EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by Swenrekcah » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #371

Swenrekcah wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it cheaper than demand shaping/wind/solar/grid-scale batteries though? That's the real question. I believe that’s the wrong question to ask. We need nuclear to be cheaper and more attractive than coal and oil (and later natural gas). If grid scale batteries ever become a viable thing and cheaper than nuclear then that’s just great and eventually the nuclear plants can be phased out in favour of those. In the mea…

>If grid scale batteries ever become a viable thing and cheaper than nuclear then that’s just great Ok. So, what if that already happened? >In the meantime however The meantime is past. Arguably it lasted until latest 2020 which was the last time grid scale batteries were expensive. 2014 was the last time solar or wind were expensive. Meanwhile, if you tried to commission a new nuclear plant now it wouldnt be running…

If that already happened then that's great. It's the first I'm hearing about it but I don't work in the sector so that's fair.

Nevertheless nuclear energy is a steady and reliable source of large amounts of energy, just like coal and oil. By having a few of those, the grid operator can greatly decrease their need for grid-scale batteries, thus enabling more grids to deploy them faster, paving the way for more solar/wind.

This is not a competition between renewables and nuclear. They aren't enemies.

CO2 is the enemy, we must focus on that.

Point well taken about how long the nuclear projects take, that's why natural gas a bridge is important.

I want purely renewable energy just as much as you but I'm highly skeptical that it is possible or even desirable to build out all the capacity we need in just solar/wind/hydro in the short amount of time we have. Everything that helps, helps. Until the point where it doesn't and then that's the time to address that.

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

#382

Post by locallost » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #378

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...

Yeah, and the amount of power they export has about halved in the last year. They're just turning stuff off without a way to replace it which will bite us all in the ass in the long run. It's the classic outsource stuff to other nations and claim victory tactic that helps nobody.

The amount of power they export peaked 2015-2018, at more than twice the previous record. Most of the nuclear plants were switched off before that. It is currently still above what they exported prior to the "nuclear exit". Please check data before drawing conclusions.

Data: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/153533/umfrag...

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

#383

Post by loeg » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

kebman wrote: post #350

loeg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norwegian electricity appears to be maybe 1.50 krone per kWh including taxes this winter? Or about 0.17 USD per kWh? That’s not especially high, although it looks to be about double last year.

Not even close. I pay almost 4 kroner per kWh this month. Granted it varies a bit depending on the deal you've got. Mine's a monthly price. Some have hourly spot price, and some have a locked-in price.

Thanks. That’s like $0.45/kWh for US readers (very high, approximately the same as what Hawaiians pay for diesel electricity).

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

#384

Post by loeg » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #162

loeg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norwegian electricity appears to be maybe 1.50 krone per kWh including taxes this winter? Or about 0.17 USD per kWh? That’s not especially high, although it looks to be about double last year.

That's less than half of what I pay in Germany, are you sure that figure includes taxes and other fees levied on the end consumer? It sounds extremely cheap. The only other reference I have is the Netherlands which is a bit cheaper but not much. Just the pure kWh cost here is like upper 20s eurocents per kWh, plus about 10 euros per month fixed fee for metering and stuff (average household will consume a few hundred…

Germany has insanely high energy prices; it’s not a great point of comparison. In contrast, Norway is (was) a net exporter of cheap hydro power.

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

#385

Post by loeg » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #157

loeg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norwegian electricity appears to be maybe 1.50 krone per kWh including taxes this winter? Or about 0.17 USD per kWh? That’s not especially high, although it looks to be about double last year.

> That’s not especially high, although it looks to be about double last year. It's almost as if most people have budgets that can't so easily handle a doubling of their bills.

It really depends on how significant the bill was before. Just for example, electricity is about 3% of my monthly mortgage. If it doubled, it would not substantially impact my budget.

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

#386

Post by gibolt » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #226

gibolt wrote: post #218

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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…

Don't forget that all other plants except wind require constant fuel. Solar and batteries have negative fuel cost, since solar is free and batteries can store off peak electricity to sell for a higher price during peaks.

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

#387

Post by fennecfoxen » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

PoignardAzur wrote: post #289

xdennis wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Romania has basically no competitive advantage in the EU, except a cheaper workforce. Part of that advantage is that Romanian labor laws are less restrictive (the minimum wage is a third of the french one, for instance). So France had a choice between repelling labor laws to keep worker competitive, tell all french truckers they could kiss their job goodbye, or introducing some protectionism. I'm usually in favor o…

I find it's insightful that this the measure basically just about the wage, not about safety or any other standards, which they might actually apply to the whole EU.

> tell all french truckers they could kiss their job goodbye

This was likely the correct option. It is okay in these cases to give these people substantial funds to ease this transition: the cost of saving-jobs in the broader economy is usually many times worse than paying off the replaced workers directly.

For instance, the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that the annual cost to the US economy of a job-saved by either Trump or Biden "Buy American" policies averages about $250,000/job/yr. This is several times what the job pays. In the case of steel tariffs, the cost of a saved job is $900,000/yr.

Better to allow the foreigners to work, tax the economy, and pay the French truckers the amount of their old salary to do literally anything else of value. Of course, this will never happen. It makes too much sense.

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

#388

Post by iso1210 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

bpfrh wrote: post #344

iso1210 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 1kWh of gas is 6 cents, and a 1kWh battery is $100 and lasts for 10,000 cycles, that puts the price of the battery at 1 cent/kWh plus the charging cost (2c/kWh for solar) In addition, for Europe, the key part of removing Russia from the energy equation is worth a hell of a lot of money.

I can follow that, but isn't this problematic when there is a power needed when there is no wind/solar available for recharging and you still need more? e.g. we would need a much larger energy storage, than for gas?

Germany currently generates 50TWh per year of solar

On average that's 136GWh per day, lets assume that was spread so that it's say 36GWh per day in winter and far more in summer.

It consumes 500TWh a year.

Lets assume consumption is 1,400GWh per day evenly across the year. Consumption is higher in the day, so even with shorter days in winter lets make that half during daylight and half at night, 700GWh each.

If Germany increased its solar to 50 times as much as it currently has to generate 1800GWh a day in winter, it would require 700GWh of storage and a total of 1400GWh during the day.

There are 48 million cars in Germany, lets assume that 65% of them are parked overnight and connected to the electric grid, making it 30 million cars. Make them all electric, with with about 30kWh of "flexible" capacity for draining overnight (50% capacity) and filling up in the day per car. That's about 1,000 GWh of storage available overnight, enough to provide for the entirety of German electric consumption overnight.

During the summer when solar capacity would be three times as much, that excess capacity could be used to generate green hydrogen through electrolosis, used to do things like aluminium production, could be exported to neighbouring countries.

Now sure switching cars to fully electric would increase total usage of energy, about 2,000 kWh per car per year, say 100 TWh a year extra, but then there's a lot of wind generation in Germany (>100TWh) now which would offset that.

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

#389

Post by arcticbull » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

gefhfffh wrote: post #248

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 sustainable? Tell me more

Nuclear is definitely sustainable [1]. There's at least four billion tons of Uranium dissolved in seawater, enough to power humanity until the heat death of the universe [+]. We just have to figure out how to get it out. [2] The amount in the ocean is constantly replenished through geological activity so one could even make the case its renewable too.

[+] There's 5.5 million metric tons of known uranium deposits. Switching to breeder reactors, which produce more fuel than they consume, would allow that supply to match current generation capacity for 30,000 years. Then there's the 4.5 billion metric tons in seawater. That'll get us 15 million years worth of power.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-reasons-why-nuclear-cle...

[2] https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4514

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

#390

Post by locallost » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #362

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...

And they could be going down even faster by switching on the nuclear plants! But at least now Germany is prepared in case of a Fukushima style tsunami. Nobody claims that carbon emissions are increasing by an absolute number. Germany is investing heavily in green energy, but green energy won't be able to provide the necessary energy for years to come. Switching to their objectively worse power sources, both in terms…

You are making a series of assumptions that are either debatable or not true. We don't know how the alternate reality where the power plants are still on looks like. The biggest reason is that most of the plants that were switched off were scheduled to be taken offline anyway because they were old. It was only sped up because of Fukushima. When people talk about Fukushima, they usually say "well it was old technology, it can't happen with the new ones", but when Germany takes the old technology offline (we're talking about some designed in the 60s), then it's criticized for political posturing and FUD.

Secondly, I posted somewhere else, but the German tax payers are since 2017 on the hook for an estimated $170B of costs for the disposal of old nuclear waste from the plants. Greenpeace has criticized the deal as inadequate since the costs will likely be higher. The way I see it, a lot of money was saved by switching them off, and that money can be used for something else. The problem of nuclear waste is unsolved in most of the world, including the US, where there are already reports that the temporary storage is leaking. Another thing to consider.

But those are mostly just opinions and what ifs. Crucially however, you are assuming that green energy can't provide for years and that they switched to an objectively worse power source. It's just not true: they rely less on coal now then they did 10 years ago, and have increased the renewable part to 45% (from 30% just five years ago). The amount of coal in use now is at a historic minimum both in terms of the percentage and the absolute amount.

Data: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38... (coal is represented by brown and gray)