Renewable Power Surpasses Fossil Fuels For First Time In Europe (japantimes.co.jp) 99
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Japan Times: Renewable power for the first time contributed a bigger share in the European generation mix than fossil fuels as the fallout from the pandemic cut energy demand. About 40 percent of the electricity in the first half in the 27 EU countries came from renewable sources, compared with 34 percent from plants burning fossil fuels, according to environmental group Ember in London. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector fell 23 percent. While power demand slumped, output from wind and solar farms increased because more plants came online in breezy and sunny weather. At the same time, wet conditions boosted hydro power in Iberia and the Nordic markets.
Electricity demand in the EU fell 7 percent overall. Fossil-fuel power generation plunged 18 percent in the first half compared with a year earlier. Renewable generation grew by 11 percent, according to Ember. Coal was by far the biggest loser in 2020. It's one of the most-polluting sources of power and its share is slumping in Europe as the price of carbon increases and governments move to cut emissions. Power from coal fell 32 percent across the EU.
Electricity demand in the EU fell 7 percent overall. Fossil-fuel power generation plunged 18 percent in the first half compared with a year earlier. Renewable generation grew by 11 percent, according to Ember. Coal was by far the biggest loser in 2020. It's one of the most-polluting sources of power and its share is slumping in Europe as the price of carbon increases and governments move to cut emissions. Power from coal fell 32 percent across the EU.
Does this include automobile use? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
If a gallon costed like 5 bucks, so would you.
Re:Does this include automobile use? (Score:4, Insightful)
Gas prices in Norway [mylpg.eu].
Note that these prices are per liter. To get gallons, multiply by 3.8.
And it's not that different in the rest of Europe. Gas in Europe costs about 4-5 bucks a gallon. THIS is why Europe uses less fuel.
Re: (Score:1)
It costs the same in the US, it's just that you don't pay it all at the pump. Later on in healthcare costs, or if you are lucky just make someone else pay it.
Re: (Score:3)
And don't forget the fossil fuel subsidies. The fossil fuels industry also contributes to class divide since you won't find any of their pollution generators in rich neighborhoods. Then there are the environmental issues with polluting maritime environments or pipeline spills. The EPA has been distorted into insignificance now that the industry has one of their lapdogs running the joint.
Re: (Score:2)
also European cars tend to be more fuel efficient than American cars partly due to American cars being larger than European cars.
Re: (Score:2)
European cars tend to be more fuel efficient because we friggin' can't afford to drive around in fat SUVs, that's all. You think we're so enlightened and above petty things like wanting to drive around in wannabe trucks? C'mon, it's just that the idiots that like that kind of landlocked oil tankers can't afford to fuel them over here, that's all.
Re: Does this include automobile use? (Score:2)
just checked it â1.36 per liter = â5.15 per gallon = $6.00 per gallon in berlin. Now I know why they love those little Fiats, dont look bad to me either at those prices.
Re:Does this include automobile use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Low interest rates favour renewable by a long margin. Renewable have high capital cost for the energy produced but very low running costs, so low interests rates give them a huge boost. Fossil fuels have lower capital cost for the energy produced but high running costs (having to keep buying fossil fuels) and so they do better with high interest rates. Right now, no question, far better to invest in renewables.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually on-shore renewable capital costs are quite competitive now, even with fossil. Of course they have been only a fraction of the price of nuclear for a couple of decades now.
Where capital costs are still an issue is off-shore, but as you say low interest rates are making that very attractive at the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
Return on Invested Capital for your average roof project in the US is more than 6% (my own was around 9% when I installed but has dropped to between 7-8% as a result of the power company lower per kwh cost).
Roof solar has much worse ROIC than your average utility project. Utility scale solar can provide returns in excess of 9%. This is much better than you will get in any other energy source excluding Wind. At that level of return even power company is building out solar as fast as they can get panels.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Our car gets driven about 10km / week to go to the supermarket at the moment - the engine generates 114kW maximum power - the car is not driven at anywhere near maximum power. Meanwhile we are generating close to 20kWhr a day with solar panels (during Winter)...
Granted we are not normal...
Re: (Score:3)
You're more normal than you might think. Since cities stopped expanding their road networks in Europe and are actually reducing the roads you can drive on by declaring them bike-only, more and more people stopped using cars in favor of bikes or public transport, also because the latter got expanded considerably in the past 20ish years.
It's simply a matter of time and money, and at this point it's simply cheaper AND faster to get through the city without a car.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Traffic uses about 16% of energy in Finland, while heating of buildings uses 25%. Industry uses 48%::
https://www.motiva.fi/ratkaisu... [motiva.fi]
But note that air travels to other countries and most likely ships trips also are not included into the traffic calculations. Only travels inside the country are.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
No is does not. The article specifically says it's about electricity generation.
But personal energy consumption is actually a minority of total energy use. A better way to look at it is how much energy is used in all transportation as a fraction of all energy uses? The answer is about 37% -- at least for the United States [llnl.gov]. It's probably less in Europe. Globally the figure is closer to 20%.
A similar move here would dramatically reduce the impact of residential and commercial energy use, moderately reduce
Re: Renewable Power Surpasses Fossil Fuels (Score:3, Interesting)
Does the EU still count burning wood pellets as a renewable energy source?
https://e360.yale.edu/features/wood_pellets_green_energy_or_new_source_of_co2_emissions
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Renewable Power Surpasses Fossil Fuels (Score:4, Interesting)
You're spot on. Europe calls burning wood chips - from various sources including Canadian and American forests - and other biomass 'green'.
There's some protest going on against this, but since it's clean 'on paper' governments see it as a simple and affordable way to produce this 'green' energy. Meanwhile destroying habitats of many species and contributing to deforestation on a scale that pales the Amazon.
It's very sad and worrying that certain political parties that claim to be 'green' accept this as a solution. It's comparable to the bio-fuel issue, where agricultural land is used to produce bio-fuel, and has such high energy cost doing so. It's sad and stupid decisions by people who can only live in a paper reality with laws, directions and numbers, and fail to use common sense. Meanwhile rejecting other options like nuclear or even wind.
We'll regret it in another 20 year. Probably claiming that 'no-one warned them' etc.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While I would agree that it can be seen as slightly misleading, it's not simply a case of blatant whitewashing.
There is a massive difference between burning coal/oil/gas, and burning wood pellets.
Given careful management and regulation (which, again, is not there by a long shot), the impact of wood and other biomass can be minimized.
Re: (Score:2)
It's comparable to the bio-fuel issue, where agricultural land is used to produce bio-fuel, and has such high energy cost doing so.
Europe has much to much agricultural land, that is why we shifted decades ago some of it to bio fuel production.
Re: (Score:2)
You're spot on. Europe calls burning wood chips - from various sources including Canadian and American forests - and other biomass 'green'.
There's some protest going on against this, but since it's clean 'on paper' governments see it as a simple and affordable way to produce this 'green' energy. Meanwhile destroying habitats of many species and contributing to deforestation on a scale that pales the Amazon.
It's very sad and worrying that certain political parties that claim to be 'green' accept this as a solution. It's comparable to the bio-fuel issue, where agricultural land is used to produce bio-fuel, and has such high energy cost doing so. It's sad and stupid decisions by people who can only live in a paper reality with laws, directions and numbers, and fail to use common sense. Meanwhile rejecting other options like nuclear or even wind.
We'll regret it in another 20 year. Probably claiming that 'no-one warned them' etc.
The wood is renewable. It needs only twenty years to regrow a section of forest.
Re: Renewable Power Surpasses Fossil Fuels (Score:2)
Well, apparently lignite is still called "coal" too. Despite being far far more shitty and polluting than even coal.
(Yet pretty popular as an energy source in Germany, "thanks" to RWE and the shut-off nuclear plants.)
Re: (Score:2)
The Germans are actively phasing out all hard coal and lignite plants so here's a quarter kid, go buy yourself a better argument.
This coal plant just got phased in:
https://www.dw.com/en/climate-... [dw.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Despite being far far more shitty and polluting than even coal.
It is not. It goes through the same scrubbings like coal plants, facepalm.
That is a myth from the 60 which got fixed when we made scrubbers mandatory in the around 1977, due to acid rain.
Re: (Score:2)
Does the EU still count burning wood pellets as a renewable energy source?
Only if the wood chips are imported from American forests in convoys of diesel-powered freighters. As seen through the eyes of economists, that wood magically appears and is not charged against European resources.
Re: (Score:2)
Wood pellets are not used for electricity, but for heating houses.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, no. Unless you find a weapon that selectively kills old people who don't give a shit about a planet that will last the maybe 10-20 years they still have and devil may care about afterwards.
Re: All it took was a pandemic (Score:2)
Like you give a shit ... You've bred kids too, haven't you?
More than one too?
Or at least you would like to, given that we're on Slashdot here. ;)
Re: (Score:2)
Me? No, I don't give a shit. I used to, but seeing that people who actually DO have kids (unlike me) and hence would have a reason to give a shit don't, I eventually wondered why I did.
Re: (Score:2)
"Unless you find a weapon that selectively kills old people "
You mean those over 80? We have such a weapon running around outside your home.
Great news for Australia! (Score:1)
If Europe burns less coal then we can burn more coal to make up for it.
It is those evil Chinese that we need to watch.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, go ahead if you can pay the Carbon price for it. No wimpy Iron or *shudders* Gold needed. Real men pay the Carbon price. 'Summer' is coming.
Nuclear (Score:3, Interesting)
Nuclear energy is the cleanest, safest (more people fall from roofs putting up solar), and best form of energy we have. We could have electricity for dirt cheap if the namby-pamby nimby fools didn't succeed in making it capital intensive and scary. Remix and bury the waste until we get fusion energy to work, at which point we can burn the waste.
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
We could have electricity for outrageous prices if the indecisive government fools succeed in taking a true capitalist stance and properly abolish energy subsidies and dirt cheap long term nuclear waste storage facilities.
There, fixed that for you.
And, yes, I consider every nuclear waste storage facility that doesn't charge the producer in advance a proper rent for every barrel stored there*, dirt cheap. (*calculated by the volume of its mess times the number of months it takes for the waste to go down in radiation intensity enough that it's comparable to background radiation. If that means a barrel needs storage for a few thousand years, go pay up that couple of million US$ for that single barrel in advance.)
To spoil your party further, fusion isn't going to solve the fission waste problems. Currently only a Thorium cycle in combination with HTMSR technology holds some hope in that regard. But for that we do need properly concentrated and well structured nuclear waste... and a lot of research still, to have any degree of success. Not the hot mess that all the 'oopsies' during the past 70 or so years have produced. Oh, and did I mention more (fundamental) research is needed to make this happen? You probably expect the government to facilitate that too, because last time I heard of a proper nuclear research program, the cold war was hot and Chernobyl the pride of mankind.
Re: (Score:3)
Fusion would solve all the problems, if it could just be made to actually work. That's why money is constantly shoveled into research with little to show for it: If and when that research does pay off, it'll pay off big.
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Funny)
Nuclear fusion actually works. A working nuclear fusion reactor is mere 8 light minutes from here. It is free to use. To be decommissioned in about 5 billion years.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Trickled is nearer the mark than shovelled, at least relative to other expenditures.
ITER is the single largest, and most expensive fusion experiment. Even with the budget completely derailed by a factor of 4, say, it'll cost somewhere in the ballpark of €20bn. That is over a period of >20 years, and is shared between the largest economic entities on the planet.
Germany alone spent more than that amount on subsidizing people for putting up solar on their roofs over a shorter time frame.
Re: (Score:2)
Fusion would solve all the problems,
Im sorry? All WHAT problems? Will it solve the nuclear fission 'waste' issue? Nope.
Fusion does not do fission.
Do you think that simply moving to pure fusion will solve all of our energy issues? Nope.
We need an ENERGY MATRIX, in which no single form of energy is more than say 33% of the matrix. Why? Because all energy forms have some sort of CON with it. Yes, that esp include Wind/solar. One of the biggest ones that I can think of is, national security.
Costs? again, all of these have their issues a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahhh.. Classic "Appeal to Utopia" logical fallacy.
Long term storage is pretty decent these days. Plus a lot of what was once called waste is becoming useful. Which may or may not happen more if research goes into it.
Research isn't going into it, as the Environmental Lobby managed to turn Nuclear into a dirty word. Which is a real own goal, as Nuclear could easily have provided the power to deal with all the demand, with just a fraction of the carbon that's being dumped into the atmosphere at the moment
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, long term storage in the form of batteries is coming along nicely whether they be lithium, flow, liquid air. Once you have millions of EVs on the road, you have a massive battery at your disposal for peak demand
Strip mining is the domain of coal extraction where old sites are being looked at to site solar farms. SO which materials are strip mined for renewables? Mining will be done for materials as they have been done for hundreds of years so why is it suddenly a "bad thing"?
Solar panel are 95% recycleable so no, not landfill.
"But Nuclear is a long way from being the bogeyman that the Environmental Lobby has painted it, and that damage came at a cost we're seeing in global warming." - no, that falls squarely on the shoulders of the coal and gas industry and its lobbyists/supporters and politicians with deep pockets that need filling to stay on side.
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear is also HEAVILY subsidized in the US. Your typical plant is given around a 4cent/kwh subsidy.
Mind you your average utility scale solar and wind project they days can generate power at around 3cents/kwh so the subsidy is actually higher than the cost of new renewable power.
This is the reason nuclear plants are shutting down left and right just like coal unless the local authorities increase the existing subsidy.
Re: (Score:2)
According to the budgeted tax preferences [wikipedia.org], nuclear receives very little subsidies, while renewables and fossil fuels receives most of the subsidies.
I'm sure you wouldn't just make up such facts though. Do you have a source for the claim that US nuclear power is that heavily subsidized, or is my source somehow incomplete?
Re: (Score:2)
Tax subsidies (either credit, depreciation or other types) aren't the only subsidies and you'd be a fool to assume they are the only ones.
In addition, the government insurance subsidy for nuclear plants far surpasses all renewable tax incentives and that is hardly the only subsidy nuclear receives either directly or indirectly.
Re: (Score:2)
You mentioned specifically 4 cents per kWh in subsidies. Where does that number come from, or how was it converted to from e.g. insurance subsidies?
Again, what is your source?
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to be an idiot. ...
Strip mining all the resources of the planet to go 100% renewable? Seriously? What mental problem do you have? At least: lack of common sense
I spare me to comment on the rest of your bollocks.
Re: (Score:3)
We did try dirt cheap storage in the UK, it was a disaster. Couldn't even keep the birds away from it. To this day they keep having leaks and accidents.
We also tried thorium and that too was a disaster. Some of them kinda worked but not for very long and ended up being a nightmare to decommission. People got fed up of throwing money into that black hole.
Re: (Score:2)
If you fail at something it doesn't mean you have to give up. How many airplanes crashed before they made a reliable one? How many rockets exploded before we got to the moon?
Re: (Score:2)
We've been trying for decades. There is a better alternative now, it's time to give up.
Re: (Score:2)
If the fusion funding levels hadn't been snipped we would built ITER and that would have been definitive as to how to build commercial reactors. The tokamak modeling has been accurate for decades. We shouldn't give up if there are paths to getting there .. we aren't at a brick wall on it. It was always known that a large machine would be needed but it wasn't built. ITER was planned in 1984 but didnt get funding until recently. We drastically cut the fusion energy budgets in the 1970s and wonder why it hasn'
Re: (Score:2)
Fusion waste is much shorter lived (100 years max). This is with the deuterium-tritium cycle as currently under development in Iter [iter.org]. This is cycle only needs deuterium and lithium as input and had thus plenty of naturally available fuel.
Re: (Score:2)
No need to store fission waste for long periods of time if we were to reprocess it to recover the unburned fissionables.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
If nuclear had to pay for the waste storage in advance, it would not be the cheapest form of energy, it would cost infinite amounts of money. Mostly because the storage time is infinite.
Re: (Score:3)
Same thing with graveyards but it doesn't cost an infinite amount to bury someone. There's plenty of land worth zero dollars. Also storage time is not infinite.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about your graveyards, where I live I have to pay an annual fee for the site my mother is buried in. If I don't pay anymore, they toss her bones on the heap and release it.
Now, of course you can stop paying for the site you bury spent Uranium in, but I wouldn't touch it with a hundred foot pole to toss it.
Re: Nuclear (Score:1, Flamebait)
Oh stop gobbling your Kool-Aid by the tanker.
"Cleanest" ... How much more short-sighted of a wannabe troll can you be? You psychos always consider your waste not part of your costs but of ours.
And even ignoring that nuclear fuel is not a renewable source and will just run out quite early and is hence retarded by definition, at the very least compared to when our Giant Fusion Reactor In The Sky will run out . . .
It simply cannot compete with renewables anymore on price, nowadays. Even with stealing the money
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Who many actually working commercial generation 4 reactors can you name?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Could you provide information on how generation 4 reactor cannot consume the waste until it's innert and essentially dispose of nuclear waste as your claim?
Simple:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Read it and grasp it, but I think you are to stupid for it. Waste can not be "burned" in any kind of reactor.
If you believe otherwise your education must suck very badly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actinides can not be "burned".
And breeding has nothing to do with the "problems" anway.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I gave up on editing wikipedia articles long ago :P
Point is that actinides can not be "burned", you can let them decay and there are some ideas how to gather them at certain spots in molten salt reactor and attempting to remove them - but that is at the moment pure SF.
Re: Nuclear (Score:2)
function SlashdotModeratrolls(facts) = return "Flamebait"
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
https://ourworldindata.org/saf... [ourworldindata.org]
So in terms of overall safety, there's not much difference between nuclear and renewable energy.
As for cost; no. The promise of too-cheap-to-meter electricity from nuclear power died in the 1960s when it was realized that the technology was oversold, and the true implications of the complete fuel cycle - the ecological, technological and logistical challenges it poses - are far worse than anyone imagined at the time.
Also worth mentioning that non-dispatchable power like nuclear is actually at odds with renewable power, which is also non-dispatchable, since you can't turn off a nuclear plant as renewable energy surges. To prevent overload the only thing you can do is take renewable energy offline entirely, since restarting a nuclear plant could take days or weeks. Rolling out nuclear hurts renewable energy, which I think is exactly why there's such a push for it...
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:3)
Also worth mentioning that non-dispatchable power like nuclear is actually at odds with renewable power, which is also non-dispatchable, since you can't turn off a nuclear plant as renewable energy surges. To prevent overload the only thing you can do is take renewable energy offline entirely, since restarting a nuclear plant could take days or weeks. Rolling out nuclear hurts renewable energy, which I think is exactly why there's such a push for it... =Smidge=
Nuclear reactors are dispatchable. While they can't restart quickly, some designs can scale down to as low as 20% output -- though 50% is more typical.
Firm capacity sources such as nuclear can actually complement intermittent sources such as wind and solar power really well. This is because once deployment of these intermittent sources have the capacity to produce ~40% of a region's electricity, the profitability of further deployments fall sharply due to the exponential amount of intermittent capacity that
Re: (Score:2)
the profitability of further deployments fall sharply due to the exponential amount of intermittent capacity that needs to be built to displace the equivalent capacity of firm sources (e.g. coal, gas, nuclear) during periods with less and less wind and sunlight.
That is nonsense, as such other plants already exist!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes :P :P
And your very long sentence has no substance to support any of your claims
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I do not read links if the comment linking them is wrong allready. Sorry ...
Re: (Score:2)
So you reject the concepts of marginal value and citations? Is economics and scientific papers meaningless to you?
It appears that you would then have to live in a self-affirmative bubble that by design rejects outside ideas.
Re: (Score:2)
If your claim something wrong, and you cite something to prove your wrong claim, why would I need to read your wrong prove?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, deployment of grid storage would reduce the need to be able to turn down a Nuclear power station.
I can see a future where every power station is complemented by a nearby grid storage facility. You could even consider storing energy for 6 months so allowing summer solar to be used to provide power for the winter.
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear energy is not cheap ... ...
And "waste" can not be burned
Re: (Score:2)
Second time (Score:2)
Re: Second time (Score:2)
Don't forget witches and Jews!
Both "wenches" that didn't want to get fucked anymore.
EU or Europe? (Score:1)
You know those two are not the same, do you?
Yeah, no matter the EU propaganda during "elections".
Re: (Score:2)
You know those two are not the same, do you?
People tend to use verbal shortcuts. That's why some people call themselves "Americans" and irritate everyone from Canada to Chile. Others talk about "England" and "English" as if they are synonyms for "Britain", "British", UK and so on. This annoys those of us in the UK who are British but in no way English.
Yes, not all of Europe is in the EU. We had better hope most of the remainder will become so...
You may not think much of EU elections. They are better than the FPTP ones in the UK. Or have you a d
Re: (Score:2)
They elected Farage - clear evidence that they are complete pile of shite (or maybe the English electorate is - hard to tell the difference, really).
Coal slump (Score:2)
And the issue is... (Score:2)
One consequence of the jump in renewables is that negative prices have increased. On particularly windy or sunny days when there isn’t much demand, the grid can be flooded with power. That’s leading wind farms to be shut off and customers to be paid to consume electricity.
Generating too much electricity skews the reporting, hiding the reality.
On particularly windy or sunny days when there isn’t much demand, the grid can be flooded with power.
And that excess, unneeded power is counted toward the electricity generated during the year, even though it is neither needed nor used, nor does it offset energy usage the next day, when it isn't so sunny or windy.
That’s leading wind farms to be shut off and customers to be paid to consume electricity.
Negative pricing is paying consumers to use electricity - let the perversity of that sink in - on sunny or windy days, you get paid to consume electricity, with the electricity costs increasing on cloudy/dark days to pay for t
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if the price swing from peak negative to peak positive pricing would allow an investor to profit off that market swing?
In theory yes, in practice no. Negative prices usually only happen between energy companies. Ordinary consumers do not get negative prices.
You have a complete misconcepted idea how and when negative prices occur. And renewables only have margin-able to do with it.
This does not really matter (Score:2)
Likewise, having EVs be powered by CLEAN power, not coal, also makes a huge difference. Europe is headed in the right direction with EVs. Now, to get the rest of the world on-board with incentives and disincentives.