Reply #16: We can invest in solar and hydro and wind and waste and geo now... [View All]

[k2qb3]

There's no need to wait 50 years, there are many places in the country where we can get a positive EROEI from renewables. Unfortunately there are impacts and environmental concerns and NIMBY going on with all of those projects, we have trouble getting wind plants online over birdkills, hydro too over fish, and even just over noise and views.

I agree we need to build new plants though, to handle the base load. We should really be doing more research on which of the top contenders has the best risk/reward and then move forward on it, I'm guessing thorium will be the future but there are several possibilities.

Even if we can eventually get to 100% renewables, and I think we probably can, it's going to take a big increase in energy production to build the infrastructure to do it in a reasonable time period. We could be off fossil fuels for the most part in a generation or two, we need to be.