Carbon neutral and CO2 emissions, etc

bennty
Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:49:56 +0000

ucbalumnus:

Utilities look at it from a finance aspect. In the windy plains areas of the US, utilities are putting up wind turbines because collecting the free “fuel” (wind) is now cheaper for them than shoveling coal or piping natural gas, despite the cost of the wind turbines themselves.

They’re also doing it because of favorable tax treatment, and end of day, the finance aspect has to live within the regulatory/tax/legal regimes created by the government. Personally, tbh, I’m not done being worried about the amount of energy being removed from a very narrow slice of atmosphere; that energy was doing other things before, and the nature of the system is not such that we can put things back as they were if we figure out that this was a bad idea. You get the “it’s only tiny in the scheme of things” argument, but this argument’s failed spectacularly in several other contexts already. But hey, I don’t make the decisions.