My oldest son and I converse on a number of subjects other than my grandchildren. One subject we discuss is green energy.
Once upon a time, I was the Environmental Manager for one of our accounts in the city. I didn't want the job and said so. But no matter, they made me do it anyway. I learned a lot of things in the process. Mainly, the wrong way to do it. I was told for the first year, go green, but spend no money! Being a former Chief Engineer, I had already implemented a number of cost saving measures that reduced our carbon foot print since it is beaten into us engineers to save money.
Eventually I got them to loosen their purse strings a little bit. We bought VFD's for our large package units, etc.
Well I have been retired, out of the field for a tad over a decade now so I decided to ask my son who is knowledgeable in this area what he felt had the most promise in the future.
His opinion is that solar energy is the way to go for the future. I think he is right, but we are not there yet. Our government is not very smart. They are trying to do too much too fast. As a result we are suffering 6% inflation. Fuel costs are starting to rise again. We have supply chain issues and food is expensive.
I agree that we should demonstrate a better stewardship of the world. However states like California and probably New York are not thinking right. If they go all electric in California regarding cars, do they realize that they will have to spend millions to upgrade the power grid? We need to produce more electricity for additional charging stations.
It varies by state, but those states who don't have an abundance of hydroelectric power will need to produce electricity by using nuclear reactors, oil, natural gas or coal. so how is that going to help reduce our carbon foot print? Then with an increase in EV's we will see an increase in battery reclamation and an accompanying increase in cost. We should not rush the process. We will just make it worse.
A message to government bureaucrats. We want to help, but we don't want to be driven into poverty and food shortages just so you can look good.🙂
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