- cross-posted to:
- canada@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- canada@lemmy.ca
Renewable energy met all new demand for electricity in 2025, according to a new review of global power generation, halting the growth of fossil fuel-powered generation and highlighting the promise of clean sources like wind and solar.
The authoritative Global Electricity Review released annually by Ember, an international energy research organization, says clean sources — especially solar — are growing fast enough and are cheap enough that they are stopping new fossil fuel-powered electricity generation. Electricity from solar and wind increased while there was no change to the amount of electricity produced from burning fossil fuels.
“We’re really talking about a large-scale change in how the energy system works. And solar is among the most scalable technologies that can deliver fast change,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember.
Just like we are the only G7 without high speed rail. Canada lags behind on everything.
Canada lags behind in everything because our only bar is “slightly better than the USA”
our healthcare lags, but its slightly better than the US
Education lags, but still slightly better than the US (is it?)
We lag behind in resisting populism and facism, but slightly better than the US
The list goes on…
Where does the US have high speed rail?
“High-speed rail (HSR) in the US is currently dominated by Amtrak’s Acela (150–160 mph) in the Northeast Corridor, with major projects underway to bring 200+ mph service to the West, including Brightline West (Las Vegas–LA, 2028) and California High-Speed Rail. These initiatives aim to connect city pairs in under 3 hours, offering alternatives to regional flights”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_States
LOL. The LA-SF high speed rail has already spent $14B and not laid a single track.
The Toronto-Ottawa rail would be built by the same three contractors that ballooned the Eglinton LRT from $9B to $12B and delivered years late. That was for 20km. Now we want to try 450km??
Estimates now are $90B , so we can safely double that, if it ever gets finished in our lifetimes, while ON land owners corrupt with Dougie and Mark sell us the land at hyper-inflated prices. All for a rail line no one will actually use.
We can already do that distance with electric planes.
We could have overhead wire electric extended buses do the route on current highways on dedicated lanes at high speed, for a tiny fraction of the cost and time, but who gets rich off that?
In reality it’s Detroit/Windsor to Quebec City. That’s an extra 4million people living in the Detroit area, making the train even more valuable and used.
We are the largest and least populated in the G7. We are also the coldest with most severe winters.
Makes little sense to use a high speed rail to connect cities with poor transit. Exactly who will use these rails? Tourists?
A vast majority of Canadians live in the Windsor-Quebec City coridor. With high quality and affordable HSR, I could travel from my home in Ottawa to any city inbetween for a show, job, whatever and be able to sleep in my own bed that night. Maybe you actually enjoy driving 6-10 hours to the nearest other city but I can assure you that most of Canada would prefer to take a 1-2 hour long train ride where you can sit back and turn your brain off instead of staring at the bumper of the person ahead of you for hours
And Canada is a massive country, yeah, but where does our population mainly live? If you just focus on our main population centres then it’s easy to connect us all. Nobody’s asking for a rail link to far northern Nunavut.
NOT TO MENTION the fact that we managed to connect the entirety of Canada by rail a century ago with far less advanced technology
I would argue Ontario needs better GO and local transit service before we spend >$100B on a pork barrel project that will link up cities with little/no transit.
And good luck in Winter.