You're seriously suggesting allowing half a million people to die per year unnecessarily in order to incentivize them to adopt cleaner power plants.
OK, then I am happy to withdraw my characterization of your comment. Your comment just adds nothing substantive to the discussion.
> If they're willing to spend money powering jet engines to shoot the smog higher into the atmosphere, why won't they transition to using a cleaner energy source that requires less money to maintain?
Because one is orders of magnitude more expensive than the other. It's as unrelated as bringing up carbon emissions by cars when people are discussing highway safety.
It is reminiscent of the "clean-coal" marketing scheme that already exists in the United States and that's what most people in this thread are discussing.
You need a few hundred (400-600) tons of coal per hour per one decently sized BLOCK (few hundred MW), usually power plants have several of those, sometimes a dozen or more, a few jet engines running at full blast its a big deal compared with a FUCKING POWER PLANT /rant
Also, none of the renewable energy sources are cheaper than coal, especially when you look at the bigger picture (mostly unutilised capacity, grid overbuild requirements, volatility)
>They could transition to a combined cycle plant if they wanted to increase efficiency.
And who is going to pay for that? How do they fuel them? They already have to import a sizable part of their natural gas consumption. Do they spend even more and add coal gassification?
India is building out nuclear, obviously after Fukushima retards made sure to obstruct as much as they could
Again, the issue is smog, that is killing right fucking now. Should they just ignore the problem and develop a massive program so you feel better?
The problem with coal is not power production, it's the infrastructure of power distribution that makes going off grid so viable.
Once you take the feed-in away the benefit is not so clear cut. Also, many people dump the externalities of home solar on everyone else (the negative spot electricity price) and then use cheap power from the grid for most of the 24h cycle
Where do you think going off grid is so viable?
Granted, my electric would only be 50-60$ a month so the savings is also not huge, but that still adds up to 9-11k in 15 years and panels last well past that.
PS: Solar quietly got really cheap, installation is often one of the major costs.
Sure, let's let them suffocate, starve or have their society collapse, as long as they are not burning coal!