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

301–310 of 451 posts

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

#301

Post by MomoXenosaga »

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.

Nuclear is gonna take 20 years at minimum for the Netherlands, it's not the money but the red tape.

And no amount of money can make the bureaucracy work faster. It's been tried.

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

#302

Post by csee »

drran wrote: post #9
hadrien01 wrote: post #4

Nuclear I can understand. But gas?

Yeah, nuclear is very green. Just look at Chornobyl: it's very green with lots of wild life. But gas?

Gas kills 40x more people than nuclear, notwithstanding climate change impact.

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

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

#303

Post by funklute »

locallost wrote: post #298
funklute wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> No, the debate I was having was about the explicit mention of "increasing CO2", which is just plain false.

In the context it seems pretty clear to me that "increasing CO2" is meant to refer to relative changes, not absolute changes. Playing semantics is a fairly pointless distraction from the actual argument.

So, as I asked before, how would these changes compare to projected decreases, if the nuclear plants were not switched off?

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

#304

Post by cm2187 »

donny2018 wrote: post #216
fennecfoxen wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At the current pace, 30,000 years sounds about right,

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

#305

Post by gefhfffh »

hansel_der wrote: post #265
gefhfffh wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those reactors are a castle in the air and your comment regarding bio gas misses the point. The idea is to label non renewable gas as green.

> The idea is to label non renewable gas as green. yes, but the document mandates that the gas has to be from renewable sources by 2035

It does? The article says "low carbon"

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

#306

Post by _hypx »

yholio wrote: post #35
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.

> plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035. It's a handout to the dying hydrogen industry of which EU was a huge supporter of. The electric revolution killed any chances of hydrogen powered cars, and the new hype in the industry is using excess renewable electricity to store in hydrogen batteries, which would then supply process heat or residential heating with zero emissions. This is all a bunch of crap…

Efficiency is quite irrelevant to this subject when the cost of energy is nearly zero. Hydrogen will win out simply because it is cheaper and more sustainable than batteries.

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

#307

Post by Krasnol »

onethought wrote: post #190
arcticbull wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about pollution and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. These are the same thing in common parlance. High CO2 emission plants are fossil fuel driven, and those are of course non-renewable. Wind, solar and nuclear are renewable, sustainable and low CO2. Nuclear in particular also produces very little waste a…

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?

You're missing the fact that many EU countries failed to invest into renewables in the recent year and now need to greenwash what they have instead...

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

#308

Post by _hypx »

Gwypaas wrote: post #48
user_7832 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious on why you're pessimistic on hydrogen. I agree that cars are likely not the best use of fuel cells (heavy vehicles are able to utilize H2's strengths much more), but in a future based on renewables hydrogen allows you to store energy in a very dense way. Lithium batteries are acceptably heavy/expensive at small scales, but how do you think will supply vary to meet demand in the medium-long term without a…

Call it a solution in search of a problem. The best fuel cells today reach about 50% round trip efficiency. That's even a high estimate. That by physics defines the price difference between where you buy low and sell high. Without even counting the hydrogen storage, fuel cell itself and everything needed to make it function. That number also defines the arbitrage marginal any other solution has against hydrogen. Be i…

The best fuel cells already reach >70% efficiency.

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

#309

Post by locallost »

Whoever builds nuclear plants because of this, I hope they get more bang for their buck than South Carolina. Years and years of planning and building, $9B spent, only to cancel the project with nothing to show for it.

Also as a German resident and tax payer, I'm pretty pissed off that I'm on the hook for about $150B for the disposal of old nuclear waste from nuclear power plants. If this is now a green solution, I hope at least the disposal has to be a part of the business plan, instead of pretending it doesn't exist and dumping it on the public first chance they get.

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

#310

Post by MomoXenosaga »

danjac wrote: post #284
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.

When Putin wanted a good return on his bought-and-paid-for lackeys in European governments.

Ah yes Russia has limitless amount of money to control the EU despite having the GDP of Italy. Putin is personally sabotaging the magical technology that can replace natural gas instantly!

The real reason why we're dependent on gas is because the eco warriors shut down coal powerplants and nuclear has been dead since 1987. Don't blame Russia for our own incompetence.

Post reply on HN