Dutch Join Germany, Austria, In Reverting To Coal (france24.com) 329
The Dutch joined Germany and Austria in reverting to coal power on Monday following an energy crisis provoked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. France 24 reports: The Netherlands said it would lift all restrictions on power stations fired by the fossil fuel, which were previously limited to just over a third of output. Berlin and Vienna made similar announcements on Sunday as Moscow, facing biting sanctions over Ukraine, cuts gas supplies to energy-starved Europe. "The cabinet has decided to immediately withdraw the restriction on production for coal-fired power stations from 2002 to 2024," Dutch climate and energy minister Rob Jetten told journalists in The Hague. The Dutch minister said his country had "prepared this decision with our European colleagues over the past few days."
Germany however said it still aimed to close its coal power plants by 2030, in light of the greater emissions of climate-changing CO2 from the fossil fuel. "The 2030 coal exit date is not in doubt at all," economy ministry spokesman Stephan Gabriel Haufe said at a regular news conference. The target was "more important than ever," he added.
Austria's government meanwhile announced Sunday that it would reopen a mothballed coal power station because of power shortages arising from reduced deliveries of gas from Russia. The authorities would work with the Verbund group, the country's main electricity supplier, to get the station in the southern city of Mellach back in action, said the Chancellery. The European Commission noted Monday that "some of the existing coal capacities might be used longer than initially expected" because of the new energy landscape in Europe.
Germany however said it still aimed to close its coal power plants by 2030, in light of the greater emissions of climate-changing CO2 from the fossil fuel. "The 2030 coal exit date is not in doubt at all," economy ministry spokesman Stephan Gabriel Haufe said at a regular news conference. The target was "more important than ever," he added.
Austria's government meanwhile announced Sunday that it would reopen a mothballed coal power station because of power shortages arising from reduced deliveries of gas from Russia. The authorities would work with the Verbund group, the country's main electricity supplier, to get the station in the southern city of Mellach back in action, said the Chancellery. The European Commission noted Monday that "some of the existing coal capacities might be used longer than initially expected" because of the new energy landscape in Europe.
Nuke plants (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuke plants (Score:5, Insightful)
We never had enough nuke plants to be able to deal with cutting off Putin to begin with. Almost no one now in politics is responsible for not more nuclear plants having been build in the 70s and letting the nuclear industry bleed to dead.
The dumb decision of sitting politicians was not starting to cut off trade with Russia after Putin sent irregulars and weapons into Donbass. In retrospect it was a clear setup to casus belli, they appeased him too long.
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Don't worry, the anti-nuke people will be on this soon, while not mentioning that coal puts out more pollutants that are radioactive in the air every few months than a catastrophic meltdown would.
I have a feeling the Europeans want their cheap gas more than they want to keep Russian tanks away from the Polish border, or even the eastern border of Germany. I wouldn't be surprised if they broker an "agreement" over the bodies of many dead Ukrainians to cede Putin the nation, if he pinky-promises not to move
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Westward is not the problem, Baltics are.
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This is about what you think is a threat. If you think we're all going to die because of global warming, then you can't solve it without Russia. They're integral to many of the raw materials we can't do a transition to clean energy without at all. And you can't run wind mills or PVs without CCGTs, because you need power generators that are fast to take load and reliable to back those up.
So if you're a Green, it doesn't matter what Russia does. There's no addressing of what you see as the ultimate threat of
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You know who else buys "their cheap gas" from Russia, "over the bodies of many dead Ukrainians"? Ukraine.
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At least that would mean he'd have gas.
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I have a feeling the Europeans want their cheap gas more than they want to keep Russian tanks away from the Polish border, or even the eastern border of Germany. I wouldn't be surprised if they broker an "agreement" over the bodies of many dead Ukrainians to cede Putin the nation, if he pinky-promises not to move westward.
I fear that too. To put it in perspective: lots of people heat their house with gas. In the Netherlands it is everyone (except the ones who have already moved to heat pumps) and in Belgium and Germany there was a big move to gas away from oil. Also a lot of electricity is produced by natural gas because it is cleaner.
Now gas prices double and heating gets expensive and electricity gets expensive. It causes almost double digit inflation numbers.
Solar and wind energy take time to install, not to mention tha
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We never had enough nuke plants to be able to deal with cutting off Putin to begin with. Almost no one now in politics is responsible for not more nuclear plants having been build in the 70s and letting the nuclear industry bleed to dead.
The dumb decision of sitting politicians was not starting to cut off trade with Russia after Putin sent irregulars and weapons into Donbass. In retrospect it was a clear setup to casus belli, they appeased him too long.
The dumb decision was not starting to cut off trade in 2014 when he invaded and annexed Crimea.
Furthermore, while I can appreciate not arming Ukraine at the time, in the immediate aftermath there was a fear that Russia would keep marching to Kyiv. But once the stalemate had arisen we have a few years to give Ukraine some NATO weapons to go with that NATO training.
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Which is exactly what was happening, and partly explains the different outcome of the current invasion compared to the 2014 one.
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Which is exactly what was happening, and partly explains the different outcome of the current invasion compared to the 2014 one.
No. Ukraine got their shit together, mostly by themselves. The idiot Obama embargoed exports of non-lethal weapons to Ukraine right after 2014, along with most of NATO, and let me tell you, it's not helmets and bulletproof vests that the Ukrainians are fighting russkie assholes with.
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The dumb decision of sitting politicians was not starting to cut off trade with Russia after Putin sent irregulars and weapons into Donbass. In retrospect it was a clear setup to casus belli, they appeased him too long.
History repeats itself. Only difference now is that there was no Chamberlain who got a written statement that Putin would not do this.
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Only difference now is that there was no Chamberlain who got a written statement that Putin would not do this.
Yeah there was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nuke plants (Score:5, Interesting)
In power generation taxonomy of the Greens, nuclear is lower than coal. It's even lower than lignite coal.
Because most Green parties that have any meaningful power in European nations started as anti-nuclear movements. And German Greens in particular not only became party that they are today from those roots, but it's the open secret natsec and OSINT communities that the large scale anti-nuclear protests that launched them as a major party were sponsored by KGB and later FSB.
Re: Nuke plants (Score:2)
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Missiles can target nuke plants
Missiles can target nuke plants whether they are decommissioned or not.
Germany's decision to shut down nukes that were producing safe, clean, reliable power was nuts.
Re:Nuke plants (Score:5, Insightful)
In reality, Germany drastically reduced electricity production from coal in the last ten years (lignite 146 TWh in 2010 -> 110 TWh in 2021, hard coal 117 TWh -> 55 TWh.)
There are two other points often missed in this debate
- Russia is also a major supplier of nuclear fuel. A lot of countries having nukes depend on Russia for fueld. The US did not restrict import from nuclear from Russia.
- Gas use in Germany can not be simply replaced by nuclear power plants for two reason: 1. a flexible power source is needed, 2. Most gas use is for creating heat in industry and homes (I think only 15% is for electricity). So even if no gas were used for electricity production, Germany would still be highly dependent on gas imports.
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A lot of countries having nukes depend on Russia for fuel
No they don't. Russia is a tiny player in nuclear fuel. Their production output is less than 1/10th of Kazakhstan, it's about 1/4 of that of Australia. And best of all, nuclear fuel is not consumed in vast quantities in short time periods meaning it's a fungible resource you can buy from literally anywhere, unlike say a gas pipeline which requires major infrastructure investment to change to ship unloading facilities etc.
But really the point is moot. Nuclear was not the problem or the solution as you correc
Is this a good thing? (Score:5, Informative)
Because of methane leakage it seems gas may be not be much better than coal anyway.
fun fact : Dutch paid a billion euro to stop them (Score:5, Interesting)
Under strong pressure of these so called 'green politicians', the Dutch government decided to subsidize American owned coal based energy plants in Holland.
They spent over a billion euro on subsidies during the last few years alone.
And now we're asking the same companies to start up their coal based energy plants.
Those American companies are laughing their pants off with the amount of amateurism of Dutch politician like Jesse Klaver and his pursuit of this ecological utopia.
But it is still taxpayers money so Jesse Klaver and his gang couldn't care less.
Re:fun fact : Dutch paid a billion euro to stop th (Score:5, Insightful)
except ofcourse that Klaver is not in power, they are in the opposition. We have a right wing cabinet, enacting right wing policies. Why blame Klaver when Rutte is in power?
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It seems to have become SOP for right wing parties. We are having strikes in the UK due to the cost of living crisis and over a decade of wages declining, and the Conservative Party government is trying to blame the socialists*. It's gaslighting, the Conservatives have been in power for 12 years and this is entirely their fault.
* The Labour Party isn't really socialist, they are a little right of centre now.
Re:fun fact : Dutch paid a billion euro to stop th (Score:5, Insightful)
Shutting down those coal plants was the right thing to do. The "subsidy" is a normal, civilized way to handle this when a company is forced to abandon an expensive asset like that.
Starting them back up again is a temporary measure (in case you haven't noticed: there's a war going on). We're lucky we can do this and add several GW to the grid at the stroke of a pen.
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So what's your alternate suggestion?
Bearing in mind that there was precisely zero risk to gas supplies in Europe 6 months ago, assuming no risk, lots of cheap gas, a court order that requires you to reduce emissions, and a legal system that requires you to buy out licenced plants, what would *YOU* have done Mr Smartyhosen.
Common, you're up there on your high horse criticising so I'm sure you have some genius ideas to share.
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Re: fun fact : Dutch paid a billion euro to stop t (Score:3)
Re:Meanwhile.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Netherlands is the second largest food exporter in the world. That's an absurd situation we have no good reason to continue to support, in view of the cost it imposes.
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That's an absurd situation we have no good reason to continue to support, in view of the cost it imposes.
It's a question of environment. You can stop all exports right now, do you think people will eat less?
The only truly absurd situation is we have is that country borders still exist and we compartmentalise environmental problems within these borders. You don't save the world by moving farming 200km west.
Re:Meanwhile.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem we have (excess nitrogen compounds) is local, caused by having too many producers all in the same place. This is eminently solvable by spreading them out.
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The problems with synthetic fertilizers are manifold and we cannot solve the problems without adopting genuinely "organic" food production, with cyclical systems where feces is returned to fields. But we can't really have that without ceasing our overreliance on pharmaceuticals, because so many of them persist even through sewage treatment. And speaking of sewage, the sludge recovered from waste treatment not only has that stuff in it, but also heavy metals and many pathogens which can also pass through the
Not even close to second (Score:3, Informative)
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Interesting.
Exactly what types of foods do the Netherlands export to the world?
Re:Meanwhile.... (Score:5, Informative)
Total export of food products made in NL has a value of E75 billion [rijksoverheid.nl]. Flowers (12,0 billion euro), meat (9,1 B euro), dairy and eggs (8,7 B euro), vegetables (7,2 B euro), fruit (7,0 B euro). We also import for about E75B, 70% of that is exported again, E21B worth is consumed in NL.
Nuclear fission power. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dr. David MacKay warned everyone.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
He shows everyone the math in this TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/davi... [ted.com]
He goes through the numbers in greater detail here: http://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
They can keep fighting this until they are freezing in the dark, or they can "follow the science" and build more nuclear power plants. Even the IPCC points out nuclear fission energy is not optional: https://nei.org/news/2022/ipcc... [nei.org]
There's three options and only three options. Fossil fuels. Energy shortages. Nuclear fission. That's the options we have today. We might have more options in the future but until more options present themselves those are the options we have to pick from.
If there's not enough nuclear power to go around then people will get desperate for energy and turn to digging up coal. Germany was living a fantasy thinking that all those windmills and solar panels were helping. All they did was make them more reliant on Russian natural gas for those cold calm nights.
This is not the least surprising, seeing nations turn to digging up coal to keep from freezing in the dark. This is setting up the world for building nuclear power plants at a rate double or triple that of the peak from 50 or so years ago.
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lol you're modded troll. Welcome to the fact-based land.
The nuclear cowardice is astoundingly perverse too. Nuclear has been up against coal for most of its life and still apparently is, and will remain so until renewables scale fully which will be a while.
France alone has saved hundreds of thousands of lives by using nuclear instead of coal. More French have died as the result of German coal pollution than from French nuclear accidents. Far more, given the first is quite large and the second is debatable b
Re: Nuclear fission power. (Score:2)
When has nuclear âoegone very badâ? Chernobyl. That is all, because Chernobyl was an incompetently designed cheaply and corruptly built to satisfy the demands of an incompetent corrupt and cheap state. Renewables cannot meet the needs of an industrialized society with todays technology, period. Thatâ(TM)s why green countries are digging for coal. This explains why (note the date) https://youtu.be/jT6HFCAFDgU [youtu.be]
Re: Nuclear fission power. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Fukushima Daiichi power plant was an ancient design from 1979 with issues:
* building a power plant on a coast known for tsunamis with a 10 meter tall sea wall. I mean, if you think a tsunami barrier is necessary and 10 meters should suffice, better choose another place;
* building the backup power generators on the front. If/when the tsunami barrier is overcome, the first thing to fail will be the emergency generators;
* absence of passive cooling (for when generators fail); passive cooling is included in new designs;
* absence of corium recuperation (for when the core melts); corium containment is included in new designs.
The same tsunami on a recent nuclear plant design would not have had the same catastrophic consequences. Reactors designed after 9/11 are also calculated to resist the impact of commercial aircrafts.
Older nuclear power plants worldwide are vulnerable, but if we are lucky enough to not have major accidents or terror attacks within 20-30 years, most of the risks will be gone as new plants replace the old ones.
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When this process starts to affect Europe itself in a major way, the German Greens are going to be lined up against the wall and shot - as an EU action.
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Germany was living a fantasy thinking that all those windmills and solar panels were helping. All they did was make them more reliant on Russian natural gas for those cold calm nights.
Or windmills and solar power have nothing to do with Russian gas. You know that, so you are a liar again.
Hint: wind and solar produce electricity. Russian gas is burned in house hold heating: has nothing to do with electricity. Dumbass.
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Even household heating is not the main use of natural gas in Germany:
https://de.statista.com/statis... [statista.com]
Households use about 30% directly (heating, cooking). About 12% is used to generate electricity.
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Nuclear power is completely useless here. Current projects in Europe take at least 20 years to build, and they need solutions much sooner than that. Even if they had started building it a decade ago, it would still be a decade away from completion if there were no over-runs.
The Dutch are building some big wind farms, including the new Thor off-shore one. They have reached a point where even off-shore wind is basically subsidy free (there is some initial assistance to help with capital costs, but after a few
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Taishan was supposed to take 4 years to build, ended up taking 10. One of the two reactors has been shut down for over a year because they think there is a design flaw in the fuel rods.
I don't know of any commercial scale ones built in a year. They also have a nuclear waste problem, as they don't have a long term storage plan for it.
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Are you trolling? When was the last time the wind stopped blowing everywhere from Spain to Malaysia?
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Are you trolling? When was the last time the wind stopped blowing everywhere from Spain to Malaysia?
Only has to stop blowing enough to not supply Spain to Malaysia. You think with a big enough grid there will always be some surplus somewhere to carry everyone else, but it does not work that way.
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You are not describing baseload power.
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I am claiming, with proof, that it is enough to provide baseload power. Do you know what baseload is?
Good, when can we expect yours? Put up or shut up!
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Did Germany interconnect wind farms across a whole continent? No.
Did they even have a smart grid? No.
Do you have any good, real-world examples of why interconnecting wind farms across a continent cannot supply baseload power?
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Of course the answer is "batteries", right? But there is not enough fucking lithium on the planet to build enough batteries to power a fucking country.
First of all: you are wrong. There is plenty of lithium on this planet. The planet is literally made from lithium.
Secondly: there are plenty of other materials (for stationary battery storage probably better anyway) one can use.
The rest is of course utter nonsense, Germany alone is already to big too have no wind everywere. That the sun is not shining at nigh
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Of course the answer is "batteries", right? But there is not enough fucking lithium on the planet to build enough batteries to power a fucking country. First of all: you are wrong. There is plenty of lithium on this planet. The planet is literally made from lithium.
Ah, okay, then I guess the lithium shortage doesn't exist, because some random idiot on /. says so. After all one just has to pick up random rocks and sell them as they're all made of lithium. Or maybe the planet isn't "literally made from lithium" after all. And even if some percent of it *is* lithium, very little of that is easily mineable.
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First of all: you are wrong. There is plenty of lithium on this planet. The planet is literally made from lithium.
TIL that the definition of "literally made from" is "less than 20 parts per million."
Problem with nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Problem with nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two flaws in your numbers.
1. You are looking at cost per nameplate kW. In Europe you might have 1,600 hours (equivalent) per year of PV, but nuclear has 8,000. Using your numbers that gives you an effective annualized cost of $625/MWh for PV or $812-1,531/MWh for Nuclear. Once you add in storage to address nighttime loads, PV is in the same range as Nuclear.
2. For this particular discussion you also need to look at average cost per MWh over a representative 24-hour period in the winter. Your basic options are to over-provision PV by a factor of ~3-6 (depending on the latitude), along with sufficient batteries for the night-time loads, nuclear, or combustion. Combustion generally has an advantage here, even|especially if it is only running 1,000 hours per year, since the fuel costs are linear and the capital costs are lower; you only need to find a way to minimize the operating costs for the idled ~7,000 hours per year. Evaluating this scenario is complicated and very sensitive to assumptions in operations, so it never really gets into the headline numbers.
Overall, I think there is a place for nuclear in the power grid if you design the marketplace to work with it. Likewise, there is a valid argument for the "unreliable grid" model, where you expect the grid to be down 5% of the year (in hours or energy), so you have local backup mechanisms like batteries and a wood burning stove to backfill the shortfall. The energy cost for the 95th percentile is about 10x the cost of energy for the 80th percentile.
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so you have local backup mechanisms like batteries and a wood burning stove to backfill the shortfall
Wood burning stove backfill? One of the most effective ways to raise the rate of premature pollution related deaths in a hurry.
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Not a modern wood burning stove, and not one that is only used a few hours per year.
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Modern stoves are much better than older ones but that drops them from spewing metric fuckloads of awful shite to merely a good stack of imperial hundredweight of shite. Better than "absolutely fucking awful" can still be merely "awful".
Also, didn't you say 5% of the year?
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Wood stoves are in fact even worse polluters than they have to be, because most of them will permit themselves to be overdamped. It's possible to design a wood stove which cannot be, and in fact the regulations require this in the USA, but not in many other countries. You cannot sell a new wood stove in the USA that doesn't meet EPA regs. A number of manufacturers actually pulled out of the US wood stove market because they were unwilling to create stoves which pollute less. Kent, for example, which I under
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There are two flaws in your numbers.
Agree, except with this. These are not "flaws" these are deliberate lies and manipulations, if not by the OP then by whomever he's getting these numbers from.
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Comparing with solar seems like an odd choice. The Netherlands is big on wind resources and is now taking bids on the rights to develop them, i.e. companies are paying for those rights rather than having to be convinced to exploit them with massive subsidies, as is the case with nuclear.
Off shore wind works 24/365 and is fairly consistent. The wind never stops blowing out there, and even if the power factor was similar to on-shore, say 30%, building 3x as much of it plus some storage is still a fraction of
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Capacity factor for offshore wind is about 65%, so you need about 50% additional (nameplate) capacity relative to nuclear. Complicating matters slightly, you need excess capacity to be located far enough away that you are not influenced by the same weather patterns. When a high pressure system is over the North Sea and Northern Europe the wind dies down. IIRC winter production is lower than summer as well, so you have other areas of concern.
A diversified grid is a more reliable grid... but it also become
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Indeed. Fortunately The Netherlands is in the EU, so importing power from other areas is not a problem.
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Yeah... NOW. But just you wait for some extreme situation like, oh I don't know, a war on our borders or a pandemic... Granted, not very likely to happen, especially not back to back, but bear with me here.
Imagine how fast countries who had been friends to that point might, oh I don't know, yoink deliveries of essential medical supplies directed to their "friends" at their ports.
Look, I like how you like to believe in the good in people. I don't enjoy being the cynical bastard that I am at all. But we're ta
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Ah yes, the comparison between heavily penalized and overtaxed nuclear and "nominal" solar with massive subsidies.
I'm not even going to go into taxation, or the fact that solar in most of the world is crime against environmentalism, as it will never even recoup the carbon debt you incur by cooking silica in coal furnace to get it to required purity to start making PVs out of them. I'll just point out that "nominal" solar means absolutely nothing other than "this will never be generated". Because nights exis
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You are just an idiot.
Why don't you look up how much solar capacity Germany has installed?
Why don't you look up how much solar energy Germany is producing per year?
As if you can not type such simple questions into google ... lol.
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Make nuclear cheaper than solar and I think you will see a lot traction.
Depends on country.
After all there are two main problems:
a) where to put one? Germany basically only could place them safely at the coast - but that would cause a storm of protest. (All other places, especially those were we have/had plants, are unsafe - the plants basically got built there illegally in the 1950s - 1970s)
b) where do we put the waste
Side problem: how do we secure transport of fuel, spent fuel and waste?
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How the fuck do you put a price on freezing to death in the winter?
I'm being 50% funny/50% serious when I say, clearly you've never been a politician or a billionaire.
You fucking liberal nutters live in fantasy land
Oh sweetie, it's both. What's the saying, "nobody got reelected putting a nuclear power plant in the backyard of their district." Conservatives talk a mean game about nuclear, but only when they're talking about putting it somewhere, where their voters won't get mad.
You guys will never learn
No you've got to snap out of people who just "talk" and don't "do". Been plenty of conservative ran governments before, what happen to all the
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There's not much available conventional gas to drill for in Europe that isn't already being extracted. Problem of geography. Even the shale due to the way it formed is way less rich than in US. In Northern America shale formations are something like 10-13 layers in most places where they're extracted. On European continent, it's about 5 layers, and that's in places where there even is gas or oil in shale deposits.
On the bright side, one of the richest shale deposits in Europe is right under Paris. Gonna be
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Scientists should run the world, not bookkeepers.
Scientists, bookkeepers, politicians...not sure who would have us all living in a society that emulates that of ants more quickly. Would make for an interesting race.
Listen To Trump (Score:5, Informative)
They laughed at him. They will not be laughing this winter. Trump may have been an asshole, but he sure was right. PRODUCE YOUR OWN ENERGY. Stop relying on your (supposed) enemies for necessities.
Listen To Reagan (Score:3, Interesting)
Ronald Reagan warned them in 1982. https://www.nytimes.com/1982/0... [nytimes.com]
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They weren't yet significantly dependent on it in 1982 however.
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Maybe not, but they were staring into the abyss. Reagan knew it. Even after Trump warned them, by which time they were dangerously dependent, they ignored all the warning signs. They just kept walking.
If the Ukraine stoush ends up as a European war, or worse, and the history books accurately reflect this part of the lead up, no-one in the future will believe they could be so utterly stupid. No-one would believe they couldn't see it coming.
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It was actually the exact diametric opposite under Reagan. Attempts to build up trade links between NATO and Warsaw Pact were widespread and actively supported by intelligence on both sides, specifically because everyone was staring into the actual abyss.
This was a time of Cold War and ongoing massive nuclear standoff. Anything to dissuade people from pressing the Big Red Button on either side was ultimately a thing that would take humanity away from said abyss, not toward it as Reagan and you imply.
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Sorry, my metaphor missed the mark. The "abyss" I was referring to was the energy dependency that Europe has magically found themselves in. I remember the abyss of the threat of nuclear war, however I think that Reagan was successful in staring down the USSR. He knew that they were practically bankrupt, on the verge of multi-country revolution and even their own governments had had enough.
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Not dependent on Russia.
But on Gas, yes.
We are bottom line less dependent on Gas atm, but we always were dependent. Historically however e got the gas from the northern sea, and lots of it was our own gas. The rest was imported from UK/Netherlands and Norway.
In he 1980s, the first big pipeline to USSR was built. We(Germany, aka Mannesmann and Thysen - Krupp - Stahl) traded pipelines - aka the pipes - for gas, and connected the USSR to its western neighbours (Ukraine etc. - yes, it did not exist then as a na
This is all kind of a moot to point (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you don't elect dictators. Once you put one in you're not going to get them out, and when you put that much power into one man's hand it's only a matter of time before they lose their minds in their old age.
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The takeaway here is that every single European country is going to be moving to wind and solar as fast as they possibly can. Little Vladdy boy's end of life crisis is going to massively accelerate the timetable on the switch to renewables. Because that's the easiest and most effective way to become energy independent. This means that even after the sanctions lift Russia is going to be facing 30% of their economy just going away over this and facing it probably 20 years sooner.
Yeah, which only means even more dependency on oil and natgas for the forseeable future, to cover for these on those cold windless nights. Oh yes, I know, we could build a worldwide energy grid because the sun always shines somewhere! It'll be there in only 100 years, and only require us to invent a room-temperature superconductor, which is easy right?! And not to mention magically solve lithium, cobalt and rare earths shortage and increase their production only about a hundredfold or so! That's so much eas
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Switching from coal to wind/solar increases the dependence on natural gas (because natural gas is usually used as a backup).
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The takeaway here is that every single European country is going to be moving to wind and solar as fast as they possibly can. Little Vladdy boy's end of life crisis is going to massively accelerate the timetable on the switch to renewables. Because that's the easiest and most effective way to become energy independent. This means that even after the sanctions lift Russia is going to be facing 30% of their economy just going away over this and facing it probably 20 years sooner.
Yes, that's your wish/dream. The article is about what's actually happening, which is that since Europe can't outsource the messy stuff to Russia anymore they are going to switch back to coal.
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Except that no country can run on 100% renewables.
I mean, technically wood furnaces are "renewables". I guess they would work at night when there's no wind.
As green as can be (Score:2)
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Not "reverting" to coal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely none of these countries have changed the course on coal and all of them still have policies in place to be coal free. A temporary setback in the face of a gas crisis is not "reverting" anymore than me not going for a jog today because it's cold and raining is me "reverting" to being a fat slob.
But hey, headlines! Soundbites! OUTRAGE! Keep the sheep angrily shaking their fists at their phones.
How did we get here? (Score:2)
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Let me remind you that the war in Ukraine started after the West refused to give guarantees that Ukraine won't join NATO
Just because something happens after something else, that doesn't mean it caused it. Putin was always going to invade Ukraine again. If he hadn't invaded it before then your argument might have made sense, but that really destroys it.
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Putin surely had an appetite for Ukraine, but if the West was willing to negotiate I don't think he would have attacked this time.
Negotiate what? The one thing he wants, assurances that nobody will be arming themselves in case he invades them, he's never going to get. Nobody is stupid enough to trust Russia. They have literally centuries of experience with them.
Mongols had an appetite for Western Europe, but their khan died and the moment to do it passed, so they never invaded.
Russians don't need a strong leader to invade their neighbors. In fact, Putin isn't a strong leader. He's a sad little man with delusions of adequacy and the urge to conquer. That's why he sees threats around every corner, he's looking in a mirror.
Surely he was stupid to bring himself into such a situation, but if you want and easy victory without battle, always give your opponent a way out, otherwise he will fight until death.
Putin has had a way out all al
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> Putin has had a way out all along, it's the same way he came in.
What, stick his head up a hole between some woman's legs?
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Putin, after being elected, wanted to almost join NATO
lol. NATO is essentially the anti-Russia alliance. It has pursued a strategy of containment which has clearly been only partially successful.
At that time he said "that is was perfectly fine" for Ukraine to join NATO.
It clearly wasn't perfectly fine. As Ukraine approached actually doing so, Putin became more adversarial.
Then NATO grew quite suddenly and not "in the spirit" of the alliance between NATO and Russia
The spirit of NATO is containment of Russia. All Putin had to do to maintain the status quo was stay contained.
The fear that Russia will do exactly as it has done is the reason why NATO exists. And Putin's Russia has proven that it is needed.
Re:How did we get here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice job blaming the victim.
No, this war started in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, like their invasions into Chechnya and Georgia and plenty of other examples in its Soviet and pre-Soviet past.
Russia has made plenty of made up excuses for starting a war and violating the sovereignty of Ukraine, saying they're saving the Ukrainians from imaginary Nazis, saying Ukraine is not a real county and they're just confused Russians with a made up language, saying it's a preemptive strike because Ukraine was going to attack them first, saying they have bio-labs with genetically engineered birds that target ethnic Slavs.
And this NATO nonsense is just another excuse.
Up until the recent invasion Ukraine wasn't joining NATO, and neither were Finland nor Sweden, Russia already had NATO members on its borders, Russia had a nuclear weapons base in the middle of NATO in Kaliningrad.
This is Putin, as he himself stated in comparing himself to Peter the Great, just trying to make a place for himself in the history books trying conquer lands and resources that he believes belong to the greater Russia of the soviet past, before he croaks.
And I think that justifying the invasion of a sovereign country, killing tens of thousands of its civilian population, leveling whole cities, stealing and destroying its resources and potentially setting up for a global famine on the pretense that it might at some point in the future apply to treaty that would help with its protection, is despicable.
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Blaming the victim, because starting a war 'All because of the perspective (presumably you mean 'prospect') of Ukraine joining NATO' sounds to me like the logic of a rapist saying he wouldn't have also murdered her if she didn't resist the rape.
Justifying the invasion because that's one of the many talking points the Russian administration uses as excuses for the invasion. Though claiming they're fighting a drug-addled Nazi regime, and everyone who's supporting them are also Nazis, seems to be a more popula
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I realize my analogy isn't perfect either, but Ukraine isn't an innocent child mauled by an unthinking animal, enraged by an outside force.
Ukraine is a sovereign country that has a right to determine which defensive treaties it would enter, not some toy for Russia and 'The West' to fight over, and while as far as I know they generally had little interest in joining NATO before the annexation of Crimea, they definitely had some after it.
I guess my main issue is this sentiment of appeasement towards Russia, t
Huh (Score:2)
remember? (Score:2)
Remember when those silly Americans said that basing your energy on Russian natgas was a dangerous and stupid idea?
Yeah....that.