grahamsz

Also the argument we should be having in the US is whether we reach our climate goals through this kind of carbon-pricing model or the top-down regulatory model. In a sane world we’d probably expect republicans to be arguing for a carbon trading scheme and the democrats to be arguing for regulation.

They certainly should work at the power level. My utility is ~36% renewable in their power mix right now, but I pay for 100% and that extra money causes them to go out and buy extra renewables for the remaining 64% of my power. I’m not under any illusion that on a cold, still winter night that my power isn’t coming from coal base load - but I have high confidence that they really are buying that extra power, and that in turn creates more demand for solar generation.

My employer does something similar, we buy the RECs from something like a third of the output of a local solar farm (under contract) and then also buy dirty power from the utility. That should ultimately wash out.

Though what I can’t figure out is how that solar power is actually accounted for when it hits the grid. It’s been severed from the renewable energy credits (that we bought) so presumably it must not count as a non-carbon power source when it enters the grid, but I can’t find a category for “non-green solar power” on any of the utility reports. Anyone know where it goes?

That’s right in the range for subfloor heating, obviously a question of whether or not you can get it somewhere that you need it

I suppose that’s very true. But it could be done - if a data center needs megawatts of cooling and is in an area where buildings need to be heated in the winter, then there should be a legal obligation to not just dump that heat.

There’s probably some alternate uses for the heat if these things were well designed. There’s some building in denver that is near a major sewer and in the winter they use a heat exchanger to extract that energy and use it to heat the building.

Lagunitas IPNA

Realistically they were almost certainly from a list of 69 remedies that spacex proposed to the FAA. I don’t think the FAA is coming up with those items on their own.

Plus having the government as a customer is very different from receiving subsidies from the government. SpaceX certainly has got some r&d funds from nasa, but on the whole most of their “government funding” comes in the form of contracts that they won on merit.

Tesla’s a bit different, but consider that the government intended to spend a bunch of subsidize the rollout of electric cars and I’d argue that they got what they paid for. Had it not been for Tesla moving aggressively into that space I don’t think we’ve have nearly as many viable electric cars at this point. Certainly it’s more of a subsidy to it was to achieve a specific policy goal and that’s really not quite the same as (for example) when we specifically bail out a company with taxpayer funds because they are at risk of failure.

It certainly opens a can of worms though, I can see the democrats pushing for 16 (Scotland’s done the same and it’s further pushed the conservatives out of power there).

It’ll also be far easier to fight the GOP proposal in court as there will be people who are actively disenfranchised by raising the age, but it’s not clear that existing voters could have standing to sue if we enfranchise younger people.

Totally agree. I think the lack of mixed zoning is fucking weird about this country. When I lived in edinburgh I was upstairs from a bar and an indian restaurant - but where I live now it’s almost a mile to get to any kind of retail or dining.

I was also reminded in a recent story about revitalizing downtowns that lots of asian cities have all kinds of stuff inside high-rise buildings. Like you’d got a noodle restaurant that was on the third floor of a random building in hong kong. But the US seems to practically require that they be entirely office space.

I suppose, but it seems like dropping COD altogether would be great

It’s the same as the pick-up truck argument. It seems insane to me to drive a $60k vehicle so that when you need to move a piece of furniture you can… i can literally rent a pickup for an hour for $20. For the half-dozen times a year that I need to move something it seems ridiculous to own it.

Yeah, you can get electric car chargers where you can set rules something like “Charge whenever power is under 5c/kWh, but try to make sure i’ve 60% charge by 8am each weekday”. Logically you could have a thermostat control AC - we’ve been playing with that at work because our power goes up at 1pm, so we turn down the thermostat at 12:00 and then turn it up at 1:00 so it shunts some of the cooling a little earlier.

I’ve never seen a tumble drier that can do it, for some reason mine has WiFi but can’t do shit like that. But, yeah I imagine the rule I’d want would be : Dry this anytime in the next 4 hours, and try to spend as little as possible.

Maybe in some places, but that’s definitely not true in my city. The intersection i can see from my home office window has a 35mph speed limit and their are accidents there all the time. I haven’t seen anyone badly injured, but there was at least one that went up a berm, over a multiuse bike path, through a fence and crashed into a neighbor’s house.

I’d totally take my 9 yr old on a 3-4 mile bike ride if we’re going somewhere that we can get to on protected bike lanes, but there are lots of places in this city that aren’t accessible that way and I’d be much happier in a small city car. I’ve taken him along a 45 mph road on a few occasions and it’s nerve-wracking, legally you aren’t allowed to pass a bike until you can give them 3 foot of space but it happens ALL THE TIME and it’s a real deterrent to cycling for us.

The 28mph top speed i think is a european classification thing, but yeah that’d be the showstopper for me - not the size or range.

I can see that they are a bit caught in the middle here, but it seems insane that they can leave a package and send a COD bill later. That part is bonkers… doesn’t COD stand for Cash on Delivery?

You can definitely achieve more if you can work the supply-side as well. In theory if the smart grid were well executed then it’d be possible for consumers to modulate their heat, charging, tumble dryers etc… to provide more elasticity.

Unfortunately in a lot of places the incentives aren’t that high. I don’t have that option where I live, but in denver the lowest consumer rate is around 7c and the highest around 17c/kWh. It’s hard to invest in new appliances to exploit that difference, but if the off-peak number were 1c then I think you’d see much more take-up of smart car chargers and people delaying when they do laundry.

As a parent, I don’t know if I agree. It takes significant effort to get my kid out on a bike as our road system isn’t great for them. (My city is actually fairly good, but we still can’t, for example, get to his school without needing to ride on the road)

If it could do 45mph and had a 40 mile range then it’d work for nearly all our in-town trips. We have a phev that can only do about 20 miles on battery and at the start of the pandemic we went 9 months without needing to put gas in it. I wouldn’t want it as our only vehicle but it’d be pretty viable as our secondary one.

Their Oli concept car is probably even cooler and would likely work better in the US market.

It’ll be interesting to see if Americans would ever go for a “City Car”. I believe Citreon are bringing the ami to the USA and I’d be tempted to get one a second car - it’s certainly well under that pricepoint.

Narrator: There was no other option. It was Morgan Freeman all the way down.