Many countries do not have the raw materials to build solar, wind turbines, and batteries so it doesn't solve the sovereignty issue.
They last 25 years. Enough time to spin up domestic manufacturing if you're really paranoid.
> or you need more
Lots of countries manufacture them today.
What chips are you talking about?
Again, by your definition, almost no country is "sovereign" for anything. Not fossil fuels, not PV and renewables, and certainly not nuclear. It's an impossible standard but only renewables get held to it.
Electronic chips in wind turbines, hydro stations, etc.. Believe it or not but all of these use chips...
> Again, by your definition, almost no country is "sovereign" for anything. Not fossil fuels, not PV and renewables, and certainly not nuclear. It's an impossible standard but only renewables get held to it.
I am not holding renewables to it. The person I was responding to made the erroneous claim that you would be sovereign with renewables. "Renewables are cheap now and they also solve the sovereignty issue." I am just pointing out that most countries wouldn't actually have sovereignty and would still be reliant on other countries.
I am the one holding the consistent standard since I believe most countries wouldn't be sovereign regardless of them using fossil fuels, nuclear, solar, wind, etc.
Might as well go with the source of energy that pollutes the least and allows you to be import-free for the longest amount of time - solar, wind, and batteries.
China, Brazil, Russia and other countries have a lot of rare earth minerals to build electronics for turbines and other sources of power.
Australia, Canada, Russia and other countries have a decent amount of uranium.
So, yes, some countries meet the definition of energy sovereignty.
They use exactly the same stuff. Nearly all power generation is just spinning magnets, obvious exception is PV. There are no particular electronic components you need for wind turbines that you don't also need for a coal or gas fired power plant. Everything uses electronic control systems.
Why do you people argue so incessantly when you clearly don't know what you're talking about?
Why do you people argue so incessantly when you clearly don't know what you're talking about?
You are able to drill and burn oil along with transmit the electricity without technology that requires rare earth minerals which are the electronics I was referring to.
We also had windmills long before we had electricity. And the west has plenty of rare earth deposits, despite the name they're not actually that rare. They're just expensive to refine and the refinement process causes a lot of pollution. China does it cheaper, polluting itself in the process and that's why we don't do it. If they were to stop giving us access to these minerals we could restart our own production. It's not just used for electronics by the way, it's also used for magnets which are a key component in electric motors/generators, so without rare earth minerals you're not generating electricity regardless of having oil.
This whole argument of yours is asinine.
The sun is an oil well. Panels are drills or pumps. Batteries are oil tanks.
Not having oil drill and oil tank factories in your country isn't a critical energy sovereignty issue.
If you get cut off from global oil trade while having oil in the ground but no ability to make drills, what use is the oil? If you want sovereignty then it is critical to have the ability to make drills, tankers, etc in your country if you rely on oil.
This is no different than solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, etc when it comes to renewables. If you don't care about sovereignty then great, you are good to go. If you do, then you need to be able to handle everything yourself otherwise you are always going to be reliant on other countries.
Your existing drills and pumps might work long enough for you to stand up a domestic drill manufacturing industry.
Same for solar, except that panels and batteries operate for way longer than drills and pumps.
> If you don't care about sovereignty then great, you are good to go
If no one is sovereign then sovereignty is meaningless. Who cares.
> Same for solar, except that panels and batteries operate for way longer than drills and pumps.
This is not about factories, but raw material as I said in a previous comment that you responded to. Most countries don't have uranium. A lot of countries do not have rare earth minerals for electronic chips.
> If no one is sovereign then sovereignty is meaningless. Who cares
The person I was originally responding to did and was claiming that you could achieve sovereignty with renewables.
I don’t understand the point
I never made the claim that nuclear would make a country sovereign. Only a small number of countries could have sovereignty with nuclear.