4 ms·

So would most of us, but somewhat impractically, Sweden tends to be at its coldest when it’s dark and windless.

eru 2y ago
Investments in long range, high wattage cabling to connect grids might be useful. There's plenty of sun light further south. Of course, you need to run the numbers to make sure it actually makes sense. Both economically and from a resource point of view. Cables ain't free to build nor maintain. But there's probably a trade to be made with the carbon capture people to sell them trash plastic to bury (or to have them pay you to bury your plastic. No need to actually ship the actual plastic around.)
- sofixa 2y ago
  > Investments in long range, high wattage cabling to connect grids might be useful. There's plenty of sun light further south. With the energy loss over the distance needed (you basically need southern Italy/southern Spain for any reliable sun during the Swedish winter), that becomes too expensive to be practical. Not to mention now you have a domino dependence, where a few bad days of weather in the Mediterranean can take out multiple countries at once, instead of Spain/Italy being able to rely on their northern neighbours in such a scenario.
  - eru 2y ago
    > With the energy loss over the distance needed (you basically need southern Italy/southern Spain for any reliable sun during the Swedish winter), that becomes too expensive to be practical. Can't be worse than that cable from Australia to Singapore? > Not to mention now you have a domino dependence, where a few bad days of weather in the Mediterranean can take out multiple countries at once, instead of Spain/Italy being able to rely on their northern neighbours in such a scenario. That's what peaker plants are for. There's no reason to go for 100% purity. Getting to 99% renewables gets you 99% of the way.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      > That's what peaker plants are for. Unless you can wish natural gas into existence, that means keeping a lot of infrastructure and storage just in case.
      - bluGill 2y ago
        Which is one part of this story: landfills create a lot of natural gas which we can store and use on demand. Large farms also create natural gas as part of manure disposal process. (cities also create some as part of sewage treatment, but I'm not aware of any that harness it - human waste if not handled carefully is deadly)
      - eru 2y ago
        Yes, but a lot less than using natural gas for your base load.
    - renhanxue 2y ago
      Some numbers: Swedish electricity production in 2023 was 163 TWh. It's for all practical purposes 100% renewable or nuclear, with a mix of approximately 40/30/20/10 hydro/nuclear/wind/other, where "other" contains 2% solar and the rest is pretty much just electricity byproducts from district heating. Also in 2023, district heating delivered a total of 53 TWh to customers. About two thirds of this came from waste and biofuels, specifically 47% renewable biofuels (mostly woodchips, bark and other forestry industry byproducts) and 20% waste. The remaining third came from an eclectic mix of inputs such as industrial waste heat (7,5%), heat pumps (5% net, that is after the electricity consumption has been subtracted), exhaust gas condensation (11%), biogas from landfills and compost (2%), fossil fuels (2,5%) and various other stuff. Turns out my info about peat was kinda out of date; it's been almost entirely phased out now. Average CO2 emissions for the electricity generation was 41g CO2 equivalents per kWh, and for district heating about 55 g/kWh. Countries with less emissions than this do exist, for example Norway and Iceland are down around 30 g/kWh, but this is already better than almost every other country on the planet. US electricity generation for comparison averaged 369 g/kWh in 2023. So: replacing all of the district heating with heat pumps would be an insanely huge project requiring a massive expansion of electricity generation, and it would have very low return on investment when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions. There is also the problem that heating energy demands are extremely uneven and unpredictable, both over the year and between years. You need a significant amount of extra capacity for very cold days, and even averaged over the year the difference between an average winter and a cold one can on the order of 20%. Just burning stuff works great as a solution for this, it's easy to have capacity on demand. Air-source heat pumps also become much less efficient on very cold days when you need them the most, which is why they're not that popular for heating here (people prefer ground source heat pumps, but those have limitations in densely populated areas because the ground doesn't contain infinite energy). Also, a side note: the heat generation in district heating plants is extremely efficient compared to electricity generation using combustible fuels. The average efficiency of the heat generation in these plants in 2023 was 96%, and that's before exhaust gas condensation is taken into account. In other words: there's a reason we are doing things this way.
- aDyslecticCrow 2y ago
  > long-range, high-wattage cabling to connect grids As the parent comment is on Sweden... That's a major discussion in our current politics and energy development landscape. Not south, though... but north. 60% of Sweden's energy production is from hydroelectric dams far in the north, but most populations are down south. So, expanding this connection is the most imminently useful infrastructure investment that could be made. But that wouldn't be enough if we also use that power for heating. The problem is that Sweden's largest energy demand is heating cold, windless winters, while the rest of Europe is also cold. Burning stuff to be warm can only really be replaced by nuclear power, which Sweden has been politically opposed to. Burning trash instead of coal is a pretty decent upgrade from that perspective.

eru 2y ago

Investments in long range, high wattage cabling to connect grids might be useful. There's plenty of sun light further south. Of course, you need to run the numbers to make sure it actually makes sense. Both economically and from a resource point of view. Cables ain't free to build nor maintain. But there's probably a trade to be made with the carbon capture people to sell them trash plastic to bury (or to have them pay you to bury your plastic. No need to actually ship the actual plastic around.)

sofixa 2y ago
> Investments in long range, high wattage cabling to connect grids might be useful. There's plenty of sun light further south. With the energy loss over the distance needed (you basically need southern Italy/southern Spain for any reliable sun during the Swedish winter), that becomes too expensive to be practical. Not to mention now you have a domino dependence, where a few bad days of weather in the Mediterranean can take out multiple countries at once, instead of Spain/Italy being able to rely on their northern neighbours in such a scenario.
- eru 2y ago
  > With the energy loss over the distance needed (you basically need southern Italy/southern Spain for any reliable sun during the Swedish winter), that becomes too expensive to be practical. Can't be worse than that cable from Australia to Singapore? > Not to mention now you have a domino dependence, where a few bad days of weather in the Mediterranean can take out multiple countries at once, instead of Spain/Italy being able to rely on their northern neighbours in such a scenario. That's what peaker plants are for. There's no reason to go for 100% purity. Getting to 99% renewables gets you 99% of the way.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    > That's what peaker plants are for. Unless you can wish natural gas into existence, that means keeping a lot of infrastructure and storage just in case.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Which is one part of this story: landfills create a lot of natural gas which we can store and use on demand. Large farms also create natural gas as part of manure disposal process. (cities also create some as part of sewage treatment, but I'm not aware of any that harness it - human waste if not handled carefully is deadly)
    - eru 2y ago
      Yes, but a lot less than using natural gas for your base load.
  - renhanxue 2y ago
    Some numbers: Swedish electricity production in 2023 was 163 TWh. It's for all practical purposes 100% renewable or nuclear, with a mix of approximately 40/30/20/10 hydro/nuclear/wind/other, where "other" contains 2% solar and the rest is pretty much just electricity byproducts from district heating. Also in 2023, district heating delivered a total of 53 TWh to customers. About two thirds of this came from waste and biofuels, specifically 47% renewable biofuels (mostly woodchips, bark and other forestry industry byproducts) and 20% waste. The remaining third came from an eclectic mix of inputs such as industrial waste heat (7,5%), heat pumps (5% net, that is after the electricity consumption has been subtracted), exhaust gas condensation (11%), biogas from landfills and compost (2%), fossil fuels (2,5%) and various other stuff. Turns out my info about peat was kinda out of date; it's been almost entirely phased out now. Average CO2 emissions for the electricity generation was 41g CO2 equivalents per kWh, and for district heating about 55 g/kWh. Countries with less emissions than this do exist, for example Norway and Iceland are down around 30 g/kWh, but this is already better than almost every other country on the planet. US electricity generation for comparison averaged 369 g/kWh in 2023. So: replacing all of the district heating with heat pumps would be an insanely huge project requiring a massive expansion of electricity generation, and it would have very low return on investment when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions. There is also the problem that heating energy demands are extremely uneven and unpredictable, both over the year and between years. You need a significant amount of extra capacity for very cold days, and even averaged over the year the difference between an average winter and a cold one can on the order of 20%. Just burning stuff works great as a solution for this, it's easy to have capacity on demand. Air-source heat pumps also become much less efficient on very cold days when you need them the most, which is why they're not that popular for heating here (people prefer ground source heat pumps, but those have limitations in densely populated areas because the ground doesn't contain infinite energy). Also, a side note: the heat generation in district heating plants is extremely efficient compared to electricity generation using combustible fuels. The average efficiency of the heat generation in these plants in 2023 was 96%, and that's before exhaust gas condensation is taken into account. In other words: there's a reason we are doing things this way.
aDyslecticCrow 2y ago
> long-range, high-wattage cabling to connect grids As the parent comment is on Sweden... That's a major discussion in our current politics and energy development landscape. Not south, though... but north. 60% of Sweden's energy production is from hydroelectric dams far in the north, but most populations are down south. So, expanding this connection is the most imminently useful infrastructure investment that could be made. But that wouldn't be enough if we also use that power for heating. The problem is that Sweden's largest energy demand is heating cold, windless winters, while the rest of Europe is also cold. Burning stuff to be warm can only really be replaced by nuclear power, which Sweden has been politically opposed to. Burning trash instead of coal is a pretty decent upgrade from that perspective.