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EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

reuters.com

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

#341

Post by labawi »

iso1210 wrote: post #327
bpfrh wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right, I somehow remembered it as the same. Isn't my comparison totally wrong on all levels? I compared batteries, which are storage(or "power plants") with the price of the thing the gas power plant uses. A better comparison would be the cost of battery storage, cost of filling it up, versus building a gas power plant and then producing the same energy. If I find a good article on that I will link…

If 1kWh of gas is 6 cents, and a 1kWh battery is $100 and lasts for 10,000 cycles, that puts the price of the battery at 1 cent/kWh plus the charging cost (2c/kWh for solar) In addition, for Europe, the key part of removing Russia from the energy equation is worth a hell of a lot of money.

Unfortunately the math is meaningless if it takes 10 000 years to get those 10 000 cycles. Batteries are currently competitive for short response times and short cycles. As price declines they become become useful for longer cycles, but there will be a point beyond which we need alternative solutions, such as bulk storage/gas, long transmission lines, and/or demand management.

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

#342

Post by kewrkewm53 »

gefhfffh wrote: post #248
arcticbull wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Anything that helps avoiding a climate catastrophe short-term is a good idea since it buys us time to switch to truly sustainable sources.

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

#343

Post by holoduke »

iso1210 wrote: post #327
bpfrh wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right, I somehow remembered it as the same. Isn't my comparison totally wrong on all levels? I compared batteries, which are storage(or "power plants") with the price of the thing the gas power plant uses. A better comparison would be the cost of battery storage, cost of filling it up, versus building a gas power plant and then producing the same energy. If I find a good article on that I will link…

If 1kWh of gas is 6 cents, and a 1kWh battery is $100 and lasts for 10,000 cycles, that puts the price of the battery at 1 cent/kWh plus the charging cost (2c/kWh for solar) In addition, for Europe, the key part of removing Russia from the energy equation is worth a hell of a lot of money.

I hate to say it. I am not pro Russia at all, but its mainly the US who wants Russia to be removed so they can sell their goods to Europe. There no other reason. Luckily we see a larger movement of people recognizing this annoying behaviour of the US.

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

#344

Post by bpfrh »

iso1210 wrote: post #327
bpfrh wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right, I somehow remembered it as the same. Isn't my comparison totally wrong on all levels? I compared batteries, which are storage(or "power plants") with the price of the thing the gas power plant uses. A better comparison would be the cost of battery storage, cost of filling it up, versus building a gas power plant and then producing the same energy. If I find a good article on that I will link…

If 1kWh of gas is 6 cents, and a 1kWh battery is $100 and lasts for 10,000 cycles, that puts the price of the battery at 1 cent/kWh plus the charging cost (2c/kWh for solar) In addition, for Europe, the key part of removing Russia from the energy equation is worth a hell of a lot of money.

I can follow that, but isn't this problematic when there is a power needed when there is no wind/solar available for recharging and you still need more? e.g. we would need a much larger energy storage, than for gas?

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

#345

Post by unionpivo »

matsemann wrote: post #184
jeeeb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intuitively 270g per kWh seemed high to me, but to put it in perspective a Tesla model 3 does about 100km per 11.9~14.9kWh (according to Google). So taking the larger estimate (and ignoring transmission etc losses) at 270g/KWh that gives emissions of around 41g/km. Comparatively though my 2021 Camry hybrid has emissions of 96g/km. So, assuming the plants are primarily being used to level out variable renewable produc…

All very high numbers. The key to solving climate change isn't to do as before, just slightly more efficient. Electric cars won't solve anything, especially not if they are indirectly powered by fossil fuels. Make cities walkable, bikeable and public transportable. That will have far bigger impact than people buying new electric cars.

> Make cities walkable, bikeable and public transportable. That will have far bigger impact than people buying new electric cars.

Not going to happen in time. And city traffic is only relatively small part of all of our CO2 emissions. Truck and delivery trucks emit more CO2 than most other cars combined, and even in walkable cities, you will still have those.

And even if we somehow to get all our cities completely carbon neutral, we still have industry, cargo, food production and lest not forget all the militaries, that themselves emit enough CO2 that they will cause climate disaster.

> The key to solving climate change isn't to do as before, just slightly more efficient.

You want big changes. You wont get them, until its too late. Because politics and people.

The best we can hope for is that enough of this kind of small improvements will add up over time, and we will find out good mitigations.

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

#346

Post by abc789654567 »

locallost wrote: post #309

Whoever builds nuclear plants because of this, I hope they get more bang for their buck than South Carolina. Years and years of planning and building, $9B spent, only to cancel the project with nothing to show for it. Also as a German resident and tax payer, I'm pretty pissed off that I'm on the hook for about $150B for the disposal of old nuclear waste from nuclear power plants. If this is now a green solution, I ho…

Bangladesh is building a power plant now and seems to be getting more bang for their buck than South Carolina.

Construction began: 30 November 2017

Commission date: 2023

Construction cost: $12.65 billion

What today is considered nuclear waste will be fuel for generation IV reactors. The main aspect of Gen IV is using closed fuel cycle for the reactor. This year Russia started building first test Gen IV reactor BREST-300. It is planned to be operational by 2029. I believe that most effective business plan of dumping today's nuclear waste is using it as fuel for Gen IV reactors.

Bangladesh Nuclear Power Plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooppur_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Generation IV reactor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

BREST reactor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor)

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

#347

Post by input_sh »

fivea wrote: post #272
arcticbull wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only gets the label if it's greener than existing solutions. They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good.

> It only gets the label if it's greener than existing solutions. They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good. That sounds very idiotic to me. One of the biggest environmental threats is global warming, which is caused by reintroducing carbon into the atmosphere through the use of fossil fuels. It makes no sense at all to label fossil fuel usage as green just because they manage to come up with an arbitrary line…

It's caused by an ever increasing amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and it's solvable by drastically decreasing that amount. Its origin is nowhere in that equation.

> and in the process ignore carbon emissions.

Natural gas is the best of the worst, and it contributes to the solution in the specific case where it replaces even worse options (like coal plants). I'd argue that It's not the best solution and nobody is arguing that, but it is a solution in very specific circumstances.

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

#348

Post by labawi »

AstralStorm wrote: post #286
retrac wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The trouble is that these hydrocarbon will just be burned like all others, causing GHG release. If you want something actually green, try ammonia via electrochemical methods, from hydrogen. This is also why these gas investments are a trap. We're already generally low on gas for winter and increasing the intake will not help, plus any operational emissions is too much and has to be optimized. 270 g CO2e is a plenty i…

If methane is manufactured from CO₂ and H₂O, there is no net GHG release, it's just storage, same as ammonia or pure hydrogen (though large methane leaks would be a problem).

IMO, methane is good, if we are actively transitioning to manufactured methane. It's a plug-in substitute with existing distribution networks, storage and consumers, easy and cheap to handle. Though efficiency is pretty bad, so it's mostly good as cheap bulk storage.

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

#349

Post by algo_trader »

Retric wrote: post #320
unicornmama wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solar + Batteries/Storage are cheap to build today. That claim is baseless.

Solar dropped below 2c/kWh in the kind of places you should actually install solar. It depends on interest rates but that’s shockingly low. Batteries provide peaking power cheaper than any rarely used peaking power plant. (2,000 charge cycles on a 100$/kWh battery charged from 2c/kWh solar is ~7c/kWh whenever you need it.) That’s all it takes for adoption to dramatically increase. Market forces will shift things arou…

> 2,000 charge cycles on a 100$/kWh battery charged from 2c/kWh solar is ~7c/kWh whenever you need it.

Well - no.

The $100 is up front capex. Add interest rate over 10 years and the price doubles. This is just the module/pack price, and you need to add installation, cabinets, fire suppression, AC/DC and controllers. Which probably add 50% to 100%.

Like wise the headline 2c/kWh is probably for ideal projects with ideal land/transmission/regulation/geography. It is also 70% generated in summer, and only 30% in the winter months.

Renewable energy is important, getting cheaper and accelerating and This-Is-Good (TM), But real physics and economics still matter.

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

#350

Post by kebman »

loeg wrote: post #153
kebman wrote: post #72

Oh, this has probably nothing to do with the major energy deficit Europe is now experiencing. Sorry for the sarcasm, but people living here without a secondary source of heat are suffering ice cold houses because they have to choose between heat or food. The deficit has lead to record prices here in Norway, in the middle of winter, because power for 5 mill people is almost completely drained in order to meet the dema…

Norwegian electricity appears to be maybe 1.50 krone per kWh including taxes this winter? Or about 0.17 USD per kWh? That’s not especially high, although it looks to be about double last year.

Not even close. I pay almost 4 kroner per kWh this month. Granted it varies a bit depending on the deal you've got. Mine's a monthly price. Some have hourly spot price, and some have a locked-in price.
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