The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday awarded $20 billion to help finance clean-energy projects across the country, marking one of the Biden administration’s biggest investments in combating climate change and curbing pollution in disadvantaged communities.
Kind of disengenous to call what is essentially micro loans to install EV chargers an infrastructure investment… EV chargers which are gonna use the same dirty electricity sources (yes better than ICE cars but still not that great).
Could have built two whole ass nuclear power plants with that money instead.
Meanwhile China installed more solar in 2023 than the US did in its entire history, have twenty nuclear plants currently in construction. Has offset who knows how many miles of car transportation with thousands of miles of high speed rails built in the last decade or so.
Nah. A nuclear power plant in the US costs ~30 billion plus.
We’re seeing a large-scale solar build-out in the US too, though not at the same pace as in China, where key components are made.
I’ll also note that every time you electrify transportation, the higher efficiency of EVs means that emissions go down.
Companies that are planning new nuclear units are currently indicating that the total costs (including escalation and financing costs) will be in the range of $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100 MW plant.
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These estimated costs translated into a projected total cost of $12.1 billion to $17.8 billion, for just two 1100 MW plants.
What’s your point exactly? That we shouldn’t do it because they cost money?
Doesn’t change that this is a stupid loan and not real infrastructure investment, and that it is unlikely to have a significant impact on climate change. Performative.
Mostly that renewables and electrification are a better use of money right now. Nuclear’s high price means that it competes with things like seasonal storage. We may well build some in the 2030s, but that requires it being able to keep prices down so that the high volumes of seasonal storage we would otherwise need aren’t cheaper.
That’s fine, but we need the capacity for it, we need investment in production and transport and those are the investment that local level governance can’t make, unlike EV charging stations. And without those, these EV charging stations will only go so far.
The point seemed pretty clear. The cost is not what is quoted initially.
Fine, they could have built one nuclear power plant and maintained one existing one. Happy?
Being factually correct is important. Don’t get snarky with me because someone dared to contradict you.
High risk and barely any reward.