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EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

reuters.com

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Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#21

Post by Chyzwar »

alkonaut wrote: post #19
Chyzwar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Germans hope that new generation gas plants could be powered by hydrogen in the future[1]. The idea is that once we have cheap energy from wind and solar, it can be stored in hydrogen. Problem is safe storage of hydrogen[2] and problematic relationship with Russia[3] [1] https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/why-hydrogen-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage [3] https://www.politico.…

Why not biogas? Not possible to produce enough?

Previous ideas about bio fuels created disaster in Third World countries.

https://www.livekindly.co/norway-ban-palm-oil-biofuel/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-palm-oil-deforestati...

Initially, Europe was thinking that biofuels would be a good way to support some counties, but the result was far from good.

Wind and solar are the best sources of energy, but lack of good grid scale energy storage make them impractical. Once we have good and cheap batteries to store energy, than solar and wind from Africa could resolve Europe energy needs. https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#22

Post by dathinab »

nathan_phoenix wrote: post #12

For anyone wondering why gas, it's gas only in specific cases. > Investments in natural gas power plants would also be deemed green if they produce emissions below 270g of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour (kWh), replace a more polluting fossil fuel plant, receive a construction permit by Dec. 31 2030 and plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035.

It's still kinda rediculus IMHO.

Nuclear power it's climate but but environment/human friendly. So I can understand that.

But natural gas isn't green however I look at it.

It's clearly better then cush l coal, but but green.

So it shouldn't be allowed to be labeled as such.

Instead we should add a label for better but but really good tech, like yellow or so.

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#23

Post by retinaros »

in france gov passed a law that will give a bad grade to gas heated houses (if the grade is bad you cant rent your house) and a good one to electricity.

oh and because of europe we import electricity from germany that is burning coal for it. we are really in the middle of a green idiocracy

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#24

Post by dathinab »

jevoten wrote: post #20
drran wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear is clearly green. We should repaint radiation warnings in green, to indicate that. > Gas is more interesting. At 500g/kwh it's on higher side normally. So there must be more to this. Nord Stream 2.

How about instead of "radiation bad", we look at more objective metrics, like deaths/CO2 per kWh: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy And instead of comparing nuclear to a magical zero-pollution/emission, flawlessly safe, always-available power source, we should compare it to what it actually gets replaced with.

Or read the article and see that most gas plants will not be labeled as green.

Still a bad choice.

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#25

Post by dathinab »

alkonaut wrote: post #19
Chyzwar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Germans hope that new generation gas plants could be powered by hydrogen in the future[1]. The idea is that once we have cheap energy from wind and solar, it can be stored in hydrogen. Problem is safe storage of hydrogen[2] and problematic relationship with Russia[3] [1] https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/why-hydrogen-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage [3] https://www.politico.…

Why not biogas? Not possible to produce enough?

Not a good choice, in many cases using the same space for (human) food or just a forest is a more environments friendly, more subtainable and due to the use of fertilizer sometimes more climate friendly choice (at least in the EU/Germany)

It also avoid all kinds of social/human problems.

And even if it's not not climate friendly it's not much worse either.

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#26

Post by akmarinov »

retinaros wrote: post #23

in france gov passed a law that will give a bad grade to gas heated houses (if the grade is bad you cant rent your house) and a good one to electricity. oh and because of europe we import electricity from germany that is burning coal for it. we are really in the middle of a green idiocracy

There was a EU program 3 years ago where it covered 30% of the cost to install a gas heater at your house, so that you’d be more environmentally friendly ffs

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#27

Post by freeflight »

alkonaut wrote: post #18

There needs to be clearer terminology and labels for “green”, “sustainable”, “renewable”, “climate neutral” energy. I’d also like to throw in “democratic” in the mix. Because energy and foreign policy can’t be separated. The EU energy mix is going to be geopolitically very important in coming years. We also need to make it very clear what the goals are for each kind and where the tradeoffs are. I think right now the…

> independent of eastern natural gas.

It's interesting how trade relationships that are centuries old, are now seen in a negative context solely on a foreign policy basis that's often dictated from across the Atlantic. Particularly when they go completely contrary to the other stated goal; Climate change.

Western Europe has been dependent on Eastern Europe's resources for a very long time, as Siberia is the largest concentration of natural resources on the continent and one of the largest on the whole planet.

It's not something anybody has much choice over; These resources are where they are, that geographic proximity also lead to their use being integrated all over the continent.

We can't replace that with wishful thinking, we can't just wish metal ores and minerals into existence or gas for industrial manufacturing.

Case in point; Germany's gas dependence, which is commonly framed as "Germany now uses more gas because it shut down nuclear reactors", when in reality only 14% of Germany's gas consumption is for electricity production [0].

The biggest chunk of German gas consumption is for industrial applications, like heavy smelting for the car industry or the chemical industry to create high demand chemicals like ammonia. Another huge chunk is household use for heating and kitchen appliances, together these two sectors account for 67% of Germany's gas consumption.

Nuclear reactors do nothing for that demand, at least not without taking a detour trough hydrogen, a detour that traditional renewables can also do [1]. While trying to supply that demand with imported American NGL would be the complete opposite of "Think of the climate!".

That's why declaring Eastern Europe's resources just as "taboo" is not a solution that will get us anywhere useful. Fighting climate change also means making the supply chains more local, you can't do that in Western Europe by declaring the largest collection of resources, in proxmity, as "off-limits for political reasons".

At some point we have to decide what's more important; Fighting climate change as a species or instrumentalizing it for these kinds of foreign policy games that usually leave everybody worse off, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

[0] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37985/umfrage...

[1] https://www.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/zv/de/ueber-fraunhofer...

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#30

Post by horsawlarway »

dathinab wrote: post #22
nathan_phoenix wrote: post #12

For anyone wondering why gas, it's gas only in specific cases. > Investments in natural gas power plants would also be deemed green if they produce emissions below 270g of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour (kWh), replace a more polluting fossil fuel plant, receive a construction permit by Dec. 31 2030 and plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035.

It's still kinda rediculus IMHO. Nuclear power it's climate but but environment/human friendly. So I can understand that. But natural gas isn't green however I look at it. It's clearly better then cush l coal, but but green. So it shouldn't be allowed to be labeled as such. Instead we should add a label for better but but really good tech, like yellow or so.

The labeling matters because it influences funds allocation.

"green" in this sense just means it's eligible to receive funding/tax status that is otherwise not available. It's not a judgement on whether the technology is carbon neutral.

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