131–140 of 430 posts
... and yet Germany looks awful on https://app.electricitymaps.com/map . Is that a measurement problem, or something else that we should know?
On this map Germany always looks bad until you zoom out enough to see the USA.
That’s such a random claim to make…
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This is why Germany produces almost 10 times as much CO2 per kWh as France. https://abload.de/img/img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg It's mind boggling.
It's.. complicated. Nuclear is super clean at the consumption site, but not super clean at the mining site [0]. And then there's the problem that France's access to cheap uranium is a relic of extractive colonialism, and these countries don't exactly see the fair profits from France's hunger for energy [1]. So yes, France's energy is cleaner, but it's a complicated picture. [0] https://meta.eeb.org/2017/10/18/french-…
It's almost certainly not complicated. The CO2 produced by mining uranium is irrelevant compared to the CO2 produced by burning coal fuel.
> And then there's the problem that France's access to cheap uranium is a relic of extractive colonialism, and these countries don't exactly see the fair profits from France's hunger for energy [1].
Uranium is not a large contributor to nuclear energy cost anyway, so this is no argument against nuclear energy.
> So yes, France's energy is cleaner, but it's a complicated picture.
I don't see how it is "complicated". Nuclear is clearly much better than Germany's coal+renewable. (Renewable-only was not an option since wind and solar are extremely volatile.)
Electricity, maybe. Energy? I wish. This headline would be more true if we had transportation fully electrified and all buildings heated with heat pumps, but last I heard the proposed law to require the latter transition to be started in 2024 was dropped again, and they're also still debating about starting to require transitioning the combustion engine fleets to electric by, what was it, 2030? I also still see stick…
Heating is one thing we have tackle, but also transportation which uses up 27.1% of energy in German. Individual transportation should be a main target, we would all shift from cars to public transport or bicycles. About 40% of distances driven with cars are shorter than 5 kilometers, a distance that's perfect for a bicycle. On top of that, car owners tend to underestimate the cost of their cars[1] [0] https://www.um…
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They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before. Nuclear and coal are getting continuously replaced by renewables. Coal end date is set to either 2030 or 2038 (I forget). The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe and it will not do anything about it for 10-20 years because it wants to build nuclear plants.
You can build both nuclear and solar and wind at the same time. Poland will stick to coal because of local economic interests, it has nothing to do with nuclear. > They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before. Well.. there is no reason why there shouldn’t be zero coal use before anyone starts shutting sown nuclear power plants. For one thing the issues with nuclear waste…
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They absolutely were counterfactually. If nuclear power hadn't been shut down, much less coal energy would have been needed.
They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before. Nuclear and coal are getting continuously replaced by renewables. Coal end date is set to either 2030 or 2038 (I forget). The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe and it will not do anything about it for 10-20 years because it wants to build nuclear plants.
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Maybe this is my tech bubble, but try to find a country with higher Linux/PGP/OpenStreetMap use. I am still trying to put my finger on what the culture difference is precisely, but also outside of tech there's more thinking about what the right/correct/fair thing to do is, even if that brings greater net harm in the end. Example: closing down nuclear because it's not a perfect solution and has risks and waste (ignori…
With all due respect, renewables are not decades away, they are at a major inflection point right now. While I deplore the shuttering of Germany's NPPs, nuclear would not have been a solution to the decarbonization challenge, as the times to build NPPs and the costs are prohibitive. Renewables are the cheapest source of energy right here and now, we should invest way more into researching grid-scale storage solutions…
Only winter sucks because the heat pump is less efficient when it's cold. Would be great to have better storage for the grid to get cheaper energy during that time.
... and yet Germany looks awful on https://app.electricitymaps.com/map . Is that a measurement problem, or something else that we should know?
This is only an example. Also CO2 emissions per capita does not provide us with a complete picture. (For example, if a country emits CO2 in the production of export goods, to what extent should the emissions actually be attributed to the importing countries?) By phasing out nuclear energy, Germany has made a major contribution to environmental protection. However, since this is a completely different category of environmental protection, it cannot objectively be offset against presumably associated CO2 emissions. In an open democratic society, such considerations are therefore not the task of a technical elite, but of the people as a whole. As an individual, of course, one can always take a different view of such majority opinions on the matter and campaign for them to be revised. However, one should always be aware that the weighing of such alternatives is fundamentally opinionated.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-per-capita-marimekko?...
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It's.. complicated. Nuclear is super clean at the consumption site, but not super clean at the mining site [0]. And then there's the problem that France's access to cheap uranium is a relic of extractive colonialism, and these countries don't exactly see the fair profits from France's hunger for energy [1]. So yes, France's energy is cleaner, but it's a complicated picture. [0] https://meta.eeb.org/2017/10/18/french-…
> It's.. complicated. Nuclear is super clean at the consumption site, but not super clean at the mining site [0]. It's almost certainly not complicated. The CO2 produced by mining uranium is irrelevant compared to the CO2 produced by burning coal fuel. > And then there's the problem that France's access to cheap uranium is a relic of extractive colonialism, and these countries don't exactly see the fair profits from…
Electricity, maybe. Energy? I wish. This headline would be more true if we had transportation fully electrified and all buildings heated with heat pumps, but last I heard the proposed law to require the latter transition to be started in 2024 was dropped again, and they're also still debating about starting to require transitioning the combustion engine fleets to electric by, what was it, 2030? I also still see stick…
In the meantime, Switzerland is installing solar panels on train tracks [0] instead of, I don't know, people's roofs. There is so much promising tech coming out in terms of energy storage and we're seeing almost zero investment from governments. Everything's backwards. [0] https://www.techspot.com/news/98944-switzerland-installing-s...
Electricity, maybe. Energy? I wish. This headline would be more true if we had transportation fully electrified and all buildings heated with heat pumps, but last I heard the proposed law to require the latter transition to be started in 2024 was dropped again, and they're also still debating about starting to require transitioning the combustion engine fleets to electric by, what was it, 2030? I also still see stick…
The issue in Germany is that this transition is expensive, even more so after 16 years of decay of everything from the past coalitions. And that makes the current coalition unpopular, along with an eternaly bickering liberals(in nothing but name) trying to block any spending. Add onto that Conservative tabloids continously firing against green with every scrap they can get, and we're looking at fascists polling over…
In fact I kinda hope they are a lobby financed agitprop operation because I couldn't think of a more entitled group outside of the London Houses of Parliament