Seems much of Europe is still chained to LNG, and that demand is even wreaking havoc in countries which have been previously quite self-sustained, or really don't use LNG much themselves - with Norway being a good example.
The political unity so quickly after the start of the war was unexpected (and admirable).
Ten years from now, Europeans will drive electric (if they'll drive at all), solar panels will be everywhere, and the continued flex-work-from-home revolution will have created an enormous amount of extra time for everybody. They'll be comfy in their sustainable homes and healthy cities, those few years of inflation a memory only.
It's a tough transition, that eventually every country needs to make, but Europe will be ahead of the rest of the world by miles.
And in the US, 10 years from now, the next gas price spike will again have people start to whine (yet again), we'll still be coughing on fumes when dropping our kids of at their school, the energy grid will continue to be unreliable in face of every minor or major natural disaster, and we'll wonder why nothing really materially has changed (and then blame the government).
Most cars sold in Europe aren't electric: only 13%. Average car life in Europe is 11 years or something like that. So, no, ten years from now Europeans won't be all driving electric, far from it. Also something like 2/3rd of all europeans live in suburbs or rural: so, yes, they'll still be driving (or using horses). People enjoying the public transports in cities are a minority.
European Suburb != American suburb. I live in the suburbs of Paris, and i have two regular train lines (as in 15 minutes cadence in off peak times) within walking distance. The vast majority of commuters in and around Paris use public transit, even when they live in small towns of a few hundred/thousand inhabitants (because even those tend to have train stations). Car trips still exist, but there are massive new projects to improve public transit even more (multiple hundreds of km of new metro lines in the suburbs, multiple new tram lines in the suburbs, etc.).
Western Europe, we'll see. Germany seems the most likely to crack with their appeasement bullshit and shameless ex-politicians. Fingers crossed they don't.
It was there for few weeks. But soon everyone was blaming others for the situation and not doing enough.
We are in this shit because of Putins war (75% of the blame), Europes general hatred of having a military (15%, say), and finaly Biden not being willing to use military force directly to stop Russia.
We can't do anything about the first, it will take decades to solve the second, but if Biden was willing to take of the gloves, Donbas and Crimera + a good chunk of Southern Russia could be in Ukranian hands come spring.
Then we could open up for their gas fields and end the problem.
Russia will try to push the narrative that this will mean a direct confrontation between them and NATO, but having seen how they do in Ukraine, this hardly matters.
Yes Russia have nukes, and some of their rockets no doubt work, but this scenarios does not trigger their criteria for use of nukes.
Only a fool believes a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO/US is a good outcome or would improve the situation. Also let's not fall into the trap of believing propaganda about military performance from either side, it will take years for an honest assessment to come out.
>Number one is the situation, when Russia is struck by a nuclear missile. The second case is any use of other nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies," Medvedev said Saturday, according to The Guardian. "The third is an attack on a critical infrastructure that will have paralyzed our nuclear deterrent forces. And the fourth case is when an act of aggression is committed against Russia and its allies, which jeopardized the existence of the country itself, even without the use of nuclear weapons, that is, with the use of conventional weapons."
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-lists-justifications-use-nuc...
Or investment into basic insulation and house upgrades. Single glazing and simple brick is still very common in the UK. Many houses could use much less energy if they didn't lose lots of it through the windows and ceilings in the first place.
It just needs to implemented!
Just imagine how much the politicians suck: Science has given them the solution for the energy problem, science has showed how to even make it economically, and has done that already years ago. All politics would have to do is implemented. But they cannot even do that ...
Right.
And this has a very important implication. For home owners who're currently deciding which heating technology to replace an oil or gas furnace with.
Biomass and Biogas will be needed urgently in the near future to supply powerplants (of utility order of magnitude) that can then stabilize the electrical grid against the fluctuations that are going to be caused by more and more wind and solar power.
The way I see it - as enticing as it may be - to replace an oil/gas furnace with a wood pellet powered one in our current situation is the wrong choice in the long-term.
The prices for electricity will rise further, yes, but the crucial role of biomass and biogas as one means to stabilize the grid will IMO lead to even greater price increases for the latter.
The solutions are, in part:
- National gas storage reserve (to buffet price/supply spikes somewhat).
- Expansion of green energy.
- Programs to reduce usage (e.g. home and business improvements).
Luckily for the UK extremely efficient heat pump based heating/cooling solutions that offer greater than 100% efficiency exist[0]. It is just a matter of the political will to covert away from gas to electricity and then retrofitting homes.
That makes thermal chemical heating 20-50% efficient, thermal electric heating 10-30% and heat pumps 50-70% efficient (depending on where you draw the boundaries).
You could also draw the limit at reduced carnot efficiency rather than reversibility, in which case heat pumps can be close to 100%
See:
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/489467/can-a-hea...
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/06/heat-pumps-work-miracles/
I won't be further responding to this sub-topic, since it has nothing at all to do with the UK's inflation/energy prices. Plus frankly I feel like you're trying to confuse people rather than inform, I'd point people to the Department of Energy link above if they want to understand the benefit that modern heat pumps could offer to energy usage.
Efficiency as a concept doesn't go over 100% and just because confusing and misleading explanations are the norm doesn't mean they should continue.
But that's exactly what it does. It's technically wrong, but communicates the understanding that you put 100% of electrical energy into it and get 250-450% of heating energy for your home out of it, as opposed to 100% with resistive heating. That some of the electrical energy comes out of the air outside or from the ground is irrelevant for most people.
What are absurd claims you reference?
And failing to communicate that the heat comes from elsewhere is condescending and leads to misunderstandings. It also fails to communicate that it's harder to move the heat when it is colder.
We have a perfectly valid term that does what yoh want without lying and without anti-education in the name of making it 'easier' which is coefficient of performance. You could even give it a different name to `void the scary word if you want, just don't call it efficiency because it's not.
But it isn't? For e.g. outside sheds (heated to 7°C) the COP can theoretically go up to 27. For solar panels, the highest theoretical efficiency is well below 100% and the bound isn't communicated.
> It also fails to communicate that it's harder to move the heat when it is colder.
For heating that's less the case, but the efficiency of e.g. solar panels also varies depending on the temperature. That's not exclusive for heat pumps (although much more extreme there).
> You could even give it a different name to `void the scary word if you want, just don't call it efficiency because it's not.
Few people know what Coefficient of Performance means. If I give choose a new name, even less people will understand it. I try to either put efficiency in quotation marks or explain the concept, but efficiency maps (in the sense of energy I care about in and out) pretty well.
I think anti-education is too harsh, I'd describe it more as a white lie. It's the same as saying Mac & Linux systems don't get malware or saying in school maths that you can't take the square root of -1.
Wrong, but correct enough for understanding the point and allowing useful reasoning.
That's just another way of saying that framing it as efficiency and disregarding that you're moving heat from a colder reservoir is incredibly misleading. Now the marketing department can put a giant "1300% efficient*" sticker on the dual use heat pump even though it's worse for heating to 24C. A heat pump is fundamentally moving heat. It's in the name. (Heat created + heat moved) / work in does not map to an intuitive or technical notion of efficiency, and framing it that way is encouraging a mental model which is not just quantitatively off, but fundamentally wrong. It's also a distinction that is subtle enough that it is very hard to see while you are confused. This is the almost worst kind communication failure (maybe just after using a dimensionless number for insulation, or using kilo for kibi) because it's so hard to correct. It leaks into other domains and destroys communication, allowing marketers to lie, and requiring a constant treadmill of new terms to fix.
> For solar panels, the highest theoretical efficiency is well below 100% and the bound isn't communicated.
The absolute bound is carnot efficiency, which is about 80% for coupling to the sun. This is close enough that out/in is fine. Additionally out/in is the correct model because you are converting energy not movng it. 'Simple silicon cells can't exceed about 35% efficiency because they need to pick whether to waste energy in blue light or ignore energy in infrared' is the only other piece of information needed to convert that to a quantitatively and physically complete model. You can even communicate it succinctly by drawing a rectangle on a black body diagram.
> saying in school maths that you can't take the square root of -1.
This is also anti-education and a far worse sin because it is crushing one of the few moments where mathematics might actually be learned in a maths class instead of rote algorithm memorization. A teacher should never ever say this. Far better to say something along the lines of "that's a question that doesn't have an answer when we're talking about numbers on the number line, come talk to me about it later". Or "it's really cool that you're thinking about that, here's the khan academy and wiki pages, write a letter telling me all about it instead of your normal homework". Or even "think about it and tell me what you think the answer should be".
NATO made a deliberate decision to bring Ukraine into the fold in 2019 and Russia reacted predictably, but not before giving us an opportunity to back down first: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/world/europe/us-nato-resp...
We dove into this knowing full well the dire energy risks that escalation posed to Europe and are now acting shocked that we didnt prepare.
Even now Stoltenburg's official line is basically "suck it up, Europe" which I assume means that NATO leadership is perfectly comfortable with the idea of a European economic disaster this winter.
The solutions you mentioned are all great in theory but the workable ones mostly all have a 5-10 year horizon and we have a problem now.
Whataboutism as a rationale for war escalation with a nuclear power is insane.
To consider reining in NATO expansion war to be equivalent to war crime apologetics is beyond absurd.
If we get to winter and the Russian economy fares better than ours (and at first glance it looks like it will) then a lot of people should be eating a lot of humble pie.
Alas I suspect theyll just call for escalation.
Cut the Russian propaganda, NATO didn't expand to Ukraine. Ukraine, a sovereign country, wanted to join NATO, as is their every right. Denying Ukraine that right and excusing Russia's war crimes is pretty bad.
I'm explaining that war, gas crisis and 18% inflation was a predictable and deliberately chosen path that wasnt hard to avoid if we'd wanted to - simply by withdrawing an invitation.
You didnt want to avoid this scenario and consider withdrawing this invitation and "denying ukraine that right". I get that.
Yes, imagine what would have happened to Chechnya or Georgia if we had let them into NATO. No, that would have been an invitation to attack Ukraine, we should have let them in.
Ukraine isnt the first time this happened. It's just this time stirring up ethnic conflict along Russia's border is causing us to really suffer.
Alas, the world doesn't operate based on the moral principles you imply, but cold hard realpolitik. Actions have consequences in the great power game between nation states.
> And it was mind bogglingly stupid, as we can see a few months in, with the massive losses to their army and economy.
The Russian economy is doing fine, business with India and China is thriving. "Massive losses to their army" I believe is far from accurate. I'll be greatly surprised if at the end of this, Ukraine isn't economically destroyed, geographically devastated. Territories lost will remain lost, and the deaths of so many people will have been for nothing more than furthering the geopolitical and industrial interests of the main instigators.
If there's anything the Russian invasion of Ukraine isn't, it's realpolitik. Invading a country because "they aren't a real country and they should be ours" is as far as the cold practicality of realpolitik as possible. (Unless you choose to believe Russia's propaganda that it was all due to NATO's expansion, which even if true is even stupider - check Finland and Sweden which joined). Invading with the walking clown of an excuse of an army is also pretty far from practical considerations.
> The Russian economy is doing fine, business with India and China is thriving.
What are you basing this on? Have you checked their official interest rates, inflation rates (of course a bucket of salt is to be applied with those) and the warnings from the central bank governess? Not only is their economy not doing great, they are still yet to feel the effects of being cut off from industrial machinery and electronics they used to rely on. China and India can't replace all their planes, tractors, cars, trucks, phones, computers.
> "Massive losses to their army" I believe is far from accurate
Well thankfully people are actively working on this so we don't have to "believe" into anything. We have cold hard data from the ground in OSINT, compiled by volunteers such as Oryx. The fog of war is certainly obscuring things, but it's plainly obvious to see that Russian losses are massive in absolute and relative terms, in men and matériel. And the Russian army confirms that itself by the type of machines it fields (they've started reactivating obsolete tanks from the reserves) and it's desperate recruitment drives.
A) Finland and Sweden havent yet joined and may not.
B) There are no ethnic Russians in Finland or Sweden in need of protection from paramilitaries sporting swastika tattoos.
C) No border disputes either.
D) No Russian military bases.
E) It's highly defensible terrain (see the winter war) unlike Ukraine.
F) Want to know where the Nazis launched an assault on Russia and where they almost won due to Russia's extreme strategic vulnerability? Hint : it wasnt the Finnish border.
Just because you dont understand the realpolitik doesnt mean it isnt realpolitik.
After Russias constant rhetoric that Ukraine is only the first country on their “let’s genocide post soviet states” list their is 0 doubt that Finland and Sweden will finish the application.
> B) There are no ethnic Russians in Finland or Sweden in need of protection from paramilitaries sporting swastika tattoos.
The largest group of paramilitaries sporting swastikas and killing Russians in Ukraine is Russians from the neo nazi Wagner group so ironically if Russia left Ukraine there’d be less Russian deaths by (Russian) Nazis.
> C) No border disputes either.
Wasn’t any border disputes with Ukraine until they discovered vast natural resources in the Donbas region that would threaten Russia as a gas and oil provider to Europe. Then suddenly there were all kinds of problems then appeared over night and people who suspiciously looked like FSB and GRU officers started a civil war in Ukraine.
> E) It's highly defensible terrain (see the winter war) unlike Ukraine.
Either Ukraine is very defensible or Russia is terrible at war the losses so far have been staggering.
1,000 tanks and close to 45k soldiers either KIA or WIA is not “massive losses”?. The world thought Russia had years worth of tanks, turns out it only took 6 months before they started breaking out the the 4 man T62s.
Anyone that looks at the events with a modicum of objectivity should admit that it looks super-dire for Ukraine and the only thing Ukrainians can hope for given current trajectories is further devastation.
These are visually verified numbers, not even the numbers being claimed by Ukraine, if you want to improve them you can always point out duplicates and they will removed if they are actually duplicates. The real number is likely higher because not all losses will be photographed.
> Russian sources claim 7-10000 casualties (deaths and wounded)
Russian sources also claimed they weren't even going to invade the day before the invasion happened. Russian casualties are nearly guaranteed to be fake.
> Taking into account that Russia has neither mobilized nor deployed its actual army yet, and that most of the fighting is being done by locals and volunteers from the disputed regions, I fail to see the significance of "massive casualties" much less people state that "Ukraine is winning".
The VDV and Spetsnaz are both in Ukraine, are they not part of the 'actual army'?. In the least we know that the VDV has suffered massive losses, even just the videos of the gravestones in Russia should show you that Russias casualties are numbers are likely very fake.
If Ukraine isn't winning, why is Russias progress so slow?, Kyiv is less than 300km from the Russian and they still haven't made it there yet. Id consider being in month 6 of a '3 day special military operation' to be winning.
> Anyone that looks at the events with a modicum of objectivity should admit that it looks super-dire for Ukraine and the only thing Ukrainians can hope for given current trajectories is further devastation.
Yeah Ukraine has been devastated and lots of Ukrainians (both soldiers and civilian) are dying in the war, but Russia is suffering huge losses too, how else do you explain Russias fielding of old equipment (such as the T62)?. If Ukraine didn't put any resistance it would be even worse, Russia has been committing genocide with impunity in Ukraine and the only thing really standing in there way is the Ukrainian armed forces.
Like many European countries, it is usual to heat German homes with gas boilers. You could (and if we don't want even worse climate change, must) replace those with electrical heating, most likely heat pumps with resistive backup. A heat pump doesn't care whether the electricity powering it is from a solar panel or a wind farm or what.
There MAY be a few cases where alternatives are harder to find (where you need the chemistry of the gas rather than the energy), but that is a pretty small percentage overall.
But to produce energy at prices that are competitive to typical prices for NG is pretty hard without either coal or cost efficient nuclear, at least in colder climates. Solar is perhaps close to becoming cheaper in sunny, dry areas further south, but wind power looks like a poor alternative at the scale needed, since it's so unreliable. Maybe one day batteries or other storage will be cheap enough that we can store wind power for a week or more, but for now, it looks like the only low-CO2 option is nuclear.
That isn’t a small percentage and those industries have an enormous knock on effect globally there is a reason why the UN put the shortage of chemical fertilizers as one of the top priorities.
Cheaper electricity won’t solve that problem and the gas prices must come down because otherwise food prices would sky rocket world wide and we will be at a severe risk of having famine in developing countries.
And whilst there are other alternatives to natural gas such as gasification which is popular in China that still requires biomass and countries like Germany cannot simply shift their production to gasification for both environmental and practical reasons.
This link describes how even the ammonia can be produced from hydrogen, which in turn can be produced from electricity (solar, nuclear, wind, take your pick):
https://www.freethink.com/environment/sustainable-fertilizer
Over the last couple of decades, though, the electricity price in Germany seems to have risen sharply, even when not including the last year.
It seems to me that many of the energy related policies in many countries have been focusing way to much on symbolism, instead of minimizing the price while also limiting actual harm to the population and the environment as much as possible. And when the price of electricity doesn't come down, consumers want to use it for as few things as possible.
Whilst all of these are possible it’s possible with a multi decade mega project style of planning.
And the first step is to have a realistic plan to make electricity as cheap and abundant as possible, as soon as possible, while still minimizing pollution.
Also, every step helps. If we cut consumption in half, we halve the rate of global warming (at least). It's not like its all-or-nothing.