EU to Bet on Electrification to Avert Recurring Energy Crises
(www.bloomberg.com)
from silence7@slrpnk.net to world@lemmy.world on 14 Apr 19:42
https://slrpnk.net/post/36568196
from silence7@slrpnk.net to world@lemmy.world on 14 Apr 19:42
https://slrpnk.net/post/36568196
How we get off fossil fuels looks very roughly like this:
- Generate electricity without burning stuff (wind, solar, geothermal, storage, and maybe nuclear if it’s cheap enough)
- Electrify everything we can (electric vehicles, elecrified mass transit, ebikes, heat pumps for home and district heat, nitrate fertilizer manufacturing, etc)
- Stop doing the things we can’t (a few industrial processes)
#world
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Honestly, sounds like a solid plan. The best time to start this would have been a decade ago. The second best time is now. To be fair, we already made good progress into this direction, bit we need to double down, that much has become obvious in the last few weeks.
We could have started 25 years ago at least. I remember watching the documentary “Who killed the electric car?” when it came out in 2006.
I’ve been saying for a decade now that electrification is the only viable way forward. All our energy efforts should be focused on that.
Electricity can be made in many ways that don’t require burning fuel, and that doesn’t release CO2. And electricity is in many ways the superior form of energy to achieve most common tasks.
For instance a heatpump running on electricity made from burning wood in a power-plant, only requires half the wood to generate the same amount of heat as if the wood was burned to heat the house directly.
An electric car similarly running on electricity from burning oil in a power-plant, still use slightly less oil than a comparable ICE car. Because the power plant is more efficient than an ICE engine, and the EV has very little waste.
When you can produce clean electricity from wind turbines, hydro power, solar panels or even nuclear power plants, the pollution and CO2 generated by that energy consumption, is only a tiny fraction of conventional energy sources, like burning fossil fuel.
Even steel smelters can now be powered by electricity, and AFAIK they are already working on implementing that in Sweden.
Something I was told years back was impossible, which it obviously isn’t.
It is way easier to make electricity environmentally friendly and sustainable, than it is for any form of burning fuel. Even If you can burn fuel without CO2 and pollution, that too can be used to generate electricity.
The future is 100% electric.
Almost everyone have been saying that. Except the oil industry lobbyists.
Well our politicians haven’t, because electricity has been heavily taxed.
And recently there have been problems with the grid having problems keeping up.
If you want people to move to electricity, you would want to make it advantageous for users to switch to electrical sources.
But all we’ve had is that EV cars have been taxed less than ICE cars. But that’s only a single segment of energy use, although it’s a big one.
They’re among the ones getting paid by the lobbyists ;)
Also a problem with politicians. It’s not like it’s a surprise o r sudden
Yes that’s the point, politicians and government are representatives of the people.
finaly
In contrast, Trump is betting on oil. This might cause the US to fall technologically behind in the development of green energy.
Not as much as you may think.
Australia ranks 46th in share of renewable in power generation, with 40.7% renewables
Australia has had some big hydro going for decades, homeowners are taking matters into their own hands installing solar&batteries, and some individual states are taking action,eg SA had the largest battery in the world when commissioned 10 years ago in 2016
Australia has a big conflict in that it also has large exports of coal and gas, with hard lobbying by miners that crosses into local power production, especially legacy coal power plants.
I think Trump bets on getting lots of bribes. He doesn’t gives a shit about US energy infrastructure.
Would have been cool to see Europe starting this seriously years ago, instead of titering and waiting for oil situation to explode. But at least it’s happening. Now I hear friends and family back home that were not into electric cars, now finally considering getting one. Now that even the availability of gas at station is not a given. Brighter future!
They will “float some measures”. We’ll see what Germany and France will say. So far Germany is still pushing hard for ICE cars because they are to shortsighted to invest in EVs and France is blocking a lot of developments so they can export electricity from their nuclear plants to other countries.
Not shortsighted. Carbrained and corrupt. Also, the time to invest in European EV production has passed. China has got that market cornered now. German carmakers squandered any advantage they might have initially held on building bulky, expensive cars that the average person can’t even afford.
Yes, because they were good at building ICE cars and wanted to squeeze as much profit out of it as possible instead of investing in transition into EV. They still look at the next quarter instead of the next decade. So yeah, shortsighted.