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[Doomblade187]

@devastator

Yes, there are currently downsides to a 100% renewable grid, but we know that. The 100% renewable goal is a stretch goal - it won't happen in 4 years, everyone knows it. The point is to start moving that way. And yes, backup fossil fuel generation is fine. Just don't want to make it the main source.

[wierd]

IIRC, the reason for non-renewables on the grid is to cover peak energy spikes and periods of poor production;

There's way to store energy that is not a battery, that could provide such standby power:

Thermal energy storage
Pumped hydro storage
Compressed air storage

etc..


The big thing is the incumbent technology replacement costs, and existing scaled costs for fossil fuel energy sources.

[Dostoevsky]

As others have alluded to, the closer you get to 100% the harder it is to squeeze out those last few points. As wierd says peak usage periods and poor production periods are a definite factor in that, and that the current storage technology we have would be very expensive (and potentially have high land usage) to cover the scale needed.

And it'd be really darned expensive - either you need to build enough capacity to be able to meet peak demand in poor weather (meaning you get up to a ridiculous overbuild for most other situations), and/or you spend a lot of money on storage.

There's the other, not so minor, problem of the way the energy sector works in America. It's a hodge-podge of national, regional, and local administrative entities interacting with a mix of monopolies, semi-nationalized entities, regulated markets, and other fun stuff (sometimes !!FUN!! stuff like Enron or PG&E). The ways those various segments are regulated is often pretty corrupt and not always incentivizing smart outcomes.

That's one reason why (as I understand it) Sanders would just nationalize the whole darn grid. Would be a probably-impossible (and possibly unconstitutional? haven't done the research on that, though) political lift, an administrative nightmare to transition, and probably a nightmare to manage. If one is gunning to 100% renewable on a short time frame, though, probably the most feasible way...

Though (again) as had been said, the benefits of squeezing out that last few percent probably aren't worth it. Better spending those resources more efficiently reducing GHGs from other sectors - these days the electric sector is only something like a third of US GHG emissions (transportation recently moved to #1, and I think buildings is #3).

That does have advantages though. If you tell twenty people you want to see 95% of them comply with X, you will get 0% compliance and twenty arguments why the other nineteen people should comply with X. If instead you demand 100% compliance, you will get 0% compliance and twenty arguments why they personally believe they shouldn't have to comply. It's easier to deal with the latter case piecemeal without being accused of playing favorites.

Plus which, politics is the only arena in which you want to ask the impossible in the hopes of getting half of it, because then everyone gets their own little carve-out to take back home to their constituents and brag about.

One of the risks here is if members of the party aren't in a position to demand 100% while still being able to win reelection (or at least feeling that way). In congress plenty of Ds (to say nothing of the Rs) don't feel like they can support it, which would make things rather awkward for interacting with their President. And unlike the situation with Trump & Rs, the Ds would actually have to pass laws instead of just looking the other way.

[Reelya]

I think the proponents are already aware that *exactly* 100% renewable may not be achievable in the near future. But you said that you live in an area where 95% of energy comes from renewable sources, but 5% non-renewable is needed to account for peak/base load.

Currently, USA is only about 15% renewable sources. If Sanders pledges 100% renewable, but "only" gets to 95%, then only the most pedantic haters will claim that Sanders was a liar who didn't deliver on his election promise.

EDIT: I'd say that there are two types of promises possible. First, there are all-or-nothing promises. For these ones, they only have any value at all if you get exactly what was promised. i.e. 99% of the promise is effectively the same as 0%. Some things are not worth even starting unless you can finish. The other type of promise are the "more or less" promises, where getting "more or less" what was promised is pretty much as good as getting the exact promise. Since even 1% reduction in emissions has a net benefit, then cutting emissions is thus a "more or less" promise. Partially achieving the promise is still valuable. Holding that we shouldn't even start unless we can get exactly 100% results is wrong for "more or less" promises and right for "all-or-nothing" promises.

[McTraveller]

Interesting, that Political Compass quiz puts me further in the lower left quadrant than any of the 2020 candidates.  I have to say though they really need to work on their questions - they are almost always phrased in the negative "Do you believe that X should not be...".

The problem with "Bernie" goals is they may be possible but a transition to those end states from our current position may not be, or if a transition is possible it will be extremely disruptive if attempted over a time span shorter than 20 years.

The main difficulty is that in order to do these things without massive upheaval you have to change the public* views on ownership and wealth.  Specifically you have to get people to want to do things not for direct personal benefit but for indirect social benefit.  Consider reformed health care or reformed education or even environmental changes:  this isn't going to manifest itself as people having lower bills or more stuff today - what it's going to do is result in lower costs relative to no investment in them today for things at some indeterminate time in the future.

This is really hard for people to intuit, and so they don't buy in.  What we are asking people to do is something like pay, say, $1000 today so that the price of insurance in 30 years is only $x instead of $x + $y, where both $x and $y are unknown.  Nobody can make a rational evaluation, because it's extremely unclear if that $1000 today is "worth" it.

So the mental shift has to be that we have to stop evaluating things in dollars but by some other metric.  This is hard because we (in general, of course) have been trained since an early age to value dollars above all else.  We are also trained to "keep up with the Jones", so the social pressures are high too - "austerity" and "contentment" are not common virtues today. Instead we see billboards for "you deserve this car/accessory/vacation/house".

*I do mean the entire public here, not the 1%.  This isn't even just because it's questionable that the 1% have enough money in the first place; it's because focusing on one group rather than the whole creates a divisive worldview and we should strive for a unified one, not a divided one.

[PTTG??]

But it is extremely clear that single-payer is better than our current system. It's how the rest of the world operates. We can look at other states and see that their citizens are better cared for and for much less.

[McTraveller]

I'm not disputing that single payer health care is more cost effective than the US system - I'm disputing that we can transition from what we have now to that system.  As far as I know, all the states that have single payer never had what the US has, so never had to undertake such a transition.

I'm also arguing that any such transition will result in higher short-term costs with savings to be realized in the future.  I'm also asserting that humans are bad about valuing things costing less in the future.  We are better at understanding increased income in the future (e.g., compound interest) but we are bad about placing a present value on reduced future costs.

A more "individual" example is evaluating TCO of electric vehicles, which is a good analog: initial purchase price is often higher than a comparable ICE vehicle, but total cost is lower.

[Max™]

We do need to still let the fleet of electrics get more general user experience and miles/lifetime before we say that, batteries aren't infinite use easily replenished resources after all. As a lover of the suck-squish-boom-blow type engines and their noises, burning hydrocarbons is fucking wasteful and messy, climate or not, we need that shit for plastic anyways.

The idea that moving to single payer is too high a barrier does kinda sound like something I would try to argue if I had actually gone into the insurance business, rather than being quietly horrified after attending a course on it, and I'm aware of large groups backed by insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, even hospitals which are actively working to drag the idea of stuff like medicare-for-all out of the public eye, find a nice dark alley somewhere, then start murdering it before jumping up and down on the corpse.

[Reelya]

The best plan is new cars as eletric coupled with alternative sourced hydrocarbons to extend the life of existing cars. Getting a new car frontloads a lot of emissions.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The best plan at this stage is to scale back car production entirely and refit the US for trains and buses while dismantling the suburbs. Cars are a plague in more ways than one.

[Naturegirl1999]

The best plan at this stage is to scale back car production entirely and refit the US for trains and buses while dismantling the suburbs. Cars are a plague in more ways than one.

Not to mention the amount of cars in landfills thst should be recycled for parts to repair existing cars Esther than continuing to make new car parts despite the amount of broken cars that can be repurposed.

[Lord Shonus]

Cars don't go to landfills. They go to scrapyards, where every useful part is stripped for resale and the rest is eventually melted down.

[Naturegirl1999]

Cars don't go to landfills. They go to scrapyards, where every useful part is stripped for resale and the rest is eventually melted down.

That’s good. Thank you for the information. I have no idea where I heard they were in landfills. Sorry for the incorrect non info.

[Trekkin]

Cars don't go to landfills. They go to scrapyards, where every useful part is stripped for resale and the rest is eventually melted down.

That’s good. Thank you for the information. I have no idea where I heard they were in landfills. Sorry for the incorrect non info.

To be fair, about 25% of the average car by mass does end up in landfills; outside of the metal content, it's not profitable to purify it for re-use, so it gets thrown out. So maybe you were thinking of that?

[Naturegirl1999]

Cars don't go to landfills. They go to scrapyards, where every useful part is stripped for resale and the rest is eventually melted down.

That’s good. Thank you for the information. I have no idea where I heard they were in landfills. Sorry for the incorrect non info.

To be fair, about 25% of the average car by mass does end up in landfills; outside of the metal content, it's not profitable to purify it for re-use, so it gets thrown out. So maybe you were thinking of that?

Probably. I would think it would be better in the long term to get as much use out of existing parts as possible, rather than spending resources creating new parts when we can prepare older parts for reuse