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Hope that gets Europe to invest in renewables and leave oil behind.
by mlinhares 7mo ago
Hope that gets Europe to invest in renewables and leave oil behind.
- rwyinuse 7mo agoI agree. Ironically ones complaining the loudest about fuel prices are be far-right populists, who tend to be against renewables.
- callamdelaney 7mo agoYeah as if Europe doesn't have Oil it isn't exploiting because of renewable legislation..
- argsnd 7mo agoEurope simply does not have enough known oil reserves to put a dent in current prices even if it exploited them all. There may still be good arguments to do so anyway, such as it being less carbon intensive than importing oil, but there is absolutely no magic lever we can pull that would fix this problem that we're just not pulling due to renewables legislation.
- calvinmorrison 7mo agoSure just send the continental german army straight for the oil fields, worked out great last time.
- callamdelaney 7mo agoBritain could start extracting oil from its European fields instead of just buying the same oil and gas from Denmark. Sanctions could be lifted on Russian oil. Duties could be dropped. There are levers.
- jopsen 7mo ago> Sanctions could be lifted on Russian oil I'd rather freeze.
- youngtaff 7mo agoThere’s very little oil and gas left in the UK part of the North Sea The Tories granted over a hundred licenses for exploration in the last ten years and so far it’s led to the supply of one months gas consumption https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/28/north-sea-oil-gas-licences-conservatives https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/28/north-sea-o...
- callamdelaney 7mo agoThe guardian would say that to be fair
- youngtaff 7mo agoSo do you have evidence that those North Sea licenses produced more oil and gas? The Guardian’s report is based on someone else’s research, they didn't just make up the story… they’re not the Daily Mail…
- varispeed 7mo agoHow do you put renewables into the petrol tank?
- kypro 7mo agoHasn't Germany and the UK been investing in renewables for years now? They must be feeling pretty happy about that decision right now unlike oil obsessed countries like the US.
- rwmj 7mo agoFor electricity generation, the UK is currently generating 50% via renewables. It goes up and down each day of course, storage is not a solved problem yet. Nice visualisations of the current status: https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ Electricity is only a part of the whole energy sector, but it's relevant to this thread about EVs.
- zejn 7mo agoYes, but it is not enough. It helps a lot when sunny, and weekend mid-day gross market prices for electricity hover just above zero, but there's not enough batteries, flexibility, and other renewables to avoid price spikes in the morning and evening peak, when hydro and gas plants are still covering a lot.
- ZeroGravitas 7mo agoPartly, though both have had periods of right wing governments trying to make this problem worse to benefit their oil and gas industry backers. And now the same people are saying that the answer is more oil and gas.
- tialaramex 7mo agoA quarter of a century ago, the first quarter of 2001, Britain used 39 TWh of coal electrical generation, 36 TWh of gas and 21 TWh of nuclear. Today we're lot more energy efficient†, and the renewables made more than 25 TWh, but nuclear is now less than 10 TWh, we of course no longer burn coal, which leaves 30 TWh of gas still and we have a lot more imports (because we have a lot more interconnect, which is also a form of energy security) † For example back then we mostly used incandescent light bulbs! And a lot of people still used CRT televisions back then!
- gib444 7mo agoIf so they must have very low domestic electricity prices (according to many people who continue to claim renewables = lower prices!) Oh, wait, they don't. At all
- drnick1 7mo agoElectric cars aren't cheap, and electricity prices are very high in Europe.
- toomuchtodo 7mo agoBYD EVs are affordable. Electricity will get cheaper with more renewables, oil will not.
- haunter 7mo agoDefine affordable. A €40k Seal is anything but affordable. Eastern Europe (and I don't put Slovenia in this case here, they are much closer to Western Europe in every sense) will not mass change to EVs suddenly when everyone is shopping for 10 years old diesels from Western Europe for maximum €10k
- toomuchtodo 7mo ago> Define affordable. Cheaper than the total cost of ownership of a combustion vehicle at $150-$200/barrel for prolonged periods of time. Are We Approaching an Unprecedented Energy Crisis? - https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-energy/iran-war-energy-crisis-hormuz/ https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-energy/iran-war-... - March 26th, 2026 France confirms oil crisis, says 30-40 percent of Gulf energy infrastructure destroyed - https://www.france24.com/en/france-confirms-oil-crisis-says-30-40-gulf-energy-infrastructure-destroyed https://www.france24.com/en/france-confirms-oil-crisis-says-... - March 25th, 2026 Even the best-case scenario for energy markets is disastrous - https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/03/22/even-the-best-case-scenario-for-energy-markets-is-disastrous https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/03/22/e... | https://archive.today/5OhRI https://archive.today/5OhRI - March 22nd, 2026
- 7952 7mo agoNew cars have questionable affordability for most people. Particularly when you factor in dubious design choices and expensive marketing. Cars and driving are expensive. If that was a barrier there wouldn't be many people on the road. Also, the Electric polo is supposed to be released at around 25k Euros. Given the lower running costs that seems like a good deal relative to legacy designs. For all those people will to spend 40k on a car you could put the money into solar panels instead.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 7mo agoEurope has no (meaningful amounts of economically viable to extract) lithium either.
- philipkglass 7mo ago"Lithium mining commences in Finland" https://www.electrive.com/2026/02/12/lithium-mining-commences-in-finland/ https://www.electrive.com/2026/02/12/lithium-mining-commence... This week, the first spodumene vein was blasted from the rock at the open-pit mine in western Finland, marking the occasion with a ceremonial event attended by invited guests and media.
- helsinkiandrew 7mo agoEurope has massive lithium reserves in Germany, Serbia, Portugal and ukraine but perhaps more importantly it also has friendly relations with other countries with reserves
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 7mo agoif those reserves were economically viable to extract, they would be already being extracted.
- legulere 7mo agoLike this? https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/vulcan-energy-achieves-drilling-and-permitting-milestones-at-geothermal-lithium-project-in-germany/?amp=1 https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/vulcan-energy-achieves-drilli... Economic viability depends on many things, lithium prices have been pretty volatile in the past, battery production in Europe as customers are just scaling up.
- youngtaff 7mo agoOr this https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/26/cornwall-new-geothermal-project-launches https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/26/cornwall...
- MattGaiser 7mo agoEh, the war in Ukraine has kind of proven that the Europeans are not all that capable of action. There has been an enormous incentive to have been getting rid of oil dependency for 4 years now.
- zejn 7mo agoThe problem with getting rid of oil is that cars currently in use will be usable even when over 20 years old, replacing them with EVs is expensive, and the good enough and economically accessible EVs are only now starting to get to market. It's really hard to quickly replace millions of vehicles.
- lostlogin 7mo agoRaising the price of fuel will do wonders for solving that.
- throwawaytea 7mo agoIn California my electricity to drive my Chevy Volt is more expensive than gasoline, if gasoline is less than $5 a gallon. So for basically the last 100k miles I've owned it, electricity was more expensive. The same goes for many plugin hybrids. Luxury EVs still win out because luxury sedans usually only get 25 mpg mixed max.
- fc417fc802 7mo agoI knew the CA grid was in a bad place but wow. What are you paying per kWh?
- throwawaytea 7mo ago$0.44 A first gen Volt takes 10.3kwh. It also uses electricity to cool the batteries while charging. If you leave it plugged in one a hot day it will cool the battery just for health overall but I'll ignore that. Then, add in the losses on the charge conversions. It easily takes 11kwh to charge a Volt. It'll go about 35 miles in the summer on that charge, and more like 28 in the winter. It also gets 35 mpg on gasoline, while providing free heat in the winter from the gas engine heat, and for most of the last few years was doing this for $3.50-$4 a gallon. There are people on Southern California/San Diego that pay more. Over there people say the Prius Prime is WAY cheaper to operate on gas because it gets 50mpg gasoline. I've even heard people running their home off gasoline because it's cheaper but that would require an impressive gas generator to do long term.
- leonidasrup 7mo agoEurope would be better served by doing, what France did in 1974. "As a direct result of the 1973 oil crisis, on 6 March 1974 Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announced what became known as the 'Messmer Plan', a hugely ambitious nuclear power program aimed at generating most of France's electricity from nuclear power. At the time of the oil crisis most of France's electricity came from foreign oil. " "Work on the first three plants, at Tricastin, Gravelines, and Dampierre, started the same year and France installed 56 reactors over the next 15 years." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messmer_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...
- mono442 7mo agoThe way the EU forces the electricity market to operate makes them completely unprofitable. Renewables are always given priority in the market, which results in other power plants operating at a capacity factor of 30-40%. Since nuclear power plants are mostly capital expenditure-intensive, this makes the electricity they produce absurdly expensive.
- leonidasrup 7mo agoBecause the way how the EU electricity market operates first to supply electric power are the power plants with the lowest operating costs. This are usually renewables and nuclear power plants. Both are capital expensive and cheap in operating costs. Usually the capacity factor of European nuclear reactors is higher than 60%. olkiluoto-3 nuclear reactor, had capacity factor 70% in the year 2024: https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/olkiluoto-3 https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/o... Mochovce-3 had capacity factor 74% in the year 2024: https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/Mochovce-3 https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/M... In the U.S. they really try to get maximum from nuclear reactors. https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/Watts-Bar-2 https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/W...
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