451–460 of 596 posts
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We don't have perfectly impact-free ways of creating energy. So using less energy to achieve the same goal is always better. And carbon dioxide is not the only pollutant that cars emit.
we dont have any way of 'creating' energy
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And yet, right now, solar is 20% of the electricity on the grid in Germany. Wind is 15% (per the electrictymaps app) Sure it would be better if it was a sunnier place, still...
You should see how much they’ve invested in solar to hit that mark, and how much capacity is being unutilized
Remember that, while prices have soared, electricity generation has not become more expensive. The "electricity crisis" is a crisis for European consumers but a massive windfall for producers. This is a market failure - not an electricity failure.
Well. I don't know where you live, but I'm not paying more than last year.
I read about soaring prices being an issue in the UK. Prices, here, in France are fixed twice a year by the energy commission. Right now, residential electricity increased by 4% last February and remained unchanged at the start of August. So it means that whatever is happening in the market, is not affecting us. Actually, I will probably have 2-3 months of cash back at the end of the year.
Not really a crisis, to be honest.
However I would be very interested to know what is the situation like for my fellow European citizens !
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> why nobody is doing anything about it > I've read somewhere Before wondering why someone, somewhere is not doing something, confirm that the thing is actually happening in the first place.
No idea about the Czech, but that's exactly what's happening in Norway. Due to trade agreements with the EU, we can not discriminate between national and EU customers when selling electricity. To be completely accurate, we aren't selling on a German exchange, we're selling on local ones, but those local exchanges are experiencing price pressure from EU customers due to export capacity recently being increased due to…
Countries like Norway, which have abundant, cheap, generation, are paying EEA prices in its highly interconnected bidding zones (NO1,NO2). The next few months, if prices persist, are likely to see lots of pressure from Norwegians to curtail exports (i.e. close off transmission capacity to EEA). This would significantly decrease prices for Norwegians, but damage the EU's integrity. The same can be said of other countries with abundant, cheap generation that are suffering the consequences of other EEA countries' actions w.r.t their electricity supply.
I say this as a supporter of the EU, but the integrated electricity market's future is in peril this winter.
Why in Spain is the electricity so cheap?
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That’s just a different problem we can’t solve, either.
Multiple solutions are already known, some better some worse. It's politics and economics that's in the way, and even then the world is changing.
Care to link to some?
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Is an investment foolish if it has a positive ROI? I live in Belgium, and even without subsidies and before the current increases in electricity prices, solar panels had a payback period of ~ 10 years (while they generally last ~ 25 years). Why would it be foolish to invest in this? You say that they would be 10x as efficient in Southwestern USA. But how would you transport the electricity from the USA to Germany? Is…
It's an opportunity cost, particularly in Germany against other RET investments such as nuclear/wind: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142152...
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Also, we barely use gas - price is mostly driven by coal.
I imagine Poland was much more paranoid than Germany about becoming overly dependent on Russian gas. Of course, now Germany is scrambling to turn coal plants back online.
This is not related to Russia.
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It has been happening here in Romania for more than a decade now, our previous president even called them out as “the smart guys from the power industry” (where “smart” was used in a derogatory way), of course that nothing came out of it all. There were also a couple of curious deaths happening in the industry (the head of our State-owned hydro company, who died in his late 30s, the local boss of a power utility, who…
Is that a recoil from the Eastern-Bloc era worship of intellectuals, or is it completely separate, or something else? Americans are often accused of undervaluing people who pursue intellectual professions and propping up "Joe the Plumber," which is why I ask.
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A huge fusion reactor in the sky that isn't available in the evening or when it's cloudy.
Remember that "transport" includes "to storage", which in turn includes some of the most efficient batteries in the form of connected reservoirs located at different heights so that gravity does the discharging work.
Electricity isn't stored, it is consumed.