Bill Gates Slams wind and solar

[SO16]

I like Bill Gates but I don’t agree with him here.

He’s talking about Tokyo and possibly 3 days a year where solar/wind and battery wouldn’t be enough to power Tokyo due to typhoons.

Wouldn’t the solution be to keep a few fossil fuel power plants on standby for emergencies? Yes it would be expensive but at least overall it would be cleaner (and possibly cheaper in the long run) for 362 days per year. The power plants are already built. No different than people having backup generators for emergencies. They could also spread out the solar power generation and grid over many miles. But there would be degredation of the power transmission.

Sure, fusion energy power plants would be better but that has been a pipe dream for decades.

 

[Toumal]

It's the "But Sometimes" phenomenon. If a solution cannot cover all scenarios, some people claim it's not viable in any scenario.

That's why nuclear power is so great because it works even when it's super hot or super cold.
Oh wait, it doesn't. If nuclear power doesn't work all the time, why is it being pursued?
Or in other words, why should we not use as much solar and wind as possible, even if it won't be able to cover all power needs all the time?

 

[SO16]

It's the "But Sometimes" phenomenon. If a solution cannot cover all scenarios, some people claim it's not viable in any scenario.

That's why nuclear power is so great because it works even when it's super hot or super cold.
Oh wait, it doesn't. If nuclear power doesn't work all the time, why is it being pursued?
Or in other words, why should we not use as much solar and wind as possible, even if it won't be able to cover all power needs all the time?

Yup!

Sometimes you don’t have power at home.

Sometimes your hard drive crashes.

By their metric, If a solution doesn’t cover all scenarios, then we shouldn’t have grid power because of possible storms knocking out power and we shouldn’t have computers until they absolutely never crash and lose data.

As far as nuclear, goes, that is not such a great option. Fukushima and also the waste is a real problem.

The best thing to do is to have a solution that covers at least a high 90’s % of a situation. But to get a single solution to 100% forces the cost to become astronomical. (Not counting the environmental costs.)

 

[wcorey]

As far as nuclear, goes, that is not such a great option. Fukushima and also the waste is a real problem.

Yep, the entire country is, for all intents and purposes, on a fault line. Fukushima would have worked if they storm-proofed the backup generators. It was older technology also. I'd no more put a nuclear power plant on a fault line than I'd build a house in the vicinity of an non-extinct volcano.

 

[Jigglypuff]

Fukushima may have happened with backup generators and backups to the backups as well. The tsunami could have damaged or destroyed the backups as well. Even if nuclear power plants are able to automatically shutdown in power failures, the waste is an insurmountable problem.

As for Bill Gates, the man is a genius idiot. He knows the computer industry, but as an educator, I see his forays into education reform as comically, stupidly misguided and terribly, terribly destructive. Therefore when I see him venture outside his computer bailiwick, I just want to punch him in the face.

As for his thoughts on renewable energy, few people have said to abandon fossil fuel. Fossil fuels make a fantastic backup solution and are great for night time. A combo of wind, solar, battery backup, geothermal, and tidal, using natural gas just for backup and low generation periods would do a tremendous amount towards saving human lives, far more than Gates's pitiful charity efforts. And yes, they're pitiful compared to what governments do. He says 25% of fossil fuel usage is for electricity. If we switch all home fuels to electric, that will increase electricity need while reducing GHGs even more. What about factories and such? They too can switch most if not all of their equipment to electric, even steel mills. It doesn't have to happen immediately, but it can happen. Ultra rich people typically think they're the smartest people in the room.

 

[jdirik]

Bill Gates is no Steve Jobs.