I don’t know what happened to solar water heating, but that was a thing in the 1970s, at least in warm climates
Solar panels existed. Some of what has brought their prices down, is just volume: more production, more installs, better setup, google planet. Even if we couldn’t have hurried some of the scientific and technical progress, they could have reached an inflection point sooner.
Wind turbines were there and ready. Again, scaling up, both 8n volume and size, has been critical to get them where they are today. That part could have happened sooner.
Anything having to do with transit and 15 minute cities, could have been triggered by the oil shocks of the 70s, and could have helped rebuild cities from the poverty and crime then.
We could have started electrifying everything - the writing was on the wall. My parents built an all-electric with time of use metering rural house in the 1970s on the promise of nuclear power. Especially for rural houses, how did we backslide into propane and oil? If we had gone with time of use metering, we could easily be ahead of where we are now, with more intelligent use of energy.
Even if you just count vehicle efficiency - that exception for light trucks has surely been an environmental catastrophe. Surely we had the technology to word that regulation better
I don’t know what happened to solar water heating, but that was a thing in the 1970s, at least in warm climates
Solar panels existed. Some of what has brought their prices down, is just volume: more production, more installs, better setup, google planet. Even if we couldn’t have hurried some of the scientific and technical progress, they could have reached an inflection point sooner.
Wind turbines were there and ready. Again, scaling up, both 8n volume and size, has been critical to get them where they are today. That part could have happened sooner.
Anything having to do with transit and 15 minute cities, could have been triggered by the oil shocks of the 70s, and could have helped rebuild cities from the poverty and crime then.
We could have started electrifying everything - the writing was on the wall. My parents built an all-electric with time of use metering rural house in the 1970s on the promise of nuclear power. Especially for rural houses, how did we backslide into propane and oil? If we had gone with time of use metering, we could easily be ahead of where we are now, with more intelligent use of energy.
Even if you just count vehicle efficiency - that exception for light trucks has surely been an environmental catastrophe. Surely we had the technology to word that regulation better
There are still companies that do it. And it seems like they are getting better. Or at least that’s what I have heard.
Note: not an endorsement of the company that I linked just using it as an example.