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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

#121

Post by freeflight »

tremon wrote: post #32
freeflight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Western Europe has been dependent on Eastern Europe's resources for a very long time, as Siberia is [..] But Siberia is not Eastern Europe, is it? It lies fully in the Asian part of Russia. Why are you labelling this an East/West thing?

I'm not labeling it as an East/West thing, the comment I replied to did, I replied in their context.

In practicality it's not an "East/West" thing as Eurasia is one continental mass, the colloquial distinction between Europe and Asia isn't one based on geography, but mostly politics.

That why "It's not in Europe but Asia" might be an interesting technicality, but doesn't change the geographic proximity, or how we are very much still talking about Russia.

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

#122

Post by vlovich123 »

tshaddox wrote: post #116
mulmen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's eligible to receive funding/tax status [...] That's literally the entire problem.

Why is it a problem to give funding or tax advantages to projects that actively reduce emissions?

The argument would be that if you didn’t provide that out market forces would force us into renewables more quickly.

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

#123

Post by jcfrei »

Chyzwar wrote: post #16
hadrien01 wrote: post #4

Nuclear I can understand. But gas?

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.…

The biggest problem is that converting energy into hydrogen is extremely inefficient.

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

#125

Post by twblalock »

tcfhgj wrote: post #82
onphonenow wrote: post #11

Nuclear is clearly green. Gas is more interesting. At 500g/kwh it's on higher side normally. So there must be more to this.

how green is it creating a unsolved waste problem costing the future tons of money? Yes, it's better than coal and perhaps even gas, but....

> Yes, it's better than coal and perhaps even gas, but....

There aren't greener alternatives that will produce all the power we need -- yes we can invest in wind power etc., but that won't produce enough power for a modern society.

Nuclear is the greenest realistic option.

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

#126

Post by Zenst »

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…

More so as it smells of politics. Germany was a thorn in Frances plans to label Nuclear green for while and does seem they wore down everybody and got thru a compromise that gets them off the hook by including gas. More worrying in this is how will this play into the whole gas drama with Russia.

Overall, it avoids a lot of awkward moments which would of seen both Germany and France fall short upon the EU's green regulations for energy usage/production. Whilst personally I feel it is a fair thing and well needed for France, I can't help feel that Germany took advantage of this and tailcoated their needs onto this and why we see gas labeled as `green`.

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

#127

Post by Yaina »

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.

What Germany did was very quickly turn off all nuclear power plants without any plans on replacing them with sustainable alternatives. Now they're offline, what's done is done. France still has nuclear power plants, and they're really pushing for nuclear energy to be considered green.

This is about investing and creating incentives. So IMHO Germany shouldn't build new plants and France shouldn't get EU funding for their existing ones and everyone, but especially these wealthy countries should focus on truly sustainable energy.

Every euro spend on a "transitional" does not go towards the truly sustainable technologies.

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

#128

Post by tshaddox »

vlovich123 wrote: post #122
tshaddox wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a problem to give funding or tax advantages to projects that actively reduce emissions?

The argument would be that if you didn’t provide that out market forces would force us into renewables more quickly.

Surely any support available to projects that replace higher-emissions facilities with lower-emissions facilities would still be available if the lower-emissions facility is a zero-emissions facility, right?

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

#129

Post by willis936 »

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…

You're conflating CO2 from logistics and CO2 from electricity production. Logistics can be entirely converted to electrical in a decade with no special sauce needed.

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

#130

Post by kortilla »

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…

> And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple.

Then we have no green energy sources at all, which makes it sort of useless as a description.

Manufacturing and installation of the energy source always has to be included. For something with as short of a life as solar panels, the manufacturing, transport, installation, and disposal is a critical piece in the CO2 emissions that has to be amortized over the kWh it’s expected to generate over its lifetime.

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