Swiss and Austrians are an exception with the hydro and should stop rubbing it in all the discussions. In Slovakia much of whatever could be dammed already is and still hydro makes only up to 20% of the mix, despite being one of the more hilly countries. Were it not for 70% nuclear, I have no idea how to even go near carbon neutral electricity. Having German electricity prices to pay for renewables is completely impossible.
>exception with the hydro and should stop rubbing it in all the discussions.
True, and it's not a exception, but geographically "luck", without mountains and the glaciers that comes with them, Switzerland would be as dry as Turkmenistan. It's just a matter of commonsense to use those altitude differences and water....but when all our glaciers are molten away, we for sure have to go back to nuclear-power.
>In an initial phase, climate change will actually cause the runoff to increase, as water stored as ice is released. However, if the glacier becomes too small, it will reach a tipping point, which we call “peak water”.
>Our study highlights the “hot spots” where retreating glaciers will cause water shortages in future.
But hey maybe you know some other mysterious ways water is stored in in mountains.
Sorry to tell you but there are not many lakes in the Maintains, and they are often fed through snow and water-sources from glaciers/snow-fields, from higher above. And there is not a single lake in the mountains with nearly the size/mass of a single glacier.
Pumped water storage is unsurprisingly limited by the same factors as hydro - there aren't that many steep mountains suitable to put lakes on top in most places.
Wind and solar need a lot of resources from mining, which itself uses fossil fuel (for extraction, treatment and transport) and creates a lot of local pollution.
Wind and solar take a lot of space that could be used for agriculture, so they compete with important uses of the soil. (I don't know if it's clear how much offshore is a thing, but I suppose this increases also energy expenditure)
If we look at CO2, which is far from the only metric, but the easiest to compare, then solar panels make up for their production in a period on months and for wind it is a period of years.
Both solar and wind provide a significant net reduction of CO2 when you take into account their production. Long term, materials in solar and wind can be re-used. So you would need to mine them only once. Currently, mining is just too cheap to effectively recycle all metals.
Wind doesn't takes hardly any space. Wind is not compatible with airfields and residential areas, but that's about it. Wind mixes perfectly fine with argiculture.
Due to you people complaining about wind in their neighborhood, there is now a lot of wind at sea. The good thing about offshore wind is that typically there is more wind at sea. So the construction cost is higher, but the production is higher as well.
For solar it is more an issue of price. Putting solar on a field is cheap. To some extent putting solar on a field is good for nature. An undisturbed area with shadow is quite nice for small plants, insects, etc.
The potential for solar in urban areas is enormous, but often not cheap. For example, existing roofs of large building are not strong enough for lots of solar.
Solar can also be mixed with smaller scale argiculture.
In the UK at least, and in general I think, this is not really true. There is plenty of land that is marginal for arable farming purposes and this is what is targeted for wind farming.
Solar on the roof only matters for single family homes, of which you won't find too many in European cities. Solar on the roof of a 12 story apartment building is not going to do much to help the residents.
