Greenpeace International“You cannot blow up the sun. It is incredibly difficult to disable a decentralised network of millions of rooftop solar panels. Distributed energy is inherently more resilient to sabotage than a handful of massive, vulnerable thermal plants.”
KerplunkIt is incredibly difficult to disable a decentralised network of millions of solar panels with household battery storage.
Full agreement. Power networks are soft targets, atomic power stations and radioactive waste storage a horrific disaster waiting to be triggered.
kravietz 🦇Yet, nuclear power stations are the only reason why #Ukraine power grid works after #Russia has annihilated hydro power plants, coal and gas power plants, and stole huge PV farms in Kherson oblast. Nuclear power plants, which Russians did not dare to destroy - and portable petrol generators, which kind of do count as distributed power generation. That’s the real world versus crypto nerd’s imagination 😄
And as it comes to PV - yes, you can’t “blow up the sun” but 1) a single country - China - currently controls[^1] 85% of the whole PV supply chain, 2) panels are easily damaged by natural (hailstorm, wind) and human factors (cluster munitions, fire) plus they depend on inverters which can be hacked remotely[^2]
[^1]: https://www.iea.org/reports/securing-clean-energy-technology-supply-chains
[^2]: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-power-plants-in-the-cloud/
Brad Macpherson@kravietz @Kerplunk @greenpeace 1) Sure, but once the panels are installed who the fuck cares for 25+ years - and there's nothing stopping us building our own (re-) manufacturing capacity, it's established tech; 2) they're also easily replaced and not nearly as easy to damage as you make out; plus damage to a panel doesn't necessarily stop it working entirely, nor the panels beside it; and 3) don't connect inverters to the internet. For the love of all that's foul and corrupt, don't do it.
nothing stopping us building our own (re-) manufacturing capacity
Well, so why aren’t we doing it now? Because Chinese production is much cheaper thanks to energy mix based 60% of coal, forced labour and weak environmental protection laws. Which is absurd way of doing “energy transformation” since CO2 doesn’t really care about administrative borders.
@kravietz @Kerplunk @greenpeace Right, so we go with your method of... continuing to burn stuff other scumbags with questionable attitudes to human rights dig out of the ground, because the alternative that's available right now isn't perfect?
Cop on, pal. We install decentralised power generation equipment, wherever possible sourced from ethical manufacturers, and we work on rebuilding our own ethical and local manufacturing capability.
I don’t know who is “we” but German BASF has just opened the largest factory in China, which doesn’t sound like “rebuilding our ethical and local manufacturing capability”, just the opposite 😄
@kravietz @Kerplunk @greenpeace Nobody's saying we *are* doing the right thing with regards our manufacturing capacity - quite the opposite, we are not doing nearly enough.
We can do more than one thing at a time though, as Americans like to say we can walk and chew gum. Replacing FF generation with decentralised (largely PV, and wind/micro hydro/etc. wherever possible and not deleterious) harvesting can't wait for local manufacturing but won't stop it. Only thing in the way is policy and will.
Well, so why aren’t we doing it now? Because Chinese production is much cheaper thanks to energy mix based 60% of coal, forced labour and weak environmental protection laws.
Sounds nearer to England than China, wages nobody can live from is Modern Slavery. UK Hospital, leaking roof, delapidated, ridiculous working hours.
China, things have changed in the last 30 years, mostly for the better, the transformation toward green tech is the fastest on the planet. .