This comment section: people who do nothing condemn people who do something for not doing another thing.
Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
51–60 of 71 posts
Re: Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you talking about? Germany would be more energy independent if it had adopted solar and wind power when Greenpeace was advocating it fourty years ago, like China is showcasing today!
The question is not if renewables can replace nuclear. Obviously it is technically possible. The question is how many times bigger should be installed peak power of renewables. 20x? 50x? And of course if it’s economically viable. Because China does not gamble with renewables. They build nuclear capacity at unprecedented levels.
> Because China does not gamble with renewables. They build nuclear capacity at unprecedented levels.
You have that backwards. In 2025 China installed 100x as much solar as nuclear.
Re: Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
#53This comment section: people who do nothing condemn people who do something for not doing another thing.
The article: green group promotes their pet solution in an application where it doesn't make any sense. Uses humanitarian disaster to quell criticism of mis-application. Pilot project launched in hope of getting a big chunk of taxpayer money for more misapplication of technology.
Re: Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
#54This comment section: people who do nothing condemn people who do something for not doing another thing.
Sometimes something is worse than nothing. I saw a lot of that when I volunteered in a war zone. I see no reason why Greenpeace would be exempted.
Country at war is absolute worst place to bring your dumb ideas and cost others their time and protection to deal with you. People who do nothing should absolutely condemn the people doing something if that is the case.
Re: Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
They would depend on china instead of Russia. huge improvement! /s
There is a significant difference in term of dependency when it comes to solar vs gas/oil. Solar panels are not consumables when int comes to energy production- oil and gas are. China can shutdown the supply of solar panels, but not the energy generation with existing panels. This gives you time to start building other supply channels.
> in term of dependency when it comes to solar vs gas/oil.
I don't agree. Oil and gas can be sourced from many different countries, you don't have to rely only on Russia. Russia is just the obvious choice if you are in the middle of Europe, but there are many other producers.
If China stops the supply of solar panels today, you are only good if you have already achieved 100% energy needs coverage with solar. No large country is going to be at that level anytime soon.
Re: Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a really fallacious argument. Nuclear wouldn't stop truck emissions, car emissions, boat emissions, long distance freight train emissions (unless electric), and airplane emissions. It wouldn't stop military emissions (which are significant). We could have done a lot more nuclear but it's not clear that it would have done more than a few percent of CO2 savings in the overall scheme of things. You can see this m…
You can just look at the total emissions from France and compare with Germany. It's quite amazing the difference. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?c... Imagine having HALF the CO2 emissions. HALF. That would be amazing. If we had that in most of Europe and the US instead of listening to the anti-nuclear lobby we would have a ton more runway to fix the issue than we have now.
Germany does have half the CO2 emissions of the USA.
Re: Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
#57This comment section: people who do nothing condemn people who do something for not doing another thing.
The article: green group promotes their pet solution in an application where it doesn't make any sense. Uses humanitarian disaster to quell criticism of mis-application. Pilot project launched in hope of getting a big chunk of taxpayer money for more misapplication of technology.
Solar and heat pumps across all of Europe is in fact one of the quickest and best ways to sideline Russia.
See the RepowerEU plan for more details:
Re: Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off grid people ~dont heat off solar. They use hydrocarbons for heat sources. Or wood. Heat vastly increases solar generation and battery demand.
Most of rural Ukraine already uses or can use solid fuel (firewood, coal) for heating. The article is about flats, not off-grid houses.
Adding some supplemental solar that will move the needle a drop in a brown-out isn't absolutely nothing I suppose, but really for immediate war-time resiliency you would be using solar for off-grid purposes (even if during grid blackouts only).
If your goal is to stay on grid the payoff on solar isn't really realized for 10+ years, when not only are the panels paid off but the accumulation factor of a country full of people with solar panels reduces the grid strain on the conventional sources you list. Adding them for war-time reasons is overall a net negative vs just buying diesel heaters, distributing solar for actual off-grid purposes so people have communications, etc. It is not going to meaningfully reduce dependency on those sources during the period of the war -- that's why I assumed it had to be for off-grid alternative because in that case it would achieve that goal.
Of course it is better than nothing, assuming they did not waste too many domestic resources doing this Greenpeace stunt. But this on-grid solar component is not a serious proposition for wartime demand, and you would be WAY better off donating to maintaining/defending the existing hydro/nuclear/coal generation than trying to deploy enough solar to move the needle for solar grid resiliency within the timespan of the war. I guess I just assumed they were acting rationally and that is why I thought it might be used in off-grid scenarios, but you've disillusioned me of that.
Re: Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article: green group promotes their pet solution in an application where it doesn't make any sense. Uses humanitarian disaster to quell criticism of mis-application. Pilot project launched in hope of getting a big chunk of taxpayer money for more misapplication of technology.
Solar and heat pumps across all of Europe is in fact one of the quickest and best ways to sideline Russia. See the RepowerEU plan for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REPowerEU
The quickest and best way to sideline russia is to take your money they had for heat pumps and use them on weapons. Putin is making Europe look like a laughing stock because they have folded to Putins threats about nuclear war and he has bluffed them into buying heat pumps instead of ballistic missiles. Europe still has their thumb up their ass singing Kumbaya and buying heat pumps while their traditional protector USA is giving every signal this tradition has ended and Europeans must spend this money to ramp up protection for themselves.
You are not going to get your way out of this with more efficient energy grids or heat pumps and using your money on that instead of bullets is the fool's way out if your goal is to sideline Russia. Of course the most hilarious thing is to think we aren't all still buying "sanctioned" russian products and they totally aren't being "smuggled" and then rebranded as Chinese or myriad of other sources -- which in fact offers options to INCREASE profits to Russian and Chinese government since now they can squeeze their citizens for payoff money to wash their products as non-Russian to bypass sanctions.
Re: Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
#60This comment section: people who do nothing condemn people who do something for not doing another thing.
If you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem.
-George Carlin