Besides paying off my debt and repairing my house as well as installing a geothermal heat pump, set up investments, basically all the normal shit one would do if they suddenly got a large windfall?
Buy up land to turn into forests, figure out a way to set it up in trusts or something such that nobody will have the right to do a full clear cut for timber any time soon, but maintenance cuts are fine.
Set up about a gigawatt worth of wind power generation in my country if the billions are multiple rather than exactly a billion euros or dollars or whatever. Our power usage peaks at around 1.6 gigawatts in the winter. Wind’s unpredictable and I don’t expect it to completely fill all demand, but rather make electricity so cheap that the fossil plants wouldn’t turn a profit most of the time. Solar would be nice too, but it’s borderline useless for about 2-4 months a year, I’ve forgotten the exact numbers.
Can’t change the world with a few billion, but could noticeably improve one particular corner of it - and one that has a particularly dirty power grid at that. Driving an EV is STILL as bad as an ICE here because in the winter our electricity comes not from something as beautifully clean as coal or gas, but fucking shale rock…
Bonus, not only would I improve the availability of cheap green power, our government is currently partially funding heating system conversions from SFHs in cities and small towns, to replace solid fuel furnaces with heat pumps (ideally) or at least newer, cleaner burning furnaces, with the goal of improving air quality. Meaning the government would essentially be helping people make the most of the cheaper and greener electricity.
Besides paying off my debt and repairing my house as well as installing a geothermal heat pump, set up investments, basically all the normal shit one would do if they suddenly got a large windfall?
Buy up land to turn into forests, figure out a way to set it up in trusts or something such that nobody will have the right to do a full clear cut for timber any time soon, but maintenance cuts are fine.
Set up about a gigawatt worth of wind power generation in my country if the billions are multiple rather than exactly a billion euros or dollars or whatever. Our power usage peaks at around 1.6 gigawatts in the winter. Wind’s unpredictable and I don’t expect it to completely fill all demand, but rather make electricity so cheap that the fossil plants wouldn’t turn a profit most of the time. Solar would be nice too, but it’s borderline useless for about 2-4 months a year, I’ve forgotten the exact numbers.
Can’t change the world with a few billion, but could noticeably improve one particular corner of it - and one that has a particularly dirty power grid at that. Driving an EV is STILL as bad as an ICE here because in the winter our electricity comes not from something as beautifully clean as coal or gas, but fucking shale rock…
Bonus, not only would I improve the availability of cheap green power, our government is currently partially funding heating system conversions from SFHs in cities and small towns, to replace solid fuel furnaces with heat pumps (ideally) or at least newer, cleaner burning furnaces, with the goal of improving air quality. Meaning the government would essentially be helping people make the most of the cheaper and greener electricity.