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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

Nope. They are not fine. Europe is floundering with its renewable transition.

Right now it's easy to build tons of cheap low-quality wind or solar generation, but it's not economic to build any kind of storage. As a result, Europe is now dependent on natural gas and coal during the winter.

And there's nothing that can change that within the next decade.

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"Europe" is not a country.

France finished it's nuclear build-out decades ago. It's still got issues, but the matter is sorted.

The UK is adding scads of wind power every day.

Ditto for Spain, only with solar.

Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Finland have mix of hydro, nuclear, and renewables.

Yes, Germany is screwing the pooch on this one. Most places east of Germany isn't doing much better. But their failure is theirs, and not their Western and Northern neighbours.

The wind power over here is nice, but hopefully the nuclear gets rolling[0].

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61010605

Unfortunately, "UK Plans..." has become statements for the purpose of electioneering rather than serious intent.

See also the list of announced projects that mere days later had to said to be "illustrative": https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/09/list-of-proj...

The western neighbours have outsized influence on EU policy compared to the east, of course they have to take part of the blame.

EU energy policy made visible changes on the markets and landscape of the eastern republics - and the people here hate the EU for it.

For example, it created a whole class of "solar barons" who used the EU regulation to get free money that now everyone has to pay for, and for the necessary energy storage that the "barons" are not on the hook for. The population here would've preferred to go nuclear, but EU forced it to support this instead.

Specifically what EU policies that the more renewable-and-nuclear friendly countries voted for do you have in mind?

The EU green deal was specifically anti-nuclear until very recently. What I'm talking about started in 2008 and finished around 2012 (though we're going to be paying for it for many decades).

Yes, it was made pro-nuclear under pressure from France. But even before then, the only countries with more nuclear power than the EU (that aren't also in the EU) are Ukraine (which is on the European grid), Switzerland (also on the European grid), Armenia and South Korea.

Europe's revealed preferences makes it the most pro-nuclear region in the world, by far.

Wut? Their anti-nuclear policy reveals them as pro-nuclear? What new nuclear was built during the last 2 decades, before they had to change the anti-nuclear policy?

The population is pro-nuclear, sure. But the policy was set by the anti-nuclear supporters of the green deal and we had to wait for many years until reality forced them to accept nuclear.

Again, the energy policy of Europe has resulted in them having more nuclear than anywhere else in the world, besides South Korea. Everything you say about Europe as a whole being anti-nuclear is more applicable to almost every other country globally. Because Europe has more nuclear than basically everywhere else.

> What new nuclear was built during the last 2 decades

More than the US, believe it or not. Between new reactors in Finland, France, and Slovakia, around 3,700 MWe versus the US at around 2,200 MWe from reactors in Tennessee and Georgia.

I'm not saying energy policy has been good in EUrope over the last 2 decades, but it's not been uniquely worse than the rest of the Western world.

I don't care about the rest of the world. The rest of the world can do whatever. My state doesn't have natural gas or oil, nor a lot of sunshine or wind, nor a lot of rivers.

I care about my taxes (and I don't mean EU subsidies here) going to solar baron's pocket instead of nuclear reactors.

The few projects you listed - you seriously think that's enough? I don't. We can see in practice that all the money spent on solar and wind led us to over dependence on fossil fuels, not their abolishment, and now we have to spend another absurd amount of money on storage to solve that.

It's a failed anti-nuclear policy that's thankfully reversed now but that doesn't change history. I really don't care about the US, or frankly, Slovakia and France. I care about my own home.

BTW, it's funny that all the projects you listed were started way before the green deal. IMHO you just confirmed what I said.

>The UK is adding scads of wind power every day.

Yeah about that wind

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/what-wen...

Surely if the generation is so cheap why won't anyone commit to more turbines?

It says right there in the article - costs went up for turbines operators, and the government didn't change the amount they'd pay. It's hard to miss.

Worth seeing contracts for onshore wind went fast though.

Strong claims. Any evidence to back them up, besides "Germany shutting nuclear stupid"?

Germany is the main culprit. There's no plan for fossil fuel phaseout in Germany, or for most of the European countries that are not blessed with almost limitless hydroenergy.

Cheap renewables allowed Europe to quickly slash some emissions, but now they're hitting a hard wall of reality: the wintertime sucks for renewables in Europe.

Germany will exit coal none later than 2038. I guess the rest of comment is just as wrong as the first claim. You still didn't bring up nuclear, I am almost surprised.

Yeah, and it'll switch to natgas. Great improvement. Not.

Youbsaid Germany doesn't have a plan to exit fossil fuels. I showed they in fact do. You are not happy, fair enough.

But since everything being done is either not enough or not feasible, what exactly is your proposal?

> I showed they in fact do.

You actually haven't shown that. Coal exit does not mean fossil fuel exit.

And I have not seen an actual plan to get out of fossil fuels, apart from general hand-waving.

And I mean an actual plan, with detailed location of new power storage plants, exact targets for renewables, etc.

Such a plan is currently being prepared for coal. Gas, as a means to cover peaks on short notice, is still needed so, but also much better than coal, especially at significantly lower volumes.

This is a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. And revamping huge portions of an energy grid, and generation base, is nothing that is done easily or fast.

Edit: Source in German:

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Fachthemen/Elektrizitaet...

> This is a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good

No. If you say they're exiting fossil fuels, but they're moving on to gas, your claim is just wrong. Gas might be better than coal, but that wasn't the claim.

Oh dear... They have a plan to exit the dirtiest form fossil fuel, one Germany heavily relies on today. I did not say Germany is gonna move to gas, since I didn't read everything, that was just an assumption.

So, what you say is the current plan to exit coal, which you initially claimed didn't exist, is garbish because the result might include some gas. And hence, there is no such plan, and even if there was, said plan wouldn't be feasible because of reasons.

That is exactly getting a (poorly defined) perfect in the way of the good.

Edit: Just realized I replied to another commenter, so please replace "you" with GP.

Again, this isn't about gas being better than coal. It's that the claim was they're exiting fossil fuels, when they aren't.

Aren't you saying the same thing? If externalities were priced appropriately, then storage probably would be a good investment.

I have hard time seeing that electricity markets in Europe were designed with a view to achieving a renewable transition (some lib service notwithstanding), so not sure that is a failure of the market as designed.

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