re: #80 Nojay UK

They are considering shutting down their lignite (i.e. dirt) power stations by, I think, 2038 because they need the electricity right now and solar plus wind plus natural gas can’t guarantee to keep the lights on if the weather is “wrong”. The short periods when renewables supplied their total demand for electricity doesn’t cover the entire yearly demands, and of course they burn a lot of natural gas for heating and process energy as well as oil for transport, aircraft etc., all of which needs to be decarbonised too.

My nuclear solution doesn’t need the weather to be right all the time, it produces enough energy for heating, lighting, washing machines, transport for EVERYONE on the planet, not just the rich nations and enough surplus at times to allocate a teraWatt or two to active CO2 decarbonisation.

Germany envisages burning even more natural gas over the coming decades, not less even with expanded renewables (many of which are approaching end-of-life and will need to be decommissioned and replaced over the coming decade).

If I had access to a big chunk of the Sahara, I would be wracking my brains trying to figure out how to build a terrawatt-capable solar plant there, and to get the electricity to any place in Africa that was willing to build infrastructure to tap into it. That just seems like a place where you can mostly count on the sun, day in and day out.