Here in Hungary, 90% of electricty mix is putin 🤣( 36% putin’s nuclear fuel, 44% putin’s natural gas) as his slave orban prohibited building of wind turbines, makes solar investments unpredictable, insecure, and we dont have any fast rivers for hydro
we may all say a big “THANK YOU!” to Philipp Rösler (FDP) and Peter Altmaier (CDU) for both destroying the German PV-industry, establishing the “Solar-Ausbaudeckel” and the CDU/CSU as a whole to block and hinder wind power for over a decade very effectively.
And their very hard work to make Germany overly dependent on fossil fuels, to keep it that way and therefore blow ALL climate goals appears to be a success model, as the CDU/CSU are currently winning the public opinion with that intend, whilst those trying to follow the steps of our european neighors are slammed into the ground (just as our PV industry).
In other words: Germans don’t want clean air. They don’t want a future.
Even worse, as he is comparing a cherry picked current mix with the german total over 6 months (Jan to June), Germany’s current mix is very similar to the current mixes he has shown.
ehhh Germany is buying less gas from Russia since they invaded Ukraine, which means that gas is more expensive and renewable energy is likely a more viable option. In no way would I thank Russia for that.
In Portugal the last coal plant closed maybe a year or so ago. Apparently some countries will take longer but, here’s a link beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/
But yeah, Poland, turkey and some balkans don’t have much planned…
Not exactly. For Sechin to make up for those profits he would have stolen if those profits existed he hiked up gas price domestically. New yacht won’t buy itself.
Also fucking lukoil that still is not sanctioned keeps selling oil, petrol and gas in Europe.
It’s very a good sign, but I do have doubts about those figures. It’s all too easy to look at total demand and total renewable generation, while ignoring the fact that the country is a net exporter and thus produces more than 100% of its demand - with the remaining uncounted percentage not being green.
“Fossil free” isn’t exactly a recognised term, either, in which case fossil free =/= net zero =/= completely green.
Scotland is a country, but so is the UK, and the UK governs over Scotland.
It’s a similar mess with the transmission network. You have NGET owning the transmission lines in England and Wales, but SPT and SHET for Scotland, however all of these are overseen by NGESO, the system operator, who balance the generation and load. Just to make it even more confusing, the Wales and South West distributor WPD has been brought back into British ownership as part of the National Grid group, so you have NGED providing some distribution as well.
Scotland is a “country”, but “country” is a vague term. Scotland is not a sovereign state, which is what most people think of when they think of countries. In fact, other than the weirdness that is the UK, I can’t think of any place that has “countries” that are not also sovereign states.
There are some places like Catalonia, or the Basque area that want to be / claim to be countries, but that’s more about sovereign status. They wouldn’t be satisfied being recognized as “countries” while still under the rule of Spain / France.
The only time this weirdness really shows up is at the World Cup, where the 3 separate countries within the UK each try to send a team. Meanwhile at the olympics they compete as one under the Team GB banner (which is its own weirdness because normally Great Britain excludes Northern Ireland, which is only included when you talk about the United Kingdom. But, Team GB includes Northern Ireland. In yet another exception, sometimes athletes from Northern Ireland compete as part of Ireland in some sports, not as part of the UK / Team GB.
IIRC, France exports its excess nuclear power in the summer (little need for AC until recently), but imports during the winter (electric heat for the most part). Mostly to and from Germany, which uses some terribly dirty sources. Don’t know if that’s changed in the last few years, though.
The mix will fluctuate on a day-by-day basis. You could be 100% renewable on one day, wind solar, and hydroelectric (although that’s problematic in and of itself) with the inevitable nuclear for base load.
The next day you could be still and overcast and you’ve already used all of your water from the dam so you have to run more natural gas in the mix.
To pick any random day and to say that that date is representative of the year as a whole is silly, you need averages over the course of a year.
True that the specific metric by definition excludes any use of fossil fuels that doesn’t have an electricity step (ICE cars, gas for heating/cooking/water heating).
However it is a relevant question to consider, to the extent those non-electricity applications remain an obstacle for reducing greenhouse emissions. An ICE car being replaced by an EV means more grid load, a Gas furnace being replaced with a heat pump means more grid load.
As an example, in my region they are talking about increased load incurred in part from EVSE and heat pump conversions. To meet that demand, a part of the plan is actually building out even more natural gas electricity generation (alongside energy storage, solar, and wind).
While it’s encouraging to see grids fairly claim reduction in carbon emissions (others have raised questions about whether this is a totally fair claim, but I have no idea), the total consumption picture is important to keep in mind.
It could, if cheap, light, efficient EVs become legal and popular in Europe.
I personally want something that would never be legal; A 4-wheeled, beefed up, 100+ km/h electric velomobile with something like CanAm Spyder tires (and track width) and a proper comfortable seat. A bit like the LCC rocket, but fully enclosed and possibly lighter.
I could get something more dangerous, like a motorcycle. While this would be in an illegal limbo between car and motorcycle.
The Renault Twizy is a too tall, simply ugly, and thoroughly nerfed version of a simile of what I wish for, and Europe will continue just vaguely trying (and complacently falling) to make speed-limited microcars for cities of type L6e and L7e the “green option” looking for adoption, but that will never reach any kind of tipping point and we all know it. Not quite designed to fail, but definitely not designed for mass adoption.
The legal limbo of what I think would be more appealing is due to both the public and the governing bodies being entirely unwilling to tolerate what safety-wise amounts to a motorcycle with a car’s stability, without reducing speed. They’d never expect to successfully lock motorcycles down to “max 45 km/h”, but the category of “motorcycle” is uniquely privileged as a traditionally recognized transport device permitted to trade away safety for other benefits. Presumably because the trade is explicit enough, as there’s no mistaking it for a car.
Anyways…
The conclusion is that no, “it” doesn’t include vehicles, and won’t any time soon. The only desirable electric cars will remain massive and heavy and expensive (but thoroughly armored), so adoption will continue to be fairly slow, and they’ll be a big drain on the grid.
I’ll end on the note that motorcycles not being popular is a huge part of why western bureaucrats (barely) tolerate them. If this was to become popular among young guys who want a cheap fast car, it’d be extremely problematic for them, and not at all worth the accelerated energy transition.
Last note, Sierra Echo is also one I’ve been keeping my eye on, but since it’s fast and light, it’s also open-air like all these things apparently have to be. Oh, and it’s also not cheap.
Lets not celebrate nuclear energy. The french plants are in a bad state and nuclear energy is not clean. Why does everyone forget the nuclear waste it produces?
Nobody forgets it, but neither short-, nor long-term storage is nearly an unsolvable problem (as climate change is), and with rising supply and demand “waste” will soon become an economically viable raw resource for refining new fuel.
It’s just a quick web search, but there are the EU countries listed with their avg. renewable electricity 2021.
As mentioned, the momentary data isn’t worth much. There are bad days with only 20% renewable electricity and there are good days with 120% renewable-only generation compared to the load. For years, European electricity prices turn negative on those days, as renewables alone in Germany generate 10TW more than the load.
That’s why annual average is important and not to single out good or bad days pretending this is the norm.
Renewables are a means to an end, not the main objective. That’s CO2 reduction. To that end, the relevant data is average carbon intensity. So I’d say this is a more relevant graph: ourworldindata.org/…/carbon-intensity-electricity…
I’m Portuguese and as much as I’d love to run on 96% green energy I can’t believe it… Last time I checked (it was quite a while ago I’ll give them that) we imported a lot of nuclear energy from France. So unless France is 100% green and still has a green energy surplus (which it isn’t/doesn’t) we’re just transfering our carbon footprint…
We do have a lot of wind turbines so maybe we don’t import as much anymore but still…
Nuclear is green though, so France is a good place to be importing from. It also has the lowest mortality rate per kWh of all power sources, Chernobyl included.
I, personally, am all for nuclear. However given the choice I’d rather my country invests in wind geothermal, solar and others. Nuclear can be a liability as we’ve seen in Ukraine.
That’s awesome. I wonder if the mountains would also make pumped hydroelectric possible too, so Portugal could use a clean method of storing power for when the wind was calm and the sun wasn’t shining.
I don’t know about the others but I don’t think I can really consider solar green, it needs a lot of silicon not only to make enough panels to have an impact but also needs the extraction of stuff for batteries too, still better than coal ig.
I think there’s a nuclear power plant in Ukraine a lot of people know about in Chernobyl or something maybe? I’m guessing that’s what they’re hinting at.
There’s definitely some figure manipulation going on here. Portugal might claim it’s importing green energy from France, meanwhile France might stack up its renewable generation against its overall demand to make its claims, meaning both are ignoring much of the fossil fuel generation from France.
It’s still good progress, but the devil really is in the details. There’s a reason this post doesn’t call it “net-zero” or any other industry recognised term.
The biggest chunk of our yearly consumption is still gas. And France’s carbon intensity is much lower than ours still (one of the lowest in Europe), so any energy we’re importing from them is actually lowering our CO2 average.
That wouldn’t be long lived, though, because when implemented in the current German fashion, they won’t be using salt water resistant equipment for cost cutting reasons and neglect all maintenance to cut even more costs. The tear powered hydroelectric plants will be rusted through and seized up in no time.
No it wouldn’t. It would never be built because the FDP would block it and Söder would refuse to have it built in Bavaria and Merz would say something about immigrants using up all our German salt on the tax payers dime all day long and Sahra Wagenknecht would mention that we wouldn’t need it if we were all good friends with Putin and the SPD would do nothing anyway and the AfD would blame the green party for not reactivating 45 year old reactors instead of building it,…
…different organisational levels of the Greens would endorse an oppose it at the same time, because it’s climate friendly but its building requires trimming a hedge of brambles on the neighbouring plot. A local citizens’ initiative against it would form due to widespread concerns about the plant’s working fluid containing the dangerous chemicals Dihydrogen Monoxide and Sodium Chloride, this initiative would run for the next council elections and win in a landslide. Then everyone would sue each other, and after about 5 to 10 years of legal battle, construction would be approved under strict additional conditions. By then, the cost would have doubled and the plant as planned and approved would be technologically obsolete and important components out of production, so there would be no other choice than repeating the entire planning and approval process all over.
At the time of posting the UK energy mix is a disappointing 50% FF. Not a lot of wind in the North Sea I guess. At peak it could be 25% FF or even lower with clear skies. At least there’s usually more wind at the same time lower temperatures increase demand.
Very disappointing. I think a large part of that is because up until earlier this year it was basically impossible to get permission for new wind turbines in England. That has now technically changed, but only insofar as it’s now just next to impossible as opposed to actually impossible.
Well that doesn’t help, but installed capacity is over 20GW (well, it was before Dogger bank, it’s probably more now). It was very satisfying last Christmas when high winds, along with mild temperatures, and a lot of shops and offices being closed meant wind was able to cover a substantial amount of the reduced demand. FF generators were under 2GW at one point, pretty much idle standby.
You’re looking at the overall generation portfolio though, I’m pretty sure the OP’s figures are just taking total renewable generation against total demand - meaning it doesn’t account for the exported generation, eg how Scotland exports to the UK and Europe.
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