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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

#691

Post by Borg3 »

jijijijij wrote: post #650
holowoodman wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not at all. Coke or hydrogen always only provide additional heat, they are never the main source of heat. The main heat source can either be coal or an electric arc furnace. The coke or hydrogen are just necessary for the chemical reaction, and providing some heat is a side-effect.

Sorry, in face of OP’s tone I allowed myself some sarcasm. Obviously there needs to be additional energy. You’d have some equilibrium with those reactions and OP didn’t make any argument why that can’t be controlled in favor of reducing Fe2O3. It’s also borderline unbelievable OP never heard of hydrogen in future steelmaking, if they are at all invested in the topic. You’d need a special kind of ignorance to think pe…

Yeah, I did not thats why I asked. Water and Steel doesnt like each other. But thanks for the info.. It seems it can be done in controlled way.

Now I wonder how cost effective it is :)

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#692

Post by ahartmetz »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #564
torginus wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a conspiracy theory of mine, but how credible is the notion that in Germany, the Greens who campaigned (successfully) for nuclear shutdown were in fact funded by Russia?

Very unlikely. - The greens opposed the Nord Stream pipelines for years. And have been opposed to relying on natural gas for a long time. -Nuclear power is generally a contentious subject in German society. Probably because of Chernobyl and how a lot of the radioactive cloud blew into Germany. Whoever lived through this will have some dramatic memories of those weeks (kids not allowed to playgrounds/outside etc.). It…

In Germany, it's worth mentioning that being against nuclear power is (unfortunately) part of the identity and founding myth of the Greens. One of the precursors of the party is the anti-nuclear movement of the late 70s / early 80s.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#693

Post by tialaramex »

nandomrumber wrote: post #525
tialaramex wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resistive heating is indeed almost 100% efficient, but combustion is only about 90% efficient and that's using modern technology to scrape almost everything we can, which has a cost in terms of the product upfront cost and maintenance. The reason it's not much higher is that we must vent the exhaust gases. If you were OK with the burned gas vapours in your home you could get close to 100%, but they're poisonous and s…

> But few cared Few cared that electricity price increases out passed general inflation. I don’t think so.

While I'm sure that it suits some people to connect "Electricity got more expensive" with "The primary generation sources changed" as a primitive post hoc ergo propter hoc argument that doesn't really work out.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#694

Post by jahnu »

padjo wrote: post #639
fundatus wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A fully renewable energy system is probably always going to be more expensive per unit than a fossil fuel based one.

No probably not at all unless you mean in the short term. The fossil industry gets way way way more financial support. The externalities of fossils are costing us incredible amounts of money, health and lives and will do for many many decades if not centuries to come. Renewables are now cheaper than nearly anything despite decades of suppression by the fossil industry.

https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel...

https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-subsidies-fossil-fuels

https://www.eesi.org/files/FactSheet_Fossil_Fuel_Externaliti...

https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2025/Jul/91-Percent...

https://sps.columbia.edu/news/fossil-fuel-industrys-ceaseles...

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#695

Post by victorbjorklund »

natmaka wrote: post #665
anovikov wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fuel is around 2-3% of electricity cost, and there is too much worldwide supply for it to be of any concern, so it doesn't really matter where it comes from. For energy balance calculations it is accepted that nuclear energy is counted as produced where the reactor itself is.

Strategically, if nuclear power experiences a resurgence, procuring uranium could become difficult because the superpowers (Russia, China, and the US) will want to reserve it for themselves, and corresponding efforts have already begun. The majority of nuclear-producing nations (Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc.) will immediately comply. Wind and sun, however, cannot be confiscated or withheld by blocka…

There is so much uranium in the ground (in the west too) that it doesn’t make sense to ”keep it” for yourself. Why would Russia wanna keep a supply for the next one million years instead of selling it and get money today? Same with all other countries with uranium.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#696

Post by jahnu »

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..

> Russia can barely manage to hold the eastern half of Ukraine

Not even half, just a fifth.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#697

Post by Jackpillar »

energy123 wrote: post #24
mekdoonggi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense, but if that's the case, why aren't they invading Taiwan now? Wouldn't now be the perfect time?

The consensus among Western defense and foreign policy types is that China will most likely invade Taiwan in 2027, relative to any other single year, conditional on them doing it at all.

This 2027 date is based off a misread from a speech from Xi that he himself has since distanced himself from. 2027 is just used by war mongers and natsec folks to bang the war drums to siphon more money into the US military industrial complex. Unlike Russia, China isn't stupid and they don't need a full scale invasion to take over Taiwan.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#698

Post by tialaramex »

eigenspace wrote: post #658
CraigJPerry wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in cold weather an ice is not close to 30%, that's an achievable warm weather figure when everything's working efficiently. Many ice journeys are so short in cold weather that efficiency never peaks above 10%

Well, EVs also lose a lot of efficiency in cold weather as well. You'll also note that the 70% figure I gave for power plants is more or less a best case scenario for modern, well designed plants. A lot of currently existing power plants do much worse than 70%

True, system thermal efficiency for the UK's CCGT generation is about 50%. Obviously that's with a varying throttle (the UK goes from say 5GW of CCGT to 25GW of CCGT in an hour if the wind drops just as everybody wakes up) and you'd do better than 50% if you were baseload running 24/7 at peak performance - but that's not a realistic place for CCGT to be when nuclear fuel is basically free and the two new big sources (solar and wind) aren't even running on actual fuel anyway.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#699

Post by locallost »

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…

The problems of the chemical companies are related to natural gas prices, not electricity. This is because gas is used in the production. It even says so in one of the links you posted:

“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

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#700

Post by BLKNSLVR »

nandomrumber wrote: post #593
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the case in Australia where, despite successive governments that were (likely monetarily* ) opposed to solar and wind, people power kinda took over to get the unexpectedly high penetration of home solar panel installations, going back beyond a decade, and currently home battery installations. Both were due to government incentives, I'm not sure if both parties may have initiated parts of these incentives…

> despite successive governments that were (likely monetarily* ) opposed to solar and wind, What are you talking about? > Both were due to government incentives, How can the government be opposed to it, while also providing rebates to rooftop solar? Anyway, it was all a big bait and switch manoeuvre, as the solar feed in tariff per kWh is only a fraction of what you pay, but it didn’t start out that way. That continu…

> What are you talking about?

The (now twice dissolved) Coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party

> How can the government be opposed to it, while also providing rebates to rooftop solar?

I'm pretty sure one government put the incentives in place, whilst another didn't roll them back, but also significantly talked down anything renewable, whilst pulling stunts like bringing a lump of coal into parliament. (from memory, not entirely sure of facts).

> Rooftop solar is a scam.

I beg to differ. I beg to differ even further when rooftop solar is coupled with a battery.

Where I may agree with you, is that solar should have been a much earlier priority for any Australian government due to Australia's abundance of space and sunshine and (confusingly, since we have so much coal) our globally quite high-priced electricity. A better strategy should have been in place for Australia's overall electrification.

I think rooftop solar is great because it's saved me a lot of money in electricity that would have otherwise been sourced from an expensive grid.

I think rooftop solar overall could be considered a scam because it advantages those who already have enough money to afford it and the ownership of their dwelling to be allowed to install it, and disadvantages those who are not in the overlap between those two venn diagrams.

Self Fact check: Australia is around the global average for electricity costs, not as expensive as I thought.

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