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If your energy policy was "hope the Ayatollah doesn't have a bad hair day", you didn't have an energy policy. Europe could have left their nuclear power plants

If your energy policy was "hope the Ayatollah doesn't have a bad hair day", you didn't have an energy policy. Europe could have left their nuclear power plants turned on. Or drilled in the north sea. Or built LNG import terminals. These were all policy choices that had nothing to do with the US or Israel.

vrganj 7mo ago
The energy policy is "let's build out renewables". It's happening rn and it's better than any of the options you mention.
- NitpickLawyer 7mo ago
  > better than any of the options you mention. Yeah, no. Merkel's deal to shut off the nuclear plants to make a coalition was 100% a blunder. Not only in hindsight, with the dependence on russian gas, but in general it was a blunder. Nuclear gives you steady energy in ways that renewables can't. We should absolutely do more renewables, but to shut off working nuclear was not good.
  - vrganj 7mo ago
    I don't disagree, though I see nuclear as an (overly expensive) bridge technology until storage becomes more built-out.
  - fpoling 7mo ago
    Nuclear is not that steady. Nuclear plants require a lot of water to cool things. And when a particular hot summer happens, rivers dry out and nuclear reactors have to scale down the power production or even be shutdown. And then they require quite significant maintenance periodically. Granted, in Europe a hot dry summer is when solar is at its peak. So it is much lesser problem than a cold winter with a lot of cloudy days with no wind when nuclear energy is ideal. Still from a perspective of 20 years ago with unknown prospects about renewables natural gas power stations were considered much more reliable and flexible power source compared with nuclear and way more cleaner than coal. Of cause, as long as one gets gas.
  - this_user 7mo ago
    It is simply false that it was Merkel who decided to shut down nuclear power plants. The decision had been made over a decade earlier. She just accelerated the plan in the end after a previous unsuccessful attempt at rolling back part of it. It also wasn't even really her decision, it was the will of the people that sharply turned against nuclear after Fukushima, she just implemented it.
- pqtyw 7mo ago
  Well besides being 20 years too late. Germany's energy policy was basically do nothing to build renewables, close all nuclear plants and blindly trust Russia for decades... Besides being a great friend of Putin one of Germany's previous chancellors was literally an openly paid Russian agent who didn't even try hiding it until 2022 (and who knows what "arrangements" he had before he left office...)
  - vrganj 7mo ago
    That is just straight up not true: https://www.techeblog.com/europe-balcony-solar-system/ https://www.techeblog.com/europe-balcony-solar-system/ Germany's been a pioneer in incentivizing personal solar installations.
    - pqtyw 7mo ago
      In what way exactly anything I said was not true? It was too little and too late and Germany only got serious about it when there were no longer any other options. > personal solar installations It was entirely insignificant back then and growth pretty much entirely stopped between 2012 and 2018.
      - ben_w 7mo ago
        You said "basically do nothing to build renewables", this is what they did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende The country looks pretty on-schedule to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_transition_scenario_in_Germany.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_transition_scenari... vs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.sv...
        pqtyw 7mo ago
        Again.. too little and too late and that plan was built around the assumption that they will continue having access to "cheap" Russian gas.
ben_w 7mo ago
> Or drilled in the north sea We did. Most of the oil and gas there has now been removed and sold. Oil production peaked in 1999, gas in 2001. If the same place, the North Sea specifically, was filled with wind farms, it could supply about half of the EU's electricity. (If all the waters around the British Isles had wind farms, it becomes 140% of current EU total primary energy consumption or 660% of the electricity consumption, assuming I did the substitution efficiency multiplier right). Guess what's getting built?

vrganj 7mo ago

The energy policy is "let's build out renewables". It's happening rn and it's better than any of the options you mention.

NitpickLawyer 7mo ago
> better than any of the options you mention. Yeah, no. Merkel's deal to shut off the nuclear plants to make a coalition was 100% a blunder. Not only in hindsight, with the dependence on russian gas, but in general it was a blunder. Nuclear gives you steady energy in ways that renewables can't. We should absolutely do more renewables, but to shut off working nuclear was not good.
- vrganj 7mo ago
  I don't disagree, though I see nuclear as an (overly expensive) bridge technology until storage becomes more built-out.
- fpoling 7mo ago
  Nuclear is not that steady. Nuclear plants require a lot of water to cool things. And when a particular hot summer happens, rivers dry out and nuclear reactors have to scale down the power production or even be shutdown. And then they require quite significant maintenance periodically. Granted, in Europe a hot dry summer is when solar is at its peak. So it is much lesser problem than a cold winter with a lot of cloudy days with no wind when nuclear energy is ideal. Still from a perspective of 20 years ago with unknown prospects about renewables natural gas power stations were considered much more reliable and flexible power source compared with nuclear and way more cleaner than coal. Of cause, as long as one gets gas.
- this_user 7mo ago
  It is simply false that it was Merkel who decided to shut down nuclear power plants. The decision had been made over a decade earlier. She just accelerated the plan in the end after a previous unsuccessful attempt at rolling back part of it. It also wasn't even really her decision, it was the will of the people that sharply turned against nuclear after Fukushima, she just implemented it.
pqtyw 7mo ago
Well besides being 20 years too late. Germany's energy policy was basically do nothing to build renewables, close all nuclear plants and blindly trust Russia for decades... Besides being a great friend of Putin one of Germany's previous chancellors was literally an openly paid Russian agent who didn't even try hiding it until 2022 (and who knows what "arrangements" he had before he left office...)
- vrganj 7mo ago
  That is just straight up not true: https://www.techeblog.com/europe-balcony-solar-system/ https://www.techeblog.com/europe-balcony-solar-system/ Germany's been a pioneer in incentivizing personal solar installations.
  - pqtyw 7mo ago
    In what way exactly anything I said was not true? It was too little and too late and Germany only got serious about it when there were no longer any other options. > personal solar installations It was entirely insignificant back then and growth pretty much entirely stopped between 2012 and 2018.
    - ben_w 7mo ago
      You said "basically do nothing to build renewables", this is what they did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende The country looks pretty on-schedule to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_transition_scenario_in_Germany.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_transition_scenari... vs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.sv...
      - pqtyw 7mo ago
        Again.. too little and too late and that plan was built around the assumption that they will continue having access to "cheap" Russian gas.

ben_w 7mo ago

> Or drilled in the north sea We did. Most of the oil and gas there has now been removed and sold. Oil production peaked in 1999, gas in 2001. If the same place, the North Sea specifically, was filled with wind farms, it could supply about half of the EU's electricity. (If all the waters around the British Isles had wind farms, it becomes 140% of current EU total primary energy consumption or 660% of the electricity consumption, assuming I did the substitution efficiency multiplier right). Guess what's getting built?