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Comment by kwertyoowiyop | Hacker News Reader

If Russia exports oil to Europe, then Russia has leverage over Europe (we will stop exporting to you). But Europe also has leverage over Russia (we will stop buying from you). Europe just has to be willing & able to use that leverage. Which it probably isn't, since it requires cooperation among several democratic countries.

If Russia exports all its oil/gas to China, then neither Europe nor Russia has leverage over the other. But Russia must be leery of tying its fortunes to China, since China is much bigger economically, not scared of Russia's military, and as an autocratic regime able & willing to use that leverage.

Geopolitique...wheels within wheels...

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It’s quite ironic that China benefits from all sides of this.

They’ll probably cut a deal for Russia for cheap oil and gas, while simultaneously selling renewables, e.g Solar Panels, Heat Pumps, Wind Turbines, etc. right back to Europe. In addition, the Ukraine situation gives them strategic advantage in predicting the West’s reaction if they take Taiwan. Since the takeover and dismantling of democracy in Hong Kong went so well, with so little pushback from the West, they are probably feeling quite confident.

If geopolitics were a game China is the real winner.

Oil and gas can be only a short term disruption to either Russia or Europe, because both are commodities AND have substitutes.

Natural gas is a little more problematic because the pipelines and LNG terminals are a big investment, but this matters less over the long term.

Disruptions in fossil fuel supplies - are another reason to switch to renewables and nuclear, the best substitutes in the long and medium term; so Russia is eroding the foundations of its economy. The Kremlin instead of researching hypersonic missiles should be investing in RnD to either find the commodity Russia can export or new alternative uses for oil.

Germany keeps foot gunning themselves when it comes to nuclear and then ends up using it anyway, just imported from France. As for hypersonic missile research, Russia is as aware as any other country in the world of what happens when the United States has you at a great military disadvantage.

They are unlikely to proceed with their scheduled nuke shutdown for 2022 given Russia's actions. Perhaps they will consider reopening the nukes they've shut down recently as well.

Only 15% of gas in Germany are used for electricity production. 85% is used for heating and in the industry and this is completely unrelated to the shutdown of nuclear plants.

Germany needs to replace gas heatings with heat pumps and gas usage in industry with hydrogen to reduce the dependency on Russian gas.

The problem is not a lack of electric energy (this year also 12 coal plants will be shut down, while a lot of renewable energy is being installed). Reopening the nuclear plants will not help.

15% is still a non-trivial amount. I assume some newer housing also uses electric heating only -- either direct floor heating or electric boiler. Is that already included in those 15%?

Anyway, renewables alone can't completely replace coal or gas, since their output is relatively unstable and unpredictable. So far Germany has been ignoring that problem while shitting on neighboring countries which cover for their fluctuations and which obviously can't pull the same trick now.

You can see the usage for electricity ("Stromversorgung") in https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/entwicklung-d... . Actually in 2021 it was only 12.7% instead of 15%. This includes all electricity usage, there is no separate electricity production for heat-pumps or resistance heating. As you can see in https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/stromerzeugun... gas usage for electricity went down when the prices for gas went up in the second half of 2021. This share could probably be reduced further, but currently there is no need for this.

Europe has an integrated grid. The purpose of this grid is to balance fluctuations. NordLink (https://www.tennet.eu/our-grid/international-connections/nor... ) was explicitly build to access the more than 100 TWh of available pumped water storage in Norway to store wind energy. And I guess Norway is making some money from it. Denmark has an even higher share of wind energy than Germany (70% last week). The Netherlands got 30% of its energy from wind last week, Austria 26%, Poland 25%. France uses German electricity when it is cold in winter and resistance heating is using more energy than they can produce or if they have to shut down some nuclear plants because of security issues (https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1549986/macron-france... ). They are all pulling the same trick.

Again: Balancing is the purpose of the grid and not "shitting on neighboring countries".

The trick is replacing coal and nukes which have predictable output with renewables while depending on the same not being replaced in the neighboring country. Poland and Czechia to be precise.

I suppose given recent developments this whole discussion is moot though :)

The thing is though that 40% of the German gas supply comes from Russia at the moment. That means that if you can eliminate the 15% used for electricity, you've reduced the demand for Russian gas by about 38%. Put that way, reopening the newly shut nuclear plants makes a lot of sense. Refuelling and starting an existing power plant should be far quicker than building a brand new power plant or wind farm. You'll still have a lot of demand for gas from heating, but the warm winter and arrival of spring should reduce that too in the next few months.

Longer term, you are right about the need for more heat pumps to replace gas heating, and I'd also add extra insulation to that to reduce the heating needed from any source. The heat pumps can be powered by nuclear, renewables or gas depending on cost and preference.

The trick here would be to tariff exports from countries buying oil and gas from Russia.

Of course, since it just became more expensive for Europe to source energy, we should remove some of the import duties on European products to help them stomach the cost of the transition.

Germany said no to NS2, wouldn't be surprised if now gets no help, because weakness usually gets punished and not rewarded.

A slight nuance is if Russia has only one customer for it's gas and oil, then China may feel they do not have to pay the going market rate. It depends if Xi thinks he is a charity for Putin.

LOL. Xi probably believes that China is the best and most advanced civilization on earth, and earth's rightful ruler. His goal may be that Russia becomes like North Korea, a weak country existing at China's pleasure because they tweak the rest of the world.

Lets entertain ourselves with following scenario:

Commandos in unmarked uniform raid the Nord Stream 1, and Yamal pipeline pumping stations, and it's toast. Repairs will take half a year at a minimum.

Germans in inland lands are about to freeze within few weeks once the buffer, and reserves run out.

What will they do? Let their economy run, or let people freeze? What would be their real limit?

48.539005,22.155793

53.021956,23.921390

At least spring is around the corner.

Tom Clancy could get an entire book series out of this.

It’s been a mild winter in DE, and it’s late February - within a few weeks, it’s spring. Had this happened in December or January, yeah, I’d be super worried for my neighbors with gas heating.

It's not like that. "Reserves will last until summer" estimate been done with assumption of gas coming at current low rates, but not complete shutdown.

They can just turn the gas flow off. There’s no reason to destroy anything.

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