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I want to believe that, but France has already recommissioned a coal fired plant. Falling back on coal will delay and exacerbate the pain of the energy transfor

by drewm1980 4y ago

I want to believe that, but France has already recommissioned a coal fired plant. Falling back on coal will delay and exacerbate the pain of the energy transformation. I am an American at a young hip company in the EU and people here only pay lip service to the energy transition. People will keep declaring climate change someone else's problem until they are starving or freezing. If you are in the USA do NOT pin your hopes on the EU leading the way.

WinstonSmith84 4y ago
hydropower / geothermal is great but most countries don't have that. Instead, using wind turbines / solar panels have random energy production... Maybe fine in the Caribbean, but you can't power a country like France or Germany with that in winter when it's cloudy, un-windy and cold for many weeks, that's utopian at best. Hence coal fired power plant, instead of NPP.
nmehner 4y ago
https://energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=EU&stacking=stacked_grouped&chartColumnSorting=default&expansion=installation_decommission&year=-1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?... Please don't look at short term effects when trying to judge the energy transition. France might restart a coal plant because of issues with its nuclear plants. Germany restarts some coal plants to deal with the gas shortage and to export electricity to France. But this is short term. It is simply not possible to build new plants within one year to deal with the political changes. The long term trends are stable. With the transition to electric vehicles (https://cleantechnica.com/2022/12/02/europe-electric-car-sales-report-13-6-of-new-cars-fully-electric/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/12/02/europe-electric-car-sal... ) fuel consumption should also soon start to fall in significant ways. Norway is already there with a decrease of 6.6% YoY (https://www.ssb.no/en/energi-og-industri/olje-og-gass/statistikk/sal-av-petroleumsprodukt https://www.ssb.no/en/energi-og-industri/olje-og-gass/statis... ), the rest of Europe is probably trailing by about 5 years. Of course everything should be faster and yes, the USA have to find their own way. It's not like even Spain and Sweden can have a similar approach to migrating to renewable energy.

WinstonSmith84 4y ago

hydropower / geothermal is great but most countries don't have that. Instead, using wind turbines / solar panels have random energy production... Maybe fine in the Caribbean, but you can't power a country like France or Germany with that in winter when it's cloudy, un-windy and cold for many weeks, that's utopian at best. Hence coal fired power plant, instead of NPP.

nmehner 4y ago

https://energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=EU&stacking=stacked_grouped&chartColumnSorting=default&expansion=installation_decommission&year=-1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?... Please don't look at short term effects when trying to judge the energy transition. France might restart a coal plant because of issues with its nuclear plants. Germany restarts some coal plants to deal with the gas shortage and to export electricity to France. But this is short term. It is simply not possible to build new plants within one year to deal with the political changes. The long term trends are stable. With the transition to electric vehicles (https://cleantechnica.com/2022/12/02/europe-electric-car-sales-report-13-6-of-new-cars-fully-electric/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/12/02/europe-electric-car-sal... ) fuel consumption should also soon start to fall in significant ways. Norway is already there with a decrease of 6.6% YoY (https://www.ssb.no/en/energi-og-industri/olje-og-gass/statistikk/sal-av-petroleumsprodukt https://www.ssb.no/en/energi-og-industri/olje-og-gass/statis... ), the rest of Europe is probably trailing by about 5 years. Of course everything should be faster and yes, the USA have to find their own way. It's not like even Spain and Sweden can have a similar approach to migrating to renewable energy.