Uruguay’s green power revolution: rapid shift to wind shows the world how it’s done
Erm, well, sorta.
An alternative energy source such as hydropower is vital to plug gaps in a renewable grid as wind and solar are intermittent.
Yes, it is. So, how much?
Installed electricity capacity in Uruguay was around 2,500 MW (megawatts) in 2009 and around 2,900 MW in 2013. Of the installed capacity, about 63% is hydro, accounting for 1,538 MW which includes half of the capacity of the Argentina-Uruguay bi-national Salto Grande. The rest of the production capacity is mostly thermal and a small share of wind and biomass.
OK, old numbers, but effectively they’re running a hydro electricity system with wind on top. Fine, works well etc.
Anyone think the greens will let us have 50 to 60% of ‘leccie from dams?
Except when there is a drought as there is now (2022/2023) due to La Niña. Then you need to import power from Brazil and Argentina.
The Greens won’t even give us the CO2 allowance to mix the concrete.
I don’t know how much the “Greens” will permit, but Mother Nature certainly will not permit us to obtain 10% of the UK’s power needs from hydroelectricity. We do not have enough mountains nor do we have big enough rivers.
Installed electricity capacity in Uruguay was around 2,500 MW (megawatts) in 2009
About the same as total UK electric capacity in 1920.
Current UK generation capacity is over 100 GW and this is insufficient.
So,
Stung by the 2008 oil price spike, Uruguay now produces up to 98% of its electricity from renewables. Can other countries follow suit?
Yes, if they’re tiny countries that have low expectations for living standards. Big countries can have affordable energy, or widespread rioting and unrest.
NB Uruguay also has no heavy industries and no intention of “defeating Russia” or supporting the “independence” of Taiwan. We in the rules-based West are in the amazing position of being ruled by people who want to master the world using wind power and smug hashtags.
Question for the strategos: if it costs us 10 x what the Russians and Chinese are paying for shells, and we can only manufacture a fraction of what they can, and they’re similarly able to easily outproduce us in tanks and tubes and other battlefield consumables, who will win the war?
As Homer Simpson calls the country: Arugay.
My California living brother was most upset in 2009 when I laughed at his prediction that was the end of the Obama first term there would be a high speed railway between San Francisco and LA. I told him they wouldn’t even have finished the first environmental impact statement by then, and that was assuming they had the money. Which they didn’t!
Rupert – My California living brother was most upset in 2009 when I laughed at his prediction that was the end of the Obama first term there would be a high speed railway between San Francisco and LA.
To be fair, they might not have hover trains in California yet, but they are leading the Western world in converting their cities to open air toilets.
E.g. California Governor Gavin Newsome is threatening to cancel a proposed new public toilet in San Francisco’s Noe Valley Town Square if San Francisco officials cannot get costs under control. According to a recent budget breakdown, the current plan is projected to cost $1.7 million, including $300,000 for architecture and engineering fees and $150,000 for construction management fees. Only $750,000 of the $1.7 million is for actual construction costs. Even if approved, the toilet may not be completed until 2025 due to the long planning process.
That’s $1.7m and years of legal wrestling for one toilet.
We backed the weak horse.
I read the UK is congratulating itself for being the first G20 nation to reduce its carbon emissions by 50%.
Stupid cvnts.
Question for the strategos: if it costs us 10 x what the Russians and Chinese are paying for shells, and we can only manufacture a fraction of what they can, and they’re similarly able to easily outproduce us in tanks and tubes and other battlefield consumables, who will win the war?
Could take a lesson from history, Steve. Reagan’s Star Wars initiative pushed the USSR into using more of its economic capacity to keep up the strategic balance than it could afford. Resulting in the collapse of the USSR.
Same could now be true of Putin. He’s put the entirety of the Russian economy to producing banging equipment. The proportion of the Western economies doing the same is trivial. How long do you think Russians are going to put up with being impoverished in the cause of Putin’s war? The feedback I’m getting from the Russians I know is not much longer. That’s without the butcher’s bill.
King or emperor, president or dictator, the rulers rule with the consent of the Mum of the guard on the palace gates. What’s her opinion?
You could also take a lesson from the fate of the Axis powers in WW2. They started a war they could not win. Allied industrial capacity was always going to triumph in a protracted war. All the West has to ensure is that Ukraine does not lose. Putin will eventually defeat himself.
@BiS
Maybe Putin is doing a “Star Wars” in reverse? Whose economy will collapse first….
BiS – Reagan’s Star Wars initiative pushed the USSR into using more of its economic capacity to keep up the strategic balance than it could afford. Resulting in the collapse of the USSR.
The USSR didn’t collapse because of Ronnie Regan or SDI (!). It collapsed because Communism doesn’t work and countries afflicted by it pursued foolish ideological ends which made them poorer and weaker over time.
Say hello to Net Zero.
He’s put the entirety of the Russian economy to producing banging equipment.
I don’t think that’s true.
The proportion of the Western economies doing the same is trivial.
That’s true.
How long do you think Russians are going to put up with being impoverished in the cause of Putin’s war?
The Russian economy is growing (much) faster than ours is, and the cost of living is much lower in Russia.
As I keep saying, and apologies for being repetitive… when Rooskies and Chinamen are driving about in their cheap petrol cars, turning on the central heating whenever they feel like it, and Brits are shivering in “warm banks” or cursing the day they were conned into buying a heat pump, it will be difficult to say how we have “won”.
The feedback I’m getting from the Russians I know is not much longer.
Consider the possibility that educated, English-speaking Russians who are chummy with foreigners are not representative of the average Ivan in the street.
King or emperor, president or dictator, the rulers rule with the consent of the Mum of the guard on the palace gates. What’s her opinion?
Putin will easily win reelection, which is pretty much all we need to know about that.
2 years into the war, and our best hope now is that Russia might decide to stop fighting – this is what losing looks like. Gideon Rachman in the FT had the best suggestion I’ve seen to date – NATO is just going to redefine failure as success and drop Kiev like it did Kabul.
You could also take a lesson from the fate of the Axis powers in WW2. They started a war they could not win. Allied industrial capacity was always going to triumph in a protracted war. All the West has to ensure is that Ukraine does not lose. Putin will eventually defeat himself.
The Axis lost because they were never capable of mobilising enough men, munitions and materiel to win. (The exact same reason Germany lost in WW1).
We are now in the same position as the Axis Powers. If our proxy war becomes a hot war, our enemies will have more of everything than we do.
Btw, 2 years in and we’re not getting any closer to matching Russian manufacturing capabilities. We’re falling further behind, which is why we can’t sustain the proxy war indefinitely.
Ukraine needs 250,000 artillery shells a month. The entire manufacturing capacity of every NATO country combined barely exceeds 10% of that, and there are no realistic plans whatsoever to increase our munitions manufacturing capacity to a level that might sustain a medium sized war.
If we went to war tomorrow, we’d run out of missiles in a fortnight. This is what happened in 2011 when Lord Pigfucker attacked Libya for no good reason. Libya was unable to fight back, but Russia and China are not easy victims.
12 years after discovering our tiny armed forces are incapable of subduing a small Third World basket case regime in a war of our own choosing, they have done exactly nothing to increase our stockpiles. There is no reason to think the West can “win” from this position, because winning at war requires material advantages the collective West has pissed away, and a will to collectively do violence that has evaporated from the dickless regimes of CW.
I assume they’ve fixed the heating in the Lubyanka Building then Steve.
Question for the strategos: if it costs us 10 x what the Russians and Chinese are paying for shells, and we can only manufacture a fraction of what they can, and they’re similarly able to easily outproduce us in tanks and tubes and other battlefield consumables, who will win the war?
We could try playing to our strengths and allowing the Ukrainians to also. The last few days showed again what Western weapons can do to the Russian war machine. The bulk of the Russian air force and navy is withdrawing from southern Ukraine / Crimea for the time being. It would be a particularly good time for the Kerch bridge to be taken out (where is the long range, big warhead ATACMS, Biden twats?). When the logistics are gone it doesn’t matter how many shells they can make.
Despite its big advantage in numbers of men and materiel, Russia still can’t press big attacks. When they try they have losses at 7:1 ratios for small gains they can’t always hold. They’ve just taken the village of Marinka at enormous cost after nearly two years. So long as the Ukrainians are willing to fight we should keep supplying them with the goods to bleed the Russians dry.
I agree we should increase our forces and their supplies.
Love the implication that one Russian shell is of the same quality and accuracy as one designed and manufactured in the free world. Ditto for the guns themselves, the targeting and the supply train.
Yesterday a single strike by British/French missiles sunk a ship full of artillery shells. The response? Randomly shelling Kherson city, causing two civilian casualties and a dozen wounded.
JG – we can but hope
PJF – We could try playing to our strengths and allowing the Ukrainians to also. The last few days showed again what Western weapons can do to the Russian war machine. The bulk of the Russian air force and navy is withdrawing from southern Ukraine / Crimea for the time being. It would be a particularly good time for the Kerch bridge to be taken out (where is the long range, big warhead ATACMS, Biden twats?). When the logistics are gone it doesn’t matter how many shells they can make.
Nah, this is losing.
The point of these headline grabbing attacks is to grab headlines. It doesn’t change the situation on the ground, which is hideously awful for Ukraine and getting worse every day.
Russia isn’t in any danger of losing Crimea based on a few missile or drone attacks. Ukranians are very angry at the existence of the Kerch Bridge, but destroying it won’t bring back Crimea or prevent Russia from resupplying the peninsula (look at a map).
Only a ground invasion could do that. But that’s been tried already.
Despite its big advantage in numbers of men and materiel, Russia still can’t press big attacks. When they try they have losses at 7:1 ratios for small gains they can’t always hold. They’ve just taken the village of Marinka at enormous cost after nearly two years. So long as the Ukrainians are willing to fight we should keep supplying them with the goods to bleed the Russians dry.
We’ve got no idea what Russia’s casualties are and the only people willing to feed us numbers are proven liars with every incentive to lie (it’s a war after all).
Ukranians in general are not “willing” to fight, that’s why they’re kidnapping 48 year old men off the street and forcing them into the meat grinder. Their government is “willing” to fight so long as we keep funding the entire war + Ukranian government.
I like Ukranians, which is why I don’t want to send them another penny. I’d rather they were alive, and that we didn’t help in their assisted suicide as a society. I’ve yet to understand why we should want white European peoples to slaughter each other.
Paul – Love the implication that one Russian shell is of the same quality and accuracy as one designed and manufactured in the free world. Ditto for the guns themselves, the targeting and the supply train.
Yarp, this is why we’re losing.
It doesn’t matter how wonderful and high tech your shells, missiles or tanks are if you run out of them weeks into a war.
But at least we’re the free world, eh? What a lovely consolation prize that is.
It would be a particularly good time for the Kerch bridge to be taken out (where is the long range, big warhead ATACMS, Biden twats?).
I read a piece a while back by someone who obviously knew what he was talking about explaining why ATACMS and Storm Shadow aren’t the right tools for taking out a target like the Kerch bridge. The right tool for that job is the German Taurus missile, which is probably why Scholz is holding back, he doesn’t want that responsibility – he is a Twat and not just for that. If he’d released the Leopards before Russia got dug in Ukraine might have had a better chance of a big breakthrough this summer.
The problem with the ammo isn’t just the shortage of shells, both sides are running out of serviceable barrels. You can’t keep firing indefinitely, they need maintenance and eventually replacing. Russia appears to have the bigger problem there, made worse because they’re using dodgy shells
Russia is also starting to see some serious moral problems and its only going to get worse when Putin is re-elected and starts conscripting middle class children, because that’s all that will be left.
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1738865889909326027?s=20
Here’s the article Storm Shadow v Taurus and its about fuzes..
https://medium.com/@tim.dezitter/why-taurus-offers-a-qualitative-edge-over-storm-shadow-scalp-eg-when-engaging-certain-targets-2d1d0ee61969
Steve needs to face facts. Putin lost the war when the Russian forces failed to take Kyiv by day 3. What followed has been face saving. If there was a cease fire now, what’s Russia gained? A few hundred square kilometres of Ukraine it didn’t hold two years ago. At what cost?
BiS – Steve needs to face facts. Putin lost the war when the Russian forces failed to take Kyiv by day 3. What followed has been face saving. If there was a cease fire now, what’s Russia gained? A few hundred square kilometres of Ukraine it didn’t hold two years ago. At what cost?
If you still think this war is primarily about seizing prime beet-growing territory, I dunno what to tell you.
I also dunno what to tell blokes who think there’s still a military solution available to Ukraine, or that a country that’s now conscripting old people, women and cripples is on the path to success.
But I’m fine with the new narrative about how ackshually the Russians are losers, because the reason this narrative is being constructed is our leaders understand the Ukraine war can’t continue. That’s why they are floating the idea of a ceasefire or armistice. Because Russia is losing so hard.
Anything that stops the war would be great news for everyone concerned. The Ukraine war is an absolute horrifying disaster and nobody should want it to continue.
God help us.
Putin (or his minions) went for the quick win with the attack on Kiev – which failed miserably and cost them dearly.
Since then they’ve fought a war of attrition against an entrenched enemy backed by NATO and America.
The Ukrainians have had since the Maiden coup in 2014 to prepare and reinforce so it’s hardly surprising that Russia hasn’t had an easy time of it. As in WW2 they’ve got off to an iffy start, but are slowly getting their shit together.
Time will tell who cracks under the strain first.
The West with it’s sanctions and seizure of Russian assets obviously thought they could either force the collapse of the Russian regime or the ousting of Putin to be replaced by someone more malleable. Failing that they seemed to be hoping to bring Putin to the negotiating table with him in a seriously disadvantaged position.
Russia and Putin have been written off multiple times, but this has clearly been shown to be empty propaganda or wishful thinking thus far.
What has been clearly exposed are the weaknesses in the Western nations backing Ukraine. Militarily, economically and leadership wise, the collective West are struggling to maintain pressure on the Russians, not while there’s a more pressing conflict now emerging in the middle east. The West is no longer quite the industrial power-house it once was. Germany is now actively destroying it’s heavy industry, to be sent overseas – never to return. Britain has shed it’s heavy industry to become a nation where we sell each other fancy coffees and houses to juice our GDP figures. It’s not even clear that the importation of millions of immigrants has even increased GDP ( certainly not per capita). Bidenflation, net zero and crony capitalism is now hollowing out Americas industrial base.
It’s not altogether obvious that Ukraine (and the West) are going to outlast Russia in this. Not while Russia still has a very real industrial base, abundant energy and a population more willing to tolerate hardship than us. Whatever happens with the elections in America next year, one thing is guaranteed – the yanks are going to be more divided than ever and social and cultural unity is going down the toilet fast.
Steve today, angling for a ceasefire: “I like Ukrainians”
Steve January 2022, anticipating a Russian invasion and three-day victory: “Ukraine is a retarded nation of potato farmers.”
That isn’t what Steve said, be fair.
If the Flemish started shelling the shit out of the Walloons, do you think France would wait 8 years before intervening?
When the ‘Special Military Operation’ started, people joked about US fighting to the lastUkrainian.
Not looking such a joke now, with disabled and geriatics and heavily pregnant women being drafted to the trenches. And still a year to go to the US elections.
Please God, end it now. Do an Afghanistan, declare victory and run away. The US lost again.
Paul, Somerset – I wasn’t going to bother replying to your drive-by quote, because you’ve done it before and we’ve already established I can’t be shamed over off the cuff comments about Johnny Foreigner (or Jimmy Britisher for that mat.)
But then I noticed you’re telling porkies about Steve:
Steve today, angling for a ceasefire
No, I’m not “angling” for a ceasefire. It’s the US government who are doing that. I want what I’ve consistently wanted: an immediate end to the war.
Not that what I want matters, I am of considerably less importance than the butler in Remains of the Day, but it matters enough for me to correct your nonsense.
January 2022, anticipating a Russian invasion and three-day victory
More lies.
I was never anticipating a Russian invasion or three day victory because I was sure there wouldn’t be one. Russia had far too few troops on the border to invade Ukraine, or so I thought and said at the time. Hence Biden talking about some kind of potential “limited incursion”. Limited, as in significantly fewer than 200K men was not, and was never going to be, nearly enough to occupy a country nearly three times the size of Britain.
Again, doesn’t matter, except it mattered enough for you to say something that isn’t true. Please stick to the truth, it’s less boring.
Tasmania have just been called out for barely having enough power for themselves, let alone anything to export. They’ve spruiked themselves recently as ‘Australia’ s battery’. Wind with hydro backup. There are actually abundant hydro resources there but they’ve been off limits politically for a long time. And what they’re saying now is they can maybe provide 20 hours of power by draining dams vs 2 hours from batteries. Assuming the link to the mainland is working.
The GW of electricity being derived from the 22% of the British land area covered by National Parks and AONBS or their celtic equivalents is within a rounding error of zero.
These are the windiest, highest and best suited places for cheapest wind power, reservoirs and pumped storage to boot.
Once again proving the contention that National Trust excepted, putting National on the front of any word or phrase turns it to schit over less than a lifetime.
– The GW of electricity being derived from the 22% of the British land area covered by National Parks and AONBS or their celtic equivalents is within a rounding error of zero.
This is the appropriate level for national parks and areas of outstanding national beauty which, by definition, are not supposed to be covered with ugly shit.
This is the appropriate level for national parks and areas of outstanding national beauty which, by definition, are not supposed to be covered with ugly shit.
Take a look at what HS2 has done to the Chilterns (I think it may also cross other AONBs on its journey north). Ugly shit is a very accurate description.
– Nah, this is losing.
Bollocks. Restricting Russian air access at the frontlines and making all of Crimea untenable for the Black Sea Fleet are significant victories.
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– The point of these headline grabbing attacks is to grab headlines. It doesn’t change the situation on the ground . .
Well, headlines are part of the war, especially at this time of western wobbliness. Showing effective use of western weapons might help bring more. Plus the situation on the ground is changed. Immediate relief to Ukrainian forces in Kherson and a gradual relief everywhere with the interruption to Russian logistics.
.
– Russia isn’t in any danger of losing Crimea based on a few missile or drone attacks. Ukranians are very angry at the existence of the Kerch Bridge, but destroying it won’t bring back Crimea or prevent Russia from resupplying the peninsula (look at a map).
If Russia loses effective use of Crimea (no air forces, no navy, no logistics, no water, no power), that’s a major part along the path to them losing it physically. All that is attainable by missiles and drones.
And you are looking at the map in ignorance. Russia can’t supply Crimea via its occupied landbridge; it can’t even supply its forces in southern Ukraine via the landbridge. The logistics route goes through Crimea, not to Crimea. The destruction of the Kerch Bridge and denial of sea supply will make Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts undefendable.
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– We’ve got no idea what Russia’s casualties are and the only people willing to feed us numbers are proven liars with every incentive to lie (it’s a war after all).
Says the man who regularly informs us of how terrible and unsustainable the Ukrainian losses are. Thing is, there is so much drone footage available from both sides that it actually is possible for non state actors to make loss comparisons. Those with strong stomachs can see for themselves attack wave after attack wave get obliterated, usually for little to no gain. The fact that they keep coming again and again, past the wreckage and corpses, is a credit to Russian drug technology.
In the end, even your demented ideology might be punctured by the curious observation that an army of press-ganged pregnant paraplegics with an average age of 63 is able to hold back the second bestest army in the whole wide world. Either the Russians just aren’t attacking, or the Ukrainians are actually pretty good and are slaughtering their invaders in the thousands. The fact you dismiss the effectiveness of advanced western weapons should tell everyone that their use is key. Destroy the Russian logistics train and you remove the Russian advantage in men and materiel.
Everyone is sitting on their hands at the moment waiting for the yanks to sort themselves out. If they can solve their border dispute, and Speaker Johnson is good to his word, supplies to Ukraine should resume in a flood.
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– I like Ukranians . . .
Oh do fuck off, Steve. They’re not just retarded beet farmers, the’yre Nazi retarded beet farmers, remember? You’re much more convincing when you pretend to be disinterested in squabbling Slavs.
I expect this twat said he liked Brits, too:
https://twitter.com/catbuchatskiy/status/1521190437863800834
(Sorry, a day late and not mean enough. Horrendous, shakey manflu intervention.)