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Comment by Mildlypolite | Hacker News Reader

They also say that the technology is here right now to decrease co2 emissions significantly.

Here in Italy ENEL (the major electricity provider) proposed a huge investment in renewables that could decrease the cost of electricity by 40%, create 80.000 jobs, just by authorising renewable projects which are already proposed and waiting authorization. This would increase the percentage of renewable energy to 70%.

This is not impossible at all.

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It’s time for massive public works projects once again. If we can spend trillions on military and billions bailing out “too big to fail” failures, we can spend significantly on re-developing our nations for the new reality of our climate and environmental limitations. We need to fund all facets of new approaches to energy and waste.

This is a weird response to the parent post. They say all we have to do is approve permits, and you reply that a massive public works project is required. Do you fundamentally disagree with them?

I read it as "we should definitely do more of these"

All you have to do is look at the impacts of predominantly renewable generation on the west coast to see that just building renewables is insufficient. CA is massively renewable but storage starved and as a result heavily leans on neighboring states dirty generation to balance the grid. We need storage projects and transmission upgrades, the generation itself is the cheap and easy part.

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