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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

#171

Post by cschwarm »

Yaina wrote: post #127
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 th…

> What Germany did was very quickly turn off all nuclear power plants without any plans on replacing them with sustainable alternatives.

This is not quite correct.

The first decision to phase-out nuclear was made around the year 2000 [1]. Its initial date for the shutdown of the last nuclear reactor was set to be 2022. The plan was agreed upon by the owners of these plans.

Around 2010, this first decision was taken back, and a few months later, Fukushima happened. This led to the second decision to phase-out nuclear.

Only then, eight of 17 reactors were turned off quickly. But this had no major impact, because the switch to renewables was already under way for ten years.

Compare Germany's coal consumption after Fukushima with Japan's, and you'll noticed the difference.

[1] https://wiki.energytransition.org/the-book/policies-for-clea...

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

#172

Post by jhoechtl »

I am an EU citizen. While this decision seems controversial to ones and downright stupid to others, I do think its the only possibility to provide cheap energy to industry and the citizens without further increasing inflation due to rising energy costs.

We need to go green and further utilize solar and wind energy and what not, its kind of hard in times of increased demand (e-cars) and rising overall energy costs.

We would have done so much better to invest in times when inflation was low for a decade.

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

#173

Post by arcticbull »

hammock wrote: post #170
arcticbull wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about pollution and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. These are the same thing in common parlance. High CO2 emission plants are fossil fuel driven, and those are of course non-renewable. Wind, solar and nuclear are renewable, sustainable and low CO2. Nuclear in particular also produces very little waste a…

I guess you missed the entire headline and article where it says they will call natural gas green.

It only gets the label if it's greener than existing solutions. They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good.

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

#174

Post by nine_k »

hammock wrote: post #165
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.

When did "green" get co-opted to mean low CO2 emissions? It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulate pollution, acid rain, habitat destruction and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that.

Methane can be very much renewable.

Its energy is "greener" than that of coal, or heavy oil: more energy is released per a CO₂ molecule produced. Also, unlike coal, it does not produce radioactive ashes.

But it's not carbon-neutral, of course. I'd call this "olive" or "lime" energy: greenish but not wholly green.

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

#175

Post by petre »

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.

The whole German agenda on decarbonization is based on Russian natural gas, so call me not surprised. If they had labelled H2 investments as green it would be a whole different thing.

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

#176

Post by bluecalm »

I guess gas is green if it comes from Putin. I mean those retiring German officials need some new jobs in gas trading companies.

Meanwhile we still have a huge "green diesel" problem with Germans dumping their polluting, smelly, carcinogenic used up engines into newer EU countries. I am so fed up with the whole green politics thing in EU. It's just for show so it benefits the biggest players.

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

#177

Post by afarrell »

hammock wrote: post #165
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.

When did "green" get co-opted to mean low CO2 emissions? It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulate pollution, acid rain, habitat destruction and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that.

Because it is widely believed that there is a climate emergency caused by CO2 emissions and so people want to focus.

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

#178

Post by heartbeats »

hammock wrote: post #165
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.

When did "green" get co-opted to mean low CO2 emissions? It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulate pollution, acid rain, habitat destruction and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that.

Because we have specific environmental problems right now, that are quite serious and worth focusing on?

You do this stuff because you want to accomplish something. If animals go extinct, that is obviously unfortunate, but it pales in comparison to the prospect that we do so.

The EU isn't trying to accomplish some type of perfect environmental justice, they're trying to keep the world habitable.

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

#179

Post by petre »

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?

Because then Russian gas investments could get EU funding, that's why. Like a Russian owned gas terminal on German soil, to be more precise. That would actually take funding from nuclear or renewables and into fuelling another country's geopolitical ambitions.

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

#180

Post by heartbeats »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #146
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.

If you include the deaths that nuclear waste will cause during the tens of thousands of years it remains radioactive it wouldn't be so positive. But of course we can't look into the future. But we do know safe storage for such durations is not yet figured out. It's externalising the problem to the future. Just like CO2, but on a much longer timeframe. Still not very ethical though IMO.

Who are all of these people who will be hurt by it?

There's nothing interesting (e.g. terrorism, bombs) you can do with nuclear waste, and it's not especially poisonous.

If you just loaded it up in barrels and dropped it at the bottom of the ocean, what's the worst that could happen?

Sure, some fish would die, but where are the millions of deaths?

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