Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 451 posts

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

#101

Post by throwaway894345 »

mulmen wrote: post #61
jillesvangurp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's oddly specific but apparently intended to allow countries to classify energy from such plants as "green" and treat it as such when buying/selling or taxing it. That is important because a lot of companies that are interested in buying green energy in order to reduce their carbon emissions would care about their energy being labeled as green. There is a lot of book keeping that is happening related to this a…

> People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that. And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. By giving themselves this loophole the EU is undermining the market forces that will make green energy viable. We don't need to find economical energy sources anymore. We need to dump money into green energy now and last month and a decade ago. The price doesn't matter, jus…

Right now nuclear is the only green energy that is suitable for base load generation apart from hydro, and it takes a long time to build new nuclear plants, so I’m okay with a bridge solution that dramatically reduces emissions even if it doesn’t bring them to zero. The alternative is a dependency on much less green fossil fuel plants when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

Intelligent people shouldn’t quibble over an imaginary “green” line, but we should focus on minimizing emissions per unit power.

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

#102

Post by AQuantized »

freemint wrote: post #88
AQuantized wrote: post #63

Nuclear investments desperately need to be recognized as green so you don't have oxymoronic policies similar to Germany's current plan where you're decommissioning nuclear to become more "green" yet producing much more carbon dioxide.

Nuclear Energy becomes decidedly less green (but still greener than out of the ground Methane) when building, maintenance and decomissioning as well as fuel transports are included. [1] But once the fix costs are accounted for making it run longer seems smart. There seems to be quiet bimodal distribution of CO2e estimates for carbon. Some are like 5 other >100 in the same unit. [1] https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh…

Also owing consideration is the many advances to those processes that could occur with more substantial investment in nuclear power.

However the primary benefit to nuclear, beyond its acceptable carbon emissions, is that functioning as a base load removes a lot of the difficultly with building enough battery infrastructure to enable solar power to power peak load and through the night. This is particularly the case for service based economies whose peak load is often after dark.

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

#103

Post by NegativeLatency »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #101
mulmen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that. And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. By giving themselves this loophole the EU is undermining the market forces that will make green energy viable. We don't need to find economical energy sources anymore. We need to dump money into green energy now and last month and a decade ago. The price doesn't matter, jus…

Right now nuclear is the only green energy that is suitable for base load generation apart from hydro, and it takes a long time to build new nuclear plants, so I’m okay with a bridge solution that dramatically reduces emissions even if it doesn’t bring them to zero. The alternative is a dependency on much less green fossil fuel plants when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Intelligent people shouldn’t…

When you consider the other environmental impacts of hydro it’s not as green as people like to think.

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

#104

Post by mulmen »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #101
mulmen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that. And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. By giving themselves this loophole the EU is undermining the market forces that will make green energy viable. We don't need to find economical energy sources anymore. We need to dump money into green energy now and last month and a decade ago. The price doesn't matter, jus…

Right now nuclear is the only green energy that is suitable for base load generation apart from hydro, and it takes a long time to build new nuclear plants, so I’m okay with a bridge solution that dramatically reduces emissions even if it doesn’t bring them to zero. The alternative is a dependency on much less green fossil fuel plants when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Intelligent people shouldn’t…

It’s not ok to call gas “green”. Period. If gas is necessary then build it, but don’t claim it is green.

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

#105

Post by [deleted] »

richardw wrote: post #97
mulmen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that. And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. By giving themselves this loophole the EU is undermining the market forces that will make green energy viable. We don't need to find economical energy sources anymore. We need to dump money into green energy now and last month and a decade ago. The price doesn't matter, jus…

> If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. Producing solar emits CO2 over the full lifecycle. Even during the generation and maintenance phase, it’s above zero. There’s no zero until we remove CO2 from the environment. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf Should we stop using solar until we find the zero-CO2 tech? Obviously not. And obviously we need net-0 asap, but it’s not “really that s…

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by colechristensen »

AQuantized wrote: post #102
freemint wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear Energy becomes decidedly less green (but still greener than out of the ground Methane) when building, maintenance and decomissioning as well as fuel transports are included. [1] But once the fix costs are accounted for making it run longer seems smart. There seems to be quiet bimodal distribution of CO2e estimates for carbon. Some are like 5 other >100 in the same unit. [1] https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh…

Also owing consideration is the many advances to those processes that could occur with more substantial investment in nuclear power. However the primary benefit to nuclear, beyond its acceptable carbon emissions, is that functioning as a base load removes a lot of the difficultly with building enough battery infrastructure to enable solar power to power peak load and through the night. This is particularly the case f…

One nice thing about solar is the economics of making the night shift more expensive and less common.

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

#108

Post by inter_netuser »

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.

what's low carbon gases?

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

#109

Post by user_7832 »

Gwypaas wrote: post #48
user_7832 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious on why you're pessimistic on hydrogen. I agree that cars are likely not the best use of fuel cells (heavy vehicles are able to utilize H2's strengths much more), but in a future based on renewables hydrogen allows you to store energy in a very dense way. Lithium batteries are acceptably heavy/expensive at small scales, but how do you think will supply vary to meet demand in the medium-long term without a…

Call it a solution in search of a problem. The best fuel cells today reach about 50% round trip efficiency. That's even a high estimate. That by physics defines the price difference between where you buy low and sell high. Without even counting the hydrogen storage, fuel cell itself and everything needed to make it function. That number also defines the arbitrage marginal any other solution has against hydrogen. Be i…

Yeah I agree with what you say (especially your last part), that its use is likely to be much more for some industries than others; for eg. for Battery EVs particularly outside North America iirc a much smaller battery can do 95% of trips, so hydrogen makes very little sense for a family car. Though the person I was replying to was more pessimistic in general.

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

#110

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mulmen wrote: post #104
throwaway894345 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now nuclear is the only green energy that is suitable for base load generation apart from hydro, and it takes a long time to build new nuclear plants, so I’m okay with a bridge solution that dramatically reduces emissions even if it doesn’t bring them to zero. The alternative is a dependency on much less green fossil fuel plants when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Intelligent people shouldn’t…

It’s not ok to call gas “green”. Period. If gas is necessary then build it, but don’t claim it is green.

> If gas is necessary then build it, but don’t claim it is green

Green is a spectrum, and a subjective one at that. Even if we limit ourselves to CO2 emissions, an absolutist stance eliminates solar and wind for the emissions in their erection.

Post reply on HN