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Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

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51–60 of 364 posts

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#51
post #18

So... why is fuel 25% cheaper in Slovenia than in the neighbouring country while Solvenia is simultaneously having issues with running out of fuel? Seems like the obvious solution is to raise prices so people stop driving to your country (wasting fuel, ironically) to take your cheap fuel instead of just paying for the fuel in their own country. More than that it's a solution the free market would actually find on its…

Price increases tend to be regressive—the poor person who needs a little fuel to get to their job is hurt more than the large business that uses a lot more fuel but has much, much more money overall. There are things you can do to try and even things out. Etherium has been considering “quadratic voting” to solve a similar problem (in this case, that would look like tracking consumption and increasing the unit price o…

I'm totally ignorant as to Slovenia, but as a general comment on taxation regressive price increases/externality taxes/sin taxes are easily made up for by simply giving everyone a fixed sum of money (that can either be gathered specifically through the regressive tax or just through the normal non-regressive tax pool).

Ethereum has the weird issue where "votes" and "money" are different things and they only want to redistribute votes and not money, but that's not a problem here...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#52

Scanning some of the early comments here, and acting as-if the oil and LNG disruptions is just a question of renewable investment is naive. This is the worst energy crisis in modern history, and little of the western world has really started feeling the effects yet: https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-energy/iran-war-... Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cook…

> Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cooking oils, lubricants, cosmetics. Dow chemical just doubled the cost of polyethylene as of April 1st. Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has like 10 days of fuel left--semis are implicated.

This is, on the high end, 20% of the use of fossil fuels. We overwhelmingly burn oil and gas. If we displaced the burning, Hormuz would not matter (or would minimally matter for a few molecules) and the world would be awash in abundant supplies.

Renewable investment would solve/would have prevented this crisis.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#53
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BYD EVs are affordable. Electricity will get cheaper with more renewables, oil will not.

Define affordable. A €40k Seal is anything but affordable. Eastern Europe (and I don't put Slovenia in this case here, they are much closer to Western Europe in every sense) will not mass change to EVs suddenly when everyone is shopping for 10 years old diesels from Western Europe for maximum €10k

If you think the Seal isn't affordable then don't buy one.

You can buy a brand new Dacia Spring for only £12,240. Personally I don't think it's a great car but it's certainly doesn't cost 40K.

If it were my money I'd spend a bit more on either a used Jag ePace or a Renault 5 but some people prefer new cars I guess.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#54

Scanning some of the early comments here, and acting as-if the oil and LNG disruptions is just a question of renewable investment is naive. This is the worst energy crisis in modern history, and little of the western world has really started feeling the effects yet: https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-energy/iran-war-... Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cook…

> Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cooking oils, lubricants, cosmetics. Dow chemical just doubled the cost of polyethylene as of April 1st. Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has like 10 days of fuel left--semis are implicated. This is, on the high end, 20% of the use of fossil fuels. We overwhelmingly burn oil and gas. If we displaced the bur…

You can't provide heating in winter using renewables.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#55
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cooking oils, lubricants, cosmetics. Dow chemical just doubled the cost of polyethylene as of April 1st. Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has like 10 days of fuel left--semis are implicated. This is, on the high end, 20% of the use of fossil fuels. We overwhelmingly burn oil and gas. If we displaced the bur…

You can't provide heating in winter using renewables.

...you can? Electric heaters exist?

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#56
post #18

So... why is fuel 25% cheaper in Slovenia than in the neighbouring country while Solvenia is simultaneously having issues with running out of fuel? Seems like the obvious solution is to raise prices so people stop driving to your country (wasting fuel, ironically) to take your cheap fuel instead of just paying for the fuel in their own country. More than that it's a solution the free market would actually find on its…

Fuel prices are regulated here, and we had an election right now and a huge gas price hike would be bad for the current government (not decided yet if they stay or go). The government basically lowered the gas tax for a bit to keep prices stable (they also raised the gas taxes during covid to keep the prices "stable").

The prices will go up soon, that's why everyone is panicking and filling up canisters of gas.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#57
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't provide heating in winter using renewables.

...you can? Electric heaters exist?

Always worth mentioning we should be using heat pumps, not straight resistive heating.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cooking oils, lubricants, cosmetics. Dow chemical just doubled the cost of polyethylene as of April 1st. Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has like 10 days of fuel left--semis are implicated. This is, on the high end, 20% of the use of fossil fuels. We overwhelmingly burn oil and gas. If we displaced the bur…

You can't provide heating in winter using renewables.

You can, and should, over the entirety of europe apart from the northern parts of the nordic countries electric heat pumps are now simply more efficient than gas powered furnaces. This is true even if powered by gas based electricity - but obviously makes it possible to power them via renewables as well.

People in Quebec (Canada), which is colder than just about all of Europe, have been providing heating in winter using renewables for decades (thanks to an excess of renewables).

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#59
post #58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't provide heating in winter using renewables.

You can, and should, over the entirety of europe apart from the northern parts of the nordic countries electric heat pumps are now simply more efficient than gas powered furnaces. This is true even if powered by gas based electricity - but obviously makes it possible to power them via renewables as well. People in Quebec (Canada), which is colder than just about all of Europe, have been providing heating in winter us…

most of the countries don't have enough hydro to make it feasible

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#60
post #59
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, and should, over the entirety of europe apart from the northern parts of the nordic countries electric heat pumps are now simply more efficient than gas powered furnaces. This is true even if powered by gas based electricity - but obviously makes it possible to power them via renewables as well. People in Quebec (Canada), which is colder than just about all of Europe, have been providing heating in winter us…

most of the countries don't have enough hydro to make it feasible

Yeah, but now wind and solar have made it feasible just about everywhere.
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