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Comment by MomoXenosaga | Hacker News Reader

In an ideal world countries like Spain and Greece invest in solar but they're completely incompetent. So you get the absurd situation that the Netherlands is European leader in solar energy lol. Most densely populated country in Europe has solar parks for fuck sake.

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From what I've read, in Spain there was for a long time (may still be?) pretty effective/expensive legislation against installing solar panels anywhere. Reason? Regulatory capture, with energy companies lobbying hard against anything that might weaken their position or profiteering opportunities.

I wouldn't call that necessarily incompetence. Corruption and cronyism, yes.

Yes, for a few years we had what was popularly called "Sun tax" in order to disincentivise people from installing solar panels in their homes. It was removed in 2018, though.

Although corruption was probably present, I would say that this kind of politics is precisely what we would expect from pro-business parties (in this case, the People's Party). They do have a long history of eschewing environmental policies as soon as any big company has money to lose because of them.

Spain has the 3rd installed capacity of solar power in Europe[1] and 2nd position in wind power[2]. It could be much better but also much worse :)

The previous government in Spain halted lots of funding for new power plants but as far as I know there is a lots of projects going on now. I expect to see a significant increment in the next years.

Also, in the Netherlands most of solar is installed in roofs, while in Spain is almost anecdotal. The previous government made difficult for individuals to install solar at home. Now that's gone but there is no subsidies, so individuals have to pay most of the installation from their own pockets, which are much more shallow than the dutch.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_European_Un... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_European_Uni...

I notice similar in Tokyo, Japan. There is so little rooftop solar installations, it is crazy. I assume it is a combination of economic and regulatory factors. At the very least, most of the outdoor train stations have very long platform coverings / roofs. These could certainly be covered with solar panels.

I live in Cyprus which experiences sunshine almost 365 days a year and has an isolated power grid from the rest of the world. We also suffer from the incompetency of Greece and Spain but I believe solar parks are not the solution. Building solar parks is a waste of land which could be used for other purposes (agriculture for example). A much better solution is to ensure every single building has solar panels on its roof. Until recently there was no incentive or motivation for this but during the past 6 months with increasing electricity costs there has been a shift to PV to the point that cost of setup has almost doubled but people are still installing them. We're heading in the right direction but it will take years for energy independence.

You wrote: <<Building solar parks is a waste of land which could be used for other purposes (agriculture for example).>> From a stricly economic view, many times a solar park in a very sunny place is more economically efficient than agriculture. That said, including social and political views, of course, we need enough agriculture to feed our societies!

I have unfortunately witnessed fields of orange trees being cut down and replaced with PV panels. Our local market has indeed an oversupply of oranges (to the point that sometimes it's more cost effective not to cut fruit rather than pay employees to do it) but I can't help to think if removing fully grown trees is better for the environment.

Your comment is flame. You really don't believe that competence is the only reason solar/wind didn't scale up right? If you remember, those countries were/are almost bunkrupt, since 2010 or so. Where would these massive investments come from? I mean the north didn't even want to move away from Russia, certainly they wouldn't care for funding solar in Greece, Spain or Italy.

The "Green new deal" however is a step in that direction. But IMO its theatrics. EU money to buy green German cars and green German infra with no plan on longevity or strategic change. Truth is, that if EU wanted energy independece, they could have it many years now. Be it nuclear or Mediterranean natural gas (the same gas now Israel is going to sell to EU).

Not that the respective governments are competent. They are not, thats a given. But the "competent" part of Europe is only so in a stupidly myopic level.

I agree with the sentiment of this post. The finance required for green energy production is often over looked. After all, India has huge deserts in the north west of their country. Yes, they have some of the largest solar parks in the world, but why isn't 25% of it covered with solar panels? Financing.

You wrote: <<But the "competent" part of Europe is only so in a stupidly myopic level.>> Can you explain this more? (Zero trolling.) I don't understand what you mean.

I'd put it down to politics.

Financing has generally been a positive for renewables.

The ability to predict output years in advance and lock in prices works well with finance to build up front.

The reason they've not built more is because the whole globe needs to work together or else one nation can save money by not bothering and just polluting instead.

If that politics got fixed (which it has slowly) then renewables would be rolled out more.

A bit late but hope you see it.

I mean that what we call the "competent part of Europe" is only competent in a myopic level. When it comes to their own local economy as if it is operating in vacuum. I argue that most of the foreign policy decisions of these members where made with short-term view of their own country economy, completely F'ing up their long term prospects by ignoring the potential and the dynamics of the periphery.

> Most densely populated country in Europe has solar parks for fuck sake.

I don't know how much is from solar parks? About 20% of all houses in the Netherlands have solar panels according to some sources so that adds up.

The EU could have invested in solar in Greece, Italy and Spain and Cyprus and interconnects further north, and likewise offshore wind in Denmark, pumped storage in Sweden, Austria and Greece

But it failed in securing energy resilience. I hope it has learned its lesson.

I don't think is that easy as doing it in the game city skylines :)

We choose to be energy independent, not because it will be easy, but because it will be hard

HVDC interconnects are not hard. We have them already. Allocating land isn't hard, it's a law in the Spanish parliament.

It just requires political will to survive. Which apparently isn't a thing people have.

The EU (meaning both the individual countries and together as the EU) did all these things. They could and should have done more, but generally have been world leaders in this.

After a solid start everything stalled around 10 years ago -- once Russia saw the threat and hooked europe on cheap gas.

Growth in Solar in Spain was negligible for 6 years from 2013 to 2019.

Italy likewise increased less than 10%

Greece has hardly any solar, with nothing built from 2013 until this year. That plant cost 130m for 350m kWh a year - that's 4c/kWh over 10 years, plus operating costs.

Painfully slow delivery that was needlessly stalled for financial reasons

I don't think it was financial reasons (or at least not in the sense that it was costing the country as a whole money).

The fossil fuel industry spent Billions on propaganda. Politicians had the option of fighting that, or using it to become more popular and so get rich.

This cost their countries Billions more than they ever earned. They're still doing it, but they might wake up soon. Still a total waste of time, energy and money though.

> That, in combination with the downward pressure on wholesale electricity prices, threatened the finances of the major utilities. Particularly hard hit were the 26 GW of natural gas-fired combined cycle (GFCC) plants built after 2000 in anticipation of substantial growth in Spain’s electricity demand, making gas the single largest source of installed capacity. This brand new fleet saw its overall load factor drop from around 50 percent in the mid-2000s to below 20 percent in 2011 and then continue to fall, almost to single digits in 2014

> As a result of these developments, the promotion of renewable power went, in just a few years, from enjoying broad public support, or at least tolerance, to facing substantial opposition. Particularly outspoken in their criticism were large electricity consumers and the major utilities, whose returns on investment in non-renewable generating capacity was being put at risk (Linares and Labandeira 2013). These various pressures in turn prompted similar policy responses by successive governments led by different parties.

https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=110...

So prices went down, country made money, big interests lost money, specifically natural gas wasn't being burnt enough for their liking, renewables got paused for a while.

Russia (and several other authorotarian regimes) benefitted, but it was mostly Spanish people conning other Spanish people for money.

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