7 ms·

Hopefully the current energy crisis (in Europe) will further accelerate development in renewable energy. Seems much of Europe is still chained to LNG, and that

Hopefully the current energy crisis (in Europe) will further accelerate development in renewable energy. Seems much of Europe is still chained to LNG, and that demand is even wreaking havoc in countries which have been previously quite self-sustained, or really don't use LNG much themselves - with Norway being a good example.

pydry 4y ago
Unfortunately we'd need another 5 years to really make a difference whereas the gas crisis is going to hit us in months.
- DawnQFunk2 4y ago
  - yourusername 4y ago
    It's a bit more real in Europe. Here in the Netherlands for many people their gas bill went up hundreds of Euro's a month. My electricity and gas rates are 2.5x what they were in 2020. The average family spending a additional 10% of their income of heating isn't what i would call "nothing"
  - pydry 4y ago
    Based upon the price of gas jumps 150% in summer time when Russia coughs. This isnt a crisis. The taps arent even off and it's summer. Russia turning off the taps in winter would be a crisis.
- Someone1234 4y ago
  True. But 5-years ago this national security reliance on foreign gas prices was well known, and little was done in the intervening time. The worry is that when the current crisis subsides that inaction will yet again fall back into favor. The solutions are, in part: - National gas storage reserve (to buffet price/supply spikes somewhat). - Expansion of green energy. - Programs to reduce usage (e.g. home and business improvements). Luckily for the UK extremely efficient heat pump based heating/cooling solutions that offer greater than 100% efficiency exist[0]. It is just a matter of the political will to covert away from gas to electricity and then retrofitting homes. [0] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-systems https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-systems
  - pydry 4y ago
    It's not like this was an earthquake that we idly knew would come one day that just suddenly hit us out of the blue. NATO made a deliberate decision to bring Ukraine into the fold in 2019 and Russia reacted predictably, but not before giving us an opportunity to back down first: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/world/europe/us-nato-response-russia-demands.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/world/europe/us-nato-resp... We dove into this knowing full well the dire energy risks that escalation posed to Europe and are now acting shocked that we didnt prepare. Even now Stoltenburg's official line is basically "suck it up, Europe" which I assume means that NATO leadership is perfectly comfortable with the idea of a European economic disaster this winter. The solutions you mentioned are all great in theory but the workable ones mostly all have a 5-10 year horizon and we have a problem now.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      Russian war crimes apologists are the worst. Nobody forced Russia to invade a sovereign country (or to consider itself the rightful owner of those lands for that matter), that's entirely their fault. And it was mind bogglingly stupid, as we can see a few months in, with the massive losses to their army and economy. It wasn't something to prepare for because it was unthinkable. It was still a huge risk to prepare for though.
      - pydry 4y ago
        Nobody forced NATO to expand to Ukraine either. Or to invade Libya. Or to invade Iraq/Afghanistan. Whataboutism as a rationale for war escalation with a nuclear power is insane. To consider reining in NATO expansion war to be equivalent to war crime apologetics is beyond absurd. If we get to winter and the Russian economy fares better than ours (and at first glance it looks like it will) then a lot of people should be eating a lot of humble pie. Alas I suspect theyll just call for escalation.
        sofixa 4y ago
        > Nobody forced NATO to expand to Ukraine either Cut the Russian propaganda, NATO didn't expand to Ukraine. Ukraine, a sovereign country, wanted to join NATO, as is their every right. Denying Ukraine that right and excusing Russia's war crimes is pretty bad.
- TrueGeek 4y ago
  The best time to install a solar panel is 5 years ago. The second best time is today.
alkonaut 4y ago
If energy costs a lot, then anyone who can offer to sell energy production obviously has an attractive product. The problem as I see it is that what's needed is plannable capacity. While there is always need for more capacity, what we need most is capacity that works regardless of whether there is water in the rivers or wind in the turbines. And that's not easy. Biomass and Biogas for example.
- ephbit 4y ago
  > Biomass and Biogas for example. Right. And this has a very important implication. For home owners who're currently deciding which heating technology to replace an oil or gas furnace with. Biomass and Biogas will be needed urgently in the near future to supply powerplants (of utility order of magnitude) that can then stabilize the electrical grid against the fluctuations that are going to be caused by more and more wind and solar power. The way I see it - as enticing as it may be - to replace an oil/gas furnace with a wood pellet powered one in our current situation is the wrong choice in the long-term. The prices for electricity will rise further, yes, but the crucial role of biomass and biogas as one means to stabilize the grid will IMO lead to even greater price increases for the latter.
data_maan 4y ago
There is nothing that needs to be developed for renewables per se, it is already available: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy It just needs to implemented! Just imagine how much the politicians suck: Science has given them the solution for the energy problem, science has showed how to even make it economically, and has done that already years ago. All politics would have to do is implemented. But they cannot even do that ...
- Lyapunov 4y ago
  Hydro isn't available everywhere and wind as well as solar are unreliable. Energy storage in the required dimension is an unsolved problem too. So whatever you're trying to say here is unfounded.
missedthecue 4y ago
The problem for europe is that solar panels, windfarms, and nuclear power plants don't produce natural gas. Electricity is great, but it's not a replacement for natural gas by itself. In Germany, only 25% of natgas usage is accounted for by electricity production.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  It isn't difficult to synthesise methane (which is what natural gas is). You "just" need lots of energy. If the problem was "Even if we have plenty of electricity, how will we get methane?" the answer is you just synthesise it. Right now Europe's problem is keeping the lights on and their people alive in the coming winter. Like many European countries, it is usual to heat German homes with gas boilers. You could (and if we don't want even worse climate change, must) replace those with electrical heating, most likely heat pumps with resistive backup. A heat pump doesn't care whether the electricity powering it is from a solar panel or a wind farm or what.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    As long as the power continues to come during the winter night when there has not been much wind for a couple of weeks. Solar is great for powering air conditioning systems, wind is far less reliable for powering heating appliances. In practice, we're not able to provide heat to places like northern Europe without either fossil fuels or nuclear, and many countries have been trying to get rid of nuclear.
- trashtester 4y ago
  Electricity, if the price is low enough, can fully replace almost every use case for natural gas. This will require some level of investment, of course, such as replacing gas ovens with electric ovens (or better, heat pumps) as well as replacing gas machinery with electric alternatives for most industries. There MAY be a few cases where alternatives are harder to find (where you need the chemistry of the gas rather than the energy), but that is a pretty small percentage overall. But to produce energy at prices that are competitive to typical prices for NG is pretty hard without either coal or cost efficient nuclear, at least in colder climates. Solar is perhaps close to becoming cheaper in sunny, dry areas further south, but wind power looks like a poor alternative at the scale needed, since it's so unreliable. Maybe one day batteries or other storage will be cheap enough that we can store wind power for a week or more, but for now, it looks like the only low-CO2 option is nuclear.
trgn 4y ago
Europe is going to come out strong out of this whole mess. The political unity so quickly after the start of the war was unexpected (and admirable). Ten years from now, Europeans will drive electric (if they'll drive at all), solar panels will be everywhere, and the continued flex-work-from-home revolution will have created an enormous amount of extra time for everybody. They'll be comfy in their sustainable homes and healthy cities, those few years of inflation a memory only. It's a tough transition, that eventually every country needs to make, but Europe will be ahead of the rest of the world by miles. And in the US, 10 years from now, the next gas price spike will again have people start to whine (yet again), we'll still be coughing on fumes when dropping our kids of at their school, the energy grid will continue to be unreliable in face of every minor or major natural disaster, and we'll wonder why nothing really materially has changed (and then blame the government).
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > Ten years from now, Europeans will drive electric (if they'll drive at all) Most cars sold in Europe aren't electric: only 13%. Average car life in Europe is 11 years or something like that. So, no, ten years from now Europeans won't be all driving electric, far from it. Also something like 2/3rd of all europeans live in suburbs or rural: so, yes, they'll still be driving (or using horses). People enjoying the public transports in cities are a minority.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > Also something like 2/3rd of all europeans live in suburbs or rural European Suburb != American suburb. I live in the suburbs of Paris, and i have two regular train lines (as in 15 minutes cadence in off peak times) within walking distance. The vast majority of commuters in and around Paris use public transit, even when they live in small towns of a few hundred/thousand inhabitants (because even those tend to have train stations). Car trips still exist, but there are massive new projects to improve public transit even more (multiple hundreds of km of new metro lines in the suburbs, multiple new tram lines in the suburbs, etc.).
- grnmamba 4y ago
viraptor 4y ago
> Hopefully the current energy crisis (in Europe) will further accelerate development in renewable energy. Or investment into basic insulation and house upgrades. Single glazing and simple brick is still very common in the UK. Many houses could use much less energy if they didn't lose lots of it through the windows and ceilings in the first place.
- omnimus 4y ago
  UK is not europe anymore :x. European north and center is highly insulated. By law in most coutries.
  - detaro 4y ago
    The UK didn't magically move on the map just because it left the EU.
    - omnimus 4y ago
      But it also is not representative of europe in general in insulation.
timeon 4y ago
Wish I was optimistic like you. The other possibility is that there will be more coal (Germany, Poland, Czech Republic are already heavy producers). Norway may cut EU and UK from their electricity production (it seems to be #1 topic there and there were already articles comparing current network with NAZI-era plans on NRK). etc.

pydry 4y ago

Unfortunately we'd need another 5 years to really make a difference whereas the gas crisis is going to hit us in months.

DawnQFunk2 4y ago
- yourusername 4y ago
  It's a bit more real in Europe. Here in the Netherlands for many people their gas bill went up hundreds of Euro's a month. My electricity and gas rates are 2.5x what they were in 2020. The average family spending a additional 10% of their income of heating isn't what i would call "nothing"
- pydry 4y ago
  Based upon the price of gas jumps 150% in summer time when Russia coughs. This isnt a crisis. The taps arent even off and it's summer. Russia turning off the taps in winter would be a crisis.
Someone1234 4y ago
True. But 5-years ago this national security reliance on foreign gas prices was well known, and little was done in the intervening time. The worry is that when the current crisis subsides that inaction will yet again fall back into favor. The solutions are, in part: - National gas storage reserve (to buffet price/supply spikes somewhat). - Expansion of green energy. - Programs to reduce usage (e.g. home and business improvements). Luckily for the UK extremely efficient heat pump based heating/cooling solutions that offer greater than 100% efficiency exist[0]. It is just a matter of the political will to covert away from gas to electricity and then retrofitting homes. [0] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-systems https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-systems
- pydry 4y ago
  It's not like this was an earthquake that we idly knew would come one day that just suddenly hit us out of the blue. NATO made a deliberate decision to bring Ukraine into the fold in 2019 and Russia reacted predictably, but not before giving us an opportunity to back down first: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/world/europe/us-nato-response-russia-demands.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/world/europe/us-nato-resp... We dove into this knowing full well the dire energy risks that escalation posed to Europe and are now acting shocked that we didnt prepare. Even now Stoltenburg's official line is basically "suck it up, Europe" which I assume means that NATO leadership is perfectly comfortable with the idea of a European economic disaster this winter. The solutions you mentioned are all great in theory but the workable ones mostly all have a 5-10 year horizon and we have a problem now.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    Russian war crimes apologists are the worst. Nobody forced Russia to invade a sovereign country (or to consider itself the rightful owner of those lands for that matter), that's entirely their fault. And it was mind bogglingly stupid, as we can see a few months in, with the massive losses to their army and economy. It wasn't something to prepare for because it was unthinkable. It was still a huge risk to prepare for though.
    - pydry 4y ago
      Nobody forced NATO to expand to Ukraine either. Or to invade Libya. Or to invade Iraq/Afghanistan. Whataboutism as a rationale for war escalation with a nuclear power is insane. To consider reining in NATO expansion war to be equivalent to war crime apologetics is beyond absurd. If we get to winter and the Russian economy fares better than ours (and at first glance it looks like it will) then a lot of people should be eating a lot of humble pie. Alas I suspect theyll just call for escalation.
      - sofixa 4y ago
        > Nobody forced NATO to expand to Ukraine either Cut the Russian propaganda, NATO didn't expand to Ukraine. Ukraine, a sovereign country, wanted to join NATO, as is their every right. Denying Ukraine that right and excusing Russia's war crimes is pretty bad.
TrueGeek 4y ago
The best time to install a solar panel is 5 years ago. The second best time is today.

alkonaut 4y ago

If energy costs a lot, then anyone who can offer to sell energy production obviously has an attractive product. The problem as I see it is that what's needed is plannable capacity. While there is always need for more capacity, what we need most is capacity that works regardless of whether there is water in the rivers or wind in the turbines. And that's not easy. Biomass and Biogas for example.

ephbit 4y ago
> Biomass and Biogas for example. Right. And this has a very important implication. For home owners who're currently deciding which heating technology to replace an oil or gas furnace with. Biomass and Biogas will be needed urgently in the near future to supply powerplants (of utility order of magnitude) that can then stabilize the electrical grid against the fluctuations that are going to be caused by more and more wind and solar power. The way I see it - as enticing as it may be - to replace an oil/gas furnace with a wood pellet powered one in our current situation is the wrong choice in the long-term. The prices for electricity will rise further, yes, but the crucial role of biomass and biogas as one means to stabilize the grid will IMO lead to even greater price increases for the latter.

data_maan 4y ago

There is nothing that needs to be developed for renewables per se, it is already available: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy It just needs to implemented! Just imagine how much the politicians suck: Science has given them the solution for the energy problem, science has showed how to even make it economically, and has done that already years ago. All politics would have to do is implemented. But they cannot even do that ...

Lyapunov 4y ago
Hydro isn't available everywhere and wind as well as solar are unreliable. Energy storage in the required dimension is an unsolved problem too. So whatever you're trying to say here is unfounded.

missedthecue 4y ago

The problem for europe is that solar panels, windfarms, and nuclear power plants don't produce natural gas. Electricity is great, but it's not a replacement for natural gas by itself. In Germany, only 25% of natgas usage is accounted for by electricity production.

tialaramex 4y ago
It isn't difficult to synthesise methane (which is what natural gas is). You "just" need lots of energy. If the problem was "Even if we have plenty of electricity, how will we get methane?" the answer is you just synthesise it. Right now Europe's problem is keeping the lights on and their people alive in the coming winter. Like many European countries, it is usual to heat German homes with gas boilers. You could (and if we don't want even worse climate change, must) replace those with electrical heating, most likely heat pumps with resistive backup. A heat pump doesn't care whether the electricity powering it is from a solar panel or a wind farm or what.
- trashtester 4y ago
  As long as the power continues to come during the winter night when there has not been much wind for a couple of weeks. Solar is great for powering air conditioning systems, wind is far less reliable for powering heating appliances. In practice, we're not able to provide heat to places like northern Europe without either fossil fuels or nuclear, and many countries have been trying to get rid of nuclear.
trashtester 4y ago
Electricity, if the price is low enough, can fully replace almost every use case for natural gas. This will require some level of investment, of course, such as replacing gas ovens with electric ovens (or better, heat pumps) as well as replacing gas machinery with electric alternatives for most industries. There MAY be a few cases where alternatives are harder to find (where you need the chemistry of the gas rather than the energy), but that is a pretty small percentage overall. But to produce energy at prices that are competitive to typical prices for NG is pretty hard without either coal or cost efficient nuclear, at least in colder climates. Solar is perhaps close to becoming cheaper in sunny, dry areas further south, but wind power looks like a poor alternative at the scale needed, since it's so unreliable. Maybe one day batteries or other storage will be cheap enough that we can store wind power for a week or more, but for now, it looks like the only low-CO2 option is nuclear.

trgn 4y ago

Europe is going to come out strong out of this whole mess. The political unity so quickly after the start of the war was unexpected (and admirable). Ten years from now, Europeans will drive electric (if they'll drive at all), solar panels will be everywhere, and the continued flex-work-from-home revolution will have created an enormous amount of extra time for everybody. They'll be comfy in their sustainable homes and healthy cities, those few years of inflation a memory only. It's a tough transition, that eventually every country needs to make, but Europe will be ahead of the rest of the world by miles. And in the US, 10 years from now, the next gas price spike will again have people start to whine (yet again), we'll still be coughing on fumes when dropping our kids of at their school, the energy grid will continue to be unreliable in face of every minor or major natural disaster, and we'll wonder why nothing really materially has changed (and then blame the government).

TacticalCoder 4y ago
> Ten years from now, Europeans will drive electric (if they'll drive at all) Most cars sold in Europe aren't electric: only 13%. Average car life in Europe is 11 years or something like that. So, no, ten years from now Europeans won't be all driving electric, far from it. Also something like 2/3rd of all europeans live in suburbs or rural: so, yes, they'll still be driving (or using horses). People enjoying the public transports in cities are a minority.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Also something like 2/3rd of all europeans live in suburbs or rural European Suburb != American suburb. I live in the suburbs of Paris, and i have two regular train lines (as in 15 minutes cadence in off peak times) within walking distance. The vast majority of commuters in and around Paris use public transit, even when they live in small towns of a few hundred/thousand inhabitants (because even those tend to have train stations). Car trips still exist, but there are massive new projects to improve public transit even more (multiple hundreds of km of new metro lines in the suburbs, multiple new tram lines in the suburbs, etc.).
grnmamba 4y ago

viraptor 4y ago

> Hopefully the current energy crisis (in Europe) will further accelerate development in renewable energy. Or investment into basic insulation and house upgrades. Single glazing and simple brick is still very common in the UK. Many houses could use much less energy if they didn't lose lots of it through the windows and ceilings in the first place.

omnimus 4y ago
UK is not europe anymore :x. European north and center is highly insulated. By law in most coutries.
- detaro 4y ago
  The UK didn't magically move on the map just because it left the EU.
  - omnimus 4y ago
    But it also is not representative of europe in general in insulation.

timeon 4y ago

Wish I was optimistic like you. The other possibility is that there will be more coal (Germany, Poland, Czech Republic are already heavy producers). Norway may cut EU and UK from their electricity production (it seems to be #1 topic there and there were already articles comparing current network with NAZI-era plans on NRK). etc.