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Some thoughts about secular stagnation | 107 comments (107 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: use savings glut to finance public investment (none / 0)
Call me irrational and/or simple-minded, but after Fukushima, I am completely anti-nuclear.

At the top of your list, I would add two options:

  • reduction in consumption
  • efficiency (e.g. better insulation)

Passivhaus construction -- which is even spreading to China now -- is in line with these two.

Point n'est besoin d'espérer pour entreprendre, ni de réussir pour persévérer. - Charles le Téméraire

by marco on Mon Nov 25th, 2013 at 04:04:42 PM EST
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Re: use savings glut to finance public investment (4.00 / 2)
Reductions in overall electricity consumption are not going to happen.
Cleaning up the rest of the economy - transport, chemical and industrial processes currently run of fossil inputs and so on means that the grid is going to have to supply a lot more juice. Currently electricity is roughly a third of our energy use, in a zero-emission economy, it will be well north of ninety, with the remainder being things like food production waste based fuels for niche applications and ambient heat sucked in by heat pumps. So even large efficiency gains still imply electricity production that is overall quite a lot higher than at present.
So production plans need to be scaled for that, and the main point of efficiency gains is to limit just how much additional cabling you are going to have to bury.
by Thomas on Mon Nov 25th, 2013 at 04:20:28 PM EST
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Re: use savings glut to finance public investment (none / 1)
Some of the extra consumption isn't actually going to impact the last-mile grid too badly. If we go down the path of "all electric motoring, and all electric home-heating via heatpumps" (you cant do district heating off a windmill.) then that demand can all be time-shifted trivially, so existing wiring out to residences would need only modest upgrades. But the production side? That is going to need beefing up. A lot.
by Thomas on Mon Nov 25th, 2013 at 04:38:01 PM EST
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Re: use savings glut to finance public investment (4.00 / 2)
You're irrational and/or simple-minded.

Like me.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Nov 25th, 2013 at 04:21:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Some thoughts about secular stagnation | 107 comments (107 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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