heights dropped by 800.  Lakewood dropped by 1190.  Westlake increased by 1500.  North Olmsted dropped by 280.  These statistics are all from the U.S. Census Bureau.

 

Just speculation on my part on Euclid, Mayfield Heights and Maple Heights, but those three cities have seen significant increases in rental property houses in the most recent decade (Channel 5 story from October).  Larger numbers of homes that had elderly residents have in many cases seen changes to population residents who are renters.  The previous residents who may have been empty-nesters or living alone have now been replaced residents that are couples or families.

I have to look at some of these reports like the one about most urban counties losing in 2021 with a huge grain of salt. They mentioned that nothing like this has happened in the last 50 years-well yeah, we had a pandemic of the scale not seen in 100 years. We will have to see what happens next-I really think that predictions at this point with everything that has happened in the last 2 years are somewhat futile.

And it was a notoriously bad census.

6 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

And it was a notoriously bad census.

Just a damn mess. 

My boss, who lives in Portage County (natch) and is always talking down cities and urban living, couldn’t wait to send us that EIG report the other day. I pointed out to him that the, fairly arbitrary, definition used of ‘Urban Counties’ accounted for IIRC 230+million people, so the ‘exodus’ (LOL) that grabbed all the clicks, was in fact, around a third of one percent of that population. Come back to me when it’s a trend and not a data point. And yes, the census was a sh*t-show no thanks to the administration that he undoubtedly helped vote into power in 2016. 

5 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

And it was a notoriously bad census.

 

5 hours ago, Toddguy said:

Just a damn mess. 

Yes, it was a bad census, no arguing that.  I also want to know the number of households who just decided to not do their duty and not respond to the census.  Good census or not, it makes no difference if people just don't complete it.

On 5/5/2022 at 1:15 PM, roman totale XVII said:

My boss, who lives in Portage County (natch) and is always talking down cities and urban living, couldn’t wait to send us that EIG report the other day. I pointed out to him that the, fairly arbitrary, definition used of ‘Urban Counties’ accounted for IIRC 230+million people, so the ‘exodus’ (LOL) that grabbed all the clicks, was in fact, around a third of one percent of that population. Come back to me when it’s a trend and not a data point. And yes, the census was a sh*t-show no thanks to the administration that he undoubtedly helped vote into power in 2016. 

 

I think I would enjoy submitting my resignation to your boss. And EIG tends to be on the conservative side although I've seen them attempt to be bipartisan. 

The questions most Americans don’t realize they should be asking:

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-midwest-danger-rotating-power-blackouts-this-summer-2022-06-03/
 

This seems like a problem. Also (although I’m all for clean energy) a bit of an indictment of the “decarbonize now” crowd.

On 6/7/2022 at 10:38 PM, LlamaLawyer said:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-midwest-danger-rotating-power-blackouts-this-summer-2022-06-03/
 

This seems like a problem. Also (although I’m all for clean energy) a bit of an indictment of the “decarbonize now” crowd.

This literally happened in the past 24 hours throughout the Midwest. The forced closing of power plants before they’ve reached their end date is a major problem which began under the Obama administration. The infrastructure was not yet in place for these closings to happen and we are seeing and feeling the results now.

5 hours ago, wpcc88 said:

This literally happened in the past 24 hours throughout the Midwest. The forced closing of power plants before they’ve reached their end date is a major problem which began under the Obama administration. The infrastructure was not yet in place for these closings to happen and we are seeing and feeling the results now.

 

Classic case of virtue signaling without expecting to deal with any potential consequences.   

 

I go back on forth on whether or not there's a deliberate effort to restrict the availability of energy to keep costs high and push more limited lifestyle choices.   I still sometimes feel that's a bit paranoid, but there's times I'm not so sure.

8 hours ago, wpcc88 said:

This literally happened in the past 24 hours throughout the Midwest. The forced closing of power plants before they’ve reached their end date is a major problem which began under the Obama administration. The infrastructure was not yet in place for these closings to happen and we are seeing and feeling the results now.

So, genuinely curious for some further background on this. I’m not saying it’s incorrect, but these are some strong statements ascribing blame directly on a specific political/administration policy, when there is nothing in the linked article that connects to this. 
 

In fact, if anything it’s to the contrary: In one of the highlighted plant shutdowns, Reuters links to another article that is titled “In blow to Biden climate goals, Entergy shuts nuclear power plant” and goes on to state “Entergy Corp (ETR.N) said on Friday it has permanently shut a nuclear power station in Michigan despite a Biden administration plan to rescue plants like it because they generate electricity virtually free of carbon emissions.”

 

(Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/blow-biden-climate-plan-entergy-shuts-nuclear-power-plant-2022-05-20/)

 

So, could it be that perhaps - Just like in Texas in 2021 - it is more complicated than blaming one man, administration, or policy direction for the complicated challenges our power grid faces? 🤔

2 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

Classic case of virtue signaling without expecting to deal with any potential consequences.   

 

I go back on forth on whether or not there's a deliberate effort to restrict the availability of energy to keep costs high and push more limited lifestyle choices.   I still sometimes feel that's a bit paranoid, but there's times I'm not so sure.

 

You're not paranoid, Eric. They really are out to get you. 

10 hours ago, wpcc88 said:

This literally happened in the past 24 hours throughout the Midwest. The forced closing of power plants before they’ve reached their end date is a major problem which began under the Obama administration. The infrastructure was not yet in place for these closings to happen and we are seeing and feeling the results now.

Okay, well the Columbus power outage was caused by a storm. I don't think it's at all related to the potential rolling blackouts being warned of. Ohio isn't even on the MISO, which is the system expected to have problems..

2 hours ago, brtshrcegr said:

So, genuinely curious for some further background on this. I’m not saying it’s incorrect, but these are some strong statements ascribing blame directly on a specific political/administration policy, when there is nothing in the linked article that connects to this. 
 

In fact, if anything it’s to the contrary: In one of the highlighted plant shutdowns, Reuters links to another article that is titled “In blow to Biden climate goals, Entergy shuts nuclear power plant” and goes on to state “Entergy Corp (ETR.N) said on Friday it has permanently shut a nuclear power station in Michigan despite a Biden administration plan to rescue plants like it because they generate electricity virtually free of carbon emissions.”

 

(Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/blow-biden-climate-plan-entergy-shuts-nuclear-power-plant-2022-05-20/)

 

So, could it be that perhaps - Just like in Texas in 2021 - it is more complicated than blaming one man, administration, or policy direction for the complicated challenges our power grid faces? 🤔

This is 100% true. We could have more power in Ohio, for instance, if Republicans weren't trying to steamroll the Icebreaker project.

 

The blame goes both ways. Decarbonizing without a good secure plan is a bad idea. Refusing cost-effective carbon-neutral solutions is an even worse idea!

I don't recall hearing that the Obama Administration or any recent admin has "forced" power plants to close - if anything, governments have been propping up power companies. The closed coal generating stations were economic decisions made by the power companies themselves. 

I think about the nearly 100-year-old coal-fired Picway Plant just south of Columbus that shut down a few years back and its colossal 1MW output near the end. How many other ones that closed were little like that?

1 hour ago, GCrites80s said:

I think about the nearly 100-year-old coal-fired Picway Plant just south of Columbus that shut down a few years back and its colossal 1MW output near the end. How many other ones that closed were little like that?

 

I actually worked at the Picway plant for a while in my five years of dealing with AEP's Clean Air Act litigation, early 2000's. The lawsuits initially gained momentum from state environmental groups, particularly downwind states in the northeast, who were then joined by the US EPA during the Clinton Administration. When Bush was elected he declined alter the existing policy and public demands for cleaner air. 

32 minutes ago, surfohio said:

 

I actually worked at the Picway plant for a while in my five years of dealing with AEP's Clean Air Act litigation, early 2000's. The lawsuits initially gained momentum from state environmental groups, particularly downwind states in the northeast, who were then joined by the US EPA during the Clinton Administration. When Bush was elected he declined alter the existing policy and public demands for cleaner air. 

Hmm. Seems a bit more nuanced and involved than #thanksobama

6 hours ago, LlamaLawyer said:

Okay, well the Columbus power outage was caused by a storm. I don't think it's at all related to the potential rolling blackouts being warned of. Ohio isn't even on the MISO, which is the system expected to have problems..

If you think it was caused strictly by a storm I’m not sure what to tell you but that’s not the whole truth.  The grid was stressed and plants going offline before there was infrastructure in place to make up for them was a major part of the problem.

 

I am not blaming the man himself but the push to close coal fired plants began under Obama in his second term and that’s a fact. A simple google will show you and that also includes the ones closed in the first year of Trumps administration. I will also mention this was a major failure of Kasichs administration as well, he didn’t do much to help us through it.

 

Other posters can blame the costs of operations but that was only an issue because of new regulations. The utilities had spent billions on technology and upgrades which had led to these plants already being a cleaner resource than their predecessors. This led to AEP and other utilities in the state to sell a lot of their plants during this time.

 

Btw I want all forms of energy on the table so our grid is as secure and plentiful as possible. Also want lines buried from here on out, no more excuses.

3 hours ago, brtshrcegr said:

Hmm. Seems a bit more nuanced and involved than #thanksobama

This isn’t a satirical #thanksobama moment, the fact remains his administrations EPA regulations forced a lot of the closures.

Everything I've heard says that multiple transmission lines were severed during the storm in Columbus, which routed all electricity through a few areas, and that was causing them to be overloaded and requiring periodic shutdowns. I don't think it was a generation issue. I could be wrong, and there might be info i haven't seen (I'm talking specifically about the issues in Columbus this week)

2 hours ago, ryanlammi said:

Everything I've heard says that multiple transmission lines were severed during the storm in Columbus, which routed all electricity through a few areas, and that was causing them to be overloaded and requiring periodic shutdowns. I don't think it was a generation issue. I could be wrong, and there might be info i haven't seen (I'm talking specifically about the issues in Columbus this week)

Yup, this week’s outage has nothing to do with supply; it’s all about delivery. 

6 hours ago, wpcc88 said:

This isn’t a satirical #thanksobama moment, the fact remains his administrations EPA regulations forced a lot of the closures.

 

No, it was the inevitable conclusion of the lawsuits initiated years before.  By 2003 The Picway plant and numerous others were operated by skeleton crews and everyone in the industry knew the days for these antiquated plants were numbered.

 

These older plants were all in obvious violation of the Clean AIr Act and they lasted decades longer than anyone had  anticipated. 

The future of America and its cities was not going to be powered by coal even if Congress had completely eliminated the EPA and every law and regulation it ever enforced in 2005 and it was never reinstated.  The market has moved decisively in favor of wind, utility-scale solar, and natural gas, with an asterisk over natural gas at this point because fuel price inflation will likely hit that segment over the next decade.  The market has also moved substantially in favor of commercial-scale solar, and many Fortune 500 companies have aggressively been taking advantage of that fact, particularly ones that operate energy-hogging data centers.  Residential solar has not declined by as much as other forms of generation over the past decade, but there could still be some serious positive externalities from more widespread adoption of ordinary consumers acting like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft and moving their generation to on-premise, not least of which would be partial protection from outages, whether caused by disasters or merely by excessive demand.  It's not market-competitive right now even with the 26% (2022) or 22% (2023) tax credit subsidy, so as long as people generally trust the power grid, don't expect widespread adoption, but it's still worth thinking about for the purposes of this thread.  Resilience tends to be undervalued by the market, since it's seldom clear how fragile something is until it's disrupted (see, e.g., the global supply chain at the moment).

 

On 6/15/2022 at 12:12 AM, wpcc88 said:

This literally happened in the past 24 hours throughout the Midwest. The forced closing of power plants before they’ve reached their end date is a major problem which began under the Obama administration. The infrastructure was not yet in place for these closings to happen and we are seeing and feeling the results now.

 

So these "end dates" (useful life expectancies) of power plants can be a little flexible but not endlessly so, and many of the coal plants that have shuttered were past their originally projected useful life expectancies, and in fact, some are still operating that are past the end of their useful life expectancies.

 

This is not a carbon-vs-carbon-free issue.  For the last decade, the overwhelming majority of all new installation has been solar, wind, and natural gas; that's two carbon-free sources and one carbon-emitting source.  We do not have publicly owned utilities.  These were business decisions based on what was the cheapest.

 

With significant inflation being a national problem again, I expect natural gas prices to continue to rise (which they have been, though not as rapidly as oil: https://www.macrotrends.net/2478/natural-gas-prices-historical-chart).

 

13 hours ago, wpcc88 said:

I am not blaming the man himself but the push to close coal fired plants began under Obama in his second term and that’s a fact. A simple google will show you and that also includes the ones closed in the first year of Trumps administration. I will also mention this was a major failure of Kasichs administration as well, he didn’t do much to help us through it.

 

Other posters can blame the costs of operations but that was only an issue because of new regulations. The utilities had spent billions on technology and upgrades which had led to these plants already being a cleaner resource than their predecessors. This led to AEP and other utilities in the state to sell a lot of their plants during this time.

 

Btw I want all forms of energy on the table so our grid is as secure and plentiful as possible. Also want lines buried from here on out, no more excuses.

 

Which regulations do you mean specifically?

 

The largest new Obama EPA regulation of coal plants came in 2015, towards the end of his term.  It was repealed by the Trump EPA in 2019: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/epa-expected-to-gut-obama-rule-on-coal-power-plants.

 

Notwithstanding that, the list of coal plants scheduled for deactivation over the next decade is significant: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-coal-fired-power-plants-scheduled-shut-2021-10-28/.  From that article:

Quote

 

Coal was the primary fuel for U.S. power plants for much of the last century, but its use has been declining since peaking in 2007. That was around the same time drillers figured out how to use hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling economically pull gas out of shale formations.

 

Gas overtook coal as the leading fuel for U.S. power plants in 2016, according to federal data, and has held that title ever since.

 

 

This has accompanied a transformational decline in the price of solar power installation, especially at utility scale: https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2021/documenting-a-decade-of-cost-declines-for-pv-systems.html:

 

Quote

Since 2010, there has been a 64%, 69%, and 82% reduction in the cost of residential, commercial-rooftop, and utility-scale PV systems, respectively. As in previous years, soft costs remain a large and persistent portion of installation costs, for both solar and storage systems, and especially for commercial and residential systems.

 

The decline mostly continued through 2021, too, again with commercial- and utility-scale declining the most: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/us-utility-scale-solar-storage-prices-drop-12-in-past-year-but-supply-c/610825/.

 

While the residential rooftop installation cost has not declined quite as much as other systems, for the purposes of this thread, it's the most interesting to me because of its potential implications for the future of America and its cities.  In particular, rooftop installation remains more expensive than utility-scale solar (or other kinds of power), but is more physically resilient because the transmission to the primary customer is a matter of feet, not miles.  If a utility is constrained by circumstances to impose a rotating blackout, or if storms simply disrupt transmission, the ability to generate power at home can at least turn a blackout into a brownout.

 

People joke that Ohio is a bad environment for solar because of frequent cloud cover and northern latitude.  It's really not.  Germany is farther north than Ohio, but I saw solar panels on a surprising number of residential roofs there (including some that were visually striking because the houses otherwise looked like they were built as backdrops for Grimm fairly tales).

 

That said, most Americans would have to significantly adjust their lifestyles if they wanted to rely on solar + storage for their entire energy demand.  A typical residential solar rooftop installation is around 5kW or 6kW.  Even if storage were free and unlimited, I wouldn't be able to draw enough power from that to power my house for a 24-hour cycle (since 5kW times about 12 hours of daylight would be about 60kWh/day or 1800kWh/month, and I use more than that in the summer).

@Gramarye All of your points are extremely well taken.

 

It's a little bit ludicrous to blame these issues (which are long in coming) on Biden.

 

I think the problem (which no one person or party is to blame for) is that for the past 35 years we haven't been investing enough in new and existing technologies. In the not-so-distant past, there was far too much opposition from environmentalists to nuclear and hydroelectric power. Carl Sagan's testimony to Congress in 1985 should have been a massive wake up call to invest in nuclear and other existing alternative energy sources. Instead, 1985 was about the peak year for nuclear plant construction and our nuclear generation capacity peaked in 1996. Our hydroelectricity capacity also peaked the 1980s. In 1985, nuclear and hydroelectric alone made up more than 27% of our electricity generation. In 2011, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, and wind combined to make up just over 30% of our electric generation. Today, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, and wind make up 37.2% of our electrical generation. Nuclear and hydroelectric are a smaller percentage of our generation now than they were in 1985.

 

So from 1985 to 2011 in terms of our actual renewable generation capacity we basically accomplished nothing.

 

And so the problem now is we are starting to walk down a bridge that isn't fully built and doesn't even have finished blueprints. True renewables* are still only about a third of electricity generation and are only up 10% since 1985. But at the same time, we (understandably) are phasing out fossil fuels (in particular coal). So meeting our 2030 climate goals means converting about 40% of our current fossil fuel electricity generation (representing about 25% of our total generation) in the next 7.5 years. We have 7.5 years to accomplish 2.5x what we accomplished from 1985 to present. I am not convinced this is actually possible using wind and solar. And the problem that is resulting is that in at least some localized areas we have lost power generation at a faster pace than we've been able to replace it. Thus the blackout concerns.

 

If we had done things better in the 1980s and 1990s, we'd be in the position of France, with most of our energy being nuclear and less than 10% coming from fossil fuels.

 

And so that's why I said initially the problem is partly on the "decarbonize now" crowd. Because for all the talk of "green new deal" and our goals, there is no actual plan I've ever seen. And if someone on this forum is aware of one, I'd love to see it. But I've never seen a plan that actually explains how we're gonna build enough solar panels and windmills to halve our 2005 emissions in the next eight years.

 

I've also never seen a plan proposed to build 200 nuclear plants over the next 20 years. Though that actually might let us meet our GHG goals.

 

 

 

* I refuse to count biomass based diesel and ethanol as being "renewables." They're stupid gimmicks.

While I'm on the topic, I also have to add that the average French citizen's carbon footprint (which again, I think France should be a model) is higher than the average human. In other words, notwithstanding that 93% of French electricity comes from hydro, nuclear, and renewables, French still create more greenhouse gas emissions than the average human. This illustrates the challenge we face with the developing world.

@LlamaLawyer, a couple of points on this:

 

I draw a distinction between renewable and clean.

 

Nuclear is clean but not renewable.  It consumes a fuel, and that fuel is only produced in hearts of supernovae, so Earth cannot acquire any more of it (absent sci-fi concepts like asteroid mining).

 

Biomass and ethanol are renewable.  They're just not cost-effective.  The definition of "renewable" has nothing to do with cost-effectiveness.

 

Solar and wind are renewable.  Earth will get more sunlight tomorrow.  It will get more wind tomorrow.  It will not get more uranium.

 

I need to look more into hydropower, but I hesitate to rely too much on that because we have too many other uses for fresh water--it would be more optimal to get power from somewhere else if we can.  We won't run out of wind or sun; we can run out of flowing water (or at least run low on it), as disturbing as that is to think about (I've seen some disturbing headlines about rivers in the West, including the Colorado).

 

But also, going back to this thread's primary topic, switching from coal to nuclear won't change cities that much more than switching from coal to wind.  There will be large generation stations sited many miles from population centers, with large, expensive transmission grid infrastructure to get that power to our cities, where most of it will be consumed.  The average urban resident won't see any difference.  Only on-premise generation would involve real changes to urban design (even if it were just on the roofs of big box stores and warehouses and distribution centers, but particularly if it became ordinary to have it on the roofs of residences as well).

13 minutes ago, Gramarye said:

 

 

Biomass and ethanol are renewable.  They're just not cost-effective.  The definition of "renewable" has nothing to do with cost-effectiveness.

 

 

No I get this. I'm just saying it because (1) it's not carbon neutral, (2) with ethanol it takes the equivalent of 100 gallons of gas to produce an acre of corn, which then produces something like 450 gallons of ethanol, and (3) if it's not cost effective or not scaleable, what's the point in even discussing it? There are an infinite number of not cost-effective ways to generate renewable energy. If we're gonna talk seriously about ethanol, maybe we should discuss getting a bunch of people on stationary bikes to power our cities.

 

25 minutes ago, Gramarye said:

But also, going back to this thread's primary topic, switching from coal to nuclear won't change cities that much more than switching from coal to wind.  There will be large generation stations sited many miles from population centers, with large, expensive transmission grid infrastructure to get that power to our cities, where most of it will be consumed.  The average urban resident won't see any difference.

 

I agree with that. The point I'm making is just that there is a blueprint for achieving most power through nuclear (e.g. France). There is also a blueprint for hydro (i.e. Norway). There is no blueprint for achieving most power through wind and solar. As far as I can tell, no country on earth gets more than half of its power from a combination of wind and solar (Denmark is the leader here). The U.S. plans call for XX% renewables in year 20XX but (as far as I can tell) have no technical plan for how to get there. E.g. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/US-Long-Term-Strategy.pdf

This photo is devastating. I realize this is a historical photo in a thread about the future but sometimes we need to know our history in order to change our future...

 

 

Saw this post, and thought it was fitting for here. 
 

Edited June 23, 20222 yr by VintageLife

Saw this one recently too