EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green

"green" in this sense just means it's eligible to receive funding/tax status that is otherwise not available. It's not a judgement on whether the technology is carbon neutral.

That's what the EU Taxonomy does: it labels activities and specifies precise criteria.

It was never meant to succeed, much like Apple's concessions to right to repair, it's just a distraction designed to buy time

Perhaps it will be competitive with batteries or synthetic or carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuels.

And they will be right. If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple.

By giving themselves this loophole the EU is undermining the market forces that will make green energy viable. We don't need to find economical energy sources anymore. We need to dump money into green energy now and last month and a decade ago. The price doesn't matter, just build true green energy and subsidize it until it becomes economical.

Make cities walkable, bikeable and public transportable. That will have far bigger impact than people buying new electric cars.

German Energiewende is criminal. Plain and simple. Shame on the Grünen, shame on the pseudo-environmentalists.

These are the same thing in common parlance. High CO2 emission plants are fossil fuel driven, and those are of course non-renewable.

Wind, solar and nuclear are renewable, sustainable and low CO2. Nuclear in particular also produces very little waste as a function of power generated and extraction of uranium from seawater could fit the renewable definition.

Its energy is "greener" than that of coal, or heavy oil: more energy is released per a CO₂ molecule produced. Also, unlike coal, it does not produce radioactive ashes.

But it's not carbon-neutral, of course. I'd call this "olive" or "lime" energy: greenish but not wholly green.

You do this stuff because you want to accomplish something. If animals go extinct, that is obviously unfortunate, but it pales in comparison to the prospect that we do so.

The EU isn't trying to accomplish some type of perfect environmental justice, they're trying to keep the world habitable.

No, it just shows that one needs to read more than the headline. It does take all that into account as well, hence all the "if"s and the "transitional" label.

[1]: https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-...

From these points natural gas is relatively good, its main problem is CO2 emissions. I worry that focusing on CO2 would lead to going back from natural gas heating to biomass/wood heating, which could be CO2 neutral[1], but brings particulate pollution and other environmental externalities.

[1] although often is not due to extraction and processing steps

You need some way of manufacturing stored energy in accessible form. These plants should be already in development and being built to hit that target...

However the primary benefit to nuclear, beyond its acceptable carbon emissions, is that functioning as a base load removes a lot of the difficultly with building enough battery infrastructure to enable solar power to power peak load and through the night. This is particularly the case for service based economies whose peak load is often after dark.

OK, but the same applies to wind turbines. I don't see a lot of Teslas hauling wind turbines down I-80. Let's not set up double standards just for nuclear.

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-germany-nuclear-reactors...

Which will increase the pressure upon Gas demand at a time that is probably one of the worst for a long time, let alone the usual winter pressure.

Shame nuclear didn't get that green EU label years ago when, as France could of green lit it's updated nuclear plant program instead of stagnating in limbo at a time in which many of their existing plants are entering end of life and with current timescales, would at best see a few pushed past that or some serious shortfalls in energy production.

As for Germany building new plants, with the public opinion, I would suspect that Germany's nuclear production is something they are happy to offshore to France and buy in that green energy cheaply without any of the political fallout/protests on it's doorstep.

We won't have many euros left if we need to fight climate change effects while we wait for new technologies. We need to use the technology we already have. In addition to that, in parallel, we also need to find enough land owners that are willing to have a wind turbine in their proverbial back yard. And in parallel install solar panels on available surfaces. And introduce (pumped, battery, etc.) energy storage. We need all of it.

Renewables don't have a money problem, it's a political and humanitarian problem. It literally costs money to have money (ask your bank), so the big money owners want to invest it. It's well known that solar panels and wind turbines pay for itself easily and are very low risk (lower even than an index fund if you operate more than a single device).

Nuclear isn't so simple, but has unique advantages. We don't have the luxury to play politics around whether nuclear is renewable or not, it's low on greenhouse gases and doesn't require a lot of land per MWh. No point delaying further while we debate for another five years about whether we should really fund this not-truly-renewable technology.

For gas, I mostly agree with you because that's an ongoing emission source with much higher greenhouse gas emissions. Building new gas plants isn't going to get us very far (even if its merits vs. alternatives need to be weighed on a case-by-case basis).

But nuclear is different from gas: it's a calculable emission source for the initial construction, and over its lifetime will be orders of magnitude lower, in the same ballpark as wind and hydro.

I'd love to go with only truly renewable sources (not that "renewables" like wind and solar have renewable or long-lived hardware, but it's a good start). I just don't see that as an option in densely populated western Europe. I'm happy that the EU looks at merits here rather than ideologies.

This is not quite correct.

The first decision to phase-out nuclear was made around the year 2000 [1]. Its initial date for the shutdown of the last nuclear reactor was set to be 2022. The plan was agreed upon by the owners of these plans.

Around 2010, this first decision was taken back, and a few months later, Fukushima happened. This led to the second decision to phase-out nuclear.

Only then, eight of 17 reactors were turned off quickly. But this had no major impact, because the switch to renewables was already under way for ten years.

Compare Germany's coal consumption after Fukushima with Japan's, and you'll noticed the difference.

[1] https://wiki.energytransition.org/the-book/policies-for-clea...

Germany is investing heavily in green energy, but green energy won't be able to provide the necessary energy for years to come. Switching to their objectively worse power sources, both in terms of carbon emissions and release of radioactive compounds to the surrounding environment, was a stupid move based on nothing more than FUD.

It's the classic outsource stuff to other nations and claim victory tactic that helps nobody.

There have been two serious nuclear incidents that have rendered land uninhabitable. One was a Soviet reactor that was already outdated at the time it was put to use, the other was the result of a tsunami. The entire field of research has been put on hold since Chernobyl, but the problems that caused the disaster have long since been solved.

Nuclear reactors have several advantages over solar and wind. Not taking up as much space, for one. There's also the ability to work during windless nights without having to install massive battery arrays.

The existing energy grid also isn't prepared for every house generating their own electricity. I know of several cities that simply refuse to connect more solar panels to the grid because the load cannot be distributed. The necessary expansion and reconstruction of the grid is planned to take about thirty years if work starts today.

Solar is great if solar panels are in constant use for over ten years, but advances in technology and deterioration of the panels themselves make many money wise consumers switch out their panels much earlier, sometimes even before they've earned back their production and transportation costs. We're just offsetting the environmental damage, moving it to mining and production facilities in China where we don't have to care.

Wind is the only green technology that I think is actually green enough not to be ruined by private economic incentives, but the NIMBY factor is huge. You're right that Europe is densely populated in comparison, and you need quite a lot of distance from the giant blades to not be affected by the many stressor such plants create, like the constant whooshing, the moving shadows and the constant low hums that come with most of them. Placing them at sea is a great solution for all of those problems, though.

There is no holy grail in energy. We'll go solar if price is more important than the environment, wind if availability is more important than the surrounding inhabitants, or coal and gas when we just need power without all the complaining.

Meanwhile, we'll always be planning some nuclear plants in Europe, because hospitals need radioactive compounds. The current ones are deteriorating but they have to keep operating because nobody wants to build new plants, but at some point we'll either have to build some at some point or not offer certain kinds of care in certain areas anymore.

But Siberia is not Eastern Europe, is it? It lies fully in the Asian part of Russia. Why are you labelling this an East/West thing?

Europe need a to take some quick and uncomfortable decisions here. It can’t be acceptable to have homes heated with fossil fuel anywhere in the rich part of the EU at least, even just a decade from now. This was just a climate issue up until the annexation of Crimea. Now it’s a question of what western democracies can and can’t do (such as: would if Finland wants to join NATO and Russia threatens Germany with gas shortages unless they veto).

The grants for switching fossil burners for heat pumps in single family homes have existed (at least in Sweden, Finland etc) for what, 20 years now? What’s happening on that front on the continent? Are there no grants? Are they not attractive?

So Russian sabre rattling is actually the US? There is a long and complicated history between Western Europe and Russia, but the time when one is selling gas to the other is just the final 20 years. It is not in the EU’s interest to depend on an unreliable partner that is trying to destabilise it. Even more so for something as vital as energy production.

> Particularly when they go completely contrary to the other stated goal; Climate change.

How is getting rid of gas contrary to the climate change related goals? These call for the end of all fossil fuel generated electricity.

> Western Europe has been dependent on Eastern Europe's resources for a very long time

Some references would be useful here. I don’t really doubt it but as you wrote it, it sounds too much like hand waving.

> Another huge chunk is household use for heating and kitchen appliances

Electricity is perfectly fine for these uses. Transitioning is expensive but mitigation if we don’t will be even more.

> While trying to supply that demand with imported American NGL would be the complete opposite of "Think of the climate!".

It would also be contrary to the EU’s long term interest. We love the Americans, but we’ll be wary that another Trump could tear down treaties and agreements way too easily. Some companies are already importing shale gas from North America and nobody is pleased.

> That's why declaring Eastern Europe's resources just as "taboo" is not a solution that will get us anywhere useful.

It’s a good thing nobody is doing that, then.

> At some point we have to decide what's more important; Fighting climate change as a species or instrumentalizing it for these kinds of foreign policy games that usually leave everybody worse off, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

Cute. Now, in the real world, we’re not going to fight climate change with gas either. Also in the real world, the EU is not the US.

If Germany used more nuclear, then more houses would probably start heating with electricity (or at least newly built houses), like in France.

But this is pretty much connected. If you have cheap electricity, you can easily use it for heating instead of natural gas.

yes, but the document mandates that the gas has to be from renewable sources by 2035

And instead of comparing nuclear to a magical zero-pollution/emission, flawlessly safe, always-available power source, we should compare it to what it actually gets replaced with.

Which will of course not be enforced, besides the fact that biogas as a “green energy” has huge caveats.

The 2035 "low carbon gases" thing is just ridiculously unworkable and will be repealed later as unrealistic.

So at best, they'll just trading ~10 years of coal power for ~5 years of coal power followed by 40+ years of fossil methane power. That's a terrible trade.

There aren't greener alternatives that will produce all the power we need -- yes we can invest in wind power etc., but that won't produce enough power for a modern society.

Nuclear is the greenest realistic option.

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

> Investments in natural gas power plants would also be deemed green if they produce emissions below 270g of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour (kWh), replace a more polluting fossil fuel plant, receive a construction permit by Dec. 31 2030 and plan to switch to low-carbon gases by the end of 2035.

This is about keeping infrastructure in place that can be retooled for a hydrogen economy [0].

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/europes-gas-firms-prime...

The laws proposed by the European Commission still need to be accepted by the European Parliament as well, indeed the commission is basically fully subordinate to the parliament, so even if the European Commission was somehow "unfairly controlled by France and Germany", which I find highly suspect considering the specifications of it, the parliament is responsible in the end, and that consists entirely of elected representatives.

This sounds more like typical Brexit-style anti-EU propaganda than a valid summarisation of the politics of the EU.

> But this decision was taken by the European Commission, a group that's not elected.

The members of European Commission are proposed by their member state governments, one from each. Do you elect directly minister or most of the posts in government?

Commission and Council are appointed by national governments while only European Parliament is directly elected by citizens. Reason for this is that no national government want to lose the power.

[1]: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE

Part of that advantage is that Romanian labor laws are less restrictive (the minimum wage is a third of the french one, for instance). So France had a choice between repelling labor laws to keep worker competitive, tell all french truckers they could kiss their job goodbye, or introducing some protectionism.

I'm usually in favor of free trade, even when it costs jobs, but in that case I think free trade would be a direct race to the bottom. Jobs performed in a country should respect that country's labor laws, otherwise companies will just shop around for the country with the least restrictive labor laws without even having to move their operation. Unrestricted european trucking went against that.

second paragraph: you should look at how electricity works. it is a european market not a french one. per wikipedia « In 2020, France retains its position as the leading exporter in Europe with a total exporter of 43.2 TWh, down by around 13 TWh compared to 2019; commercial export volumes decreased by 7% to 77.8 TWh, while import volumes increased by 22% to 34.6 TWh. The balance of trade remained an exporter every month except September, which is usually a very exporting month; this anomaly is explained in particular by the sharp drop in the availability of nuclear power plants« and it was same for 2021

In Lithuania you can no longer build new homes heated by gas. All new homes have to be classed as a zero energy building, heated by renewal sources, which natural gas from Russia is not. If it works there, it can work everywhere else in Europe too.

In 2020, it was Germany who was the largest electricity exporter on the planet [0], must be thanks to our nuclear power?

[0] https://www.worldstopexports.com/electricity-exports-country...

now that russia push for gas all western media (beside germany that broke a deal with them) see it as evil. i remember not that long ago a nobel prize winning american president praising himself and being praised by journalists for pushing gas. I guess it,just proves energy,is political first

you mean fossil gas

gas can be used very well for storage, i.e. compensating renewables by storing its energy for long periods of time

It's almost as if most people have budgets that can't so easily handle a doubling of their bills.

Just the pure kWh cost here is like upper 20s eurocents per kWh, plus about 10 euros per month fixed fee for metering and stuff (average household will consume a few hundred kWh per month, let's say 200, so ten euros adds about 20% to the price). Total cost per kWh for me personally is .33€/kWh or, to put it in comparable units, 3.3 NOK.