Yes Is Mise - I support cycling.
I also support New Urbanism.

Bloomberg analyses Vienna's public housing success. Instead of being a place for welfare recipients, this is where their middle class live. It's not quite government owned and run housing - but hybrid. The government buys the land off citizens at a fair price. (This would HAVE to happen here "On just terms" - remember your constitution. Or at least "The Castle".) Then, because the government can't afford to house everyone in a middle class suburban home - the homes are demolished and higher density housing put in. But unlike just "flats" which are basically coffins in the sky you go home to sleep in - these are more New Urban town plans with shops and everything around a tram or train station.
https://youtu.be/41VJudBdYXY

This is my favourite New Urban primer - only 3 minutes. A town square with a tram, surrounded by shops and services and a walkable high-density neighbourhood that only takes 7 minutes to get home to your eco-apartment.
http://youtu.be/VGJt_YXIoJI

This next video is 13 minutes and describes the "Third Place". It’s a walkable local pub or town square park and eating place where anyone can hang out. For locals. Not something anonymous and huge and distant that you drive to – like a supermall that services 300,000. It's like your lounge room, but public. A broad range of different people just hang there - because it's fun.

The town plan itself fights loneliness and isolation. It’s charming and nostalgic - but many of us do not experience this kind of spontaneous local fun. We live in suburbia. There’s no ‘there’ there. But real-world studies confirm that the many physical and mental health benefits are real!

http://youtu.be/VvdQ381K5xg

Max,
Very interesting, l’ve been an advocate for New Urbanism for some time.
They already have it in India, more by accident than design, we have a flat in Mumbai and everyone in the building knows everyone else; we are in comfortable walking distance of the Metro station which links to three suburban rail lines.
There are plenty of local small shops, including food takeaways, all of which do deliveries; ring up for a toasted sandwich and tea and five minutes later there’s a knock at the door; cheap too including the tip.
We could make our own, but as “Rich” Australians it is expected that we’d spend locally.
We’re also expected to hire a washer woman to do the clothes, another to sweep the flat and mop the floors.
She however doesn’t do windows so each visit we also hire a window cleaner who comes around every two weeks.
The many high rise apartment blocks often have landscaped meeting areas, and we have very rich friends who rent a full floor apartment in such a block, they are on the 25th floor of a 27 floor building, the ground floor is shops, 1st and 2nd floors are.business offices, 3rd to 26th are whole floor apartments and the top floor is utilities, such as water tanks, AC machinery, electrical including the standby generator and the lift winding machinery.

Hi Max,

The article you linked claimed 40 to 50 USD per mwh from wind and solar. It also included the 80 to 90 USD per mwh for storage, but not the 20% energy loss for stored power, making the cost of wind and solar power up to 150 USD per mwh.

In contrast, French nuclear power can cost as little as 30 to 40 USD over the life of the power plant, or about a fifth to a quarter the cost of stored wind and solar as claimed in your link.

http://www.renewable-ei.org/en/activities/column/REupdate/20220128.php

So how is it that solar and wind are "four times as cheap" as nuclear? I think you are being conned by renewable energy marketeers Max.

Issy,

Do you also have a local coolie to fan you on hot days, and massage your tootsy-wootsys before bed? Just asking.

Hi Fester,
you're double counting again. Where do you get the idea that round-trip losses were omitted from the energy studies? ESOI / firmed studies must lincude what it takes to deliver power at a certain level of reliability.

It gets WAY above our lay person heads in that this then involves weather modelling of decades of weather data. So they measure 100% renewables penetration + storage and the storage costs are WAY too high. But 200%? 300%? 400%? When we OVER-build, it radically reduces the storage required to the point where even with bad weather, La Nina, and storage inefficiencies HIGHER than 20% loss - the cost comes in at a certain price.

Nuclear is great - but the French fleet was built out in old Gen 2 technology. It's probably illegal to build a reactor like that today due to increased safety requirements of the post-Chernobyl and post-Fukushima world. (Remember - I'd live in both those exclusion zones as the radiation just isn't that bad.)

But today's Gen3 reactors? The EPR has been a disaster in the UK - SO expensive. To make nuclear competitive would require a huge government standardised assembly line construction that I just don't see the populations of the world backing today.

Renewables are here. They are accelerating. They are being built 3 times faster than all other new energy sources combined. And Australia WILL be around 90% renewables in just 8 years.

Where do you get this garbage you push Max?

We couldn't buy & install enough so called renewables to reliably supply 50% of our power requirements in 50 years let alone your ridiculous 8 years. Are you drinking the same stuff as Albo & Bowen. Give it up before it totally rots your brain.