11 ms·

This is a bit buried but important: > And electricity only accounts for 18% of the UK's total power needs. There are many demands for energy which electricity

by wepple 3y ago

This is a bit buried but important: > And electricity only accounts for 18% of the UK's total power needs. There are many demands for energy which electricity is not meeting, such as heating our homes, manufacturing and transport. Currently the majority of UK homes use gas for their heating Perhaps we should start talking about what % of “energy” comes from renewables? Probably far more difficult to calculate and we’ll never hit 100% I guess?

trebligdivad 3y ago
The UK does have live gas usage data which includes the amount used for electricity and that going to other uses; https://mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net/ https://mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net/ (I don't know of a friendlier URL)
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
One complication is that burning fuel is so much less efficient than electrical usage If you ignore that, then it radically changes the impression you get from these stats. The technical terms are "primary energy" (the amount of energy you put in as fuel) and "final energy" the actual useful stuff you want done. Cars moving to EV will reduce the need for "primary energy" by about 4x if the useful final energy remains flat. Similar for heat pumps for home heating.
- ThomPete 3y ago
  The problem with that argument is that wind and solar needs backup from fossil fuel.
  - dmbche 3y ago
    Or a buffer system with batteries - there are a few options that are being researched!
  - ericd 3y ago
    There’s always wood… those stoves have gotten surprisingly efficient, and no new carbon in the carbon cycle, it’s basically a solar battery.
    - doublesocket 3y ago
      Except they produce horrendous small particle pollution, which even the most efficient stoves haven't solved. https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-burning-air-pollution-uk-doubled-decade https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-bur...
      - Pxtl 3y ago
        I am curious if wood-burning technology would be a suitable solution for rural settings where lower population density means particulates and smog are a lesser concern. Pellet stoves for heating, wood-gas for long-ranged vehicles. But while trees are a renewable fuel, they still mean converting carbon from a sequestered place (a tree) into being released into the air.
        brianwawok 3y ago
        Trees are net neutral. Tree starts as a seed. Grows up and sequesters X tons of carbon. Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon. Tree is re-planted, grows up, sequesters X tons of carbon. Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon. If everything in the world right now was wood powered, we would not have a global warming problem. We would have massive tree farms sequestering the same amount of carbon we are releasing. (We might have a soot and particle problem, but that's another story). The problem with oil and coal, is we have no way to make more. We burn oil and release carbon.. how are we making more oil and pumping back underground to sequester that carbon?
        throwbadubadu 3y ago
        Very true, but we likely couldn't have that amount of farmland for what we currently just pull out of earth with millions of years of sequestring.. not sure if getting rid of most of the livestock needs would free enough ("Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories").. are there any calculations how many tree farms we'd need besides a huge solar/wind/geothermal mix?
  - ljf 3y ago
    Wind and solar need back up yes - but it doesn't have to be from fossil fuel. Currently that is often the cheapest and quickest - but batteries and other energy storage are fast becoming economical. We are already using less non-renewables each year.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - vixen99 3y ago
      Fast becoming economical? How fast? Current cost for battery storage I've seen quoted (open to correction) is around $600K per MWh. For every MW of wind or solar power that would be $120 million. Wind farms at around $1.5 million per MW ie., around 80 times that. And are there that numbers of batteries available? Currently dependent on availability of cobalt, lithium,manganese and nickel with China as the main supplier of these and world’s largest producer of graphite, the primary anode material for Li-ion batteries.
      - SuoDuanDao 3y ago
        Batteries are currently following their own version of Moore's law, though they double in quality (or halve in price) every 48 instead of every 18 months. Of course, that isn't a trend that can continue forever, but it doesn't need too many more iterations to be the only game in town.
      - bryanlarsen 3y ago
        8minute energy is building solar plants with overnight battery backup for 4 cents/kWh. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8minute-Solar-Energy-Expands-Development-Pipeline-to-18-Gigawatts-with-New-Solar-Plus-Storage-Power-Plants https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8mi...
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Batteries are much cheaper today than they were yesterday, and it’s a clear push downward over time. China being the “main supplier” has more to do with them undercutting everyone else in refining by not paying attention enough to their environment, it isn’t sustainable. All of these raw materials have ample reserves outside of China. Some of battery economy comes from that, but not most of it. There are other ways to store energy than batteries. The Pacific Northwest and even California has a lot of pumped storage hydro capacity. Hydro is a renewable that can be used on demand, and can be combined with other renewables to move water back up to reservoirs.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    It's not really a problem, even just moving all fossil fuels from heating and transport and using it in electrical generation gets you a 4x gain, from which you lose about 50-60% when turning it to electricity, so still ahead by about 2x even before you start adding in the wind and solar. Plus we already built all that storage for gas and oil, might as well use it as part of the transition.
    - FinnKuhn 3y ago
      Additionally with an ever improving grid in Europe local variables such as weather or seasons be can also partially balanced.
      - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
        Yeah, another story covering this had interconnects as just below gas in rank order of usage. Also, despite that large import, UK was a net exporter for the first time in a while last year since France was having issues with its nuclear fleet.
        stuaxo 3y ago
        We need to get more interconnects between Scotland and England. They are building them, but in the sea which could be interesting with an annoyed Russia. Wind farms were built at sea, on the surface because of nimbyism on land, but being ever cynical I think the real reason was to push the cost and difficulty up giving oil companies more time. Later, during Liz Truss's short and disasterous tenure, just as solar panels were getting very cheap, even very low quality farm land was reclassified as a strategic asset for food to be grown on and no solar. In what was possibly a distraction wind was now to be allowed on land (of course it's much less convenient to put up a wind turbine than to get some very cheap solar panels and that's before all the nimby groups, some of which get dark money funding).
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > from which you lose about 50-60% when turning it to electricity Does this include transmission losses? I think they average 10% for UK electricity.
  - Pxtl 3y ago
    With what argument? Parent post was talking about measuring energy needs and how efficiency of consumption works, not wind and solar. Did you mean to reply to a different post?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- contravariant 3y ago
  While that's true you do need to take into account the limited efficiency of power plants as well, especially when it comes to heating. Simply burning gas to generate heat is basically 100% efficient, if you convert it to electricity first you'd need a COP of at least 1.7 to recover the energy lost while generating the electricity.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    A good heat pump has a COP of 4.
    - dahfizz 3y ago
      In ideal conditions. Even good heat pumps with COP >=4 will drop below 2 when it's cold out
      - throwaway473825 3y ago
        If it's very cold, yes. But the average should still be well above 3: > Similarly, in Finland, tests of air-to-air heat pump systems from various manufacturers resulted in COPs of 3 at -10C and 2 at -20C. Source: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-the-energy-crisis-is-boosting-heat-pumps-in-europe/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-the-energy-crisis...
      - bryanlarsen 3y ago
        Judging by how much insulation the typical English house has, it doesn't get cold there.
        stoobs 3y ago
        Not as cold as the Nordics, sure, but depending on cycles, it can drop a few degrees below freezing between November - March The main issue is that homes were designed to trap and keep heat in, rather than true insulation, which means that as summers get warmer, our homes turn into ovens, with no way to cool them down properly. Case in point last summer with UK temps hitting 40C and above for a few weeks. Government are trying to kill off the old gas boilers though, with heat pumps being pushed very heavily, not sure if they're enforcing it yet or not though. Apparently they're also looking at switching out natural gas for a hydrogen mix, but that means having to rework a lot of the piping/valves as hydrogen needs much higher standards than currently applied.
- tpoacher 3y ago
  Efficiency is only one aspect of the equation. Storage is another one. As is multiplicity of energy inputs. I still have no idea why nobody uses heat reservoirs for shower hot water, like they do in the Mediterranean. (it's not a sun coverage problem, because contrary to popular anecdotes, the UK actually gets quite decent sun coverage a lot of the time)
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Main reason is that gas was heavily subsidised and promoted for a bit when they were pumping it from the North Sea. That was obviously short term stupidity at the time, but has only become more so with hindsight. Compare with Norway that also has North Sea gas, but heavily pushed heat pumps and is a market leader.
    - makomk 3y ago
      That's not obvious at all. At the time that the UK switched to gas, Norway was pushing resistive electrical heating and not heat pumps - and that only worked for them because nearly all of their electricity came from hydroelectric generation. The push for heat pumps is much more recent, with only a few thousand households in Norway having heat pumps as recently as 2005. The UK doesn't have the geography for that kind of large-scale hydroelectric, and there's a huge efficiency and equipment cost to using resistive electric heating rather than burning fossil fuels directly when your electricity has to be generated from fossil fuels. Also, the coal that cheap natural gas largely replaced in the UK was directly killing a bunch of people by causing pretty nasty pollution. In general, a lot of comparisons with other countries that get published in the British press are like this - they ignore important differences between the UK and those countries or problems and costs associated with what they're doing because the goal is to make it seem like there were easy options that the UK missed out on because our government is evil, not to actually help people understand the world.
      - _oyks 3y ago
        True - and fair point on the UK comparisons. Though of course, sometimes there are easy options that the UK missed out on because they are inept and apathetic, which would vindicate some of those comparisons to some extent.
- slashdev 3y ago
  When it comes to usage in heating, burning fuel is as efficient as it gets. All the chemical energy (available in that oxidation reaction) is converted to heat. Electricity involves more overheads in generation and transmission.
  - yrro 3y ago
    Some of that heat goes up the chimney. A good quality log burner, used correctly (and I believe that most people who use log burners have no effing clue how to do so) is at best 60-80% efficient. Plus you have to account for the energy used to grow, harvest, season & transport the wood, even before you throw 20-40% of it away when you actually burn the damn stuff!
    - nindalf 3y ago
      I think GP might be referring to a gas burning boiler.
      - yrro 3y ago
        Same principle just with a different efficiency number. I doubt any but a fraction of combi boilers are 98% efficient: most people run them too hot, so they aren't able to recover sufficient energy to reach that goal. But in any case, you now have to account for installing and maintaining the gas network, refining the oil into gas, shipping the oil to the refinery, extracting the oil in the first place, exploring for the oil in the first place, and so on. It's far more efficient to burn that fuel to move existing energy from one place (outside) to another (inside)... you can turn 1J of fuel into 4J of heating if you're lucky!
  - nindalf 3y ago
    Burning fuel is pretty efficient, until you realise that heat pumps have an efficiency greater than 1. So a heat pump driven by electricity uses less energy than burning fuel in a boiler. If the electricity is renewable, so much the better.
    - 3y ago
detritus 3y ago
Quite. I've tired of pointing out to overly-optimistic responses on the internet about how well countries are doing in this regard, when if you look at the overall energy usage pie-chart, there's a big chunk covering industry and transportation that's a looong way off yet from being covered by renewables. Not that I wish to be pessimistic, rather realistic.
- pydry 3y ago
  If electricity prices stay low other forms of energy will migrate. Already people in the UK are hooking up electric cars and heat pumps to automated tariffs that charge/heat depending on the availability of cheap power (i.e. wind/sun availability). The important thing is to double down on what is already working.
  - mikro2nd 3y ago
    I heard, just the other day, about someone (in the UK) using their Tesla to make money by buying cheap (night-time) power and selling it back during high-rate times, and I was moved to wonder... Does this "profit" making scheme still work when you take into account the lifespan of the Tesla's batteries -- I'd guess they're good for something like 4000 cycles, and then you're facing the cost of replacement. I have my doubts whether it really works out, but lack the data. Anyone with insight?
    - SuoDuanDao 3y ago
      I don't have the numbers with me, but I've seen convincing discussions that it can work with some caveats. The main issue being that spot prices are extremely volatile, so it's possible for a player at the utility space to get very high prices for electricity for very short times. But daytime-pricing schemes, while they follow the general trends of this volatility, insulate the consumer from the worst of this volatility enough that simply arbitraging the difference probably won't pay for the wear on a Tesla. But a fleet of Teslas paying the same rates as the utilities could make it a profitable enterprise. Reading between the lines of Tesla investor meetings it sounds as though they have the software but haven't implemented it because it would hurt their brand as a luxury good.
Certhas 3y ago
No need to guess... If you watch about any talk on climate change mitigation it will start with a chart that shows which sectors use which amount of energy. It's literally the introduction of the IPCC Report WG3 Report on energy: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Chapter06.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6... Just check out the first figures. Decarbonization of energy use in different sectors will require different technologies, but electricity is key. ENTSOE expects the amount of energy use that is directly electric to rise to up to 50% by 2050 for Europe: https://2022.entsos-tyndp-scenarios.eu/scenario-results/#demand https://2022.entsos-tyndp-scenarios.eu/scenario-results/#dem... We are talking so much about decarbonizing the electric grid because that's the easy part, but also because its the foundation for what must come afterwards.
Demoloto 3y ago
We don't need to solve everything now. The headline is still good and doesn't need to be more specific to be good news.
- krupan 3y ago
  But the headline is very misleading. The article says a third of their electricity comes from wind. 1/3 is not what came to my mind when I read, "main source of electricity." And now knowing that electricity is only 18% of their total energy, that means wind isn't really doing much at all for them. So you can't actually look at this and say, "wow, the main source of electricity! Climate change is nearly conquered! We just need more a few more windmills!" Like many will think when they read this headline.
  - Demoloto 3y ago
    In which country do you live? At least in Germany heating with electricity is not that common. I do have separate expectations on electricty vs heating.
ReptileMan 3y ago
>There are many demands for energy which electricity is not meeting, such as heating our homes, manufacturing and transport. Aka - the big ones.
kieranmaine 3y ago
The UK government publishes data on this: From https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-6-renewables https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-secti... Energy Trends March 2023 - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1147249/Energy_Trends_March_2023.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

by wepple 3y ago

trebligdivad 3y ago

The UK does have live gas usage data which includes the amount used for electricity and that going to other uses; https://mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net/ https://mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net/ (I don't know of a friendlier URL)

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

One complication is that burning fuel is so much less efficient than electrical usage If you ignore that, then it radically changes the impression you get from these stats. The technical terms are "primary energy" (the amount of energy you put in as fuel) and "final energy" the actual useful stuff you want done. Cars moving to EV will reduce the need for "primary energy" by about 4x if the useful final energy remains flat. Similar for heat pumps for home heating.

ThomPete 3y ago
The problem with that argument is that wind and solar needs backup from fossil fuel.
- dmbche 3y ago
  Or a buffer system with batteries - there are a few options that are being researched!
- ericd 3y ago
  There’s always wood… those stoves have gotten surprisingly efficient, and no new carbon in the carbon cycle, it’s basically a solar battery.
  - doublesocket 3y ago
    Except they produce horrendous small particle pollution, which even the most efficient stoves haven't solved. https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-burning-air-pollution-uk-doubled-decade https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-bur...
    - Pxtl 3y ago
      I am curious if wood-burning technology would be a suitable solution for rural settings where lower population density means particulates and smog are a lesser concern. Pellet stoves for heating, wood-gas for long-ranged vehicles. But while trees are a renewable fuel, they still mean converting carbon from a sequestered place (a tree) into being released into the air.
      - brianwawok 3y ago
        Trees are net neutral. Tree starts as a seed. Grows up and sequesters X tons of carbon. Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon. Tree is re-planted, grows up, sequesters X tons of carbon. Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon. If everything in the world right now was wood powered, we would not have a global warming problem. We would have massive tree farms sequestering the same amount of carbon we are releasing. (We might have a soot and particle problem, but that's another story). The problem with oil and coal, is we have no way to make more. We burn oil and release carbon.. how are we making more oil and pumping back underground to sequester that carbon?
        throwbadubadu 3y ago
        Very true, but we likely couldn't have that amount of farmland for what we currently just pull out of earth with millions of years of sequestring.. not sure if getting rid of most of the livestock needs would free enough ("Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories").. are there any calculations how many tree farms we'd need besides a huge solar/wind/geothermal mix?
- ljf 3y ago
  Wind and solar need back up yes - but it doesn't have to be from fossil fuel. Currently that is often the cheapest and quickest - but batteries and other energy storage are fast becoming economical. We are already using less non-renewables each year.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vixen99 3y ago
    Fast becoming economical? How fast? Current cost for battery storage I've seen quoted (open to correction) is around $600K per MWh. For every MW of wind or solar power that would be $120 million. Wind farms at around $1.5 million per MW ie., around 80 times that. And are there that numbers of batteries available? Currently dependent on availability of cobalt, lithium,manganese and nickel with China as the main supplier of these and world’s largest producer of graphite, the primary anode material for Li-ion batteries.
    - SuoDuanDao 3y ago
      Batteries are currently following their own version of Moore's law, though they double in quality (or halve in price) every 48 instead of every 18 months. Of course, that isn't a trend that can continue forever, but it doesn't need too many more iterations to be the only game in town.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      8minute energy is building solar plants with overnight battery backup for 4 cents/kWh. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8minute-Solar-Energy-Expands-Development-Pipeline-to-18-Gigawatts-with-New-Solar-Plus-Storage-Power-Plants https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/8mi...
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Batteries are much cheaper today than they were yesterday, and it’s a clear push downward over time. China being the “main supplier” has more to do with them undercutting everyone else in refining by not paying attention enough to their environment, it isn’t sustainable. All of these raw materials have ample reserves outside of China. Some of battery economy comes from that, but not most of it. There are other ways to store energy than batteries. The Pacific Northwest and even California has a lot of pumped storage hydro capacity. Hydro is a renewable that can be used on demand, and can be combined with other renewables to move water back up to reservoirs.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  It's not really a problem, even just moving all fossil fuels from heating and transport and using it in electrical generation gets you a 4x gain, from which you lose about 50-60% when turning it to electricity, so still ahead by about 2x even before you start adding in the wind and solar. Plus we already built all that storage for gas and oil, might as well use it as part of the transition.
  - FinnKuhn 3y ago
    Additionally with an ever improving grid in Europe local variables such as weather or seasons be can also partially balanced.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      Yeah, another story covering this had interconnects as just below gas in rank order of usage. Also, despite that large import, UK was a net exporter for the first time in a while last year since France was having issues with its nuclear fleet.
      - stuaxo 3y ago
        We need to get more interconnects between Scotland and England. They are building them, but in the sea which could be interesting with an annoyed Russia. Wind farms were built at sea, on the surface because of nimbyism on land, but being ever cynical I think the real reason was to push the cost and difficulty up giving oil companies more time. Later, during Liz Truss's short and disasterous tenure, just as solar panels were getting very cheap, even very low quality farm land was reclassified as a strategic asset for food to be grown on and no solar. In what was possibly a distraction wind was now to be allowed on land (of course it's much less convenient to put up a wind turbine than to get some very cheap solar panels and that's before all the nimby groups, some of which get dark money funding).
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > from which you lose about 50-60% when turning it to electricity Does this include transmission losses? I think they average 10% for UK electricity.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  With what argument? Parent post was talking about measuring energy needs and how efficiency of consumption works, not wind and solar. Did you mean to reply to a different post?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
contravariant 3y ago
While that's true you do need to take into account the limited efficiency of power plants as well, especially when it comes to heating. Simply burning gas to generate heat is basically 100% efficient, if you convert it to electricity first you'd need a COP of at least 1.7 to recover the energy lost while generating the electricity.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  A good heat pump has a COP of 4.
  - dahfizz 3y ago
    In ideal conditions. Even good heat pumps with COP >=4 will drop below 2 when it's cold out
    - throwaway473825 3y ago
      If it's very cold, yes. But the average should still be well above 3: > Similarly, in Finland, tests of air-to-air heat pump systems from various manufacturers resulted in COPs of 3 at -10C and 2 at -20C. Source: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-the-energy-crisis-is-boosting-heat-pumps-in-europe/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-the-energy-crisis...
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      Judging by how much insulation the typical English house has, it doesn't get cold there.
      - stoobs 3y ago
        Not as cold as the Nordics, sure, but depending on cycles, it can drop a few degrees below freezing between November - March The main issue is that homes were designed to trap and keep heat in, rather than true insulation, which means that as summers get warmer, our homes turn into ovens, with no way to cool them down properly. Case in point last summer with UK temps hitting 40C and above for a few weeks. Government are trying to kill off the old gas boilers though, with heat pumps being pushed very heavily, not sure if they're enforcing it yet or not though. Apparently they're also looking at switching out natural gas for a hydrogen mix, but that means having to rework a lot of the piping/valves as hydrogen needs much higher standards than currently applied.
tpoacher 3y ago
Efficiency is only one aspect of the equation. Storage is another one. As is multiplicity of energy inputs. I still have no idea why nobody uses heat reservoirs for shower hot water, like they do in the Mediterranean. (it's not a sun coverage problem, because contrary to popular anecdotes, the UK actually gets quite decent sun coverage a lot of the time)
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Main reason is that gas was heavily subsidised and promoted for a bit when they were pumping it from the North Sea. That was obviously short term stupidity at the time, but has only become more so with hindsight. Compare with Norway that also has North Sea gas, but heavily pushed heat pumps and is a market leader.
  - makomk 3y ago
    That's not obvious at all. At the time that the UK switched to gas, Norway was pushing resistive electrical heating and not heat pumps - and that only worked for them because nearly all of their electricity came from hydroelectric generation. The push for heat pumps is much more recent, with only a few thousand households in Norway having heat pumps as recently as 2005. The UK doesn't have the geography for that kind of large-scale hydroelectric, and there's a huge efficiency and equipment cost to using resistive electric heating rather than burning fossil fuels directly when your electricity has to be generated from fossil fuels. Also, the coal that cheap natural gas largely replaced in the UK was directly killing a bunch of people by causing pretty nasty pollution. In general, a lot of comparisons with other countries that get published in the British press are like this - they ignore important differences between the UK and those countries or problems and costs associated with what they're doing because the goal is to make it seem like there were easy options that the UK missed out on because our government is evil, not to actually help people understand the world.
    - _oyks 3y ago
      True - and fair point on the UK comparisons. Though of course, sometimes there are easy options that the UK missed out on because they are inept and apathetic, which would vindicate some of those comparisons to some extent.
slashdev 3y ago
When it comes to usage in heating, burning fuel is as efficient as it gets. All the chemical energy (available in that oxidation reaction) is converted to heat. Electricity involves more overheads in generation and transmission.
- yrro 3y ago
  Some of that heat goes up the chimney. A good quality log burner, used correctly (and I believe that most people who use log burners have no effing clue how to do so) is at best 60-80% efficient. Plus you have to account for the energy used to grow, harvest, season & transport the wood, even before you throw 20-40% of it away when you actually burn the damn stuff!
  - nindalf 3y ago
    I think GP might be referring to a gas burning boiler.
    - yrro 3y ago
      Same principle just with a different efficiency number. I doubt any but a fraction of combi boilers are 98% efficient: most people run them too hot, so they aren't able to recover sufficient energy to reach that goal. But in any case, you now have to account for installing and maintaining the gas network, refining the oil into gas, shipping the oil to the refinery, extracting the oil in the first place, exploring for the oil in the first place, and so on. It's far more efficient to burn that fuel to move existing energy from one place (outside) to another (inside)... you can turn 1J of fuel into 4J of heating if you're lucky!
- nindalf 3y ago
  Burning fuel is pretty efficient, until you realise that heat pumps have an efficiency greater than 1. So a heat pump driven by electricity uses less energy than burning fuel in a boiler. If the electricity is renewable, so much the better.
  - 3y ago

detritus 3y ago

Quite. I've tired of pointing out to overly-optimistic responses on the internet about how well countries are doing in this regard, when if you look at the overall energy usage pie-chart, there's a big chunk covering industry and transportation that's a looong way off yet from being covered by renewables. Not that I wish to be pessimistic, rather realistic.

pydry 3y ago
If electricity prices stay low other forms of energy will migrate. Already people in the UK are hooking up electric cars and heat pumps to automated tariffs that charge/heat depending on the availability of cheap power (i.e. wind/sun availability). The important thing is to double down on what is already working.
- mikro2nd 3y ago
  I heard, just the other day, about someone (in the UK) using their Tesla to make money by buying cheap (night-time) power and selling it back during high-rate times, and I was moved to wonder... Does this "profit" making scheme still work when you take into account the lifespan of the Tesla's batteries -- I'd guess they're good for something like 4000 cycles, and then you're facing the cost of replacement. I have my doubts whether it really works out, but lack the data. Anyone with insight?
  - SuoDuanDao 3y ago
    I don't have the numbers with me, but I've seen convincing discussions that it can work with some caveats. The main issue being that spot prices are extremely volatile, so it's possible for a player at the utility space to get very high prices for electricity for very short times. But daytime-pricing schemes, while they follow the general trends of this volatility, insulate the consumer from the worst of this volatility enough that simply arbitraging the difference probably won't pay for the wear on a Tesla. But a fleet of Teslas paying the same rates as the utilities could make it a profitable enterprise. Reading between the lines of Tesla investor meetings it sounds as though they have the software but haven't implemented it because it would hurt their brand as a luxury good.

Certhas 3y ago

No need to guess... If you watch about any talk on climate change mitigation it will start with a chart that shows which sectors use which amount of energy. It's literally the introduction of the IPCC Report WG3 Report on energy: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Chapter06.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6... Just check out the first figures. Decarbonization of energy use in different sectors will require different technologies, but electricity is key. ENTSOE expects the amount of energy use that is directly electric to rise to up to 50% by 2050 for Europe: https://2022.entsos-tyndp-scenarios.eu/scenario-results/#demand https://2022.entsos-tyndp-scenarios.eu/scenario-results/#dem... We are talking so much about decarbonizing the electric grid because that's the easy part, but also because its the foundation for what must come afterwards.

Demoloto 3y ago

We don't need to solve everything now. The headline is still good and doesn't need to be more specific to be good news.

krupan 3y ago
But the headline is very misleading. The article says a third of their electricity comes from wind. 1/3 is not what came to my mind when I read, "main source of electricity." And now knowing that electricity is only 18% of their total energy, that means wind isn't really doing much at all for them. So you can't actually look at this and say, "wow, the main source of electricity! Climate change is nearly conquered! We just need more a few more windmills!" Like many will think when they read this headline.
- Demoloto 3y ago
  In which country do you live? At least in Germany heating with electricity is not that common. I do have separate expectations on electricty vs heating.

ReptileMan 3y ago

>There are many demands for energy which electricity is not meeting, such as heating our homes, manufacturing and transport. Aka - the big ones.

kieranmaine 3y ago

The UK government publishes data on this: From https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-6-renewables https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-secti... Energy Trends March 2023 - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1147249/Energy_Trends_March_2023.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...