[JohnRawls]

So, what would be the cost for the USA to implement the Green New Deal?

Or, if you wish to discuss another country, please use that country as an example.

Another question that would need to be asked would be: how much do you gain?

Well, lets take a dream scenario when you replace all the energy production with nuclear which is cheapest option right now. Lets also pretend that you don't need to upgrade the grid almost at all somehow.

So US is around 4 460 000 GWH in 2018. We can safely assume that 66% of this are fossil fuels while the remaining 33% are renewables. (If you count Nuclear as a renewable which some don't like) It is close enough.

So 4 460 000 GWH * 0.66 = 2 944 000 (Aproximately)

So in US, it is estimated that you need around 5945$ in nuclear per KW to install. Which is a nice way of saying that you need 5945 per 8,784 KWH at 100% capacity at all time. No power plant ever runs at 100% capacity all the time. So lets say they run at 80% capacity on average (I Have no clue for this number).

So it rounds to around 6000 USD per 7000 KWH which puts us at around 0.85714 USD per KWH so we multiply it by 2 944 000 000 000 = which adds up to 2.5 trillion. We need to add 10% for cleanup so that puts us at 2.75 trillion. Lets go with very low interest rates of 2.5% per year. Nuclear power plants take around 5ish years to build and around 20ish years to become profitable if not more. So total cost in the end will be around 3.5 trillion.

So basically the US will need to cough up, just to construct the cheapest possible solution right now around either 2.5 Trillion upfront and around 500 billion every year for 5 years just to build the power plants. This does not include the maintanence, training of personal or expanding the capacity to build them. Basically you will need to convince the US to not spend on the military for a decade or so to fund this. (Just the power plants construction, expanding the capacity to build them and training of personal to man them).

Hydro technically can be cheaper but you can't build it everywhere.

I mean i am no professional nor do I think my math is correct fully. But it still shows a grim picture of sorts. This does not include increased consumption, job losses for making gas/oil people unemployed or other problems that this will cause. Nor does it account in to itself upgrade of the power grid, storage, delivery etc. I have no idea how to calculate all those together.

[Pants-of-dog]

So, about 5 trillion over the next five years.

While that is real money, it is also not that much compared to US government budgets, or GDP.

Even if it costs 20 trillion over that time period, it is still far less than the cost of doing nothing.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

It's not just the money, it's the construction capacity. 5 years for a nuclear power station is ambitious (it'll take at least 6 years to build one in the UK), but you'd have to build them all simultaneously. You need experience to build them; if Hinkley Point C will provide 7% of the nation's current electricity needs, you need 14 of them, and then probably another 14 for all the heating needed to become electric, which you have to build simultaneously. While converting all the homes, schools, hospitals, offices, shops, factories etc. to electric heating. And inventing electric trucks, and replacing the entire fleet, in 5 years. And getting somewhere in the world to build factories to completely replace all the private vehicles in the country. In 5 years. It's ridiculous.

[Pants-of-dog]

It seems more like one of those ridiculously extreme positions one takes prior to negotiation, so that the final realistic compromise is closer to what you want.

[JohnRawls]

So, about 5 trillion over the next five years.

While that is real money, it is also not that much compared to US government budgets, or GDP.

Even if it costs 20 trillion over that time period, it is still far less than the cost of doing nothing.

Its not as simple as that actually. Lets say you build those power plants then what? This still only covers 2018 and you are in 2024 right now. What about the infrastructure? Not all people heat their houses with electricity. Not all cars are electric cars. Those electric cars need charging station and so on and so forward. Electricity consumption will go up by a LOT. Not to mention that I have no clue how to upscale nuclear reactor production because even if we take all world capacity to build nuclear reactors we still can't do it just for US.

The numbers are actually more or less correct (Well, as much as an amateur can count). Us runs around 100 nuclear reactors right now which is 20ish of US energy generation. So by that logic you need 400 more nuclear reactors. Which have warying costs but I would say 5 billion - 6 billion for US or Europe. So it does put us around 2 trillion to 2.4 trillion range.

If i could take a guess then I would say that somewhere between 40-60 trillion is needed. Over 10 years that is not doable. Over 30 ? Mmmm, probably still not doable. In 30 years it might be possible with extreme effort from private business and government. The problem is that this extreme effort requires public support which is almost non-existant. Green parties in Europe and America are minorities with 3-15% support. The rest of the world doesn't even give a flying fuck.

[JohnRawls]

It's not just the money, it's the construction capacity. 5 years for a nuclear power station is ambitious (it'll take at least 6 years to build one in the UK), but you'd have to build them all simultaneously. You need experience to build them; if Hinkley Point C will provide 7% of the nation's current electricity needs, you need 14 of them, and then probably another 14 for all the heating needed to become electric, which you have to build simultaneously. While converting all the homes, schools, hospitals, offices, shops, factories etc. to electric heating. And inventing electric trucks, and replacing the entire fleet, in 5 years. And getting somewhere in the world to build factories to completely replace all the private vehicles in the country. In 5 years. It's ridiculous.

Yeah that is one of my points. 5 years is not that redicilous by the way. The French proved that you can streamline the process if you make constant improvements to it. At their peak, they managed to finish them within 4 years I think. May be a bit shorter even. But the trick that they used is that the same people were building the nuclear power plants one after the other. So not only were they experienced but they also streamlined production and manufacturing of the parts. Don't know if they still can do that nowadays, with the decline of nuclear and all.

Edit: Google says that Japanese managed to build a nuclear power plant in 39 months. So 3 years and 3 months.

[Pants-of-dog]

Its not as simple as that actually. Lets say you build those power plants then what? This still only covers 2018 and you are in 2024 right now.

What are you saying here?

What about the infrastructure? Not all people heat their houses with electricity.

The US GND does not say that all heating of buildings will be replaced in ten years. It discusses upgrading existing buildings and building new ones according to sustainable principles, but that is something that would be easy to do.

The easiest way to do that would be to use LEED standards ir their equivalents for renovation and new construction.

Not all cars are electric cars. Those electric cars need charging station and so on and so forward. Electricity consumption will go up by a LOT.

Yes, it will go up. But hopefully total energy usage will go down.

Not to mention that I have no clue how to upscale nuclear reactor production because even if we take all world capacity to build nuclear reactors we still can't do it just for US.

Provide evidence for this claim. Thanks.

The numbers are actually more or less correct (Well, as much as an amateur can count). Us runs around 100 nuclear reactors right now which is 20ish of US energy generation. So by that logic you need 400 more nuclear reactors. Which have warying costs but I would say 5 billion - 6 billion for US or Europe. So it does put us around 2 trillion to 2.4 trillion range.

If i could take a guess then I would say that somewhere between 40-60 trillion is needed. Over 10 years that is not doable. Over 30 ? Mmmm, probably still not doable. In 30 years it might be possible with extreme effort from private business and government. The problem is that this extreme effort requires public support which is almost non-existant. Green parties in Europe and America are minorities with 3-15% support. The rest of the world doesn't even give a flying fuck.

You forgot hydro-electricity and wind power. Both of these are more efficient than fossil fuels.

Anyway, Robert Pollin estimates that the USA can get to zero emissions by 2050 or 2060, at a cost of $18 trillion or so.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10 ... 3419833518

[BeesKnee5]

Wind and solar with storage is much cheaper than new nuclear and has a faster roll out.

5-10 years to get a nuclear plant built. It's not the way forward when the future is increasingly a need to fill the gaps of irregular renewables. That will be filled with biofuel, hydrogen and storage.

[Godstud]

Wind and solar are unreliable, and generally inefficient. They're usually not very good on a utility basis, and more useful for specific things.

Nuclear is the way to go.

[JohnRawls]

What are you saying here?



The US GND does not say that all heating of buildings will be replaced in ten years. It discusses upgrading existing buildings and building new ones according to sustainable principles, but that is something that would be easy to do.

The easiest way to do that would be to use LEED standards ir their equivalents for renovation and new construction.



Yes, it will go up. But hopefully total energy usage will go down.



Provide evidence for this claim. Thanks.



You forgot hydro-electricity and wind power. Both of these are more efficient than fossil fuels.

Anyway, Robert Pollin estimates that the USA can get to zero emissions by 2050 or 2060, at a cost of $18 trillion or so.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10 ... 3419833518

Hydro is cheaper than nuclear yes but the problem with Hydro is that you can't build it everywhere and only in specific places. Wind and Solar are pricier, mostly because their capacity to produce is unreliable. Also you need storage. With nuclear you flip the switches to go up and down when needed. With Solar and Wind it is more like, is it windy or not. Is it sunny or not. There is also the same problem as with Hydro. Some places are way better than others. Building Solar in Estonia is BS when we have 4 hours of sun in the winter and around 5-6 hours in other seasons. Not to mention that it is very clowdy. We can produce probably 1/10th of Solar energy per season compared to Texas or Northern Africa.

As for capacity to produce nuclear reactors. Well there is only 50 of them being built world wide right now. US needs 400 more to become fully nuclear(Well replace fossil fuels). Total there is around 450 reactors functional world wide. Link: https://www.world-nuclear.org/informati ... dwide.aspx

Lets assume that you can get something out of Wind, Solar and Hydro under reasonable circumstances. Like solar in Texas for example. Some Hydro also where it is possible. So it drops to around 350 reactors. Current capacity is 50 at the same time world wide. Nuclear is not popular right now so i am pretty sure a doubling is doable. Is trippling possible? This already seems sketchy but also might be okay. So 150 reactors in 5 years. Lets say we take the 2030 objective. Still 300 reactors in 10 years. 50 are still missing. I am not sure how fast can the capacity be scaled up because it is such an intensive construction and production process for materials. You need specific know-how and not many countries have it.

As for consumption. Pure electricity consumption will go up. Pure energy production will go down. What is the difference? Well, "Energy" is a term that can be applied to a combustion engine in cars to move the car. But it produces little to any electricity in the process (To charge the battery in the car) but a lot of energy to actially move the car. To put it simple, for the environment energy production is important because it means less CO2 but for our "nuclear scenario" it is only relevant to a degree that some of that energy will need to be replaced by electricity.

[Pants-of-dog]

@JohnRawls

Again, it can be done by 2050 with about 18 trillion. And it does not need to be solely nuclear.

[JohnRawls]

@JohnRawls

Again, it can be done by 2050 with about 18 trillion. And it does not need to be solely nuclear.

As I said several times. It is not that it is not doable but that it will hurt a lot. First of all, 18 trillion is a low ball because it will only cover one side of things like producing all electricity by nuclear lets say. But it won't cover other aspects like infrastructure and so on.

Even if we pretend that its 18 trillion. That is almost 1 trillion per year. Which is 25% of US budget. There is no way you can convince to give that money away for no clear profit right now. This is not WW2. There is no overwhelming support for the green movement. If you take 25% of US budget per year then the military, healthcare, education etc will suffer. It is not like its a choice between good and bad. Its a choice between investing money in one thing or the other.

[BeesKnee5]

A lot of rosy specs for nuclear. Globally it's not the answer, even nationally it's not the answer for most countries.
It cannot be built anywhere, they need access to large amounts of water for cooling. This means reliable rivers or the coast. They need to be on stable ground and they need significant infrastructure to serve the power generated.
They also aren't quite as reliable as many assume, when offline for maintenance they leave a huge hole in your capacity and when hot weather hits you have to reduce output. This happened in France this summer during the heatwave and UK has had several episodes of short notice maintenance that's caused extra use of gas. Add the huge amount of CO2 from all the concrete needed in production and they are not quite so ideal.

Anyone who thinks they represent the best bang for your buck on electricity generation is also failing to appreciate how far renewables with storage has come. Nuclear has an enormous initial capital outlay and significant decommissioning costs. Once factored in the price is around $150 per KWh, that's 50% more expensive than wind or solar with storage and the gap is widening.

The answer lays in the use of interconnected renewables and virtual power plants. We are seeing the beginnings of this in Europe with its interconnectors that are starting to allow countries to tap into Iceland's thermal energy, Norway's hydro and Frances existing Nuclear, also in Australia and the UAE where battery storage is only just coming of age.
A few examples
https://qz.com/1536917/the-uae-has-the- ... ery-plant/
https://virtualpowerplant.sa.gov.au/
https://www.power-technology.com/featur ... er-plants/

No reason to dump existing Nuclear, but also no reason to see it as a panacea.
There was a study done a couple of years ago, for wind and solar to reach 80% of US energy supply would cost $2 trillion in batteries and interconnectors. The beauty of this is the solar and wind can be built into this starting immediately and prices are already lower than two years ago. To go further would mean longer term storage like hydrogen generation which is inefficient but becomes viable once renewables start to exceed 100% requirements for significant periods.

[QatzelOk]

They are not exactly wrong but the problem is that they have no concrete solutions/demands

Wheras commercial media knew exactly what to do. Find a cute icon to flash on a screen to convince viewers that "We're on it. Don't worry."

Bolivia was recently destroyed under Greta's watchful eye. The Amazon burned to the ground. Our Western leaders are cutting environmental protection..... Isn't she cute?

I think Caturday could also be used to fight climate change, since no one wants to stop driving pickup trucks or flying all over the world, and our elite won't let us choose anything else.

Here's my Greta solution to climate change, pollution of all types, world wars, and political atrocities:


There. Monorail cat, to promote mass transit.

Now I've done as much as the networks have by "showing you Greta."

[BeesKnee5]

Fossil fuel subsidies are up to 6.5% of global GDP each year. Perhaps this money should be used in subsidy free renewables instead.

https://t.co/wHIdmVvZqj?amp=1

[JohnRawls]

A lot of rosy specs for nuclear. Globally it's not the answer, even nationally it's not the answer for most countries.
It cannot be built anywhere, they need access to large amounts of water for cooling. This means reliable rivers or the coast. They need to be on stable ground and they need significant infrastructure to serve the power generated.
They also aren't quite as reliable as many assume, when offline for maintenance they leave a huge hole in your capacity and when hot weather hits you have to reduce output. This happened in France this summer during the heatwave and UK has had several episodes of short notice maintenance that's caused extra use of gas. Add the huge amount of CO2 from all the concrete needed in production and they are not quite so ideal.

Anyone who thinks they represent the best bang for your buck on electricity generation is also failing to appreciate how far renewables with storage has come. Nuclear has an enormous initial capital outlay and significant decommissioning costs. Once factored in the price is around $150 per KWh, that's 50% more expensive than wind or solar with storage and the gap is widening.

The answer lays in the use of interconnected renewables and virtual power plants. We are seeing the beginnings of this in Europe with its interconnectors that are starting to allow countries to tap into Iceland's thermal energy, Norway's hydro and Frances existing Nuclear, also in Australia and the UAE where battery storage is only just coming of age.
A few examples
https://qz.com/1536917/the-uae-has-the- ... ery-plant/
https://virtualpowerplant.sa.gov.au/
https://www.power-technology.com/featur ... er-plants/

No reason to dump existing Nuclear, but also no reason to see it as a panacea.
There was a study done a couple of years ago, for wind and solar to reach 80% of US energy supply would cost $2 trillion in batteries and interconnectors. The beauty of this is the solar and wind can be built into this starting immediately and prices are already lower than two years ago. To go further would mean longer term storage like hydrogen generation which is inefficient but becomes viable once renewables start to exceed 100% requirements for significant periods.

150 per KWH? Your numbers are wrong. Not just wrong but UNREALISTICALLY wrong to the point of me thinking that you don't know what you are talking about. I am not a specialist here but 150 per KWH is impossible. At that rate it means that the whole US electric system production facilities cost around 200-750 trillion. That is a number larger than the whole global economy combined. Even if we say 100 or 50 or 10 per KWH that still bloats just the price of all production facilities in to the stratosphe and above total value of assetts and gdp in the country. US basically uses 4 460 000 000 000 KWH per year per 2018 statistics. A simple google search shows thats the average cost of KWH in the US is 13.30 cents for consumption. 150 / 0.133 / 12 = 94 years. So you are trying to say that it takes 94 years for a nuclear power plant to become profitable basically. (Assuming that 150 includes everything including interest and other risk, construction, trainings etc etc etc)

[BeesKnee5]

150 per KWH? Your numbers are wrong. Not just wrong but UNREALISTICALLY wrong to the point of me thinking that you don't know what you are talking about. I am not a specialist here but 150 per KWH is impossible. At that rate it means that the whole US electric system production facilities cost around 200-750 trillion. That is a number larger than the whole global economy combined. Even if we say 100 or 50 or 10 per KWH that still bloats just the price of all production facilities in to the stratosphe and above total value of assetts and gdp in the country. US basically uses 4 460 000 000 000 KWH per year per 2018 statistics. A simple google search shows thats the average cost of KWH in the US is 13.30 cents for consumption. 150 / 0.133 / 12 = 94 years. So you are trying to say that it takes 94 years for a nuclear power plant to become profitable basically. (Assuming that 150 includes everything including interest and other risk, construction, trainings etc etc etc)

My figures are from the latest Lazard LCOE report, although I confess to typing KWH when I meant MWH
The point stands that Nuclear only competes with solar and wind if you ignore the cost of construction and decommissioning. It's also not very good at handling variable demand which other renewable sources impose on it.

This is the truth behind how nuclear competes
https://theintercept.com/2019/07/26/ohi ... rstenergy/

In the UK the new nuclear station has a government guaranteed strike price of £92.50 MWh inflation linked for 35 years. To put this in context this years average wholesale price for baseload in the UK is under £50 MWh so the electricity will be subsidised by 50% when it comes online.

[JohnRawls]

My figures are from the latest Lazard LCOE report, although I confess to typing KWH when I meant MWH
The point stands that Nuclear only competes with solar and wind if you ignore the cost of construction and decommissioning. It's also not very good at handling variable demand which other renewable sources impose on it.

This is the truth behind how nuclear competes
https://theintercept.com/2019/07/26/ohi ... rstenergy/

In the UK the new nuclear station has a government guaranteed strike price of £92.50 MWh inflation linked for 35 years. To put this in context this years average wholesale price for baseload in the UK is under £50 MWh so the electricity will be subsidised by 50% when it comes online.

Okay, if its MWH then its a lot better. Then we can talk.

Best case scenario renewables vs nuclear is indeed better. I never disputed this. But this creates again the same problem that existed, you can build good performing renewable solar or wind in Texas which you can't do in the north of the country (US). This has always been the problem. Texas will be probably be the first state to become fully renewable followed by California and others. The problem arrises when you take the whole country in to account. The more North you move, the harder it becomes on Solar. Wind is a complicated subject because it depends on the Terrain and climate. (The closer to shore, the better usually).

On average if you take the whole country then nuclear is better. This has been the problem for solar especially. Not that it can't be used, it just can't be used everywhere. Everyone says that "just deliver" that energy from Texas to somewhere else but that is currently impossible. First of all because of storage is needed and second of all because you need to basically have superconductors to move large quantaties on very large distances for it to be economically viable. Superconductors are too pricy to build powerlines out of them.

Also regarding the math. If its 150 per MWH then again, the math is screwed. It means you need around 750 billion to fully replace US all power production with nuclear. Also something doesn't add up. That is way too cheap. 750 billion divided by 500 reactors will make it 1.5 billion per reactor. This is way to cheap compared to reality.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

Also regarding the math. If its 150 per MWH then again, the math is screwed. It means you need around 750 billion to fully replace US all power production with nuclear. Also something doesn't add up. That is way too cheap. 750 billion divided by 500 reactors will make it 1.5 billion per reactor. This is way to cheap compared to reality.

$150 per MWh is the price they'd sell the energy at, I think. For example, Hinkley Point C has a strike price of £92.50/MWh in 2012 prices - which, after a little inflation, is about $140/MWh. At 4.2 billion MWh/year US electricity usage, that's $630 billion/year to pay for the electricity - running costs, and paying back the cost of building the reactors, over many years.

[JohnRawls]

$150 per MWh is the price they'd sell the energy at, I think. For example, Hinkley Point C has a strike price of £92.50/MWh in 2012 prices - which, after a little inflation, is about $140/MWh. At 4.2 billion MWh/year US electricity usage, that's $630 billion/year to pay for the electricity - running costs, and paying back the cost of building the reactors, over many years.

This seems more reasonable actually and explains the discrapepncy. Then what Bee said is a bit wrong and hard to compare to what I was saying before. If we do the math then average price per KWH is somewhere between 12 and 14 cents in US. So 14 * 1 000 / 100 = 140 Dollars. In the range you would expect.

Solar math:
Google says average cost per Watt install in US is between 3 and 4 dollars for solar. Lets do the same calculations. We take 3.5 as a baseline. 3500 USd Per KW and 3 500 000 per MW. 3 500 000 / (366*24)= 400 USD per MWH. 400 * 4 460 000 000 = 1.8 Trillion to make US fully solar renewable IF the placement was perfect. Basically if everyone was Texas/California. This does not take in to account batteries though which by this time should not be seperatable from solar panels because they simply don't work properly otherwise. How much is battery price? Google says that panels cost 10k-14k while batteries will cost you 5k to 7k usually. So that is 50% increase for the batteries. We are talking about housing level batteries so lets pretend they are the same for large industry (Which they are not). 1.8 Trillion + 50% = 2.7 Trillion. So if the whole US was Texas/California then you would need 2.7 Trillion USD to put all production to fully renewable solar. You can probably subtract some from that cost because some of the electricity is already produced by "pure" renewables. So lets say 2.5 Trillion.

Conclusion: Same as nuclear just not possible because of different sun levels north of Texas/California. Nuclear provides more stable output compared to Solar. Only manages to compete under best possible conditions.