Will Europe's Push to Reduce Russian Fossil Fuel Use Hurt Its Climate Goals? (apnews.com) 290
In 2021, the European Union imported about 40% of its gas and 25% of its oil from Russia, reports the Associated Press. But now EU officials "are fixated on rapidly reducing the continent's reliance on Russian oil and natural gas — and that means friction between security and climate goals, at least in the short term.
"To wean itself from Russian energy supplies as quickly as possible, Europe will need to burn more coal and build more pipelines and terminals to import fossil fuels from elsewhere...." [T]he EU plans to reduce Russian gas imports by two-thirds by the end of this year, and to eliminate them altogether before 2030... In the near-term, ending energy ties with Russia puts the focus on securing alternative sources of fossil fuels. But longer term, the geopolitical and price pressures stoked by Russia's war in Ukraine may actually accelerate Europe's transition away from oil, gas and coal. Experts say the war has served as a reminder that renewable energy isn't just good for the climate, but also for national security. That could help speed up the development of wind and solar power, as well as provide a boost to conservation and energy-efficiency initiatives....
The rapid pursuit of energy independence from Russia will likely require "a slight increase" in carbon emissions, said George Zachmann, an energy expert at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. But "in the long term, the effect will be that we will see more investment in renewables and energy efficiency in Europe," Zachmann said.
Plans that wouldn't have been contemplated just a few months ago are now being actively discussed, such as running coal plants in Germany beyond 2030, which had previously been seen as an end date. Germany's vice chancellor and energy minister, Robert Habeck, said there should be "no taboos." The Czech government has made the same calculation about extending the life of coal power plants. "We will need it until we find alternative sources," Czech energy security commissioner Václav Bartuska, told the news site Seznam Zprávy. "Until that time, even the greenest government will not phase out coal...."
In Britain, which is no longer part of the EU, Prime Minister Boris Johnson says it's "time to take back control of our energy supplies." Britain will phase out the small amount of oil it imports from Russia this year. More significantly, Johnson has signaled plans to approve new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, to the dismay of environmentalists, who say that is incompatible with Britain's climate targets. Some within the governing Conservative Party and the wider political right want the British government to retreat on its commitment to reach net zero by 2050, a pledge made less than six months ago at a global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland....
Yet the shock waves from the war cut both ways. Sharply higher gas and electricity prices, and the desire to be less dependent on Russia, are increasing pressure to expand the development of home-grown renewables and to propel conservation. The International Energy Agency recently released a 10-point plan for Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian gas by a third within a year. Simply lowering building thermostats by an average of one degree Celsius during the home-heating season would save 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year, or roughly 6% of what Europe imports from Russia.
"To wean itself from Russian energy supplies as quickly as possible, Europe will need to burn more coal and build more pipelines and terminals to import fossil fuels from elsewhere...." [T]he EU plans to reduce Russian gas imports by two-thirds by the end of this year, and to eliminate them altogether before 2030... In the near-term, ending energy ties with Russia puts the focus on securing alternative sources of fossil fuels. But longer term, the geopolitical and price pressures stoked by Russia's war in Ukraine may actually accelerate Europe's transition away from oil, gas and coal. Experts say the war has served as a reminder that renewable energy isn't just good for the climate, but also for national security. That could help speed up the development of wind and solar power, as well as provide a boost to conservation and energy-efficiency initiatives....
The rapid pursuit of energy independence from Russia will likely require "a slight increase" in carbon emissions, said George Zachmann, an energy expert at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. But "in the long term, the effect will be that we will see more investment in renewables and energy efficiency in Europe," Zachmann said.
Plans that wouldn't have been contemplated just a few months ago are now being actively discussed, such as running coal plants in Germany beyond 2030, which had previously been seen as an end date. Germany's vice chancellor and energy minister, Robert Habeck, said there should be "no taboos." The Czech government has made the same calculation about extending the life of coal power plants. "We will need it until we find alternative sources," Czech energy security commissioner Václav Bartuska, told the news site Seznam Zprávy. "Until that time, even the greenest government will not phase out coal...."
In Britain, which is no longer part of the EU, Prime Minister Boris Johnson says it's "time to take back control of our energy supplies." Britain will phase out the small amount of oil it imports from Russia this year. More significantly, Johnson has signaled plans to approve new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, to the dismay of environmentalists, who say that is incompatible with Britain's climate targets. Some within the governing Conservative Party and the wider political right want the British government to retreat on its commitment to reach net zero by 2050, a pledge made less than six months ago at a global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland....
Yet the shock waves from the war cut both ways. Sharply higher gas and electricity prices, and the desire to be less dependent on Russia, are increasing pressure to expand the development of home-grown renewables and to propel conservation. The International Energy Agency recently released a 10-point plan for Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian gas by a third within a year. Simply lowering building thermostats by an average of one degree Celsius during the home-heating season would save 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year, or roughly 6% of what Europe imports from Russia.
They screwed up (Score:3, Insightful)
They should keep the nukes running and build more
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That's way too big of a risk for anyone to be willing to take under any circumstances. Especially when you consider how often big businesses will skip maintenance and how easy it is to corrupt the gov
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Actually what matters even more is that nuclear is excessively expensive. Without massive subsidies nobody wants to operate these money-destroyers today let alone build more. And that does not include accident-cost and cost for safe disposal of the ruins and burnt fuel. Taking those into account, the cost for nuclear power is simply insane.
It took a while for some operators to admit, but we now have nukes in Europe being shut down voluntarily by the operators and operators not asking for run-time extensions
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People forget.
People have forgotten the Windscale fires in the UK, as the UK are building new reactors as we speak.
People forget and opportunities come around again.
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People have forgotten the Windscale fires in the UK, as the UK are building new reactors as we speak.
The UK is building a couple of reactors very slowly and very far behind schedule and very far over budget, when they could have spent that money on offshore wind... for which they have numerous ideal sites. And in fact they are doing that, but they could have done more.
They also could physically build more reactors, but aren't because people haven't forgotten that nuclear is expensive and hazardous and produces base load rather than following load which makes it difficult to integrate more of it in exactly
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The UK had a fire in a very early air cooled nuclear reactor in 1957, in a reactor which had been operational since 1951. Since then, the UK has operated (and continues to operate) a number of nuclear plants safely, as well as several submarines powered by nuclear reactors.
A lot less was known about nuclear power and the safety implications thereof in the 1950s. A lot has been learned since then, and a lot of technologies have improved. Modern reactor designs are much safer, and a lot of the delays/costs ar
Follow the science ... (Score:2)
After Fukushima nobody's going to do that.
Unless they follow the science, your path is follow the politics.
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After Fukushima nobody's going to do that.
Unless they follow the science, your path is follow the politics.
The Fukushima disaster was not caused by environmentalist politics, it was caused by a bunch of nitwits otherwise known as the nuclear industry building a nuclear reactor by the sea in an extremely active earthquake and tsunami zone. It's not that people don't trust nuclear as a technology so much as that they don't trust the greedy bunch of selfish corporate morons who build nuclear plants and run them.
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After Fukushima nobody's going to do that.
Unless they follow the science, your path is follow the politics.
The Fukushima disaster was not caused by environmentalist politics, ...
You are off topic. We are not talking about the disaster cause, we are talking about the reaction to the disaster.
it was caused by a bunch of nitwits otherwise known as the nuclear industry ...
No, it was caused by one company's bad decisions and a lack of oversight by government. And still ... more people have died from fossil fuels than the nuclear industry.
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Nonsense there are over 430 Nuke plants running just fine right now
As far as you know, sure.
and we need more of them to power electric cars and work out of fossil fuels
No, we don't.
The one thing we know is humans thirst for power is only going up
Maybe. World populations are starting to level off and much of the current push is for efficiency. EVs use much less power than ICEVs, heat pumps use much less energy than resistive heaters or fuel-based boilers, etc.
and solar panels and wind alone could never replace the energy needs we have
Of course they could, if we put the solar panels in space.
This is why we need to promote development of space, so that we can move heavy industry there.
We need a non-fossil fuels bridge to renewables (Score:2)
and we need more of them to power electric cars and work out of fossil fuels
No, we don't.
False. Following the politics of renewables only, no nukes, is actually prolonging the use of fossil fuels. And various leaders, some of them going back to the 1970s, in the green and anti-nuke movements now admit this. Consider their hostility to nuclear power to be one of their greatest mistakes.
You can wish as hard as you want for renewables, but science and engineering will take its time. We need a non-fossil fuels bridge to renewables, that's nuclear today.
The one thing we know is humans thirst for power is only going up
Maybe. World populations are starting to level off and much of the current push is for efficiency. EVs use much less power than ICEVs, heat pumps use much less energy than resistive heaters or fuel-based boilers, etc.
You make naive comparisons. Its not power i
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Following the politics of renewables only, no nukes, is actually prolonging the use of fossil fuels
That's a ridiculous idea because we can build more output from renewables faster and cheaper (meaning we can build more) than we can build it from nuclear. Got any non-ridiculous ideas on offer?
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Just out of curiosity what is the number of wind turbines to a nuclear plant? Or miles of solar panels to a nuclear plant?
For example, it takes the output of about 2,000 wind turbines of 2 megawatts (MW) each–roughly half of the 8,203 MW of new US wind installations last year–to equal the annual energy production of a single typical nuclear reactor. [energypost.eu]
Are you suggesting that it is possible to increase the current pace of wind turbine installations by that amount over what is already being produced?
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People who will say anything to "defeat" nuclear power seem to bee shooting us int he foot as we try to move away from fossil fuels
People who will say anything to defend nuclear power are selling out the future for the present. Suggesting that they're doing it to save the future is insensible.
Nuclear does not displace renewables, just fossil (Score:2)
People who will say anything to "defeat" nuclear power seem to bee shooting us int he foot as we try to move away from fossil fuels
People who will say anything to defend nuclear power are selling out the future for the present.
How? They are saying nuclear should be used to displace fossil fuels, not displace renewables. Again, renewable won't arrive fast enough, we need a bridge until then, its nuclear or fossil fuels. You fantasies and misrepresentations won't change that.
Suggesting that they're doing it to save the future is insensible.
Only because you erroneously think nuclear displaces renewables.
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Again, renewable won't arrive fast enough
Again, it takes 20 years to build a nuclear plant, so your argument exists only to satisfy your man-child fantasies that nuclear power makes sense because it is neato.
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The amount of electricity generated by renewables in the US has surpassed nuclear since 2017.
https://futurism.com/report-re... [futurism.com]
A wind farm or solar installation can be built in a couple of years, on budget. Nuke plants take well over a decade and routinely cost twice what was budgeted. And they produce electricity at a cost of many multiple of renewables. So many reasons why they are no longer feasible.
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Nuke plants take well over a decade and routinely cost twice what was budgeted.
And how much of that is thanks to the endless bureaucratic hurdles, rampant NIMBYism, and unrestricted lawfare? It ain't the engineering that's the cause of the time and money.
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The amount of electricity generated by renewables in the US has surpassed nuclear since 2017.
Irrelevant, the anything-but-fossil-fuels solution that includes nuclear does not displace renewables, it displaces fossil fuels. Renewables + nuclear gets to zero fossil fuels faster. By failing to include nuclear you perpetuate fossil fuels for a longer time frame and increase CO2 emissions.
Nuke plants take well over a decade and routinely cost twice what was budgeted.
Mostly due to politics. And the easy to build renewable locations are getting less common and politics is slowing these down as well.
And they produce electricity at a cost of many multiple of renewables. So many reasons why they are no longer feasible.
Again, renewables can not deliver 100% of our increasing needs, you merely perpetuate
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Following the politics of renewables only, no nukes, is actually prolonging the use of fossil fuels
That's a ridiculous idea because we can build more output from renewables faster and cheaper (meaning we can build more) than we can build it from nuclear. Got any non-ridiculous ideas on offer?
How about we start up the plants that were prematurely shutdown over politics?
Also the delays to new nuclear plant construction are largely political in nature.
And no, you will not build renewables fast enough, and you will end up using fossil fuels as the bridge. China, the world's largest producer of solar panels is building more coal based plants because renewables aren't enough and won't be any time soon.
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You need to add the storage requirement. No-one on this thread advocating wind and solar is doing that.
When calculating equivalent generating supply from either one, versus conventional (gas/coal) or nuclear, you need to proceed as follows:
1) Provide enough storage to supply the system for at least two weeks of calm
2) Provide enough intermittent capacity to ensure that even in calms there is enough generation that, matched to the storage above, you can supply demand. This will require over provision of
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should keep the nukes running
Except whoever can "keep the nukes running" keeps them running. Not sure you realize the costs that would be involved in keeping the to-be-decommissioned plants running further. Today it's just cheaper to build new renewables than to refurbish old nuclear plants that were scheduled to be decommissioned in very near future and their maintenance schedule has been reflecting that for the past few years.
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Note that "can" means "can and not lose tons of money on it". There have already been several premature shut-downs in Europe for economic reasons. Nuclear just a money-sink.
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Premature shutdowns of nuclear plants in Europe were due to POLITICS and the Green party's manipulations and lie campaigns
It is really sad that the "greens" have become the most prominent cause of continued fossil fuel use
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Bullshit. You have no clue what you are talking about.
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Nuclear phase-out – opting out and back in again
After the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Green Party won the elections in 1998, the government of Gerhard Schroeder (SPD) reached what became known as the “nuclear consensus” with the big utilities (in 2000). They agreed to limit the lifespan of nuclear power stations to 32 years. The plan allocated each plant an amount of electricity that it could produce before it had to be shut down. Because nuclear power generation can vary, the plan did
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Show evidence. The LCOE of nuclear is hugely more expensive than any renewables.
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They should keep the nukes running and build more
Sorry, Europe is not quite stupid enough to do that. The tiny number of nukes under construction is only to maintain the nuclear arsenal for Franke (and the UK), no other purpose and electricity from them will be excessively expensive and basically a by-product.
Re: They screwed up (Score:2)
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The issue with elites is when they engage with this crap it's their citizens that have to suffer the consequences.
If they get hungry enough, there will be consequences for Putin. If Russia were invaded, there would be consequences for everybody just like if their economy goes to shit.
This is why Trump was much better on the Russia/Ukraine situation
Trump's isolationism emboldened Putin [usatoday.com], Trump weakened NATO by saying we wouldn't aid NATO nations which didn't give us money [nytimes.com], Trump discussed withdrawing from NATO [vanityfair.com], Trump suggested we should give Russia a pass on Crimea [usnews.com], and of course Trump was literally impeached for deciding to withhold aid from Ukraine.
Putin and Xi are bullies and bullies only respond to strength
If Trump had Putin's cock any far
Re: They screwed up (Score:2)
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I've pointed out many times before that once Trump's fraud against Deutsche Bank came out, nobody but Russian banks would lend him money. Russia was cultivating Trump for decades [theguardian.com]. This was their opportunity to make him a fully owned asset, and they took it.
Re: They screwed up (Score:2)
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If Putin owned Trump why didn't Putin invade under Trump?
Because he was busy getting what he wanted out of Trump, a weakened NATO and a weakened Ukraine. What are you, fucking new?
Why did Trump sanction Russia?
Re: They screwed up (Score:2)
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If they get hungry enough they will just end up starving to death, and will probably die blaming the west rather than putin.
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If they get hungry enough they will just end up starving to death, and will probably die blaming the west rather than putin.
People rarely just starve to death these days, when there are lots and lots of firearms in the hands of the people. And while Russians aren't generally as personally well-armed as Americans due to stricter firearms laws than we have in most states, they have loads of illicit guns in their country too.
My big concern is that Russia will sell nukes to make up their budget shortfall.
Re: They screwed up (Score:2)
One crisis at the time, please. (Score:2)
All those ambitious clime goals and cutting ties with Russia sound like great political statements but, ultimately, they will hurt ordinary citizens by rising energy prices to insane levels. There are already people in the UK who have to choose every day between heating their homes and buying food, and it is only about to get worse if we don't take a step back and accept that unprecedented events such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are valid reasons to defer clime goals until we sort out the current
build more nukes ! (Score:2)
build more nukes !
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Europeans are not _that_ extremely stupid.
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There will always be a crisis though. As one ends, another begins.
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Here in Brazil there are people using alcohol or wood to cook, because of GLP [wikipedia.org] prices (the crisis here begin way before this Ukraine/Russia issue...)
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they will hurt ordinary citizens by rising energy prices to insane levels
Perhaps Europeans should build real houses with insulation [bbc.com] instead of trying to brag how strong their brick and concrete houses are.
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New houses are nearly perfectly insulated (in Germany) and for most old houses there was government incentives to insulate them since 30 years ...
No idea about UK, though.
Re: One crisis at the time, please. (Score:2)
Re: One crisis at the time, please. (Score:2)
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There were incentives to insulate, but the payback times and disruption rarely made it worth it except for some low hanging fruit.
The playground of rich people doing major renovations or people with a ton of free time who did it DIY.
Re: One crisis at the time, please. (Score:2)
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I think the same. Especially if you consider the harsher climate in most parts of UK.
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they will hurt ordinary citizens by rising energy prices to insane levels
Perhaps Europeans should build real houses with insulation [bbc.com] instead of trying to brag how strong their brick and concrete houses are.
Perhaps you should inform yourself what is actually going on in Europe?
Re: One crisis at the time, please. (Score:2)
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All those ambitious clime goals and cutting ties with Russia sound like great political statements but, ultimately, they will hurt ordinary citizens by rising energy prices to insane levels
How do you think it will hurt ordinary citizens in Ukraine who are getting bombed daily?
This isn't a empty statement, this is stopping directly financing putin's invasion.
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Cutting energy dependence decades out isn't going to scare Putin away.
Europe should have gone into warmode immediately and cut Russia off entirely, that would have scared him. Instead the EU said "gas is more important than Ukrainians" and Putin heard it loud and clear. Russia was going to hurt, probably worse than he expected, but it wasn't going to get entirely crippled. This seems good enough for him to keep on keeping on.
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Since you are from the UK and you pretend to care about the plight of the common person, how about pointing the finger at the Tory Party, which squeezes everyone the benefit of the wealthy? Could be you are a card carrying Tory yourself?
BTW, it's the same thing in the US. Those who scream about the "regular folks" want to cut taxes
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Well said.
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One crisis at the time, please.
The climate crisis doesn't stop being a crisis just because you say please. It doesn't go away just because Russia is Russia'ing again, either.
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Would you invest money in LNG terminals to buy energy from foreign countries indefinitely, or build wind and solar farms and eventually become energy independent.
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Maybe, maybe your currency collapses and you suddenly get forced into trade balance.
Printing while in trade deficit is a dangerous game for smaller countries.
So? (Score:2)
Worrying about the henhouse while the house burns (Score:2)
Once there is enough energy to actually run the continent we can restart the ritual of turning towards Oslo on Friday and sing VaiGreta, MashGreta to the tone of the Green muezzin.
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how much global warming comes from bombs? (Score:2)
I mean, there has to be some savings, ecology-wise, in de-funding those actively exploding bombs.
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Re: how much global warming comes from bombs? (Score:2)
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We MUST stop the growth of productivity on this planet, because we use too many resources to be renewable, and that's based on economic activity. We MUST reduce our resource consumption if we are to have a future. If you want to expand endlessly, you must do it in endless space, and not here on this limited little mudball.
Nonsense again ... (Score:2)
"To wean itself from Russian energy supplies as quickly as possible, Europe will need to burn more coal and build more pipelines and terminals to import fossil fuels from elsewhere...."
Why?
Makes no sense.
Most coal is coming from Russia.
What has oil and gas to do with burning more coal while reducing/removing oil and gas imports?
Nothing obviously. Or does anyone think we have oil burning electricity plants? Or gas burning electricity plants in such amounts? Or we would build new coal plants?
It is a gain a st
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Most coal is coming from Russia.
Because it is cheaper, which was smart up till recently. But Europe has their own if they need, which is good.
"To wean itself from Russian energy supplies as quickly as possible, Europe will need to burn more coal and build more pipelines and terminals to import fossil fuels from elsewhere...." Why?
Replacing gas used for heating with resistive electrical heat (people's first choice to keep from freezing) is going to put a huge load on your grid, no matter how distributed it is.
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No one would use resistive heating - that would be complete nonsense in nearly every case.
And switching to any other heating system, is a DECADE long effort. We probably have something like 40 million households. It will take for ever to replace gas furnaces with heat pumps etc. most certainly not a year two.
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Yes, they should certainly switch to heat pumps. But 2.7 million heat pumps were sold in 2019, and fossil fuels still heat the vast majority of homes in Europe. In 2020, the European Union reported 195.4 million households. Let's say 3/4 of them are still heated with fossil fuels, which is literally the case in Germany. Where are you going to get 146 million heat pumps? If every air con manufacturer switched over to making only heat pumps, they might be able to produce around 25 million of them a year. But
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No one would use resistive heating - that would be complete nonsense in nearly every case.
If Russia turns off the taps tomorrow you will no doubt be amazed.
And switching to any other heating system, is a DECADE long effort.
Sure, a decade in peacetime. This thread is not about that.
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And switching to any other heating system, is a DECADE long effort.
Sure, a decade in peacetime. This thread is not about that.
It's easy to get people to support spending lots of money when bombs are falling on them, but when they're falling on someone else, it's a lot harder. Another thing you'd do in actual wartime is accept austerity, which in this case means a lot of people moving in together and sharing housing and even beds to stay warm.
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My first choice would be a bed tent, to trap body heat, and a mattress heater for supplemental heat, because there's no need to heat the whole house or even the whole room. Yes, it's still resistive heating, but only a few hundred watts, as opposed to an electric furnace which is tens of thousands of watts, so the load on the g
Re: Nonsense again ... (Score:2)
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In the EU, is resistive electrical heat really "people's first choice to keep from freezing" as the comment above claimed?
I'm talking about what people who use gas for heat will do if there is no gas tomorrow. Given years to plan I'm sure the result would be different.
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If there is no gas heating literally tomorrow in freezing temperatures, it would be wise to follow this advice [youtube.com] to stay alive.
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Most coal is coming from Russia.
Because it is cheaper, which was smart up till recently.
It wasn't smart, because giving money to a historical aggressor in your region is not a good plan for the future when they have every reason in the present to continue to be aggressive. Or it was smart because it kept Russia from needing to invade until their tires rotted, but not because it was cheaper.
Need more nuclear reactors (Score:2)
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Won't happen. Since they would shut down anyway, they had only minimal maintenance so for a delay they would need heavy maintenance and recertification.
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Germany is still in the process of shutting theirs down, they really need to delay for at least a few years.
Why are you advocating economic insanity? Are you stupid? Also, Germany has 3 reactors running now. They do not matter.
Nope (Score:3)
Q: Will Europe's Push to Reduce Russian Fossil Fuel Use Hurt Its Climate Goals?
A: No, because progress on those goals has been purely illusory.
Europe has not reduced carbon emissions, instead is has exported and increased emissions. [climateworks.org]
The European Union is broadly credited with reducing its emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and is on track to meet its goal of a 20% reduction in GHGs in 2020 compared to 1990 levels. But a full lifecycle accounting of European member state carbon emissions, including those emissions caused through consumption of imported goods, tells a different story: Under this accounting method, EU emissions have actually grown by 11% - with some nations seeing substantially higher emissions growth than others.
So Europe has been like, "Hey, manufacturing our stuff here produces bad carbon emissions. So let's have it manufactured in China instead. Problem solved!"
Undoing that practice a bit by improving energy availability in Europe will not make that unless energy policy any more useless.
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That is an stupid argument.
Especially as you have reading comprehension problems regarding the quote you made: your quote clearly states "argrar imports". And not exporting "manufacturing emissions".
It is hardly Europes fault that "other countries on the world" suddenly export more food.
So: yes, we did reduce our emissions greatly! Did your country? Idiotic posts like yours usually come from countries that did not do much, if anything at all, to reduce their CO2 footprint.
There is hardly anything manufactur
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There is hardly anything manufactured in China that has any use in Europe.
Is that why Europe imports about the same amount of stuff from China every year that the USA does? Because Europe has no use for Chinese goods? Now granted, that's half as much per capita, but it ain't nothin'.
And for those it does not really matter where it is produced. The CO2 is the same.
That the CO2 is the same is the point. If you export manufacturing to another country then you're not actually reducing CO2, you're just moving its production somewhere else. Since it's fungible and global it doesn't matter where you produce it, what matters is whether you produce it. And it doesn't m
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Is that why Europe imports about the same amount of stuff from China every year that the USA does?
Europe does not. Which is easy to google.
Most stuff are agrar products and textiles.
If you export manufacturing to another country then you're not actually reducing CO2, you're just moving its production somewhere else.
But we are not doing that. It would mean closing a factory in Europe. So, when did we close a factory last time in Europe?
If you want to ride that horse you need to find industries or at least
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Q: Will Europe's Push to Reduce Russian Fossil Fuel Use Hurt Its Climate Goals?
A: No, because progress on those goals has been purely illusory.
Pretty much, yes. In its collective wisdom, the human race seems to be trying for 4C, maybe 5C. Whether there will be a human race after that is questionable.
the more they cost (Score:2)
Does it matter? (Score:2)
Most of them don't hit them anyway, so does missing the targets for reason A mean something significantly different from missing the targets for reason B?
Seems like this is a golden gift to EU governments to blame Putin for something that they never really intended to achieve this cycle anyway.
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The green goals were always a lie. (Score:2)
They were just shuffling their cards.
Well WE aren't producing fossil fuels anymore!
WE aren't doing X, Y, and Z!!
They just avoid mentioning that they ARE, they're just outsourcing them now.
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Why are we worrying about 0.01% sea level rise in 300 fuckin' years?
Because it would affect golf courses [politico.com].
More than 0.001 [Re:Why worry about 0.01%?] (Score:2)
Why are we worrying about 0.01% sea level rise in 300 fuckin' years?
Average depth of the earth's oceans is 3.7 km, so that would be 37 cm (a little over a foot) in 300 years. Expected sea level rise is low... but not that low.
In its 2019 report, the IPCC projected that without emissions being cut, 3.7 meters of sea level rise by 2300. (with the range estimated at 2.3 to 5.5m) That's ten times what you say, and in a shorter time. https://earthobservatory.nasa.... [nasa.gov]
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Online grocery store lockout screens harassments stream video
Google Gmail websites ridiculously broken Bitcoin Tor.
To sum it up.
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Only thing keeping Russia safe from US secondary sanctions is Europe. China does not and will not choose Russia over the US when secondary sanctions roll around.
Europe's room to further antagonize Putin is limited, but the situation is the same the other way around.
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I wasn't talking about WW3, I was talking about Cold War 2. Putin can't cut off Europe from gas, because the moment he did he'd get cut off from importing anything touched by US technology, which is to say everything. China would suffer Huawei^100 if they were too blatant with tech smuggling in that scenario, which they wouldn't be ready to.
As long as Putin delivers gas to Europe, Russia is part of the global economy for the most part.