nebulousmenace's comments

1) "below nuclear" is a very flexible concept (the Levy plant in Florida cost $1 billion and they didn't even break ground) and people often confidently assume a nuclear price that is three times smaller than actual building costs. 2)"purely renewable" is a small phrase about a big assumption. 80% solar/wind is cheaper than operating what the US has right now; solving the last 20% has a number of options and we don't know which will work, but while we are quadrupling our current level of solar and wind we have some time to work on that. (Noon Energy makes some attractive claims but it's very early days.) 3) A small amount of "clean firm power" - almost anything's cheaper than nuclear- saves a large amount of storage. Maybe that's closed loop geothermal, maybe that's synthetic natural gas, maybe it's nuclear, but nuclear is REALLY expensive.

Solar power in the US has gone up by literally a factor of 100 in the last [searches] 13 years. Does that seem crushed to you?

There's a countermovement, the "Pretty Good House" idea ( https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/pretty-good-hou... .) It has the goals like "simplicity" and "avoiding diminshing returns" (the 80-20 rule: 20% of the work gets you 80% of the improvements, in this case.) It avoids certification and excessive rigor. (One article about it mentioned the split between Passivhaus and Passive House. As I recall it was over the amount of shading from one southern tree.)

My point, if any, is that it's not "Passivhaus or nothing."