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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

#71

Post by jevoten »

Gwypaas wrote: post #53
jevoten wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Renewables are what you should compare nuclear with. And by your own stats they win even there. Framing it as a contest versus fossil fuels is building a strawman nowadays.

And yet fossil fuels are still funded, and even subsidized, instead of nuclear.

By all means try and get 100% of power from wind and solar, but we're not there yet. And until we are, and they can provide the required baseload power, it's not a strawman at all.

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

#72

Post by kebman »

Oh, this has probably nothing to do with the major energy deficit Europe is now experiencing. Sorry for the sarcasm, but people living here without a secondary source of heat are suffering ice cold houses because they have to choose between heat or food. The deficit has lead to record prices here in Norway, in the middle of winter, because power for 5 mill people is almost completely drained in order to meet the demand of 450 million EU citizens. It's... I have no words. Guess it's great all these power companies are getting rich.

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

#73

Post by jeeeb »

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.

Intuitively 270g per kWh seemed high to me, but to put it in perspective a Tesla model 3 does about 100km per 11.9~14.9kWh (according to Google). So taking the larger estimate (and ignoring transmission etc losses) at 270g/KWh that gives emissions of around 41g/km.

Comparatively though my 2021 Camry hybrid has emissions of 96g/km.

So, assuming the plants are primarily being used to level out variable renewable production, I guess that is a reasonable standard for bridging a technology gap.

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

#74

Post by Gwypaas »

jevoten wrote: post #71
Gwypaas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are what you should compare nuclear with. And by your own stats they win even there. Framing it as a contest versus fossil fuels is building a strawman nowadays.

And yet fossil fuels are still funded, and even subsidized, instead of nuclear. By all means try and get 100% of power from wind and solar, but we're not there yet. And until we are, and they can provide the required baseload power, it's not a strawman at all.

Yes, fossil funding and subsidies should have been removed some 30 years ago. At least. Can't argue with that.

Baseload as a term does not exist on the producer side. Simply by chance the cheapest sources of energy were the most inflexible ones. This is coal and nuclear, they therefore got coined as "baseload" power generation. Today they aren't cheapest anymore and unsurprisingly suffer.

On the other hand, a base demand exist on the consumer side, that is true. But due to electricity being electricity it does not matter how it's met. Nuclear doesn't produce any other better kind of electricity. That's the gear strength of it, it is fungible.

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

#75

Post by retinaros »

kergonath wrote: post #69
retinaros wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

before shouting misinformation you might want to inform yourself first paragraph I never said having gas was exclusive of getting a bad grade. however gas is now considered a bad energy and will reduce your grade. and it is one of the key factors. when your investment is six digits or more and a stupid law destroy it you know it. and no it is not for new constructions. in paris a huge chunk of the old apartments have…

How do you square this: > France retains its position as the leading exporter in Europe with a total exporter of 43.2 TWh with this: > because of europe we import electricity from germany that is burning coal for it ? If you are such a keen observer on the electricity market, then surely you know that France is always importing from somewhere, and as its biggest neighbours, it is logical to see Germany there? There w…

we do import electricty and 22% more in 2020 ,a trend that continued this year. and we import from germany that is burning coal. so I dont see what you missed here. our electricity is not green because we import german coal based electricity that is a fact. i know that france export some. but you know trade also means importing for different reasons like price for instance? and europe has to do with it because in france prices for electricity are not related to our infrastructure and us being fully nuclear but dictated by the european comission.

you re welcome

https://ec.europa.eu/energy/topics/markets-and-consumers/EU-...

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

#76

Post by [deleted] »

neximo64 wrote: post #33

There was an insecticide ban (Neonicotinoids) not so long ago, i.e a "complete ban", but then I saw that it didn't apply to greenhouses - where it had more than 80% of its use prior to the ban. After that alot of the directives that come from the commission, especially involving climate change, if you look at it properly is just greenwashing. France is maybe about the only country that is genuine about it. [1] https:…

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by RealityVoid »

nousermane wrote: post #70
nitrogen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that bees are the biggest likely victims of neonicotinoids, isn't restricting their use to greenhouses exactly what we want? Let bugs outside be, keep bugs inside under control?

...except greenhouses are not exactly hermetically sealed, especially during summer.

Should not matter that much though, since the small amount of insects that penetrate should be a far far lower number than the ones outside the greenhouse. Overall, it passes the sniff test for me.

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

#78

Post by freemint »

mlyle wrote: post #43
alkonaut wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your point is: once no fossil fuel is used to heat Europe (which has to be very soon), something else will. The replacement could be anything but it seems unlikely to be coming from Siberia. Europe need a to take some quick and uncomfortable decisions here. It can’t be acceptable to have homes heated with fossil fuel anywhere in the rich part of the EU at least, even just a decade from now. This was jus…

> Not sure what your point is: once no fossil fuel is used to heat Europe (which has to be very soon), something else will. The replacement could be anything but it seems unlikely to be coming from Siberia. Thank you for putting this more clearly than I could. Europe's got to move to more heat pumps and more industrial use of electricity to be greener. Then the question becomes: where is the best source of that elect…

I am curious how well the new Lithium free batteries CATL is working on will perform at 10% extra volume and half as expensive they could be enough to make power-to-gas to expensive.

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

#79

Post by kergonath »

Gwypaas wrote: post #64
kergonath wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go on, then, compare away. Both in terms of deaths/kWh and CO2/kWh, nuclear is equivalent or better than most renewable you could name. There are arguments against nuclear, but these aren’t them.

Yep. So close you can call it equal, unless future deaths from groundwater pollution where to happen from leakage. So lets discount that and focus on the side which allocates capital and brings projects to completion. The cheapest renewables are currently a magnitude cheaper per KWH.

> unless future deaths from groundwater pollution where to happen

Surely you have a risk assessment for this, or can point to holes in the existing ones?

No industry is clean by definition and at the moment both wind turbines and solar panels depend on local industry in China, which is quite bad even by European standards and also runs on coal. And then there is the insanity of cutting down forests to put solar panels.

> The cheapest renewables are currently a magnitude cheaper per KWH.

They are only if you include subsidies and neglect to account for storage. But that’s not really relevant as I am not arguing against renewables. Both renewables and nuclear have different profiles, different advantages, and different use cases. And a combination is much cheaper than using only either.

The thing is, though, that by saying that nuclear is as bad as fossil fuels, we contribute to expanding our use of fossil fuels in the future, which is orders of magnitude worse than all the nuclear accidents that ever happened or are likely to happen. There is no way of framing Germany’s decision to close early perfectly functioning nuclear reactors only to build gas-fired power plants as a win for either the climate or humanity.

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

#80

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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.

Does anyone know how many g of CO2 for the average natural gas and coal plants are?
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