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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

#491

Post by eigenspace »

m4rtink wrote: post #477
grumbelbart wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It is in general (much) more efficient to burn natural gas in a power plant and use the electricity for heatpumps compared to simply burning gas at home for heating.

Yeah, in combined cycle plants you burn the natural gas first in a gas turbine first, use the waste heat from that to boil water and run steam turbine. Then condense the steam using your district heating circuit. You can say this is 100% efficient as you make some electricity and the rest does house heating.

Definitely not 100% efficient, but it can still hit a much higher efficiency than without the heat recovery

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#492

Post by FrostViper8 »

doublerabbit wrote: post #158
FrostViper8 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A supermarket shop for the basic essentials (cheese, eggs, flour, vegetables) now come to around $60/80 a trip. No it doesn't. Maybe if you are shopping at Waitrose. It is more expensive. But it isn't £45 for basics. I did an entire shop which will last me the week for £30 (in Aldi).

I shop at Sainsburys where I can. The main supermarkets for me are Morrison and kind of forced to use M&S. Everyone has their super market preference. ASDA would be cheaper still. You can't disagree that prices have sky rocketed, shrunk in quantity and now lower quality.

I am not denying there is inflation and shrinkflation. However I kept my bill in check by doing the bulk of my shopping and cheaper stores e.g. Aldi (quality of most stuff is comparable to more expensive super markets) and only spending more when it makes sense.

The vast majority of the public doesn't understand what causes inflation or that there is a difference between monetary and price inflation and energy is part of that.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#493

Post by tsoukase »

All these milestones of renewables Vs fossils are low hanging fruits. Sometime soon they will hit a wall of diminishing returns: more solar improves nothing.

Also, if a large share of heating and transportation converts to electricity then renewables will become a single digit share and we are back to burning. We desperately need a new breakthrough energy saving technology from summer to winter/vehicle, either electrical or chemical. I bet on hydrogen/eFuel. Or else nuclear.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#494

Post by troyvit »

monero-xmr wrote: post #363
danny_codes wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is a classic case of underestimating how far manufacturing improvements can get you on the cost scale. You see a promising technology in the lab and it’s hard to imagine a 1 million x reduction in price, yet we see that time and time again as tech gets scaled out. What’s wild to me is how the US is leaving itself in the dust. How the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce el…

I mean where are all the factories making batteries in Europe? It’s not like the US is purposefully preventing battery tech. It’s why all of the government-funded solar companies imploded as well. The manufacturers do not compete

They're in Europe and they produce a lot of batteries. The caveat is that 80% of the investment money came from LG, a South Korean company.

https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/europe-has-solid-basis-batt...

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#495

Post by midlander »

epolanski wrote: post #403
coryrc wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's convenient the Islamic countries don't seem to mind their coreligonists being persecuted here, especially as these people haven't launched military invasions of neighboring regions.

Islamic countries, especially the Arab ones barely said anything in face of the genocide in Gaza. Hell, more journalists have died reporting in Gaza than in WW2, Vietnam, Iraq and Afganistan combined and nobody gives two damns.

Many Hamas members had day-jobs as “journalists”, meaning they worked on producing content for Hamas. Many of them took part in the invasion of Israel on Oct 7th taking selfies with and clips of the gruesome massacres as they were unfolding.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#496

Post by epolanski »

lejalv wrote: post #467
epolanski wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ain't gonna use the dishwasher when the system wants me to, but when I can or want. I pay low energy prices during night than day, that's normal, but I'm still not gonna do laundry at 9 pm, I'd rather pay the 10/20 cents more during the day.

I do time my dishwasher and washing machine to align with peak solar where I live. I'd like to appeal to you to evolve that frame of mind. To help avoid first world problems (I can't wash a dish by hand, I need it now ) devolving into third-world ones (power cuts, crop failures, torrid tropical nights on mid latitudes, mountains disintegrated). Sometimes its important to remind we're on a generational mission, and it…

I don't like your feedback, it's condescending and you know nothing about me.

1. In my area 96% of energy is gas-based. I live in Rome, Italy. It's written in my energy bill. I ain't got no solar. Night or day it's mostly a matter of relatively small changes of demand.

2. If you want to do something real for the environment change your diet! I'm sick of this neverending focus on energy when the biggest impact you can have is by eating way less meat, cattle in particular. On that I am very sensitive. And me deciding to have less burgers and steaks across an year has magnitude of order more impact than your silly dishwasher. Do the math. As I am on transport where instead of pretending to be green by buying 3 tonnes electric SUVs on a lease from US lunatics I use public transport and use my old beaten car sparely in the weekends.

Spare me your nonsense because I ain't gonna be thinking about running a noisy dishwasher in my living room at 9 pm, the only moment of relax and peace for my family because of negligible-to-nonexistent impact on the environment.

And just to add, I don't even own AC, and I can assure you it gets 40C/100+ Fahrenheit, with high humidity in Rome at summer. That's how sensitive I am to the topic.

You know nothing about the people you interact with.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#497

Post by thinkcontext »

buckle8017 wrote: post #380
softwaredoug wrote: post #288

It used to be the big worry among climate activists that you'd never get every country organize and move in one direction. Like you'd need some global body to clean everything up. That's very fragile. Luckily, we're moving to a world where a disjoint, self-interested response can be an advantage. Countries decide, for their own selfish reasons, to adopt green energy. For energy independence, affordability, clean air,…

Oil the west doesn't use isn't magically staying in the ground. Middle and low income countries (most notably China) increased consumption is more than offsetting reductions from high income countries.

More than 50% of cars sold in China now come with a plug, on top of the most of the buses and 2 wheelers. Most analysts say they have plateaued and will begin declining in the next few years. They also are beginning to ramp up EV exports to other developing economies.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#498

Post by monero-xmr »

troyvit wrote: post #494
monero-xmr wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean where are all the factories making batteries in Europe? It’s not like the US is purposefully preventing battery tech. It’s why all of the government-funded solar companies imploded as well. The manufacturers do not compete

They're in Europe and they produce a lot of batteries. The caveat is that 80% of the investment money came from LG, a South Korean company. https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/europe-has-solid-basis-batt...

There’s the former darling Northvolt. Took a lot of state money and then imploded https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/12/ev-battery-...

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#499

Post by FrostViper8 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #421
doublerabbit wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any energy security for the future for the UK unfortunately. We sold ourselves short during the GW/Blair Neo-labour era. Scotland maybe, they have wind-farms but the UK likes to tax that. We've just started the era of paying for the cost of Brexit. It's hitting hard. My weekly supermarket shop for the basic essentials (cheese, eggs, flour, vegetables) now come to around $60/80 a trip. Parmesan Cheese is a…

> compared to the US $7–$24+ per kg. thats per pound (lb). Given that you can't make parmesan in the UK AND its historically expensive (see samual peypes) it seems an odd choice to pin your argument on. > We sold ourselves short during the GW/Blair Neo-labour era. I mean we really didn't it was a period of great productivity and a massive boost in living standards almost universally.

I think they are probably buying the most expensive of everything in the shop. I can get everything for about £30-40 in Aldi.

> I mean we really didn't it was a period of great productivity and a massive boost in living standards almost universally.

A huge amount of wealth was also created under Thatcher but also a huge amount of wealth inequality. Blair didn't really change anything initially and continued their policies.

Remember that period ended with the Global Financial Crisis and an large increase of deficit spending.

There is also other problems with the Blair government. There was our involvement in the war in Afghanistan/Iraq, some of the iffy terrorism legislation amongst other things.

So like with a lot of things it was a mixed bag.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#500

Post by rfrey »

coryrc wrote: post #488
rfrey wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 crim…

It's pure pedantry to distinguish between "user pay" and "progressive fees" based on usage. You're advocating for private payments on public infrastructure, it doesn't make it socialism just because it's infrastructure you disapprove of.
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