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Every country tries securing cheap energy; that's what energy markets are for. There is no such thing as a trivial win here. And trying to secure it could end

Every country tries securing cheap energy; that's what energy markets are for. There is no such thing as a trivial win here. And trying to secure it could end up costing significant GDP, as demonstrated by wars fought over securing energy.

roenxi 4y ago
They aren't. The EU is in the news right now because they cracked down on nuclear and fossil fuels and - after succeeding - ended up in an energy crisis. You can see what countries trying to secure cheap energy do by looking at China and India - lots of coal, lots of oil, bring on as much capacity in nuclear and renewables as they can. They're playing with effectively 4x as many sources of energy as the EU despite the Europeans having a wealth and tech lead! I say 4x because renewables aren't quite a big enough energy source to break up into components.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > The EU is in the news right now because they cracked down on nuclear and fossil fuels and - after succeeding - ended up in an energy crisis. They allowed the fossil fuel lobby to severely curtail their renewable installations and had a quarter of their nuclear reactors fail. Then had a massive source of gas disappear. The renewables are working exactly as advertised. Seems like a pretty good argument for more of them. > do by looking at China So at least half of new generation as renewables with a small increase in nuclear whilst keeping thermal plant capacity roughly constant (mostly by moving existing production to more efficient plants)?
  - roenxi 4y ago
    That would be an improvement over the failure that they have managed. The Europeans have shrinking access to electricity, so they effectively must have negative absolute growth on fossil fuels and I suspect negative or near 0 growth of nuclear (not going to check, so maybe someone is doing the sensible thing and building some nuclear plants and I haven't read about it). They have a long way to go to get towards the sort of success China is managing. They need a lot of renewables to recover from their serious policy screw ups. They don't seem to have been able to build it that quickly! Hopefully they manage before there is a really bad winter.

roenxi 4y ago

They aren't. The EU is in the news right now because they cracked down on nuclear and fossil fuels and - after succeeding - ended up in an energy crisis. You can see what countries trying to secure cheap energy do by looking at China and India - lots of coal, lots of oil, bring on as much capacity in nuclear and renewables as they can. They're playing with effectively 4x as many sources of energy as the EU despite the Europeans having a wealth and tech lead! I say 4x because renewables aren't quite a big enough energy source to break up into components.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> The EU is in the news right now because they cracked down on nuclear and fossil fuels and - after succeeding - ended up in an energy crisis. They allowed the fossil fuel lobby to severely curtail their renewable installations and had a quarter of their nuclear reactors fail. Then had a massive source of gas disappear. The renewables are working exactly as advertised. Seems like a pretty good argument for more of them. > do by looking at China So at least half of new generation as renewables with a small increase in nuclear whilst keeping thermal plant capacity roughly constant (mostly by moving existing production to more efficient plants)?
- roenxi 4y ago
  That would be an improvement over the failure that they have managed. The Europeans have shrinking access to electricity, so they effectively must have negative absolute growth on fossil fuels and I suspect negative or near 0 growth of nuclear (not going to check, so maybe someone is doing the sensible thing and building some nuclear plants and I haven't read about it). They have a long way to go to get towards the sort of success China is managing. They need a lot of renewables to recover from their serious policy screw ups. They don't seem to have been able to build it that quickly! Hopefully they manage before there is a really bad winter.