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There is not really a separate price for fossil fuel electricity. And renewable energy has preference: if renewable energy is available, it will be used with pr

by lispm 7y ago

There is not really a separate price for fossil fuel electricity. And renewable energy has preference: if renewable energy is available, it will be used with preference. > Even if there was 100% renewable energy for electricity production in 2050, that wouldn't help with emissions that stem from heating unless you'd also make people heat with electricity. And to do that, you'd need to lower the prices (or raise the prices of alternatives). That's right. In a future with large electricity surplus it makes sense to switch to electricity for heating. To make that attractive new price models are needed. Currently another goal is to increase heating efficiency and cheap heating prices would go against it. When we switch to electricity we want to make sure that the heating is max efficient. Different from France, where electricity for heating is cheap and is used very inefficiently.

anon4242 7y ago
There are good energy efficient solutions to heating that use electricity. Here in Sweden the most common solution for new houses is the downhole heat exchanger [1]. If you want a cheaper initial investment an air heat pump can be used. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downhole_heat_exchanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downhole_heat_exchanger
- lispm 7y ago
  Sure, there are. But houses need to be insulated. Consumers need not waste energy by just using it -> for example don't open the window to cool down, instead of lowering the heating, etc. etc. Standards need to be defined for new houses. Also provide solutions for existing houses. Provide business models. To create that market and to make some impact means that we are talking about decades.
  - anon4242 7y ago
    I keep forgetting how hopelessly after on the insulation central Europe is compared to us in the north. A friend of a friend built a house by Swedish standards in the UK a while ago and all her neighbors pitied her because the snow remained on her roof during winter.
    - lispm 7y ago
      We have that, too. But highly insulated houses have new problems: air quality can be bad and houses need an extensive fresh air supply system. Moisture needs to be removed from the air, too. But if coal&oil, now gas and future electricity would be cheap, there would be little incentive to develop working solutions. There are also concepts like 'virtual power plants': a virtual power plant consists of a bunch of renewable electricity producers (solar, wind, ...) and a gas power plant for back up. The gas power plant would then also provide the heat for homes in a centralized fashion. The efficiency of such a gas power plant could then very high. This would work for residential areas. The gas could also in the future be produced from local renewable energy sources.
    - atoav 7y ago
      UK is much much worse than Germany tho. And as an Austrian I have to say that most scandinavic houses I have been to (including iceland) were much worse insulated (both thermally and acoustically) than the houses in Austria.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
>> Even if there was 100% renewable energy for electricity production in 2050, that wouldn't help with emissions that stem from heating unless you'd also make people heat with electricity. And to do that, you'd need to lower the prices (or raise the prices of alternatives). >That's right. In a future with large electricity surplus it makes sense to switch to electricity for heating. To make that attractive new price models are needed. Again, maybe read the article before commenting. Because the article explains how the pricing structure is incentivising people to continue using fossil fuels, even with a large electricity surplus.
- lispm 7y ago
  Again, the article is misleading and fails to understand the German electricity markets (!), how the EEG works, how the electricity production/distribution/sales works in Germany, the pricing and how consumers buy electricity. For example: the renewable produced electricity is delivered onto the grid and the distribution takes it. As much as is possible. This is mixed with non-renewable electricity. The consumer then gets delivered the mix. The normal consumer has no choice - he always gets the mix. He/she can't prefer fossil fuels or renewable. If there is more coal generated electricity, the renewable energy electricity has a preference. By law: https://www.buzer.de/s1.htm?g=eeg_2009&a=8 https://www.buzer.de/s1.htm?g=eeg_2009&a=8 'Netzbetreiber sind vorbehaltlich des § 11 verpflichtet, den gesamten angebotenen Strom aus Erneuerbaren Energien und aus Grubengas unverzüglich vorrangig abzunehmen' translates: 'Grid companies ... are required to take all provided electricity generated from renewable energies ... immediately and with preference.' That's the German law, the EEG, the renewable energy law. Thus there is simply no choice: ALL AVAILABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY IS PUSHED INTO THE GRID IMMEDIATELY WITH PREFERENCE. The provider of renewable energy gets a guaranteed price, based on some calculations. The goal is that this price goes down over the years. Additionally coal gets further price burdens, which last year had an effect that a lot of coal was driven out of the market, because coal generated electricity was suddenly much less competitive. Currently there is no time in Germany when renewable energy electricity drives the country 100% or more. There are weekends with lots of wind where we reach 60%. These days are still relatively rare. On these days the consumer can not choose to get more wind electricity, since he AUTOMATICALLY gets as much as possible via the mix provided by the grid. The producer gets his price. Now there might be additional capacity available and there might not be a buyer for it. Thus the price on the spot market gets zero for some short period of time or even negative. But for me as an end consumer I can't choose what kind of electricity I get delivered. What I can influence is where I buy the electricity from and where the profits from that are invested. For example I buy my electricity from a local provider, which invests in renewable energy. The company not only buys renewable energy on the market, but also has its own renewable energy production. The provider invests their profits into more renewable energy production. For coal its currently tough to make any profits and they are slowly driven out of the market: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/hunderte-millionen-verlust-braunkohle-kraftwerke-tief-in-den-roten-zahlen/24857196.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/hunderte-millionen-ve... Last year in the first half brown coal power plants were 650 Million Euros in the red. Thus the consumer doesn't give the coal power plants any advantage. The added capacity of renewable produced electricity is each year planned (but not completely determined) and the government has instruments to influence that.
luckylion 7y ago
> There is not really a separate price for fossil fuel electricity. And renewable energy has preference: if renewable energy is available, it will be used with preference. Sure, sure, the issue is that you can use electricity or fossil fuels for heating. If the prices are massively different, people cannot afford to go green. Having super high prices for consumers while essentially subsidizing industry seems like a problematic approach, and one that primarily hits the lower classes, as a higher electricity bill will very much directly affect their bottom line. Combining this with a subsidy policy framework for renewables that also primarily the upper middle & upper class profit from, this looks more like redistribution via market.
- lispm 7y ago
  > Sure, sure, the issue is that you can use electricity or fossil fuels for heating. You can't. Fossil fuels are still used for electricity, too and there is not enough cheap electricity for heating. If you want to bring people from relatively cheap gas to expensive electricity (the free electricity claim is just nonsense) that would be massive investments, while the consumer already pays for the move into renewable energy for electricity production, which without heating still needs to scale to replace more fossil and nuclear. If we want to have the consumer to pay for new heating systems and electricity distribution for heating on a larger scale, then this will be difficult... It's simply not the case that one lowers the price for electricity (who pays for that?) and consumers will switch on their electrical heating systems. There is simply no large scale infrastructure for that. It might even be better to create gas from electricity and deliver that to the customer... Then one can use the large storage and distribution systems for gas in Germany and the gas heating which is widely available. There is a move to get rid of oil heating and to provide incentives to install different heating from 2026 onwards...

by lispm 7y ago

anon4242 7y ago

There are good energy efficient solutions to heating that use electricity. Here in Sweden the most common solution for new houses is the downhole heat exchanger [1]. If you want a cheaper initial investment an air heat pump can be used. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downhole_heat_exchanger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downhole_heat_exchanger

lispm 7y ago
Sure, there are. But houses need to be insulated. Consumers need not waste energy by just using it -> for example don't open the window to cool down, instead of lowering the heating, etc. etc. Standards need to be defined for new houses. Also provide solutions for existing houses. Provide business models. To create that market and to make some impact means that we are talking about decades.
- anon4242 7y ago
  I keep forgetting how hopelessly after on the insulation central Europe is compared to us in the north. A friend of a friend built a house by Swedish standards in the UK a while ago and all her neighbors pitied her because the snow remained on her roof during winter.
  - lispm 7y ago
    We have that, too. But highly insulated houses have new problems: air quality can be bad and houses need an extensive fresh air supply system. Moisture needs to be removed from the air, too. But if coal&oil, now gas and future electricity would be cheap, there would be little incentive to develop working solutions. There are also concepts like 'virtual power plants': a virtual power plant consists of a bunch of renewable electricity producers (solar, wind, ...) and a gas power plant for back up. The gas power plant would then also provide the heat for homes in a centralized fashion. The efficiency of such a gas power plant could then very high. This would work for residential areas. The gas could also in the future be produced from local renewable energy sources.
  - atoav 7y ago
    UK is much much worse than Germany tho. And as an Austrian I have to say that most scandinavic houses I have been to (including iceland) were much worse insulated (both thermally and acoustically) than the houses in Austria.

marcus_holmes 7y ago

>> Even if there was 100% renewable energy for electricity production in 2050, that wouldn't help with emissions that stem from heating unless you'd also make people heat with electricity. And to do that, you'd need to lower the prices (or raise the prices of alternatives). >That's right. In a future with large electricity surplus it makes sense to switch to electricity for heating. To make that attractive new price models are needed. Again, maybe read the article before commenting. Because the article explains how the pricing structure is incentivising people to continue using fossil fuels, even with a large electricity surplus.

lispm 7y ago
Again, the article is misleading and fails to understand the German electricity markets (!), how the EEG works, how the electricity production/distribution/sales works in Germany, the pricing and how consumers buy electricity. For example: the renewable produced electricity is delivered onto the grid and the distribution takes it. As much as is possible. This is mixed with non-renewable electricity. The consumer then gets delivered the mix. The normal consumer has no choice - he always gets the mix. He/she can't prefer fossil fuels or renewable. If there is more coal generated electricity, the renewable energy electricity has a preference. By law: https://www.buzer.de/s1.htm?g=eeg_2009&a=8 https://www.buzer.de/s1.htm?g=eeg_2009&a=8 'Netzbetreiber sind vorbehaltlich des § 11 verpflichtet, den gesamten angebotenen Strom aus Erneuerbaren Energien und aus Grubengas unverzüglich vorrangig abzunehmen' translates: 'Grid companies ... are required to take all provided electricity generated from renewable energies ... immediately and with preference.' That's the German law, the EEG, the renewable energy law. Thus there is simply no choice: ALL AVAILABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY IS PUSHED INTO THE GRID IMMEDIATELY WITH PREFERENCE. The provider of renewable energy gets a guaranteed price, based on some calculations. The goal is that this price goes down over the years. Additionally coal gets further price burdens, which last year had an effect that a lot of coal was driven out of the market, because coal generated electricity was suddenly much less competitive. Currently there is no time in Germany when renewable energy electricity drives the country 100% or more. There are weekends with lots of wind where we reach 60%. These days are still relatively rare. On these days the consumer can not choose to get more wind electricity, since he AUTOMATICALLY gets as much as possible via the mix provided by the grid. The producer gets his price. Now there might be additional capacity available and there might not be a buyer for it. Thus the price on the spot market gets zero for some short period of time or even negative. But for me as an end consumer I can't choose what kind of electricity I get delivered. What I can influence is where I buy the electricity from and where the profits from that are invested. For example I buy my electricity from a local provider, which invests in renewable energy. The company not only buys renewable energy on the market, but also has its own renewable energy production. The provider invests their profits into more renewable energy production. For coal its currently tough to make any profits and they are slowly driven out of the market: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/hunderte-millionen-verlust-braunkohle-kraftwerke-tief-in-den-roten-zahlen/24857196.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/hunderte-millionen-ve... Last year in the first half brown coal power plants were 650 Million Euros in the red. Thus the consumer doesn't give the coal power plants any advantage. The added capacity of renewable produced electricity is each year planned (but not completely determined) and the government has instruments to influence that.

luckylion 7y ago

> There is not really a separate price for fossil fuel electricity. And renewable energy has preference: if renewable energy is available, it will be used with preference. Sure, sure, the issue is that you can use electricity or fossil fuels for heating. If the prices are massively different, people cannot afford to go green. Having super high prices for consumers while essentially subsidizing industry seems like a problematic approach, and one that primarily hits the lower classes, as a higher electricity bill will very much directly affect their bottom line. Combining this with a subsidy policy framework for renewables that also primarily the upper middle & upper class profit from, this looks more like redistribution via market.

lispm 7y ago
> Sure, sure, the issue is that you can use electricity or fossil fuels for heating. You can't. Fossil fuels are still used for electricity, too and there is not enough cheap electricity for heating. If you want to bring people from relatively cheap gas to expensive electricity (the free electricity claim is just nonsense) that would be massive investments, while the consumer already pays for the move into renewable energy for electricity production, which without heating still needs to scale to replace more fossil and nuclear. If we want to have the consumer to pay for new heating systems and electricity distribution for heating on a larger scale, then this will be difficult... It's simply not the case that one lowers the price for electricity (who pays for that?) and consumers will switch on their electrical heating systems. There is simply no large scale infrastructure for that. It might even be better to create gas from electricity and deliver that to the customer... Then one can use the large storage and distribution systems for gas in Germany and the gas heating which is widely available. There is a move to get rid of oil heating and to provide incentives to install different heating from 2026 onwards...