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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

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Ed Milliband for PM!

He's about the only one of the lot of them that actually understands that the point of being in power is to change things for the better. He's done an absolutely smashing job with energy, and I'd love him to get the opportunity to do the same sort of real improvements on the rest of the economy.

Is this satire? We have steel plants and potteries closing down because they can't afford to be run due to energy prices.

But that's OK because we can import from China or wherever and it counts against their (dirtier) emissions than ours.

We have lots of things closing down, we need to sort that out, but burning the fucking world so we can live a life of plenty right now while screwing up every child and their own children even worse is not the way to do it.

And I don't give a shit if "China is worse". They are, because they started from a worse position, but they're improving a fuck sight faster than us. If your worldview is way too right-wing and self-centered that fucking China is a shining beacon in the darkness by comparison, maybe it's time to take a long hard look in the mirror.

Oh, China is by no means a beacon. I just don't think we should be (effectively) outsourcing pollution to them. In the last 8 years, China has emitted more CO2 than the UK has in the last 250.

China is approximately 40x the size of the UK, and has 20x the people. Using "the last 250 years" is not in any way a comparable term.

The UK was emitting (in 2000) roughly what China is emitting today, 9.36 tonnes/capita then for the UK vs 9.24 tonnes/capita now for China. China is behind the UK on the curve from industrialisation to clean industrialisation but the "250 years" thing is just designed to present them in a bad light.

Neither of them are close to the USA, which is running at 13.8 tonnes/capita right now.

energy prices are firmly david camerons fault!

He might have been a Net Zero nut, but I don't think he's the one stopping people fracking or drilling the North Sea. And it was Nick Clegg who said "no point building a new nuclear plant as it will take ten years to deliver"(about ten years ago).

If Clegg erred, it was by being overly optimistic.

Approval for Hinkley Point C was indeed granted ten years ago but it has not, in fact, delivered. Unit 1 is currently estimated to begin production in 2030 at the earliest.

If the projected £48bn cost had instead been invested in building out new wind and solar projects, they'd be online now and would already be producing more electricity than HPC ever will, even when taking the differences in average capacity factor into account.

...when it is sunny and windy.

I honestly don't know why anyone is arguing against nuclear at this point.

Even taking the different average capacity factors into account, the renewables would still produce more electricity each year than Hinkley Point C.

The case against new nuclear is simple: they take too long and cost too much money. HPC got the go-ahead based on EDF bearing the brunt of the risk, but if we could have persuaded French taxpayers to subsidise new UK offshore wind it would have made much more sense for us to do that instead.

The case against wind and solar is that it only works when it is windy or sunny. At least Nuclear is consistent.

> The case against wind and solar is that it only works when it is windy or sunny.

It is 2026 and "solar" can for a while now be read as "solar with battery storage". Similar, grid-level storage for any other intermittent power generation method.

We all know this, you included. This tired and childish talking point that "solar only works when it is sunny" is boring and increasingly at odds with observed reality of these power systems as they are now rapidly being built out.

You think Solar + Batteries is equivalent to a nuclear power plant? What would the footprint be for equivalent solar power production?

Already answered by parent https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48477998 Not equivalent, more power and faster.

Yeah, but he's wrong? Solar + battery requires 50-70x more land than the equivalent nuclear plant, according to google.

You think that he's wrong about the same money getting more ROI if invested in Solar + battery because ... "it needs more land"?

This is not just incorrect, it's nonsensical, non-sequitur. These comments with perpetually moving goalposts are not serious.

This was the question you chose to respond to:

You think Solar + Batteries is equivalent to a nuclear power plant? What would the footprint be for equivalent solar power production?

I'm not sure how me saying "50-70x more area" is a non-sequitur.

> The question that I asked is an irrelevant derailing, but I'm not sure how it is a non-sequitur.

OK buddy, you do you.

Thankfully the sun still rises most days. And the winds ye gods the winds

Im referring to brexit and to his "cut the green crap" which left us horribly exposed to energy price shocks caused by Putin. North sea barely has any gas left and is not economically viable. And yes as you have alluded, most of the NZ policies the rw populists are raging about were drafted years ago under the conservatives.

Oil companies seem awfully keen to drill in somewhere that is not economically viable. Net Zero has left us more exposed to Putin, not less as we don't produce much of our own energy and are in fact buying Russian oil via India, rather than drilling out our own.

> Net Zero has left us more exposed to Putin, not less

Spain and Portugal are less exposed to oil price shocks. Why do you think that is?

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-Portugal-and-...

They're also more exposed to massive power outages. Why do you think that is?

Pivot to a different cheap shot playing on a disinfo talking point.

For people who want more a substantive look at it,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47936236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47936236

https://watt-logic.com/2025/05/09/the-iberian-blackout-shows...

Sorry, when was Ed Milliband in power again?

Oh look: https://www.gov.uk/government/people/ed-miliband

"Ed Miliband was appointed Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero on 5 July 2024. He was elected MP for Doncaster North in May 2005."

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