<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>gchadwick</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s important not just to look at current electricity usage but total energy needs.  To truly decarbonise you need to stop burning gas for heating, stop burning fuel for transportation (or convert to Hydrogen) and so on.  So the existence of countries that can supply their current electricity needs via renewables doesn&amp;#x27;t immediately imply that for a zero carbon future renewables is all that is needed.&lt;p&gt;David MacKay covers this in his excellent book: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.withouthotair.com&amp;#x2F;c18&amp;#x2F;page_103.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.withouthotair.com&amp;#x2F;c18&amp;#x2F;page_103.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As for political will I feel we should first start with the numbers and works out what adds up.  If people don&amp;#x27;t want nuclear but nuclear is the only path to zero carbon then we&amp;#x27;ll need to choose one or the other.&lt;p&gt;Right now we can make great progress by ignoring nuclear because there&amp;#x27;s lots of things to be done.  So go all in on renewables and ditch nuclear is a politically easy choice.  Does great things for the stats and many people don&amp;#x27;t like nuclear.  Will it take us all the way though?</text><parent_chain><item><author>jillesvangurp</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think the need for nuclear is much of a fact. It&amp;#x27;s more wishful thinking. Norway gets by without it and uses wind and hydro (mostly) for most of their electricity needs. They have no need for nuclear whatsoever and they export energy. Iceland is famous for using geothermal. Scotland exports wind power and generates more power than they need that way. Also, places like Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden are relying on lots of wind (on and offshore).&lt;p&gt;The energy markets in Europe are connected and the fastest growing source of energy is basically wind. Coal is shrinking at this point and the enthusiasm for building new gas plants is likewise melting away rapidly as their cost seems to be on the high side compared to clean energy solutions. It will take decades to get rid of both of course.&lt;p&gt;Sweden and Finland actually both have nuclear plants. Finland even built a new one recently. But in general, nuclear is on the way out in Europe as there is no political will to commit to building new plants across the continent. Older plants are shutting down one by one. France has a lot of aging nuclear plants and they don&amp;#x27;t seem to be building new ones and are actively considering shutting a few down (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.france24.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;20170710-france-hulot-could-close-nuclear-plants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.france24.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;20170710-france-hulot-could-clos...&lt;/a&gt;). Apparently keeping their existing capacity online would take tens&amp;#x2F;hundreds of billions and the political appetite for those investments is pretty low.&lt;p&gt;Many EU countries are on a path to completely clean energy and it does not seem to involve building new nuclear plants.</text></item><item><author>Robotbeat</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m super pro-renewables. The fact is that northern Europe is going to need nuclear to completely decarbonize (which is what is required to meet our goals).&lt;p&gt;Because of the long winters, to do the same with wind&amp;#x2F;solar will require about 3-5 times as much cost as you might think at first. You need to provide extra capacity to artificially increase effective capacity factor, and then you need about 48 hours of storage. Also possible, but about the same price, is hydrogen for seasonal storage for winter.&lt;p&gt;...and generally speaking, effectively any carbonfree project being built now needs to be supported. We need everything. Including a lot more off-shore wind.</text></item><item><author>pytester</author><text>My local constituency was going to achieve this honour but unfortunately the local MP Robert Syms (known to be somewhat corrupt) killed the project on utterly bullshit grounds (it would barely have affected the view): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Navitus_Bay_wind_farm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Navitus_Bay_wind_farm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a contrast, it was also reported today that Hinkley point will be £2.9 billion over budget: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;business-49823305&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;business-49823305&lt;/a&gt; luckily for them, they get to charge  £92.50 per megawatt hour upon completion - locked in for 10 years. While wind power is costing us £40 per megawatt hour, not guaranteed, and likely to decrease.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The largest offshore wind farm is nearly complete, can power 1M homes</title><url>https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-largest-wind-farm/index.html</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>Maakuth</author><text>I think increased interconnects are the way to go, but don&amp;#x27;t mind adding nuclear capacity. It&amp;#x27;s worth noting though, that Norway is quite an exception in their hydro capacity, as there is so much height differences in their terrain. Increasing hydro capacity is also pretty hard these days due to enormous environmental cost and the fact that most of the viable sites are already built.</text><parent_chain><item><author>jillesvangurp</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think the need for nuclear is much of a fact. It&amp;#x27;s more wishful thinking. Norway gets by without it and uses wind and hydro (mostly) for most of their electricity needs. They have no need for nuclear whatsoever and they export energy. Iceland is famous for using geothermal. Scotland exports wind power and generates more power than they need that way. Also, places like Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden are relying on lots of wind (on and offshore).&lt;p&gt;The energy markets in Europe are connected and the fastest growing source of energy is basically wind. Coal is shrinking at this point and the enthusiasm for building new gas plants is likewise melting away rapidly as their cost seems to be on the high side compared to clean energy solutions. It will take decades to get rid of both of course.&lt;p&gt;Sweden and Finland actually both have nuclear plants. Finland even built a new one recently. But in general, nuclear is on the way out in Europe as there is no political will to commit to building new plants across the continent. Older plants are shutting down one by one. France has a lot of aging nuclear plants and they don&amp;#x27;t seem to be building new ones and are actively considering shutting a few down (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.france24.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;20170710-france-hulot-could-close-nuclear-plants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.france24.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;20170710-france-hulot-could-clos...&lt;/a&gt;). Apparently keeping their existing capacity online would take tens&amp;#x2F;hundreds of billions and the political appetite for those investments is pretty low.&lt;p&gt;Many EU countries are on a path to completely clean energy and it does not seem to involve building new nuclear plants.</text></item><item><author>Robotbeat</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m super pro-renewables. The fact is that northern Europe is going to need nuclear to completely decarbonize (which is what is required to meet our goals).&lt;p&gt;Because of the long winters, to do the same with wind&amp;#x2F;solar will require about 3-5 times as much cost as you might think at first. You need to provide extra capacity to artificially increase effective capacity factor, and then you need about 48 hours of storage. Also possible, but about the same price, is hydrogen for seasonal storage for winter.&lt;p&gt;...and generally speaking, effectively any carbonfree project being built now needs to be supported. We need everything. Including a lot more off-shore wind.</text></item><item><author>pytester</author><text>My local constituency was going to achieve this honour but unfortunately the local MP Robert Syms (known to be somewhat corrupt) killed the project on utterly bullshit grounds (it would barely have affected the view): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Navitus_Bay_wind_farm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Navitus_Bay_wind_farm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a contrast, it was also reported today that Hinkley point will be £2.9 billion over budget: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;business-49823305&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;business-49823305&lt;/a&gt; luckily for them, they get to charge  £92.50 per megawatt hour upon completion - locked in for 10 years. While wind power is costing us £40 per megawatt hour, not guaranteed, and likely to decrease.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The largest offshore wind farm is nearly complete, can power 1M homes</title><url>https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-largest-wind-farm/index.html</url></story>