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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

#211

Post by diffeomorphism »

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.

> It’s not ok to call gas “green”. Period.

And as helpfully explained by the top post you are replying to nobody does that.

It is labeled as a useful transitional tool towards green energy (when obeying lots of additional restrictions) and thus deemed eligible for subsidies/investment. The headline shortens "eligible for subsidies/investment aimed at promoting green energy, but only if meeting lots of other requirements and ..." to "green".

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

#212

Post by vanusa »

squarefoot wrote: post #195

It's absolutely crazy, but in line with what's going on with energy demand out of control due to cryptocurrencies sprouting everywhere: some countries banned non green energy sources, so we redefine the word green. Bravo! That's exactly what one can expect from corrupt politicians. I would accept to go back to nuclear only in one case: whoever is pushing for it will build their house within 10 Km of either a nuclear…

A flip argument.

By that token -- if you advocate of, for example, EVs then I trust you'll be more than happy to move to an area where the freshwater has been diverted to support lithium extraction. Or if you're a fan of solar power, you'd be delighted to send your kids off to the DRC to work in a cobalt mine.

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

#213

Post by londons_explore »

More carbon will be released in 2022 than any past year in human history, according to the IEA.

So all the talk of green tech is still just that - talk. Any reductions in emissions have been eclipsed by other people's emissions expansions.

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

#214

Post by AYBABTME »

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.

You can make methane from carbon capture/sabatier reactors. Although I'm not sure if that's any more efficient than desalination/hydrolysis for an H2 plant with fuel cells. In any case, I'm onboard with replacing coal with gas, if nuclear isn't an option. Gas is cheap and fast to build today, and can be supplanted by nuclear/renewable later on. A pragmatic middle ground to (hopefully temporarily) accommodate the nuclear skeptics.

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

#215

Post by fsh »

yongjik wrote: post #188
GekkePrutser wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those "millions of years" comments always seem rather out of place, considering that the Earth naturally contains enough radioactive elements that literally kept it warm for 4.6 billion years. (And they come with several billion years of half-lives.) When you see volcanoes, earthquakes, and hot springs in action, that's the power of radiation. All of it.

This is a very bad comparison. Radioactive heating is only significant because the earth is very large. Soil has a very low background activity of a few hundred Bq/kg. High-level nuclear waste has 2 TBq/kg after 100 years.

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

#216

Post by donny2018 »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #196
onethought wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is not renewable… right? Ie there is a finite amount of nuclear material on earth and it’s not overly abundant either. Am I missing something?

There's 5.5 million tons of known uranium reserves. If you took our current reactor fleet and replaced it with fast breeders, this would supply it for 30,000 years. There's also 4.5 billion tons of uranium dissolved in seawater. Then there's thorium. You're missing that. Technically not renewable, but in the long run, neither is the Sun.

Hopefully, fusion energy will be reality way before we will be close to depleting known uranium resources.

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

#217

Post by matsemann »

consp wrote: post #191
matsemann wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All very high numbers. The key to solving climate change isn't to do as before, just slightly more efficient. Electric cars won't solve anything, especially not if they are indirectly powered by fossil fuels. Make cities walkable, bikeable and public transportable. That will have far bigger impact than people buying new electric cars.

This is far more a us/Canada problem than a European one, and this is a European proposal.

Don't agree. While car culture is far worse in America, we're still far too dependent on cars here in Europe as well in situations where it isn't necessary. Almost all planning revolves around cars, and then some pedestrian stuff is tacked haphazardly on at the end.

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

#218

Post by gibolt »

AYBABTME wrote: post #214
hammock wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can make methane from carbon capture/sabatier reactors. Although I'm not sure if that's any more efficient than desalination/hydrolysis for an H2 plant with fuel cells. In any case, I'm onboard with replacing coal with gas, if nuclear isn't an option. Gas is cheap and fast to build today, and can be supplanted by nuclear/renewable later on. A pragmatic middle ground to (hopefully temporarily) accommodate the nucl…

Solar + Batteries/Storage are cheap to build today. No need to choose a worse technology in every way now, that only becomes less viable as time goes on.

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

#219

Post by throwawaylinux »

xcambar wrote: post #187
throwawaylinux wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "green" movement to squash nuclear going back to the 60s was the best investment the fossil fuel industry has ever made.

I'm really curious in reading more about this. If you have some resources, don't hesitate to share.

About fossil fuel companies donating money to anti-nuclear "environmental" movements?

https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear

Hopefully you don't believe it would be a step too far for the fossil fuel industry that has been responsible for wars and regime change and cartel behavior going back over a century to subvert or create fake environmental movements to keep their competition down.

It would be more outlandish to believe the fossil fuel industry isn't a major driving force behind the anti-scientific anti-environmental anti-nuclear movement. Follow the money.

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

#220

Post by pjerem »

numpad0 wrote: post #154
richardw wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Personally I’m not sure solar is a viable mass power production. I think it’s just a nice option for remote power production, as in “no one else in x miles” situation where x is an unsigned int.

Technically, the Sun send us orders of magnitude more energy that we will ever need.

So, yes, I agree with you that today, efficiency of solar panels is not enough for really big scale. But results are already impressive and furthermore, we have yet an infinity of optimizations to research to extract more energy from the sun.

In fact, while absolutely not probable in the coming decades Solar could even be one of the « magic solutions » alongside the fusion. Because we know the energy is there, we just don’t get her how to extract it.

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