[HN Gopher] EU countries already hitting some of their sustainab...
___________________________________________________________________
EU countries already hitting some of their sustainable energy
targets for 2030
Author : geox
Score : 60 points
Date : 2024-02-28 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.plos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.plos.org)
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Why bother? This is like paying off a debt with low interest
| early. A poor financial decision.
| matsemann wrote:
| It's the opposite. It's like saving for pension early, and
| letting interest on interest do its job.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| There is no interest. If it was profitable to go green, there
| would be no reason for government initiatives.
|
| No, preventing climate change isn't interest. You're not
| changing anything as one small European country.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| If the costs of carbon and climate change were fully
| internalized with appropriately set carbon taxes, I would
| agree with you. In the absence of that, it's entirely
| possible that these top down efforts are doing too much,
| too fast (although they could also be doing too little too
| slowly). But it's absolutely certain that in the absence of
| such taxes, the market itself will do it far too slowly.
|
| Now, as for what the "appropriately set carbon taxes are"
| (and therefore how fast is fast enough), that's an entirely
| political question that depends on the preferences and
| values of the society enacting the taxes.
| malermeister wrote:
| You're not as _one_ small European country. If only they
| formed a union of sorts...
| fredrikholm wrote:
| > You're not changing anything as one small European
| country.
|
| An amazing example of the tragedy of the commons, thank
| you.
| epolanski wrote:
| Oil gets tons of subsidies.
|
| So does production or environmentally impactful products
| like meat and milk derivatives e.g. in Europe.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Why bother? This is like paying off a debt with low interest
| early.
|
| Quite the contrary. Once a solar panel is built, you never need
| to invest into fuel for it, only a tiny bit for maintenance
| during its lifetime. The energy is provided virtually for free
| by the sun, gravity or by the aftereffects of Earth's creation
| many billions of years ago.
|
| A fossil plant, even a nuclear plant, in contrast will require
| continuous purchases of fuel, of which quite a lot comes from
| countries that ... aren't really aligned with our Western
| values.
|
| Reducing CO2 emissions is just a nice side effect.
| skrbjc wrote:
| Pretty sure most solar panels are also sourced from countries
| that are not aligned with western values, while Australia is
| one of the largest producers of Uranium ore and nuclear
| powerplants are built locally.
| jbarham wrote:
| Ironically despite Australia being a major producer of
| uranium, its current Minister for Climate Change and
| Energy, Chris Bowen, constantly denigrates nuclear power
| [1]. But that's par for the course in Australian politics
| ("Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate
| people who share its luck").
|
| 1: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2F
| twit...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Pretty sure most solar panels are also sourced from
| countries that are not aligned with western values
|
| That's purely a pricing reason, and a bit of a "let's
| outsource the environmental pollution to China" as well
| (anything involving silicon tends to use quite nasty
| chemicals, there's a reason like half the Silicon Valley is
| a Superfund site). Germany for example used to be the
| worldwide leader in manufacturing solar panels thanks to a
| _massive_ subsidy program that kickstarted the industry.
|
| Should China decide to cut us off, it's trivial to
| establish domestic production again - essentially, a solar
| panel is a bunch of decently purified _sand_. That stuff is
| available everywhere on the planet, unlike gas, oil or
| uranium.
|
| > while Australia is one of the largest producers of
| Uranium ore and nuclear powerplants are built locally.
|
| It took the US almost two years to ban the import of
| Russian uranium [1] despite the Russian invasion of
| Ukraine. Besides, Australia and Canada are the only two
| stable, clearly Western-allied democracies out of the 10
| top uranium producers and only account for ~18% of
| worldwide production. The rest is either too neutral for my
| taste (Namibia, India), failed states (Niger), an active
| warzone (Ukraine) or some sort of autocracy (the rest).
| With these circumstances alone, it's beyond foolish to rely
| on nuclear.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-passes-bill-
| bannin...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uran
| ium_p...
| FredPret wrote:
| I'm sure uranium mining releases some CO2 - unless someone
| invents electric mining trucks (those things are just mammoth
| and drive slowly, maybe it can be made to work).
|
| But a little bit of spicy rocks give off such a ridiculous
| bounty of 24/7 energy that it's just a no-brainer.
|
| We should do solar, wind, _and_ nuclear; in the meantime we
| can replace a lot of coal and oil with the much cleaner
| natural gas.
| ben_w wrote:
| > unless someone invents electric mining trucks
|
| That part's fine; some even charge just from regenerative
| braking because the ore is at the top of a hill.
|
| As for "nuclear?", energy density only matters in a few
| specific ways like making it easier to tidy away the waste,
| what most people care about is cost. Good luck to all the
| teams trying to make nuclear cheaper, but for now that
| means PV and wind.
| FredPret wrote:
| Until you price in storage / making up the numbers with
| coal and oil at night
| acchow wrote:
| Note that their 2030 targets were already set far too out into
| the future. They should have been hit 50 years earlier.
| panzagl wrote:
| You know, some of the countries didn't really exist 50 years
| ago...
| fredrikholm wrote:
| Not many people know this, but prior to Estonia's second
| independence in 1991, it was just barren land, completely
| devoid of human activity.
| pstrateman wrote:
| I really don't see how western countries reducing CO2 production
| is going to have a net effect globally.
|
| Are we really naive enough to think that African and Asian
| countries won't just replace our consumption of fossil fuels?
|
| Pretty sure none of these countries have emissions targets:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_air_pollu...
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Air pollution is not the same thing as what you're discussing.
| Generally speaking, yes, we should probably expect them to use
| renewables because renewables are gradually cheaper than fuels.
| pstrateman wrote:
| Renewables are still an order of magnitude more expensive
| than fossil fuels.
|
| Especially in countries without any infrastructure.
| gambiting wrote:
| Yes, but as the time goes on that will be less and less
| true.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The LCOE of utility solar is cheaper than the LCOE of most
| if not all fossil fuel based alternatives for the developed
| US. This does of course vary by region and infrastructure.
| One would expect that to become more and more favorable
| over time.
| jbm wrote:
| If renewables are cheaper, then yes.
|
| If the centralized power grid is poor quality (think South
| Africa) or there is poor quality central government, yes.
| pstrateman wrote:
| If we cant make renewables cheap in western countries, how is
| it possible they'll be cheap in poor countries?
| ben_w wrote:
| The premise is false. Renewables are the cheapest form of
| new energy, which is why they're also the dominant form of
| new energy and why the targets are being met ahead of
| schedule.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, even if the former were true, the answer is that
| capital isn't easy to come by in poor countries so
| distributed generation starts coming out ahead.
|
| But the former isn't true. Renewables are really cheap.
| dumpHero2 wrote:
| Lot of R&D, tech companies operate out of west. Improving tech
| in the west reduces the cost for the entire world.
| pstrateman wrote:
| That doesn't explain how you expect to keep people in extreme
| poverty from burning fossil fuels to get out of that poverty.
| ben_w wrote:
| By making the alternative cheaper.
| nico_h wrote:
| They are in extreme poverty because they can't afford the
| fossil fuel to burn for economic development. As they
| develop, they might pick renewable because its cost is
| falling to the point it might become cheaper than burning
| fuel, at least for certain use cases.
| gibolt wrote:
| Renewable production is still rapidly increasing, and prices
| falling. At some point, you saturate the most profitable
| markets relative to production, and get a race to the bottom.
|
| Worse off nations should benefit from the glut of cheaper
| panels from companies fighting to stay afloat, that are far
| cheaper than continuing to buy oil.
| epolanski wrote:
| What a deaf way of thinking imho.
|
| We should all strive to do what we can, regardless of what
| others do.
|
| Setting an example and making investments eventually trickles
| down abroad with technologies being cheaper, with foreign
| companies being pushed by genuine or PR reasons to make
| investments on being greener in those countries etc.
| beepboopamkitty wrote:
| The idea that foreign countries will be influenced or pushed
| by Western countries "setting a good example" into making
| investments that would benefit their countries from an
| environmental standpoint is absurd. Do you really think that
| Chad, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. (who are all at the top of that
| list for countries with the worst air pollution) give a damn
| about their air quality? Or PR reasons for bettering their
| countries? Not even slightly. The leaders of those countries
| couldn't care less about "their people" because their goal is
| to keep them poor, uneducated and scared so they can stay
| rich and in power. This is painfully obvious and pretending
| it's not real won't help any advancements.
| nerdbert wrote:
| When people in richer countries buy a lot of solar panels and
| heat pumps and whatnot, that brings down the manufacturing cost
| of these items, so that they also become the rational choice in
| poorer countries.
|
| Once everyone in America started driving cars, that didn't
| drive a resurgence in the use of horses for transportation in
| Africa.
| muspimerol wrote:
| I'd argue that the rich nations have an obligation to find a
| way to structure a less carbon intensive economy. The global
| south can benefit from the R&D that the west does. It's not a
| forgone conclusion that the only way to grow is by burning
| fossil fuels, but the global south will certainly go that way
| if there is no known alternative.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Looking at the data, Africa and Asia have been steadily
| increasing their renewables and currently have higher
| percentage than the US, though the US are catching up very fast
| thanks to the IRA
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...
| dandellion wrote:
| The US once spread democracy all over the world, surely they
| can spread renewable energy the same way too.
| yread wrote:
| Not all countries in Africa are dirty polluters (like South
| Africa). Kenya or Congo are basically all renewable
| FredPret wrote:
| > The smallest distance in relation to the target set for SDG 7
| can be observed for Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, and Austria. By far
| the greatest progress in period 2010-2021 has been achieved by
| Malta, and significant for Cyprus, Latvia, Belgium, Ireland, and
| Poland.
|
| Surprised not to see France on this list with all their nuclear
| power, though from glancing at this they seem to be using some
| aggregated measure instead of just CO2 which probably makes it
| much more complicated.
| kragen wrote:
| zerocalories asks, 'Why bother? This is like paying off a debt
| with low interest early. A poor financial decision.'
|
| this presupposes that the energy mix is changing because of
| costly government subsidies, and if that presupposition were
| correct, it would be a very reasonable comment
|
| but that's not what's happening. countries aren't hitting their
| targets because the local government subsidies are more
| successful than expected; they're doing it because renewable
| energy (and, in some cases, energy efficiency improvements) is
| cheaper than fossil fuel in most of europe now, and has been for
| several years now, so companies and individuals invest in
| renewable energy instead of fossil-fuel production capacity, even
| without local government incentives
|
| this is primarily because of capitalism in china, strongly
| supported, of course, by the so-called communist party of china
|
| it would be easy to misunderstand that the chinese government is
| subsidizing the european energy transition, so that as europe
| switches over to renewables, it will cost the chinese government
| larger and larger amounts of money until finally they take
| measures to stem the flood. but that is not what is happening;
| the chinese renewable energy producers are profitable on their
| own terms. there was a price-fixing cartel announced at davos in
| 02019, which kept the price of solar panels at about EUR0.20 per
| peak watt of low-cost panels from the end of 02018 to the end of
| 02022 (or EUR0.29 for mainstream higher-efficiency panels). if we
| believe https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-
| preis... that price has now fallen to EUR0.09 per peak watt for
| low-cost panel modules, EUR0.14 per peak watt for mainstream, so
| the cartel has evidently fallen apart; i infer that government
| support was helpful for holding it together for so long, but
| presumably at the end the panel producers' gross profit margins
| were close to 50%, like copyright-mafiaa rentiers
|
| this is also why african, asian, and american countries with no
| emissions targets won't just replace european consumption of
| fossil fuels
| h0l0cube wrote:
| > this is also why african, asian, and american countries with
| no emissions targets won't just replace european consumption of
| fossil fuels
|
| Yet they are.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...
| temp9864 wrote:
| If you put enough solar into an electricity grid you will
| eventually have coal generators shutting down because the
| variable pricing will drive them out of business. Watch the
| wholesale price dashboard for Australia for a while and compare
| it to local weather if you don't believe me [1]. The other effect
| will be that 24 hour power becomes prodigiously expensive or not
| available, which is why the Australian government is funding coal
| generators to the tune of 1.1 billion this year [2]. Even they
| are not stupid enough to think an industrialised society can
| manage without it.
|
| [1] https://aemo.com.au/Energy-systems/Electricity/National-
| Elec...
|
| [2] https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/fossil-fuel-
| subsidi...
| nerdbert wrote:
| ... in a world where utility-scale battery technology doesn't
| continue to evolve along its current trajectory because of, um,
| reasons.
| jopsen wrote:
| Or wind turbines...
|
| Ofcourse transmission lines might be a bottleneck.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Ofcourse transmission lines might be a bottleneck.
|
| In UK many windfarms wait for years to be connected to the
| grid as locals protest power pylons 'blighting the
| landscape'.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Home battery systems are getting absurdly cheap. Grid scale
| will follow, but before then it would be cheaper to incentivize
| rooftop solar and home battery installations in places where
| there's plenty of sunlight (e.g., most of Australia)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-28 23:00 UTC)