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Comment by bioemerl | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a really bad idea when we are facing mass energy shortages that threaten to let Russia tear our allies out of our sphere of influence.

Yes, we need to get off of oil and gas

Yes, we don't need subsidies.

But wait for the war to be over and we know Germany won't be freezing, please.

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I am a hardcore advocate for cutting oil and gas as much as possible, but even ignoring the war, the order of operations is more or less wrong. Electrify your homes, fix your grid, then cut subsidies.

Do the hard parts first. (The alternative only ends up making things worse for the average person)

Nobody has an incentive to electrify if oil and gas are still artificially cheap.

The end of oil cannot and will not come due to its (market) price.

As electrification happens demand for oil will drop and oil will get cheaper. In a world without externalities this would lead to a state of having a mix of both.

But we need oil to go away entirely. Price won't do that unless green tech is so crazy cheap that it makes oil literally not worth pulling out of the ground. I don't see it happening.

Or --- I could see it happening, but that's only after most wells run dry - if that happens we have failed to prevent global warming.

To get rid of oil we just:

* Have the tech that allows it.

* Tax the crap out of oil so that it is forced to maintain a certain price.

* Let the market squeeze oil out. The oil will be cheap, but taxes will make it not worth anything.

And there are many incentives to electrify. Including government subsidies, the fact that green tech is already often cheaper than oil, and the fact that oil is an unreliable resource.

Right now? We need gas to run our society. It's OK to take steps to keep it going so long as we also take steps to ensure we can stop the tap when it's time.

Speaking of order of operations, first fix your grid, then electrify the homes.

Look at California which has banned new gasoline cars in 2035, banned new natural gas hookups, and also told people to reduce electrical usage and not charge their cars!

I feel like this is a false connection.

The 2035 ban doesn't change the present either way and Cali has a ton of time to beef up its power grid in the meantime.

California won't. Just like they won't ever complete that $100bn high speed rail.

I thought it was "charge your cars at night"

California’s great held during a literally historic heat wave. That’s a vote of confidence for me that they can handle this transition. Sure they tried to reduce load, but that’s a sensible thing to do in a historically high demand for electricity!

For what it's worth, unless I'm missing something, this was introduced late last March (2021) and has gone no where since. So slightly different climate at the time.

I believe there has been a recent effort to move it forward. That's how it came to my attention.

According to congress.gov (the linked site), clicking on Actions shows zero activity since March of 2021.

Here is the climate activist effort I am referring to:

https://www.climatechangemakers.org/issue-briefing-ffs

Bills like this that would cause a huge change all at once are generally not intended to move forward legislatively. They’re introduced to be fodder for political activity like awareness campaigns, fundraising, or GOTV.

For the love of God just not now let's just not do it now please! Now's the worst time to do it (keep repeating this every year).

Yep, exactly. Meanwhile...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32777774

>Yes, we need to get off of oil and gas

>Yes, we don't need subsidies.

>But wait for the war to be over and we know Germany won't be freezing, please.

If we're going to subsidize energy production until the war is over, might as well put all those subsidies into renewable energy that will further reduce Russia's global influence.

Renewable energy just isn't up to the task in the timeframe we are talking about and in Germany where there really just isn't that much sun.

Long term, 100 percent. We need renewables and we should be Manhattan projecting fusion, energy storage, and transport lines.

But until we have breakthroughs, we are stuck with brown energy.

Renewables is not just solar... Renewables produced over 50% of the energy consumed Germany, Jan to March this year...

For those doubting/disputing this - it was over 50% in q1 2022 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/renewables-cover-50-ger...

Sure, but any incentive to speed up that effort will help. In the meantime, oil and gas will fine without the existing subsidies, given they are still posting record profits in the midst of the war:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oil-companies-record-profits-20...

Record profits won't matter when a company looks at a project and sees it will result in a loss. It's rare they will decide to subsidize that loss unless there is incentive.

No idea how the math works out. It may be that the subsidies may be totally excessive.

I'm skeptical the layman's perspective on this is actually accurate. The reasoning presented screams "arguments made in bad faith by activists" to me. Stuff that seems super reasonable but breaks apart once you understand in depth.

>Record profits won't matter when a company looks at a project and sees it will result in a loss

What long-term projects are you imagining oil and gas to start investing in now? To hit 2030 / 2050 emission goals, we can't afford to invest in new long term oil and gas projects.

>I'm skeptical the layman's perspective on this is actually accurate. The reasoning presented screams "arguments made in bad faith by activists" to me. Stuff that seems super reasonable but breaks apart once you understand in depth.

Here are a couple of resources on how much these subsidies work out to be:

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-f...

[1]: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...

I'm not sure fusion is the breakthrough most think it will be. https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run...

It seems like for it to even have a chance we need to go big on fission fow now.

It won't make a difference. They're not gonna turn down business or reduce capacity because of this.

So dont do it at all? Because the republicans are likely going to take the house in November, and they definitely arent going to pass this.

I think yes, not doing this at all (for 4 years until election cycle) is a better decision than making us less prepared to deal with this immidiate future.

Big assumption that 4 years from now it can be done. Politically, you should do it when you can do it. When clinton failed to pass healthcare reform in 1992, we had to wait almost 20 years to pass the ACA.

I'm from the EU: we could cut energy requirement for heating by 50% in a very short time just by properly insulating buildings. It's also rational to reduce the regulations blocking + further incentivise build out of wind/solar along with prolongation of existing nuclear where possible.

Lets do that instead of sucking yet more oil/gas out of the ground.

How long would it take to properly insulate all the buildings that need to be heated but are inadequately insulated?

I have no idea what the situation is with availability of insulation contractors and supplies, but I'm guessing years? Certainly won't be possible by this winter.

Insulating a home does not give you a 50% reduction! It's closer to 15%.

You might get 50% on a leaky barn with zero insulation, but how many homes in Europe are like that?

(Note I'm not saying not to do this - certainly do this, just have proper expectations.)

I achieved a 50% heating cost reduction after investing in the insulation of an older house. This included replacing the single pane glass.

Such properties are common over Europe; especially in properties built before the 1980s (which thank to the rebuild after WW2 are a decent percentage of all building stock).

Overall you'll maybe cut gas usage by 20% in 2-3 of years by insulating those buildings, building out renewable electricity with storage and incentivising heat pumps (which reduce/remove gas usage of resident-owned properties where they are viable).

Proper perfect brand new construction compared to 1950s worn out building might be 50% increase but that requires building a new building.

Add-on insulation can help but it’s much harder and not as great.

Why wouldn't EU energy consumers have done that already if they can save that much money?

A huge amount of property is not owned by the energy consumer and the owners are not incentivised (or forced) to do it - so they don't. It's not a cash problem - the owners are earning exceptional returns at this time - it's a problem of poor regulation.

One fix would be to have the owner pay for heating/cooling costs of the structure. My apartment pays for the heating so as a result the place is very well insulated even though it is older.

I'll note that it's not always worth it to further insulate or replace functional though inefficient equipment. For example my apartment has an electric bill of about $50 a month, half of that is a fixed infrastructure cost. Even if I could bring my electric use to zero, it could at best save $25 a month. Replacing my AC with a more modern one could probably at best save $5 a month of that, taking many years to pay off even if you pay nothing for labor.

I suspect in many cases the energy consumer is not the building maintainer.

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