France ends gas heaters subsidies
reuters.com
reuters.com
If we're on the topic of nations wasting energy, let's talk about the US (no hate, just pointing out the facts).
I was shocked to see Las Vegas casinos on the strip keeping all the doors open while running the AC at full blast to have 22C in the middle of the desert, basically outdoor. Single pane windows in Miami that don't even close properly and have no outdoor blinds to not let all the sun heat in the house and instead vent it out via the AC, and a general level of poor building insulation that would be illegal in most of Europe. Plus, 4 way stop signs at many intersections causing vehicles to consume unnecessary fuel, tires and brake pads with the accompanying fine dust that comes with it.
It all seemed mad to me.
Of course then there’s the one job where the owner walked into department saw that everyone was wearing full winter jackets, mittens and scarves. Next day it was more reasonable.
You're right. It's madness.
It's a strong argument for sustained high fuel prices. The world cannot carry on like this.
So instead of actually solving problems that waste the most energy, we should virtue signal instead? ban something because 'it sends the wrong message', not because it is an actual problem?
How many of these heaters are in a typical city? In which period of the year are they turned on? Total is probably mimiscule compared to gas used for heating or cooking.
And you can always just give out blankets.
Luckily I see infrared heaters more and more which fulfil the same role but are much more efficient, and with the current energy prices the financial incentives might be good enough that places replace them voluntarily.
Especially so in France, which already has massive carbon-free electricity sources.
This sounds a bit rich, I mean, many of us here in Europe don't have the financial resources to just shrug this off as "it might as well happen now than in 10 years from now". I agree though with the take on France, they're one of the few countries in Europe who can afford to make that move right now (at least on paper, I don't know the details of their electrical and power grid).
So this seems like exactly the right approach: the state is shifting subsidies to the cleaner source, doing what should be done anyway.
I agree affordability is an issue, and the state should step in where necessary.
- a big capex (~20k euros)
- a sufficiently insulated house
So potentially, for old house in moderately cold winter climate that means 50-60k euro investments that probably can be paid back in 15 years, if everything last at least 15 years without breakages... Far more economical air-air or air-water heat pumps can't be used in many place simply because of exterior temperature, especially at night, and insufficient insulation.
Of course: we know all houses MUST tend to consume less, BUT pushing the need for new houses in the middle of a crisis, where many comprehend that's partially natural, but also partially artificial (just to make some people richer) it's not exactly a viable way. Italy for instance launch a "110% incentives" that essentially means: we (government) pay 110% of any work needed to get 2 energy consumption class improvement in houses. The result after more than an year is a disaster: due to high demand it's almost impossible finding anything and prices have been skyrocket well passing bonus thresholds. France have launched a bit before "1 euro symbolic price for generic insulation", as a result many choose it, it was far simple than the Italian 110% but again the outcome was mostly very bad: to maximize profits most enterprises have done very bad/useless jobs just dropping insulation without ventilation, without caring of humidity etc.
IMVHO the SOLE option is pushing individual homes, offering incentives to sell apartments to the State (buy back to demolish in the future) in exchange of new A-class houses. That means a first batch of remote workers and retirees from the middle class, behind them small opportunities for service industry will appear so new people coming and behind them others as well. That's might be doable in 25+ years for a significant amount of people, in 50+ years for most with a new old distributed economy in the whole country instead of a concentrated ones in the hands and places. The rest seems to be a classic stereotypical USA-style business plan: try and fix on the go while making disasters on scale. It's a recipe for a disaster so big that have all the potential for a global unrest at WWIII level...
Just pushing "small potatoes" efficiency like "just change to heat pumps for hot water, induction plates etc" is meaningless: the outcome will be may small capex for not really reduced opex, a big amount of wastes, a big gains for few who build such appliance and no real benefit for the society. For instance I have a hot-water heat pump and a solar p.v. system, most of the time I prefer heat water with the classic 2.7kW electrical resistance inside the pump because it's load curb works far better with p.v. self-consumption since it's far faster than the heat pump and so let me schedule more loads (washing machine, dishwasher etc) during the peak hours. Long story short: if we push p.v. systems it's better for them having a kind of electrical appliance that's NOT better for reduce power bill without p.v. and that's a problem. Also their MTBF vary and that's another problem. These days and not from today too many prefer focusing on an aspect and ignore the big picture, that does not work. We always need the big picture.
> (ii) the power to be replaced cannot be generated from renewable energy sources, based on a comparative assessment with the most cost-effective and technically feasible renewable alternative for the same capacity identified; the result of this comparative assessment is published and is subject to a stakeholder consultation;
> (iii) the activity replaces an existing high emitting electricity generation activity that uses solid or liquid fossil fuels
> (v) the facility is designed and constructed to use renewable and/or low-carbon gaseous fuels and the switch to full use of renewable and/or low-carbon gaseous fuels takes place by 31 December 2035, with a commitment and verifiable plan approved by the management body of the undertaking;
> (vi) the replacement leads to a reduction in emissions of at least 55% GHG over the lifetime of the newly installed production capacity;
So in short gas is only green if the investment replaces coal or oil, reduces GHG by 55%, is replaced with renewables before 2035 and no renewable alternatives exist. This is a very limited scope. For heating purposes Germany is moving away from gas as well: https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/entwicklung-b... From 2025 on each installed heating has to be powered by 65% renewable energy. This basically rules out gas+oil.
If you want social redistribution, implement redistribution. Do cash handouts. But don't fuck up other field of politics. These special interests corrupt everything. If you want to solve a problem, tackle it. Don't play "over gang" so some body can fill their pockets in the process.
E: This is not about gas for our SUVs being 30% more expensive, this is about your heating bill quadrupling since Q1 2021 if you have to do a new contract now.
You'd be surprised. Mostly these arguments come from people who think the whole thing is bullshit (or have financial incentives to say so) and we should take no action at all, or even actively move back to more fossil fuels.
Apparently back in the heyday of the trans Atlantic slave trade, most people understood that it's a bad thing, that treating those people like shit will someday bite them in the ass, with slave revolts and the like. Given the sensibilities of the time - French Revolution, American Revolution etc proclaiming that people should be free etc. everybody understood this was just a matter of time.
But then you have all those voices saying - yeah its bad, but "Think of the people! How are they going to raise their children and feed their families without the slaves" ...
And it just sounds crazy, I wonder how future generations are going to think about all of our carbon problems. Well I guess I don't, the question is how much we're going to be condemned and called crazy.
It a bit like how America would panic if Russia put military hardware in Mexico. Basically Putin is trying to create a neutral zone on it's borders.
This doesn't excuse any of Putin's actions though.
That's what Russian propaganda keeps saying. But they ignore the huge amounts of gas that was found in the region of Ukraine that was annexed by Russia. Further, Ukraine gave back their nuclear weapons. Meaning, Ukraine already acted to demilitarize.
Ukraine moving closer to EU and NATO can be traced back to Ukraine finding huge gas reserves in 2012 and Russia attacking Ukraine in 2014.
Not really. Russian propaganda talk about liberating Ukraine because it is ruled by Nazi's. They talk about themselves as the heroes rather than wanting to destroy Ukraine "just" to create a neural zone.
The gas might be a motivator too but as you said yourself Ukraine was moving closer to EU and NATO before Russia started any hostilities.
Summarizing will always leave some detail out so I'll instead link to a talk that does go in depth into this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
Long story short: putin is a dictator BUT his propaganda have plenty fo truth to use against NATO just because the other side (USA and UK in primis, BUT others as well) are equally dictatorships only with much more hypocrisy and less symbols. The famous putin's definition of the west as the empire of lie is unfortunately actually true.
The "solution" then depend on who: for us, Citizens, the solution is eradicating the neoliberal ideology will all their apical figure put to serve lifetime jail in condition sore enough to discourage anyone trying to follow their examples. For USA and UK gov. the war MUST go on though because they need to silence protests against them by their own people hit by economic crisis and Democracy destruction operated by them. China LIKE the war because for them means having plenty of Russian's natural resources, at a discounted price, and also probably access to high tech military gears, probably enough to counter USA in few years given their industrial power. Putin need a bit the war to silence protests in Russia itself, destroy the oligarch he dislike (and he actually thanks the NATO for sanctions help). So that's the issue: the solution needed by the people is the opposite of the needs of the "élites".
Also you can notice that Russia have actual reasons to justify their actions, while they are certainly not the moving reasons, USA have LIED about Saddam's mass-destruction weapons, have LIED about Afghanistan protection to osama bin laden etc so far the Russian have not lied publicly, only in Mali they state they were not there just few months ahead of French withdraw and while formally true that was a deliberate lie since they have sent Wagner mercenaries, following the same path of USA usage of Blackwaters and co. But Iraq and Afghanistan was (and still are) the formal war, Syria (started by France, but kept going by NATO like Libya), Somalia, are not formal but still war with big numbers of people suffering and NATO is involved certainly not for peace enforcing or peace keeping ops.
I'm from Italy, nephew of Italians partisans from WWII, I do know the history of WWII and I do know who are "nazi" and who are not enough to understand that putin is a dictator, but on the other side there are other dictators and putin is a dictator outside my country, some others are dictators inside so their are more "primary enemies" than him. Actually as a EU Citizens I feel all the right to accuse my governments of high treason since it act against us citizens, raping the reminiscence of Democracy we still have, raping the Constitution, for foreign interests to speak clear and loud. For me so far remaining in NATO means remaining in a criminal association against the people in general. Also I'm pretty convinced that USA and UK Citizens interests are NOT the interests their government have...
[1] https://kyivindependent.com/opinion/yuri-polakiwsky-a-lend-l... https://archive.is/rXbiM
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eu-external-investment-plan/projects/uk... https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/06/30/u...
So yeah, Russia started 3 wars, the US 2. The agresser is clearly Russia.
I don't remember the specifics, but there are some aids for improving insulation in the form of direct cash contributions and also low (or no) interest loans, guaranteed by the state.
The minimum wages are 1269 after taxes. And while developer income is far from what it is in “hot” locations (berlin, london) to say nothing of the US, it’s generally way over min wages, by integer multiples.
Then good luck to the millennials out there will will have lower pensions than the boomers while also not being able to afford to own any properties.
In France, developers are amongst the most well off salaried people. A junior developper would already be well above the median income and amongst the top 30% earners.
Same goes for the family with three kids.
Indoor temperatures going down by a degree or two really is not a big deal.
Netherlands is planning to get rid off gas for a while. I've attended a presentation by the city. They planned to spend 12.500 EUR per house to switch to an local heating plan. Basically a source of hot water will enter the home. This pipe is way bigger than a gas pipe, this is why 12.500 EUR is needed per home.
They mentioned that likely you'll pay the same for heating as before.
I find it bonkers. With 12.500, why not insulate and maybe prepare it for a air/water heat pump. The radiators on really old homes will need to be replaced with ones that work with a low temperature. Walls need to be insulated, windows and window frames likely need replacing. Still, it's way better to be more energy efficient than to spend 12.500 EUR per house (of which 11.500 will be "subsidized") than asking people to change things without actually improving their homes.
The problem doesn't seem to be the money. The problem is that idiotic solutions are suggested. Plus that whatever is subsidized goes up in price. E.g. a air/water heat pump costs way too much.
You will not. You're describing city heating, which was easily 4-5 times as expensive as equivalent gas. That was before the > 2x price hike recently.
Not only: many industrial process need heat, they might probably switch to electricity but not "today" and even doing so the price of the output will be veeeery higher than today not counting the fact that actually we do not know how to satisfy such eventual hyper-big electricity demand. If tomorrow all cars became e.v. in a snap we simply can't recharge them. Not only: we can't make metals for the green revolutions without fossils. etc etc etc.
Long story short: I'm a LEFT-wing environmentalist and I see the Green New Deal as green as "dollar green" or "stereotypical toxic waste green", certainly not environment natural grass green. Oh, and do consider a thing: so far skyrocketed prices from gas, oil etc is NOT due to the Russians who keep selling as usual (and sanctions avoid touching those aspects) BUT due to future market speculations witch is a western and neoliberal thing, as "green" as the nazi, the same nazi they have armed and trained in Ukraine actually, not much differently on the original nazi in Germany, created and financed by the big & powerful of their time, locals AND from other countries included USA and UK wealthy and gov. (remember IBM and Standard Oil just to name two well known?)...
Smelling rodent for myself I've choose to live a big city for a mounting area (a bit remote, BUT well served for various aspects, from internet connections to food and services) building a modern insulated house, with a small p.v. systems etc at that time was not cheap but now start to pay back not much by nature but by artificially skyrocket price of anything. And that's not good ALSO for me because yes, these days I'm well served by such investments but that's for artificial reasons. I'm still be "less wealthy" than what I could due to the new deal. Only very few keep profiting toward 2030 agenda where "no one [but neoliberals élite] will own nothing"...
The Netherlands has an enormous oversupply of poop. It's been exporting it for years, to whoever will take it.
> the Green New Deal want to push a meat-less diet not because of pollution but because doing so means that food production is a big industrial business, not something little player can run and compete
I'm afraid you entirely lost me here. This (meat can be done profitably at a smaller scale than plant production) is quite simply a fabrication.
I'm talking about animal manure, not human's one... That last can't be used in agriculture because too many meds and diseases can pass along... The NL btw have a population density that can't really nourish it's resident without importing significant amount of foods. That's a classic problem, but in an age of scarcity it count much more than in an age of abundance...
> meat can be done profitably at a smaller scale than plant production) is quite simply a fabrication
Meat can be done at small scale, no matter the profit. You can easy raise chickens in your own backyard, nourishing them with some insects and various food waste if you can't have a bit of grains. They reproduce autonomously for almost the entire year and in 4-5-6 month you can slaughter them at home. That means you can at a hyper-small scale source proteins to keep yourself alive if needed. At a slightly bigger scale a S.E. can easily live selling eggs and meat. At a slightly bigger scale you can have goats and sheep, from a region of the earth to another it's just change the size of land needed to nourish a flock, goats and sheep live normally in rural central Asia, in place almost desertic for a hyper-large part of the year, they also live in Scandinavia and similarly in various part of Africa. At a slightly bigger scale came pigs and cows.
On contrary to nourish people with crackers made from grains and dried insects as the Green New Deal want you need factories. You need automated systems to dry insects (alive, of course) grind them into flour, cut this flour with the corn flour, add flavor enhancers and various other synthetic chemical compounds, package everything etc. That can't be done at a small scale. That's why Green New Deal want them: living on such "food" demand living on industry, without you perish, while living on classic fosterage can be done as we have done in the early age of humanity, surely it's not much living then surviving doing as such BUT it's still possible, so anyone can potentially do just owning land in almost any part of the world, it's just a matter of how much land is needed per human being. That's is...
To preserve meat you just need salt (yes saltpetre help, but it's not mandatory) and salt can be easily sourced from the see and in some lands without any specific tech. Making salami, hams etc demand nothing more (the casings are obtained from the animal).
I hope I have clarified now :-)
This is a hilarious conspiracy theory. (((They))) want to stop people from being able to live without industry because … there is such a huge population willing to do that? Right.
Essentially all such publishing depict a society when individuals own nothing and depend of very few hyper-giant conglomerate/zaibatsu/chaebol -alike private companies.
A conspiracy is something done in the dark, definitively not publishing plan for anyone who want to read...
Oh, BTW you can see trends everywhere to confirm those publications: start from the IT, how many do use someone else computers instead of their own iron? How many do have their emails locally, using them locally and relay on third parties just for IMAP and SMTP? How many leave their files on cloud "drives"? Keep going with cars: how many connected cars are on the market where the formal owner can't even repair hes/shes own vehicle? How many choose leasing instead of buying? How many rent a house and how are the trends of real estate market?
In the past was normal in most countries owning a house, was normal owning a car that can be repaired by anyone, was normal have personal archives on personal archival systems first on paper and than with desktop computers and so on.
Now take a look at your own life: how much you depend on third parties services and how few such parties are respect of your own great-grandparents?
My great-grandparents were very well off for their time, but I’d rather be a poor person (in Europe) today than swap places with them.
It's good practice to use sources which back up your claim, rather than just vaguely talk about the same topic.
Some people suffering from debilitating conditions may freeze to death in their homes, but those people weren’t capable of safely living by themselves in the first place.
I’ve lived through the winter in an old building that would barely heat above 17C, it wasn’t great, but I certainly wasn’t freezing all day long.
If heat pumps become economical, it's a game changer.
* (super summarized), France developped nuclear electricity back in the 70s. As a counterpart, Electric heaters were massively deployed
* Electric heaters were deployed with a technology named "fil pilote": when you change the phase, you can drive the target temperature https://www.vitahabitat.fr/blog/qu-est-ce-que-le-fil-pilote-...
* Unfortunatly, to drive the temperature, you need... something to drive it which was not deployed: you cannot plug a NEST and plugin in in a thermostat is complex
* In recent years, DIY based solutions based on Home Automation or Shelly were deployed by DIY communities but hey this require high skills & dedicated server (synology like), and sometime soldering. There is no plug and play solution on the market
* Heatzy.com proposed a wifi based solution but you can only do On/Off, not select a target temperature (so this is useless)
So having a single wifi small box to plug on the heater to drive the target temperature is a game changer
--> Since i'm looking at this market every years since 2013, it has not evolved until this post on hcknews! Very happy to see this solution coming! you made my day! (unfortunatly we're at the end of winter :))
"fil pilote" was probably useful in the 90s but it sounds outdated to me.
Also, why is a Linky meter necessary, shouldn't it work with any electricity meter?
On another note I don't understand how pilot wires aren't more widespread outside of France. I bought my radiators in France because I couldn't find here anything that would be easy to control, and anything controllable at all was 5 to 10 times as expensive.
Do you know if I can manage it through my own Home Assistant instance?
> Be an architect of the energy transition
> A unique Home Energy Management System
Just a shame this didn’t come 20-30 years back, when the country started working on migrating away from oil furnaces. While that was extremely successful it was mostly done by expanding nat gas municipal networks and replacing oil furnaces by gas-powered ones.
But that used to be a lot more common, these days it’s become rare outside of rather rural places for which a gas network is not economically viable. Basically as oil furnaces reached EOL, people would replace them with gas if they had a muni gas network (“gaz de ville”, literally city gas), because the country subsidised switching away from oil furnaces.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utiliti...
In Netherlands various farmers invested to switch from gas to alternative sources. These farmers are now way more competitive than before. Netherlands leads the way in technology around farmers. Farmers have huge expenses, these expenses can be reduced by investing. Some invested, some didn't.
What would help is to have more guidance around this. That not every person (and e.g. farmer) needs to figure things out on their own.
For a lot of basic machinery (and in the case of staple foods, seed), Russia is very dependent on imports which sanctions will adversely effect both the availability of and the availability of funds to pay for if they have a willing supplier. So, no, I don't think Russia is generally self-sufficient for food or energy even if they currently export it.
How much of Europe's natural gas consumption is used as fertilizer feedstock?
Europe has plenty of alternative gas sources from Algeria to Norway, all the way to LNG. The only benefit of Russia was geographic proximity to the baltic and central europe countries and their price point.
The main reason Russia's gas made sense in Europe was the transition of Coal Plants to NG plants (which is itself a mistake in my view). With enough infrastructure investment, and now with the political will behind it, Central Europe and the Baltics can transition to electric heating alternatives and cut-off most domestic gas dependencies.
Norway looks to be a more stable source https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Beginning-Of-...
But there was another source that I can't seem to find anymore that indicates that norway gas reserves are not that great.
edit: https://www.reuters.com/article/france-fertilizers-yara-intl... Fertilizer production was already hit by big gas prices, I think that cutting of russian gas won't help the situation.
Algeria already provides gas to most of Southern Europe, it is the 5th largest gas producer in the world.
> another source that I can't seem to find anymore that indicates that norway gas reserves are not that great.
Norway is 6th largest NG produce in the world and yields a cubic output equivalent to a quarter of Russia's output.
The point is a very large investment/infrastructure rollout will come around to pluck gas dependency from Russia, it will happen either by alternative sources or eliminating the need for NG in specific applications.
The cost issue is no longer on the table, the European block has woken up, this is a geo-political issue now, economics has been relegated.
I'd still call syria blocking pipelines at the behest of Putin, Armenia being filled with Russian military and Azerbaijan having it's production part Russian owned significant. It's done with a reason because switching sources ain't as easy as often portrayed.
France is only going to continue fund the Russian military for 5 more years. It is nice that they are speeding up the process away from fossil fuels, but 5 more years of funding a military invasion is 5 years too much.
Even if every single country in Europe was willing to kill their own citizens (removing cheap heating during cold seasons) by stopping using Gas today the Russian invasion of Ukraine would not stop.
France has, buy providing funds to Russia, enabled the invasion of Ukraine. France couldn't know this would happen before Russia actually sent in the troops, but that claim of innocence is lost now. If you provide funds today to Russia we know what those funds will be used on, and with the knowledge the buyer carry some responsibility just as if they donated money.
My parents now have a much quieter heating system that is immune to gas price shocks (they also got rid of their gas range for an induction cooktop and disconnected their gas hookup altogether). And now, of course the satisfaction of not funding Putin's war effort.