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Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
- newsclues 10mo agoSolar seems vulnerable in a war.
- iso1631 10mo agoIf you have solar on your roof and a bomb hits it, you have no power. And no roof. Power is the least of your problems. If you have a central power nuclear/gas/coal station and a bomb hits it, nobody has power.
- woodpanel 10mo ago> If you have a central power nuclear/gas/coal station and a bomb hits it, nobody has power. if that happens it can be repaired more economically and faster – as has been repeatedly shown in Ukraine.
- kilington 10mo agoI think we need to look harder at the concept of survivor bias and what it doesn't mean for future chance if anyone believes Ukraine nuclear power stations suffering damage as routinely as any other physical asset would have been OK.
- iso1631 10mo agoIf my roof has gone it doesn't matter, as I need to move elsewhere. Chances are my roof won't be gone though.
- ekianjo 10mo agoThe grid never relies on a single source
- theshrike79 10mo agoBut 99% of your neighbours will still have power and roofs. If a central power plant is destroyed, 0% of the neighbourhood will have power, but 100% will have roofs. Which is better in your opinion?
- Mashimo 10mo agoSolar + battery helps against shorter blackouts, to at least keep your freezer and fridge running. All while they repair the grid.
- NicuCalcea 10mo agoCompared to what? Gas, nuclear and hydro seem even more vulnerable.
- mothballed 10mo agoOff grid people ~dont heat off solar. They use hydrocarbons for heat sources. Or wood. Heat vastly increases solar generation and battery demand.
- NicuCalcea 10mo agoMost of rural Ukraine already uses or can use solid fuel (firewood, coal) for heating. The article is about flats, not off-grid houses.
- mothballed 10mo agoAdding some supplemental solar that will move the needle a drop in a brown-out isn't absolutely nothing I suppose, but really for immediate war-time resiliency you would be using solar for off-grid purposes (even if during grid blackouts only). If your goal is to stay on grid the payoff on solar isn't really realized for 10+ years, when not only are the panels paid off but the accumulation factor of a country full of people with solar panels reduces the grid strain on the conventional sources you list. Adding them for war-time reasons is overall a net negative vs just buying diesel heaters, distributing solar for actual off-grid purposes so people have communications, etc. It is not going to meaningfully reduce dependency on those sources during the period of the war -- that's why I assumed it had to be for off-grid alternative because in that case it would achieve that goal. Of course it is better than nothing, assuming they did not waste too many domestic resources doing this Greenpeace stunt. But this on-grid solar component is not a serious proposition for wartime demand, and you would be WAY better off donating to maintaining/defending the existing hydro/nuclear/coal generation than trying to deploy enough solar to move the needle for solar grid resiliency within the timespan of the war. I guess I just assumed they were acting rationally and that is why I thought it might be used in off-grid scenarios, but you've disillusioned me of that.
- 10mo ago
- watwut 10mo agoSolar and wind can be distributed and thus more robust - Russia needs to attack more then one place. Which is, I suspect, why certain people object to this.
- Kuinox 10mo agoGreen Planet Energy, have been greenwashing fossil gas, especially russian gas, for years.
- willis936 10mo agoMy first thought was "Greenpeace, the fossil fuel mouthpiece that killed the nuclear industry?" I'm not sure why I'd care about news related to them that wasn't their dismantling.
- Kuinox 10mo agoFrom greenwashing to ethic washing, they are sure good at washing.
- pjc50 10mo agoGreenpeace got their start against nuclear weapons and nuclear waste dumping at sea. I don't think it's entirely appropriate to ignore the risks of nuclear in the country that contains Chernobyl, and another different nuclear plant which is quite close to the front lines and was shut down by capture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Pla...
- boxed 10mo agoIt is though. Climate change due to fossil fuel use is not a risk, it's a guaranteed disaster. If you have to choose between a risk and certain disaster, you never choose the guaranteed disaster, yet that is what the anti-nuclear movement has done. I get it, nuclear accidents are scary, but we have to be able to take a step back and look at the entire picture and not get blinded by some detail.
- AdamN 10mo agoThat's a really fallacious argument. Nuclear wouldn't stop truck emissions, car emissions, boat emissions, long distance freight train emissions (unless electric), and airplane emissions. It wouldn't stop military emissions (which are significant). We could have done a lot more nuclear but it's not clear that it would have done more than a few percent of CO2 savings in the overall scheme of things. You can see this most clearly in China which is still burning tons of coal in 2026 and have had no compunction with nuclear ever.
- woodpanel 10mo agoThese guys... after decades of destroying nuclear, German energy independence and thus pegging German energy sourcing to Russian pipelines, resulting in the geopolitical mess we and Ukraine are in – to have the gall to even pretend they're doing any good here...
- lysium 10mo agoWhat are you talking about? Germany would be more energy independent if it had adopted solar and wind power when Greenpeace was advocating it fourty years ago, like China is showcasing today!
- lnsru 10mo agoThe question is not if renewables can replace nuclear. Obviously it is technically possible. The question is how many times bigger should be installed peak power of renewables. 20x? 50x? And of course if it’s economically viable. Because China does not gamble with renewables. They build nuclear capacity at unprecedented levels.
- triceratops 10mo ago> Because China does not gamble with renewables. They build nuclear capacity at unprecedented levels. You have that backwards. In 2025 China installed 100x as much solar as nuclear. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46638024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46638024
- ekianjo 10mo agoThey would depend on china instead of Russia. huge improvement! /s
- Xylakant 10mo agoThere is a significant difference in term of dependency when it comes to solar vs gas/oil. Solar panels are not consumables when int comes to energy production- oil and gas are. China can shutdown the supply of solar panels, but not the energy generation with existing panels. This gives you time to start building other supply channels.
- zihotki 10mo agoThe problem is that they're useless during winter in Ukrain. There is barely any energy generated between November and March. And heatpump won't work during frequent outages. Nice but kinda useless gesture
- nutjob2 10mo agoHeat pumps work fine on batteries. The better solution is extensive battery storage and (intermittent) grid power, under the circumstances.
- ZeroGravitas 10mo agoThey mention large hot water stores which are cheaper and simpler than batteries for storing heat, at least for now.
- jillesvangurp 10mo agoExactly. Micro grids keep on functioning unless they are hit directly. Batteries can charge up when there's power from solar, the grid, rooftop wind, generators, EVs that can provide power back, and so on. There are many options here; batteries don't care where the power comes from. That kind of resilience is very hard to take out with drones once you have it. Centralized grids are much less resilient. I expect Ukrainians don't actually need to be told this and are already getting creative with ensuring they have power. There's plenty of incentive there to make sure they are not overly dependent on centralized power and heating infrastructure. Of course it takes time to fix and upgrade all buildings; that's why the Russians can still have huge impact with their nightly strikes against civilian infrastructure. I think Russia and Puting will get credited for inadvertently speeding up the energy transition across Europe by a few decades. Everybody is going cold turkey on Russian gas and the replacement isn't LNG. That's more of a stop gap solution until something more economical can be put in place. We're having pretty harsh winter here in Germany (and elsewhere in the EU). There's not a lot of talk about gas prices in the news so far. That's because we've had a few years to diversify our energy sources. LNG is now a big part of the mix, obviously. But the high price of that is also an incentive for people to consider alternatives like heat pumps.
- 10mo ago
- piokoch 10mo agoHow solar can help Ukraine now? When there weather is foggy, cloudy? How heap pump can help if there are electricity outages?
- AdamN 10mo agoSolar works fine when it's overcast - and it doesn't require a grid. Heat pump is kind of a valid criticism but it's not like those infrastructure attacks by Russia aren't taking out gas and oil also.
- tucnak 10mo agoIf they were serious about helping us, they would bring boiler, turbine, and transformer parts. > The project, underway since the end of 2023, is focused on the renovation and energy upgrade of a five-storey, 60-apartment block. [..] Heat pumps and solar energy now supply a large residential building in full, a first for Ukraine. Böhling urges: “Solutions like this should be prioritised over gas heating in EU-funded reconstruction.” Not the first. I don't think some people realise this, but Ukraine is a country with highly-modernised, strong, and well spread-out industrial base. This is why it took the invaders three whole years to seriously damage our CHP infrastructure to the point it cannot be repaired in a timely manner. And most new apartment blocks are built with heat pumps, geothermal anyway. Some smaller ones (such as the 5-story one they're taking about) were being retrofitted by housing cooperatives due to favourable economics of it. We are not third-world; most existing apartment blocks in all major cities are largely reliant on vast, redundant CHP infrastructure for power distribution and centralised heating. THAT is a solved problem. What we need is more air defense platforms and replacement parts that we cannot easily manufacture, in numbers.
- karol 10mo agoDid they also bring rainbow flags?
- thunfischtoast 10mo agoThis comment section: people who do nothing condemn people who do something for not doing another thing.
- temp8830 10mo agoThe article: green group promotes their pet solution in an application where it doesn't make any sense. Uses humanitarian disaster to quell criticism of mis-application. Pilot project launched in hope of getting a big chunk of taxpayer money for more misapplication of technology.
- ZeroGravitas 10mo agoSolar and heat pumps across all of Europe is in fact one of the quickest and best ways to sideline Russia. See the RepowerEU plan for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REPowerEU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REPowerEU
- mothballed 10mo agoThe quickest and best way to sideline russia is to take your money they had for heat pumps and use them on weapons. Putin is making Europe look like a laughing stock because they have folded to Putins threats about nuclear war and he has bluffed them into buying heat pumps instead of ballistic missiles. Europe still has their thumb up their ass singing Kumbaya and buying heat pumps while their traditional protector USA is giving every signal this tradition has ended and Europeans must spend this money to ramp up protection for themselves. You are not going to get your way out of this with more efficient energy grids or heat pumps and using your money on that instead of bullets is the fool's way out if your goal is to sideline Russia. Of course the most hilarious thing is to think we aren't all still buying "sanctioned" russian products and they totally aren't being "smuggled" and then rebranded as Chinese or myriad of other sources -- which in fact offers options to INCREASE profits to Russian and Chinese government since now they can squeeze their citizens for payoff money to wash their products as non-Russian to bypass sanctions.