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Comment by synotna | Hacker News Reader

I dunno about de-facto, my anecdata is my heating is in the process switching from L-Gas to H-Gas, have not heard any mention of replacing gas in the near future for existing properties

Wonder what the stats are for new builds being with gas heating vs without

Am not optimistic about German electricity handling the switching of heating and transport (cars) on top of existing usage+growth as long as we're antinuke (:

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Electric heating and transport both help introduce renewables faster as they are both effectively storage. EVs are literally batteries that can charge off peak and electric heat pumps can work near continously to store heat in the building fabric and pause when demand is high.

Good insulation is another super boring technology that really helps too.

Yeah, its pretty unrealistic to imagine any zero-Carbon approach which excludes nuclear. But the greens would rather cover their eye/hears about that, and imagine that it can all be done with wind and solar (in northern europe of all places).

It’s certainly possible, just very very expensive due to capacity factors and storage. Like ‘multiples of GDP’ expensive depending on the napkin math used.

Is the carbon footprint being taken into account regarding batteries, windmill blades, and solar panels? These are all very expensive consumables, with no good way to reuse or recycle. Specifically the windmill blades and solar panels.

How does nuclear help with heating homes? The last time I checked we put nuclear plants far away from people, not use them for district heating.

Ever hear of electric heating? How on earth would you expect solar or wind to be used for heating. It's far from the cheapest option currently, but you're not getting rid of fossil fuels without electric heat.

Northern Europe has a lot of offshore wind capacity.

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