Jennifer Mary Tess
This is an opinion article. Here is a paragraph:
<< Another issue is that wealth limits the perspectives of even the best-intentioned people. This week, Bill Gates argued in an interview with the Financial Times that divesting (ditching stocks) from fossil fuels is a waste of time. It would be better, he claimed, to pour money into disruptive new technologies with lower emissions. Of course we need new technologies. But he has missed the crucial point: in seeking to prevent climate breakdown, what counts is not what you do but what you stop doing. It doesn’t matter how many solar panels you install if you don’t simultaneously shut down coal and gas burners. Unless existing fossil fuel plants are retired before the end of their lives, and all exploration and development of new fossil fuel reserves is cancelled, there is little chance of preventing more than 1.5C of global heating. >>
It said, “It doesn’t matter how many solar panels you install, if you don’t simultaneously shut down coal and gas burners.”
Apparently this guy doesn’t realize that when you install a solar panel array, say 4000 watts for example, that’s 4000 watts that is no longer needed from the fossil fueled power plant. If you install enough renewables such as solar and wind, then you are shutting down the power plant effectively. The power plant can be eliminated when the renewables plus storage puts out the same power.
Why would a company shut down the fossil fueled power plant? Because the power plant uses a huge amount of fossil fuel, usually coal; the renewables us none. One coal burning power plant uses 150 train carloads of coal a day! That’s expensive, $2059 per car — that’s 0.3 million dollars a day. Renewables are free.
