5 ms·

>There's a lot of investment that will become stranded in the transition, and that's going to try to stop it for as long as possible. I wish more people apprec

by pydry 3y ago

>There's a lot of investment that will become stranded in the transition, and that's going to try to stop it for as long as possible. I wish more people appreciated this. There's a lot of money available to push covert anti-renewable messages. It gets pumped from think tanks into the media with messaging designed to make the reader feel smart about repeating their "skeptical" take. It then works its way on hacker news with somebody quite honestly saying something like "I'm pro renewables but...", quite unaware of the money flows driving their beliefs.

RandomLensman 3y ago
Who, for example, will be paying for reworking the stock of old housing in a lot of European countries? Stranded assets are not just an issue for big investors and corporations.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  You can pay for a house refit with future fuel savings and governments can add incentives paid for with lower health costs. The timeline might be long enough that people, especially landlords who don't have to live in the drafty, cold building or pay the fuel costs, won't do it without various carrots and sticks but that's totally different from a stranded asset.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Some of the now paused ideas of needing to modernize buildings would have actually ruled out use of of buildings below certain standards from certain dates - so stranded assets are quite possible. Payback: Maybe over 30-50 years, but not over 20 or so - so for a lot of older people this isn't an economically viable proposition. Lower health costs? Where does that come from?
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      That's a "stick", not a stranded asset. The NPV of compliance would need to negative for the asset to be stranded. If the older people want to sell their home to someone else then they need to do the work. Again, unless that work costs more than their house, which to be clear, it doesn't, then it's not a stranded asset.
      - RandomLensman 3y ago
        If you need a few hundred k to convert in order to still live in your place (not sell it), I'd say that is getting pretty close to stranded asset, because you need to find a lot of money to stay in there. If you don't have the money, it is a stranded asset and I am sure some aggressive investor will happily make you a bad offer.
        ben_w 3y ago
        I'm considering building right now; "a few hundred k" is demolish and redo from the ground up territory for normal housing around here. The only way you're doing that for a mere renovation is if it's a historically significant building.
        RandomLensman 3y ago
        Something like 10k per square meter isn't a bad guesstimate for getting to a high energy standard. Then take a large house and you are there. Building and demolishing is way more expensive.
        ben_w 3y ago
        (1) Which currency are you talking in here? (2) This 98m^2 detached house is listed at €104k to build: https://www.massa-haus.de/fertighaus/einfamilienhaus/lifestyle-09-01-s/ https://www.massa-haus.de/fertighaus/einfamilienhaus/lifesty... This is the cheapest they do, yet a thing costing 10k/m^2 as you suggest would cost nearly a million.
    - blitzar 3y ago
      Roof insulation had a payback (for me) of 3 months last winter - it might have been 2 years at the old gas / electricty prices.
      - RandomLensman 3y ago
        Then you had a great starting point. Replacing a gas heater with a heat pump at sub 1000 euro annual heating costs will not pay back fast, for example.
        blitzar 3y ago
        Most of the UK has the same if not worse starting point. Somehow the culture war decided that loft insulation is proof of the "woke mind virus".
        makomk 3y ago
        Most of the UK absolutely does not. In order to get payback numbers like that, you basically have to have no loft insulation at all, and previous government insulation schemes were so sucessful that there were already very few homes left with no loft insulation by 2008: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/sep/27/energy.loft.insulation https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/sep/27/energy.loft.in... For a while after that, the government funded insulation top-ups in order to get an impressive sounding number of installs they could brag about, but those had much worse return on investment and that program was killed off a few years later. The thing is that we have an election coming up and a lot of the British press want the party that was in power back then and still is to lose, so they've pushed the narrative that cancelled insulation program would've achieved a lot more than it could've in reality and that people would've been saved from high energy bills if the government hadn't cancelled it for being too woke. There's been similar nonsense about other things like onshore wind for the same reason. Anyway, at least in the UK the problem is that almost all of the easy, high-return on investment insulation upgrades have been done, and the only way to have a substantial impact is through ones that have payback times in the decades. If the era of zero interest rates is over permanently, that's basically equivalent to saying they'll never pay back the cost in many cases.
graemep 3y ago
"There's a lot of money available to push covert anti-renewable messages." There is also a lot of money to be made pushing pro-renewable messages. There are huge amounts of money to be made from complete replacement of existing products and infrastructure. You are promoting a mixture of conspiracy theory and a straw man argument.
mrkeen 3y ago
Who paid for you to write this? Edit: You're right. There probably wasn't a money flow driving parent's writing. Stupid idea.
roenxi 3y ago
Speaking as a greasy capitalist; if I can invest in renewables and make money or resist renewables and make money, why resist? The issue historically has been people have been claiming that renewables are cheap which were transparent lies. The German Energiewende stands as a stark monument to what happened to anyone silly enough to believe the greens in the 2010s. Even now there is reason to be suspect. But if the situation changes then what people do will change too.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Energiewende, even with its various flaws, has been a good investment for Germany. If they'd been a bit more aggressive about EVs, home heating and offshore wind they'd probably be even better off but that all got derailed by complaints about costs fanned by climate change deniers and leveraged by opportunist politicians.
- blitzar 3y ago
  Without the cheap renewables subsidising their bills germans would be paying even more for their electricity. If they had maintained their nuclear generating capacity + their current (and ever increasing) renewable capacity - electricity in germany would be on the brink of being free and unlimited.
  - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    There is no such thing as a cheap renewable when you need to have coal plant running 24/7 as a backup.
    - blitzar 3y ago
      Its cheaper than running everything on coal.
      - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
        Well that coal runs anyway even if you are not consuming electricity from it.
xnx 3y ago
"but what about tire particles?" is one meme that feels like it is right at the intersection of these forces.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Bird strikes from wind turbines is another. Does the person making that argument know or care about other major sources of bird death - cats, window collisions, habitat loss, pollutants etc? Usually not, it's just a convenient one to bring up to discredit the unknown.
  - tzs 3y ago
    Cats and window collisions do kill way more birds than wind turbines, but they are largely birds that are abundant. Wind turbines are often built in places where much less abundant birds, such as eagles and various other raptors, hunt. Wind turbines are particularly treacherous to those birds because they have a ridge over their eyes that blocks forward and upward vision (to keep the sun out of their eyes) when they are looking down to spot prey, so even though they have remarkable vision (hence the phrase "Eagle eyed") they can fly right into a turbine in broad daylight.
    - pydry 3y ago
      With cats, vehicles and buildings it's something like 100 million annually while wind turbines it's like 100-400k. So, not just way more but 200-500x more. With eagles the numbers killed are in order of hundreds. Newer wind turbine designs also reduce the number of bird deaths considerably. The scale of the problem is clearly small, relatively speaking. It would be ignored under normal circumstances, just like the #1 and #2 deaths for eagles currently are, but the carbon industries gave this story some great PR.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  Anytime anyone says that, you can respond with this https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehicle-emissions-rates-vehicle-vehicle-type-using-gasoline-and https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehic... Also worth pointing out the weight penalty for EV's has been decreasing steadily over time. One would assume tire emissions would thsu also decrease. Doesn't say tire emissions aren't a problem[1] but it's suspicious people care about it when it's an EV and don't care when it's a 5500lb truck. [1] Particles from exhaust, brakes, and tires aren't the same[2]. [2] 6PPD-quinone from tires is killing salmon in the pacific northwest.

by pydry 3y ago

RandomLensman 3y ago

Who, for example, will be paying for reworking the stock of old housing in a lot of European countries? Stranded assets are not just an issue for big investors and corporations.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
You can pay for a house refit with future fuel savings and governments can add incentives paid for with lower health costs. The timeline might be long enough that people, especially landlords who don't have to live in the drafty, cold building or pay the fuel costs, won't do it without various carrots and sticks but that's totally different from a stranded asset.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Some of the now paused ideas of needing to modernize buildings would have actually ruled out use of of buildings below certain standards from certain dates - so stranded assets are quite possible. Payback: Maybe over 30-50 years, but not over 20 or so - so for a lot of older people this isn't an economically viable proposition. Lower health costs? Where does that come from?
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    That's a "stick", not a stranded asset. The NPV of compliance would need to negative for the asset to be stranded. If the older people want to sell their home to someone else then they need to do the work. Again, unless that work costs more than their house, which to be clear, it doesn't, then it's not a stranded asset.
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      If you need a few hundred k to convert in order to still live in your place (not sell it), I'd say that is getting pretty close to stranded asset, because you need to find a lot of money to stay in there. If you don't have the money, it is a stranded asset and I am sure some aggressive investor will happily make you a bad offer.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        I'm considering building right now; "a few hundred k" is demolish and redo from the ground up territory for normal housing around here. The only way you're doing that for a mere renovation is if it's a historically significant building.
        RandomLensman 3y ago
        Something like 10k per square meter isn't a bad guesstimate for getting to a high energy standard. Then take a large house and you are there. Building and demolishing is way more expensive.
        ben_w 3y ago
        (1) Which currency are you talking in here? (2) This 98m^2 detached house is listed at €104k to build: https://www.massa-haus.de/fertighaus/einfamilienhaus/lifestyle-09-01-s/ https://www.massa-haus.de/fertighaus/einfamilienhaus/lifesty... This is the cheapest they do, yet a thing costing 10k/m^2 as you suggest would cost nearly a million.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    Roof insulation had a payback (for me) of 3 months last winter - it might have been 2 years at the old gas / electricty prices.
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      Then you had a great starting point. Replacing a gas heater with a heat pump at sub 1000 euro annual heating costs will not pay back fast, for example.
      - blitzar 3y ago
        Most of the UK has the same if not worse starting point. Somehow the culture war decided that loft insulation is proof of the "woke mind virus".
        makomk 3y ago
        Most of the UK absolutely does not. In order to get payback numbers like that, you basically have to have no loft insulation at all, and previous government insulation schemes were so sucessful that there were already very few homes left with no loft insulation by 2008: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/sep/27/energy.loft.insulation https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/sep/27/energy.loft.in... For a while after that, the government funded insulation top-ups in order to get an impressive sounding number of installs they could brag about, but those had much worse return on investment and that program was killed off a few years later. The thing is that we have an election coming up and a lot of the British press want the party that was in power back then and still is to lose, so they've pushed the narrative that cancelled insulation program would've achieved a lot more than it could've in reality and that people would've been saved from high energy bills if the government hadn't cancelled it for being too woke. There's been similar nonsense about other things like onshore wind for the same reason. Anyway, at least in the UK the problem is that almost all of the easy, high-return on investment insulation upgrades have been done, and the only way to have a substantial impact is through ones that have payback times in the decades. If the era of zero interest rates is over permanently, that's basically equivalent to saying they'll never pay back the cost in many cases.

graemep 3y ago

"There's a lot of money available to push covert anti-renewable messages." There is also a lot of money to be made pushing pro-renewable messages. There are huge amounts of money to be made from complete replacement of existing products and infrastructure. You are promoting a mixture of conspiracy theory and a straw man argument.

mrkeen 3y ago

Who paid for you to write this? Edit: You're right. There probably wasn't a money flow driving parent's writing. Stupid idea.

roenxi 3y ago

Speaking as a greasy capitalist; if I can invest in renewables and make money or resist renewables and make money, why resist? The issue historically has been people have been claiming that renewables are cheap which were transparent lies. The German Energiewende stands as a stark monument to what happened to anyone silly enough to believe the greens in the 2010s. Even now there is reason to be suspect. But if the situation changes then what people do will change too.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Energiewende, even with its various flaws, has been a good investment for Germany. If they'd been a bit more aggressive about EVs, home heating and offshore wind they'd probably be even better off but that all got derailed by complaints about costs fanned by climate change deniers and leveraged by opportunist politicians.
blitzar 3y ago
Without the cheap renewables subsidising their bills germans would be paying even more for their electricity. If they had maintained their nuclear generating capacity + their current (and ever increasing) renewable capacity - electricity in germany would be on the brink of being free and unlimited.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
  There is no such thing as a cheap renewable when you need to have coal plant running 24/7 as a backup.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    Its cheaper than running everything on coal.
    - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
      Well that coal runs anyway even if you are not consuming electricity from it.

xnx 3y ago

"but what about tire particles?" is one meme that feels like it is right at the intersection of these forces.

pjc50 3y ago
Bird strikes from wind turbines is another. Does the person making that argument know or care about other major sources of bird death - cats, window collisions, habitat loss, pollutants etc? Usually not, it's just a convenient one to bring up to discredit the unknown.
- tzs 3y ago
  Cats and window collisions do kill way more birds than wind turbines, but they are largely birds that are abundant. Wind turbines are often built in places where much less abundant birds, such as eagles and various other raptors, hunt. Wind turbines are particularly treacherous to those birds because they have a ridge over their eyes that blocks forward and upward vision (to keep the sun out of their eyes) when they are looking down to spot prey, so even though they have remarkable vision (hence the phrase "Eagle eyed") they can fly right into a turbine in broad daylight.
  - pydry 3y ago
    With cats, vehicles and buildings it's something like 100 million annually while wind turbines it's like 100-400k. So, not just way more but 200-500x more. With eagles the numbers killed are in order of hundreds. Newer wind turbine designs also reduce the number of bird deaths considerably. The scale of the problem is clearly small, relatively speaking. It would be ignored under normal circumstances, just like the #1 and #2 deaths for eagles currently are, but the carbon industries gave this story some great PR.
Gibbon1 3y ago
Anytime anyone says that, you can respond with this https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehicle-emissions-rates-vehicle-vehicle-type-using-gasoline-and https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehic... Also worth pointing out the weight penalty for EV's has been decreasing steadily over time. One would assume tire emissions would thsu also decrease. Doesn't say tire emissions aren't a problem[1] but it's suspicious people care about it when it's an EV and don't care when it's a 5500lb truck. [1] Particles from exhaust, brakes, and tires aren't the same[2]. [2] 6PPD-quinone from tires is killing salmon in the pacific northwest.