Live data from Hacker News

Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

viborc.com

91–100 of 130 posts

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#91
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Have you ever been to any of the mentioned countries or spoken with people from there, or is your opinion based on what you hear and see as an outsider?

I have indeed been to both Albania and Macedonia. Great countries, awesome people, I enjoyed my trip tremendously. But locals do indeed complain about corruption and the inefficiency of their government when you take with them. The issue with criminality and especially drug trafficking is also very much palpable in Albania.

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#92
post #9
post #3

It would be interesting to know the end game here. If the Ukrainian war ends, I assume that isn't the end of it. I assume the taps from Russia will turn back on, but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply.

I think Russian bet is that Europe would take 3-7 years to shift dependence away from Russian gas and that in the mean time a lack of access to cheap energy will lead to economic collapse, which will ultimately make the shift even harder. Putin is not testing our resolve but our ability. I suspect the goal is also also to trigger conflicts between EU member nations over energy scarcity. E.g. Germany has enough gas to…

Russia hoping for European economic collapse would be just as stupid as Europe hoping for Russia's economic collapse.

They are too entangled at this point for either to survive the collapse of another.

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#93
post #31
post #11

To put this in relation, here is a comparison of gas storage capacities in Europe: https://erdgasspeicher.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ines_ga... Here is table from Sunday which also shows the total gas stored in each country, along with the capacity ("Working volume"), annual consumption, and injection / withdrawal capacities: https://agsi.gie.eu/ Missing from the list is Switzerland, which does not have any gas st…

The UK has 35Mtpa LNG port capacity and spain has 44Mtpa which is more than the rest put together though (Germany has 0!), so it probably balances out in terms of screwedness. The UK also produces about half of it natural gas. Each country has differing reliance on natural gas too. The UK is particularly reliant, for example. Only the Netherlands looks well prepared - 8.8Mtpa of LNG import capacity, 120TWh of storage…

Historically, the UK has not had much gas storage capacity (even Rough wasn't that big) because gas wells have a reasonable amount of turndown capacity and those wells are directly coupled through St Fergus and other sites into gas cleaning and then into the national gas grid.

Germany has never had significant gas production and is heavily gas dependent so has built up storage facilities for strategic reasons.

The mistake made was that since 2004, the UK has become a gas importer with a greater fraction of imports every year. There was then a series of judgements made by successive governments that:

1) Gas was only a bridge fuel from which the UK would move away over time

2) The UK network is also essentially directly coupled into the Norwegian gas system which is and was massive

3) The UK has proportionately a very large amount of LNG terminal capacity

Therefore it was decided that it was not necessary either to develop more storage capacity nor indeed to pay for the re-completion of Rough in order to keep it operating. This now seems to have been a serious error.

This is particularly true because:

1) The UK, like The Netherlands, is almost entirely gas heated, Germany is also heavily gas dependent but heating mixes vary across European countries by a lot more than most people appreciate. This is because the UK and The Netherlands discovered gas early and gas is a brilliant heating fuel (apart from the whole global warming thing...). Norway, which discovered gas in large quantities only after it had already built hydro infrastructure and invested in electric heating, doesn't use much gas for heating domestically.

2) The UK has a lot of renewables and very little hydro and has therefore developed over the last decade into a gas + renewables electrical grid and closed its coal power plants. The great wave of nuclear AGR shutdowns has barely started but the Magnoxes are mostly offline already. Other European countries have kept their coal plants around either in daily use or on standby and are therefore able to bring them back. The GB grid simply doesn't have much idled but non-demolished coal capacity left on it.

3) Although, unlike most EU power markets, the GB electricity market is not pure "energy only" and has a capacity market, like those markets, electricity is priced at the marginal cost which in most hours is set by gas generation.

So the UK gets a double whammy of gas price effects.

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#94
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A view from Germany: Up to Russian invasion this February: old oil furnaces were being avidly replaced with natural gas ones. Solar installations were starting to slack off. Lots of re-roofing and new exterior wall insulation. Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere. Gonna be hard to convin…

> Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere. France here... Seeing how things were turning in May I turned my open fireplace into a closed one (way better efficiency) and ordered metric shit-tons of dry wood (I've now got enough for at least two years). Thankfully my house ain't using natural…

EDF is certainly run by state apparatchiks, but it's hard to argue that they haven't done a pretty good job making electricity available cheaply and plentifully to French consumers.

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#95
post #5

If climate change doesn’t bless Europe with a warmer winter this year I see no way that a bunch of people won’t freeze to death.

My heater was broken one winter, so I had a completely unheated apartment for quite a while in germany.

It's not cosy, but far, far from freezing to death.

Countries further north do not use gas for heating, countries further south do need it even less to stay above something tolerable.

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#96

What's rarely mentioned is that many European countries have massive reserves of recoverable shale gas but have banned fracking and are thus depending on imported gas... That's one of the reasons the US are cashing in right now while Europe is having an "energy crisis".

Currently in EU renewable energy is practically 40%. So there is zero point in digging holes in the ground. They can easily buy the rest and quickly grow renewable energy share (basically what they are doing now).

That seems to high, I came up with 12.4% primary energy in 2021 and 22.1% gross final energy in 2020 after a quick search.

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere. France here... Seeing how things were turning in May I turned my open fireplace into a closed one (way better efficiency) and ordered metric shit-tons of dry wood (I've now got enough for at least two years). Thankfully my house ain't using natural…

EDF is certainly run by state apparatchiks, but it's hard to argue that they haven't done a pretty good job making electricity available cheaply and plentifully to French consumers.

EDF is mostly doing a good job especially considering how the EU competition regulation hinders them but they seriously screwed up with the nuclear power stations maintenance situation.

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#98
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an emergency plan being executed and expedited to reduce total gas demand by 30%, which just happens to be the amount Europe imports. With half of that 15% this winter.

Reducing energy consumption will only lead to impoverishment.

If you look at the current plans in most countries, they're largely about reducing waste and excessive usage. I mean... you could consider not being allowed to heat your private swimming pool "impoverishment", but probably only if you were comically wealthy and entitled.

(I'm actually a little surprised just _how_ un-aggressive the plans generally are.)

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#99
post #3

It would be interesting to know the end game here. If the Ukrainian war ends, I assume that isn't the end of it. I assume the taps from Russia will turn back on, but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply.

> I assume the taps from Russia will turn back on Why? The current trend is to work hard in order to reduce any form of business with Russia that would help them to rebuild the army and become a threat again.

And just after that quote I said:

>but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply

Russia is using gas to try and keep Europe out of the conflict. Once the war ends that ceases to be a motivator. Thus I assume they will turn the taps back on. That doesn't mean we want to rely on it which is the whole point of the question. Victory in Ukraine doesn't end this, so what's the end game. Is there going to be a further push for renewables? Gas from other sources? What's the time frames?

Re: Europe gas storage reserves – by country, updated daily

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> surely freedom of speech, the right to protest [are the fundamental determinants of social progression] a) No, that's pretty arbitrary. Every country has limits on freedom of speech and expression, and they all draw the line in different places. b) It is 100% not illegal to express an opinion that Charles isn't fit to be king, that the monarchy should be abolished and so on. No end of people saying just that on the…

Surely however, democratic society has its foundation in these things. Without freedom of speech, we don't a free formation of ideas in society, so there can be no legitimate elections. Without freedom to protest and to have political gatherings we don't have freedom to communicate ideas to people who don't see them, and then again, we don't have prerequisites for a functioning democracy I think a) is very dubious--…

You are now changing your argument from "Britain may in fact be the most backwards country, socially" to "Britain doesn't have a functioning democracy".

Every country on earth has forms of expression that aren't protected. I'm sorry you don't like that, but it doesn't make it any less true.

People have not been arrested because they said "fuck imperialism". Here, I'll say it now. Fuck Imperialism! There is zero chance I will get in any legal issue in the UK for this, and I also believe that you know this full well. Once more with feeling, fuck imperialism!

In the UK, as in almost every country, violence isn't the sole determinant of whether or not a protest is legal. In the US for example, the degree to which you obstruct traffic is important to the legality of your protest.

Post reply on HN