As someone who's been pushing for renewables for quite a while now it's dismaying that it's taken a war to accelerate this push, but I'm glad to see that it's happening at least.
It's doubly dismaying that my own country (US) is still doubling down on fossil fuels despite everything.
The concern about a new dependency on China is real, but renewables do have the advantage that once you have the infrastructure in place it keeps working without continuously importing fuel. Nonetheless, China has done a good job building up their PV/battery manufacturing capacity (including via subsidies for a while if I'm not mistaken) and to the extent the rest of the world wants to avoid a dependency on them we should do that too.
I've been arguing with Europeans on twitter (including an environmental scientist) who believe this war shows we need to resume drilling in the North Sea and Groningen.
It feels like this collective insanity will never end
I wish there was somewhere I could talk about world affairs and European affairs with reasonable people, the way I can talk about tech on HN. But anywhere I've tried - Twitter, r/europe or any smaller subs I've found are just filled with reactionaries trying to stir up hate for whatever reasons they have. There are reasonable voices there, people who are capable of actual conversation, but they're just drowned out. I used to comfort myself by thinking they must all be 14 year olds, or Russian bots, or whatever, and some probably are, but now I'm convinced the large majority are just hate filled adults who've gotten stuck on Twitter, Facebook, reddit etc. and literally spend all their time there basically shouting as if they were lunatics on a street corner.
I might pass by but I wouldn't stand and listen to an angry man on a street corner, and I definitely wouldn't try and have a conversation nearby (or with) them. So why would I expect that to work on Twitter?
Well "Europeans on Twitter" are probably the kind of people who look at the owner of the site posting about a homeland for white people and that kind of thing and aren't bothered too much by it.
I think Europe should resume drilling in the North Sea and Groningen if they have exploitable reserves there. Europe depends on energy imports and that won't change in our lifetimes (I'm in my early forties, so at least in my lifetime.) They should take advantage of whatever resources they have.
I'm guessing you think otherwise? Why? Do you think the energy transition will be faster? What makes you think that?
> It feels like this collective insanity will never end
They simply do not believe that the consequences will be as bad as the models predict. And a lot of trust and good will has been expended on social issues, for example the fight to allow transgender people to use whatever bathroom they choose, or to promote childhood reassignment surgery, etc. As a strategic decision, we have taken our eye off the ball, climate change is actually an existential threat, bathroom choice never was. You can argue that we can do two things at once, but there is a cost for dividing our focus and effort; even if it didn't raise the hackles of those already less predisposed to worry about the environment.
A couple of years ago the last of the exploration rigs in Norway left Norwegian waters. Because nothing that could be drilled (and hasn't already) can compete on price with solar etc.
Lots of people think someone should do this or that. They don't invest their own money though, they just think someone else should do, etc.
With respect to Groningen:
1. zero deaths reported ever
2. quakes in Groningen maxed out at 3.6 which is considered light. By comparison NL's worst earthquake wasn't in Groningen (North) but in the south of the country unrelated to the gas, a scale of 6. Again no people died.
3. the 450 billion m3 of gas left is worth 170 billion last month ('normal'), 345 billion at today's prices, and 1.6 trillion at 2022 peak prices.
4. Field used to supply 10% of EU gas, this shifted EU/Worldwide demand to Russian gas, helping them fund the cold-war against the EU and hot-war against EU's ally Ukraine.
Governments routinely put a price on a human life. The Dutch government puts a price of about 3-4m on a human life. i.e. if a policy measure costs 500m and is estimated to save 100 lives, it's deemed financially irresponsible because the 5m cost per life is more than the value set by the government. Whereas if a measure costs 100m (e.g. implementing an anti drunk-driving program) and it is estimated to save 500 lives, it's financially OK'd because the cost of 200k to prevent a death is less than the value of a life.
The estimates for the Groningen gas field are completely off. Even if you take another €50 billion out of the ground, experts don't expect an earthquake to kill any people. While on the contrary, if you don't, numerous people will die from alternatives (dirty coal and in russian war).
Should be move as fast as possible to renewables? Yes. But green advocates severely overestimate how fast we can do that. We have broken renewable records for 10 years in a row, yet we use about 80% of the fossil energy that we used 35 years ago. We didn't replace Groningen with renewables, we replaced it with Norwegian gas and US LNG imports, and Russia picked up the slack elsewhere because we dropped Dutch supply. So yes in the long-term renewables will make Groningen unnecessary, in the short-term we continue to use gas and keeping Groningen open longer seems to be supported by an objective analysis. Of course politics aren't just objective, they're emotional, which is why Groningen was closed, not because it was the best idea.
Yes, this is correct, Europe energy policy is catastrophically behind and needs to pursue all paths simultaneously, because the future is very murky, Europe needs a LOT of power, and it's not clear which will work best:
- Continue building out solar + battery storage
- Resume drilling in domestic accessible offshore locations safe from trade disruptions
- Recommission and build new nuclear plants
- Build LNG import terminals to eliminate dependence on Russian gas
"As someone who's been pushing for renewables for quite a while now it's dismaying that it's taken a war to accelerate this push, but I'm glad to see that it's happening at least."
It takes tremendous hardship and a lot of time to push people to renewables. Give them their cheap oil back and they are hooked on the needle again in no time. Historically we've been there, multiple times.
Sorry for the cynicism. I too hope it is finally happening at least, and maybe it is at last.
Resilience against geopolitical disruption has always been a nice characteristic of renewables (of course, centralizing the production in China is a mistake from that point of view, if for no other reason than the general danger of centralization). It is unfortunate though, if we needed an actual event to see this advantage.
Well, but in case you have already infra & ecosystem, you could then affort maybe to produce a little bit mor expensive in your own country, if supply from china will be under threat like oil today?
I would rather have solar everywhere and the risk depending on china (and the risk of producing something over market price) than the current ongoing forever riskof fossil dependency, because solar manufacturing you could resolve in theory in every country (at some scale), while fossil production is limited to a handful with no chance for anyone else to do it?
> renewables do have the advantage that once you have the infrastructure in place it keeps working without continuously importing fuel
There are issues if the infrastructure is network accessible and is updatable. The consumer end of it (e.g. home solar) is often dependent on apps etc. and is very vulnerable. I hope (probably optimistically) that critical systems are air gapped.
Its always been obvious to me that we should have a variety or energy sources for security and its complacent to think otherwise. Over-reliance on an unstable region makes it all the worse.
Germany is very slowly starting to understand, exiting nuclear power and installing a lot of intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind power and solar power, does not make your country independent of fossil fuels.
China builds a lot of renewables, but they don't build them to replace fossil fuels, they build them in addition to fossil fuels. We should absolutely not follow this way.
But why does US need any of that? It's a massive exporter of fossil fuels and will be much richer as a result (but yes just as every other way of getting richer, it will also increase inequality).
Unfortunately much of China’s perverse tactics (they’ve done this in a wide array of industries) is to steal patented tech and trade secrets from companies outside China, subsidize the manufacturing and development etc, then sell their product at an artificially low price which kills the original company and good faith competitors as they cannot compete with the artificially lower prices.
Then once the dust settles they’re the only company which can handle large order sizes required for supply chains to build downstream products, and the world becomes further reliant on them.
Security concerns and national defense aside, a prime example pre-ban was Huawei layer 1 infrastructure products which far exceeded feature density, and cost effectiveness than competitors due to the subsidies. They’ve done similar tactics with solar panels.
This doesn’t imply China or their state sponsored companies never create novel tech, but there’s a hugely perverse system whose purpose is to illegally undercut competition overseas with no real recourse from the victim countries outside of total company bans. And even then, people find a way around the bans and the damage is already done to the original companies.
Yeah, I live in Spain and probably once again we'll have restrictions on AC in the summer just like at the start of the Ukraine war. Hopefully, we can avoid actual blackouts.
The bizarre thing is that our government still wants to close down the remaining nuclear power plants. One of the issues with our proportional electoral system is that smaller, more extreme parties can become kingmakers and in our current situation the centre-left governing party relies on the support of the far-left party to stay in power, and those guys are rabidly anti-nuclear power.
But this should be a clear signal that we need renewable power and nuclear power and we need to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles. Ending the tariffs with China that stop us benefiting from their affordable PV panels and electric cars would be a good step towards this.
I wonder where the gulf states are going to end up.
They have tried hard to build economies that aren't just fossil fuel exports. Tourism, trade, finance, luxury living for rich foreigners… but everything they have tried is contingent on peace in the region. I doubt foreigners are looking forward to layovers in Dubai now there are Iranian drones heading their way.
Maybe future travelers will not see two trunkless legs in a desert, but empty condo towers and abandoned super cars still loaded with labubus.
From what I've read, the immediate effect will likely be worse for CO2 emissions, because the alternative to (liquefied) gas is often coal power. Also, the various inputs that are needed for global manufacturing are also affected, so maybe even renewable tech gets more expensive.
I'm not saying that the dependence on the middle east was good, but I think it's good to keep in mind that this was a pretty stable equilibrium even with the various questionable countries involved until the US initiated a global supply shock without a good reason.
It feels so slow. I would like to have an electric car or e-bike. I live in a building that is part of a housing company that has many owners (most of them people living here). It is slow to decide and implement renovation, and the pipeline is basically full for a few years.
We might get car charging infrastructure only a few years down the line. Maybe a bike shed for e-bike charging a year after that?
What happened to those optimistic ideas where every lamp post had a charger? I would pay for that. I also see these small transformer huts on the streets. What if at least those had neighborhood high speed chargers, it shouldn't cost much since basically there's a good power source right there?
There's just so much friction. I hope some enterpreneur here makes these things real!
I'm unpacking my electric motorbike[1] and its moped sister[2] from winter storage and preparing them both for a summer in a city in a nation which energy supply is mostly renewables.
Of course, it took a lot of gasoline to get them here, but I sure as heck won't be using much gasoline to put them to solid use clocking up the kilometers, 100 at a time.
Got a few deals on solar panels for the backyard that'll get me completely off the grid for the most part, and from then on it'll be maintenance mode and solar powered travel as priority number one ..
I heard somewhere that there is some sort of evangelical Christian sect in Korea that believes the current US president was sent by God. Not as a positive force, but as a force to end the global status quo (which I suppose they consider unjust). I find this fascinating because the US president's actions so far have: exposed decade-old myths about the rule-based international order, caused the EU to seek more self-reliance, caused former enemies in Asia to consider alliances and now accelerate the end to fossil fuel dependence. One could argue that the results of his actions are indistinguishable from that of a double agent's.
We should generate our own power on our own land with our own technology - one day it will seem like insanity that we ever outsourced our most precious resource to the other side of the world, and relied on international shipping/markets to deliver it. Solar is a miracle technology. Wind is very good. Hydro and nuclear can supply large base load. Our own oil can supply peakers. What are we doing in the middle east?
Our company made a 'bet' that energy management, sustainability, clean energy and whatnot would become a big thing. This was around the time of COP26 (2021) where there seemed to be a societal drive for reducing carbon emissions and a general acceptance that climate change was a thing. We employed young and enthusiastic sustainability consultants, we run a successful project to reduce energy consumption in polymer manufacturing, we build product that worked. That part of our business has shut down completely.
Unfortunately governments were reluctant to really get behind regulations that were needed, and the business case for investment in any drive to sustainability did not exist. People lost interest as inflation went up, and other things seemed more important. The market was flagging and Trump's "drill baby drill" was the final nail in the coffin.
The world was _nearly_ there to rapidly accelerate reducing the dependency on fossil fuels on the back of climate change. Instead we went back to fossil fuel cars and built energy-intensive AI data centres. We collectively dropped the ball and one day will look back on it as a missed opportunity.
Easier said than done, during this week many German regions are on general strike, thus everyone just switched back to their cars, complaining about unions, their power in infrastructure and so on.
Naturally most of those cars are combustion based, because it is still very expensive to buy a new EV, and even used ones are more expensive than new combustion cars, and there is the whole question of how damaged the battery will be anyway.
"The world’s biggest energy consumer nations are now back at the drawing board: Europe last week unveiled new financial guarantees for atomic power after decades of closing nuclear plants. Other major importers are planning to source fuel from a broader array of suppliers to hedge their risk."
I'm not seeing it.
The European plan sounds like another goal to have a proposal in ten years [1]. And hedging imports of fossil fuels doesn't reduce dependence, just dependence on a particular source.
If past crisis are any indication this "push" won't last.
We've had crisis with fossil fuels since OPEC's first big price increase in 1973 and the pattern is always the same: first the whole world realizes they need to find alternative sources of energy. Then, after a while, politicians go "drill, baby, drill".
Oil is an addiction and most people don't drop addictions by their own.
Europe and the US need to bring manufacturing of EVs, batteries, solar, and relevant components back locally. Use automation to make it more feasible. We need rooftop solar + regional SMRs for a cheap, stable energy supply.
To do so, we need to adapt regulation & deregulate. This needs to happen now. If we continue on like this, we'll decelerate back to the stone age.
449 comments
It's doubly dismaying that my own country (US) is still doubling down on fossil fuels despite everything.
The concern about a new dependency on China is real, but renewables do have the advantage that once you have the infrastructure in place it keeps working without continuously importing fuel. Nonetheless, China has done a good job building up their PV/battery manufacturing capacity (including via subsidies for a while if I'm not mistaken) and to the extent the rest of the world wants to avoid a dependency on them we should do that too.
It feels like this collective insanity will never end
I might pass by but I wouldn't stand and listen to an angry man on a street corner, and I definitely wouldn't try and have a conversation nearby (or with) them. So why would I expect that to work on Twitter?
I'm guessing you think otherwise? Why? Do you think the energy transition will be faster? What makes you think that?
> It feels like this collective insanity will never end
They simply do not believe that the consequences will be as bad as the models predict. And a lot of trust and good will has been expended on social issues, for example the fight to allow transgender people to use whatever bathroom they choose, or to promote childhood reassignment surgery, etc. As a strategic decision, we have taken our eye off the ball, climate change is actually an existential threat, bathroom choice never was. You can argue that we can do two things at once, but there is a cost for dividing our focus and effort; even if it didn't raise the hackles of those already less predisposed to worry about the environment.
A couple of years ago the last of the exploration rigs in Norway left Norwegian waters. Because nothing that could be drilled (and hasn't already) can compete on price with solar etc.
Lots of people think someone should do this or that. They don't invest their own money though, they just think someone else should do, etc.
With respect to Groningen: 1. zero deaths reported ever 2. quakes in Groningen maxed out at 3.6 which is considered light. By comparison NL's worst earthquake wasn't in Groningen (North) but in the south of the country unrelated to the gas, a scale of 6. Again no people died. 3. the 450 billion m3 of gas left is worth 170 billion last month ('normal'), 345 billion at today's prices, and 1.6 trillion at 2022 peak prices. 4. Field used to supply 10% of EU gas, this shifted EU/Worldwide demand to Russian gas, helping them fund the cold-war against the EU and hot-war against EU's ally Ukraine.
Governments routinely put a price on a human life. The Dutch government puts a price of about 3-4m on a human life. i.e. if a policy measure costs 500m and is estimated to save 100 lives, it's deemed financially irresponsible because the 5m cost per life is more than the value set by the government. Whereas if a measure costs 100m (e.g. implementing an anti drunk-driving program) and it is estimated to save 500 lives, it's financially OK'd because the cost of 200k to prevent a death is less than the value of a life.
The estimates for the Groningen gas field are completely off. Even if you take another €50 billion out of the ground, experts don't expect an earthquake to kill any people. While on the contrary, if you don't, numerous people will die from alternatives (dirty coal and in russian war).
Should be move as fast as possible to renewables? Yes. But green advocates severely overestimate how fast we can do that. We have broken renewable records for 10 years in a row, yet we use about 80% of the fossil energy that we used 35 years ago. We didn't replace Groningen with renewables, we replaced it with Norwegian gas and US LNG imports, and Russia picked up the slack elsewhere because we dropped Dutch supply. So yes in the long-term renewables will make Groningen unnecessary, in the short-term we continue to use gas and keeping Groningen open longer seems to be supported by an objective analysis. Of course politics aren't just objective, they're emotional, which is why Groningen was closed, not because it was the best idea.
It's like going on stormfront and wondering why there's so many white nationalists on the internet.
- Continue building out solar + battery storage
- Resume drilling in domestic accessible offshore locations safe from trade disruptions
- Recommission and build new nuclear plants
- Build LNG import terminals to eliminate dependence on Russian gas
It takes tremendous hardship and a lot of time to push people to renewables. Give them their cheap oil back and they are hooked on the needle again in no time. Historically we've been there, multiple times.
Sorry for the cynicism. I too hope it is finally happening at least, and maybe it is at last.
That said I’m all for it, too bad the supply chain disruption that this mess will cause will make it twice as hard as it could’ve been.
The dependency is latent, is only become a problem when you (USA) does something to dick with China's dependency on you.
If you don't do that, no problems. The rest of us live just fine depending on things from China.
I would rather have solar everywhere and the risk depending on china (and the risk of producing something over market price) than the current ongoing forever riskof fossil dependency, because solar manufacturing you could resolve in theory in every country (at some scale), while fossil production is limited to a handful with no chance for anyone else to do it?
> renewables do have the advantage that once you have the infrastructure in place it keeps working without continuously importing fuel
There are issues if the infrastructure is network accessible and is updatable. The consumer end of it (e.g. home solar) is often dependent on apps etc. and is very vulnerable. I hope (probably optimistically) that critical systems are air gapped.
Its always been obvious to me that we should have a variety or energy sources for security and its complacent to think otherwise. Over-reliance on an unstable region makes it all the worse.
China builds a lot of renewables, but they don't build them to replace fossil fuels, they build them in addition to fossil fuels. We should absolutely not follow this way.
> It's doubly dismaying that my own country (US) is still doubling down on fossil fuels despite everything.
A few get rich. Project2025 (that is, their hardwing agenda is the cover up for theft).
We need to monitor these guys and then take back what they took from all of us globally.
Then once the dust settles they’re the only company which can handle large order sizes required for supply chains to build downstream products, and the world becomes further reliant on them.
Security concerns and national defense aside, a prime example pre-ban was Huawei layer 1 infrastructure products which far exceeded feature density, and cost effectiveness than competitors due to the subsidies. They’ve done similar tactics with solar panels.
This doesn’t imply China or their state sponsored companies never create novel tech, but there’s a hugely perverse system whose purpose is to illegally undercut competition overseas with no real recourse from the victim countries outside of total company bans. And even then, people find a way around the bans and the damage is already done to the original companies.
Solar panels: https://www.marketplace.org/story/2021/12/09/chinas-state-sp...
Huawai: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/chinas-huawei-threat-us-na...
The bizarre thing is that our government still wants to close down the remaining nuclear power plants. One of the issues with our proportional electoral system is that smaller, more extreme parties can become kingmakers and in our current situation the centre-left governing party relies on the support of the far-left party to stay in power, and those guys are rabidly anti-nuclear power.
But this should be a clear signal that we need renewable power and nuclear power and we need to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles. Ending the tariffs with China that stop us benefiting from their affordable PV panels and electric cars would be a good step towards this.
They have tried hard to build economies that aren't just fossil fuel exports. Tourism, trade, finance, luxury living for rich foreigners… but everything they have tried is contingent on peace in the region. I doubt foreigners are looking forward to layovers in Dubai now there are Iranian drones heading their way.
Maybe future travelers will not see two trunkless legs in a desert, but empty condo towers and abandoned super cars still loaded with labubus.
I might reach my dream life (no work just binge hacking kernels) sooner than I expected. Now I just need to pretend I don’t need money as well.
I'm not saying that the dependence on the middle east was good, but I think it's good to keep in mind that this was a pretty stable equilibrium even with the various questionable countries involved until the US initiated a global supply shock without a good reason.
We might get car charging infrastructure only a few years down the line. Maybe a bike shed for e-bike charging a year after that?
What happened to those optimistic ideas where every lamp post had a charger? I would pay for that. I also see these small transformer huts on the streets. What if at least those had neighborhood high speed chargers, it shouldn't cost much since basically there's a good power source right there?
There's just so much friction. I hope some enterpreneur here makes these things real!
Of course, it took a lot of gasoline to get them here, but I sure as heck won't be using much gasoline to put them to solid use clocking up the kilometers, 100 at a time.
Got a few deals on solar panels for the backyard that'll get me completely off the grid for the most part, and from then on it'll be maintenance mode and solar powered travel as priority number one ..
[1] - https://www.blackteamotorbikes.com/
[2] - https://unumotors.com/
Unfortunately governments were reluctant to really get behind regulations that were needed, and the business case for investment in any drive to sustainability did not exist. People lost interest as inflation went up, and other things seemed more important. The market was flagging and Trump's "drill baby drill" was the final nail in the coffin.
The world was _nearly_ there to rapidly accelerate reducing the dependency on fossil fuels on the back of climate change. Instead we went back to fossil fuel cars and built energy-intensive AI data centres. We collectively dropped the ball and one day will look back on it as a missed opportunity.
Naturally most of those cars are combustion based, because it is still very expensive to buy a new EV, and even used ones are more expensive than new combustion cars, and there is the whole question of how damaged the battery will be anyway.
I'm not seeing it.
The European plan sounds like another goal to have a proposal in ten years [1]. And hedging imports of fossil fuels doesn't reduce dependence, just dependence on a particular source.
[1] https://www.nucnet.org/news/von-der-leyen-sets-out-eu-smr-st...
We've had crisis with fossil fuels since OPEC's first big price increase in 1973 and the pattern is always the same: first the whole world realizes they need to find alternative sources of energy. Then, after a while, politicians go "drill, baby, drill".
Oil is an addiction and most people don't drop addictions by their own.
To do so, we need to adapt regulation & deregulate. This needs to happen now. If we continue on like this, we'll decelerate back to the stone age.