As much as I don’t like the administration, I don’t think this is necessarily true. Subsidies are being removed but I think most renewable has the chance to hold on its own. I do wish more of the markets worked closer to a an actual market like Texas which incentivizes creativity and trying to maximize. Renewables are so cost effective these days that most areas implement them and then natural gas serves as a useful baseload.
That is what I was leaning towards. Subsidies can be helpful to accelerate things but you have to be making the right bet. Ultimately it’s up to economics to make it a reality. Renewables are economically viable at this point in a lot of markets. The human race cannot make rational decisions at scale unless there is an immediate threat. The market so far in history has done the best job at pushing change. It’s far from perfect but I believe to be the best we have.
A 747 burns ~9 tonnes of kerosene per hour, creating ~29.6 tonnes CO2. The Monroe Power Plant produces 3400 MWe at ~1 kg CO2 per kWh, so ~3400 tonnes CO2 per hour.
It's a little complicated to weigh stratospheric emissions- the CO2 has a larger impact, and while the water droplets and contrails left by planes somewhat counteracts it (by reflecting incoming infrared) it's harder to compare intangibles like mercury emissions from coal. If you just say its all a wash, that plant is equivalent to 120 747s running full speed.
Private jets consume more like .9-1.5 tonnes per hour, so that's equivalent to ~900 billionaires. That's a bit less than half of them which is probably a lot more than were at the wedding. They also probably parked them instead of leaving them circling in the air.
If there were 90 billionaires who flew 12 hours each way in their private jets, then they probably released around 2.5 hours worth of Monroe Power Plant time over those 90 days- 8458 tonnes. Fun fact, the pilots and flight attendants probably used ~1000 tonnes of CO2 worth of energy etc and exhaled ~25 tonnes of CO2 in that time. 25 tonnes is small compared to the planes (>.3%), but in those 90 days the planes released just .11% as much as the coal plant.
Coal really truly sucks and it's unfair that I can't eat tuna without getting mad hatter disease.
