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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

#291

Post by alkonaut »

fy20 wrote: post #112
alkonaut wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grants I have see now e.g Finland seem to be a straight grant of €4000 which gets you almost all the way to a decent heat pump. These are cash grants not deductions (as they should be! They are covering a one-time cost!) This is for single family detached homes (which are almost invariably owned)

Retrofitting is going to be much more than the cost of the unit itself though. You can't just replace an on-demand gas boiler with a heat pump. The rest of the heating system is completely different between the two, it just wouldn't work. It's especially problematic in apartments where there is limited space.

But we (Nordics) replaced all our oil pans. I naively thought it was the same thing just oil instead?

A boiler makes hot water in a tank in the basement and showers, radiators and taps use that hot water?

I have seen (In Scotland) some extremely weird contraptions where water was heated in the shower by what I can only assume was an flame in a box on the wall. But surely that’s not what Germans and others on the continent are using? They do have a central hot water system?

How else is water coming to the radiators? I guess my question is: are there gas lines around a typical home to any other place than the boiler and possibly stove? Why?

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

#292

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mulmen wrote: post #135
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If gas is necessary then build it, but don’t claim it is green Green is a spectrum, and a subjective one at that. Even if we limit ourselves to CO2 emissions, an absolutist stance eliminates solar and wind for the emissions in their erection.

I’m not sure why this keeps getting regurgitated. Are you honestly arguing that the CO2 emissions in the production and operation of a solar plant are even remotely comparable to the emissions of a gas plant? If I have to explicitly spell all that out every time then we can’t have a conversation. It’s an absurd standard.

> Are you honestly arguing that the CO2 emissions in the production and operation of a solar plant are even remotely comparable to the emissions of a gas plant?

No, just that pretending one or the other is universally accepted as “green” while the other is not is absurd.

Gas isn’t emission free. But “green” has no requirement to be zero emissions. It is in the process of being defined; this is that process and discussion. (Hybrids were once green.) “Green” should move us towards a zero-emissions future. If that happens with gas, that’s better than sitting around getting hysterical about definitions while baseload runs on dirty power.

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

#293

Post by locallost »

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.

Germany's carbon dioxide emissions have been going down steadily since they started switching off their aging nuclear plants. It's amazing to me how people can think they have a rational argument that's based entirely on fiction.

Data: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...

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

#294

Post by jacquesm »

doikor wrote: post #232
Daniel_sk wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At least Finland has a responsible attitude to the nuclear waste problem.

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

#295

Post by funklute »

locallost wrote: post #293
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.

Germany's carbon dioxide emissions have been going down steadily since they started switching off their aging nuclear plants. It's amazing to me how people can think they have a rational argument that's based entirely on fiction. Data: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...

How does that compare to (projected) decreases if they didn't switch off their nuclear plants? It seems to me that is what the debate is really about.

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

#296

Post by alkonaut »

neximo64 wrote: post #141
alkonaut wrote: post #18

There needs to be clearer terminology and labels for “green”, “sustainable”, “renewable”, “climate neutral” energy. I’d also like to throw in “democratic” in the mix. Because energy and foreign policy can’t be separated. The EU energy mix is going to be geopolitically very important in coming years. We also need to make it very clear what the goals are for each kind and where the tradeoffs are. I think right now the…

Isn't this the recipe for making science political?

No one can draw a line between economics/politics/science. The line drawn is that politicians like to leave researchers alone while researching. Once the result leaves the researcher it’s not separable from politics and economics.

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

#297

Post by [deleted] »

ben_w wrote: post #254
inglor_cz wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The facilities don’t yet exist in large numbers because batteries have only recently become cheap enough to do this cost effectively. Even the battery factories are in their early stages right now. Do you have a reference for the storage capacity of that NSW battery? Because every newspaper I’ve found talking about it, only talks about megawatts (power) not megawatt-hours (energy), and it’s the latter which is expens…

[deleted]

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

#298

Post by locallost »

funklute wrote: post #295
locallost wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany's carbon dioxide emissions have been going down steadily since they started switching off their aging nuclear plants. It's amazing to me how people can think they have a rational argument that's based entirely on fiction. Data: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...

How does that compare to (projected) decreases if they didn't switch off their nuclear plants? It seems to me that is what the debate is really about.

No, the debate I was having was about the explicit mention of "increasing CO2", which is just plain false. There are a lot of people that parrot this around the world, by just guessing in line with their beliefs, but the data is pretty clear.

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

#299

Post by kwhitefoot »

ben_w wrote: post #254
inglor_cz wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The facilities don’t yet exist in large numbers because batteries have only recently become cheap enough to do this cost effectively. Even the battery factories are in their early stages right now. Do you have a reference for the storage capacity of that NSW battery? Because every newspaper I’ve found talking about it, only talks about megawatts (power) not megawatt-hours (energy), and it’s the latter which is expens…

I don't know how big the New South Wales battery is but Victoria has just switched on on:

"The 300 MW / 450 MWh battery will consist of 210 Tesla Megapacks covering an area smaller than the football oval at Geelong’s GMHBA Stadium"

https://victorianbigbattery.com.au/

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

#300

Post by bserge »

ben_w wrote: post #259
rsj_hn wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breeder reactors can create more fuel, but even without these, there is a substantial amount of uranium that this is a non-issue. By the same token, solar is also non-renewable since it requires real resources mined from the earth which are in finite supply and solar panels are not 100% recyclable (and especially not the batteries required to make solar reliable). In this sense, nothing is renewable -- even hydro wil…

> solar panels are not 100% recyclable (and especially not the batteries required to make solar reliable) While I can believe that we don’t have a current recycling chain set up for these, I absolutely do not believe that they are genuinely non-recyclable. We make both of these out of a variety of literal rocks, extracting trace elements and purifying them greatly in the process of manufacture. Even in the worst case…

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