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For anyone wondering why gas, it's gas only in specific cases. > Investments in natural gas power plants would also be deemed green if they produce emissions

For anyone wondering why gas, it's gas only in specific cases. > Investments in natural gas power plants would also be deemed green if they produce emissions below 270g of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour (kWh), replace a more polluting fossil fuel plant, receive a construction permit by Dec. 31 2030 and plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dathinab 5y ago
It's still kinda rediculus IMHO. Nuclear power it's climate but but environment/human friendly. So I can understand that. But natural gas isn't green however I look at it. It's clearly better then cush l coal, but but green. So it shouldn't be allowed to be labeled as such. Instead we should add a label for better but but really good tech, like yellow or so.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  The labeling matters because it influences funds allocation. "green" in this sense just means it's eligible to receive funding/tax status that is otherwise not available. It's not a judgement on whether the technology is carbon neutral.
  - dathinab 5y ago
    But that is what people will treat it as. If it's just about such aspect you could give it some arbitrary EU regulation number and say it's compatible with that. By basing it around the term "green" it's very much focused around marketing and what people will perceive as "carbon neutral".
    - shawnz 5y ago
      Why would this impact the colloquial meaning of "green" in any way? Do people usually adapt their informal language to be consistent with EU regulations?
      - tcfhgj 5y ago
        well all our energy infrastructure and politics will have to be adapted to it which makes this not unlikely
  - mulmen 5y ago
    > it's eligible to receive funding/tax status [...] That's literally the entire problem.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      Why is it a problem to give funding or tax advantages to projects that actively reduce emissions?
      - vlovich123 5y ago
        The argument would be that if you didn’t provide that out market forces would force us into renewables more quickly.
        tshaddox 5y ago
        Surely any support available to projects that replace higher-emissions facilities with lower-emissions facilities would still be available if the lower-emissions facility is a zero-emissions facility, right?
        mulmen 5y ago
        The gas plants aren’t zero emission. They’re better than coal. That’s a low bar.
        vlovich123 5y ago
        You have a finite pool of resources. Market forces means that people will try to optimize for the best ROI (not really the full story, but generally true for a vast majority of the funds). Since natural gas is cheaper, you’re subsidizing a comparatively dirty source of energy which penalizes something like nuclear which is truly zero carbon. So sure, net you might achieve a reduction. However, that could mean that after 30 years you aren’t as decarbonized if the investments in natural gas prevented nuclear and renewable build out. I don’t know if that’s the actual case, but my prior based on how the FF industry operates leads me to believe that to be a reason natural gas is being framed in this way. Sure, it only covers construction before 2030. However these plants easily last 50+ years and inflation means that a nuclear plant starting in 2031 will have a much harder time competing with a natural gas plant making its economics worse. I’m always open to having my mind changed with data and a compelling counterargument, but I’m more sympathetic to the position that’s extremely concerned with natural gas being included. The emissions limit should probably be 10x lower than what was set to allow natural gas. If this is a jobs thing to provide an off ramp for the industry, I’m more sympathetic to that as long as we’re honest and transparent that that’s why we’re doing it (the political and economic ramifications are just as important as the goal of decarbonization). Just don’t spit in my face and tell me it’s raining.
  - throwaway472927 5y ago
    Isn't it kind of worse that it's not just a branding question? After all the idea is to incentivise truly carbon neutral energy. Obviously there's pragmatism and gas is better than coal but I think an independent body would say "burn gas if you must, but don't expect to get off freely with closing the nuclear plants".
- labster 5y ago
  Natural gas can be green and reduce global warming… in the specific case where you burn methane that would have otherwise escaped to the atmosphere. Garbage dumps are a very good case to burn natural gas, get energy, and slow help the climate. But these sources are limited.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    I believe that "natural gas" only refers to fossil gas, and other sources of Methane already have (different) marketing terms.
    - otherme123 5y ago
      They are called "biogas" and considered renewable.
- scotty79 5y ago
  It's politics. France has nuclear and Germany has a huge pipe to buy natural gas from Putin.
- crucialfelix 5y ago
  It's labelled as Transitional, not green. That's what the EU Taxonomy does: it labels activities and specifies precise criteria.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Yes, it's oddly specific but apparently intended to allow countries to classify energy from such plants as "green" and treat it as such when buying/selling or taxing it. That is important because a lot of companies that are interested in buying green energy in order to reduce their carbon emissions would care about their energy being labeled as green. There is a lot of book keeping that is happening related to this and some big financial interests across the EU. Demand for non green energy is going to be dropping as companies shoot for being carbon neutral and are incentivized to switch to green energy. The Germans are going to have to build a lot of new capacity until 2030 because their new government just committed to closing all their coal plants by then. Inevitably, that's going to involve building some new gas plants. And those won't be green unless they meet those criteria. So, that construction permit end date is interesting here. This clearly is a stop gap solution so Germany can get rid of coal and build some "greener" replacement plants without creating a demand problem for energy produced by those new plants. If they weren't green, lots of companies would end up buying their energy from other suppliers. After 2030, the attention will shift to getting rid of natural gas completely; hence the further restriction of having a plan for switching to something else. Natural gas is already a bit on the expensive side and lowering the carbon output won't help with that. But it's going to take a bit longer. Nuclear is in there because lots of countries in the EU are still building new nuclear plants and they don't actually emit carbon. So, calling that green is a lot less controversial. So, odd but I can see the logic. I don't necessarily agree with it though. If it emits carbon, it's a problem and as a consumer I would not want to be tricked into buying "green" energy like that. People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that.
- mulmen 5y ago
  > People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that. And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. By giving themselves this loophole the EU is undermining the market forces that will make green energy viable. We don't need to find economical energy sources anymore. We need to dump money into green energy now and last month and a decade ago. The price doesn't matter, just build true green energy and subsidize it until it becomes economical.
yholio 5y ago
> plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035. It's a handout to the dying hydrogen industry of which EU was a huge supporter of. The electric revolution killed any chances of hydrogen powered cars, and the new hype in the industry is using excess renewable electricity to store in hydrogen batteries, which would then supply process heat or residential heating with zero emissions. This is all a bunch of crap that will never be economic, since transporting, handling and using hydrogen is a nightmare and generating it via electrolysis is expensive and ineficient - to the point where the only economic source is to crack methane and release CO2. But that does not seem to stop the hydrogen hype, and it will likely continue in Europe for a few more years, until die it must, as prescribed by the laws of physics.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "The electric revolution killed any chances of hydrogen powered cars" It was never meant to succeed, much like Apple's concessions to right to repair, it's just a distraction designed to buy time
- user_7832 5y ago
  I'm curious on why you're pessimistic on hydrogen. I agree that cars are likely not the best use of fuel cells (heavy vehicles are able to utilize H2's strengths much more), but in a future based on renewables hydrogen allows you to store energy in a very dense way. Lithium batteries are acceptably heavy/expensive at small scales, but how do you think will supply vary to meet demand in the medium-long term without a chemical fuel (hydrogen/ammonia)?
  - Gwypaas 5y ago
    Call it a solution in search of a problem. The best fuel cells today reach about 50% round trip efficiency. That's even a high estimate. That by physics defines the price difference between where you buy low and sell high. Without even counting the hydrogen storage, fuel cell itself and everything needed to make it function. That number also defines the arbitrage marginal any other solution has against hydrogen. Be it batteries, over built renewables or geographically coupled networks. Hydrogen as a feedstock for industry?? Definitely. Hydrogen for airplanes? Likely synthetic hydrocarbons but we will see, the hydrogen has to come from somewhere. Same with long distance ocean transport. Emergency reserve of power for a nation state? Just use fossil fuels.
jeeeb 5y ago
Intuitively 270g per kWh seemed high to me, but to put it in perspective a Tesla model 3 does about 100km per 11.9~14.9kWh (according to Google). So taking the larger estimate (and ignoring transmission etc losses) at 270g/KWh that gives emissions of around 41g/km. Comparatively though my 2021 Camry hybrid has emissions of 96g/km. So, assuming the plants are primarily being used to level out variable renewable production, I guess that is a reasonable standard for bridging a technology gap.
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  I do wonder, how significant are inefficiencies in transmission, charging, and storage? With cheap lithium batteries I've bought (like phone power banks), I usually need to subtract about 25% from the rated capacity to figure out how many times it'll fill my phone's battery. Although hopefully cars are more efficient
  - jeeeb 5y ago
    Your right! I was just looking at it from the point of view of how efficient does this standard require power plants to be, since 270g of CO2 to run a 1kw heater for an hour seemed high. If you look at the whole energy supply chain though the picture is probably a lot worse for both, in particular when you account for things like methane leaks or the emissions from transporting + refining oil.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Losses on the big high-voltage wires average about 2% in the US. Losses on lower-voltage distribution wires average 4% on top of that - so about 6% in total. [1] Lithium Ion batteries charge near 100% efficiency. [2] In terms of storage (specifically self-discharge), Lithium Ion batteries lose 5% in 24 hours, then 1-2% per month thereafter - but can be as low as 0.35% per month. [3, 4] [1] http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much-electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/ http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-... [2] https://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/lithium-ion-battery-advantages/ https://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/lithium-ion... [3] https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-802b-what-does-elevated-self-discharge-do%C2%A0 https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-802b-what-does-elev... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Does anyone know how many g of CO2 for the average natural gas and coal plants are?
- wazoox 5y ago
  About 400 to 500g of CO2 per kWh. That's everything but green. Plus as Norway and Netherlands production are in sharp decline, the proportion of EU natural gas coming from Russia, currently at 40%, is deemed to grow. That's mind-boggling stupid: let's get ourselves depending upon Russia and Putin, and let's replace are 15g/kWh nuclear plants with 500g/kWh gas plants! What could go wrong? German Energiewende is criminal. Plain and simple. Shame on the Grünen, shame on the pseudo-environmentalists.
option 5y ago
Germany is a powerful country in EU and they are going to buy more gas from Russia because they are closing their nuclear. Of course, it is ridiculous that gas is considered green…
inter_netuser 5y ago
what's low carbon gases?
- avz 5y ago
  The only one I can think of right now that releases energy when burnt in oxidizing atmosphere is H2, though there almost certainly are others.
- matsemann 5y ago
  We in Norway have at least deluded ourself into believing that our oil and gas are cleaner than other countries', and we therefore should keep pumping fossil fuels out of the ground because it's better that we do it than someone else.. Smh
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
scotty79 5y ago
Isn't it because of Nord Stream 2?
hammock 5y ago
When did "green" get co-opted to mean low CO2 emissions? It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulate pollution, acid rain, habitat destruction and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about pollution and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. These are the same thing in common parlance. High CO2 emission plants are fossil fuel driven, and those are of course non-renewable. Wind, solar and nuclear are renewable, sustainable and low CO2. Nuclear in particular also produces very little waste as a function of power generated and extraction of uranium from seawater could fit the renewable definition.
  - hammock 5y ago
    I guess you missed the entire headline and article where it says they will call natural gas green.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      It only gets the label if it's greener than existing solutions. They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good.
      - fivea 5y ago
        > It only gets the label if it's greener than existing solutions. They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good. That sounds very idiotic to me. One of the biggest environmental threats is global warming, which is caused by reintroducing carbon into the atmosphere through the use of fossil fuels. It makes no sense at all to label fossil fuel usage as green just because they manage to come up with an arbitrary line in the sand for unrelated pollutants and in the process ignore carbon emissions.
petre 5y ago
The whole German agenda on decarbonization is based on Russian natural gas, so call me not surprised. If they had labelled H2 investments as green it would be a whole different thing.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Nuclear is gonna take 20 years at minimum for the Netherlands, it's not the money but the red tape. And no amount of money can make the bureaucracy work faster. It's been tried.
ulrikrasmussen 5y ago
Gas power plants are currently a cornerstone of the Danish green electricity plan. The idea is to base everything primarily on wind and solar, and to build an extensive direct current distribution network to exchange power with neighboring countries. Even with all that, there will still be periods where the sun does not shine and the wind doesn't blow. Gas power plants are then supposed to take over in those periods, which are hypothesized to be relatively short. It has been projected that all gas will be biogas by 2035, i.e. derived from food waste etc, and thus in theory carbon neutral.
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  Cool story, but it is a lie. Biogas manufactured from biowaste, even if done perfectly, is insufficient by a factor of 4. You need some way of manufacturing stored energy in accessible form. These plants should be already in development and being built to hit that target...
- q1w2 5y ago
  This is exactly why nuclear needs to be the solution. Solar and wind will always need gas to provide reliable power.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dathinab 5y ago

It's still kinda rediculus IMHO. Nuclear power it's climate but but environment/human friendly. So I can understand that. But natural gas isn't green however I look at it. It's clearly better then cush l coal, but but green. So it shouldn't be allowed to be labeled as such. Instead we should add a label for better but but really good tech, like yellow or so.

horsawlarway 5y ago
The labeling matters because it influences funds allocation. "green" in this sense just means it's eligible to receive funding/tax status that is otherwise not available. It's not a judgement on whether the technology is carbon neutral.
- dathinab 5y ago
  But that is what people will treat it as. If it's just about such aspect you could give it some arbitrary EU regulation number and say it's compatible with that. By basing it around the term "green" it's very much focused around marketing and what people will perceive as "carbon neutral".
  - shawnz 5y ago
    Why would this impact the colloquial meaning of "green" in any way? Do people usually adapt their informal language to be consistent with EU regulations?
    - tcfhgj 5y ago
      well all our energy infrastructure and politics will have to be adapted to it which makes this not unlikely
- mulmen 5y ago
  > it's eligible to receive funding/tax status [...] That's literally the entire problem.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Why is it a problem to give funding or tax advantages to projects that actively reduce emissions?
    - vlovich123 5y ago
      The argument would be that if you didn’t provide that out market forces would force us into renewables more quickly.
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        Surely any support available to projects that replace higher-emissions facilities with lower-emissions facilities would still be available if the lower-emissions facility is a zero-emissions facility, right?
        mulmen 5y ago
        The gas plants aren’t zero emission. They’re better than coal. That’s a low bar.
        vlovich123 5y ago
        You have a finite pool of resources. Market forces means that people will try to optimize for the best ROI (not really the full story, but generally true for a vast majority of the funds). Since natural gas is cheaper, you’re subsidizing a comparatively dirty source of energy which penalizes something like nuclear which is truly zero carbon. So sure, net you might achieve a reduction. However, that could mean that after 30 years you aren’t as decarbonized if the investments in natural gas prevented nuclear and renewable build out. I don’t know if that’s the actual case, but my prior based on how the FF industry operates leads me to believe that to be a reason natural gas is being framed in this way. Sure, it only covers construction before 2030. However these plants easily last 50+ years and inflation means that a nuclear plant starting in 2031 will have a much harder time competing with a natural gas plant making its economics worse. I’m always open to having my mind changed with data and a compelling counterargument, but I’m more sympathetic to the position that’s extremely concerned with natural gas being included. The emissions limit should probably be 10x lower than what was set to allow natural gas. If this is a jobs thing to provide an off ramp for the industry, I’m more sympathetic to that as long as we’re honest and transparent that that’s why we’re doing it (the political and economic ramifications are just as important as the goal of decarbonization). Just don’t spit in my face and tell me it’s raining.
- throwaway472927 5y ago
  Isn't it kind of worse that it's not just a branding question? After all the idea is to incentivise truly carbon neutral energy. Obviously there's pragmatism and gas is better than coal but I think an independent body would say "burn gas if you must, but don't expect to get off freely with closing the nuclear plants".
labster 5y ago
Natural gas can be green and reduce global warming… in the specific case where you burn methane that would have otherwise escaped to the atmosphere. Garbage dumps are a very good case to burn natural gas, get energy, and slow help the climate. But these sources are limited.
- adrianN 5y ago
  I believe that "natural gas" only refers to fossil gas, and other sources of Methane already have (different) marketing terms.
  - otherme123 5y ago
    They are called "biogas" and considered renewable.
scotty79 5y ago
It's politics. France has nuclear and Germany has a huge pipe to buy natural gas from Putin.
crucialfelix 5y ago
It's labelled as Transitional, not green. That's what the EU Taxonomy does: it labels activities and specifies precise criteria.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Yes, it's oddly specific but apparently intended to allow countries to classify energy from such plants as "green" and treat it as such when buying/selling or taxing it. That is important because a lot of companies that are interested in buying green energy in order to reduce their carbon emissions would care about their energy being labeled as green. There is a lot of book keeping that is happening related to this and some big financial interests across the EU. Demand for non green energy is going to be dropping as companies shoot for being carbon neutral and are incentivized to switch to green energy. The Germans are going to have to build a lot of new capacity until 2030 because their new government just committed to closing all their coal plants by then. Inevitably, that's going to involve building some new gas plants. And those won't be green unless they meet those criteria. So, that construction permit end date is interesting here. This clearly is a stop gap solution so Germany can get rid of coal and build some "greener" replacement plants without creating a demand problem for energy produced by those new plants. If they weren't green, lots of companies would end up buying their energy from other suppliers. After 2030, the attention will shift to getting rid of natural gas completely; hence the further restriction of having a plan for switching to something else. Natural gas is already a bit on the expensive side and lowering the carbon output won't help with that. But it's going to take a bit longer. Nuclear is in there because lots of countries in the EU are still building new nuclear plants and they don't actually emit carbon. So, calling that green is a lot less controversial. So, odd but I can see the logic. I don't necessarily agree with it though. If it emits carbon, it's a problem and as a consumer I would not want to be tricked into buying "green" energy like that. People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that.

mulmen 5y ago
> People are going to notice this and call bullshit on that. And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple. By giving themselves this loophole the EU is undermining the market forces that will make green energy viable. We don't need to find economical energy sources anymore. We need to dump money into green energy now and last month and a decade ago. The price doesn't matter, just build true green energy and subsidize it until it becomes economical.

yholio 5y ago

> plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035. It's a handout to the dying hydrogen industry of which EU was a huge supporter of. The electric revolution killed any chances of hydrogen powered cars, and the new hype in the industry is using excess renewable electricity to store in hydrogen batteries, which would then supply process heat or residential heating with zero emissions. This is all a bunch of crap that will never be economic, since transporting, handling and using hydrogen is a nightmare and generating it via electrolysis is expensive and ineficient - to the point where the only economic source is to crack methane and release CO2. But that does not seem to stop the hydrogen hype, and it will likely continue in Europe for a few more years, until die it must, as prescribed by the laws of physics.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"The electric revolution killed any chances of hydrogen powered cars" It was never meant to succeed, much like Apple's concessions to right to repair, it's just a distraction designed to buy time
user_7832 5y ago
I'm curious on why you're pessimistic on hydrogen. I agree that cars are likely not the best use of fuel cells (heavy vehicles are able to utilize H2's strengths much more), but in a future based on renewables hydrogen allows you to store energy in a very dense way. Lithium batteries are acceptably heavy/expensive at small scales, but how do you think will supply vary to meet demand in the medium-long term without a chemical fuel (hydrogen/ammonia)?
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  Call it a solution in search of a problem. The best fuel cells today reach about 50% round trip efficiency. That's even a high estimate. That by physics defines the price difference between where you buy low and sell high. Without even counting the hydrogen storage, fuel cell itself and everything needed to make it function. That number also defines the arbitrage marginal any other solution has against hydrogen. Be it batteries, over built renewables or geographically coupled networks. Hydrogen as a feedstock for industry?? Definitely. Hydrogen for airplanes? Likely synthetic hydrocarbons but we will see, the hydrogen has to come from somewhere. Same with long distance ocean transport. Emergency reserve of power for a nation state? Just use fossil fuels.

jeeeb 5y ago

Intuitively 270g per kWh seemed high to me, but to put it in perspective a Tesla model 3 does about 100km per 11.9~14.9kWh (according to Google). So taking the larger estimate (and ignoring transmission etc losses) at 270g/KWh that gives emissions of around 41g/km. Comparatively though my 2021 Camry hybrid has emissions of 96g/km. So, assuming the plants are primarily being used to level out variable renewable production, I guess that is a reasonable standard for bridging a technology gap.

Rebelgecko 5y ago
I do wonder, how significant are inefficiencies in transmission, charging, and storage? With cheap lithium batteries I've bought (like phone power banks), I usually need to subtract about 25% from the rated capacity to figure out how many times it'll fill my phone's battery. Although hopefully cars are more efficient
- jeeeb 5y ago
  Your right! I was just looking at it from the point of view of how efficient does this standard require power plants to be, since 270g of CO2 to run a 1kw heater for an hour seemed high. If you look at the whole energy supply chain though the picture is probably a lot worse for both, in particular when you account for things like methane leaks or the emissions from transporting + refining oil.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Losses on the big high-voltage wires average about 2% in the US. Losses on lower-voltage distribution wires average 4% on top of that - so about 6% in total. [1] Lithium Ion batteries charge near 100% efficiency. [2] In terms of storage (specifically self-discharge), Lithium Ion batteries lose 5% in 24 hours, then 1-2% per month thereafter - but can be as low as 0.35% per month. [3, 4] [1] http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much-electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/ http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-... [2] https://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/lithium-ion-battery-advantages/ https://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/lithium-ion... [3] https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-802b-what-does-elevated-self-discharge-do%C2%A0 https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-802b-what-does-elev... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

Does anyone know how many g of CO2 for the average natural gas and coal plants are?

wazoox 5y ago
About 400 to 500g of CO2 per kWh. That's everything but green. Plus as Norway and Netherlands production are in sharp decline, the proportion of EU natural gas coming from Russia, currently at 40%, is deemed to grow. That's mind-boggling stupid: let's get ourselves depending upon Russia and Putin, and let's replace are 15g/kWh nuclear plants with 500g/kWh gas plants! What could go wrong? German Energiewende is criminal. Plain and simple. Shame on the Grünen, shame on the pseudo-environmentalists.

option 5y ago

Germany is a powerful country in EU and they are going to buy more gas from Russia because they are closing their nuclear. Of course, it is ridiculous that gas is considered green…

inter_netuser 5y ago

what's low carbon gases?

avz 5y ago
The only one I can think of right now that releases energy when burnt in oxidizing atmosphere is H2, though there almost certainly are others.
matsemann 5y ago
We in Norway have at least deluded ourself into believing that our oil and gas are cleaner than other countries', and we therefore should keep pumping fossil fuels out of the ground because it's better that we do it than someone else.. Smh

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

scotty79 5y ago

Isn't it because of Nord Stream 2?

hammock 5y ago

When did "green" get co-opted to mean low CO2 emissions? It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about particulate pollution, acid rain, habitat destruction and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. This global warming-driven definition of "green" ignores all of that.

arcticbull 5y ago
> It wasn't that long ago we used to worry about whether fuel was renewable or not, and about pollution and other environmental externalities in general, not just CO2. These are the same thing in common parlance. High CO2 emission plants are fossil fuel driven, and those are of course non-renewable. Wind, solar and nuclear are renewable, sustainable and low CO2. Nuclear in particular also produces very little waste as a function of power generated and extraction of uranium from seawater could fit the renewable definition.
- hammock 5y ago
  I guess you missed the entire headline and article where it says they will call natural gas green.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    It only gets the label if it's greener than existing solutions. They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good.
    - fivea 5y ago
      > It only gets the label if it's greener than existing solutions. They're not letting perfect be the enemy of good. That sounds very idiotic to me. One of the biggest environmental threats is global warming, which is caused by reintroducing carbon into the atmosphere through the use of fossil fuels. It makes no sense at all to label fossil fuel usage as green just because they manage to come up with an arbitrary line in the sand for unrelated pollutants and in the process ignore carbon emissions.

petre 5y ago

The whole German agenda on decarbonization is based on Russian natural gas, so call me not surprised. If they had labelled H2 investments as green it would be a whole different thing.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

Nuclear is gonna take 20 years at minimum for the Netherlands, it's not the money but the red tape. And no amount of money can make the bureaucracy work faster. It's been tried.

ulrikrasmussen 5y ago

Gas power plants are currently a cornerstone of the Danish green electricity plan. The idea is to base everything primarily on wind and solar, and to build an extensive direct current distribution network to exchange power with neighboring countries. Even with all that, there will still be periods where the sun does not shine and the wind doesn't blow. Gas power plants are then supposed to take over in those periods, which are hypothesized to be relatively short. It has been projected that all gas will be biogas by 2035, i.e. derived from food waste etc, and thus in theory carbon neutral.

AstralStorm 5y ago
Cool story, but it is a lie. Biogas manufactured from biowaste, even if done perfectly, is insufficient by a factor of 4. You need some way of manufacturing stored energy in accessible form. These plants should be already in development and being built to hit that target...
q1w2 5y ago
This is exactly why nuclear needs to be the solution. Solar and wind will always need gas to provide reliable power.