Could the Ukraine Crisis Push Europe Toward Energy Self-Sufficiency With Renewable Energy? (slate.com) 203
Countries imposing sanctions on Russia also depend on it for oil and natural gas, notes Slate's web editor.
"Noah J. Gordon, an adviser at the Berlin-based, climate-focused think tank Adelphi, thinks there's an opening here for Europe to take a different route — to pursue more energy self-sufficiency not by building out gas reserves, but by expanding its renewable energy sources at a faster pace." Noah Gordon: [O]nly about 15 percent of Germany's huge gas consumption — almost all imports — is used in power production, and only 15 percent of German power is generated from gas. Most of that gas from Russia or elsewhere is used for heating buildings and in industry.... I think this crisis has really changed the terms of debate. There's a lot of talk today on massive European mobilization to build heat pumps so that Germany and the rest of Europe could heat their buildings with electricity instead of gas, and to renovate buildings for energy efficiency. This is a thing called the EU Renovation Wave, which is a buzzword that can now really get going....
[T]he answer is to reduce fossil fuel use as much as we can. There might not be a wartime mobilization to build weapons for this conflict, but there could be to build heat pumps and to renovate buildings. That's really the way out of this, and to get the clean energy to back it up.... Building a heat pump today isn't going to cut emissions on its own, and you need clean electricity to power the heat pumps, or you haven't made that much progress. But at least with heat pumps and efficiency, you're not locking in future fossil fuel use....
[Y]ou could get a paradigm shift after this, like we did after 1973 and the Arab oil embargo with a greater focus on alternative energy, such as nuclear, and an energy efficiency drive back then in the EU and Japan and even the U.S. in terms of car fuel economy standards.
"Noah J. Gordon, an adviser at the Berlin-based, climate-focused think tank Adelphi, thinks there's an opening here for Europe to take a different route — to pursue more energy self-sufficiency not by building out gas reserves, but by expanding its renewable energy sources at a faster pace." Noah Gordon: [O]nly about 15 percent of Germany's huge gas consumption — almost all imports — is used in power production, and only 15 percent of German power is generated from gas. Most of that gas from Russia or elsewhere is used for heating buildings and in industry.... I think this crisis has really changed the terms of debate. There's a lot of talk today on massive European mobilization to build heat pumps so that Germany and the rest of Europe could heat their buildings with electricity instead of gas, and to renovate buildings for energy efficiency. This is a thing called the EU Renovation Wave, which is a buzzword that can now really get going....
[T]he answer is to reduce fossil fuel use as much as we can. There might not be a wartime mobilization to build weapons for this conflict, but there could be to build heat pumps and to renovate buildings. That's really the way out of this, and to get the clean energy to back it up.... Building a heat pump today isn't going to cut emissions on its own, and you need clean electricity to power the heat pumps, or you haven't made that much progress. But at least with heat pumps and efficiency, you're not locking in future fossil fuel use....
[Y]ou could get a paradigm shift after this, like we did after 1973 and the Arab oil embargo with a greater focus on alternative energy, such as nuclear, and an energy efficiency drive back then in the EU and Japan and even the U.S. in terms of car fuel economy standards.
Sure, in 20 years (Score:4, Insightful)
We took too long to do it. And we don't have the will to do it fast ala WWII. So Putin wins, at least up to the boarders of countries with nukes. He'll stop there, but we'll let him go that far.
Re: Sure, in 20 years (Score:5, Insightful)
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you can not make plastic, fertilizer, medical equipment, rubber, fake leather, and a whole unbelievable list of other things without oil. Also, what are you going to do?
A lot of this stuff can be done with carbon extraction from the air. It's more expensive, but would it really be drastic if fake leather became more expensive?
Ultimately everything can be done without oil, it's just a matter of at what cost.
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Direct carbon extraction from the air is never going to be economical. I think some bioplastics will become more common as the century moves on, but there really are only two alternatives to virgin petroleum. (1) Recycling (which currently doesn't work economically because virgin plastic is cheaper) and (2) using less of the damned stuff in the first place.
I'm a big fan of using less of the damned stuff. It's just ridiculous the amount of plastic a household consumes in a week, almost none of it really ne
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Direct carbon extraction from the air is never going to be economical.
It depends on the purpose, of course. For gasoline? Not likely to ever be economical.
For the plastic parts on my laptop? Sure, why not?
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Well, because CO2 as troublesome as it is is a trace gas, amounting to 4 hundredths of a percent of the atmosphere. As an industrial process it's bound to be uneconomical. Sure, if we're doing carbon capture anyway for climate reasons then it makes sense.
Like I said, bioplastics essentially do the same thing. You just use a lot of relatively non-valuable land.
Re: Sure, in 20 years (Score:5, Insightful)
Oil is not the issue. Natural Gas is. This is what the Russians are providing Europe with.
Those stupid fucks (EU govts) have even started a second huge pipeline to bring even more gas from Russia to Europe. This is a twofold disaster: For the planet and for strengthening a dependency we already had with Russia.
I guess that's what we get with small democracies: Short term self centered decisions, sometimes dumb as fuck like NordStream 2.
Re: Sure, in 20 years (Score:3)
But they installed low flow toilets and windmills so we good ya?
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The last 25 years or so I've only had toilets at home that were designed to use a small amount of water. Similarly at various offices. Typically these toilets let's you select how much water that should be used during single a flush. The flow rate is still high though, it's just the total volume that's smaller.
Maybe I've just been lucky, but I don't think I've ever seen one of these "modern" toilets leak, so I wonder in what way and why your toilets leak... Out onto the floor? Or do you mean it's continu
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Not just started. Nord Stream 2 is complete, and Gazprom has filled it with methane. They can start deliveries the day after the Germans sign off the last of the paperwork.
Possibly worth noting that the Europeans decided many years ago that energy and energy policy was an economic matter to be handled under the EU treaties, not a security matter to be handled under NATO. That's irritated the US from the time they made that decisi
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EU imports Russian Oil and Nat Gas (Score:3)
Oil is not the issue. Natural Gas is. This is what the Russians are providing Europe with.
EU imports Russian Oil and Gas. For example "Germany imported 83 million tonnes of crude oil (the country also imports additional mineral oil products). Russia was by far the largest supplier in 2020, delivering 34 percent."
https://www.cleanenergywire.or... [cleanenergywire.org]
Yeah but you have to question (Score:2)
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The idea was to make Russia dependent on that income. It might have worked, we will have to see what the long term damage to Russia is.
Using Europe's energy security for that purpose probably wasn't the best idea, but people were optimistic in the early 90s.
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With the Rouble in freefall today I think Putin is going to have to care about the economy. There are rumours that he is firing senior military staff - he was expecting this to be over with very quickly, before Europe was able to get the really painful sanctions in place.
Re: Sure, in 20 years (Score:2)
Or maybe they have a more nuanced view with pros and cons, risk assessments,
Maybe they use nordstream to have a better negotiating position with other companies.
Imagine if they actually wrote a document analysing the situation in depth.
Even better, discussed all details with all different stakeholders.
No, they are just stupid. That is the only reasonable explanation.
Your reasoning seems to be based on boolean variables. Try int8 for starters.
Re: Sure, in 20 years (Score:5, Informative)
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I'll give you 5 out of 10. You hit a few easy markers, but its like you're not really trying.
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Lefties would rather die than allow for more waste incineration, and they run things in EU.
Don't be stupid. Waste incineration is on the rise in Europe and has been steadily for 2 decades with more waste incinerated both in total and as a percentage of generation occurring in 2021 than any previous year. Don't confuse reality with the whining of a few vocal idiots.
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You can make all those things without petroleum if you want to. Synthetic oil isn't terribly difficult to make, and we're already very good at taking hydrocarbon feedstock and cracking or reforming it to produce what we want. It's just more expensive than pumping it out of Russia, but probably not as expensive as you think.
Liquid fuels and petroleum based are 2 diff things (Score:2)
Unfortunately, like renewables, this will need R&D and engineering for many years to come. Perhaps setting aside large tracts of la
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It doesn't seem that's the case. Large tracts of ocean for algae maybe, but solar panels are so much more efficient than photosynthesis that it's probably better to just use them and go with an entirely synthetic process. It helps iron out availability problems with renewables too.
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I didn't say anything about "standing pools." The system is limited by the amount of energy and the cost of materials. Solar panels and wind turbines are a lot more efficient, cheap, getting cheaper, and useful for things other than making fuel.
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The system is limited by the amount of energy and the cost of materials.
And solar and wind is not?
Solar panels and wind turbines are a lot more efficient, cheap, getting cheaper, and useful for things other than making fuel.
The point is making fuel. For some applications fuels are superior to battery.
Also solar panels are truly terrible for industrial scale, solar thermal is far more logical.
Do you have any idea what would happen (Score:2)
So yeah we can get away from oil. At least politically. And that's what we're talking about in the context here.
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Oil is not just energy. If you could produce the equivalent megajoules overnight with renewables, you can not make plastic, fertilizer, medical equipment, rubber, fake leather, and a whole unbelievable list of other things without oil.
You are right, but only on a macro-economic scale. The reality is the overwhelming consumption of oil is for energy and there are many additional sources for oil and gas coming into the EU that easily cover that small component of our oil and gas use.
As it stands Russia supplies 40% of Europe's gas. That is among other things used to make fertiliser, but they aren't as controlling with oil. If Europe covered only a portion of energy consumption alone to say nothing of the additional uses for oil and gas the
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Petroleum is used for those things because of it's vast array of ready-made molecules to swap around like Legos... But it's not the only source of such molecules. There's any number of plant based materials, and if worse comes to worse you can synthesize them from raw elemen
Economy (Score:3)
building that kind of infrastructure, especially in our pro-Austerity political environment where nobody thinks anything can be done and where 50-60% of the productive capacity of every economy goes straight to the top takes a long, long time. By the time it's done Putin will have rebuilt the USSR. .
That's amusing. Europe has assembled a bureaucratic nightmare of a political system where even top-down decisions that everyone can agree upon take years to roll out. You get hints of this ossified culture in the US, where a lithium mine is tanked because a bird that *might* end up on the "threatened" species list nests nearby. Or a much-needed apartment development in San Francisco gets held up because it would occasionally cast a shadow on an adjacent park.
Of course, these are all pretenses for what is re
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Nothing like a war to sharpen your focus.
Since the end of WW2, or at the very least since the end of the Cold War, the West has been focused on the business of ... business.
Least cost, efficient supply chains, etc. China and other countries with a command economy have used this to strategic advantage. Others, with a more liberal attitude got fat and lazy.
Now, suddenly, a lot of rich, but energy poor countries have the one thing that they despite more than a harsh word ... war. This will shift their prioriti
Re: Economy (Score:3)
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Canadian oil exports have grown steadily for decades. The growth rate accelerated in 2009 and has remained at that higher rate since.
Most of that growth is due to increasing bitumen exports. That's what you get out of the famous oil sands. Bitumen is quite economical to ship by train since to get it through a pipeline you have to dilute it a lot. Nevertheless, most oil does not travel by rail; it was 3.7% in 2015, 7.5% in 2019, and 4.6% in 2020.
Damn numbers, messing up the narrative, hey?
https://www.cer-rec [cer-rec.gc.ca]
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US, Canada, Norway, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina... a bunch more smaller ones, and some larger ones that are rated as less than "flawed" on the democracy index.
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building that kind of infrastructure, especially in our pro-Austerity political environment where nobody thinks anything can be done
Germany doesn't really have that mentality. The average German definitely plans ahead and builds things properly. That's why their cars are built to last. And their houses.
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My dad's 1998 BMW 528i would like to disagree. He uses it mostly for road trips since it's too stupid to drive in the city with that boat of a car, but in the last 3 trips the car broke down.
Gas pump twice, and alternator once.
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Gas pump twice, and alternator once
Didn't fix the fuel pump properly the first time?
Germany does NOT think ahead on energy (Score:3)
building that kind of infrastructure, especially in our pro-Austerity political environment where nobody thinks anything can be done
Germany doesn't really have that mentality. The average German definitely plans ahead and builds things properly. That's why their cars are built to last. And their houses.
Absolutely false with respect to energy. Germany is absolutely political with respect to greenwashing. As Putin like to but up a facade of strength, Germany likes to put up a facade of green. If Germany were truly being practical and looking ahead it would have shut down the dirtiest power sources first. Coal, oil and than natural gas. Instead for political reasons it shuts down nuclear first, increasing the usage of coal, oil and natural gas. Don't worry, we have lots of photo-ops with solar panels and win
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Shutting down nuclear is simply accelerating the natural death of the current generation of nuclear reactors.
That acceleration remains political. And the decision not to replace with newer reactor designs was also political. And these political decisions resulted in increased use of coal, oil and natural gas. Again, precisely backwards from that which make sense environentally.
There are plenty of places where you could *legally* build new nuclear reactors but it isn't happening because nuclear plants are crap as investments.
So are the solar and wind investments. Again, political stunts, green washing. Solar thermal would make more sense for industrial scale solar.
Part of that are what in effect are subsidies for fossil fuels that we take for granted; like fighting wars to ensure our access to them and letting people use our atmosphere as a dump for free
As I said, it is not environmental nor logical to increase coal, oil and natural gas use, which Ger
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> nuclear plants are crap as investments
Maybe it's crap as investment if not all costs are taken into account. Emitting lots of carbon, and financing Putin's and other autocrats' war machine and citizen suppressing police has costs too. Potentially, European freedom and democracy. That's quite a significant cost, no? It's easy but useless to just consider the direct cost
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nuclear plants are crap as investments
Maybe it's crap as investment if not all costs are taken into account. Emitting lots of carbon
Nuclear actually emits plenty of carbon over its lifecycle, less than a fossil fuel plant but more than any other kind of plant, if you're measuring cradle to grave (which is the only measurement that matters.)
, and financing Putin's and other autocrats' war machine and citizen suppressing police has costs too.
False dichotomy. Renewables don't do that. Your faulty logic is faulty.
We greenwashed, we were poltical (Score:2)
building that kind of infrastructure ... We took too long to do it.
We green washed, we were political, while hyping renewable projects and shutting down nuclear we quietly increased the usage of coal, oil and nat gas. It was absolutely political theatre.
Investing in renewables was fine, but we grossly exaggerated their usefulness with today's tech and today's designs. As you suggest we really need over a decade more of R&D and engineering to even have a realistic plan based on renewables. That means we need a bridge from today to a renewable future. Nuclear is the m
Not without nuclear. (Score:2)
They'd need a continent panning grid to assure wind energy is always available. There isn't enough hydroelectric truc to act as a battery for stirred solar so they will need online spooled up coal plants or nuclear to meet loads. And the more renewable you rely on the more backup you need too. They are decades away. Then there's the heating and cooking gas. Switching that tie me truck just makes the peak load problem worse.
So they are going to need to embrace nuclear power. But instead what is going g
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This is a definite kick-in-the-pants moment. After decades of US griping about it, Germany just announced it's going to increase its defense spending to 100 billion euros, which will vault it from 7th rank in defense spending in the world to third. Germany will be spending *twice* what Russia does, and Germany is an industrial superpower, not a feeble, corrupt, resource-extraction based economy. This will reshape the security situation in Europe, which wasn't Putin's intention and won't at all be to his
Questions (Score:2)
Most of that gas from Russia or elsewhere is used for heating buildings and in industry
How much in each? Industrial uses of gas are probably not replaceable by heat pumps since they are likely to involve heating to high temperatures so if most of the gas is used there heat pumps will not make much difference.
The next issue is how well will heat pumps work in the interior of Europe where there is a continental climate with cold winters? Heat pumps are incredibly efficient for small temperature differences but by the time it gets below -10C the efficiency gets much lower and the heating pow
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Ground source heat pumps work great. Air source heat pumps have temperature limits, but are much better than they were a few years ago. I was just reading about a company making heat pumps designed to replace gas boilers for homes with forced hot water heating systems so that they don't need to replace the whole system, just the boiler.
The strategy now is to grab all the low-hanging fruit as quickly as possible. Doing energy audits, air sealing, and insulation improvements could significantly reduce the
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Ground source heat pumps work great.
I'd not thought of that. I suspect installation will be rather expensive given the drilling involved but physics-wise it makes perfect sense. Thanks!
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Yes, it's expensive, but not nearly as expensive as it used to be. For example Dandelion Energy has been installing relatively low-cost geothermal for several years (mostly in upstate NY). I have no direct experience with them, so I'm not endorsing them, but I'm endorsing the concept.
If Europe (or specific countries like Germany) got serious about converting from gas to electric, technologies like this would be much cheaper if they were doing them at scale. I expect they could double or better the number
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Yes, we have cold winters, but we also know how to make heat pumps work. Most of the installations have the heat source from the ground which has a relatively constant temperature of 7-9C independent of the air temperature. For those that use the outside air as a heat source the heat pumps are sized accordingly, and they work efficiently (COP>1) down to -20C.
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Ground source heat pumps make a huge amount of sense - I had not realized they were available. I suspect installation is very expensive but they will clearly work well even in cold weather. I actually live in Canada where we get a week or two below -30C each winter (and
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Greenland does well with air source heat pumps.
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In cities, you can install district heating and use water source heat pumps. Most cities have a harbour.
Also, you can store heat from summer to winter in covered dams. This is getting popular in Denmark.
Texan Greenie Thinking (Score:2)
Have you seen energy prices in the EU (Score:2)
why limit to just electrification with renewables? (Score:2)
I think we need to get away from the one-trick pony approach to move things along faster. There are other ways to use the sun and other approaches to limiting energy usage.
For example, coatings have been developed that act almost like diodes for heat movement. Heat moves through from one side and is reflected away from the other. The overall effect is so great that the non-reflective side is cooled below ambient as heat is emitted but refused a path back in. Incorporating this into building structures in so
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In this universe we obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Do you have one in the universe you are coming from? Do you also have magnetic monopoles? Just asking for a friend.
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Break the US fossil fuel addiction, too (Score:3, Interesting)
If the US and Canada would take similar steps, it would finally allow the Free World to get the hell out of the Middle East and watch the hate mongers slaughter each other while we eat popcorn.
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Both the US and Canada are net exporters of both oil and gas.
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Both the US and Canada are net exporters of both oil and gas.
I believe the US was a net petroleum importer in 2021 and is predicted to do so again in 2022. Then you also need to consider which types of petroleum we're importing vs which types we're exporting.
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Thanks for saving me the trouble of responding to that guy...and being more polite than I'd have been.
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Setting aside the fact that there's more to the free world than the US and Canada... The Middle East isn't a majority provider of oil to the US and hasn't been as long as I've been watching. (Since around the turn of the century.) The vast majority of our oil comes from Canada, Mexico, and various South American so
You gt the cause and effect reversed. (Score:5, Interesting)
They always used to believe even if grid is gone, they transportation sector is under the thumb of gasoline and diesel. But even that is being seriously assaulted. The car makers have caved in and all of them are switching to EV, shelving R&D on ICE, closing ICE factories and line ups.
Russia is trying to secure the bread basket of Europe. Ukraine accounts for more than 50% of wheat consumed in Europe and its wheat is highly prized in Arab lands.
The war will not be the reason Europe becomes free of dependency on fossil fuels. Europe becoming free of fossil fuel dependency is the reason for this war.
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Yep, it makes me think that Nuclear is idiotic and can't help with AGW or energy independence because it takes so long to build, costs so much, and creates such a high-value target.
Not a terrible idea (Score:2)
It's not a crazy idea. Heat pumps are way more efficient than gas or electric heat. Current models even work when it's quite cold, below 0 degrees F. They're plausible anywhere in Europe, except perhaps Scandinavia. I'm pretty interested in replacing my old AC unit with a heat pump but that's only because my current AC is quite old.
Thing is, this sort of thing takes time. The city I live in, San Jose, is floating a proposal to ban gas appliances and heat in 2030. I think that's too fast. I don't know you ca
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I doubt it matters much. Usage should be low. When I lived there I did not have an AC, and rarely used the heat. And that was on the east side. Very temperate climate. I was stunned when friends would install a central AC. My question was always why.
East side of San Jose? We routinely need heat in the winter. When it's over 90, it gets uncomfortably hot in my house so AC is nice. Lots of times we can just depend on the whole house fan.
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Yes. (Score:2)
It's happening already. One positive aspect of this crazy Gangsta- Czar going apeshit.
You're talking decades (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of talk today on massive European mobilization to build heat pumps so that Germany and the rest of Europe could heat their buildings with electricity instead of gas, and to renovate buildings for energy efficiency. This is a thing called the EU Renovation Wave, which is a buzzword that can now really get going....
You're talking about a solution that will take decades to address a problem that could manifest itself next week...
It could be a goad towards nuclear ... (Score:2)
... if Europe really wants to be self sufficient in energy.
The answer is no. (Score:4, Interesting)
The answer is, no it cannot push the EU to renewables, because installing renewables is not a way of reducing need for conventional generation. Nor will the EU move to renewables because they are cheaper than conventional, because they are not. And finally, it will not do it because however much people want to, you cannot run a modern economy on wind.
To see this you just have to look at the UK wind power numbers and the implications of the UK plans for Net Zero. The wind power generation numbers are available here:
https://gridwatch.co.uk/WIND [gridwatch.co.uk]
From this you can see that there is no way to run a grid on wind. What you can do is run it on gas and supplement your gas with wind. Its is therefore false to say that wind has become or will become cheaper than gas, they are not alternatives, you cannot replace gas with wind.
You will be replacing gas with wind plus gas, which is not cheaper than gas alone, its a lot more expensive. In addition, the latest Net Zero information shows that its necessary to rebuild huge amounts of transmission infrastructure to move the power to where it is needed. From offshore north of Scotland to the UK Midlands. The idea that this is cheaper than conventional is idiotic.
In addition, there are social costs to going to intermittent generation while increasing demand. The latest UK Net Zero plans show using smart meters to turn off vehicle charging, draw down vehicle batteries, and turn off heat pumps during peak demand hours.
Second, it is also wrong to suggest you can reduce demand for oil by moving cars to EVs. It depends entirely what you are using to generate the power. As the above charts show, and as the UK Net Zero plans show, there is no way to install enough wind in any reasonable time period to be able to generate current demand, let alone the increased demand from EVs.
The plan is to go from about 24GW faceplate to about 70GW by 2030. If you assume 4GW per turbine, that is going to be 10,000+ offshore turbines by 2030. And by the later years, replacing the ones already installed and wearing out. Its not possible. And even if you could do it, all you have really done is increase the intermittency problem. And for every unit of wind you install, you have to install an identical amount of gas fired generation to back up the dips. That alone is problematic.
And finally they are proposing to install 600,000 intermittently supplied heat pumps a year. Which is a completely insane ambition. There are just not enough tradesmen to do it. And the task is not simply bolt a heat pump onto existing heating systems. Its install new and bigger rads, and hew piping to them, because heat pumps work at much lower temps than gas boilers.
The whole idea is harebrained.
Resources (Score:2)
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It seems shortsighted to rely on other countries for the stuff that keeps your country running, particularly when the countries that provide those resources have vastly different regimes to yours. Oil from the middle East and gas from Russia - not quite the liberal paradises that Europe would like to work with!
Where have we heard that before?
“Germany will have almost 70 percent of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas. You tell me, is that appropriate?,” he asked, while Stoltenberg listened.
At one point, the former Norwegian prime minister pointed out that the NATO allies in Europe disagreed among themselves on ways to reduce the continent’s reliance on Russian gas.
“Germany is totally controlled by Russia, cause they are getting 60 to 70 percent of their energy from Russia an
nuclear just has the waist issue (Score:2)
nuclear just has the waist issue
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nuclear just has the waist issue
You mean expanding, like the waists of fat Americans?
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New reactors burn old waste as fuel, solves 2 prob (Score:2)
nuclear just has the waist issue
Newer reactor designs actually help clean up the waste issue. It can use old reactor fuel waste currently being store as fuel. Burning it down much more efficiently than older reactor designs. Turning a high level 10,000 year storage problem into a low level 300 year storage problem.
So modern nuclear is not only cleaner, it has a secondary benefit of clearing up old waste.
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Power generation in 2010 (so before Fukushima) in Germany from lignite was 146 TWh and from coal was 117 TWh. This declined to 108 TWh (lignite) and 54 TWh (coal), respectively, in 2021. (Source: https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/... [ag-energiebilanzen.de])
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And what about Chernobyl? Here we have an RBMK-1000, a second generation graphite-moderated reactor! Indeed, the RBMK is widely considered the oldest second generation reactor type.
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Gen II+ has had no problems. That and Gen III are fine and safe.
Irrelevant to bring up commercial power reactors without containment building anyway, no one is going to build those any more.
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Generation II reactors are still in use, as the next generations reactors are so frickingly expensive, that their numbers are small, and their electricity has to be heavily subsidized to be commercially viable. Yes, no generation III reactor has ever failed catastrophically. That's because there are not many of them in the first place.
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You're laughable with your "heavily subsidized" phrase, since solar and all other green energy and electric cars are with Tesla getting the most.
They're getting temporary subsidies that are actually moving technology forwards. Oil gets assloads of subsidies that move nothing forward, just keep us stuck under big oil's thumb and oh yeah are paying for the destruction of the biosphere. Oil and solar subsidies are nothing alike except that both involve money.
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"When a junior aid pointed out that missiles were still landing in Kyiv, Speaker K'Breel appropriately had his gelsacs punctured."
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Pravda is just a word. In America we associate it with propaganda, but that doesn't make any more sense than saying "Daily News" is propaganda based on its name alone.
That is, it might be propaganda, it might not. You can't tell just by the word pravda.
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It's the Russian word for "truth". You didn't know that?
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Clearly that means it's not propaganda.
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True, something with "fact" in its name is never wrong.
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Last month he ordered a release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, with the idea that it would push gas prices down a bit. And they did go down, by about 20 cents/gal, which is 5%. Misguided and not particularly helpful either. Most people's budgets would benefit much more from a 5% drop in housing costs (Or a 50% drop in healthcare costs, or a dozen other doables I could list...)
Presumably they were trying to combat the Ugh, gas prices SO HIGH that's been a hot topic on social media this season. It is t
Russian Oil and Gas is largely irrelevant to USA (Score:2)
EU and USA are in in for a huge treat. Russia plans to sell their oil and gas for rubles exlusively starting next winter. The world has changed forever on February 23.
If you look at the EIA figures for 2020 [eia.gov] you can see that is probably not going to both the Yanks that much. Russia is significant in petroleum imports (7%) but not oil. If the US keeps on increasing the efficiency of their cars to something almost European and continues to increase their domestic refinery capacity they should remain a net petroleum exporter.
Europe on the other hand is a different kettle of fish they buy a significant portion [europa.eu] of their energy from Russia. If Russia goes ahead and prices in ru
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the greens and the global east do seem to be scratching each other's back quite vigorously these days.
What do you mean by "these days"? It was Lenin that called them useful idiots.
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Weird. How do they get them to grow in China? Is it a climate thing? Something about the soil?
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While I entirely agree that a major war in Ukraine is the most pressing concern, I think the message needs to go out to Russia that it cannot rely on oil and gas revenues to fund its military adventures. In order to make that economic message clear, increased investment in windmills and solar panels would be advantageous. This message comes from your favourite capitalist climate weenie.
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How will we get millions of tons of food aid into Ukraine with no operating ports
Currently, it can still be driven across the border with Poland.