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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

#221

Post by bpfrh »

gibolt wrote: post #218
AYBABTME wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gas based Power plants are for providing capacity quickly when needed, and the cost is good compared to lithium batteries:

1 KW Gas is 0,0639€ 1 KW Lithium Battery is ~105€

There is an incoming lithium shortage which means either the price will rise sharply, or you have to build other types of batteries.

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

#222

Post by [deleted] »

jcfrei wrote: post #123
Chyzwar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by kitsune_ »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #202
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.

> This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that. No, it just shows that one needs to read more than the headline. It does take all that into account as well, hence all the "if"s and the "transitional" label.

Sorry, but this just green washing.

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

#224

Post by [deleted] »

bpodgursky wrote: post #111
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…

> when building, maintenance and decomissioning OK, but the same applies to wind turbines. I don't see a lot of Teslas hauling wind turbines down I-80. Let's not set up double standards just for nuclear.

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by Swenrekcah »

mulmen wrote: post #200
Swenrekcah wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that gas is not green, but it’s a whole lot green er than many alternatives. Replacing a large coal plant with gas is much better for our future than opening a same size solar plant (and not closing the coal plant). Of course greener still would have been to build a solar plant instead of the gas plant. But solar is intermittent and coal isn’t so that wouldn’t be sufficient. All of this is true so long a…

> I guess technically it could have been labelled ‘purple’ and a new rule made that all allowances made for ‘green’ also apply to ‘purple’ but honestly that sounds to me more likely to be abused in the future. How would this be abused? The problem is that the EU talks a big game but can’t actually deliver. Calling gas green is moving the goalposts. If gas is necessary that’s fine, just don’t pretend we are on track t…

Because it’s already a stretch to call gas green I don’t think it will be as easy to add worse things to the green label as it would be to add new labels to a ‘Colors similar to green’ pool.

What is the purely green alternative to gas that these gas plants will steal funds from? Intermittent energy doesn’t qualify.

The numbers to care about aren’t the ratio of green to non green plants, but actual CO2/MWh and those won’t be hiding the problem.

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

#226

Post by inglor_cz »

gibolt wrote: post #218
AYBABTME wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Batteries/Storage are cheap to build today"

And yet the existing battery facilities that could keep a smallish region (or a single city) supplied for 15 minutes or more are exceedingly rare.

Maybe they aren't as cheap as you claim. Australia is recently building a 1200 MW battery in New South Wales for 2.4 billion dollars - a cost comparable to a new nuclear reactor.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/05/world...

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

#227

Post by relix »

xdennis wrote: post #199
hadrien01 wrote: post #4

Nuclear I can understand. But gas?

It's because the EU is almost entirely controlled by France and Germany. If this were up to the people of the EU (or their representatives in the EU parliament), it wouldn't stand a chance. They'd never declare gas green. But this decision was taken by the European Commission, a group that's not elected. And who leads the commission: von der Leyen, a German. It's like when they forced truckers to continuously return…

Explain how a commission of 27 commissioners, one from each member state (so 1 person from Germany and 1 person from France and 25 from the other 25 member states), with at the head a person who was elected to that position by the European Parliament, which is the group of 705 MEPs who each are in turn elected proportionally by the population of the EU, amounts to "France and Germany basically control the EU".

The laws proposed by the European Commission still need to be accepted by the European Parliament as well, indeed the commission is basically fully subordinate to the parliament, so even if the European Commission was somehow "unfairly controlled by France and Germany", which I find highly suspect considering the specifications of it, the parliament is responsible in the end, and that consists entirely of elected representatives.

This sounds more like typical Brexit-style anti-EU propaganda than a valid summarisation of the politics of the EU.

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

#228

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

arcticbull wrote: post #164
Rebelgecko wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder, how significant are inefficiencies in transmission, charging, and storage? With cheap lithium batteries I've bought (like phone power banks), I usually need to subtract about 25% from the rated capacity to figure out how many times it'll fill my phone's battery. Although hopefully cars are more efficient

Losses on the big high-voltage wires average about 2% in the US. Losses on lower-voltage distribution wires average 4% on top of that - so about 6% in total. [1] Lithium Ion batteries charge near 100% efficiency. [2] In terms of storage (specifically self-discharge), Lithium Ion batteries lose 5% in 24 hours, then 1-2% per month thereafter - but can be as low as 0.35% per month. [3, 4] [1] http://insideenergy.org/201…

> Lithium Ion batteries charge near 100% efficiency

The power electronics to charge the battery also have losses. Although they are getting really good, my guess would be something better than 95% efficiency in the battery charger. There are some really great improvements in power transistors recently though, so this number will still have some room for improvement.

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

#229

Post by HatchedLake721 »

kitsune_ wrote: post #223
diffeomorphism wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that. No, it just shows that one needs to read more than the headline. It does take all that into account as well, hence all the "if"s and the "transitional" label.

Sorry, but this just green washing.

I call this real-life decisions.

If someone has better ideas how to progress and unite 27 countries with different levels of transition challenges and different views on nuclear and other sources, please submit them.

Otherwise, being pedantic and negative about non-perfect solutions while not taking into account the complexity of getting a consensus with 27 members is not helpful to anyone.

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

#230

Post by wott »

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.

Please update your views of European urbanism (browsing Google's aerial photos should be enough). Urban sprawl is the defining key of the last 50 years.

Here is a starting point, miles and miles away from the historical centre of Toulouse: https://www.google.fr/maps/@43.537841,1.2268468,2639m/data=!...

Now it is not only happening around cities, around big towns, around small towns, it also happens at unprecedented speed around the tiniest villages.

A site that puts side by side aerials from now and from before urban sprawl: https://remonterletemps.ign.fr/comparer/basic?x=1.212446&y=4...

Back in huge cities. The city of Paris is much less populated than one century ago. Now it represents only 1/6th of the population of its urban area, an ogre which has swallowed almost 2000 municipalities (two thousand!).

Elsewhere in the country, you see urban areas from cities multiple dozens of miles apart joining in a continuous sprawl. Heck, even in my deep and remote area disconnected from any city or even town, there is now 5 miles of sprawl joining the 3 villages of the valley in continuous strips along the roads; before the sprawl, population of my municipality was 50% higher, and yet 80-90% of the now occupied space was free.

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