<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>dubcanada</author><text>A few things&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; If we could wave a magic wand and completely stop our CO2 emissions it wouldn&amp;#x27;t move the needle on global warming at all.&lt;p&gt;Some people completely ignore the fact that it does help, it may not help the ozone above China, but having a country that is not pumping out ash and other byproducts into the air does make it citizens healthier. They live longer, they have less health issues, they pay more taxes (potentially longer job life span), and they are happier. So regardless of the short sighted &amp;quot;we are too small to do anything&amp;quot; statement. It does help.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Notwithstanding these facts, the government went all in on renewables and cutting down on emissions -- despite it not making any sense -- because it&amp;#x27;s a popular measure across all age groups.&lt;p&gt;Another interesting statement, should it not make sense for a government to do what it&amp;#x27;s citizens want?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Energy companies had to invest in still unproven renewable tech which was very costly.&lt;p&gt;Solar is fairly new, but wind is certainly not new in any fashion, along with water it is one of the oldest forms of energy generation that exist. If anything coal&amp;#x2F;nuclear are newer than wind. And tidal assuming a stable tidal pattern is also an easy engineering issue to solve. I am not sure beyond solar you can argue &amp;quot;unproven renewable tech&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently, like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t really say that, if that&amp;#x27;s an argument then nobody would ever buy anything, because it could always be better and cheaper later.&lt;p&gt;I get the reasoning for your statement, because investing in natural gas or other oil methods like that can provide more faster for the general populace. But there is no reason that renewable cannot ALSO do that, it&amp;#x27;s just nobody has an example of such case. And there are plenty of examples with gas.</text><parent_chain><item><author>vmsp</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d like to offer a more critical perspective as a Portuguese living in Portugal.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re a country with very severe economical, financial, social and health problems which have been unsolved for years. Living in Portugal is a hard and it&amp;#x27;s expected it will get harder and harder. We have tons of young people leaving the country every year.&lt;p&gt;Our CO2 emissions are like 0.15% of the total and our per-capita emissions are already lower than for ex. Germany. We basically have no industry. If we could wave a magic wand and completely stop our CO2 emissions it wouldn&amp;#x27;t move the needle on global warming at all.&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding these facts, the government went all in on renewables and cutting down on emissions -- despite it not making any sense -- because it&amp;#x27;s a popular measure across all age groups.&lt;p&gt;Energy companies had to invest in still unproven renewable tech which was very costly. As a result, energy companies then had to amortize this investment and now we have one the highest energy prices in all of Europe. Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently, like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech.&lt;p&gt;So, we -- the Portuguese -- are worse, overall, because of these short sighted measures. But, hey, at least we get good press.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>54% of Portugal’s electricity is now generated by renewable energy</title><url>https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2023-09-30/54-of-portugals-electricity-is-now-generated-by-renewable-energy/81840</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>conjecTech</author><text>Something like 80% of Portugal&amp;#x27;s solar has been installed since 2018[1], when solar was on-par with if not cheaper than any other form of electricity generation. And that&amp;#x27;s from aggregate perspective, the economics are definitely better for Portugal. There were PPA being signed in similar geographies for 3c&amp;#x2F;kwh that year. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if the defrayed cost from lower fossil fuel usage just since the start of war in Ukraine has fully offset the cost of the installation. I&amp;#x27;m not sure why you think this has been so costly for average citizens.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pv-tech.org&amp;#x2F;portugal-installs-more-solar-pv-in-2022-so-far-than-all-of-2021&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pv-tech.org&amp;#x2F;portugal-installs-more-solar-pv-in-2...&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>vmsp</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d like to offer a more critical perspective as a Portuguese living in Portugal.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re a country with very severe economical, financial, social and health problems which have been unsolved for years. Living in Portugal is a hard and it&amp;#x27;s expected it will get harder and harder. We have tons of young people leaving the country every year.&lt;p&gt;Our CO2 emissions are like 0.15% of the total and our per-capita emissions are already lower than for ex. Germany. We basically have no industry. If we could wave a magic wand and completely stop our CO2 emissions it wouldn&amp;#x27;t move the needle on global warming at all.&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding these facts, the government went all in on renewables and cutting down on emissions -- despite it not making any sense -- because it&amp;#x27;s a popular measure across all age groups.&lt;p&gt;Energy companies had to invest in still unproven renewable tech which was very costly. As a result, energy companies then had to amortize this investment and now we have one the highest energy prices in all of Europe. Had we chosen to start investing in renewables more recently, like Brazil, we would be buying better and cheaper tech.&lt;p&gt;So, we -- the Portuguese -- are worse, overall, because of these short sighted measures. But, hey, at least we get good press.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>54% of Portugal’s electricity is now generated by renewable energy</title><url>https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2023-09-30/54-of-portugals-electricity-is-now-generated-by-renewable-energy/81840</url></story>