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Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

spiegel.de

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Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#61

Post by whiteboardr »

jonathan-adly wrote: post #25

There are solutions, just unpopular and require a political class that is not fickle and weak. Solution #1. Capitulate to Putin and treat Russia as a regional power that can gobble and punish its neighbors when they stray too far. Solution #2. Forget about the climate for the next 5 years, turn on all coal, nuclear powerplants. Solution #3. Put the Euro printer in overdrive and pay whatever price needed for the littl…

#2 This won’t help the millions of people who depend on their places being heated by gas - it’s going to be an existential threat for many.

First financially, then physically once the pipes run dry.

You can’t fix the infrastructure at that scale this quickly and winter isn’t far away.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#62

Post by listless »

nisa wrote: post #18

To get some perspective why this is such a hotly debated topic - just got my heating bill for the last year - just a small 2 person flat in a small town - most flats in Germany are heated by gas one way or another - 700€/year with 5.2ct/kWh for 2021 - current market is more like 15ct/kWh and will probably rise. With the rise in rent prices in the last years this could push quite a bit of poor / lower middle class peo…

Serious question here - I swear I'm not trolling and I've been asking myself this same question...'

Would you be fine with it if you were on the margin?

I have this same attitude about inflation in the US and rising interest rates. Good - we need to get the situation under control. But I'm not living on the margin. It affects me, but not really. I'll be fine. So I don't really have any skin in the game here. Not yet.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#63

Post by londons_explore »

nisa wrote: post #18

To get some perspective why this is such a hotly debated topic - just got my heating bill for the last year - just a small 2 person flat in a small town - most flats in Germany are heated by gas one way or another - 700€/year with 5.2ct/kWh for 2021 - current market is more like 15ct/kWh and will probably rise. With the rise in rent prices in the last years this could push quite a bit of poor / lower middle class peo…

Fun fact:

Nearly all gas turbine power stations can also run on oil. Oil is usually a backup method in case the gas supply is disrupted, but it is possible for them to run on oil continuously. The exact oil type required differs, but some can use Diesel/Petrol/Kerosene/ethanol/hydrogen or sometimes even unrefined crude oil.

With gas prices so high, many are already running on oil, and that's part of the reason Diesel/Petrol prices are so high, even though the price of crude oil hasn't gone up much for months.

On charts of power generation, they still show up in the 'gas' category, even if they're burning oil. As far as I know, apart from the tanker of fuel arriving every 10 minutes day and night there is no way to know what they're burning.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#64

Post by Filligree »

lolinder wrote: post #26
shafyy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas cannot be replaced by nuclear energy (or any other source of electricity) for many applications, at least not in the short term. For example here in Germany, many homes use gas boilers (heaters) for heating space and water. You would need to rebuild a lot of infrastructure to use electricity (which Germany plans to do, but obviously this will take years if not decades).

Is there a difference between the kind of gas used in power plants and the kind for residential use? If not, couldn't nuclear plants reduce the need for gas in power plants, allowing that gas to go to heating homes instead?

Gas plants are almost universally peaker plants, designed to quickly ramp up and down, while nuclear plants are almost universally baseload.

There’s nothing in principle stopping us from building peaker nuclear reactors, but nobody except the military ever does so. As a result, nuclear largely cannot substitute for gas without massive storage systems that don’t exist.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#65

Post by rwmj »

jonathan-adly wrote: post #25

There are solutions, just unpopular and require a political class that is not fickle and weak. Solution #1. Capitulate to Putin and treat Russia as a regional power that can gobble and punish its neighbors when they stray too far. Solution #2. Forget about the climate for the next 5 years, turn on all coal, nuclear powerplants. Solution #3. Put the Euro printer in overdrive and pay whatever price needed for the littl…

#3 can't create power infrastructure out of nothing in 6 months.

Option #4 is ration gas. It won't be pleasant but it's possible.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#66

Post by pydry »

lolinder wrote: post #26
shafyy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas cannot be replaced by nuclear energy (or any other source of electricity) for many applications, at least not in the short term. For example here in Germany, many homes use gas boilers (heaters) for heating space and water. You would need to rebuild a lot of infrastructure to use electricity (which Germany plans to do, but obviously this will take years if not decades).

Is there a difference between the kind of gas used in power plants and the kind for residential use? If not, couldn't nuclear plants reduce the need for gas in power plants, allowing that gas to go to heating homes instead?

It could but so would accelerating solar and wind deployments.

At this point those are probably more cost effective solutions. Trying to restart a reactor that youve been going through the shutdown process for about 5 years is probably going to cost more.

It's super weird how many people think this restarting the nuke plants is a solution. It'll cost a lot and wont make much overall difference.

(of course, neither will anything else really... there are zero short term solutions to Germany's russian gas dependence other than kowtowing).

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#68

Post by cm2187 »

shafyy wrote: post #16
hash07e wrote: post #5

Errr... How about turn on those Nuclear plants?

Natural gas cannot be replaced by nuclear energy (or any other source of electricity) for many applications, at least not in the short term. For example here in Germany, many homes use gas boilers (heaters) for heating space and water. You would need to rebuild a lot of infrastructure to use electricity (which Germany plans to do, but obviously this will take years if not decades).

Electric heaters are cheap (it's just a glorified resistance). It's easy to switch home heating from gas to electric (with portable devices). Maybe not for every room but enough to survive a winter or two. Water heating is more complicated.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#69

Post by raverbashing »

My uninformed bet is that a) Russia likes money more and b) if they wanted to cut the delivery of gas they would have done it already

They like playing the panic angle of course, and closing the tap once in a while, but I think it's mostly hot air

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#70

Post by the_gipsy »

oxff wrote: post #9

Glad to let moralistic foreign policy drive the entire trade block down the shitter (it is moralistic FP because EU did not nut up and actually deploy to protect the so-precious-Ukraine, but instead threw its own economy and living standards into chaos just so they wouldn't be mistaken to be pro-Putler). In short, insanity.

We should have given up eastern Ukraine, negotiate peace. Better surrender a part than destroying the whole country. We get hyperinflation, giving money to USA's weapons industry, general destabilization, and a lot of dead Ukranians. All because it's politically weak to negotiate with Russia. Only Macron tried and he was sadly ridiculed. Does nobody remember how Sarkozy helped with Georgia's peace negotiations?
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