EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by pydry » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:15 AM UTC

donkarma wrote: post #186

protontypes wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the untruth. The German Green Party has never done this. The current Green government has clearly opposed it. The Green government in Austria also opposes it. https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/taxonomieverordnung-bundes...

funny how germany just decided to close half of their nuclear plants because they're scared of Chernobyl or something

It's weird how the risk of another Fukushima was successfully downplayed so much.

Obviously it's the sole world leader with a PhD in nuclear physics who is only one miscalculated the costs and risks. /s

Obviously the fact that 0 insurers would touch a nuclear plant without pushing liability for 99% of the cleanup costs onto the taxpayer doesnt mean it's not 100% safe. Right?

If the US nuclear industry's aging plants really were getting safer like they claim wouldnt they be happy to prove it by raising their liability cap a little bit above 0.1% of the cost of fukushima?

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

#242

Post by retrac » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:16 AM UTC

AYBABTME wrote: post #214

hammock wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did "green" get co-opted to mean low CO2 emissions? It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulate pollution, acid rain, habitat destruction and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that.

You can make methane from carbon capture/sabatier reactors. Although I'm not sure if that's any more efficient than desalination/hydrolysis for an H2 plant with fuel cells. In any case, I'm onboard with replacing coal with gas, if nuclear isn't an option. Gas is cheap and fast to build today, and can be supplanted by nuclear/renewable later on. A pragmatic middle ground to (hopefully temporarily) accommodate the nucl…

> Although I'm not sure if that's any more efficient than desalination/hydrolysis for an H2 plant with fuel cells.

One can make more than methane. Heavier liquid fuels like methanol, which is a great gasoline analogue, can also be synthesized.

Theoretically speaking, the most efficient way to split water is thermal decomposition at really, really high temperatures, with a catalyst. I've seen a variety of proposals to split water into hydrogen and fix the H2 as a hydrocarbon, with direct heating from both concentrated solar and nuclear. I don't know about the practical economics, though.

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

#243

Post by clusterfish » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

black3r wrote: post #15

onphonenow wrote: post #11

Nuclear is clearly green. Gas is more interesting. At 500g/kwh it's on higher side normally. So there must be more to this.

The article states that a Gas power plant would only be labeled green if it emits less than 270g/kWh, replaces a previous fossil fuel plant, construction starts before 2030 AND plant plans to switch to low carbon gases (biogas?) by the end of 2035. I guess the goal is to phase out coal in Germany and Poland by any means necessary..

You can get great g/kwh for gas plants if you don't account for all of its stray methane emissions, and the accounting for that is rather pitiful nowadays.

The 2035 "low carbon gases" thing is just ridiculously unworkable and will be repealed later as unrealistic.

So at best, they'll just trading ~10 years of coal power for ~5 years of coal power followed by 40+ years of fossil methane power. That's a terrible trade.

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

#244

Post by gefhfffh » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

acd wrote: post #207

Very good news! We need to build fast breeder reactors which burns up the nuclear waste that we have created through older reactors. Ie in normal nuclear reactirs only about 1% of nuclear fuel is converted into energy, the rest is waste. Breeder reactors can take the nuclear waste and convert it into useful energy. BioGas which is methane gas extracted from waste is also very green. Fast Breeder Reactor https://en.wi…

Those reactors are a castle in the air and your comment regarding bio gas misses the point. The idea is to label non renewable gas as green.

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

#245

Post by michaelt » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

diffeomorphism wrote: post #211

mulmen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not ok to call gas “green”. Period. If gas is necessary then build it, but don’t claim it is green.

> It’s not ok to call gas “green”. Period. And as helpfully explained by the top post you are replying to nobody does that. It is labeled as a useful transitional tool towards green energy (when obeying lots of additional restrictions) and thus deemed eligible for subsidies/investment. The headline shortens "eligible for subsidies/investment aimed at promoting green energy, but only if meeting lots of other requireme…

> nobody does that

Except the title of the article :)

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

#246

Post by otherme123 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:28 AM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #193

onethought wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is not renewable… right? Ie there is a finite amount of nuclear material on earth and it’s not overly abundant either. Am I missing something?

Breeder reactors can create more fuel, but even without these, there is a substantial amount of uranium that this is a non-issue. By the same token, solar is also non-renewable since it requires real resources mined from the earth which are in finite supply and solar panels are not 100% recyclable (and especially not the batteries required to make solar reliable). In this sense, nothing is renewable -- even hydro wil…

Anyway, nuclear is never included in the "renewable" bucket, because the fuel has to be harvested and doesn't renew on a human timescale. Nuclear is green, because its net emissions are almost zero.

OTOH burning wood is renewable, but not green, and also not sustainable. So nothing inherently good about being renewable.

It's pointless to have a practical classification to then come with "technically..." and some weird and unpractical reason.

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

#247

Post by wazoox » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #80

nathan_phoenix wrote: post #12

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.

Does anyone know how many g of CO2 for the average natural gas and coal plants are?

About 400 to 500g of CO2 per kWh. That's everything but green. Plus as Norway and Netherlands production are in sharp decline, the proportion of EU natural gas coming from Russia, currently at 40%, is deemed to grow. That's mind-boggling stupid: let's get ourselves depending upon Russia and Putin, and let's replace are 15g/kWh nuclear plants with 500g/kWh gas plants! What could go wrong?

German Energiewende is criminal. Plain and simple. Shame on the Grünen, shame on the pseudo-environmentalists.

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

#248

Post by gefhfffh » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #169

hammock wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did "green" get co-opted to mean low CO2 emissions? It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulate pollution, acid rain, habitat destruction and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that.

> It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about pollution and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. These are the same thing in common parlance. High CO2 emission plants are fossil fuel driven, and those are of course non-renewable. Wind, solar and nuclear are renewable, sustainable and low CO2. Nuclear in particular also produces very little waste a…

Nuclear is sustainable? Tell me more

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

#249

Post by ben_w » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

bpfrh wrote: post #221

gibolt wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar + Batteries/Storage are cheap to build today. No need to choose a worse technology in every way now, that only becomes less viable as time goes on.

Gas based Power plants are for providing capacity quickly when needed, and the cost is good compared to lithium batteries: 1 KW Gas is 0,0639€ 1 KW Lithium Battery is ~105€ There is an incoming lithium shortage which means either the price will rise sharply, or you have to build other types of batteries.

Those are the wrong units in two different ways at once.

KW = power, kWh = energy = integrated power over time

Batteries are reusable. I see claims varying from 2,000, to more than 10,000 times. That reduces the battery cost to between €0.0525 and €0.0105 / kWh.

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

#250

Post by josefx » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 10:34 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #165

nathan_phoenix wrote: post #12

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.

When did "green" get co-opted to mean low CO2 emissions? It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulate pollution, acid rain, habitat destruction and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that.

In Germany "green" meant diesel with salad oil mixed in before our politicians started to focus on electric cars. Everything renewable qualifies as "green" even its worse for the environment.