Greece passes first climate law, vows to cut dependence on fossil fuels
uk.news.yahoo.com
uk.news.yahoo.com
In any case, the thig is that this made Greece be self-sufficient on power and allowed us to pay a very small price on electrical bills (because coal is very cheap and we don't need to import it; actually the Greek Public Power Corporation owns the coal mines so it doesn't even pay for it, it only mines it).
Unfortuanately, over the last 5-10 years this has changed greatly: The EU has passed some laws that force all members to have a minimum amount of "green" power (i.e wind / sun etc). This may seem like a good thing on first sight (Greece has a lot of sun and wind) but it is very, very problematic: The "green" power is much more expensive than traditional power (needs a lot of investments in new power plants which also are much more expensive than coal) and also it is much less reliable than good old coal (you also need power at night or when there's no wind, power cannot be saved to be used later).
On top of that, the EU has also passed some CO2 laws that more or less forbid us to use our coal plants because if we keep using them we'll need to pay a very big fine for every ton of CO2 these plants produce. This resulted in a need for Greece to use imported natural gas to cover its power needs. The end result because of these two fine EU laws is that is we greeks pay the most expensive power in the EU, despite being one of the poorest countries!
So, no matter what the article says or what laws have been passed, the truth is that: Greece cannot use its own coal nor its thermoelectric power plants because the EU will not allow Greece to use it. Greece is forced to import solar panels and wind turbines from abroad (while thermoelectric power plants that have been built a few years ago have been left to rot). Greece is also forced to use imported natural gas to cover its needs (while our mountains are full of coal).
Because this is Greece where nothing ever works right, the plan failed (though I don't know the particulars) and so you can still, today, see plots of land that would normally be planted with vegetables or cereals etc, instead covered in solar panels. My understanding is that those are not connected to the grid, their owners can't sell the power they generate and they don't even have the funds to tear them down, so they're just left there to disintegrate slowly, while the entire plan is canned due to incompetence and shoddy planning.
Like everything else in Greece, and like this new plan will inevitably end up.
Greece has immediate access to deep ocean for cheap storage, and plenty of sunshine and wind year-round. Transmission lines out to the rest of Europe could make them a major exporter.
I am curious about what you mean, can you please elaborate?
But pumping water and air, driving winches, and building pressure vessels are all mature tech.
Energy storage is mostly freshman-level physics (E = Fx, E = mgh), chemical schemes excepted. Undersea methods can often be adapted to an under-groundwater form.
The winning energy storage methods will be the cheapest ones, even at the expense of round-trip efficiency. But forms that are shippable, such as liquified ammonia synthesis, have an advantage than can overcome both higher cost and lower efficiency.
Most places will rely on a mix.
Greece can do it!
Scotland also plans big wind park.
There are houses that already run on 100% renewables (summer solar generated hydrogen)
Current nuclear plants just dont fail in such way as to "threaten all of Europe and Africa"
I'm not against nuclear, but can we please not build them in places that present unnecessary risks?
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-hope...
Sure technology has improved and it is safer, but you know can make it even safer still? Not putting them on places with lots of seismic activity.
The death and destruction from tsunami itself was several orders of magnitude more than from nuclear station malfunction. [1]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11...
Because whenbyou do the math of cost benefit, it falls squarely on the benefits side.
"Not building on places with seismic activity" is.
One can also build some of them on a barge and moor it over deep water just like a deepwater oil rig, where it will be protected from earthquakes. The US is currently designing one, the Russians already have one but that's not an option anymore.
Also, smaller the Greek islands are not big energy consumers. A wind farm, solar plus storage might be enough for most if them. Also use the surplus to make hydrogen and store it for burning in a gas generator. Some of them are near the shore and they're already powered by cable.
Of all the possible places to build nuclear plants, why go put them in a place that has plenty of sunshine and tons of seismic activity?
No matter how favorable the odds, why play those when there are places that could be even better?
Assuming the future successful invention and deployment of battery power storage to provide a consistent 11,000 Megawatt-hours per day (a fairly typical large city supply amount), what do you think would happen to those enormous ganged up batteries in an earthquake?
https://battlebornbatteries.com/lithium-ion-battery-puncture...
No, absolutely not. I said in the first comments, not against nuclear. What I am against is pushing for unproven designs facing avoidable risks.
it has been standard from the late 60s.
In Fuertaventura wind is almost base load power because you have >10 kt most if not all of the time.
Before those social and political, rather than technological, obstacles to progress are resolved, the last thing anyone should encourage Greece to do is install nuclear bloody reactors on our land.
Corruption and abuse of power is not just a Greek thing.
You're just trying your best to misinterpret what I actually wrote.
That implies that your problem is specifically with Greece having nuclear plants, and that there are other societies that are capable of managing nuclear reactors on their land. Does it not?
Do you disagree with what I wrote above, about the situation in Greece?
Because you said that "Corruption and abuse of power is not just a Greek thing". Not "just" a Greek thing, yes? So you must think that it is a Greek thing.
Note, my comment was not only about "corruption and abuse of power", but also about incompetence. See in my comment: "a country were rank incompetence runs rampant". You didn't seem to disagree with that - you only commented about corruption and abuse of power.
So which parts of all this do you disagree with? Can you clarify?
I'm sorry but I have to confess, I'm very confused by the way you choose to communicate. If instead of attacking an opinion I didn't express, you had taken the time to think carefully about what I acturally wrote, and made a comment about that, you could have spared us both a lot of wasted effort. If you didn't have time to think carefully and you just wanted to express your disagreement or frustration at my comment, you could always just downvote my comment. But if you're going to put time in a discussion, then put enough time in it to avoid confusing everyone, including yourself. If I may.
I agree that Greece is not the best place to build reactor plants, but I do not agree with the reasons you provided.
There are other countries that also have incompetence and corruption - endemic and systemic - and yet they still promote big enterprises, and I don't see how this is an argument against the project in itself.
I understand now your disagreement. Out of curiousity, what is the reason you don't think Greece is not the best place to build reactor plants?
That is what happens when globalists and climatists from Brussels grab you by your... budgets.
Things haven't been going great for Greece since Varoufakis betrayed his voters and local politicians became agents of the EU. Sad!
Curious what you mean?
Beyond the cultural heritage, they’re a NATO member in a semi-hostile state with Turkey and, as of today, Iran.
Turkey and Greece are super important for the regional stability in Southeastern Europe. Together they control most of the waterways in the region. You should view most of the Aegean along with the Sea of Crete as Greece, because it is Greek territorial waters and EEZ
I think culturally Greece will be relevant for a long time to come because of the construction of Ancient Greece as a sort of origin for “western society.”
Economically, well, you have to try something, right? I may agree in the sense that I don’t think Greece would be doing this if they were an economic powerhouse, doing great thanks to oil. But, is it bad to do something not completely altruistically?
Greece is bankrupt. It made this cute announcement because it costs the country nothing, and should anything go wrong, it would be rescued by the EU.
From 4 Apr 2022:
Greece has received three international bailouts from the euro zone and the IMF worth 280 billion euros ($307.19 billion) since 2010. It emerged from its latest bailout in 2018 and has relied on the debt markets to cover its borrowing needs since.
“Greece concluded today the repayment of its debts to the IMF,” Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said in a statement. After previous early repayments to the IMF, Greece owed 1.9 billion euros in loans due by 2024, the last batch of a total of 28 billion euros the Fund provided between 2010 and 2014.
https://www.reuters.com/article/greece-economy-imf-idUSKCN2L...