alt Hacker News> There's a weird "degrowth" mindset
Matching demand to production where possible strikes me as a sane approach. Western nations have become very used to an incredibly high standard of living largely powered by disproportionately massive energy consumption per person. If it uses power more efficiently to dry one's clothes at night or run the dishwasher overnight, rather than during the day alongside AC and computers and whatnot, that seems eminently reasonable to do.
This sharp resistance to minor personal inconvenience is bananas to me. If the alternative is to bring massive battery storage or nuclear plants online, vs "hey, maybe charge your car overnight" or "hey, timeshift your AC use and add some insulation to your house," why wouldn't we do that?
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One measure of progress is not having to think about something. I don't want to have to think about when to wash my clothes or my dishes or whatever. I want to push the button and have it go. I'd be willing to make a concession for an EV since it consumes a lot of power, but it should be automatically controlled and not make me think.
If we're going to electrify everything, we need a clean, plentiful, reliable electrical supply. There is no technical obstacle to having this.
Saying "we can save $1000 per person in capital costs, they just need to deal with 5 extra minor inconveniences per day" is not how you run a developed country.
>This sharp resistance to minor personal inconvenience is bananas to me.
I assume you're in good health, not poor, in a stable living arrangement, etc. The burden of "minor personal inconveniences" depends greatly on how many inconveniences you already suffer. Somebody working two jobs doesn't have much spare energy for optimizing utility use.
Human development is all about removing minor inconveniences. It's how we progress from 0 climate control and lacking clean drinking water to how we live today. Here's a good article on the subject: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/we-live-like-roy...
The rational approach is to both bring that new green / nuclear energy capacity online AND simultaneously reduce waste.
> add some insulation to your house,
Adding insulation is expensive, and awkward. If you have cavity walls that are uninsulated, it needs to be done right. If you have single skim walls you either do external cladding (and change the outside of your building), or build an internal stud wall and insulate that, which is very effective but costs a decent amount, reduces internal floor space, and requires a full redecoration after.
You seem to be missing the human element in your calculation. It's not just power plants and the machines that use the electricity from them. The machines are built for humans, who want their clothes washed today so they can be folded today and ready for tomorrow. They want the dishes washed today so they can be put back on the shelves before tomorrow's breakfast. And, by the way, grime on dishes gets more difficult to remove once it has sat drying, waiting for the machine to start.
Building more power plants seems like a pretty sane approach to me.
> Matching demand to production where possible strikes me as a sane approach.
No, you're supposed to do the other way around.
Why not bring massive energy storage and nuclear plants online? Because it's expensive? Or because we let oil companies and land owners make the rules?
Making peoples lives worse to save money is a capitalist mindset and I don't understand why so many left wing people believe in it. The promise of socialism was always higher living standards for the working class (99 percent) at the expense of millionaires.
> "hey, timeshift your AC use and add some insulation to your house"
The UK has the oldest housing stock in Europe, and most likely in the world. [0]
Roughly 30% of the stock is single-skin, without a cavity. While it's not impossible to insulate such walls, it's generally inadvisable for many reasons. The same goes for the roofs of these houses; although you will find many companies willing to spray your roof with foam or other forms of thermal sealing, those roofs were never designed to be insulated, causing other potentially catastrophic problems once it's been done.
Generally, the poorest and oldest people in society occupy these houses, but no matter; the government will ban the sale of gas boilers to coerce them in to installing heat pumps, despite them being incompatible with the existing pipework and radiators.
0: https://files.bregroup.com/bretrust/The-Housing-Stock-of-the...