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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#481

Post by youngtaff »

owenversteeg wrote: post #300
eigenspace wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be rather misleading to to talk about renewable energy generation versus total energy usage. Most uses of fossil fuels are very inefficient. For instance, when you step on the accelerator in your car, only around 30% of the energy in the fuel you use actually is being used to propel you forward. The majority of the energy is wasted as heat. In a power plant that's more like 70% being captured and going towards…

I mostly agree. Certainly transportation is an obvious one. But of course there are still some losses; when you include all the losses in the system and cold weather you can easily get ~80% for EVs vs. ~30% for ICE cars. Heat pumps can be very efficient, but 5x more efficient than combustion/resistive heating (which is near 100%...) is not common in practice. 3x, sure, plenty of installations that get that or better…

> Road transport represents ~26% of global energy use

Does that 26% include the energy that's involved to ship the fuel in tankers?

Something like 50% of marine fuel usage is shipping fossil fuels around the world

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#482

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

IshKebab wrote: post #396
pranavj wrote: post #113

The most underreported part of this story is the battery piece at the end. Batteries are beginning to displace natural gas in evening peak hours - that's the exact window where solar critics have long argued renewables fall short. If this trend accelerates (and battery prices are dropping faster than most models predicted), the "intermittency problem" starts looking more like a solvable engineering challenge than a f…

The problem with solar isn't the night. Getting enough batteries to cover that is totally doable. The issue is the winter. And not even because of fewer daylight hours - on sunny winter days there is usually still a good amount of solar. The problem is its often very cloudy in the winter. In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days in a row where solar output is virtually zero. I don't know what th…

Keep some of the existing natural gas plants around as an emergency reserve. Run them on hydrogen or hydrogen derivatives for zero carbon fuel, if the emissions are large enough to matter.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#483

Post by nradov »

zdp7 wrote: post #476
nradov wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so that implies there's no need for homeowner subsidies in wealthy, developed countries.

Not really, unless you are just guessing. A quick read shows that solar gained popularity because of an unreliable grid and a removal of subsidies on diesel. Solar ended up being the cheaper and more reliable option. Labor costs for installation are also lower. In remote areas you may not even have a grid option. Simple general assumptions don't hold across vastly different geopolitical circumstances.

Right, so there's still no need for subsidies.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#484

Post by two_handfuls »

SamPatt wrote: post #229
embedding-shape wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however. What kind of selfish point of view is this? Don't you want people to use energy sources that are better for our entire world, even if it costs you like $10 more in taxes per year? Seems like a no brainer deal if you like "the outside" and you want it to still be there. I'm a…

>I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me. That's because you're rich like most people on HN. Environmental protection is a luxury good. This has been proven time and time again. A great reason to prioritize growth and wealth creation. Poor countries don't make those tradeoffs, they're worried about survival not what percentage of their ene…

> Environmental protection is a luxury good. This has been proven time and time again.

I see this lie repeated in many places. Environmental protection is much, much cheaper than the alternative.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#485

Post by coryrc »

rfrey wrote: post #427
coryrc wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. As soon as the roads are all paying best-possible-use property tax for the space they take up and it's completely paid by automobiles, in addition to all maintenance, we should try to proportionally assign dedicated bicycle infrastructure costs toward bicycle users, now and anticipated. 2. Everyone is a pedestrian.

People accuse communists of being unrealistic idealists, but they have nothing on the libertarians.

That's the first I've heard of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax (and, less directly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism ) being libertarian!

fuck cars

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#486

Post by SamPatt »

triceratops wrote: post #356
AlexandrB wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada should invest in Nuclear. Solar is far less efficient in Canada than somewhere like California - whether rooftop or utility-scale. The short winter days, low angle of incidence, and snow means that panels are basically non-operative for 3-4 months a year. This is a huge problem if you also want people to switch to efficient electric-powered heating in the form of heat pumps.

Canada already has lots of nuclear: https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent... The efficiency of solar does not matter in 2026. Panels are so cheap that just you don't have to think about it if you have abundant land. If solar is 4x less productive in the winter you just build 4x as many panels. Panels have to be angled more vertical the further north you go so the snow will just slide off. They…

Everything has tradeoffs - those panels themselves take energy and rare earth minerals to create, and getting both of those requires pollution, primarily in China where they have lower standards than western nations.

So filling Canada with panels because they're cheap isn't likely the best environmental choice, on net. Though I admit I haven't done the math here, it's just an intuition that "just build 4x panels" isn't the solution.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#487

Post by rfrey »

coryrc wrote: post #485
rfrey wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People accuse communists of being unrealistic idealists, but they have nothing on the libertarians.

That's the first I've heard of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax (and, less directly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism ) being libertarian! fuck cars

User pay formerly-public-infrastructure is what I identified as libertarian. Would you also advocate for residents of high crime areas to pay more taxes for police coverage?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#488

Post by coryrc »

rfrey wrote: post #487
coryrc wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the first I've heard of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax (and, less directly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism ) being libertarian! fuck cars

User pay formerly-public-infrastructure is what I identified as libertarian. Would you also advocate for residents of high crime areas to pay more taxes for police coverage?

"User pay" is typically associated with regressive per-use taxes. It's perfectly compatible with socialism to ensure the cost of the road system is applied to only automobile users in a progressive manner. Relatedly, Finland moving violation fines are not a fixed fee and are proportional to income: https://nri.today/wealthy-speedsters-beware-finlands-million... Stop thinking "cars=default", they are not.

Legally criminal actions are violations against the state, which is why a prosecutor decides whether to file charges and does not need the consent of the victim to do so. We already have what you suggest with civil law and private security.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#489

Post by direwolf20 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #383
direwolf20 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you compensate your neighbors for the loss of garden view caused by your house?

Is that something you usually have to pay your neighbors where you live? If you put up some ugly thing in your garden you have to pay your neighbors?

Sam said he doesn't force other people to pay for things he loves, so I'm wondering how he doesn't force his neighbors to pay for his house with their view.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#490

Post by direwolf20 »

epolanski wrote: post #404
direwolf20 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one country that still produces goods rather than switching to complete financialization!

Just to point out, but producing goods in exchange for pieced of paper is a weak system, especially if it's focus is export and not internal consumption, see Germany, Japan, Italy or China, all slowing down due to their reliance on exports.

To stay strong, you have to keep exercising your muscles or they will atrophy. To stay smart, you have to keep exercising your brain. To be able to produce stuff, you have to keep producing stuff no matter which country it goes to.
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