11 ms·

From absolute gold standard electric production/infrastructure in the 70s to barely able to light school rooms in 2022 I miss politicians who had a vision that

From absolute gold standard electric production/infrastructure in the 70s to barely able to light school rooms in 2022 I miss politicians who had a vision that didn't stop at the end of their term. We even had to restart a coal power plant last week...

kkfx 4y ago
The issue is simple: privatizations. The public in the past have invested for the public interests. After the private have do not profiting from old State made investments leaving anything else falling apart. When they reach a certain level of mess they going out, leaving the State arrange the mess and handle the rage, waiting to came back once a new wave of investments will repair the mess. Unfortunately people seems to ignore that, allowing such model to prosper.
- cm2187 4y ago
  Not sure what privatisations have to do with the problem. My understanding is that it is a combination of a technical problem (corrosion happening at an unexpected pace) and the impact of covid lockdowns which deferred critical maintenance.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    Privatization has everything to do with the problem. Let's take EDF and our nuclear plants. Why is EDF struggling financially today ? Because, through the magic of _opening up to the market_, they have been forced to sell up to 100TWh are prices as low as €40/MWh. The new private operators that came in simply resold that. And right now ? They're even kicking out clients, just so they could sell on the market at €1000/MWh. What does EDF struggling financially mean ? Among others, fully depending on the state to give them the money they need to exist, not being able to keep training and maintain specialists to repair such corrosion (we needed to import people because there were simply not enough qualified engineers for that), not being able to build more plants and therefore losing our edge in nuclear power. Why are most of our public services struggling ? Because over time, they've been handed out to private companies. Unemployment office ? Partly privatized. Tax collection from employers ? Privatized. Healthcare ? Partly privatized, and the beast is being starved so they can privatize it more. There has not been a single, memorable outcome of a public service being privatized in France and it getting better.
    - alwayseasy 4y ago
      > Among others, fully depending on the state to give them the money they need to exist, not being able to keep training and maintain specialists to repair such corrosion (we needed to import people because there were simply not enough qualified engineers for that), not being able to build more plants and therefore losing our edge in nuclear power. EDF is struggling because the state kept intervening and asking them to shut down future nuclear plants. You can't have specialists if they are retiring and the state destroyed any career prospects due to planning they would shut down plants...
      - Gwypaas 4y ago
        Have a look at Flamanville 3 and then try to sell another 20 of those to the public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
        dividedbyzero 4y ago
        Oops: > EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion[6] and stated it would start commercial operations in 2012, after construction lasting 54 months.[7] The latest cost estimate (July 2020) is at €19.1 billion, with commissioning planned tentatively at the end of 2022.[8][2] That's ten years late at 578% the projected cost.
        lolive 4y ago
        Subcontractors are extatic !
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      > they have been forced to sell up to 100TWh are prices as low as €40/MWh. Should be plenty. The Swedish paid off nuclear plants operate around €25/MWh. Lazard similarly puts the range for paid-off nuclear plants at $24-$33/MWh. It's simply mismanagement of a golden goose. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
- mhh__ 4y ago
  The issue with "privatisation" (they're not all the same) IMO is that it's usually done by politicians trying to get something for nothing. Lets say the benefits of privatisation are 10% cheaper widgets or power stations, a politician will aim for 30%. Goodbye future.
  - guggle 4y ago
    Private or public, nuclear does not like short-term management. And there has been too much of it lately, mostly because politics.
- ttymck 4y ago
  Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but I can't quite follow what you're saying. I know it's anti-privatization, but I can really make out the rest. What does this mean > "After the private have do not profiting from old State made investments leaving anything else falling apart. When they reach a certain level of mess they going out, leaving the State arrange the mess and handle the rage"
  - oezi 4y ago
    He means that a publically built monopoly rarely benefits from privatization. Because the efficiency gains will largely be extracted by the private owners.
    - Raed667 4y ago
      there was also an (ideology motivated) sabotage, where EDF is forced to sell at a loss to private competitors who produce nothing, who then will turn around and sell to customers at a cheaper price than EDF. So they can claim that private is obviously better.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - kergonath 4y ago
        It’s all a house of cards anyway, as the “alternative providers” who were supposed to provide all that magical agile goodness through the wonders of competition fold one after the other and are actively pushing their customers to EDF. That’s cargo cult economics: someone said competition was good so we’re going to have all the appearances of it without giving up on our large publicly-funded infrastructure. Because at the end of the day we need electricity and all these rent seekers are only good at extracting value from existing installations. Utterly disgusting.
        Gibbon1 4y ago
        That's what I call Potemkin Markets. You see that everywhere, enabling insiders to engage in legal risk free looting but claiming it's okay because you sprinkled magic free market pixie dust on it.
- lairv 4y ago
  Sure, obviously this has nothing to do with a 40-year anti-nuclear policy.
  - hinata08 4y ago
    the anti-nuclear policy was in Germany France was proud of the nuclear energy. It had plenty of cheap and carbon-free electricity (it was once exported to all the neighbouring countries) It was a way to be independent energy wise, as more countries can export nuclear fuel than oil. It was building power plants, and processing nuclear waste from other countries And it made plenty of engineers busy ! France used to be a country led by engineers.
    - lairv 4y ago
      Anti-nuclear policy sure was more significant in Germany as it has led to the complete stop of its use, but in France it has also slowed down the development of the industry. Although it has evolved positively over the last three years, nuclear energy remains controversial in public opinion [0,1], and many ecologist and left-wing movements have militated against nuclear power for the last 30 years. Whether or not it had an impact on the country policy toward nuclear power would require a more in-depth and complete archive work, but just remember that Emmanuel Macron was advocating toward reducing the share of nuclear power when he was elected for the first time in 2017 [2] (he has now changed) [0] https://www.ifop.com/publication/lopinion-des-francais-sur-lenergie-nucleaire/ https://www.ifop.com/publication/lopinion-des-francais-sur-l... [1] https://www.lesechos.fr/politique-societe/societe/sondage-exclusif-une-majorite-de-francais-reconnait-les-merites-du-nucleaire-1361153 https://www.lesechos.fr/politique-societe/societe/sondage-ex... [2] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87skbx https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87skbx
      - merb 4y ago
        wow... I mean france basically said at the start of the energy crises that they will build tons of new nuclear plants! they even were the most influential country within the eu which made it possible that the eu gives funding for nuclear plants. I'm really not sure what you want? of course for everything there is an anti movement, but france is definitly not anti-nuclear, neither are most of its people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gobip 4y ago
  Your own argument is busted by.. your own argument. EDF has been nationalized again and here we are. The issue isn't "privatizations".
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    Lol no it hasn't. As of last year, the state owned 83% of EDF, along with everything that being a publicly traded company entails. The renationalization process has been started, then immediately halted by shareholders that sued to block it. Additionally, things don't get magically fixed because it belongs to the state again. The current state of things is the result of 20 years of selling off EDF, piece by piece to vultures.
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    This is like watching a new administration take over government and then blaming them a month later for problems caused by the previous administrators. It takes time to fix years of neglect and malicious incompetence.
grecy 4y ago
> I miss politicians who had a vision that didn't stop at the end of their term. Australia is exactly the same. In 10 years there were 7 different Prime Minsters. The leaders spend all their time bickering about who is in charge instead of actually doing anything. In Australia they're calling it an "Energy Crisis", which is a complete lie. Australia has a leadership crisis that has resulted in a crisis of basically everything else.
- boyter 4y ago
  This. Along with the privatisation of the industry and the miss aligned incentives. Gold plated delivery of electricity, but no guarantees of getting it. I find it insane that a country with as much natural resources, plus unlimited sunshine and space for wind farms has such high energy prices. It’s also why I’m not sold on electric cars. I’d hate to suddenly be unable to charge it. If someone is really serious about CO2 emissions we need to transform the economy to be reliant on electricity not oil, and the only way to do that is drive the price down close to zero. Especially worrying for me is the push to get everything on electricity. Only to then do rolling blackouts, or turn things off selectively so energy providers can fleece end users with price hikes. Alas everyone is only interested in the next 4 years so there is little vision.
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    > It’s also why I’m not sold on electric cars. I’d hate to suddenly be unable to charge it. Have you ever wondered why they're called pumps when you go to the gas station? They're electric pumps. All the diesel or petroleum you're imagining you can use instead because you were "not sold on electric cars" isn't going anywhere if the electricity is off.
    - boyter 4y ago
      I understand your point but you have totally missed mine. One of the main reason to have an electric car is the ability to charge from home using your solar. With the way islanding laws work in Australia should rolling blackouts happen you cannot do this. Admittedly they could change the laws around this. I would love to be able to use a car as my battery as well when I need power overnight.
SkyPuncher 4y ago
I'll offer a different take. This is simply the human condition. It's extremely difficult to prioritize something that is working. Any effort put into something that isn't perceived broken is effort that is taken away from something else that is perceived as broken. These cycles happen in just about everything. A perfect example is business security. Nearly every time there's a breach, it's the same pattern: "We take security seriously"....except we kind of put it on the back burner for the past years.
- fendy3002 4y ago
  For anyone who played sim city know this. Sometimes youw won't extend power gens until some parts of the city glowing with electricity icon. And to optimize budget we like to have power gens to be just slightly overproduced than consumption.
  - rmbyrro 4y ago
    Maybe simcity is not the best model of how reality works in society management.
- Kuinox 4y ago
  Our (france) hospital system is collapsing and barely working everywhere in the country and it's still not prioritized.
  - pjerem 4y ago
    Well, it’s a political issue though. It’s not the same system that worked yesterday that is suddenly collapsing on itself. It’s a series of hostile political decisions against it made to actively induce a collapsing. We could very easily fix it by applying old recipes that worked well yesterday but nobody (with the power to) wants to fix it.
    - psychoslave 4y ago
      >We could very easily fix it by applying old recipes that worked well yesterday but nobody (with the power to) wants to fix it. There are urgency services that are literally closing due to lack of personal, right now. Even in major cities. An the government is now considering to open a reflection on reintegrating thousands of people that were laid off (not fired but no longer paid) as they didn’t consent to be vaccinated. So yes, there are some levers government can turn to instantly make situation a bit less terrible. But this will not be enough to make situation sound. No one want to go to work for miserable wages in awful conditions that are promised to be degraded constantly for what decades of data allows to forecast. And you don’t form new doctors, nurses and so on over the course of a night, not even speaking about what makes a group of trained individuals becoming an efficient team.
llsf 4y ago
Energy infrastructure time horizons are different from politicians ones. Energy policy requires planning and large investments over decades. There is no incentives for politicians today to say here we are spending $XXB on energy infrastructure now so you can reap the profits of it, in 20 years from now. Specifically, France got some bad short-term decisions in mid-2000 to not renew nuclear maintenance (hoping to close it eventually), and now all those decisions have to be reversed. But again, reversing it is not going to happen in matter of weeks or months. So, this winter might bring some careful balance distribution (and imports).
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> From absolute gold standard electric production/infrastructure in the 70s to barely able to light school rooms in 2022 And they voted, like the rest of the EU, the ban of ICE and hybrid vehicles sales by 2035. 2023, risks of blackouts. 2035: every single car sold is going to be 100% EV. And the switch to EVs is already happening, which is already putting a shitload of stress on the network. If 0% of the vehicles in France were EVs, there would be absolutely zero blackout this winter. I'm not saying we should not switch to EVs. What I'm saying is we're simply not ready at all.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  Funnily enough, Switzerland is mulling a temporary EV ban because of its toll on the electric grid. https://www.autoevolution.com/news/swiss-government-may-ban-ev-use-this-winter-to-conserve-electricity-205479.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/swiss-government-may-ban-...
  - mmastrac 4y ago
    The article doesn't say it's a ban: just a limitation for essential travel, after non-essential heating is turned off in nightclubs, etc: The first one would be the emergency phase and would have three degrees of restrictions that will entail reducing shop operating hours, turning off heating systems in nightclubs, and reducing temperature in buildings to no more than 20 degrees celsius. The restrictions on electric vehicle usage for non-essential travel is in the third escalation level of the emergency phase.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > What I'm saying is we're simply not ready at all Then they will simply push the deadline out. But far better to have an aggressive timeline for the market to coalesce around.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    No? We should build more reactors.
selimthegrim 4y ago
Macron was in New Orleans yesterday flogging wind power and trying to promote French companies here. What is he doing in France for it?
- psychoslave 4y ago
  He is actually generating of a lot of hot air!

kkfx 4y ago

The issue is simple: privatizations. The public in the past have invested for the public interests. After the private have do not profiting from old State made investments leaving anything else falling apart. When they reach a certain level of mess they going out, leaving the State arrange the mess and handle the rage, waiting to came back once a new wave of investments will repair the mess. Unfortunately people seems to ignore that, allowing such model to prosper.

cm2187 4y ago
Not sure what privatisations have to do with the problem. My understanding is that it is a combination of a technical problem (corrosion happening at an unexpected pace) and the impact of covid lockdowns which deferred critical maintenance.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  Privatization has everything to do with the problem. Let's take EDF and our nuclear plants. Why is EDF struggling financially today ? Because, through the magic of _opening up to the market_, they have been forced to sell up to 100TWh are prices as low as €40/MWh. The new private operators that came in simply resold that. And right now ? They're even kicking out clients, just so they could sell on the market at €1000/MWh. What does EDF struggling financially mean ? Among others, fully depending on the state to give them the money they need to exist, not being able to keep training and maintain specialists to repair such corrosion (we needed to import people because there were simply not enough qualified engineers for that), not being able to build more plants and therefore losing our edge in nuclear power. Why are most of our public services struggling ? Because over time, they've been handed out to private companies. Unemployment office ? Partly privatized. Tax collection from employers ? Privatized. Healthcare ? Partly privatized, and the beast is being starved so they can privatize it more. There has not been a single, memorable outcome of a public service being privatized in France and it getting better.
  - alwayseasy 4y ago
    > Among others, fully depending on the state to give them the money they need to exist, not being able to keep training and maintain specialists to repair such corrosion (we needed to import people because there were simply not enough qualified engineers for that), not being able to build more plants and therefore losing our edge in nuclear power. EDF is struggling because the state kept intervening and asking them to shut down future nuclear plants. You can't have specialists if they are retiring and the state destroyed any career prospects due to planning they would shut down plants...
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      Have a look at Flamanville 3 and then try to sell another 20 of those to the public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
      - dividedbyzero 4y ago
        Oops: > EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion[6] and stated it would start commercial operations in 2012, after construction lasting 54 months.[7] The latest cost estimate (July 2020) is at €19.1 billion, with commissioning planned tentatively at the end of 2022.[8][2] That's ten years late at 578% the projected cost.
        lolive 4y ago
        Subcontractors are extatic !
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    > they have been forced to sell up to 100TWh are prices as low as €40/MWh. Should be plenty. The Swedish paid off nuclear plants operate around €25/MWh. Lazard similarly puts the range for paid-off nuclear plants at $24-$33/MWh. It's simply mismanagement of a golden goose. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
mhh__ 4y ago
The issue with "privatisation" (they're not all the same) IMO is that it's usually done by politicians trying to get something for nothing. Lets say the benefits of privatisation are 10% cheaper widgets or power stations, a politician will aim for 30%. Goodbye future.
- guggle 4y ago
  Private or public, nuclear does not like short-term management. And there has been too much of it lately, mostly because politics.
ttymck 4y ago
Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but I can't quite follow what you're saying. I know it's anti-privatization, but I can really make out the rest. What does this mean > "After the private have do not profiting from old State made investments leaving anything else falling apart. When they reach a certain level of mess they going out, leaving the State arrange the mess and handle the rage"
- oezi 4y ago
  He means that a publically built monopoly rarely benefits from privatization. Because the efficiency gains will largely be extracted by the private owners.
  - Raed667 4y ago
    there was also an (ideology motivated) sabotage, where EDF is forced to sell at a loss to private competitors who produce nothing, who then will turn around and sell to customers at a cheaper price than EDF. So they can claim that private is obviously better.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - kergonath 4y ago
      It’s all a house of cards anyway, as the “alternative providers” who were supposed to provide all that magical agile goodness through the wonders of competition fold one after the other and are actively pushing their customers to EDF. That’s cargo cult economics: someone said competition was good so we’re going to have all the appearances of it without giving up on our large publicly-funded infrastructure. Because at the end of the day we need electricity and all these rent seekers are only good at extracting value from existing installations. Utterly disgusting.
      - Gibbon1 4y ago
        That's what I call Potemkin Markets. You see that everywhere, enabling insiders to engage in legal risk free looting but claiming it's okay because you sprinkled magic free market pixie dust on it.
lairv 4y ago
Sure, obviously this has nothing to do with a 40-year anti-nuclear policy.
- hinata08 4y ago
  the anti-nuclear policy was in Germany France was proud of the nuclear energy. It had plenty of cheap and carbon-free electricity (it was once exported to all the neighbouring countries) It was a way to be independent energy wise, as more countries can export nuclear fuel than oil. It was building power plants, and processing nuclear waste from other countries And it made plenty of engineers busy ! France used to be a country led by engineers.
  - lairv 4y ago
    Anti-nuclear policy sure was more significant in Germany as it has led to the complete stop of its use, but in France it has also slowed down the development of the industry. Although it has evolved positively over the last three years, nuclear energy remains controversial in public opinion [0,1], and many ecologist and left-wing movements have militated against nuclear power for the last 30 years. Whether or not it had an impact on the country policy toward nuclear power would require a more in-depth and complete archive work, but just remember that Emmanuel Macron was advocating toward reducing the share of nuclear power when he was elected for the first time in 2017 [2] (he has now changed) [0] https://www.ifop.com/publication/lopinion-des-francais-sur-lenergie-nucleaire/ https://www.ifop.com/publication/lopinion-des-francais-sur-l... [1] https://www.lesechos.fr/politique-societe/societe/sondage-exclusif-une-majorite-de-francais-reconnait-les-merites-du-nucleaire-1361153 https://www.lesechos.fr/politique-societe/societe/sondage-ex... [2] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87skbx https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87skbx
    - merb 4y ago
      wow... I mean france basically said at the start of the energy crises that they will build tons of new nuclear plants! they even were the most influential country within the eu which made it possible that the eu gives funding for nuclear plants. I'm really not sure what you want? of course for everything there is an anti movement, but france is definitly not anti-nuclear, neither are most of its people.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gobip 4y ago
Your own argument is busted by.. your own argument. EDF has been nationalized again and here we are. The issue isn't "privatizations".
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  Lol no it hasn't. As of last year, the state owned 83% of EDF, along with everything that being a publicly traded company entails. The renationalization process has been started, then immediately halted by shareholders that sued to block it. Additionally, things don't get magically fixed because it belongs to the state again. The current state of things is the result of 20 years of selling off EDF, piece by piece to vultures.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  This is like watching a new administration take over government and then blaming them a month later for problems caused by the previous administrators. It takes time to fix years of neglect and malicious incompetence.

grecy 4y ago

> I miss politicians who had a vision that didn't stop at the end of their term. Australia is exactly the same. In 10 years there were 7 different Prime Minsters. The leaders spend all their time bickering about who is in charge instead of actually doing anything. In Australia they're calling it an "Energy Crisis", which is a complete lie. Australia has a leadership crisis that has resulted in a crisis of basically everything else.

boyter 4y ago
This. Along with the privatisation of the industry and the miss aligned incentives. Gold plated delivery of electricity, but no guarantees of getting it. I find it insane that a country with as much natural resources, plus unlimited sunshine and space for wind farms has such high energy prices. It’s also why I’m not sold on electric cars. I’d hate to suddenly be unable to charge it. If someone is really serious about CO2 emissions we need to transform the economy to be reliant on electricity not oil, and the only way to do that is drive the price down close to zero. Especially worrying for me is the push to get everything on electricity. Only to then do rolling blackouts, or turn things off selectively so energy providers can fleece end users with price hikes. Alas everyone is only interested in the next 4 years so there is little vision.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  > It’s also why I’m not sold on electric cars. I’d hate to suddenly be unable to charge it. Have you ever wondered why they're called pumps when you go to the gas station? They're electric pumps. All the diesel or petroleum you're imagining you can use instead because you were "not sold on electric cars" isn't going anywhere if the electricity is off.
  - boyter 4y ago
    I understand your point but you have totally missed mine. One of the main reason to have an electric car is the ability to charge from home using your solar. With the way islanding laws work in Australia should rolling blackouts happen you cannot do this. Admittedly they could change the laws around this. I would love to be able to use a car as my battery as well when I need power overnight.

SkyPuncher 4y ago

I'll offer a different take. This is simply the human condition. It's extremely difficult to prioritize something that is working. Any effort put into something that isn't perceived broken is effort that is taken away from something else that is perceived as broken. These cycles happen in just about everything. A perfect example is business security. Nearly every time there's a breach, it's the same pattern: "We take security seriously"....except we kind of put it on the back burner for the past years.

fendy3002 4y ago
For anyone who played sim city know this. Sometimes youw won't extend power gens until some parts of the city glowing with electricity icon. And to optimize budget we like to have power gens to be just slightly overproduced than consumption.
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  Maybe simcity is not the best model of how reality works in society management.
Kuinox 4y ago
Our (france) hospital system is collapsing and barely working everywhere in the country and it's still not prioritized.
- pjerem 4y ago
  Well, it’s a political issue though. It’s not the same system that worked yesterday that is suddenly collapsing on itself. It’s a series of hostile political decisions against it made to actively induce a collapsing. We could very easily fix it by applying old recipes that worked well yesterday but nobody (with the power to) wants to fix it.
  - psychoslave 4y ago
    >We could very easily fix it by applying old recipes that worked well yesterday but nobody (with the power to) wants to fix it. There are urgency services that are literally closing due to lack of personal, right now. Even in major cities. An the government is now considering to open a reflection on reintegrating thousands of people that were laid off (not fired but no longer paid) as they didn’t consent to be vaccinated. So yes, there are some levers government can turn to instantly make situation a bit less terrible. But this will not be enough to make situation sound. No one want to go to work for miserable wages in awful conditions that are promised to be degraded constantly for what decades of data allows to forecast. And you don’t form new doctors, nurses and so on over the course of a night, not even speaking about what makes a group of trained individuals becoming an efficient team.

llsf 4y ago

Energy infrastructure time horizons are different from politicians ones. Energy policy requires planning and large investments over decades. There is no incentives for politicians today to say here we are spending $XXB on energy infrastructure now so you can reap the profits of it, in 20 years from now. Specifically, France got some bad short-term decisions in mid-2000 to not renew nuclear maintenance (hoping to close it eventually), and now all those decisions have to be reversed. But again, reversing it is not going to happen in matter of weeks or months. So, this winter might bring some careful balance distribution (and imports).

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> From absolute gold standard electric production/infrastructure in the 70s to barely able to light school rooms in 2022 And they voted, like the rest of the EU, the ban of ICE and hybrid vehicles sales by 2035. 2023, risks of blackouts. 2035: every single car sold is going to be 100% EV. And the switch to EVs is already happening, which is already putting a shitload of stress on the network. If 0% of the vehicles in France were EVs, there would be absolutely zero blackout this winter. I'm not saying we should not switch to EVs. What I'm saying is we're simply not ready at all.

rjzzleep 4y ago
Funnily enough, Switzerland is mulling a temporary EV ban because of its toll on the electric grid. https://www.autoevolution.com/news/swiss-government-may-ban-ev-use-this-winter-to-conserve-electricity-205479.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/swiss-government-may-ban-...
- mmastrac 4y ago
  The article doesn't say it's a ban: just a limitation for essential travel, after non-essential heating is turned off in nightclubs, etc: The first one would be the emergency phase and would have three degrees of restrictions that will entail reducing shop operating hours, turning off heating systems in nightclubs, and reducing temperature in buildings to no more than 20 degrees celsius. The restrictions on electric vehicle usage for non-essential travel is in the third escalation level of the emergency phase.
threeseed 4y ago
> What I'm saying is we're simply not ready at all Then they will simply push the deadline out. But far better to have an aggressive timeline for the market to coalesce around.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  No? We should build more reactors.

selimthegrim 4y ago

Macron was in New Orleans yesterday flogging wind power and trying to promote French companies here. What is he doing in France for it?

psychoslave 4y ago
He is actually generating of a lot of hot air!