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Costa Rica Has Gone 76 Straight Days Using 100% Renewable Electricity (vox.com)
Last year, Costa Rica powered itself using only renewable energy for 75 days. It has topped that feat this year. Vox reports: Costa Rica is pulling off a feat most countries just daydream about: For two straight months, the Central American country hasn't burned any fossil fuels to generate electricity. That's right: 100 percent renewable power. This isn't a blip, either. For 300 total days last year and 150 days so far this year, Costa Rica's electricity has come entirely from renewable sources, mostly hydropower and geothermal. Heavy rains have helped four big hydroelectric dams run above their usual capacity, letting the country turn off its diesel generators. Now, there's a huge, huge caveat here: Costa Rica hasn't eschewed all fossil fuels entirely. The country still has more than 1 million cars running on old-fashioned gasoline, which is why imported oil still supplies over half its total energy needs. The country also has cement plants that burn coal.
"The downside to hydropower is that it requires consistent rainfall. Though the dams in Costa Rica are now full, just months ago the country was suffering one of the worst droughts in its history. This forced Costa Rican utility companies to burn fuel to generate power, releasing greenhouse gases and causing rate rises. Even if Costa Rica were able to sustain 100% clean electricity production, the country still relies on petroleum for transportation, and emissions from this sector are the largest hurdle the country faces in reaching its carbon neutrality goal. The environment ministry reports that fuel burned by cars, buses and trains accounted for almost 70% of the country’s carbon emissions in 2014. According to customs there are only 200 or so hybrid cars in Costa Rica to take advantage of the energy produced by renewables on the grid.
The fact that even a country like Costa Rica, which has made major investments to produce clean energy, still struggles with these obstacles, shows just how difficult it would be for larger, more industrialised nations to follow in its footsteps.
With a population under 5 million and no major industry, Costa Rica uses much less power than most developed countries, and its geography of tightly packed volcanoes, rivers and mountains is more suited to producing clean power than most."
sauce: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/30/truth-behind-costa-rica-renewable-energy-reservoirs-climate-change
With the exception of a few isolated communities (and the occasional voltage support from Burrard Thermal in Vancouver), British Columbia has run on hydro power for decades.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
In our trip to the country, we stayed in a semi-permanent camp on the Pacific shore, which was not wired. In fact, there was no proper road to it either — the only way to get there was by (small) plane.
The camp had a generator, of course — a noisy affair, which they fired for a few hours each day to power up/recharge the radio and phones. But, hey, there are still places in the world, where even those evil devices — made from poisonous materials by exploited workers toiling in polluting factories — aren't known...
Some times the spurning of civilization is explained simply by absence of civilization...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Well, those people in the states are wrong. Hydro is renewable, like it or not. Renewable doesn't mean no impact on the population and ecosystems. All power sources have an impact.
The problem with hydro is that it's impossible to build more dams in countries with environmental regulations, water rights laws and lawyers.
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I think Iceland generates almost all of it's power from geothermal, to the point where most of the world's bauxite smelting is done there, and there's enough power left over for most citizens to pay a flat rate for electricity.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Environmentalists won't allow new dams to built in the US and are actively trying to have old ones torn down.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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My country (Paraguay) went 100% renewable after 1973, when the Acaray dam went operational and covered 100% of the energy needs of the country. In 1983 the world's largest operational dam (Itaipú) began to serve energy and we own 50% of it (with Brazil). We also own 50% of another large dam (Yacyreta). Now, and save for biomass-burning usines used in the Mennonite colonies at the far north, isolated Chaco area, we still are 100% covered by hydropower. There are plans to convert these biomass plants either to solar power or to lay down wires so they could use power from Itaipu. So, I would say that covering large energy needs with renewable power is totally possible, and we are proof of it since 1973.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."