alt Hacker NewsNo, it’s being used to say that ignoring the problems with Wind farms scaling to a huge scale (and fossil fuels is massive and wind has made less than a noticeable dent) means that you’ve solved one set of problems for another and hopes the second set isn’t as bad. I didn’t say the only alternative is to go back to fossil fuels. I personally think that nuclear has much better and cleaner scaling properties with fewer issues than wind and solar (for example it still remains generally true that the only countries that have meaningfully reduced CO2 emissions are those that have offset it using nuclear while solar and wind have a very poor record) .
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> wind has made less than a noticeable dent
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-mu...
Almost 30% is not nothing.
If the only similarity is ignoring some problem somewhere then those two are massively different and it's not "funny" in the way you're implying.
Please look at a chart of per-MWhr generation costs. Wind and solar are a fraction of the cost of nuclear (with solar plunging by the day, almost) and nuclear is only getting more expensive as time goes on despite being a decade or two away from being a 100 year old technology.
In the US nuclear plants are being phased out and wind/solar projects are replacing them at a ratio of roughly 6:1...with huge savings for grid operators and customers. It's so cheap, even with storage system costs it's still cheaper.
That's where utilities are focused: expanding energy storage and better transmission grid infrastructure. Those, and renewable energy, increase grid reliability.