The thing about massive oil wealth is that it's massive. Even if this project fails, Saudi Arabia will still have massive piles of money. They can afford to have a few bets simply not pay out.

But yeah, the Norwegians seem to be getting more value out of their sovereign wealth fund. If I got to choose my citizenship, I know which country I'd choose.

And I also know which countries the customers should choose when they make decisions about where to buy their oil from, and what regimes to prop up.

I carry cash. If the store won't accept it, I politely say "sorry, I didn't realise you don't accept real money" then walk straight out, leaving my purchases on the counter, and never go back. There are a couple of bars in town and one coffee truck that I no longer visit, which is a penalty I am prepared to accept. I also occasionally have smaller stores round-down the price, leading to a direct saving for me. If such a saving is offered, I graciously accept this (not my place to tell them how to run their business, and I really do appreciate it) but I never ask for a cash discount. I value living in a country where the printed price is not negotiable, haggling over every transaction is inefficient.

True, but not really relevant in 2025. In 2012 I hoped that more merchants would accept cryptocurrency in order to force the likes of Visa/Mastercard to improve their scummy business tactics. This doesn't seem to have happened and crypto seems to be just a way for online scammers to launder their takings, and people with inside knowledge to do old-fashioned insider trading on the cryptocurrency of choice. Not to mention the carbon footprint.

I had the same issue when trying to rent a car last year. I tried to walk away from the deal when the counter agent told me this, (I would have literally had to walk!) but (like most rental car bookings) I had reserved the vehicle online and already paid a deposit. So they had me over a barrel. In this case I still had an overseas credit card, which I had to use and eat the foreign-transaction fee at the end of the month.

I asked the agent why it made sense that they would refuse a domestic debit card (with plenty of money in the account!) but accept a foreign credit card, but couldn't get a sensible answer beyond "that's our policy, produce a card or go away and eat the prepaid booking fee." I mean, the agent already literally had my drivers license and passport in her hand, I don't see how it could be related to "security" or "identity verification." If I was allowed to use the card to make the reservation and pay in advance, I should be allowed to use the same card when collecting the vehicle in person. In fact, being required to use that same card makes sense in terms of security, though it would obviously be a hassle for e.g business trips where your employer makes the reservation.

Needless to say, I will never use Budget or Nu ever again.

e.g, Finnair has a "sustainable aviation fuel" fee as a line item it its tickets: https://www.finnair.com/en/sus...

The older vacubots didn't do any of this. I have a Roomba from 2012. It's still going strong and doesn't have *any* telemetry. No idea if you can still buy something similar, I don't know what I'll do when this one finally dies because I don't want any of the new spy vacuums in my house either.

I have had a robot vacuum cleaner for over a decade. It doesn't do any mapping, never has, and doesn't need to in order to do its job of driving around the floors sucking up dirt. No wifi, no camera, no lidar. Just a couple of IR sensors for proximity and cliff, and a bump sensor as a backup for the IR.

Here are three in Canberra: https://www.act.gov.au/our-can...

I mentioned this above, but a "thermal battery" is pretty straightforward to do at home. At its simplest, this can be as simple as heating your domestic hot water system when the electricity is free. Hot water stores well for 24+ hours, it can be used for bathing/washing, or if you store enough of it, for heating. For Australians in hot areas, I could see storage of "cold" becoming common. For example, chilled brine that is used for cooling in the evenings during the "duck curve."

On a larger scale, I believe that the big coastal desalination plants are indeed throttled to take advantage of the cheap times for electricity.

The panels that came with our house (we moved there in 2012, the panels were installed some time before that) are just fine. There was a big hailstorm in 2020 that cracked roof tiles and dented cars, but the solar panels are still fine. Peak power is down maybe 10% over those 13+ years.

Electric hot water is a big load. With a 300L tank you can store a day's worth of hot water for the whole family, and heat it in whichever part of the day is cheap/free.

You mention retirees but there are also professionals who work from home, or even stay-at-home parents, though I'll concede the latter are more rare than they used to be.

One example of number 2 is Lake Drkiai in Lithuania/Belarus. This was used as the cooling pond for a nuclear power plant and the water temperature of the lake rose by about 3 deg C, leading to eutrophication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If you have a better idea for getting rid of the waste heat from a power station, I'd love to hear it. So far the answers (for ANY power station, including solar) are
1. The atmosphere.
2. Local waterways (rivers, cooling ponds etc)
3. The ocean.

Even a gigawatt of heat is pretty minimal compared to the thermal mass of the English Channel. And the channel is hardly a closed system - it disperses through the entire Atlantic Ocean. I think the output of Flamanville is a rounding error in the thermal budget of that system. The ocean is pretty much the best place on the planet to dump heat.

The English Channel is disgusting. Loads of untreated sewage from the UK every time they have a bit of rain in England. Industrial pollution. Discarded war materiel. A bit of warm water is pretty minor on the list of "nasty crap in the English Channel."