Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 451 posts

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

#271

Post by ido »

kennywinker wrote: post #192
nine_k wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is as close to arguing about what colour to paint the deck chairs on the titanic as I can imagine. A non-carbon neutral source of energy is not any shade of green, until we’ve averted the upcoming climate disaster. And then maybe we can debate about how to spend our limited carbon budget.

Replacing coal with these and nukes while renewables are still being built (at greater speed than ever) is still an improvement.

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

#272

Post by fivea »

arcticbull wrote: post #173
hammock wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

That sounds very idiotic to me. One of the biggest environmental threats is global warming, which is caused by reintroducing carbon into the atmosphere through the use of fossil fuels. It makes no sense at all to label fossil fuel usage as green just because they manage to come up with an arbitrary line in the sand for unrelated pollutants and in the process ignore carbon emissions.

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

#273

Post by kmlx »

porkbrain wrote: post #90
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theway government grants work in UK is, the richer you are, the more you get from the government. They freauently are offset against your taxable income, so they are most effective if you are in highest tax bracket. Conversely, poorest people rent the shittiest and least efficient homes, but they don't have the choice to replace the heating system - that's the landlorsa decision. But he doen't pay the utilities, the…

> But he doen't pay the utilities, the tenants do, so why would he care? When you talk rent in London the first question asked tends to be "bills included?". This suggests to me that a non-trivial number of landlords would be interested in efficiency. Anecdotal, I don't have the data for the whole UK.

> When you talk rent in London the first question asked tends to be "bills included?".

is this something new? i have been renting in London for almost a decade and I have never heard of a landlord or agency offer to pay my bills.

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

#274

Post by SonicTheSith »

pydry wrote: post #251
lucb1e wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every euro spen[t] on a "transitional" does not go towards the truly sustainable technologies. We won't have many euros left if we need to fight climate change effects while we wait for new technologies. We need to use the technology we already have. In addition to that, in parallel, we also need to find enough land owners that are willing to have a wind turbine in their proverbial back yard. And in parallel instal…

>Nuclear isn't so simple, but has unique advantages Its advantages are dwindling compared to solar/wind/battery/pumped hydro/demand shaping. It requires gargantuan subsidies to even exist. For instance, the nuclear industry in the US has barraged us with propaganda about how really incredibly safe it is and how overregulated they are but insurers will still refuse to insure a nuclear plant unless 99% of the liability…

The thing is,

While Nuclear is not cheap, it will be cheaper than the effects from un-softened climate change.

While Nuclear is difficult to maintain and if an accident happens it is bad, but the damage and affected area can be easily calculated.

While Nuclear waste storage costs money and has to be secure for a long time, the chance that we as humans will be able to recycle the nuclear waste in 200-500 years is fairly high. On the other hand once shit hits the fans with climate change shit really hits the fan but with the quantity of New York City's total sewage from the last 5 decades.

The thought that we will be able to recycle nuclear waste in 200+ years is more reliable than any promise Elon Musk has ever given.

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

#275

Post by Paradigma11 »

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.

How about we use the same principles that we use for lead, arsen... Those have to be stored indefinetly, so an infinitly more difficult problem.

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

#276

Post by loup-vaillant »

afarrell wrote: post #177
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.

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

> Because it is widely believed

With good reason, I might add. There is a climate emergency caused by greenhouse gas emissions after all.

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

#277

Post by drran »

kergonath wrote: post #79
Gwypaas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. So close you can call it equal, unless future deaths from groundwater pollution where to happen from leakage. So lets discount that and focus on the side which allocates capital and brings projects to completion. The cheapest renewables are currently a magnitude cheaper per KWH.

> unless future deaths from groundwater pollution where to happen Surely you have a risk assessment for this, or can point to holes in the existing ones? No industry is clean by definition and at the moment both wind turbines and solar panels depend on local industry in China, which is quite bad even by European standards and also runs on coal. And then there is the insanity of cutting down forests to put solar panel…

> They are only if you include subsidies and neglect to account for storage.

Hey, nuclear energy is heavily subsidized by government, and it badly needs batteries for storage too.

For example, insurance for nuclear stations is provided by government for free, because its price is sky-high. If we include cost of insurance into the price of nuclear energy, its price will be too high for economy.

Nuclear can support base load only. For day-to-day management, a hydro, gas, coal, or batteries are necessary. Nuclear is not an option to reduce CO2 emissions substantially without hydro or batteries. We use nuclear power for decades already.

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

#278

Post by unicornmama »

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.

> Solar + Batteries/Storage are cheap to build today.

That claim is baseless.

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

#279

Post by pydry »

SonicTheSith wrote: post #274
pydry wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nuclear isn't so simple, but has unique advantages Its advantages are dwindling compared to solar/wind/battery/pumped hydro/demand shaping. It requires gargantuan subsidies to even exist. For instance, the nuclear industry in the US has barraged us with propaganda about how really incredibly safe it is and how overregulated they are but insurers will still refuse to insure a nuclear plant unless 99% of the liability…

The thing is, While Nuclear is not cheap, it will be cheaper than the effects from un-softened climate change. While Nuclear is difficult to maintain and if an accident happens it is bad, but the damage and affected area can be easily calculated. While Nuclear waste storage costs money and has to be secure for a long time, the chance that we as humans will be able to recycle the nuclear waste in 200-500 years is fair…

>While Nuclear is not cheap, it will be cheaper than the effects from un-softened climate change.

Is it cheaper than demand shaping/wind/solar/grid-scale batteries though? That's the real question.

As far as I can see that answer may be yes in one specific circumstance - when you already have a nuclear plant with another 5+ years of life left. i.e. when the insane capex is a sunk cost.

In all other instances it only really comes close if you assume the risk of nuclear disaster is close to zero or if you pretend that the precipitous fall in solar/wind/battery prices didnt happen yet.

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

#280

Post by kzrdude »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #269
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.

It is called green washing. Wrap yourself in a big green carbon neutral flag, and you may commit all the environmental atrocities you wish.

At the same time we need to do better and better. The goal is not to be perfect in the first iteration.
Post reply on HN