4 ms·
While not ideal, peaker gas plants. Better than coal, worse than solar and wind. Necessary evil until adequate grid storage.
by mint2 4y ago
While not ideal, peaker gas plants. Better than coal, worse than solar and wind. Necessary evil until adequate grid storage.
- belorn 4y agoThat was the model that EU went with for the last 20-30 years. It was not ideal.
- pjc50 4y agoIt worked fine until the invasion of Ukraine forced the difficult choice to stop funding that war by buying gas from them. Not dissimilar problem to dependency on oil. There is a real issue with long term storage, but in the meantime overbuilding can achieve climate goals at reasonable cost and far less time than it takes to build a new nuclear plant. (Hinkley Point C was approved in 2012 and is still not online!) Germany's decision to shut nuclear in response to Fukushima looks terrible in the rear view mirror. But I suspect it was informed by how bad the costs of Chernobyl were in terms of discarded agricultural production.
- matmatmatmat 4y agoWith Germany, in particular, I think there was also a lot of pressure from Green parties. In any case, I would agree it looks like a mistake in hindsight.
- Xylakant 4y agoThe greens also pressured to install solar and wind as replacement, not coal and gas. They raised the issue of energy dependency early and constantly. It’s easy to blame them, but this is not what they asked for.
- cauch 4y agoAFAIU, the Germany case is complicated: the non-Green government followed half of the Green parties plan (going out of nuclear) but half-assed the other half (compensate by expanding the required renewable sector) that was as important for the Green parties. There can be tons of explanations for that: going out of nuclear was more popular than building renewables in people's backyard, going out of nuclear was an easier path to follow than develop the renewable sector, the effort of going out of nuclear may have been used as an excuse to say "see, we do green stuffs, no need to do more", the coal/gas generation may have looked an easier or more profitable path for some politicians, the industry had less resistance against going out of nuclear than going out of coal/gas, going out of the nuclear may have been an easy concession to give to the Green and to look good to the public, or even the government had low incentive to succeed in the transition because if it fails they can blame the Green parties ("but it was your plan ... see, Green parties don't have realistic ideas")...
- mint2 4y agoRussia wasn’t the only source of gas available, it was just the cheapest. With minimal effort they could have sourced elsewhere, it’s just not an instantaneous pivot. Also closing nuclear plants was a bad choice.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoNo it wasn't. They relied on natgas for baseload production.
- MarkMarine 4y agoWe are in a way different place with domestic natural gas production than the EU.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WorkingDead 4y agoSo it's not actually cheaper once you account for the entire parallel infrastructure you need.