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EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

reuters.com

141–150 of 451 posts

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#141

There needs to be clearer terminology and labels for “green”, “sustainable”, “renewable”, “climate neutral” energy. I’d also like to throw in “democratic” in the mix. Because energy and foreign policy can’t be separated. The EU energy mix is going to be geopolitically very important in coming years. We also need to make it very clear what the goals are for each kind and where the tradeoffs are. I think right now the…

Isn't this the recipe for making science political?

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#142
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still kinda rediculus IMHO. Nuclear power it's climate but but environment/human friendly. So I can understand that. But natural gas isn't green however I look at it. It's clearly better then cush l coal, but but green. So it shouldn't be allowed to be labeled as such. Instead we should add a label for better but but really good tech, like yellow or so.

Natural gas can be green and reduce global warming… in the specific case where you burn methane that would have otherwise escaped to the atmosphere. Garbage dumps are a very good case to burn natural gas, get energy, and slow help the climate. But these sources are limited.

I believe that "natural gas" only refers to fossil gas, and other sources of Methane already have (different) marketing terms.

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#144
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> independent of eastern natural gas. It's interesting how trade relationships that are centuries old, are now seen in a negative context solely on a foreign policy basis that's often dictated from across the Atlantic. Particularly when they go completely contrary to the other stated goal; Climate change. Western Europe has been dependent on Eastern Europe's resources for a very long time, as Siberia is the largest c…

> Case in point; Germany's gas dependence, which is commonly framed as "Germany now uses more gas because it shut down nuclear reactors", when in reality only 14% of Germany's gas consumption is for electricity production [0]. If Germany used more nuclear, then more houses would probably start heating with electricity (or at least newly built houses), like in France.

Or, even better, district heating.

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#145
post #127

Nuclear investments desperately need to be recognized as green so you don't have oxymoronic policies similar to Germany's current plan where you're decommissioning nuclear to become more "green" yet producing much more carbon dioxide.

What Germany did was very quickly turn off all nuclear power plants without any plans on replacing them with sustainable alternatives. Now they're offline, what's done is done. France still has nuclear power plants, and they're really pushing for nuclear energy to be considered green. This is about investing and creating incentives. So IMHO Germany shouldn't build new plants and France shouldn't get EU funding for th…

Oh, they only a few days ago turned off a load more, reducing their nuclear capacity by half...just before winter.

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-germany-nuclear-reactors...

Which will increase the pressure upon Gas demand at a time that is probably one of the worst for a long time, let alone the usual winter pressure.

Shame nuclear didn't get that green EU label years ago when, as France could of green lit it's updated nuclear plant program instead of stagnating in limbo at a time in which many of their existing plants are entering end of life and with current timescales, would at best see a few pushed past that or some serious shortfalls in energy production.

As for Germany building new plants, with the public opinion, I would suspect that Germany's nuclear production is something they are happy to offshore to France and buy in that green energy cheaply without any of the political fallout/protests on it's doorstep.

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#146
post #20
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear is clearly green. We should repaint radiation warnings in green, to indicate that. > Gas is more interesting. At 500g/kwh it's on higher side normally. So there must be more to this. Nord Stream 2.

How about instead of "radiation bad", we look at more objective metrics, like deaths/CO2 per kWh: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy And instead of comparing nuclear to a magical zero-pollution/emission, flawlessly safe, always-available power source, we should compare it to what it actually gets replaced with.

If you include the deaths that nuclear waste will cause during the tens of thousands of years it remains radioactive it wouldn't be so positive.

But of course we can't look into the future. But we do know safe storage for such durations is not yet figured out. It's externalising the problem to the future. Just like CO2, but on a much longer timeframe. Still not very ethical though IMO.

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#148

For anyone wondering why gas, it's gas only in specific cases. > Investments in natural gas power plants would also be deemed green if they produce emissions below 270g of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour (kWh), replace a more polluting fossil fuel plant, receive a construction permit by Dec. 31 2030 and plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035.

Yes, it's oddly specific but apparently intended to allow countries to classify energy from such plants as "green" and treat it as such when buying/selling or taxing it. That is important because a lot of companies that are interested in buying green energy in order to reduce their carbon emissions would care about their energy being labeled as green. There is a lot of book keeping that is happening related to this a…

There is already a demand /production problem with, even without gas plants.. No idea what the plan is here..

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#149

For anyone wondering why gas, it's gas only in specific cases. > Investments in natural gas power plants would also be deemed green if they produce emissions below 270g of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour (kWh), replace a more polluting fossil fuel plant, receive a construction permit by Dec. 31 2030 and plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035.

Isn't it because of Nord Stream 2?

Re: EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

#150

For anyone wondering why gas, it's gas only in specific cases. > Investments in natural gas power plants would also be deemed green if they produce emissions below 270g of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour (kWh), replace a more polluting fossil fuel plant, receive a construction permit by Dec. 31 2030 and plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035.

It's still kinda rediculus IMHO. Nuclear power it's climate but but environment/human friendly. So I can understand that. But natural gas isn't green however I look at it. It's clearly better then cush l coal, but but green. So it shouldn't be allowed to be labeled as such. Instead we should add a label for better but but really good tech, like yellow or so.

It's politics. France has nuclear and Germany has a huge pipe to buy natural gas from Putin.
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