The energy crisis and Europe’s astonishing luck | Hacker News Reader

The energy crisis and Europe’s astonishing luck

economist.com

115 pointsmfiguiere185 comments

The 'good weather' may have some problematic knock-on effects some months down the road if it keeps up, even if the lower demand due to record winter warmth has reduced spot prices on the LNG market.

Warm weather trends could mean less snowpack across the region and potential drought conditions, which could impact everything from agricultural production to reduced summer hydroelectric production to problems with the cooling water supply for France's fleet of nuclear reactors:

> "So while the current mild weather is viewed by some as having prevented a deeper power crisis stemming from gas shortages, the low snow and rain totals this winter may themselves pose an even greater risk if the warm and dry conditions continue."

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/europes-mild-wea...

Notably, the trend of winters warming at a more rapid rate than summers in continental interiors is a long-standing prediction of climate models. Another feature is increased climatic instability associated with the gradually increasing water vapor content of the atmosphere (~7% increase per 1C temp rise), meaning long-term predictions are less reliable.

Another factor that might be influencing the current relatively low European gas price is the trend towards de-industrialization in Europe, which is not a good sign for long-term economic health:

> "Energy-intensive industries, such as aluminium, fertilisers, and chemicals are at risk of companies permanently shifting production to locations where cheap energy abounds, such as the United States. Even as an unusually warm October and projections of a mild winter helped drive prices lower, natural gas in the United States still costs about a fifth what companies pay in Europe."

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/energy-crisis-chips-...

There is long-term potential for renewable energy to replace most natural gas demand, and if 10X as much effort had gone into it over the past ten years, Europe might not be in this bind at all.

> Warm weather trends could mean less snowpack across the region and potential drought conditions, which could impact everything from agricultural production to reduced summer hydroelectric production to problems with the cooling water supply for France's fleet of nuclear reactors.

The problem for agriculture there is not only water, it also needs cold periods for better harvests and fruit production.

Energy policy has been the gravest mistake in recent European history and it wasn’t for lack of viable alternatives.

We Europeans like to make fun of Americans, but at least they managed to become energy independent in the same time span. All that we have in Europe is a shrinking industrial base and the largest war on European soil in 80 years (yet I’m sure we will still find a way to feel morally superior to the rest of the world somehow).

You are looking at this the wrong way. Europe's problem is not its dependence on Russian energy but but its inability to say no to America and Britain when that duo interfere in mainland security matters. Its mind boggling that a country of Germany's size and might can't tell America to fuck off "Ukraine is not going to be in your sphere of influence". The tapped phone call between American diplomats back in 2014 was supposed to expose the outsize American role in Ukraine right before Russia seized Crimea: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

That would make total sense had Germany not been making all of the wrong moves and relatively in bed with Russia the entire time, as opposed to the United States' support of Ukraine and anti-corruption movements there.

In your imagined scenario everything regarding Ukraine would be worse off, not better.

I would like to understand why Germany loves Russia so much, despite what's happened over the past year.

There was all kinds of funny business with Nordstream, Manuela Schleswig's fishy "foundation", and more. I can understand Schroeder - he's just getting paid by Putin every year. But Scholz? It seems that every month he makes up a different reason why Germany can't properly support Ukraine. A few helmets and kevlar vests and a handful of Gepards without ammunition, but Leopard 2s? God no, we couldn't possibly do that, it might hurt Putin's feelings! It seems he wants to give Ukraine just enough to watch them slowly bleed out.

Is it just that Putin is paying off most of the German politicians, and has been doing so for years? I guess they're pretty cheap to buy, and they're completely shameless about it - just look at Schroeder.

IMHO, Ukrainians should grab Königsberg for themselves after the end of war and then exchange it for something useful, e.g. exchange it for Transnistria with Moldova, instead of returning Königsberg to Germany.

Yeah, let's ruin our diplomatic relationships with Germany and Moldova, then try to join EU and NATO.

Why we need to try exchange Transnistria for Konigsberg in the first place?

Russian 14th army may strike from the back to support the main army, so they should be made toothless before the second wave of invasion, but Ukraine cannot attack 14th army without breaking relationships with Moldova, EU, UN, and NATO. However, Ukraine can exchange this problem (Transnistria) for another problem (Königsberg) to negate them both.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_presence_in_T...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobasna_ammunition_depot

But Koningsberg is czech!

Königsberg was part of Germany when annexed by Soviet Union. I see no page about Königsberg in Czech language at Wikipedia at all. Anyway, Germans were expelled, so Königsberg is populated by Russians now, which makes it similar to Transnistria, Crimea, etc.

Last October, a petition for the Czech republic to annex the region received over 20k signatures. This led to many jokes: https://www.petice.com/petice_za_vyhlaeni_referenda_o_pipoje...

The best thing Europe could do to Kaliningrad is encourage a separatist movement there. There's not much Russia could do about it if they had a consensus to separate, and being an exclave of a pariah country in the middle of foreign hostile territory is not exactly conductive to day-to-day living. If there was a clear (if unspoken) understanding that such an entity, once it clearly breaks up with Russia, would be admitted to EU under the usual rules, I think it could be sold.

And then? You have a piece of territory that is ethnically and culturally Russian, but integrated into Europe instead of that whole "Russian World" nonsense. That can be used as an agitprop showcase to contrast with Russia proper, especially as things get worse there as economy starts feeling more long-term effects from sanctions.

It's organic political opinion. For one thing, Germans feel very real guilt for their invasion of Russia in WW2, and they don't like the idea of aiding in a war against it. For another, the experience of the Cold War was much more traumatic for them than it was for the US, and they're not eager to start a new one.

This is absolutely true in my experience (live in Germany; have lots of friends and extended family here), and also mind-boggling. Germans also tend to be dismissive of Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltics, and sometimes even express disdain for at least one of those countries. Except that Germany didn't invade Russia in WW2; Germany invaded the USSR and Ukraine suffered at least as much in WW2 as Russia did. Some would argue more. It was the German-Soviet Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact¹ that allowed the Soviet occupation of the Baltics and Poland.

Yes, Germany really did the Soviets dirty² in the end, but German behavior was overall, in the opinion of many, worse for all the countries that the Germans allowed the Soviets to conquer than for the Russians directly. And yet, Germans truly seem to feel remorse only for Russians and not all FSU people. I don't exactly know why that is. My gut feeling is that Germans have more deeply ingrained respect, historically speaking, for the Russians than for Balts/Poles/Ukr/etc, so the feelings in general are deeper. Like I said at the beginning, Germans I know are really dismissive or worse of Poles/Balts/etc, though maybe not so much Ukrainians now, given current events.

Edit to add: I don't believe Germans "love russia so much", as suggested in the grandparent comment. Respect, yes, but not love, though I understand that is probably not meant literally anyway.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

² English idiom

> I don't exactly know why that is. My gut feeling is that Germans have more deeply ingrained respect, historically speaking, for the Russians than for Balts/Poles/Ukr/etc, so the feelings in general are deeper.

Read this (amazing) dispatch from Berlin. Old school journalism with an attempt at analyzing the German psyche and (bonus) surprising information about the affinity felt for Russia by some Germans, including the Kaiser.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/germany/1940-04-01/p...

https://archive.is/lZMnx

-- snippet --

Hegel is one of the most abstruse of philosophers. He is quoted as saying, "One man has understood me and he has not." It is pretentious for someone not a philosophical scholar to discuss him. But what is important is the residue of his philosophy in the minds of the intelligentsia, who have passed it on in a sloganized form to the masses. The idea of the Volkstaat is certainly to be found in Hegel. He conceived the individual as finding himself only in the society of which he is an organic member; religion was not universal, but the spontaneous development of the national conscience; the artist was not an individual but a concentration of the passion and the power of the whole community. The deformation of these ideas is part of Naziism. The organic state is the Nazi ideal, in spite of the fact that Naziism destroyed what is organic. For one cannot create an organism by Gleichschaltung—switching into line—an idea not derived from biology but from mechanics.

Reading Hegel, and observing the relationship in Nazi Germany between state and Movement, one can see how easy would be a jump to the conception of the state as a proselytizing church, an idea which possessed Byzantium and the Eastern Church, and which is given expression in Dostoevski's novels. In "The Brothers Karamazov" he makes Father Paissy say: "The Church is not to be transformed into the State. That is Rome and its dream. On the contrary, the State transformed in the Church will ascend and become a church over the whole world—the glorious destiny ordained. . . . This star will rise in the East."

I quote Dostoevski here because the sympathy between the German idealistic philosophers and the great nineteenth century Russian novelists is constantly apparent. The Russian Communist state is certainly not the state dreamed of by Dostoevski who, at the end of his life at least, was deeply Christian; but it is a state that is, at the same time, a secular religion with a mission of world salvation. And so is the Nazi state. And with this it stops being a state in any Western sense of the word.

The attraction between Germany and Russia is enormous, and always has been. The Russian revolution was made in Germany—it grew out of German idealism via Marx—and Russia has contributed to it, and to the German mind as well, the spirit of Byzantium. That these two revolutions, the German and the Russian, would one day merge has been anticipated by many people. It is interesting that in 1931, two years before Hitler, the German Kaiser gave an interview at Doorn in which he expressed his scorn for any pan-Europeanism that would link Germany in an economic and spiritual alliance with Western Europe, above all with France and England. In fact, he made the statement, startling from a conservative at that time, that Germany's next of kin was Russia. "Western culture has reduced itself to mere utilitarianism, but the pendulum of civilization is switching to Eastern Europe and its way of life. We are not Westerners. . . . We cling with all our roots to the East."

The German belief that the West is decadent reached its clearest expression in Spengler. Utilitarianism is interpreted as a sure sign of decadence. Except in the East—to which Germany belongs—idealism is dead. The West has lost its biological vitality, its will to life and power. So run the arguments. The Nazis' revolt towards paganism as a spring from which Life can be renewed, and their systematic anti-intellectualism, are both reflections from Nietzsche, who denounced the concepts of "the good, the true, and the beautiful" as arresters of Life. Good, true, and beautiful, are only relative. They are the values of impotent, humble, feeble men with slave minds. The morality of bold, vigorous, healthy men is different. Their ethic is an ethic of strength, cruelty, combativeness, vigor and joy. Caution, humility, cleverness, pacifism, are only virtues for slaves, who can best advance themselves by the cultivation of these qualities. - Dorothy Thompson

(I posted this a few months ago expecting an interesting thread of discussion but it fell through the cracks.)

Do the Germans not understand that they also invaded and destroyed Ukraine in WW2?

They do. They also understand that there collaborators were Ukrainian nationalists (who were extremely anti-semitic and enthusiastically participated in pogroms) who are increasingly venerated in Ukraine. As an American, I'm able to compartmentalize this, and rationalize that Ukrainians are venerating people like Bandera for their anti-Russian partisanship, not for their anti-Jewish politics. But this is less of an option for Germans, who for very understandable reasons have a greater sensitivity to anti-Semitism than most nations.

The Anti-Semitism stuff is just a propaganda line invented by Vladislav Surkov (Russia’s Goebbels).

Like all good propaganda, it contains a kernel of truth that’s expanded and dilated until it becomes nonsense.

Believing in generalised Anti-Semitism and Nazism in Ukrainian society is like believing Saddam Hussein funded 9/11. It’s just a mind trick.

I think everything I wrote is accurate. Bandera was a vicious anti-Semite. Bandera did collaborate with the Nazis. Bandera is venerated in Ukraine (since 2014 and especially since 2022). Maidan was made possible by armed support from neo-nazi political parties. Based on my reading, I do not think that Ukraine is a particularly anti-Semitic place, and I think that they like Bandera mainly because they see him as an anti-Russian fighter. But it's easy for me to understand why Germans are much more uncomfortable with the symbolism that I am.

Oh I wasn't saying Bandera wasn't an Anti-semite, I have no idea. Just the idea that Ukraine is an anti-semite society, that's completely nuts. I've visited and have Ukrainian friends - they do have a big problem with racism, but not to some crazy level vs in that region. I've heard of things happening in Poland that well, are not very progressive - ie public buses not stopping for black people, racial beatings, taunting on the streets.

Ukraine just had a bigger issue I believe because of the participation of certain groups (Azov) in the Maidan revolution and then in the 2014+ war. My impression is this happened quite simply because every sector of society was at Maidan, but the Azov guys were more willing to get their hands dirty/get violent, thus they became prominent. That's my impression.

It's even more complicated that that. For example, whatever Bandera's personal ideology was, and despite his early attempts to collaborate with the Germans after they first occupied Ukraine, they quickly found the views and the goals that he was advocating dangerous enough to themselves to stick him into a concentration camp for the rest of the war.

Aiding a war ‘against it’?? These people are just dumb about this conflict. How about we all leave the borders as they are and do something more valuable for mankind. The only people who want war are the ones blinded by power

> A few helmets and kevlar vests and a handful of Gepards without ammunition, but Leopard 2s?

German military support is in the same order of magnitude as other countries. Including heavy weapons. Don't bother linking news articles or opinion pieces. Here's an up-to-date primary source: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/data-sets/ukraine-suppo...

It's totally fair to argue that Germany should deliver more stuff or heavier weapons, but the helmets and vests and corruption rhetoric is unwarranted.

I agree with you, but part of the perception of Germany, including in GP comment, comes from Germany's hesitation to be as vocally supportive of Ukr, and from Germany's hesitation to take the risk on leading the way on supplying MBTs and other heavy weapons. For my entire life, Germany has acted like the leader of Europe, and now they have not either in words or deeds, which has colored the perception of ... not a few people. Germany has provided lots of aid, but they have been so damned shy about it, and never or at least rarely before other nations.

Given that Schroeder started working for Nord Stream within weeks of stepping down as Chancellor, later became manager of Nord Stream 2, was paid $350,000 per year as director of the board of Rosneft, and was nominated to the board of directors of Gazprom, is it really unwarranted to point out that he was bought and paid for as Putin's servant?

It's hard to argue with that, but I don't think you can generalise it to all German politicians or even the current government on the whole.

Germany has been lacking a coherent security strategy. They neglected the Bundeswehr for decades and in recent years doubled down on their dependency on Russian fossil fuel (one could argue this was a mutual interdependency as German companies were crucial for the Russian arms industry).

Apart from the far right/left everyone in Germany (that I know) is thankful for America's support in Eastern Europe. Most of these people had no goodwill towards the US military before this war - mainly due to the shameful campaigns in Afghanistan/Iraq. But they also realized that the German/Western European security 'strategy' regarding Russia was a big failure.

Plus Germany's half-century long anti-nuclear stance does them a disservice.

If that is a thing that bothers you, one of the people that made sure that the Bundeswehr never recovers was that corrupt von der Leyen. She was MoD, funnelled a bunch of money to her McKinsey son, and then went on to become the head of European Commission. With someone like that at the helm of the EU, you don't need enemies.

The sibling comment mentions Germany's nuclear policy. It's worth noting that Germany at the EU tried to lobby against nuclear to deprive France out of EU support for Green energy. They have an irrational hate for nuclear energy, but it's not limited to nuclear energy. Somehow the once antiwar Green party has become the party of warmongering and coal lobbying.

Germany during the Kohl administration shut killed fibre optics infrastructure projects to fight the influence of public TV and promote cable TV. [1]

So this is at least 4 decades of ideological mismanagement. I'd say the respect for German infrastructure is the work that has been done after the war up until then.

[1] https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe...

In eastern Germany at least, Telekom laid fibers after 1993.

Nothing is a big failure if the problem is too complex. With such probs, the only success is not getting pulled into a deep hole and wasting resources.

It's not a bad strategy cuz no one believes Ukraine can fight forever without someone else paying the bills. Let the US pay the bills till they can't.

The US is a dysfunctional society, and the strategies that come out of it, are what you expect out of a mental asylum. All this nonsense about sending weaponry over (which takes years of training to use effectively) is one example of the mindlessness.

Also good for Germany that Russia is going to be in such an economic mess after this, the energy from there is going to be very cheap.

> what you expect out of a mental asylum

Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of LNG?

Always the "sphere of influence" crap rhetoric.

We all know Russia WANTS a sphere of influence. But why should Russia have a sphere of influence? What is so special about Russia that you believe it deserves such a thing? Russia isn't even able to protect those currently in its sphere of influence (CSTO), as we can see in Armenia.

Nukes? The DPRK has nukes. Should the DPRK have a sphere of influence? Should India and Pakistan have their spheres of influence? Should everyone get nukes just to guarantee their own sovereignty?

Economy? Pre-war Russia was economically the size of Italy.

The ex-Warsaw Pact countries joined NATO of their own initiative precisely to be as far away from Russia as possible. Because being in the Russian sphere of influence means having your people sent to the gulag in Siberia.

If the war achieved anything for Russia, it's putting Russia firmly inside Chinas sphere of influence.

America has the exact same policy not only in the entire North and South America, but also in the Middle east and elsewhere. I agree that what Russia is doing is morally disastrous but rationally, they are doing exactly what the US and everyone else is doing.

'But your honor, I should allowed to do this thing because I saw someone else do it!'

'Sir, you're accusing your neighbour of painting his house red. Your house is red."

Your honor, the fact that my house is red does not make his house not red. My house being red is irrelevant.

'Sir, have you heard of the word hipocrisy? If you want your neighbourhood to keep their houses white, maybe you should not have painted your house red. You also refused any consequences of painting your house red, but now you demand it for your neighbour?'

You speak like a child

The USA has everything it needs to back up that claim to being a superpower among which we can count:

- being a top tier tech power

- being a top tier culture exporter

- being the reserve currency for the world (the USA is THE monetary superpower)

- having good relationships with other major powers which amplify it's own

- having the best military force projection and having alliances which further magnify that force projection

Like it or not, the USA has what it takes to back it up. And I agree, the USA has been and is behaving morally disastrous in several ways. One does not excuse the other. No ones military imperialism is excusable.

But in addition to that, I am saying, the Russian leadership is braindead because they failed to accurately appraise their chances and continue to do so. They thought they could take Ukraine in a few weeks and when that proved wrong they did not recalibrate their expectations. At any time until the point they officially declared annexation, they could have declared mission accomplished and the internal propaganda machine would have done it's job. Now they are stuck, unable to make progress and unable to backtrack. Such stupidity is far more disastrous than the villainy of imperialism. This is Cipolla's 5'th law of stupidity and its corollary applied: "A stupid person is the most dangerous person in existence." and "A stupid person is thus more dangerous than a bandit.". Also, a relevant quote by the same author: "The ability to hurt of a stupid person depends on the […] position of power or authority he occupies in the society."

China, compared to Russia, does in fact have some actual capability to support its ambitions. Will they be stupid in the future and overestimate themselves? So far they are somewhat cautious but we will see.

America has more natural resources than Europe. That’s just luck.

Luck is one component, but you are more lucky if you have more land. EU population density is 112 people per square kilometer, US has 36 per square kilometer. EU area is 4.2 million square kilometers, US has more than double of that, with a smaller population. Also, low population density helps with extraction. A lot of the USA is desert where nobody is living so only few people will complain about fracking messing up their life.

More fossil ressources that they burn in ignorance of the damage they are doing to the world.

With the invention of fracking, the EU could have essentially unlimited natural gas for the next century, but they can’t because it was banned and due to the nature of property rights.

The fracking revolution could only have happened in the US due to how property rights are managed interestingly…

i don't know man it's raining like hell in the netherlands

https://archive.ph/FaZYK

what stands out to me is that hopefully this crisis has broken up some of the static mentality we've had here. We had for the most part adopted the narrative that Russian energy is necessary, the economy will die otherwise, and so on.

Now we're building LNG terminals in Germany, we're building a pipeline to Norway for hydrogen, all that stuff is suddenly possible in months when it took us decades to built a trainstation in Stuttgart. When shit hits the fan apparently we can still move things.

The entire last year has made me oddly enough more optimistic. The continent is holding together, in addition to the weather the demographically tight labor market is sort of a blessing as unemployment remains low even with economic hickups and there's a real awareness that the status quo on many fronts wasn't sustainable.

Things are not that simple unfortunately. The lack of an energy crisis this winter due to warm weather should not be mistaken for absence of economic harm, as in demand destruction. A high gas import bill is problematic for European economies, especially the ones that have a well-developed heavy industry, which tend to be also heavy gas users. This means the Europeans won’t be able to compete on international markets due to the higher cost of energy. IIRC I read somewhere (dbresearch probably) that chemical industry shrank by ~21% in Germany in Q4. Lost production will have to be replaced by imports, adding to the trade deficit caused by higher energy prices/LNG.

There is economical harm and that cannot be changed. But GP has a point in that Germany seems to have abandoned its stance of weathering crises by mostly waiting them out. The consequences of the Ukraine war for Germany are serious and will have to be dealt with, but there is a lot of potential to do so, and I agree with GP it's a good sign that there appears to be both willingness and ability to make use of that potential, though Germany will need a lot more of that in the coming months and years.

I honestly thought Trump was mad when he told Germany off for Russian imports. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-summit-pipeline-idUS...

German delegation’s response at UNGA when Trump says “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg

Isn't this the same speech that he started by saying "my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country"? No wonder they're laughing.

Every administration says nonsense like that because there is no way to measure such fluff.

No, other administrations have some humility.

Trump said nothing new. The issue was known for decades but Germany liked cheap gas too much(i.e like the U.S liked cheap labour from China). Not to mention that Trump also said EU is a foe for the U.S and Russia is treated unfairly. Trump was a true clown that just said a lot of things hoping something will stick. It's amazing that people still quote him.

In a single paragraph you condemn from multiple sides. Too much and too little controversy, too meaningful yet too insubstantial, subjectively both wrong and right. There should be weight in your efforts.

Yes, it was definately a highlight of his political career when he was able to semi-coherently express the standard US policy on something.

We have learned nothing. Europe is nestling close to China. Environmentalists continue to block all efforts to wean us off Russian gas. The real economic adjustment to higher energy costs has not come with hundreds of billions of subsidies (so environmentalists win the day politically...everyone thinks it will be fine, they don't see that German unemployment would be north of 20% if this ran it's course).

It has just started.

That’s just all FUD.

> Now we're building LNG terminals in Germany

That's not a good thing. LNG is not a good solution, apart from being easy and readily at hand.

> Now we're building LNG terminals in Germany, we're building a pipeline to Norway for hydrogen, all that stuff is suddenly possible in months

Building something does not mean that you will be able to fill it. The LNG comes from the US, who source it themselves from domestic and arab sources. The next biggest source of gas is Qatar and they explicitly said that they couldnt fulfill Europe's gas demand even if they sold their entire stock to Europe directly. Russian gas and energy still are the only sources that can supply the world globally.

Even the US strategic petroleum reserve is dwindling as the US makes a quick buck selling its oil to Europe on inflated prices to the extent that it started making German and French governments complain publicly. Of course, there is also the Russian gas and oil that they buy from intermediaries and then sell to Europe - a fine example of US corporate-state mentality.

Driving to my in-laws in Niedersachsen up from northern Bavaria through the former East on Christmas Eve was revelatory: not only a slight increase in windmills, along with several of those enormous blades parked on the side, but banks of solar panels along with Autobahns everywhere, in various states of construction, but the ones with panels up were of course more conspicuous.

Those solar panels weren't there back in June.

Very interesting. Under normal circumstances this would be considered to be dire. It would mean water problems in the year. However the Ukraine war made it into a favorable condition.

I find it hard to agree that we can call climate change-related weather "luck". If anything, European politicians will not learn their lesson and calling it luck is a shallow, short-term thinking.

China is sometimes proactive on weather, e.g. for large events like the Olympics, https://www.cma.gov.cn/2011xwzx/2011xqxxw/2011xqxyw/202112/t....

> The Artificial Weather Impact Center mainly participates in the formulation of technical standards and norms related to artificial weather impact, is responsible for the construction, operation and maintenance of business systems, equipment research and development, test assessment and support, and the promotion of new technologies, organizes major national scientific and technological projects and large-scale scientific experiments, and is responsible for the program system of large-scale aircraft operations nationwide.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/01/24/ol...

> China has been ramping up its program to levels seldom seen, either there or around the world. In December 2020, government officials announced a major expansion, setting as its goal triggering rain over more than two million square miles — an area larger than 187 of the world’s countries ... These efforts could have major consequences for both China’s 1.4 billion people and neighbors like Myanmar, India, and Nepal, raising a kind of ethical-meteorological tension between national sovereignty and global responsibility.

What would happen if two neighboring countries attempted to influence the weather near their border?

I've been genuinely scared of global warming and such mild winters but this year I appreciate the benefits.

It's just world's 50 year plan to invade russia in winter /s

I wouldn't call it entirely unpredictable. I've had probably five successive years of my birthday (the 20tht of October) being unusually warm. Warm as in being closer to 20 degrees celcius; or in one case warmer than that. The previously expected temperatures would be closer to zero. Like it reliably was every year when I was younger. 5 degrees would be normal. 10 degrees would be warm. 20 degrees would be ridiculous and unthinkable. Except that has now happened or nearly happened more than five years in a row. 18 degrees last time. And it hit 23 degrees a few days after.

I actually walked outside in a t-shirt and a hoody in Berlin on the 31st of December. It was 17 degrees Celcius during the day. It never dipped below 14 degrees that day. That was only a few degrees warmer than the year before. This is the new normal for western Europe. It's long, cold winters that have become unusual.

We haven't had one of those for quite a few years. The couple of weeks of snow we had last year don't count. The two weeks of freezing temperatures we had a month ago don't count. That's actually what used to be normal and expected for months on end. The anomaly is that this only happens for very short periods of time now. And some winters it doesn't happen at all anymore.

I haven't actually had my heating on since December. The temperature in my apartment never dips below 18 degrees. In January. That's a first. That has never happened to me.

This is not luck but climate change. The real lucky event is that Putin is forcing our hands years before we were ready to do something about that. LNG and coal are the short term expensive solution that is obviously bad for the climate. But they are also an enormous financial incentive to switch to renewables. Energy bills have gone up by 200-300% for people. It sucks. People are switching off their heating systems and wearing multiple sweaters for financial reasons. People I know, like my sister and my parents. And they are not even poor. This sucks more for people that literally need to choose between feeding themselves, paying the rent, or staying warm. There are plenty of those people.

Everybody that has the option is now considering roof top solar, heat pumps, etc. Whatever they can do where the math adds up. And in some cases even when it doesn't add up. Demand for that stuff is simply enormous. Everybody is looking at ways to cut their energy bills whichever way they can and as fast as they can. There's a sense of urgency with people to fix their energy independence. We didn't have that before 2022. That's a really positive change from my point of view.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, I can just nod to everything you say.

I remember that as a kid (25-20 years ago) there were winters where school busses would just not show up, because it was too cold and public service could not clear roads from snow and ice fast enough. We went out with sleds to the hills around town and ride them down all day. That was normal in my childhood from December to mid-February. The children of my friends never went to the same hills with sleds, because there's just no snow anymore. Maybe 2-5 cm that last for three days, but that's it. And not even that does happen every year. Climate is changing. Period.

We shouldn't forget that this whole energy crisis was the result of bad EU policy. Even though Putin's unjustified invasion of Ukraine was the spark that set the fire, EU's dependence on Russian natural gas was foreseeable and foreseen and warned about for years prior [1]:

> U.S. President Donald Trump launched a sharp public attack on Germany on Wednesday for supporting a Baltic Sea gas pipeline deal with Russia, saying Berlin had become “a captive to Russia” and he criticized it for failing to raise defense spending more.

But it didn't start there [2]:

> U.S. President Barack Obama told the European Union on Wednesday it cannot rely on the United States alone to reduce its dependency on Russian energy, as relations with Moscow chill over its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.

The US foresaw and planned for the rise in demand for LNG, something Europe did not do [3]:

> The last time the United States was a net exporter of natural gas was in 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower was president. That should change in 2018 when the country is expected to become the world’s third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

It went so far as Germany building an LNG terminal to mollify the US [4]:

> Germany will chose where to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal by the end of 2018 as a gesture to the United States which wants to ship more gas to Europe, the economy minister said on Tuesday.

And now Europe complains about the price they have to pay for LNG [5].

Don't lose sight of the fact that the entire European energy crisis is the result of poor strategic planning, avoidable dependence on Russian energy and poor policy.

I'm glad there's been a heat wave to alleviate winter-related heat issues. The UK, for example, has "warm hubs" [6] for people who literally cannot afford to heat their home.

Remember too that passing on those high energy costs to customers is also a policy choice by the various governments.

[1]:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-summit-pipeline/trum...

[2]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-eu-summit/obama-tells...

[3]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-natgas-lng-analysis/a...

[4]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-energy-usa-russia/germ...

[5]: https://www.politico.eu/article/cheap-us-gas-cost-fortune-eu...

[6]: https://www.wrccrural.org.uk/services/wrcc-warm-hubs/what-ar...

Hear hear!

In this 1984 world: the NHS crisis is due to COVID, the energy crisis is due to the war in Ukraine.

The UK has a scapegoat for almost every crisis. We’re very good at that.

Never mind US; Russia has been openly using gas supply as a geopolitical pressure tool - at first, against Ukraine - since 2005. And opposition / anti-war folk in Russia have been talking about the insanity that is the European energy policy and its Russia dependence and its likely long-term consequences since at least 2008, after the war with Georgia (some were at it even longer, since Nord Stream became a thing). There were ample warnings all around for those willing to listen.

"National leaders must make the most of the good weather"

saved you a click.

The mercy of God.

Or wrath depending on whose perspective you’re looking at it from.

Indeed. 2022 was the year we realized God doesn’t like authoritarians. All the talk of an American decline and yet in a single year all (except NK) of the major world authoritarian regimes have been facing real crisis. In the west our crisis seem to be overhyped both by the news and said authoritarian regimes.

The crisis is real, and the western democracies are very poorly (and frequently corruptly) run. The western powers have been doing a great job of shooting themselves in the foot.

However, it seems the authoritarians are even more incompetent and/or corrupt than the corrupt Western powers.

Imagine what kind of society humanity could have if people didn't constantly allow incompetent and corrupt leaders to take over.

The curse of dictators. The longer you stay in power, the more detached from reality you become because everyone treats you like a god

billionaires as well. look at an interview woth a famount billionair when they jusy made their wealth, and 10 years later. The dofference is plain to see.

Oower gets to your head. Human psycology is notndesigned to cope with like a million people qued up to kiss ass and suck your dick

> Imagine what kind of society humanity could have if people didn't constantly allow incompetent and corrupt leaders to take over.

I think part of it is the “power corrupts” aspect and another is the likelihood that the kind of people who seek power generally aren’t the kind of people who should be put in power. We haven’t really figured out a solution to that problem that works at scale.

>another is the likelihood that the kind of people who seek power generally aren’t the kind of people who should be put in power.

That's indeed a problem, but only part: terrible people are still just people, and have no ability on their own to hold onto power. They only do so because a legion of people enables them: security forces, police, military, and ultimately the regular citizenry. All these people either happily risk their lives defending the terrible person, or stand back and do nothing and allow themselves to be abused. Just look at Russia: Putin is an elderly man in poor health. He has no ability to keep himself in power unilaterally. But a bunch of security people are happy to follow his orders and keep him in power, and even murder other rich, powerful people on his behalf. It would be easy for them to murder him in his bathtub like another terrible autocrat long ago, but they prefer to stay loyal to him even while he destroys their country.

> It would be easy for them to murder him in his bathtub like another terrible autocrat long ago, but they prefer to stay loyal to him even while he destroys their country.

No, it wouldn’t. Even if it was and let’s say they do it, then what next? Do you assume that some kind-hearted leader will just fill in the power vacuum instead of war hawks like Yevgeny Prigozhin and Sergei Shoigu?

If the security forces were smart and wanted a good leader that wouldn't destroy the country, they'd kill those guys too.

Do you really think it's better to just let a horrible leader keep leading, because there's a chance the next guy will be worse? Even if he is, the chaos of transition should make it easier to cut his reign very short and choose again.

The point is it’s never that simple…what you’re proposing is a full revolution, which is very difficult to pull off and not to talk of transitioning to another regime peacefully.

I’m not sure if you’re a westerner but one of the issues I notice with people in western developed countries is thinking it’s easy to just fix the government. I live in a country similar to Russia and the issue is that taking out the leader won’t suffice because the entire system is corrupt from top to bottom.

You know why those security forces continue to just do their jobs? It’s better to live under a tyrant within a governmental system than in a chaotic failed state.

There's quite a few people in the Russian security and military forces who think that Putin isn't going far enough, if anything. If Russia actually has a successful coup, I'd say it's a decent change that the new guy will be worse than Putin in all respects. The more extreme forces are more likely to try, and probably more likely to succeed if they do.

Other than resorting to nukes, how much farther can they even go? Their military is gutted at this point.

Russia hasn't had a true total mobilization yet, so there are still bodies to throw at the enemy. And, well, nukes aren't exactly off limits to the kind of people I'm talking about, either.

> We haven’t really figured out a solution to that problem that works at scale.

In fact, we have, but we aren't capable of implementing it. The solution is to select leaders randomly. https://realkm.com/2020/10/13/would-we-do-better-choosing-le...

This could work, but with an additional step: there should be a background check and/or psych test on the candidates. If they're found to have (or have had) any desire to become one of the leaders, they're disqualified. Only people who don't want the job are allowed to have it (and it's mandatory).

Many of the factors and changes in society that are making democracy dumber is also making autocrats dumber and less effective.

America has alot of dumb people are are getting systematically dumber. But the smart people are really really productive and keep the rest of the place bumbling along. Most of these authoritarian states lack that.

Also, democratic systems have mechanisms for getting rid of truly ineffective people in a relatively reliable and predictable fashion. Authoritarian regimes have a hard time replacing the top without chaos, and the replacements are also often not vetted to be better.

For a while, it seemed like China's one-party state promised to have the best of both worlds, with a single party and lack of general elections to avoid the problems with in-fighting between parties and the voters making stupid choices, and the general inefficiency of democratic systems, while having a party (with many thousands of members) in charge rather than a single person so the party can replace the top leadership when necessary.

In practice, however, it doesn't seem to be working out as promised, with Xi turning into a dictator.

>merica has alot of dumb people are are getting systematically dumber

Is there evidence of this? Anecdotally at least even dumb people are a lot more knowledgeable than they were two generations ago.

The nice thing about being a (professed) smart cynic is that you don’t have to bring any sources to the table. The more cynical and the more “everyone is stupid (but me)”, the less you have to substantiate your claims.

Oh for sure, democracies have to figure out how to actually get things done domestically. However authoritarians are able to get things done domestically and are just incompetent.

If democracies can become well oiled machines, it’s clear that no dictatorial government could complete with them.

All? Saudi Arabia had a good year.

I think it's more like authoritarians had a bad year, except the ones allied with the US.

That’s fair but then again that’s from being allied to competent nations. Left on its own the Saudi dynasty would not exist as it pays its way out of rebellion with subsidies and lacks the martial intellect to ensure a monopoly on violence against rebel groups (even with western weapons of war.)

Riight. This does present a conundrum though.

If god exists, then he may have chosen to make the wather warm, but then it also means that he chose to not stop the killing of innocent civilians in the war.

So, if god exists, he is an a*hole.

> So, if god exists, he is an a*hole.

Isn’t that the unavoidable conclusion, if you read common religious texts?

Yes.

> The mercy of God.

The mercy of probabilities.

Yes, burning down your house does provide some heat temporarily. Nothing to do with god or mercy.

This just proves that chemtrails are real and the CIA is controlling the weather.

I for one welcome our fictional conspiracy theory overlords.

You don't have to believe in "chemtrails" to believe in weather modification. Weather modification is not science fiction. In fact, numerous weather modification projects are registered with NOAA.[1]

"Chemtrails" seems like a classic misdirect-and-discredit campaign.

If I was running the CIA, right now I would be warming Europe like there's no tomorrow (and denying it to avoid international blowback and to shirk blame for any side-effects).

[1] https://library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Collections/Wea...

"Warming Europe" is not a result any sane assessment of weather modification could suggest is possible.

The EU really focused on importing rather than conserving natural gas.

A huge solar/wind install which significantly reduced the need for natural gas turbines over the year doing as much to fill tanks as their new LNG terminal while providing more long term utility. Instead by focusing on being able to import and store vs conserve and store they further spiked prices.

I am not saying they wanted to maximize misery for political reasons or profits for the energy sector. However, I can’t help but feel they mismanaged this even though the worst predictions like rationing or 10x price increases never happened.

Perhaps I should give them more credit and say their plan actually worked reasonably well even if it’s benefitted from unusual weather. Winter is far from over and they are already in the clear.

What kind of solar install could have been finished by now?

I don’t really know, my point was really more about them seemingly putting all their eggs in one basket even though the total drop in natural gas as a percentage of energy generation supply wasn’t that big.

A rough ballpark to see if it could have been meaningful, they had most of the year and annual production is something like ~200GW of solar panels vs average electricity production in the EU is ~300 GW. I have no idea how much could have been fast tracked but moving the needle quite far seems possible.

But again I am not an expert and their plan seems to have worked.

Diversifying it is a good point. While gas was maybe the focus for this winter, of course it would be good to start the solar initiative at the same time so that it can be ready for some future year.

And what kind of yield would you get in December - February when you really need to heat the houses? Europe is much higher north than many assume

Offsetting demand natural gas demand in June also lets you stockpile that natural gas. The EU produces a great deal of natural gas and can store it just fine, they simply needed to make up a deficit.

That would not have helped for this winter.

Natural gas in a tank is just as useful if it’s there because it was imported or stockpiled.

You misunderstand. For it to be useful this winter, additional solar would have needed to have been deployed at the beginning of summer. Your timeline is: Russia invades February 24. Your most effective solar window is April-October. The solar would have needed to be built in 1-2 months to offset summer gas use.

It’s more effective to bring solar online sooner because it’s providing power every month after being installed thus providing a longer window to stockpile natural gas. However, while output is lower in December it’s still useful for December, January, and February and then continues to provide power into the future.

The EU is very much still concerned about having enough natural gas for next winter.

As an example the UK "stockpile" of gas is notionally 9 TWh although in practice you definitely shouldn't treat that whole volume as slack because if it ever runs out everything is fucked.

The UK uses typically maybe 700 GWh per day of electricity. So the stockpile you're talking about is less than two weeks of electricity you've "offset" from the summer. OK, and now what do we do for the remaining months of winter ?

UK doesn’t supply 100% of electricity from natural gas only 38.5% and they continue to produce natural gas in the winter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_the_Unit...

Let’s suppose the deficit is 40% of natural gas which represents a daily deficit of ~40% * 0.385 = 15.4% of electricity generation. So that 9 TWh represents 9,000 / 700 / 0.385 / 0.4 = ~83 days which is already quite close to spring without any additional imports. But, I am also suggesting bringing more power generation online which further decrease the gap.

PS: Even just 3% of total daily electricity being covered by new generation that ~83 days to ~104 days, again before considering any extra imports.

The 38.5% figure you're using is a mean over the course of a year so you're double counting, and the 40% you've chosen to discount by is an arbitrary fiction, the question is about the value of a "stockpile" and so arbitrarily assuming we can just buy more gas as we please to fill some of it back up begs the question.

Point to a specific calculation where 38.5% double counting.

That 40% was a ridiculous over the top doomsday estimate as the UK procedures a lot of natural gas and only ~7% of their imports came from Russia in 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1324377/uk-natural-gas-i... The only reason to use 40% is to simulate the EU is reducing global supply and it’s impact wasn’t even close to that severe.

As to just buying more natural gas, that’s what actually happened so I don’t need to assume anything. The entire EU was able to successfully replace all Russian natural gas from the global market.

> Point to a specific calculation where 38.5% double counting.

The calculation you did. It uses this figure, but the figure itself is already accounted for in what you were trying to model, that is what double counting is.

The annual 38.5% includes both very windy days, and very sunny days, in which consequently PV input and wind power input were very high, as well as the dark and cold but still days in which neither produces very much power.

But the problem scenario we care about is long dark cold days of winter. You can't use a figure which averages in a bright but gusty June morning and use that as representative of a miserable January, you need to look at what it's like on such days, and it's much higher than 38.5%.

Remember, your original thesis is that somehow not using gas in June will save you needing gas in January and I've shown why that's nonsense, the "stockpile" involved is just far too small for this to make any sense.

For what you wanted to do to actually make sense the UK would need to buy at least ten times as much storage as it has now, ie enough to last out a nasty winter. But it shows no sign of wanting to do that, if anything exactly the opposite, preferring to "leave it to the market" and then acting confused when the market does what you'd expect, ie gouge them for every penny it can.

> It uses this figure, but the figure itself is already accounted for in what you were trying to model, that is what double counting is.

No, let’s use some numbers to derive the average power per day from natural gas:

“In 2020, total electricity production stood at 312 TWh (down from a peak of 385 TWh in 2005), generated from the following sources:[45]

Gas: 35.7% (0.05% in 1990), Nuclear: 16.1% (19% in 1990 …”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom

So in 2020 the UK produced 312 TWh * 35.7% = 111.384 TWh (Natural gas) / 365 = 305 GWh per day from Natural Gas.

Ignoring domestic production when the war started they where going to need to make up ~7% of that or 21 GWh per day or ~7.7 TWh across the entire year from missing Russian natural gas supply.

Now you've gone on a weird tangent where instead of talking about the topic on which I pointed out the numbers don't work (stockpiling gas in June so as to not need it in January), you've decided that for some reason the UK's goal needs to be making exactly the same ratio of extra electricity as as the fraction of Russian gas they used to import.

But those aren't comparable numbers, which will be why you've got this ludicrously small result. Even with the weird choice to replace specifically Russian gas in the UK (What about elsewhere? What about the huge price increases? What about global supply concerns?) you need to replace the gas not some portion of electricity. So that means you need to stockpile... drum roll... 5.6 billion cubic meters of gas.

But gas is a physical material, you need to keep it somewhere and the UK doesn't own storage for 5.6 billion cubic meters of gas.

It might seem like they must have more than that, but imagine what it would look like, imagine a 20km by 20km box, 14 metres high, that's the internal dimensions of the storage you're imagining.

The UK did own a noticeable fraction of 5.6 billion cubic meters, not enough but a fair start, the Rough storage site. Rough is actually gas wells which are dry, re-purposed as storage. However, the UK government didn't want to pay for this, so after it was sold into the private sector the owner decided they weren't bothered and it was moth-balled. Once emergency payments were forthcoming, a fraction of Rough that was in least bad condition was re-opened for this winter. Again though, even the whole site if magically restored to 100% service would not store 5.6 billion cubic meters, that's just a lot of gas.

The UK produces natural gas, so their Russian imports was only 4% of it’s total supply. Non Russian imports in 2022 where fine so why you bring it up?

As to storage that’s hardly a fixed number, the UK is looking to add another 1.7 Billion cubic meters of storage for next year, but could easily have done so in 2022. https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/uk-gas-storage-capa...

Also, this may be shocking for you but people don’t store gas at standard pressure and temperature in big above ground tanks. So no 5.6 billion cubic meters of gas isn’t a 20km by 20km box. The UK has plenty of geologic features to store gas namely the same places it was extracting it from for decades.

For comparison when the graph here shows just shy of 4,000 billion cubic feet in storage in NA, that’s ~113 billion cubic meters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_storage

Almost all of Europe is north of the 42nd parallel, which is about even with where Illinois borders Wisconsin.

Berlin only gets about 9 hours of visible light today.

Lots of 5-10 acre-looking parks along the Autobahns outside of cities, financed by various regional power companies and run by specialized solar operators, often outside their home regions (example: an EnBW park run by a company based near Stuttgart, located next to a rest stop in Thüringen)

I imagine the lead time on even a 3x increase in solar panel production would be well over a year.

They had 6-8 months to solve this problem.

Enough natural gas exists in the world outside of Russia to power Europe. Is that true of solar panels?

also it's winter and much of Europe is pretty far north, so short days and allot of clouds with rain and maybe some snow.

Europe produces natural gas, the need is to offset an import deficit not completely replace all electricity and home heating across the EU.

For scale average electricity profusion in the EU is 300GW, vs 200 GW of worldwide solar panel production. So, it could have clearly moved the needle.

Even if they could somehow magically install gigawatts of solar power, all those furnaces in people's homes still run on natural gas.

That's the fundamental problem: heating in Europe generally requires gas, because that's how the infrastructure was designed. They should be pushing for conversions to electric heat pumps, to avoid this kind of thing in the future: electric can run on any power source, whether it's fossil fuel or solar or nuclear.

Heat pumps are not efficient at all for large temperature deltas. Electric is general bad for heating (efficiency wise) unless we literally manage to generate tons of it for very cheap (e.g. fusion).

Big chunks of Europe don't get cold enough for the delta to be unacceptable. A 20K delta (so e.g. you want it to be 20° C inside, but the outside air temperature is 0° C) is still well inside the range where the heat pump has > 100% efficiency.

When it's really cold, which even in Northern Europe is only a few days per year, air source heat pumps would be < 100% efficient and you'd step to resistive heating, but it's weird to optimise for a worst case scenario.

And ground source heat pumps are a thing, unlike the air the ground has a relatively stable temperature we can leverage to stabilise home temperatures.

Ground-source heat pumps fix that problem I believe. Of course, drilling a hole is extra work and expense. For multi-unit housing, it should be a lot more economical since you could drill one hole for coolant circulation and share that among all the units.

And some countries already are. For example, in Lithuania there are subsidies (~40% of installation price) for replacing gas, wood or coal furnaces with heat pumps. (Also subsidies for installing solar panels and batteries too.)

It's just that... Theres so many households and only so few manufacturing/importing/installing capabilities. And the subsidies aren't limitless too :-)

Solar electricity supply is not elastic and obviously doest't work at night. And installation won't happen overnight as well as production. So stocking gas was the only viable short term option

Sure but it’s been 11 months, assuming the concern was this winter that’s quite a bit of time to do something.

11 months is no time at all for any kind of large-ish project. And small-scale projects are getting harder due to the economic situation as well. You just cannot do much of anything in 11 months.

Assuming you don’t treat it as an emergency 11 months isn’t that long.

But, look at how quickly and how many COVID vaccines where created and entered mass production. Or how quickly Germany got their new LNG terminal online from scratch. We normally take forever to build a bridge, but 15 days after a hurricane Florida got large temporary bridge ready for traffic. https://practical.engineering/blog/2022/12/15/how-this-bridg... That’s the kind of response that gets stings done.

So, 11 months is a long time when people actually decide acting right now is important.

It does work at night, for about 4-6 months if you’re far enough North.

Have... have you lived here? Solar makes zero sense in most of Europe: most of the year it would barely trickle charge the grid. Yeah, it'd work brilliantly at small scale for a few months every year, but grid storage is measured in "at most a few days", no technology exists that would make solar even remotely sensible in most of Europe. And no, "building it where it's sunny, then sending it on" would be nowhere near enough to cover the rest of Europe. People did consider that. Then they actually ran the numbers. Then they went "oh... okay that's never going to work".

No one solution needed to be be total. It’s been 11 months and the concern has already shifted to next winter that’s a long time for wind/solar to be reducing demand for natural gas turbines. Burning less gas in July let’s you have that gas to burn in January assuming you have storage capacity.

My point is the plan seems to be “let’s just import it whatever the cost” rather than saying what can we do to minimize the need while also increasing imports.

> Burning less gas in July let’s you have that gas to burn in January assuming you have storage capacity.

Britain has bulldozed all of ita gas storage, we are all neoliberal just-in-time supply chains believe in the market.

If the rest of the world stops supplying Britain with energy snd food there will be frostbite and famine in 1 week

Ge5ting planning approval for a wind turbine takes 5 years.

During the energy crisis, conservative government has moved to make solar illegal on agricutural land

Solar is being rolled out like crazy and the main constraint is not the available sunlight but rather getting a connection to the grid. In fact if you look at where there's the most solar power in Europe, it's north western Europe (Benelux + Germany) even though one might expect it would produce more in Southern Europe

Global Solar Atlas* gives a pretty good overview of the gains from solar that can be expected depending on latitude. North of France solar just isn't very efficient so to get a decent amount of power out of it would require setting up solar farms across large areas. Maybe setting up solar in pasture would work, but good luck getting that past the NIMBYs.

Wind is more attractive, but needs tons of infra work to be a proper solution and the power of atom can't be harnessed because of the stark lack of research and knowledge, the heavy upfront costs, and shenanigans from so-called "green" parties.

I'm guessing the politicians' battle plan is basically "hope someone else fixes it and lets me take credit."

* https://globalsolaratlas.info/map

The map highlights a future of power cables through Turkey and Spain with North Africa and the Arab states providing power sourced from the sun, with additional solar -> ammonia -> transport -> storage -> hydrogen -> baseload generation.

Details aside it's much like today, with the massive gas lines to Russia out of the picture (transformed and redirected if you will).

It's a big shift, yes, but on the scale of what has been done before.

This is because of extreme subsidies. In the Netherlands people can still subtract the solar power they feed back to the grid from their bill on a kWh basis. This is called "salderen". It's pretty unfair because the power is fed back when it's cheap and the people without panels (or that can't have them) are paying for it through higher prices and taxes. Because obviously the energy companies aren't charities so they make up the difference one way or another. And in winter these panels aren't very effective there.

Meanwhile here in Spain where solar panels would do a lot more good there aren't many due to lack of incentives. I don't think they should do the same kind of feedback incentive but it would be great if they'd subsidize the purchase price which is much harder to stomach due to Spain's much lower salary standards. And of course these are great to power air conditioning which is pretty much a must in Spain whereas the Netherlands needs more energy in winter for heating. So a net win for the environment.

You’re missing the point. I worked on a project years ago that used incentives to drive PV installations when the ROI wasn’t great.

Basically a $50M in annual small scale solar incentives saved ratepayers something like $600M in excess capital costs because it reduced peak demand. For electricity, the hottest week of the summer costs more than the coldest month. The more you can maximize usage of the big power plants off peak, the lower your rates go and the more efficient you are.

Being against solar is completely nuts.

> For electricity, the hottest week of the summer costs more than the coldest month.

This is true of the USA, but is not true about Europe, where few people have AC, and you only see the sun a few hours a day.

Europe sees more of the sun than the US in summer, being on average further North. I am not sure about what you are trying to say. Completely agree about the general lack of AC, though.

Uh, there is a positively huge difference between, say, Sweden and Greece. Sweden has almost no AC, Im sure Greece has a lot. Also a silly difference in insolation during winter. Ive seen on http://app.electricitymap.org/ that Greece has had some VERY good days for solar production lately, like above 60% of installed capacity. I suspect the installed capacity is not updated with reality, or theyre very lucky. Sweden produces maybe a few % of the summer figures at the moment.

That lack of AC won't last much longer. I'm admittedly at about the same latitude as the most southern tip of Germany in Romania. I doubt I'll last more than another year in August without installing AC for all rooms.

Also ask the Greeks. Or Italians. Or the Spanish or southern France.

Incidentally, with this warm winter I'm paying more for heating than my largest heating bill ever, that happened in a -20 C month. And that with government capped heating prices.

> Being against solar is completely nuts.

We don’t have a silver bullet. I wish people would just understand this simple fact. Most of these pro-this or anti-that positions are purely ideological and without regards for actual facts.

The absolute priority and necessity is to get out of fossil fuels. Solar cannot be enough for Europe, and building large solar farms in most places is nonsense, but at the same time it needs to be developed where it does make sense.

Exactly. It’s a solution, not the solution.

Then for you too: have you been here? Yes, there are a few countries for which Solar will work, and more countries for which a massive Solar investment will never pay off. But you know what will? Wind and hydro. You know what's already been constantly getting invested in? Wind and hydro.

Being against renewables is completely nuts. Being against solar in places where solar is a dumb idea for most of the year, and we could spend the same money on better green alternatives is being perfectly sensible.

Build solar installations where there's a reliable amount of sun, for most of the year (and each country where that's the case already has solar projects going). And then understand that even if you do that, the benefit will be local rather than EU wide because there simply isn't enough Europe that matches that description for solar to be the only renewable you can think of.

When I go to https://model.energy/ and model what's the cheapest way to provide baseload using wind and solar (and batteries and hydrogen) in Germany, the minimum cost solutions use quite a lot of solar. Hell, if I do the same for Sweden there's still quite a lot of solar in the mix.

From the site:

"This is a toy model with a strongly simplified setup. Please read the warnings before interpreting the results. In particular: [Very long list]"

Hydrogen as storage is still very far into the future.

To take some numbers it suggest for Sweden if we remove hydrogen storage, we just need 800% wind overcapacity, 400% solar overcapacity and 100% grid capacity battery solution.

And your objection to that conclusion is? The model is using real historical weather data. Without hydrogen, covering seasonality and rare prolonged dark/calm periods could become very expensive.

That’s just not true. Solar makes sense even in the far North, North of the arctic circle. I ran the numbers and deployed, it’s been profitable since day 1.

There are many renewable energy projects already going on, including large solar power stations in the Sahara desert that feed into the EU grid via submarine cables.

E.g.: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/solar-energy-egypt-europe...

The point is 2022 installs have been business as usual rather than in response to spiking energy prices.

This crisis was predicted 11 months ago with the invasion and they are already forecasting issues next winter that’s a long time fast track stuff.

Solar installations are limited by production capacity of the panels. There may be no significant options available for fast tracking.

Germany did complete some energy projects in record time, such as the construction of a new LNG facility to enable more gas imports by ship.

Global production capacity is on the order of 200 GW, that dwarfs the deficit from reduced natural gas imports from Russia.

And that LNG facility was my point, that’s far less useful once Russia’s pipelines open up again. It’s a massive investment with limited long term gain on top of also paying higher natural gas prices.

There is the possibility that Russian gas lines never open up (in the near future).

Ukraine war is likely going to turn out to be a massive political realignment.

> And that LNG facility was my point, that’s far less useful once Russia’s pipelines open up again. It’s a massive investment with limited long term gain on top of also paying higher natural gas prices.

It is strategic. Sometimes you do need to pay more to keep some options open and diversify your sources. The last year has shown how foolish it would be to get back in bed with Russia. Buying their gas is fine, getting dependent on it is not.

The point is 2022 installs have been business as usual rather than in response to spiking energy prices.

Installs accelerated significantly:

https://www.solarpowereurope.org/press-releases/new-report-r...

"New report reveals EU solar power soars by almost 50% in 2022"

SolarPower Europe’s annual progress report for solar power reveals that the EU installed 41.4 GW of solar in 2022, up 47% from the 28.1 GW installed in 2021. ...

47% sounds like a major boom but 2021 installs where also up 34% over 2020.

So no the EU didn’t suddenly change policies in 2022 to bring a lot of new generation online, just continued the same long term trend.

A liquid natural gas port was fast-tracked. It worked.

Installing wind that fast is "impossible". Remember that Europe needs to import stuff, and most things are in scarce supply at the moment. Thats not even mentioning lack of workforce, competence and permitting!

It is happening, but it takes 5 years to get going and 10 years to see the results.

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