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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

#231

Post by mulmen »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #225
mulmen wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

> What is the purely green alternative to gas that these gas plants will steal funds from?

Nukes are greener than gas, at least in terms of our continued existence on this planet. If we don’t curb greenhouse gas emissions yesterday nobody will be around to die of radiation poisoning.

Energy storage can be solved, it just has to become necessary. Building gas plants today means we will be burning fossil fuels until 2080. We need to have these problems solved decades before that.

My objection is not necessarily to building the gas plants, it is to calling it green so some politicians can claim they did their jobs.

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

#232

Post by doikor »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #205
Bayart wrote: post #143

Just replace "gas" and "nuclear" with "German" and "French".

Not really true - France was the loudest voice but they were representing a lot of other EU countries. E.g. Slovakia (50% nuclear today, 70% nuclear production next year) was also a big proponent, or Czech republic...

Also Finland with OL3 that just finished building (currently going through testing) and plans to build a new nuclear power plant site in Hanhikivi.

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

#233

Post by littlestymaar »

acd wrote: post #207

Very good news! We need to build fast breeder reactors which burns up the nuclear waste that we have created through older reactors. Ie in normal nuclear reactirs only about 1% of nuclear fuel is converted into energy, the rest is waste. Breeder reactors can take the nuclear waste and convert it into useful energy. BioGas which is methane gas extracted from waste is also very green. Fast Breeder Reactor https://en.wi…

> BioGas which is methane gas extracted from waste is also very green.

Until people start valuing the waste more than the original products, and waste production become the goal: https://farmersjournal.ie/will-milk-be-the-byproduct-of-manu...

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

#234

Post by doikor »

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.

I think the idea is to do it only run such plants when there is massive overproduction from solar/wind that makes the price of electricity zero or negative.

Basically storing what can't be used at that moment. It does not matter if it is at 10 or 100% efficiency as if such storing methods did not exist the only other option would be to turn off those panels/wind turbines.

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

#235

Post by thisoneistheone »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #229
kitsune_ wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No post body was provided.

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

#236

Post by gefhfffh »

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.

Jep, it is

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

#237

Post by HatchedLake721 »

matsemann wrote: post #217
consp wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is “we here in Europe”? It’s equivalent to saying “we on planet earth do it this way”.

It’s 30+ completely different countries with different infrastructure, different views on how things should be done and different decision makers.

Your experience in X is different to Y.

E.g. as far as I know, no one in Netherlands “haphazardly tacks some pedestrian stuff at the end”.

Of course you’ll be more dependent on a car if you live in some parts and of course some will have cars where it isn’t necessary.

What we all do know and believe we can agree on, is that public transport (mainly trains and buses) in all of Europe is miles ahead and puts United States to shame.

There’s a reason why we don’t really have drive through ATMs and cities with towns are walkable and pedestrian first, while cars are second or even third behind bikes.

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

#238

Post by deadfish »

inglor_cz wrote: post #226
gibolt wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/f…

Looks like the cost of nuclear in Australia is not comparable.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/too-slow-too-expensive-why-nucle....

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

#239

Post by Swenrekcah »

mulmen wrote: post #231
Swenrekcah wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> What is the purely green alternative to gas that these gas plants will steal funds from? Nukes are greener than gas, at least in terms of our continued existence on this planet. If we don’t curb greenhouse gas emissions yesterday nobody will be around to die of radiation poisoning. Energy storage can be solved, it just has to become necessary . Building gas plants today means we will be burning fossil fuels until 2…

I can see how it’s offensive to call it green but honestly I think the politicians really did do their job here.

Nuclear is a great option and should have been chosen 40 years ago but since it wasn’t we must take what we can get today. If I decide today I’m going to replace coal plants with nuclear, that means I’ll be burning coal for at least 20 years until the nuclear project is complete.

Much better then to, sure start building the nuclear plant, but also switch over to gas today, then complete the switch 10-30 years later.

And if the gas plants remain in operation until 2080 I’m optimistic enough to believe they’ll have been made to install CCS sometime in the early 2040s.

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

#240

Post by kortilla »

mulmen wrote: post #137
oneoff786 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re asking someone to compare numbers, then it wasn’t really as simple as you originally stated

It is as simple as I originally stated. The argument that solar emits carbon is counting the carbon emitted in construction and plant operation. That is such a minute amount of carbon in comparison to the energy produced by a gas plant in generating power that it isn’t even worth talking about for the purposes of classifying gas as “green”. Getting the construction and logistics of anything carbon neutral is orthogon…

> That is such a minute amount of carbon in comparison to the energy produced by a gas plant in generating power

Citation needed. A gas plant dwarves solar in energy output.

The whole point is that solar does have an emission and burying your head in the sand does no good when we are comparing solutions that don’t emit during generation but do to make (solar vs wind + batteries vs nuclear?).

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