I'm advocating for more nuclear, for deep decarbonization (removing 99% of CO2 output) and removing of all uses of fossil fuels. And as humanity we failing, because CO2 output is still rising.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026/co2-em...
I think the best option would be a world wide CO2 tax, because we already see carbon leakage, competitive advantage of economies with more CO2 production, but cheaper energy and cheaper products. (China, US over Europe)
> Resiliency requires redundancy and that means excess production capacity.
Redundancy is good and desirable, but someone has to pay for the infrastructure even when it's not fully utilized or is used to full extend only few times a year (Dunkelflaute). Overbuilding electricity production and overbuilding electric grid is expensive. In the past get to high reliability countries had only about 5 - 10% spare electric production capacity, not a spare coal power plant for each running coal power plant.
"Of course, the probability of Dunkelflaute is higher in winter, with peaks in November and January. Here, on average, there are 50-100 hours of Dunkelflaute per month, and as many as 150 hours in Sweden."
https://www.kraftblock.com/blog/bringing-light-into-dunkelfl...
When more solar/wind is installed on grid the necessary builds of backup peaker gas plants, expansion of electric grids to balance out the weather caused variations in production is no calculated in the LCOE of the solar/wind power plant. LCOE for solar PV plus battery storage is better indicator, but even then doesn't include the backup peaker gas plants and expansion of electric grids. (China builds backup coal power plants for solar).
> solar panels are dirt cheap
Solar panels are dirt cheap, because they are made in China. Polysilicon production is very energy intensive and China has a lot cheap electricity. Lot of production in Inner Mongolia, lot of sunshine and lot of coal.
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2025/12/china-takes-9-...
> excess energy, it can be used for green hydrogen
How to do it economically is a open research problem, because Alkaline water electrolysis has problems with fluctuating solar power supply (battery storage and solar overbuilding may be necessary) and Proton exchange membrane electrolysis is expensive (uses expensive metal because of corrosion).
https://raw-science.org/iridium-pem-electrolysers/
https://www.solas.capital/hydrogen-vs-energy-efficiency-inve...
Isn't the Romania Romania battery storage system buildout enabled by subsidies (tax payers money) ?
https://cop31tr.com/romania-shifts-solar-subsidies-toward-ba...
> You have a fixed worldview, the grid is an unchangeable fixed structure, and it can never be changed because you wrote a bit of software in COBOL 50 years back. What happened in your 20s is the best and ideal grid and it should never change. In your age of fossil fuel, production was far away, needed transmission infrastructure to bring power to the cities. Because coal is extremely polluting, hydro is geo-fixed and nuclear needs to be far (nobody will allow it). None of those assumptions are true anymore.
I didn't see any COBOL code, oldest code was Pascal, but was been replaced because Sun stopped official support of Pascal compiler on Solaris.
Coal burning is terrible, lot of particulate matter (depending on the filtering system of the coal plant), sulfur, toxic heavy metals (lead, arsenic, cadmium), radioactive elements (uranium, thorium and decay products) (under normal situation coal power plant outputs more radioactive material then nuclear power plant into air). Gas is much cleaner, but still some methane leakage and lot of CO2.
> nuclear needs to be far (nobody will allow it)
We scared the people to death in 1970s, 1980s, 1990s with nuclear fear mongering. Movies: China syndrome, Dr. Strangelove, and other. Nuclear power production has been made equal with nuclear weapons. Activists presented each nuclear powerplant as ticking nuclear bomb.
Chernobyl was a big Soviet failure, but probably smaller then the 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster