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This is not limited to the UK Europe has been in an energy war with Russia for the past year, we have a drought affecting hydro power and the French nuclear fl
by eisa01 4y ago
This is not limited to the UK
Europe has been in an energy war with Russia for the past year, we have a drought affecting hydro power and the French nuclear fleet is just out of service
The government action up to now has been almost nothing, basically amounting to announcing a few LNG import projects and updated 2030 targets. Nearly nothing has been done to the demand side nearly six months into this crisis
What needs to be done that can help 0-6 month time scale:
Gas supply
* Ramp up of Groningen (with payments to affected people living there)
Electricity generation
* Restart of all possible coal plants (only two have announced restart in Germany!)
* Removal of any restrictions limiting oil and diesel fired gensets from operating
* Extension of the three reactors in Germany, and likely also the three shut down reactors
Demand
* Have utility field forces inspect every gas boiler, starting with the vulnerable population, to set the correct flow temperature on condensing boilers (saves 5-10% !), check for easy fixes (e.g., leaky drafts that can be plugged)
* Mandate utilities to pay for avoided gas/electricity use for people on fixed retail tariffs - everyone need to be price responsive, not only large industrials
* Mandate commercial customers to raise AC setting to 25C
* Mandate everyone to lower thermostat to 18C
* Cash payments to households (at least vulnerable customers), but do not link it to the consumption levels and do not lower the price indirectly by other means (e.g., VAT reduction)
This will also require that permits, supply chains, labor etc. get fixed. Apparently that's stopping some of the coal restarts in Germany. That would not be a restriction if this was a shooting war...
- ska 4y ago> This is not limited to the UK Sure, everyone is struggling but there are some unique twists and turns in the UK right now, and some have been made worse by own goals.
- rich_sasha 4y agoYeah, it's all fairly bad, but then I'm not sure where I would move to. US seems bonkers in its own way, Germany is buckling under the gas crisis, France... lovely place but i can't understand how it stays afloat. Poland is just about in free fall. Italy and Spain seem (?) perpetually in the grip of a political crisis. Other countries i know less about. Switzerland? Netherlands? Denmark?
- jacquesm 4y agoGreat stuff, fully agreed with all of these. And I would add: a very large industrial effort to create heatpumps on such a scale that we can convert all of Europe in two years tops.
- Nextgrid 4y ago> French nuclear fleet is just out of service Isn't it just temporary due to the heatwave? Thus they'll be able to power them back on as winter hits (which coincides with extra demand for heating)?
- eisa01 4y agoNot only. It's also extra outages due to discovery of cracks in pipes related to the safety system... https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2022/04/24/french-energy-supplier-edf-shows-concern-over-corrosion-problems-at-its-nuclear-plants_5981437_19.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2022/04/24/french-...
- vaylian 4y agoI know you mean well, but > * Restart of all possible coal plants (only two have announced restart in Germany!) > * Removal of any restrictions limiting oil and diesel fired gensets from operating are really bad ideas. The current crisis is nothing compared to the looming climate crisis. What we need is a hard sustained break in energy consumption. We can have a good quality of life with a lot less energy, if we stop wasting so many resources on things that don't matter or are not required. We should buy (and produce) less non-essentials and travel should be limited to things that really require physical presence. Home office should be offered whenever possible.