Hacker News Reader

A few things

> If we could wave a magic wand and completely stop our CO2 emissions it wouldn't move the needle on global warming at all.

Some people completely ignore the fact that it does help, it may not help the ozone above China, but having a country that is not pumping out ash and other byproducts into the air does make it citizens healthier. They live longer, they have less health issues, they pay more taxes (potentially longer job life span), and they are happier. So regardless of the short sighted "we are too small to do anything" statement. It does help.

> Notwithstanding these facts, the government went all in on renewables and cutting down on emissions -- despite it not making any sense -- because it's a popular measure across all age groups.

Another interesting statement, should it not make sense for a government to do what it's citizens want?

> Energy companies had to invest in still unproven renewable tech which was very costly.

Solar is fairly new, but wind is certainly not new in any fashion, along with water it is one of the oldest forms of energy generation that exist. If anything coal/nuclear are newer than wind. And tidal assuming a stable tidal pattern is also an easy engineering issue to solve. I am not sure beyond solar you can argue "unproven renewable tech".

> Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently, like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech.

You can't really say that, if that's an argument then nobody would ever buy anything, because it could always be better and cheaper later.

I get the reasoning for your statement, because investing in natural gas or other oil methods like that can provide more faster for the general populace. But there is no reason that renewable cannot ALSO do that, it's just nobody has an example of such case. And there are plenty of examples with gas.

> Another interesting statement, should it not make sense for a government to do what it's citizens want?

Nope, not always, and this is why direct democracy is pretty inefficient. People aren't experts, are often shortsighted and thinking at the micro level: many government policies and choices need long term thinking and expertise at the macro level. Take a look at Switzerland - "green" measures such as a carbon tax, which is considered by many experts as one of the best policies to reduce CO2 emissions, was refused by voters, because they're thinking about the impact it will have on them personally, now, and not about all the negative things which will be reduced with such a tax.

It would cost them a lot of money and have no impact on CO2 levels. Chinese and Indians will not magnanimously sacrifice their money to lower their CO2, and if they don't then it doesn't matter.

With that attitude, nobody is going to do anything.

The rest of the world can encourage China and India with economic sanctions if they won’t come along for the renewables and EV ride. With that said, China at least is an example of moving to EVs and renewables rapidly.

China is the world's manufacturing powerhouse. It's very difficult to get the economic leverage to sanction China, and convincing developing nations to go along would be virtually impossible.

> China is the world's manufacturing powerhouse. It's very difficult to get the economic leverage to sanction China, and convincing developing nations to go along would be virtually impossible.

You don't buy from them. This is already happening [1] [2] [3]. Developing nations have no purchasing power compared to the developed world. They'll kowtow to developed world hegemony if push comes to shove (at least within the scope of US foreign aid [~$40B/year] and dollar dominance).

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=manufacturing+moving+away+fr...

[2] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/manufacturers-move-away-fr...

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/china-factory-of-the-world-i...

Could we explore a bit in how it would cost them money. Taxes in general get back into the economy unless the government stockpile the revenue or invest them over sea. It would increase costs for companies doing exports, raising costs on mining (29.9% of total exports), and maybe organic chemicals exports. Switzerland second largest export is Pharmaceuticals, but I am unsure how much a carbon tax would impact that industry.

If they also applied it to imports then countries with high CO2 would have a harder time to export to Switzerland. Having less access to cheap products with high carbon footprint would add a costs to citizens, as alternative products will likely cost more, but then it would also encourage industries in China/India to produce products with lower footprint in order to compete on markets with carbon taxes/tariffs based on carbon footprint. It might even encourage local productions which can be a boon for the economy.

Poor countries have no incentive to pay carbon fees. Then have rich countries pay their carbon fees? So then tax payers of developed nations take the hit and have their own economic output lowered while countries ignoring carbon fees move ahead. It's a death spiral.

Have a look at Steven Koonin's "Unsettled". He was an Obama DOE appointee and Provost of Caltech (he's a physicist). He makes convincing arguments that the climate change models are highly unreliable. It's not Fox News garbage, he's legit.

The US and EU are making very large policy moves based on models that are not necessarily accurate.

But if the models are inaccurate, what if they are inaccurate in the optimistic direction?

That’s how error bars work and why they are indicated as +/-

Because the evidence doesn't point that way, and it's very expensive to make such an assumption, especially when much of the rest of the world doesn't follow.

I dunno... it's expensive in the short term but you end up with an energy infrastructure that makes you energy independent and where costs will only go down over time since solar/wind/batteries are all on a Moore's law like cost trajectory.

Fossil fuels meanwhile will on average only get more expensive over time because they are being depleted, and this isn't considering other externalities besides CO2 emissions.

There are reasons besides climate change to get off fossil fuel.

>Nope, not always, and this is why direct democracy is pretty inefficient. People aren't experts

This was also the Monarchist argument for not even allowing representative democracy (rule by "rabble").

Swiss laws are actually fairly decent while your American representative democracy proves that representative democracy really is rule-by-experts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes

> This was also the Monarchist argument for not even allowing representative democracy (rule by "rabble").

And their premise was stupid because rule by inheritance has zero guarantees. A representative democracy can more easily have a meritocratic aspect to it.

> your American representative democracy

I'm not american, and they literally have one of the worst possible "democratic" systems, so shouldn't be used for anything else other than an example on what not to do.

>> Notwithstanding these facts, the government went all in on renewables and cutting down on emissions -- despite it not making any sense -- because it's a popular measure across all age groups.

> Another interesting statement, should it not make sense for a government to do what it's citizens want?

"and now we have one the highest energy prices in all of Europe."

'want' is an evolving metric. I'm sure they want low energy prices now.

Something like 80% of Portugal's solar has been installed since 2018[1], when solar was on-par with if not cheaper than any other form of electricity generation. And that's from aggregate perspective, the economics are definitely better for Portugal. There were PPA being signed in similar geographies for 3c/kwh that year. I wouldn't be surprised if the defrayed cost from lower fossil fuel usage just since the start of war in Ukraine has fully offset the cost of the installation. I'm not sure why you think this has been so costly for average citizens.

[1] https://www.pv-tech.org/portugal-installs-more-solar-pv-in-2...

It's so typically Portuguese to look at good news and somehow see it as bad news. I'm Portuguese, and I too suffer from this syndrome at times.

Not this time. Glad to see Portugal is on the right track.

You missed the point.

Us not polluting is, obviously, great news.

What we had to do to get to get here is the bad news. We chose to invest cash we don't have in fixing a problem we don't (really) cause and to which we don't (really) have a solution for. This, while 1/4 of the population earns minimum wage. My conclusion still stands.

Not to invalidate what you're saying, but surely every country has it's problems? While the problems you sight are significant, if this has been the case for a while, would they have been resolved if all the money had not been invested into renewables?

It sounds like culturally, those problems would still exist today i.e. due to corruption, but at least you have the renewables in place, as opposed to not have them.

I feel like you're looking for an ideal version that doesn't exist in reality.

I am not Portuguese but live here for some years now. It surprises me often how happy Portuguese can be with minor details that work while there are so many much more serious problems.

For example: some years ago several people mentioned the roads of Portugal were the best of Europe. I had a hard time believing because many local roads were worse than I remember from most countries. After the 3rd person or so I started wondering and looked it up. Turned out this was only for highways, which Portugal has only a few and build with EU money. Plus Portugal was actually only second, the Dutch highways were the best. Something I suspect at that time was not really frontpage news in the Netherlands. Until today many local roads are very bad.

I live in Ohio, but spent a couple of weeks in Portugal last year, including in some remote areas... Your roads on the whole are better than ours, by a long shot.

"Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently, like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech."

Yeah, everyone could just wait, until the magic revolutionary renewable tech comes around the corner and everyone implements it at once. Except progress usually does not work like that.

People do not learn to install solar panels or wind turbines over night. You want a solid growing workforce that can do that. And if not enough people are buying it, no one will produce those panels, can install or maintain them, or develope better ones.

And if this doesn't happen, then we will soon really learn, what a migration crisis looks like.

Depending on your priorities and your constraints, there's a sort of "optimal" time to enter the market. If you look at the technology adoption curve, early adopters are those with excess cash. If you don't have excess cash, your money is better spent entering the cycle later, when the technology evolution is close to plateauing (when all the major issues have been sorted out, and now the improvements are only marginal).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle

For infrastructure, some countries (rich ones) can be early adopters, because early adoption means more cash outlay for technology that is still rapidly evolving and will likely be outdated soon, which requires replacement. But poorer countries might find it more prudent to be Early Majority or Late Majority adopters. Consider subway systems -- early adopters like NYC made it possible for technology to improve. But if you look at subways in Asia, many systems are far more technologically advanced than NY's MTA because they came online later, when train technology had matured and they could afford more with less $.

We need early adopters, but that doesn't mean everyone needs to be an early adopter.

"We need early adopters, but that doesn't mean everyone needs to be an early adopter."

That's right, but the time for early adopters with renewables was 20+ years ago.

And so it was. But even back then, not every country ought to have been one. The US should have been. It has the cash and the ability to continuously invest and upgrade. Papua New Guinea, maybe not. They have other things to invest in that are more pressing than bootstrapping nascent technology. That’s my point.

Wrong take, and a prime example of the national sport of being overly negative and pessimistic.

Portugal did go early into the wind power game. It had its costs but also produced know-how and a relevant industry stake in that market.

The solar installation effort was much better timed. Solar being fed into the grid is a lot cheaper than other sources, except for hydro (built in the 60s/70s, mostly already paid for).

The current push will create 40GW of capacity, for a country that uses 9GW peak. It should be enough to run the country 100% on renewables. That's a game changer.

Remove oil/gas imports from the national trade balance, and Portugal is suddenly a very very rich country.

> Remove oil/gas imports from the national trade balance, and Portugal is suddenly a very very rich country.

Is energy that much of typical person's spend? And internal creation of energy doesn't drop the cost to consumers to zero.

It is a relevant portion of a personal budget, if you include transportation costs. On a national level, though, it's huge. Portugal imports all of its oil and gas, and has a trade balance that is permanently on the slightly negative side. Energy is a very easy way to fix that, with excellent economic second order effects.

> If we could wave a magic wand and completely stop our CO2 emissions it wouldn't move the needle on global warming at all.

That stance could be held by virtually every country, condemning us to collective inaction.

GP's point is that Portugal wasn't the best placed country to go all-in on renewable energy because it was already economically in trouble and that the last thing Portuguese people needed was higher energy prices.

There are other countries that have stronger economies which are better placed to "go green".

That's just wrong. If China (29%) and the US (14%) waved the said wand we'd cut down emissions by almost 50% and would be looking at a completely different scenario.

> I'd like to offer a more critical perspective as a Portuguese living in Portugal.

I’d like to offer some context for comments such as these as a portuguese living in Portugal.

The portuguese have very low self-esteem as a people. They very often criticize their own country in very harsh terms with a strong bias towards “the grass is always greener on the other side” and tend to steer conversations away from any positive aspects (most often by trying to present them as negative).

Foreigners are expected to passively agree with negative comments about Portugal. But beware: contributing with additional negative aspects is frowned upon and will trigger a sudden patriotic episode.

You made the politicians who signed off on this very wealthy. Government programs mean big contracts, and the people who decide on those contracts always get their slice.

If they were serious about decarbonization they'd be pushing next gen nuclear to the point that electricity was so cheap that fossil tech couldn't compete.

What we're doing now is subsidizing cheap oil for China, while soaking American and European consumers, but the politicians are getting their slice, so why not?

Nuclear power stations are built solely for the purposes of supporting a nuclear military (like in Russia, the USA or France) or building nuclear weapons in a hurry (like in Sweden, Iran or South Korea).

No country does it for any other reason. Certainly not for the environment. The cost is absolutely prohibitive (5x solar/wind) and it demands lavish subsidies even if you discount the nearly free government-granted catastrophe insurance.

The only way to make it cheap for the consumer is to have paid off the plants because they were built 50 years ago and to neglect their maintenance. Like France.

Pumped storage, solar and wind meanwhile, are very, very reasonably priced.

> If they were serious about decarbonization they'd be pushing next gen nuclear

Well, then you must be overjoyed to learn that in the US just that is being done. Between the Infrastructure Act and the IRA there's money for:

- new technology development

- a nuclear production tax credit

- domestic fuel so we don't have to buy uranium from Russia

I'm sure after learning this you will feel moved to write Joe Biden a thank you card for implementing the exact policy you are advocating.

> and now we have one the highest energy prices in all of Europe

I hear that over and over again but... looking at my last EDP bill I find that I pay €0.15/kWh so what am I missing?

It is good that something has been improved, and now you have concrete proof that change in the right direction is possible.

Now that renewables are on the rise, the same effort can be put into other things that need improvement. It's a great start!

> Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently, like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech.

Brazil has been investing in renewables for nearly a century. For instance, the Henry Borden hydroelectric power plant is from 1926.

We built 12 hydro power plants in the 1950s. That's not really what the OP is talking about, but a trend in the early 2000s of overbuilding wind at prices that didn't make sense for the next 20 years, and hardly make sense now, 20 years later. Building solar now (which is as much responsible for current results as anything else) also makes financial sense.

By being early, I hope that you have acquired expertise that you can now export.