331–340 of 368 posts
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I have good news for you, Germany did so in 2011: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-carbon-...
I'm talking per capita and no it hasn't. GDP is not a license to pollute.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=...
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Biomass is carbon neutral.
There's nothing green about chopping down forests for energy - biomass being called carbon neutral is one of the greenwashing scams of the century. Whether burned forests are ever regenerated at all is something that I'm incredible sceptical about - there's very little oversight into companies' claims. Even if they are being replanted, you are tearing down potentially primary forest and important habitat and replacin…
What happens is that combustible waste and young growth (especially the bits unusable by the lumber industry) get burned. This is a cylcle, not to be compared with coal or oil.
Yes, it's still polluting.
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Algeria is just a second Russia with sunny weather. Dictatorship, most of the money is going to the military complex (and buying russian gear even), in conflict with their neighbors, most of the money comes from fossil fuel, politically opposed to the EU... There's not many places you can get gas even if you don't care about the environment. And yes, getting gas from Algeria was a problem before the war as well. Real…
I missed the part where Algeria has a nuclear arsenal and wants to invade some place (don't mention West-Sahara please, that thing is worthy of it's own series of books). So, no fossil fuels from oppressive regimes then (I'm all for it, really, the sooner the Saudi can no longer pay the way into everything the better). Which leaves us with what exactly? Renewables, meaning sourcing from China. And nuclear, just remin…
So yeah solar panels imports are also a big issue, I'm worried that China will close off the exports at some point.
As for nuclear, it's not as big of an issue as you think, most of the value is in the plant, there's lots of countries exporting the raw material which are not much related and storage is pretty easy. (Conditions may apply of course, some nuclear grids are much more dependent than others but it's possible to be relatively independent with it)
Fossil fuels are a diplomatic, environmental and economic issue, even if you don't care about the environment, three's lots of other downsides.
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You're just assigning magical value to "turn it off". That's only a big deal with fossil fuels due to the fuel cost, the fuel cost of nuclear is marginal. Yes, I agree that it's stupid to build a (big) nuclear power plant only to use it to boil an Olympic sized swimming pool most of the time. But that's stupid because we're over-relying on "green" energy that can't provide baseload power. It's even more stupid with f…
The problem with your logic is, that nuclear is _only_ competitive with a 100% utilization rate/capacity factor. Only with these 90+% capacity factors do you get to competitive rates per kWh produced. Otherwise the initial CapEx is just too large, especially in a non-zero rate environment, as these plants are _already_ scoped/calculated/financed to 40 years. At 90+% capacity factor! That amount of CapEx is basically…
The main reason is that we price pollution and radiation control into nuclear plants, but fossil fuel plants get a free pass.
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There's nothing green about chopping down forests for energy - biomass being called carbon neutral is one of the greenwashing scams of the century. Whether burned forests are ever regenerated at all is something that I'm incredible sceptical about - there's very little oversight into companies' claims. Even if they are being replanted, you are tearing down potentially primary forest and important habitat and replacin…
Nobody is chopping down old growth forest to burn in electrical plants. What happens is that combustible waste and young growth (especially the bits unusable by the lumber industry) get burned. This is a cylcle, not to be compared with coal or oil. Yes, it's still polluting.
I wouldn't be so sure.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63089348
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/26/biomass-ca...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/estonia-h...
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> Nuclear AND Renewable energy It cannot be done because it financially condemns new nuclear plants. "The rates at which conventional power plants are utilized will continue to decrease as competitive pressure from near-zero marginal cost solar photovoltaic and onshore wind power, and battery energy storage continue to grow exponentially worldwide." Eye-opening video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg
It is does not. LCOE is a metric from the Lazard institute has been debunked many time alreayd because it does not take into consideration the cost of the capacity guarantee of the grid. If you had that, Nuclear become competitive. If you had that and tax properly coal and Gas plant proportionally to the emission they really do. Nuclear become even incredibly cheap, specially if we consider its hydrogen co-generation…
Source? There are several studies looking at what it’d take to go for 100% renewable energy that ends up with a lower total cost of energy than what we have today. Including costs for balancing the grid. This assumes no technological improvements.
Considering the cost of nuclear today, I don’t see how nuclear could ever contributing to lowering the total costs.
Yes, with technological improvements, and scaling up manufacturing, I’m sure nuclear could become much cheaper. But so could renewables and energy storage solutions. And energy storage solutions have network effects with decarbonisation of transportation that nuclear power doesn’t get to benefit from. I don’t see a way for nuclear to catch up considering how solar and battery technologies are rapidly becoming essential to every aspect of society. The amount of R&D going into these fields is absolutely staggering.
And nuclear power has this sword of Damocles hanging over it: if advanced geothermal gains significant traction, nuclear is doomed. Both nuclear and geothermal is essentially ways of getting thermal energy with near zero operating costs. But geothermal is much easier in terms of regulation and have zero concerns regarding waste management. What do you think will happen when the entire oil and gas industry is made redundant? An industry whose main competency is drilling deep. Just focus on drilling deeper, cheaper, and you get infinite free and green energy forever.
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> Solar panels and wind turbines also require emitting CO₂ for their manufacture, and it turns out that they emit more than nuclear, fuel included. You traced every aspect of the supply chain of both technologies to come to this conclusion? > in France for instance it's nuclear energy fueling enrichment. And tell me, where are the uranium mines in france?
> And tell me, where are the uranium mines in france? There are known uranium reserves in France, they're not mined currently because the ore is dirt cheap and much more easily mined in Australia/Kazakhstan/Canada etc ... The amount of ore is very small, and the environmental impact is also much less compared to that of mining rare earth minerals that so-called renewables need so much of.
If you want to discuss the capital expense of nuclear, its not too great either, really most countries can't even afford a nuclear power program, where even the poorest can utilize solar panels.
This is good news. And while there are problems with achieving 100% renewables year round, from energy storage to geographic country conditions, the world would be much better off when the fossils only are used on these days where there isn't enough renewable energy. No need to go overzealous here for the last few %, I'd be very happy if we manage to globally run the vast majority of the time clean.
The problem that isn't mentioned in the article is: at what cost to the Portuguese people this achievement was done? We're already a poor country, and we're kept in mediocrity because we keep getting crushed by rising prices. So the question is: if we don't get anything positive out of it, other than a green drop in the ocean of pollution which won't change that tide of events, why are we paying a premium for it? Sho…
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Which of the following was misrepresented do you think: - that Germany has 135 GW combined installed capacity of wind and solar? - that wind and solar, combined, were only producing 15% of their installed capacity aka 20GW? - that Germany needed 61 GW of electricity? - wind and solar, combined, were producing only 30% of Germany's needs? - that Germany needed to burn 20 GW of coal to cover this? - that Germany needed…
> - that wind and solar, combined, were only producing 15% of their installed capacity aka 20GW? This is a misrepresentation. Solar for example is only ever planned for to achieve about 30% of its "capacity" (due to the whole sun going down at night thing). And even that varies with seasons. So if you're claiming the German grid planners were expecting the solar to magically 4x overdeliver, and were suddenly let down…
1. 30% is avaerage number which is a useless because at 10 in the morning when I was writing my text solar was even below that.
2. You're literally confirming what I was saying.
> So if you're claiming the German grid planners were expecting the solar to magically 4x overdeliver
I was claiming no such thing. I said, and it is backed by reality, that at 10 o'clock in the morning on a cloudy quiet day 135GW worth of renewables were producing only 20GW.
Which is a fact. I know it's an unpleasant fact, but reality has the unfortunate tendency to be unpleasant.
> Onshore wind has a similar number (again, varies by season).
So, again. What exactly was I misrepresenting? The fact that renewables are overprovisioned in Germany? Or the fact that they were producing significantly less than both their capacity and the needs of the country? Or the fact that Germany had to burn 20GW worth of coal to keep up with the demand?
Or the fact that even if you provision 400% capacity (4x times the demand), and it still produces 15%, you will still need to burn coal through the night.
So it's 18:44 when I'm writing this. Wind is at 12.69% and solar is at 3% capacity. In total 16% of Germany's eletricity demand. It's lower than when I was writing these numbers in the comment when someone called me a liar. 40% of electricity (26 GW) is coming from coal.
Reality has the unfortunate tendency to be unpleasant.
Funnily, but when I keep asking "how much more do we need to overprovision renewables" to meet the demands, I'm met with silence or wishful thinking.
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The problem that isn't mentioned in the article is: at what cost to the Portuguese people this achievement was done? We're already a poor country, and we're kept in mediocrity because we keep getting crushed by rising prices. So the question is: if we don't get anything positive out of it, other than a green drop in the ocean of pollution which won't change that tide of events, why are we paying a premium for it? Sho…
Every country has these problems currently. But people’s money is tacked away in the pockets of the riches and shareholders, something that can and should be solved in different ways than burning dinosaurs. We can not destroy our environment AND distribute wealth more equally, it’s not an „OR“.
It's like the EU giving tax benefits to those who buy electric vehicles, and slapping taxes on those who burn dinosaurs -> when a lot of those have no choice but to burn dinosaurs, and they have to drive old cars because they can't afford new electric vehicles.
How do you expect "regular people" to be onboard, when they are getting squeezed and penalized for being poor/middle class? It's not like they have a choice.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but the " something that can and should be solved in different ways" should have come first, before anything else, and it's not happening any time soon.
Guess who is paying in the meantime?
The sentiment that fuels extremism and movements that oppose these measures don't pop out in the vacuum.