10 ms·

Europe’s energy crisis hits science

56 points by bluish29 4y ago

NKosmatos 4y ago
The looming energy crisis, along with the EU recession/depression knocking our door, is going to affect many science/technology related sectors and their funding.
Proven 4y ago
elimgta 4y ago
How come there is nobody held responsible on the side of European regulators/politicians that led the continent into such dependency on fossil fuels with no backup supplier
- 88840-8855 4y ago
  The US bombed oil producing countries when they tried to drop the petro dollar and the US was and is very depending on imports. Should we do the US model and bomb Russia ... or Should the US follow your suggestions and put US presidents into prison?
  - aa-jv 4y ago
    The solution to this crisis is for the remaining free people of the world to start demanding war criminals be prosecuted for their actions - whether American or Russian, it doesn't matter. Until we start jailing the war criminals and undoing the actions they've taken, we're headed into the abyss.
  - vachina 4y ago
    > The US bombed oil producing countries when they tried to drop the petro dollar Interesting. Is there a book that truthfully describes this event? (Not an American)
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      Its mostly not true. Some people assume that all US policy is actually oil policy and that the $ is valuable because of petrol. Neither is really true. Sure in the last 70 years oil was important to US in foreign policy but its far from the only or dominate factor in most of it.
      - brnaftr361 4y ago
        Yeah, most people don't understand that the USD is granted value by the fact we'll come in with the world's most expensive army to kick down your doors and occupy your nation for a decade if you so much as consider stepping out of line. And one of those lines conveniently is oil exchange with that USD; which also happens to be the modern worlds biggest shared dependency.
        panick21_ 4y ago
        Yeah but funny enough some countries that don't do what the US wants like Cuba, Venezuela Iran, North Korea are not invaded and some of those have oil. During the oil crisis the US didn't invade countries that didn't sell oil. At the same time the US invaded Vietnam, Iraq, Lybia, Syria and helped fight wars in places like Yemen. Some that don't have oil. Are you seriously suggesting if France and Saudi Arabia traded in $ the US would invade either country? At the same time the US is heavily involved with Israel/Palestine neither have oil. So the idea that its all about oil is incredibly reductionist and a totally false understanding of US policy making. In fact if you go threw most of the supposed 'its all about oil' foreign policy issues in more details and you look at the decision makes, oil usually isn't actually the driving force.
        brnaftr361 4y ago
        Of course they're not invaded, we Banana Republic or Contra their asses, conversely we squeeze the everloving shit out of them through finance. There's also simply the concept of a persistent credible threat: look at a map of US bases. Note also I did indicate that it wasn't the exclusive determinant by using the phrase "one of those lines." We've also fucked with Cuba, Iran, Venezuela. Iraq did have oil and the Saudis were using directional drilling to tap it, which initiated the first Gulf War. Palestine is a proxy war. Until the US is critically weakened, France will not trade in Francs or Rubles or etc... And Europe is dependent on the US for continued geopolitical stability.
  - YesWeWill 4y ago
    What does it have to do with the US? This is about the EU only. The EU only put all focus on "green" energy and then tried to solve the problems it created with fossil fuels while forgetting about or even actively working against nuclear. What the US did has nothing to do with that.
    - rowanajmarshall 4y ago
      > The EU only put all focus on "green" energy and then tried to solve the problems it created with fossil fuels while forgetting about or even actively working against nuclear. I'm not sure that's true. The EU (25%) as a whole has more nuclear energy than the US (19%). About half of EU countries use nuclear power, keeping in mind almost half of EU countries have less people than Massachusetts. Remember, the EU doesn't generally run energy policy. The individual countries do. If anything, it was a lack of commitment to green energy that led to this.
      - YesWeWill 4y ago
        The EU assigns money it takes from the states - money the pro-nuclear states would've used for their nuclear energy, but since it was appropriated by the EU and then assigned by its own rules that were constructed to rule out nuclear energy, they couldn't. So our pro-nuclear state has huge fields of solar arrays that everybody here hates because it replaced natural parks and makes us more reliant on gas powerplants, and the our/EU money was taken by gangsters, we call them the "solar barons" - great, thanks EU.
        rowanajmarshall 4y ago
        For France (and I imagine it's similar for other countries), EU contributions are a smidgen under 1% of GDP. I can't imagine that makes the decisive difference here. And in any case, since the EU still gets more of its energy from nuclear than the US does they'd be doing a piss-poor job of it. In fact, looking at the figures, the only countries worldwide that get more energy from nuclear than the EU _and_ aren't part of the EU are Ukraine (55%), South Korea (28%), Switzerland (29%), and Armenia (25%). And both Switzerland and Ukraine are synchronised with the greater European grid!
  - testfoobar 4y ago
    The US is a net energy exporter.
  - rr888 4y ago
    Most Oil from the Middle East goes to Asia and Europe, US produces enough energy itself. Yes US tries to stabilize the region, I think Asia and Europe gives not enough thanks.
    - 88840-8855 4y ago
      The same how the US tries to stabilize the Taiwan/China conflict? :)))
      - rr888 4y ago
        I dont think that has anything to do with oil. Kinda similar though, should the USA help democratic small countries from authoritarian bullies next door? Maybe USA should just let the world burn like the Europeans do.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    The US doesn't depend on imports- we choose to not exploit our resources when other countries are happy to sell theirs cheaply.
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  What do you feel "held responsible" means? At the scale of counties and continents, this either means some statutory duty has been breached, or some political decision has been taken that favours the current arrangement over one with more availability of backup supplies - in exchange for other downsides (e.g. cost). Realistically it's the latter. And this means that different politicians and political movements can now propose more plans for energy stability—maybe additional funding for renewables, expanding nuclear provision or so on—and hopefully this will affect political and regulatory decisions in the future. At this scale—and for all its flaws—the ballot box is the only real tool for accountability.
  - YesWeWill 4y ago
    What ballot box? I can't vote about the Commission... It was chosen by a vote of ministers but that minister was actually from a opposition party here! This """democratic""" system is broken. And my vote about the EU Parliament affects only 2% of the total seats.
    - matthewmacleod 4y ago
      Take your pick. Your local government, your national government, or your European government all have an aggregate effect on national an international energy policy, even if that impact is not direct. If you have a better idea what it means to be "held responsible" I'm happy to hear it.
    - simiones 4y ago
      The Comission is nominated by the European Council - made up of the heads of government/state of the member states, which are usually democratically elected in some way - presumably your vote can influence who 1 particular member of the European Council is. Then, the nomination of the Comission and individual comissioners are validated or not by the European Parliament, whose members are again chosen democratically in every member state. So, while it is quite indirect, our vote does influence the membership of the comission. Of course, as in any such system, the more direct way of gaining some kind of influence is to try to organize others to vote a certain way, to participate yourself, or to organize others to campaign together to directly convince/shame the members of the Comission or Parliament or Council to take particular policies.
- that_guy_iain 4y ago
  Because realistically, they've been dependent on fossil fuels for so long and the public for a large part have not been that friendly to renewable power sources for so long. Also, renewable energy hasn't been that reliable in the past. It's not like they weren't dependent and then decided to become dependent. And fossil fuels are a resource for which not many countries have it, so creating backup supplies isn't as easy as in other things. Germany was about to build a backup gas pipeline (Abeit still to the same supplier), it took 10 years to just to get it to the viable stage before it was cancelled.
  - Brometheus 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - that_guy_iain 4y ago
      ~10 years is nothing when it comes to adoption of these things. I'm thinking of the reptutation renewable energy had 30 years ago as not being very efficent. Obivously, it's came a long way. But considering how long it takes for power stations to be replaced/approved/etc it's not surprising that how it was 30-years ago affected it's adoption.
      - Brometheus 4y ago
        that_guy_iain 4y ago
        What am I mistaken about? Do you know how it increased 5 fold in the last 10-years? Because it's easy to have lots of growth when your numbers are small. Also, the tech has improved. And again, you're talking 10-years. To solve this issue you need multiple decades. You seem to be talking about the past 10-years, while I'm saying for that the problem we've got of being dependent on fossil fuels which has been developed over the past 100+ years. 30-years or so ago. Solar for example wasn't that good. Hydro was a concern and expensive. So while, we have been making good strides in the past 10-years, there is 100+ years of stuff you need to combat. The past 10-years proves the future, but, it doesn't automatically undo the past nor does it remove the fact that renewable energy when it first came out was inefficent.
- makomk 4y ago
  Basically, the entire European green and anti-global warming movement was either delusional or bought off and there was (and still is) not really much of a counterbalance to this within the mainstream. They pushed for renewables that required a huge amount of natural gas as backup for when the wind dropped or the sun went behind clouds and for the shutdown of alternatives like coal and nuclear, whilst simultaneously campaigning to block new natural gas exploration and investment in Europe. This made energy supplies completely dependent on imports from totalitarian dictatorships. In addition, Germany chose to make themselves completely dependent on Russia specifically despite attempts by the US and eastern European countries to stop them and somehow arm-twisted the EU into letting them go ahead with this - but even if it wasn't for that, the natural gas capacity just isn't there to cope with Russia refusing to supply and there hasn't been the willingness to invest in building more. I don't think they've stopped this campaign even after it ended in catastrophe either. It's certainly still going on in the UK - for example just yesterday I saw a BBC article telling people that building more natural gas production here is pointless because wind and solar are cheaper, presumably based on the raw per-MWh number with no storage to fill in the gaps when it doesn't produce. That is not a useful replacement for natural gas at all.
  - Brometheus 4y ago
    Germany produced 48% of its electricity via renewables this year so far. The surpluss energy will soon be used to electrolyze hydrogen that will be fed into our vast gas infrastructure.
    - vixen99 4y ago
      Is this incorrect information?
      - anovikov 4y ago
        This is absolutely correct. And there is a lot of renewable generation in the winter too because it gets really windy in most of Germany. And sure, having about 3x renewable generation and consuming the excess generation when it's above the demand, into producing green hydrogen, is about what the longer-term plan for electricity production looks like. There will still be times when renewables will be insufficient, on calm winter days, but infrequently, and then electricity can be produced back from that green hydrogen, but overall there will be surplus, resulting in hydrogen replacing the one produced currently from fossil fuels, for steel production and other industrial uses.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  “How come there is nobody held responsible for relying on the cheapest, most reliable, longest used source of energy used by literally every country on the planet” is certainly a take.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- fulafel 4y ago
  It's easy to blame the politicians but realistically we should blame voters who kept their head in the sand about the climate catastrophe and allowed fossil rampdown to progress this slowly - and now it's almost too late. This acute crisis is a blip in the ocean compared to the climate problem, even though it by chance drags policy to the same direction.
  - lp0_on_fire 4y ago
    Of course we're blaming the politicians! They're the ones making the poor policy decisions.
    - fulafel 4y ago
      It's so psychologically convenient though. Choose between policies attached to faces/parties in elections, and then blame the face when the policy turns out to be terrible, or feel you made such a wise voting decision if it seems to work out. (Apologies if you weren't being sarcastic, wasn't sure) edit: and of course the elected people bear their share of the blame, I don't mean to exclude them, but voters hired them to do what they say they're going to do in face of the ongoing climate catastrophe situation. Marketplace of ideas, etc. They're proxies.
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  It's funny, but 40% of EU budget is dedicated to Common Agricultural Policy which is designed to protect EU from the same kind of scenarios we see in the energy sector now. Time to create a Common Energy Policy.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  For the same reason that rolling blackouts in Texas and recently California are not really leading to changes in the status quo. Complacency. And lets be fair, Europe has a way more resilient power network. Six months of severe disruptions to gas supplies and everything is still running smoothly. It's the cost that is concerning but so far there have been no major disruptions to grid stability.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    Recently California? This happens every summer.
    - jillesvangurp 4y ago
      It is summer ...
- Brometheus 4y ago
  https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-put-on-trial-in-german-climate-change-drama-set-in-2034-1.4412921 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-p...
- thrown_22 4y ago
  What I don't get is the people on hacker news who argue that what we're seeing in Europe isn't the death knell of 'green grids'. This happened because we removed base load generation from coal and nuclear and replaced it with gas. The only thing which can turn on fast enough to match clouds movements. Then went and bought that gas from geopolitical adversaries.
  - doikor 4y ago
    > This happened because we removed base load generation from coal and nuclear and replaced it with gas. The only thing which can turn on fast enough to match clouds movements. You might not be able to turn nuclear on/off very fast but adjusting from ~5% to 100% and back is really fast. Actually faster then most gas peaker plants in W/min change rate. This is not really done much outside of France as the running cost of a nuclear plants are roughly the same at 5% and 100% of output (actual fuel costs are very small part of the total cost of running a nuclear power plant)
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      In markets where renewables are a large chunk of the theoretical maximum power hugely negative prices are common. Producing 5% of 1MW for 5 minutes might be costing you more than what you made selling 100% of that 1MW for most of the day.
      - doikor 4y ago
        In Finland they got that situation somewhat covered. The same companies that own most of the nuclear power plants (Olkiluoto) are also some of the largest consumers (UPM and Stora Enso. Two very large paper companies). They also own a lot of hydro so they have a lot of capability to adjust the equation both from the input and output side. These paper companies own all this production because electricity is a massive part of their operational costs and by owning the production if the market goes bad they can just use it themselves at cost of production instead of selling the electricity on the open market basically capping the cost of electricity in their costs. (edit: Actually now that I think about it this is very similar to how most big cloud platforms work. Basically you build infrastructure for your own use and then also sell the same infrastructure to anyone who is interested.) > Producing 5% of 1MW can be costing you more than what you made selling 100% of that 1MW for most of the day. The thing is that with nuclear the costs will be mostly the same when plant is off, at 5% or at 100% (probably most expensive is at off state as you can't use the electricity you made yourself to run all the cooling systems etc). Obviously if the market prices are negative you just run at plant at minimum power which is basically just enough to cover the plants own usage.
- finikytou 4y ago
  many people were against it. they calleds them nazi for opposing the "woke green" movements pushed from the goldman sachs of the world/biden (who now fracks more than trump) up to the wokest leftist green liberal on linkedin that publicly shamed people who were still using straws and were not convinced of wind/solar energy
- tomp 4y ago
  Because you cannot just jail every politician.
- carmel1 4y ago
  "Economic Interdependence: A Path to Peace" was a central dogma in Europe after WW2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/425132 https://www.jstor.org/stable/425132
- concinds 4y ago
  Egregious mismanagement by stupid European leaders. Why would they hold themselves accountable? https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_production_and_imports https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... "Production of primary energy in the EU was 17.7% lower in 2020 than it had been a decade earlier." [this includes renewables and nuclear, as well as fossil, gas, geothermal, etc] "Indeed, more than half (57.5 %) of the EU’s gross available energy in 2020 came from imported sources." -- "Invest in renewables!" Ok, but that means needing to restart coal plants and import natural gas when there's no wind or sun. Where are the massive battery investments in Europe for energy storage? Nowhere. "Everyone, buy electric cars!" Ok, but there's be a permanent blackout if every car was actually electric. There's not enough electricity being generated to charge them. Insane maniacs. Switching to clean energy means transitioning from non-electric energy (gas, petrol) to electric. That means we must produce more electricity. Why aren't they obsessed with increasing electricity production, so electric cars won't lead to blackouts and import dependency?
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Primary energy isn't a good measure. You want "final energy" the energy used to actually do something of use. Most of the Primary Energy is wasted, so anyone who is sensibly rolling out cheap renewables (or even expensive nuclear) will see their primary energy go down, even as their final energy goes up. Ideally efficiency improvements also make final energy go down. Also, EVs help the grid and prevent petro states, like say Russia, from making as much money.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  ...So you want to sue voters for wanting cheap energy in 1997? The rut that Europe is now in is the direct result of the following: - Until very recently[0], energy demands could only be met with a significant amount of fossil fuels. Europe is notoriously poor in fossil fuel reserves[1] and must import them. - Fossil fuels are fungible in substance but not in location. A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil, but oil in Saudi Arabia is not oil in Germany. Transport adds cost, and the cheapest and safest way to transport oil is with a pipeline. - Out of all of Europe's close neighbors, Russia has the biggest fossil fuel reserve. There really isn't a suitable "backup supplier" that could bring fuel in cheaply. - People and politicians in 1997 assumed economic ties with Russia would put their military on a leash in the same way that the ECSC, EEC, and EU had put West Germany's military on a leash. That last consideration might seem quaint given that Russia invaded Ukraine, but globalization was something that had already worked in Europe and people thought it was exportable. Even then, it might still work out. The economic problems Europe is looking at are nothing compared to the damage that the current slate of broad sanctions have done and are doing to Russia. Europe is looking at one particularly cold winter, but Russia is seeing a slow-motion economic collapse on the same scale as the collapse of the Soviet Union. The real mistake was not that we built Nord Stream, but that we waited until 2022 to actually punish Putin for invading Russia's neighbors. [0] Specifically, cheap solar and wind did not exist in 1997 and nuclear was and still is expensive to build. [1] This is also why the US is obsessed with oil. Running out of it was one of the deciding factors in the fall of Nazi Germany.
Dave3of5 4y ago
> Power generators that had been shut down could not ramp up in time to meet renewed demand Not disputing this but can someone give a source on what power generators in the UK where shutdown during the pandemic and could not ramp back up ? I've worked in a power plant and the gas combined cycle one I worked in could be shutdown and re-started in about 10 minutes (I know this as I actually shut one down by mistake). The only power plants I think that work like this are nuclear which must continuously run once started albeit they can be run at a lower level if demand is low. Edit: It's looks like for nuclear all I can find is Sizewell B was reduced to 50% for a few months but I can see it's back up to 100% now: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/covid-19-coronavirus-and-nuclear-energy.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuses https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuse...
- gwbas1c 4y ago
  I wonder if it's also a supply-chain or staffing issue? A combined cycle plant might be able to start "instantly," but if there's no fuel or staff, it's going to be idle.
  - Dave3of5 4y ago
    > but if there's no fuel or staff, it's going to be idle That would indicate that there is a gas shortage in the UK right now which isn't true. In terms of staff the daily operations of a plant only requires a handful of people. There was I think only 2 control room operators on duty at the 1200 MW plant I was working in near Bristol (Seabank power station). So I suspect it's not that he's referring to. Given that he was a scientist at Oxford he must have data to back this up but I'd like to see what plants shutdown. Edit: Actually I'm wrong the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies looks like some thinktank that props up oil and gas. The board of directors tell you what you need to know about them. I think this whole article is garbage.
    - viraptor 4y ago
      > that there is a gas shortage in the UK right now which isn't true While not an actual shortage yet, from the info I've seen, UK is very much behind the rest of Europe on the plan to make winter reserves. https://agsi.gie.eu/ https://agsi.gie.eu/ currently storing only slightly more than Belgium for example. Do you think they could be "cautious" with distribution of what they have?
gwbas1c 4y ago
I wonder if: The energy crisis will put pressure on scientists to optimize code? I've come across hideously unoptimized code in my career; where merely understanding general basics about the compiler / OS / database result in significant improvements. (And thus less energy consumption.) There is a market for moving supercomputing to places with lower energy costs?
- kreig 4y ago
  From my experience, usually micro-optimizations (such as optimizing code) don't have a great impact on execution performance than, for example, changing the approach at a higher level (introducing caching, etc), the same may apply on energetic performance I guess.
lower 4y ago
The crisis is having an impact on science funding in general: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220726202735873 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202207262...
newaccount2021 4y ago
game_the0ry 4y ago
Its not the science Europe should be worrying about, its the local pubs and cafes that will inevitably be forced to close bc their utility costs will 10x. That is the cost of sanctions on Russian energy. I am an American and I love Europe, I just eloped in Italy this year. I hate what EU leaders are doing to their people.

56 points by bluish29 4y ago

The looming energy crisis, along with the EU recession/depression knocking our door, is going to affect many science/technology related sectors and their funding.

Proven 4y ago

elimgta 4y ago

How come there is nobody held responsible on the side of European regulators/politicians that led the continent into such dependency on fossil fuels with no backup supplier

88840-8855 4y ago
The US bombed oil producing countries when they tried to drop the petro dollar and the US was and is very depending on imports. Should we do the US model and bomb Russia ... or Should the US follow your suggestions and put US presidents into prison?
- aa-jv 4y ago
  The solution to this crisis is for the remaining free people of the world to start demanding war criminals be prosecuted for their actions - whether American or Russian, it doesn't matter. Until we start jailing the war criminals and undoing the actions they've taken, we're headed into the abyss.
- vachina 4y ago
  > The US bombed oil producing countries when they tried to drop the petro dollar Interesting. Is there a book that truthfully describes this event? (Not an American)
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Its mostly not true. Some people assume that all US policy is actually oil policy and that the $ is valuable because of petrol. Neither is really true. Sure in the last 70 years oil was important to US in foreign policy but its far from the only or dominate factor in most of it.
    - brnaftr361 4y ago
      Yeah, most people don't understand that the USD is granted value by the fact we'll come in with the world's most expensive army to kick down your doors and occupy your nation for a decade if you so much as consider stepping out of line. And one of those lines conveniently is oil exchange with that USD; which also happens to be the modern worlds biggest shared dependency.
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        Yeah but funny enough some countries that don't do what the US wants like Cuba, Venezuela Iran, North Korea are not invaded and some of those have oil. During the oil crisis the US didn't invade countries that didn't sell oil. At the same time the US invaded Vietnam, Iraq, Lybia, Syria and helped fight wars in places like Yemen. Some that don't have oil. Are you seriously suggesting if France and Saudi Arabia traded in $ the US would invade either country? At the same time the US is heavily involved with Israel/Palestine neither have oil. So the idea that its all about oil is incredibly reductionist and a totally false understanding of US policy making. In fact if you go threw most of the supposed 'its all about oil' foreign policy issues in more details and you look at the decision makes, oil usually isn't actually the driving force.
        brnaftr361 4y ago
        Of course they're not invaded, we Banana Republic or Contra their asses, conversely we squeeze the everloving shit out of them through finance. There's also simply the concept of a persistent credible threat: look at a map of US bases. Note also I did indicate that it wasn't the exclusive determinant by using the phrase "one of those lines." We've also fucked with Cuba, Iran, Venezuela. Iraq did have oil and the Saudis were using directional drilling to tap it, which initiated the first Gulf War. Palestine is a proxy war. Until the US is critically weakened, France will not trade in Francs or Rubles or etc... And Europe is dependent on the US for continued geopolitical stability.
- YesWeWill 4y ago
  What does it have to do with the US? This is about the EU only. The EU only put all focus on "green" energy and then tried to solve the problems it created with fossil fuels while forgetting about or even actively working against nuclear. What the US did has nothing to do with that.
  - rowanajmarshall 4y ago
    > The EU only put all focus on "green" energy and then tried to solve the problems it created with fossil fuels while forgetting about or even actively working against nuclear. I'm not sure that's true. The EU (25%) as a whole has more nuclear energy than the US (19%). About half of EU countries use nuclear power, keeping in mind almost half of EU countries have less people than Massachusetts. Remember, the EU doesn't generally run energy policy. The individual countries do. If anything, it was a lack of commitment to green energy that led to this.
    - YesWeWill 4y ago
      The EU assigns money it takes from the states - money the pro-nuclear states would've used for their nuclear energy, but since it was appropriated by the EU and then assigned by its own rules that were constructed to rule out nuclear energy, they couldn't. So our pro-nuclear state has huge fields of solar arrays that everybody here hates because it replaced natural parks and makes us more reliant on gas powerplants, and the our/EU money was taken by gangsters, we call them the "solar barons" - great, thanks EU.
      - rowanajmarshall 4y ago
        For France (and I imagine it's similar for other countries), EU contributions are a smidgen under 1% of GDP. I can't imagine that makes the decisive difference here. And in any case, since the EU still gets more of its energy from nuclear than the US does they'd be doing a piss-poor job of it. In fact, looking at the figures, the only countries worldwide that get more energy from nuclear than the EU _and_ aren't part of the EU are Ukraine (55%), South Korea (28%), Switzerland (29%), and Armenia (25%). And both Switzerland and Ukraine are synchronised with the greater European grid!
- testfoobar 4y ago
  The US is a net energy exporter.
- rr888 4y ago
  Most Oil from the Middle East goes to Asia and Europe, US produces enough energy itself. Yes US tries to stabilize the region, I think Asia and Europe gives not enough thanks.
  - 88840-8855 4y ago
    The same how the US tries to stabilize the Taiwan/China conflict? :)))
    - rr888 4y ago
      I dont think that has anything to do with oil. Kinda similar though, should the USA help democratic small countries from authoritarian bullies next door? Maybe USA should just let the world burn like the Europeans do.
- dekhn 4y ago
  The US doesn't depend on imports- we choose to not exploit our resources when other countries are happy to sell theirs cheaply.
matthewmacleod 4y ago
What do you feel "held responsible" means? At the scale of counties and continents, this either means some statutory duty has been breached, or some political decision has been taken that favours the current arrangement over one with more availability of backup supplies - in exchange for other downsides (e.g. cost). Realistically it's the latter. And this means that different politicians and political movements can now propose more plans for energy stability—maybe additional funding for renewables, expanding nuclear provision or so on—and hopefully this will affect political and regulatory decisions in the future. At this scale—and for all its flaws—the ballot box is the only real tool for accountability.
- YesWeWill 4y ago
  What ballot box? I can't vote about the Commission... It was chosen by a vote of ministers but that minister was actually from a opposition party here! This """democratic""" system is broken. And my vote about the EU Parliament affects only 2% of the total seats.
  - matthewmacleod 4y ago
    Take your pick. Your local government, your national government, or your European government all have an aggregate effect on national an international energy policy, even if that impact is not direct. If you have a better idea what it means to be "held responsible" I'm happy to hear it.
  - simiones 4y ago
    The Comission is nominated by the European Council - made up of the heads of government/state of the member states, which are usually democratically elected in some way - presumably your vote can influence who 1 particular member of the European Council is. Then, the nomination of the Comission and individual comissioners are validated or not by the European Parliament, whose members are again chosen democratically in every member state. So, while it is quite indirect, our vote does influence the membership of the comission. Of course, as in any such system, the more direct way of gaining some kind of influence is to try to organize others to vote a certain way, to participate yourself, or to organize others to campaign together to directly convince/shame the members of the Comission or Parliament or Council to take particular policies.
that_guy_iain 4y ago
Because realistically, they've been dependent on fossil fuels for so long and the public for a large part have not been that friendly to renewable power sources for so long. Also, renewable energy hasn't been that reliable in the past. It's not like they weren't dependent and then decided to become dependent. And fossil fuels are a resource for which not many countries have it, so creating backup supplies isn't as easy as in other things. Germany was about to build a backup gas pipeline (Abeit still to the same supplier), it took 10 years to just to get it to the viable stage before it was cancelled.
- Brometheus 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - that_guy_iain 4y ago
    ~10 years is nothing when it comes to adoption of these things. I'm thinking of the reptutation renewable energy had 30 years ago as not being very efficent. Obivously, it's came a long way. But considering how long it takes for power stations to be replaced/approved/etc it's not surprising that how it was 30-years ago affected it's adoption.
    - Brometheus 4y ago
      - that_guy_iain 4y ago
        What am I mistaken about? Do you know how it increased 5 fold in the last 10-years? Because it's easy to have lots of growth when your numbers are small. Also, the tech has improved. And again, you're talking 10-years. To solve this issue you need multiple decades. You seem to be talking about the past 10-years, while I'm saying for that the problem we've got of being dependent on fossil fuels which has been developed over the past 100+ years. 30-years or so ago. Solar for example wasn't that good. Hydro was a concern and expensive. So while, we have been making good strides in the past 10-years, there is 100+ years of stuff you need to combat. The past 10-years proves the future, but, it doesn't automatically undo the past nor does it remove the fact that renewable energy when it first came out was inefficent.
makomk 4y ago
Basically, the entire European green and anti-global warming movement was either delusional or bought off and there was (and still is) not really much of a counterbalance to this within the mainstream. They pushed for renewables that required a huge amount of natural gas as backup for when the wind dropped or the sun went behind clouds and for the shutdown of alternatives like coal and nuclear, whilst simultaneously campaigning to block new natural gas exploration and investment in Europe. This made energy supplies completely dependent on imports from totalitarian dictatorships. In addition, Germany chose to make themselves completely dependent on Russia specifically despite attempts by the US and eastern European countries to stop them and somehow arm-twisted the EU into letting them go ahead with this - but even if it wasn't for that, the natural gas capacity just isn't there to cope with Russia refusing to supply and there hasn't been the willingness to invest in building more. I don't think they've stopped this campaign even after it ended in catastrophe either. It's certainly still going on in the UK - for example just yesterday I saw a BBC article telling people that building more natural gas production here is pointless because wind and solar are cheaper, presumably based on the raw per-MWh number with no storage to fill in the gaps when it doesn't produce. That is not a useful replacement for natural gas at all.
- Brometheus 4y ago
  Germany produced 48% of its electricity via renewables this year so far. The surpluss energy will soon be used to electrolyze hydrogen that will be fed into our vast gas infrastructure.
  - vixen99 4y ago
    Is this incorrect information?
    - anovikov 4y ago
      This is absolutely correct. And there is a lot of renewable generation in the winter too because it gets really windy in most of Germany. And sure, having about 3x renewable generation and consuming the excess generation when it's above the demand, into producing green hydrogen, is about what the longer-term plan for electricity production looks like. There will still be times when renewables will be insufficient, on calm winter days, but infrequently, and then electricity can be produced back from that green hydrogen, but overall there will be surplus, resulting in hydrogen replacing the one produced currently from fossil fuels, for steel production and other industrial uses.
DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
“How come there is nobody held responsible for relying on the cheapest, most reliable, longest used source of energy used by literally every country on the planet” is certainly a take.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
fulafel 4y ago
It's easy to blame the politicians but realistically we should blame voters who kept their head in the sand about the climate catastrophe and allowed fossil rampdown to progress this slowly - and now it's almost too late. This acute crisis is a blip in the ocean compared to the climate problem, even though it by chance drags policy to the same direction.
- lp0_on_fire 4y ago
  Of course we're blaming the politicians! They're the ones making the poor policy decisions.
  - fulafel 4y ago
    It's so psychologically convenient though. Choose between policies attached to faces/parties in elections, and then blame the face when the policy turns out to be terrible, or feel you made such a wise voting decision if it seems to work out. (Apologies if you weren't being sarcastic, wasn't sure) edit: and of course the elected people bear their share of the blame, I don't mean to exclude them, but voters hired them to do what they say they're going to do in face of the ongoing climate catastrophe situation. Marketplace of ideas, etc. They're proxies.
sam_lowry_ 4y ago
It's funny, but 40% of EU budget is dedicated to Common Agricultural Policy which is designed to protect EU from the same kind of scenarios we see in the energy sector now. Time to create a Common Energy Policy.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
For the same reason that rolling blackouts in Texas and recently California are not really leading to changes in the status quo. Complacency. And lets be fair, Europe has a way more resilient power network. Six months of severe disruptions to gas supplies and everything is still running smoothly. It's the cost that is concerning but so far there have been no major disruptions to grid stability.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Recently California? This happens every summer.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    It is summer ...
Brometheus 4y ago
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-put-on-trial-in-german-climate-change-drama-set-in-2034-1.4412921 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-p...
thrown_22 4y ago
What I don't get is the people on hacker news who argue that what we're seeing in Europe isn't the death knell of 'green grids'. This happened because we removed base load generation from coal and nuclear and replaced it with gas. The only thing which can turn on fast enough to match clouds movements. Then went and bought that gas from geopolitical adversaries.
- doikor 4y ago
  > This happened because we removed base load generation from coal and nuclear and replaced it with gas. The only thing which can turn on fast enough to match clouds movements. You might not be able to turn nuclear on/off very fast but adjusting from ~5% to 100% and back is really fast. Actually faster then most gas peaker plants in W/min change rate. This is not really done much outside of France as the running cost of a nuclear plants are roughly the same at 5% and 100% of output (actual fuel costs are very small part of the total cost of running a nuclear power plant)
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    In markets where renewables are a large chunk of the theoretical maximum power hugely negative prices are common. Producing 5% of 1MW for 5 minutes might be costing you more than what you made selling 100% of that 1MW for most of the day.
    - doikor 4y ago
      In Finland they got that situation somewhat covered. The same companies that own most of the nuclear power plants (Olkiluoto) are also some of the largest consumers (UPM and Stora Enso. Two very large paper companies). They also own a lot of hydro so they have a lot of capability to adjust the equation both from the input and output side. These paper companies own all this production because electricity is a massive part of their operational costs and by owning the production if the market goes bad they can just use it themselves at cost of production instead of selling the electricity on the open market basically capping the cost of electricity in their costs. (edit: Actually now that I think about it this is very similar to how most big cloud platforms work. Basically you build infrastructure for your own use and then also sell the same infrastructure to anyone who is interested.) > Producing 5% of 1MW can be costing you more than what you made selling 100% of that 1MW for most of the day. The thing is that with nuclear the costs will be mostly the same when plant is off, at 5% or at 100% (probably most expensive is at off state as you can't use the electricity you made yourself to run all the cooling systems etc). Obviously if the market prices are negative you just run at plant at minimum power which is basically just enough to cover the plants own usage.
finikytou 4y ago
many people were against it. they calleds them nazi for opposing the "woke green" movements pushed from the goldman sachs of the world/biden (who now fracks more than trump) up to the wokest leftist green liberal on linkedin that publicly shamed people who were still using straws and were not convinced of wind/solar energy
tomp 4y ago
Because you cannot just jail every politician.
carmel1 4y ago
"Economic Interdependence: A Path to Peace" was a central dogma in Europe after WW2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/425132 https://www.jstor.org/stable/425132
concinds 4y ago
Egregious mismanagement by stupid European leaders. Why would they hold themselves accountable? https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_production_and_imports https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... "Production of primary energy in the EU was 17.7% lower in 2020 than it had been a decade earlier." [this includes renewables and nuclear, as well as fossil, gas, geothermal, etc] "Indeed, more than half (57.5 %) of the EU’s gross available energy in 2020 came from imported sources." -- "Invest in renewables!" Ok, but that means needing to restart coal plants and import natural gas when there's no wind or sun. Where are the massive battery investments in Europe for energy storage? Nowhere. "Everyone, buy electric cars!" Ok, but there's be a permanent blackout if every car was actually electric. There's not enough electricity being generated to charge them. Insane maniacs. Switching to clean energy means transitioning from non-electric energy (gas, petrol) to electric. That means we must produce more electricity. Why aren't they obsessed with increasing electricity production, so electric cars won't lead to blackouts and import dependency?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Primary energy isn't a good measure. You want "final energy" the energy used to actually do something of use. Most of the Primary Energy is wasted, so anyone who is sensibly rolling out cheap renewables (or even expensive nuclear) will see their primary energy go down, even as their final energy goes up. Ideally efficiency improvements also make final energy go down. Also, EVs help the grid and prevent petro states, like say Russia, from making as much money.
kmeisthax 4y ago
...So you want to sue voters for wanting cheap energy in 1997? The rut that Europe is now in is the direct result of the following: - Until very recently[0], energy demands could only be met with a significant amount of fossil fuels. Europe is notoriously poor in fossil fuel reserves[1] and must import them. - Fossil fuels are fungible in substance but not in location. A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil, but oil in Saudi Arabia is not oil in Germany. Transport adds cost, and the cheapest and safest way to transport oil is with a pipeline. - Out of all of Europe's close neighbors, Russia has the biggest fossil fuel reserve. There really isn't a suitable "backup supplier" that could bring fuel in cheaply. - People and politicians in 1997 assumed economic ties with Russia would put their military on a leash in the same way that the ECSC, EEC, and EU had put West Germany's military on a leash. That last consideration might seem quaint given that Russia invaded Ukraine, but globalization was something that had already worked in Europe and people thought it was exportable. Even then, it might still work out. The economic problems Europe is looking at are nothing compared to the damage that the current slate of broad sanctions have done and are doing to Russia. Europe is looking at one particularly cold winter, but Russia is seeing a slow-motion economic collapse on the same scale as the collapse of the Soviet Union. The real mistake was not that we built Nord Stream, but that we waited until 2022 to actually punish Putin for invading Russia's neighbors. [0] Specifically, cheap solar and wind did not exist in 1997 and nuclear was and still is expensive to build. [1] This is also why the US is obsessed with oil. Running out of it was one of the deciding factors in the fall of Nazi Germany.

Dave3of5 4y ago

> Power generators that had been shut down could not ramp up in time to meet renewed demand Not disputing this but can someone give a source on what power generators in the UK where shutdown during the pandemic and could not ramp back up ? I've worked in a power plant and the gas combined cycle one I worked in could be shutdown and re-started in about 10 minutes (I know this as I actually shut one down by mistake). The only power plants I think that work like this are nuclear which must continuously run once started albeit they can be run at a lower level if demand is low. Edit: It's looks like for nuclear all I can find is Sizewell B was reduced to 50% for a few months but I can see it's back up to 100% now: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/covid-19-coronavirus-and-nuclear-energy.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuses https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuse...

gwbas1c 4y ago
I wonder if it's also a supply-chain or staffing issue? A combined cycle plant might be able to start "instantly," but if there's no fuel or staff, it's going to be idle.
- Dave3of5 4y ago
  > but if there's no fuel or staff, it's going to be idle That would indicate that there is a gas shortage in the UK right now which isn't true. In terms of staff the daily operations of a plant only requires a handful of people. There was I think only 2 control room operators on duty at the 1200 MW plant I was working in near Bristol (Seabank power station). So I suspect it's not that he's referring to. Given that he was a scientist at Oxford he must have data to back this up but I'd like to see what plants shutdown. Edit: Actually I'm wrong the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies looks like some thinktank that props up oil and gas. The board of directors tell you what you need to know about them. I think this whole article is garbage.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    > that there is a gas shortage in the UK right now which isn't true While not an actual shortage yet, from the info I've seen, UK is very much behind the rest of Europe on the plan to make winter reserves. https://agsi.gie.eu/ https://agsi.gie.eu/ currently storing only slightly more than Belgium for example. Do you think they could be "cautious" with distribution of what they have?

gwbas1c 4y ago

I wonder if: The energy crisis will put pressure on scientists to optimize code? I've come across hideously unoptimized code in my career; where merely understanding general basics about the compiler / OS / database result in significant improvements. (And thus less energy consumption.) There is a market for moving supercomputing to places with lower energy costs?

kreig 4y ago
From my experience, usually micro-optimizations (such as optimizing code) don't have a great impact on execution performance than, for example, changing the approach at a higher level (introducing caching, etc), the same may apply on energetic performance I guess.

lower 4y ago

The crisis is having an impact on science funding in general: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220726202735873 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202207262...

newaccount2021 4y ago

game_the0ry 4y ago

Its not the science Europe should be worrying about, its the local pubs and cafes that will inevitably be forced to close bc their utility costs will 10x. That is the cost of sanctions on Russian energy. I am an American and I love Europe, I just eloped in Italy this year. I hate what EU leaders are doing to their people.