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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

#751

Post by triceratops »

buckle8017 wrote: post #732
lambdaone wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it looks like bad news in the short term, China is building even more renewables than they are coal stations, with the result that the fraction of fossil power consumption in China is actually decreasing: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...

Your just lying with statistics. Fraction goes down but total fossil fuel consumption is at an all time high in China. They now use more fossil fuels than the entire western world combined.

> They now use more fossil fuels than the entire western world combined.

No idea what "more fossil fuels" is because how do you compare a bag of coal to a barrel of oil.

Also what about all the years that they didn't? Which is nearly all of the years before the Industrial Revolution.

And if they continue electrifying at their current pace, soon they'll be emitting less carbon than everyone else. What'll you talk about then?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#752

Post by Moldoteck »

pfdietz wrote: post #746
Moldoteck wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but since this tax is done only at EU level, it causes industry offshoring and $ redistribution. EU could have just subsidized ren more instead of this tax. This way electricity/production prices would be lower while ren tech still supported

Industry offshoring is dealt with via CO2 tariffs, which the EU has also introduced. Subsidizing production is itself a market distortion.

Only small part of the problem is dealt with tariffs. And these were introduced only recently.

Market is always distorted one way or another depending on the goals. Co2 tax too is a market distortion since the tax value is chosen arbitrarily

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#753

Post by matthewdgreen »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #523
matthewdgreen wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A typical dishwasher load requires 1-3kWh, so you'll just use your home battery and do it whenever you want.

a lot of that energy could have been recuperated with a heat exchanger when the water is refreshed, also in laundry machines.

That's more or less what heat pump clothes dryers do. They draw in air, heat it, and then blow the humid air back over the cold side of the heat pump loop to condense it. They save tons of energy. I don't think there's anything similar for water (in clothes or dish washers) but the quantities might just be too small to bother with.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#754

Post by matthewdgreen »

ljlolel wrote: post #597
matthewdgreen wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems unlikely that we'll be selling oil for $5, unless fossil fuels are completely replaced and it becomes a side-of-the-road novelty.

Then it loses economies of scale and capital wasted so price won’t go down

At that point, who really cares? As scale goes down and economies of scale go away, it just becomes an irrelevant novelty. But the actual question is: how much will industrial applications matter.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#755

Post by pfdietz »

Moldoteck wrote: post #752
pfdietz wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industry offshoring is dealt with via CO2 tariffs, which the EU has also introduced. Subsidizing production is itself a market distortion.

Only small part of the problem is dealt with tariffs. And these were introduced only recently. Market is always distorted one way or another depending on the goals. Co2 tax too is a market distortion since the tax value is chosen arbitrarily

Very weak arguments there. Adding distortions is ok because other distortions exist? Non sequitur. Tariffs don't currently do everything therefore they cannot ever solve the problem? Also a non sequitur.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#756

Post by xorcist »

holowoodman wrote: post #604
eigenspace wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be rather misleading to to talk about renewable energy generation versus total energy usage. 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…

> 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.…

The interesting bit about using H2 in industrial processes is that, while inefficient, it's also the school book example of variable loads. Solar and wind produces power extremely cheap but intermittent, so in a grid the push down prices when they produce the most. Variable loads can, at least in theory, be run when prices are the cheapest.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#757

Post by IshKebab »

lambdaone wrote: post #617
hexbin010 wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try 2 weeks of seemingly endless cloud up this way lol. This winter has been seriously depressing so far

Remarkably, even most cloudy weather still lets a suprising amount of sun in. And it doesn't stop the wind from blowing. The threat is when the wind stops blowing at the same time it's very, very cloudy and in the middle of winter (short days). This happens, but it's very intermittent. However, as seen above, there are lots and lots of ways to store (or equivalent) power over long periods, it's just the economic ince…

> even most cloudy weather still lets a suprising amount of sun in

It really doesn't. Clouds absolutely kill solar. In the winter we get 10-20kWh/day on sunny days and 0.5-2kWh/day on cloudy days.

I dunno where you got that info but it's dead wrong.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#758

Post by xorcist »

torginus wrote: post #502
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly we got a warning in 2014 with Crimea being seized and fossil apologists like Bjorn Lomborg argued against rolling out wind and solar faster in response. Because he's so "reasonable" and "pragmatic", he didn't say we shouldn't phase out Russian gas, he just said solar and wind don't work and so we should invent some totally new type of energy for this purpose. It's only with a few years hindsight that he's obvio…

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?

The question does not make sense because it does not describe what happened. It was the conservatives who took the decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany.

It is unlikely that the greens had much control over that, even if someone would have claimed it their victory at the time. That the greens would wield secret power over their political opponents would require a special kind of conspiracy.

It was done for economic reasons, like so many other political decisions are. The connections to Russian oil and gas companies on both sides of politics probably helped, but it would have happened anyway. Of course it was spun as a great thing for the environment, which it wasn't, but spin doesn't have to make sense.

Ex-politicians riding the Russian oligarch gravy train should be chastised, and rightfully so. That does not require any anti-green sentiment or conspiracies, just common sense.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#759

Post by xorcist »

monero-xmr wrote: post #498
troyvit wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're in Europe and they produce a lot of batteries. The caveat is that 80% of the investment money came from LG, a South Korean company. https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/europe-has-solid-basis-batt...

There’s the former darling Northvolt. Took a lot of state money and then imploded https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/12/ev-battery-...

Some people like to say they did, but when you look at the money it was almost all private capital, from big banks and large infrastructure and private pension funds.

That does not make the investment any better. Private capital can be misallocated too.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#760

Post by hexbin010 »

lambdaone wrote: post #617
hexbin010 wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try 2 weeks of seemingly endless cloud up this way lol. This winter has been seriously depressing so far

Remarkably, even most cloudy weather still lets a suprising amount of sun in. And it doesn't stop the wind from blowing. The threat is when the wind stops blowing at the same time it's very, very cloudy and in the middle of winter (short days). This happens, but it's very intermittent. However, as seen above, there are lots and lots of ways to store (or equivalent) power over long periods, it's just the economic ince…

> Remarkably, even most cloudy weather still lets a suprising amount of sun in

Lol give over. Who told you that - solar panel companies? Companies selling holidays to the UK?

You ever been to England?

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