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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#631

Post by Dig1t »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #618
clarionbell wrote: post #600

Meanwhile European chemical manufacturing is collapsing under weight of record energy costs.[1][2] Most of other manufacturing is somehow tied to chemicals, you can't build things without material after all. So this will feed ongoing industrial collapse, which now affects even Germany.[3] Meanwhile, low income households are running into financial issues if they want to turn up the heat.[4] The whole process has been…

If you don't propose what you think is a better alternative we don't know what we are agreeing with by upvoting. Is it: 1. Let Russia take most of eastern Europe in exchange for gas 2. Make Europe Great Again i.e. complain loudly about current politicians then do everything even worse with no plan or logic 3. Fully automated Luxury Communism 4. Ask Harry Potter to make chemical inputs with his magic wand. 5. Nuclear,…

>Let Russia take most of eastern Europe in exchange for gas

Do people seriously think this is a possibility? Or is that hyperbole?

Russia can barely manage to hold the eastern half of Ukraine, I genuinely don’t see how they could take the eastern half of all of Europe..

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#632

Post by nasmorn »

Borg3 wrote: post #624
holowoodman wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most uses of fossil fuels are very inefficient. For instance, when you step on the accelerator in your car, only around 30% of the energy in the fuel you use actually is being used to propel you forward. The majority of the energy is wasted as heat. In a power plant that's more like 70% being captured and going towards the goal (electricity generation). Yes, but there are also future inefficient uses of renewables.…

Uh, can you provide any scientific papers that H2 can be used for Iron smelting? CO2 is very stable, even at high temperatures. Its hard to strip O2 from it (except photosintesis). Now, H2 itself is very violatile gas. When burn, it creates water. Water is not stable high temperatures. It become vapor and when temperature rise it can even break bond between H2 and O. So, papers or are you hallucinating?

They are already building such plants. So I would assume they have a plan

But here is a paper - only the title is German the main part is English https://pure.unileoben.ac.at/files/1851525/AC06514880n01vt.p...

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#633

Post by jijijijij »

clarionbell wrote: post #600

Meanwhile European chemical manufacturing is collapsing under weight of record energy costs.[1][2] Most of other manufacturing is somehow tied to chemicals, you can't build things without material after all. So this will feed ongoing industrial collapse, which now affects even Germany.[3] Meanwhile, low income households are running into financial issues if they want to turn up the heat.[4] The whole process has been…

[flagged]

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#634

Post by sahilagarwal »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #618
clarionbell wrote: post #600

Meanwhile European chemical manufacturing is collapsing under weight of record energy costs.[1][2] Most of other manufacturing is somehow tied to chemicals, you can't build things without material after all. So this will feed ongoing industrial collapse, which now affects even Germany.[3] Meanwhile, low income households are running into financial issues if they want to turn up the heat.[4] The whole process has been…

If you don't propose what you think is a better alternative we don't know what we are agreeing with by upvoting. Is it: 1. Let Russia take most of eastern Europe in exchange for gas 2. Make Europe Great Again i.e. complain loudly about current politicians then do everything even worse with no plan or logic 3. Fully automated Luxury Communism 4. Ask Harry Potter to make chemical inputs with his magic wand. 5. Nuclear,…

Better management?? Easier processing for residential solar panels? How about government subsidies on solar panels for lower income homes?

Hell, maybe create a unified portal when companies buy energy - show the cost difference side by side.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#635

Post by Synaesthesia »

fundatus wrote: post #614
clarionbell wrote: post #600

Meanwhile European chemical manufacturing is collapsing under weight of record energy costs.[1][2] Most of other manufacturing is somehow tied to chemicals, you can't build things without material after all. So this will feed ongoing industrial collapse, which now affects even Germany.[3] Meanwhile, low income households are running into financial issues if they want to turn up the heat.[4] The whole process has been…

And the reason for that? Fossil fuels. Cited from one of your articles: > “Our industry continues to face difficult market dynamics and challenging energy costs, with European gas prices around three times higher than the US,” Arnaud Valenduc, business director for Ineos Inovyn, the Ineos business that makes chloromethane, says in the press release.

Well you need fossil fuels for feedstock in the chemical industry. It's one place they can't be replaced.

The real reason is because Europe cut itself off from cheaper Russian gas.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#636

Post by lambdaone »

eigenspace wrote: post #248
Havoc wrote: post #140

Now we just need to figure out scalable storage. Ideally something like the sand batteries that you can scale with construction equipment rather than just adding more rows of tiny lithium batteries

The answer is likely going to have to be hydrogen, but there's a pretty difficult catch with hydrogen: it makes zero sense to invest in any hydrogen electricity storage infrastructure until the grid is already like 80+% renewable. There's simply no sense in turning electricity into hydrogen so that it could be used in 6 months (losing 50+% of the energy along the way as heat!) when you could just sell that electricit…

Syngas makes a lot more sense than hydrogen, in the short term. But what really makes sense in the longer term is massively scaled Carnot batteries. Slightly less efficient than batteries, but really cheap to build (it's a combination of resistive heating and old-fashioned thermal power station technology) overbuilding renewables is cheap, and you can charge your Carnot battery [almost] all year long.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#637

Post by lambdaone »

Moldoteck wrote: post #345
eigenspace wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway and Sweden have tones of renewable energy, but relatively little intermittent energy. If the economics of H2 ever work, it'll only ever work in a grid that's driven by intermittent energy sources (wind and solar). A hydro-driven grid does not need storage. Hell, if you have enough hydro, it can even be your storage. Not all of Europe has the geography to be able to cover their needs with just hydro.

H2 economics work if you have constant oversupply. If your electrolyzer works only 50% of the time and storing is expensive, transporting is expensive and roundtrip efficiency is abysmal, it'll still cost a ton. Higher chances to use just cheaper gas generation because even LNG is cheaper than H2 saga.

H2 economics don't work at all, and H2 is largely a fig-leaf for the fossil fuel industry.

If you were to have an environment in which H2 would actually make economic sense, non-H2 storage and distribution systems would be even cheaper, and they can be added incrementally rather than needing a big bang, preventing investing in H2 from taking off in the first place.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#638

Post by suddenlybananas »

triceratops wrote: post #527
SamPatt wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything has tradeoffs - those panels themselves take energy and rare earth minerals to create, and getting both of those requires pollution, primarily in China where they have lower standards than western nations. So filling Canada with panels because they're cheap isn't likely the best environmental choice, on net. Though I admit I haven't done the math here, it's just an intuition that "just build 4x panels" isn…

Your intuition is flat out wrong. Building new nuclear takes too long. "Just fix the nuclear regulations" is a vibes-based statement. Even China built 100x as much solar as nuclear in 2025. Wouldn't they "lower standards" to build more nuclear if it made any economic sense? As for > those panels themselves take energy and rare earth minerals to create You've swallowed Big Oil propaganda and are choosing to parrot it…

The reason Nuclear takes so long is that people are neurotic about it and so the regulations are totally excessive. If we had a standardised reactor, it wouldn't be that difficult to churn them out.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#639

Post by padjo »

fundatus wrote: post #614
clarionbell wrote: post #600

Meanwhile European chemical manufacturing is collapsing under weight of record energy costs.[1][2] Most of other manufacturing is somehow tied to chemicals, you can't build things without material after all. So this will feed ongoing industrial collapse, which now affects even Germany.[3] Meanwhile, low income households are running into financial issues if they want to turn up the heat.[4] The whole process has been…

And the reason for that? Fossil fuels. Cited from one of your articles: > “Our industry continues to face difficult market dynamics and challenging energy costs, with European gas prices around three times higher than the US,” Arnaud Valenduc, business director for Ineos Inovyn, the Ineos business that makes chloromethane, says in the press release.

Gas prices are high at least in part because of reduced exploitation of resources. For example here in Ireland we have stopped extracting our own gas and now import.

I'm I'm favour of increased renewables, but we need to be truthful about the costs. A fully renewable energy system is probably always going to be more expensive per unit than a fossil fuel based one.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#640

Post by padjo »

Dig1t wrote: post #631
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't propose what you think is a better alternative we don't know what we are agreeing with by upvoting. Is it: 1. Let Russia take most of eastern Europe in exchange for gas 2. Make Europe Great Again i.e. complain loudly about current politicians then do everything even worse with no plan or logic 3. Fully automated Luxury Communism 4. Ask Harry Potter to make chemical inputs with his magic wand. 5. Nuclear,…

>Let Russia take most of eastern Europe in exchange for gas Do people seriously think this is a possibility? Or is that hyperbole? Russia can barely manage to hold the eastern half of Ukraine, I genuinely don’t see how they could take the eastern half of all of Europe..

I mean there's precedent in living memory...
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