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Comment by peterspath | Hacker News Reader

But at what cost?

Energy is very expensive which makes everything expensive like normal cost like groceries, heating, everyday transportation. Housing market is the worst, too little houses are being build because of all the rules. Too many people are being let in which is leading to an overheated market for buying and renting houses.

For normal people this is a bad situation. It’s only good for property owners (that sell houses) and the government because more tax income.

I’m lucky that I am a software engineer and have an above average salary. But the average person in my country (the Netherlands) is worse off. I hear many stories of people that can’t go on holiday anymore abroad while 5 years ago they could.

This all in the name of being green and being the best boy in class. Set an example. Need to start somewhere. We (our country hence the tax payers) spent billions on it. And get very very little in return.

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While energy is expensive, I find it hard to blame on the "green stuff".

The majority of the energy cost increases in the last few years are because fossil fuels got more expensive for europeans, as cheap gas and oil from Russia wasn't cheap nor very available any more. Lower emissions technologies require much less energy: Heat pumps, induction stoves, electric goods and private transport. Renewables are furthermore more resilient to supply shocks, as they aren't as dependent on from despotic states such as Russia, Saudi Arabia or (seemingly) the US for much of the (fossil) energy. The correct response would be to electrify as much as possible (much less energy required) and produce electricity without the need for importing fossil fuels.

The housing situation sucks, but while many rules discourage housing production, only a smaller subset is there to reduce emissions (requirements about amenities such as outlets, room size and layout, parking and local opposition have little to do with emissions). Many countries such as the US which care much less also suffer heavily as well from being unable to build enough housing.

I have little idea about what specifically the netherlands are doing on climate, but it has at least not been my impression that they were the "best boy in class".

You might not see the benefit directly, but the idea is that we must do this for future generations. If everybody keeps looking at the others, nothing happens. The ones that can lead must lead.

There are generations alive today who will live to see the end of this century, and the consequences of our emissions:

https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/amoc-atlantic-tipping...

> The ones that can lead must lead.

I get frustration that people feel in some countries like Netherlands where emissions per capita is 6.56t CO2, while others that also can do something like US, do not (14.3t CO2 per capita).

> If everybody keeps looking at the others, nothing happens.

On the other hand, this is true.

This is extremely frustrating considering also how much wealth there is in the US. Luckily on state level there are initiatives and some green energy is more cost efficient than ff. Still, not a great situation.

We must suffer, our kids and their kids, alive today, must suffer so unborn future generations may (possibly?) benefit from unpredictable climate benefits?

I’m not buying it, but it’s being forced down my wallet anyway.

What’s the reason we have to have expensive energy and import massive numbers of unskilled migrants?

What does immigration policy have to do with climate and energy?

The grand parent comment brought it up.

Anyway, immigration drives up energy demand, and according to at least some theories of economics, that has a tendency to drive up price.

I kinda agree.

I however think it should be a personal responsibility. Not something forced upon you or being pushed to the government to solve. People have more personal responsibility. Lots of them aren’t bothered anymore because they think the government will fix it.

For example, I don’t have a car and choose to live in walking distance of my work. When I go somewhere I take the bike or train.

If there was any sign of that working that'd be fine.

I'd go the other way - it should be a global carbon tax of so much per ton. Otherwise you get the present combo of "EU - But at what cost?" and "World emissions hit record high", ie. suffering but with no results.

Tax still gives personal freedom - just if you want to burn a lot of oil you pay more.

What if we leave our children an impoverished Europe and a world dominated by authocraties?

Will we?

Well, unless we manage to reverse the trend I guess.

Then they'll be in a better position than if we leave them a Europe that can't support life.

> But at what cost?

I can’t help thinking of the satirical cartoon “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing” ;)

There’s no universe where expensive energy and unavailable housing is a better world.

There’s no universe where importing huge numbers of unskilled migrants depended on the state is a better world.

> There’s no universe where expensive energy and unavailable housing is a better world.

But there is a world where solar power plus battery storage is so much cheaper than coal that it's going to be cleaned up AND lower price of electricity just by market forces.

Fossil fuels have a host of nasty externalities aside from climate change that are greatly lessened by cleaner sources of energy. For example, cutting down on the 10s of millions of lives that are shortened and made worse by fossil fuel pollution could be part of a better world.

In many places wind and solar are now cheaper than fossil fuels. This can particularly be seen in the past year countries like Pakistan, India, South Africa, etc greatly expanding their use of solar in particular.

Not sure what immigration has to do with energy policy.

And the other one where the people sit in the cave sheltering from something and one says "But for one beautiful moment we produced a lot of value for the shareholders."

Because we stole from the future for the gains and quality of life today, and now we must pay the debt back (global low carbon electric generation transition, EVs, heat pumps, decarbonization, and sequestration of excess CO2 emitted since industrialization began).

That’s what always is happening. We learn. The next generation will have something different they will steal from the future.

It’s an infinite thing.

Some will say we do nothing, some will say we do better. Imho, the latter is winning over the former at the moment. That might change, hopefully it doesn't. As you say, this is an infinite ooda loop of humanity in the aggregate.

(1GW of solar PV is deployed every 15 hours as of this comment; battery storage is ~$52/kwh, half of new vehicles sold in China and 25% of global auto sales currently are battery electric or plug in hybrid electric; manufacturing capacity and uptake trajectories continue to steepen)

Solar:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices

https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-...

Batteries: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

Heat pumps: https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-heat-pumps/executi...

EVs:

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025

https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/global-elect...

https://web.archive.org/web/20250904191345/https://www.ftpor... [pdf]

Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy+ (LCOE+) : https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...

You provided good links. I will read them. Saved in my reading list. I agree with you that we should leave this place better than we found it.

I appreciate the open mind. The data is very favorable, innovation may have saved us from ourselves.

Additional citation:

China is quietly saving the world from climate change - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45253245 - September 2025

I can’t think of a single thing where people damaged their surroundings and following generations didn’t have to pay more for that then what earlier generations got out of the destruction.

One of the pressures causing migration is global warming screwing up agriculture, particularly in poorer regions.

Any source for this?

> Housing market is the worst, too little houses are being build because of all the rules.

I find other reasons way more convincing:

Construction can’t keep up with efficiency gains of the rest of the world. This has less to do with regulation and more with failure to automate as much. Basically baumoll’s cost disease.

Centralization means that everyone wants to live in the same places. We hardly can create new land to build on, especially where we need it the most.

Missing or wrong regulation of cars in cities. They take up an enormous amount of space.

Financialisation of the housing market. Housing can either be affordable or a good investment asset. Not both.

All you say is true, except adopting green solutions is not a plan to be achieved in 4 or 5 years. I think modern politics has being more focused on the continuation of one or a group in power or reaching the power rather then advancing towards common goals. In times of hardship, people want the solution for their big problems to be easy. I can't buy something increase minimum weight (inflation) Missing health or jobs, blame immigrants not the lack of investment over the last 20 years nor the future consequences.

It anguishes people that their problems are not truly solvable but only briefly relieved until the side effects are uncovered.

And it is the same here. The advancements of politics in the development of sustainable and renewable energy was not enough. There were way too many counter incentives to actually act serious on it. The lobby of oil, etc...

Many of the politicies that were adopted post COVID could have been adopted 15y or 30y before. The lack of restructuration of the taxation over the companies exponentially increasing the usage of electricity or profit with diminishing employees is the same is another example.

For now, people are focusing on a war that will only exist because people are focusing in a war that does not exist. A trillion dollars in war insteadof towards actually solving the causes for the potential war is a slap on the faces of poor people (aka us) who will be sent to kill other ones children.

I digress

You don’t think a livable planet is a good benefit for your money? Especially for later generations?

Well. We have another crisis. We are not producing later generations. Part of it is that everything is too expensive. So for who would we leave this place?

The marginally higher cost of energy is not the main contributing factor to lower birth rates

How does global warming make planet not livable? Some places - maybe, but not a planet.

Also global warming makes some places livable as well.

New slogan for pro-global warming folks: Make Greenland green again!

The quoted person is from the Netherlands. Global warming and sea level increases directly pose a threat to their country, most of which is already below sea level.

> But at what cost?

Most of this improvement is driven exactly by cost reductions. In other words: the CO2 emissions are falling BECAUSE solar is cheap.

Lowering CO2 is the thing that SAVES money.

Would you say that lowering the climate goals / increasing emissions could meaningfully alleviate pressure on the housing market, migration, groceries, energy, etc.?

One of the things we (the Netherlands) should do is get to a more average level on EU levels. Not trying to be the best. The costs are too high.

Also energy cost should be as low as possible. A few nuclear plants could be a good solution. (I’m not an energy expert) When you lower energy cost, the cost of all other things can also be lowered.

Not an expert either, but commonly nuclear energy tops the list of most expensive sources, even if we ignore cost of mining, waste storage and dismantling of old installations.

There are arguments to be made in favor of nuclear, but I don't think cost is one of them

The costs of nuclear are 80% in managing regulatory burdens, where laws require recertifying a design for every unit constructed and spurious lawsuits postpone beginning construction for a decade etc.

Nope. The costs comes from being absolutely enormous civil project.

Construction workers haven’t gotten meaningfully more efficient while the salaries have risen based on industries with efficiency gains.

It seems like nuclear power has an extremely tiny sweet spot in countries development curve where it is only very expensive.

Right where salaries are still low but the knowhow for advanced technology has started to burgeon. For example India and China. Although China has been cutting back their nuclear program in favor of renewables for a while now.

Another data point is to consider the price of nuclear submarines, in the 10s of billions. Admittedly, military spending leaves room for misestimation but the point is that many if not most of regulation around nuclear plants does not apply to marine vessels. Safety still plays a major role, but a very different one. More pragmatic, less regulatory.

And that's a big big part of the issue, Germany said "fuck ghg" and closed their nuclear plants.

We also have soaring energy costs in Sweden.. but _only in the south_ close to Germany, in the north we still have plans on using relatively inefficient electrolysis to produce hydrogen to in turn reduce GHG's from steel production, because we have so much power generated from wind (uneven) and waterfalls (even).

Sweden is once again building nuclear plants after 40 years, but we could've started far earlier.

What are you talking about? We’re below average already[1].

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

It’s not just about green energy, also everything else that relates to being green and good for the environment, like CO2 and nitrogen emissions.

> A few nuclear plants could be a good solution. (I’m not an energy expert)

You should look at the track record of recent nuclear projects in Europe. Olkiluoto and Flamanville both 3x+ over budget in time and money. Sizewell C isn't doing too well either, its very far from cheap.

Nuclear is never a good solution if you are looking for cheap energy.

You live in netherlands

less emission = less artic ice melt = less sea water rising

how can you say this??? while netherlands is probably need one the most???

Not really. We are masters of the water. We build land out of water (like the island in Dubai, some airport islands in Asia, a whole new province called Flevoland). Make dikes and dunes to withstand the worst storms in a hundred years, since 1953. So we could prepare for rising sea levels which doesn’t rise that quickly

Well, good luck with that.

> If the circulation weakens, Northwestern Europe would experience the most pronounced cooling. Under global warming of +2°C, a cold extreme that currently occurs once every ten years in the Netherlands could drop to -20°C — around fifteen degrees colder than in the pre-industrial climate, according to the same climate model. In Scotland the cold extreme could reach -30°C, a full 23 degrees colder than in the late 19th century.

https://www.uu.nl/en/publication/what-will-happen-to-europe-...

I haven’t read into the details yet. But scientist discover something new every year. We know for sure when we arrive at that point.

Also -20 sounds better than +40. But that’s a preference lol

That's not -20 OR +40. You're getting both. And while you're busy touting your preferences, I'm sure your farmers will be happy about their crops freezing, their land becoming unusable, your building being thoroughly unable to withstand such massive temperature swings and cracking, making it even worse to live in.

>We know for sure when we arrive at that point.

The moment you do arrive at the -20 every year point means that:

* You've spent the previous 40 years in denial that it happens more and more often

* You're on the path to -30 already, with no way to stop it.

So, no, we won't "wait and see", no.

I'd rather not bet the survival of the human race on "scientists discover something new every year"

The rate of sea level rise since the turn of the century has nearly doubled to almost half a centimeter each year. At the current rate is increase, within a human lifespan, some Dutch dikes will be underwater.

If the ice caps fully melted, that's 60-70 meters of sea level rise. Well before we reach that point, the Netherlands will be lost. There's simply no building dikes which approach that level. Even if that's not within your lifetime, it's not outside of the realm of the possibility that your grandchildren would be facing that eventuality.

Does it matter how quickly it rise? Eventually sea will go 1m up, how dikes will help? Are you going to build a seawall for entire country?

What about the costs not doing nothing.

The consequences of climate change will also affect normal people more than the top.

If you take a step back, what did the netherlands look like 100 years ago? What was the wealth inequality split? How much capital was owned by the elite vs the commoner?

You will see that the last 70 years have really been an outlier in history due to the great reset of WW2 and the elite losing their wealth. The current trends are actually the return back to historical norms.

The problem here is not green energy sandbagging the economy in NL and making life unaffordable for the commoner, the problem here is that wealth/capital accumulates faster than wages and therefore as the economy slows down an ever growing slice of GDP goes to capital owners.

I would suggest if you want to solve this problem, do not blame the green energy — it is a distraction — instead look to your elected representatives in government to form wealth tax and land tax legislation to curb the positive feedback loop of wealth accumulation, lest you become a serf to the elite again.

Take a look at Thomas Piketty if you are interested in learning more.

The rich pay enough in this country. The middle class is enslaved for the bottom 10%, not the top 1%.

This situation has played out in every developed nation, do you really think NL is unique? Look at any country in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, China, … and they all have a huge issue with inflated asset prices (housing, stocks, gold) because wealth is becoming more concentrated and rich people need to park their wealth somewhere, and that somewhere is gold, stocks, real estate, bonds, and mortgages.

Also notice that asset prices started increasing across the world way before we had green energy policies. I live in a place where they canceled a bunch of green energy policies (mainly carbon taxes) and guess what happened to asset prices? Nothing.

Also note that the top 10% of wealthy people own over 50% of the wealth in NL https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2025/03/56-percent-of-wealth-i...

If you don’t feel like reading Piketty I would recommend watching this short video which shares a bunch of views with Piketty: https://youtu.be/BTlUyS-T-_4?si=6Lms-8pJTcJm7k7e

Any specific book of him you recommend? I love to read, so will definitely add it to my to read book. I recently read Thomas Sowell's book called Economic Facts and Fallacies which I can recommend.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

And same time here Finland we have super cheap electricity. It is just that you don’t build enough new capacity and nuclear power is no go.

Super cheap electricity and new built nuclear power requires absolutely insanely large subsidies to go exist.

In other words: you would pay for it with your taxes instead.

You’re from the Netherlands, and can’t see the negatives of sea level rise?

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