Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

Post by atoav » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 6:53 AM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #143

atoav wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone who runs a mineral water company. His biggest expense was the energy cost for washing the glas bottles. He now built a absolutely massive solar farm that feeds directly into heating a well insulated underground water tank. At the time he told me about it (ca two years ago) he said according to his research it is not unlikely to be the biggest such hot water storage in Europe. The amount of energy neede…

Was this electric or direct water heating?

Post by sajithdilshan » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 8:03 AM UTC

alpineman wrote: post #261

sajithdilshan wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plants don't feel pain as pain is generally understood. we don't know that for sure. just to be safe don't eat plants or plant based products too. Eat dirt, that's 100% safe and also feed your children dirt too. The evolution would do the rest and rid your genes from the gene pool

Absurd example, dig at my kids, no counterargument. That's the online equivalent of conceding the argument. Nice one.

Post by ragebol » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 8:45 AM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #145

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but by a weird coincidence most of that heat can be provided by heat pumps at a similar 3-5x ratio.

(it's not a coincidence, it's the exact opposite formula. You can only get 20% out of a certain heat engine because running it in reverse would be a 500% efficient heat pump, and the closed loop can't be more than 100%. This still applies even if the engine isn't built to be able to act as a heat pump, because some other engine could.)

Post by nec4b » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 9:02 AM UTC

alpineman wrote: post #179

softwaredoug wrote: post #107

The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat. A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2]. Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-im…

Yeah, plus the ethical angle. It's a bit ridiculous that we have people researching the 'theoretical ethical treatment of LLMs' when we are doing such awful things to animals on a massive scale. We have dogs and cats as pets and we eat cows and pigs (in Western countries). As if cows and pigs didn't also have personalities, memories, parental bonds, the ability to feel pain. It's a mass wilful ignorance. What's the d…

Post by uecker » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 10:24 AM UTC

realusername wrote: post #77

Krasnol wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found). Maybe you should take a closer look how those prices come to be. Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades. Last time they wanted to play the free market game, they h…

> Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades. You won't find any grid which isn't subsidized, remember Germany already spent ~2x the French grid and that didn't spend by itself.