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War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

economist.com

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Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#171

Post by throwaway4aday »

LatteLazy wrote: post #127
butler14 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a particularly cynical view from someone privileged enough to be able to afford solar panels. I have panels too. But I also have friends that can't pay their energy bill this month.

My solar panels were free, I got them in 2021. The local council installed them. They came the same week I applied and were really pleased to do it because they were under pressure as they're meant to get X household a month to hit an annual target and were badly behind. https://www.lbbd.gov.uk/news/2021/free-solar-panels-barking-... (there is now an income limit which I disagree with but whatever...) I told my neigh…

Is your house running off of the power the panels output or are you being paid for the power they generate?

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#172

Post by some_random »

hackandthink wrote: post #164
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suddenly so many people are actually pacifists, yeah I don't buy it either. And in their anti Western hatred they are willing to sacrifice a sovereign state to a Russian invasion. A question I pose to these people- after Ukraine what other land is Putin allowed to grab?

I do not support any party in this war, though I'm not really pacifist. It's not worth dying for NATO membership or an ukrainian Crimea. And nobody should be forced to fight in any war. It is about cost/benefit. If Ukraine would tell: We are looking for a compromise (no NATO membership, Crimea belongs to Russia, ...), I could change my mind and support them. If Russia would invade another country there's a new cost/b…

You don't think Russia would invade the Baltics? Or are they not west enough for you? Could you outline the difference between a Western country that Russia wouldn't dare invade vs nations that in your mind deserve to be ethnically cleansed?

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#173

Post by throwaway4aday »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9
whatever1 wrote: post #2

War and subsidies have turbocharged the LNG transition. There, I fixed the title.

Natural gas compliments renewables until battery storage and renewables overproduction pushes out natural gas. It also produces smaller amounts of CO2 per unit of electricity produced versus coal. Recently, there was an HN thread about large amounts of UK wind curtailment. The largest battery storage system in Europe just went live to provide grid services that’ll negate the need for natural gas to provide those serv…

> 100MW/107MWh

Oh good, only 3,000 more of these and things should be peachy.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#174

Post by SECProto »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42
pydry wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At no point does the article claim "war is good because it's spurring green energy spending" Instead it pretends it has significant upsides that are based upon a spurious theory. Realistically renewables require an intense amount of capital that this war has suddenly made a lot more expensive. This will hamper green energy investment - older plants will be kept running for longer, new green energy plants won't get b…

> spurious evidence Why are IEA forecasts spurious? > less crass form of war cheerleading Would the article be better if it just commented on the acceleration of investment in renewables, leaving unsaid the cause of said acceleration because some readers find it distasteful? This is one of the more surprisingly anti-intellectual threads I’ve seen on HN.

> Why are IEA forecasts spurious?

While I don't agree with the post you're replying to, the IEA has a long history of terrible predictions with renewable energy. Not sure if they've improved recently, but for the better part of two decades, they predicted negligible growth in the solar market, even after being contradicted every single year:

https://maartensteinbuch.com/2017/06/12/photovoltaic-growth-...

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#175

Post by toomuchtodo »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #173
toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas compliments renewables until battery storage and renewables overproduction pushes out natural gas. It also produces smaller amounts of CO2 per unit of electricity produced versus coal. Recently, there was an HN thread about large amounts of UK wind curtailment. The largest battery storage system in Europe just went live to provide grid services that’ll negate the need for natural gas to provide those serv…

> 100MW/107MWh Oh good, only 3,000 more of these and things should be peachy.

It’s a good thing then that Tesla is building 40GWh/year of storage at their new Megapack factory in Lathrop, CA, although the more utility scale storage manufacturing capacity built, the better. We’re going to need a lot as you mentioned, and they’re currently sold out for the next two and a half years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvSmMUdC_nA

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#176

Post by hackandthink »

some_random wrote: post #172
hackandthink wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not support any party in this war, though I'm not really pacifist. It's not worth dying for NATO membership or an ukrainian Crimea. And nobody should be forced to fight in any war. It is about cost/benefit. If Ukraine would tell: We are looking for a compromise (no NATO membership, Crimea belongs to Russia, ...), I could change my mind and support them. If Russia would invade another country there's a new cost/b…

You don't think Russia would invade the Baltics? Or are they not west enough for you? Could you outline the difference between a Western country that Russia wouldn't dare invade vs nations that in your mind deserve to be ethnically cleansed?

No country deserves to be ethnically cleansed.

I meant "western" geographically here.

I'm sure Russia won't invade the Baltics.

But I'm not sure that Russia will never invade Azərbaycan. (Azərbaycan has oil and is not in NATO and frome time to time they attack Armenia or Armenia attacks Azərbaycan).

I remember the second (Putin's) war in Tschetschenia. I've known since 20 years that Russia/Putin is ruthless.

How to deal with Russia? I actually opt for appeasement and containment.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#177

Post by jillesvangurp »

voqv wrote: post #156
jillesvangurp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, the main function of LNG long term will be to smooth the transition of households from burning gas for heating to using heat pumps. As LNG is expensive, people who can will switch sooner than later. Also, rolling out heat pumps is going to take a long time and some people will be dependent on gas for as long as that is going to take. A secondary role for LNG is to power gas peaker plants when renewables f…

Germany's steel and chemistry sector require large amounts of natural gas. In general, natural gas (currently LNG) was also to smooth a transition towards green hydrogen, the plan being to build infrastructure that can burn/store/use both, as explicitly stated by Federal ministries/agencies. > that plan is out of the window There hasn't been officially confirmed, soon there will be a report called "Power plant strate…

> There hasn't been officially confirmed, soon there will be a report called "Power plant strategy 2026" that will give a better outlook as to what is gonna happen this decade.

It's a highly political topic.

Blue hydrogen from LNG is more of a research topic / aspirational thing for the fossil fuel industry than it is an actual thing. This seems to be more of a talking point than something that is being done at scale with any decent capture of carbon.

LNG in the industry is of course a thing. Heating things is done with gas and coal mostly. A lot of that will have to be transitioned away to something else. Hydrogen might be an option. But some industries might also switch to other forms of heating. E.g. there are some ways to use electricity directly for this via things like induction or plasma heating. Historically, using fossil fuels was cheap. But when you are going to use vast amounts of electricity to generate green hydrogen for industrial heating use cases, this changes. Using the electricity directly might be more efficient in some cases.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#178

Post by LatteLazy »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #171
LatteLazy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solar panels were free, I got them in 2021. The local council installed them. They came the same week I applied and were really pleased to do it because they were under pressure as they're meant to get X household a month to hit an annual target and were badly behind. https://www.lbbd.gov.uk/news/2021/free-solar-panels-barking-... (there is now an income limit which I disagree with but whatever...) I told my neigh…

Is your house running off of the power the panels output or are you being paid for the power they generate?

If there is excess it goes back to the grid. I looked at a battery pack etc (more for reliability than profit...) but it didn't seem economically viable. I think if I had a wind turbine or if they keep cutting the feed in prices it would be?

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#179

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pydry wrote: post #132
kortilla wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure you’re familiar with supply and demand. The investment in green tech is driven by price of renewables compared to price of fossil fuels. A big decline in supply of fossil fuels (which is what has happened in Europe due to the war) shifts the trade-off significantly in favor of green energy. This shift can be so dramatic that it drives up the short term cost of green energy. That’s a good problem to have beca…

>I’m sure you’re familiar with supply and demand. Yes, that's precisely why I said that the cost of capital going up due to war (higher interest rates) would have a dampening effect on green energy which is very capital intensive. That's called "supply and demand in action". The pro war argument (the Economist's) would *ignore* this facet, arguing only "fossil fuels are more expensive -> green energy will definitely…

> why I said that the cost of capital going up due to war (higher interest rates) would have a dampening effect on green energy which is very capital intensive

If only someone looked at the rate of new and projected investment into green energy after a period of both (a) Russia invading Ukraine and (b) rising interest rates. They could write an article about it and clear up the confusion.

Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition

#180

Post by hackandthink »

_kbh_ wrote: post #165
hackandthink wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not support any party in this war, though I'm not really pacifist. It's not worth dying for NATO membership or an ukrainian Crimea. And nobody should be forced to fight in any war. It is about cost/benefit. If Ukraine would tell: We are looking for a compromise (no NATO membership, Crimea belongs to Russia, ...), I could change my mind and support them. If Russia would invade another country there's a new cost/b…

> It is about cost/benefit. This is truer then you know, the world must make the cost of Russia trying to take over another country so expensive both financially and militarily that they do not try this again. Don't forget Ukraine is not the first, Russia has invaded and sometimes even entirely annexed countries in the past. > If Ukraine would tell: We are looking for a compromise (no NATO membership, Crimea belongs…

Maybe I'm wrong. But I think John Mearsheimer got it right in 2014:

"Next, Putin put massive pressure on the new government in Kiev to discourage it from siding with the West against Moscow, making it clear that he would wreck Ukraine as a functioning state before he would allow it to become a Western stronghold on Russia’s doorstep."

This is happening now.

"Russia wants all of Ukraine, they want to subjugate them completely."

I don't think so. Russia annexed the territory it really wants. If Ukraine demilitarizes they would make a deal.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...

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