I think I have an answer to the implicit question raised by Iddo Wernick in this piece at RealClearScience:
Confidence that green technologies can scale to dominate national energy systems remains based more on marketing claims than on demonstrated operational experience. The national goals set for 2050 present a supreme technological challenge to reduce environmental fallout while raising living standards for billions around the globe. Neither rich nor poor nations can afford to invest in technologies that achieve questionable benefits at the expense of accessible, reliable energy services for its citizens. Technologies that do not scale are destined to remain boutique technologies, the purview of the rich, environmental activists, and politicians that seize upon them to make empty promises.
Vaporware will always be a great way to rake in subsidy dollars.
Making the Tesla EV a status symbol for the top 10% of income earners was a stroke of genius on Elon Musk’s part. If you genuinely want to reduce carbon emissions, that’s the right way to do it. Subsidizing status symbols for the top 10% of income earners is unconscionable stupidity.
People were buying cars in the early 1900s before there was a network of gas stations. Developing a new network is not something we haven’t done before. The costs of batteries, solar, wind power etc have all significantly decreased over the last 20 years. That is with significant resistance from major parts of the world, like half of the US. We are seeing a number of new vehicles, not just Tesla coming out with 400 mile ranges. Will improvements keep happening? Who knows? I guess that back in 1903 this guy would have been pointing out that automobiles had too many problems and would never go national either. A modern day Malthus.
Talking with the kids over the weekend they make the case that a lot of what needs to be done doesnt really need a major technology jump. The charger issue has a number of solutions that can work using existing tech, though undoubtedly new and better will be found.
Vaporware would be a good description if we hadn’t reached the point where wind and solar are now the cheapest forms of energy in many places. If we were still stuck at golf cart range levels for cars. If there was only one car company making EVs. Now if someone would just figure out how to actually make those affordable small nuclear plants you talk about we can move stuff along even faster.
Steve
Most of the problems with nuclear are regulatory.