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> I think the idea that renewables have to be paired with large amounts of energy storage is not correct. In Ireland dispatchable power is used when wind is low. Natural gas, hydroelectric, HVDC, pumped storage.

Natural gas is neither renewable nor emission-free when burning, albeit less than burning coal, for instance. About 117 pounds of CO2 are produced per million British thermal units (MMBtu) equivalent of natural gas compared with more than 200 pounds of CO2 per MMBtu of coal and more than 160 pounds per MMBtu of distillate fuel oil. Source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/natural-gas-...

So while using natural gas is better than using coal, in the longer term we likely needs to reduce its usage and substitute with renewables too.

We cant switch overnight.

It takes about 1/10 or 1/20th the amount of time and 1/5th the cost to build equivalent solar production. It's better to start with that and let pumped storage, batteries and hydrogen play catch up than pay 5x more and wait 10-20x longer for equivalent levels of nuclear power production.

Right now we use so much natural gas that a GWh of solar or nuclear produced energy is essentially just a GWh of natural gas that never gets burned.

That GWh can be produced in two years less consistently or twenty years more consistently. Which do you choose?

Id take two years. Storage and demand shaping infrastructure will catch up.

> That GWh can be produced in two years less consistently or twenty years more consistently. Which do you choose?

Both.

Intermittent generation methods are more problematic the more of the grid you try to replace with them. You have solar generation during the day, you run your natural gas plants less during the day but still run them at night, great. Keep building solar until you can stop running them during the day at all. Installing that much capacity could take 20 years.

At that point you'd have to contend with what to do at night. But hey, by then the nuclear plants you started building today are online. You might also look into ways of speeding up the process, because it shouldn't take 20 years to do that.

Let say a natural gas power plant has a life time expectancy of 20 years. If we say that in 20 years we can abandon natural gas with nuclear, then lets put that as a deadline for when the last natural gas power plant will be demolished.

We need to stop building new natural gas power plants and existing ones need to have a planned obsolescence so that investors know when their investment will no longer be worth anything.

gas power plant != natural gas power plant. Green hydrogen gas generated from excess renewables and biogas exist, and can often be used in existing power plants. Though they are expensive right now, we've no idea how the technology may evolve in the next few years.

In Ireland they are actually building natural gas power plants with the assumption they will be stop operation as little as 5 years and only used for emergency purposes from then on. This is because they are using OCGT gas turbines which were invented for use in 3rd world countries and are much cheaper than conventional CCGT gas turbines.

Also don't forget that nuclear power plants have to go offline for maintenance like everything else, and I'm not sure it will ever be financially viable to have redundant nuclear power plants. France recently had to take 50% of their power plants offline for a few months to fix cracks and Japan had to take all of them offline for a few years after Fukushima. Thats why it's necessary to have emergency backup power plants and right now these are typically gas.

Fun fact. Nuclear power can technically load follow. It just generally isn't a good idea because it isn't very cost effective to not be running your nuclear power plant at all times. Also fun fact, nuclear power is really useful for high energy intensive operations such as splitting oxygen and hydrogen atoms from one another.

Side note: The France story is much more complicated. It doesn't sell narratives well, but what can I say, truth is complicated. It's not going to fit into this comment, but it has to do with regulations, covid, Ukraine, Germany, lack of European self-sufficiency, economics, and so much more. It's best to not bring up France's recent nuclear fiasco unless you're willing to get into the weeds, because otherwise you'll just start a fight by anyone who knows a bit more but still not the full story (which means multiple people will argue confidently and a clusterfuck ensues). With no doubt, France has blame to play. But to give just a push to find more info, remember that inspections and maintenance are scheduled quite far in advance. That many had been pushed off because of a global pandemic, and then war broke out. One could say this was quite a series of unfortunate events. Yes, blame France, but placing all blame on France is like destroying all farms except for one and then blaming that farm for famine when it got overrun by pests (even if it was entirely that farmer's fault, was it?)

I think the point is that people often point to France as "look it works" (while simultaneously saying "there Germany terrible") when the reality is that no France doesn't just work (and yes failure modes are always about multiple disadvantages coincidences, all the other stuff is usually covered).

Saying France "works" or "doesn't work" isn't so straight forward, but I definitely lean more towards the "it works" side. I mean it is a net exporter of energy and is only rivaled by Sweden in terms of emissions per kWhr (Sweden has a lot of hydro, which is great, but not available to everyone. Can also be dangerous, see Banqiao, but that's not very relevant tbh). Germany on the other hand has 6x the emissions. They've been making great strides, but still have yet to be able to remove themselves from their coal and gas addictions (gas is potentially worse than typical accounting but let's use official numbers to keep fair). That is also what put them at the mercy of Russia (and consequently several other EU countries who depended on either Russia or Germany for power, which increased demand from French power), but also can be seen as a strategic move politically since trade partners are less likely to go to war but it can also be leverage. As you might see, this is in fact a pretty complicated clusterfuck. But we can all agree that German electricity is procured at 6x the emissions of French electricity. Success does depend upon which metrics you care about, but if we're talking climate, emissions are definitely one of the most important ones. A big issue is that Germany is often viewed as a mover and role model in the climate space but even by EU standards they are one of the worst offenders (doubly so if you bin the countries by economic size. i.e. Poorer countries have worse emissions). So I get why people push back against Germany because while we should congratulate them for their large rollout of renewables we should still criticize them for their emission levels and inability to actually match what others have done (even many with little to no nuclear, see UK)

You may find this site useful strictly for the electricity and subsequent emissions side. It'll be insufficient for total emissions though (as that includes many things beyond electricity) and certainly isn't adequate for understanding geopolitics or other things. I suggest poking around, using the emission tab per region (defaults on production) and also changing the time scale to at least 30 days to be a more accurate view of this specific question we're addressing.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR

I liked you first comment about things being complicated and that "good" or "bad" is difficult to tell because people will give more importance to the partial elements they see.

Unfortunately, you've done just that in this last comment.

One detail that I see too often with people advancing similar arguments than you here is that they just take two countries and compare them if it was two lab experiments done within the same conditions and repeated sufficiently to bring conclusive results.

There are plenty of elements about that: the way France and Germany are industrialised is pretty different so what worked/did not work for one does not mean it would have worked or not for the other, maybe if Germany would have followed the same path as France the German specificity would have made Germany emitting 8x more instead of 6x (or not, of course), maybe the German way had 60% chance of success and bad luck failed while the France way had 40% chance of success and lucky then they did not failed (not saying it's the case, just that it's tricky to pretend getting lessons from what happened), maybe one country had pushed itself in a corner and will struggle on the last few yards while the other had a worst initial score because they were paving the road (again, not saying it's the case), maybe the success of France relied on having Germany going that way (who knows how the French nuclear park would have evolved if they had Germany that would have provided electricity with exactly the same characteristics and fulfilling the same needs on the same market but having the same drawbacks on the same market), ...

It does not mean we cannot get lessons, but the lessons you bring (or the method itself) are just invalid: no, looking at the electricity map today is just not a way to conclude which strategy is the best. And everyone who reasons like that is just muddying the water rather than being helpful.

> Unfortunately, you've done just that in this last comment.

I think you're reading into my comment too much. I was just explaining some of (certainly not all) absurd amounts of complexity. I was very careful to frequently stress that there are many valid metrics to use to compare, and that none of them are complete. Even my statement is just some complexity and no conclusions.

Certainly I don't think France and Germany should have taken the same path. This is the specialization I was discussing.

> looking at the electricity map today is just not a way to conclude which strategy is the best.

Definitely not something I claimed. I even was careful to stress that this is a very limited metric. And of course not, because they're different countries. Specialization requires complementary strategies, coalitions. So I'm not sure why we'd measure at that abstract of a level (country to country with industry, energy, economics, and such) because you just can't. You can only compare parts at a time and even adding several dozen more metrics you won't be even remotely whole.

Sorry if I have misunderstood. But I still don't understand the reason you put the electricity map website and saying "I suggest poking around ... to be a more accurate view of this specific question we're addressing", this website is 100% useless for that discussion, due to effects I've mentioned.

You also said "we should still criticize them [germany] for their emission levels and inability to actually match what others have done ", which seems to be exactly what I was talking about: "inability to actually match what others have done" is pretty much saying that if 2 countries spend as much effort and goes into the same strategy, they will match.

Maybe you don't think like that (in which case, my bad), but a lot of people do and your previous comment is very not well written to not amplify this way of thinking by implying this logic is sound.

The website is purely to see electric energy production (note the care or words). It is but one of many metrics, which I think we both agree aren't even enough to adequately answer the question of "country emissions" but is the part of that conversation that most people are familiar with.

But I think we need context, as that's likely where things got lost. C0llusion's comment above my "fun fact" comment was the critical aspect. They got causality wrong in their final point. Last year (2022) France's output was ~70% of their 10 year average. I think they confused 50% with their goal for only 50% dependence on nuclear power. The cracks is also a bit weird because while not wrong, it isn't complete and not the causal issue since all nuclear power plants have cracks in the same way all damns do. Here's a "short" writeup by world nuclear[0]. It also briefly mentions how France wanted to be energy independent post oil crisis. But for complexity sake, we can't say counterfactually that Germany made the "wrong" move (or "right") one because you can make an argument about geopolitics and Germany's strategy. If their actions did starve off war then that's a better climate strategy. To complex for me to speculate tbh, just recognizing that it's part of the equation.

I think a big difference in our framing is that you're putting things as if there is a universally optimal strategy by a single nation. Even strictly just on the energy domain. The world is just too complex and it is a multi-agent system that isn't zero sum. Strategies don't work like that when there's so much coalition building. And it is hard for me to properly explain what I'm thinking in just a few comments. I think unfortunately I have a different view than most are used to and so I'm still trying to figure out how to handle the inference gap. I do sincerely appreciate the reinforcement and if you have any additional advice in how I can better communicate. I truly take this idea of complexity to heart, it is a core belief of mine. And if we're being honest, climate is one of the most complicated existential crises that humans have faced. Certainly no single person is able to understand even a relatively complete story except from orbit. But details matter so much that I think we do a great disservice ignoring the complexities (not just around climate). What I can't figure out how to communicate correctly yet is how to discuss a metric but not imply that it is the only thing we should look at. If you have any suggestions I'd really appreciate it. Not sure how to juggle a ton of things but pause to talk about one because talking about everything all at once is fucking chaotic and I'm already verbose as it is. I'm not sure how well this came off but I hope you can see that there's a communication breakdown (admittedly I'm not doing a great job).

[0] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

> I think a big difference in our framing is that you're putting things as if there is a universally optimal strategy by a single nation.

That's exactly the opposite of my point. I explicitly say that nation A going into direction X may lead to nation B failing when going into direction Y while it would have succeed if nation A would not have gone into direction X.

As advice, I would say that you should not provide any "counterfactuals" to not-deep-details-enough, because those counterfactuals are also not-deep-details-enough. For example, in C0llusion's comments, you react on the causality error, which is just too simplistic anyway. But you react by opposing their not-deep-details-enough argument with a not-deep-details-enough argument. Both of these arguments are not useful. What you need to do is to show the complexity and why concluding while not having a deep enough overview is stupid. What you have done here in part of your comment is stepping down to their level and arguing with a similarly not-deep-details-enough argument as if this argument is somewhat not as bad. At least you could have added a lot of disclaimer around it, such as "please don't use this argument to jump to the opposite conclusion, as it is as bad, but as a naive example contradicting your logic ..."

> That's exactly the opposite of my point. I explicitly say that nation A going into direction X may lead to nation B failing when going into direction Y while it would have succeed if nation A would not have gone into direction X.

I guess I'm confused then because this still reads to me as if you're suggesting there's strictly competing strategies. I get that you are discussing different strategies but to me this reads as optimizing for independent strategies rather than optimizing for dependent ones (which is the usual common way people frame things: look at x country, copy their model; no other nuance needed).

> I would say that you should not provide any "counterfactuals"

I'm also confused because I don't know where I presented any counterfactuals. I know where I said we can't place counterfactuals with insufficient information, but not where I claimed a counterfactual.

Really I'm a bit confused because I didn't claim anything that isn't simply fact, the rest is just mentioning of variables not considered and that this is still an even incomplete picture.

> But you react by opposing their not-deep-details-enough argument with a not-deep-details-enough argument.

Yes. We're still operating from orbit. I'm responding to "look at this island" with "but consider the archipelago." I'm not sure what more you expect, as this is HN. We can get some nuance but even just saying to look in a broader sense (which we haven't even seen everything that's still highly important) takes so much writing. Compression is useful, but not when we don't agree we're working in compression or localized discussions. But abstract discussions can also be useful. The "detail" you're criticizing is different from the one I was: words are overloaded.

> What you need to do is to show the complexity and why concluding while not having a deep enough overview is stupid.

I simply do not have time to write a novel, and even if I wanted to could not do so on HN. I'm sorry, we can only discuss at high levels and specifics can only be localized. But resolution will always be fairly low. I am only trying to increase the scope of the discussion because I have faith in my fellow users to increase resolution on their own time.

>Storage and demand shaping infrastructure will catch up

Storage in particular could be MUCH cheaper. (And still be centralized to conserve public-utility oversight and dangers from all those saboteurs out there somewhere.)

Battery storage is VERY expensive and hard on the environment. I continue to see little attention being paid to merely simple gravity storage.

Yes, traditional large-scale pumped hydro exists (usually using expensive turbines to pump water uphill, like the plants used in the UK for decades to get past tea-time. There are many more in the U.S.) They're usually expensive (good for getting tax-payer dollars into constructor pockets) ... time-consuming as well ... and need a hill for a reservoir and a water-source. (Of course we have -all the time in the world- right?)

But on a large scale, electricity can also be stored much more simply and economically by moving VERY heavy weights uphill ... or lifting VERY heavy weights out of a hole. Already existing and proven steel cables can lift 'barrels' containing hundreds or thousands of tons of (very cheap) rocks. Construction times and $/MW cost savings over high-tech 'solutions'? might be 10-1000 times lower.

>Natural gas is neither renewable nor emission-free when burning

Yes you are correct, in fact I actually addressed that in the later part of my comment

>From 2030 onwards the focus will be on decarbonising the remaining ~20% of electricity generation that is gas. How that will be done will depend mostly on how the technology matures in the meantime, but it will likely be replacing natural gas with hydrogen and biogas. Another option could be carbon capture. Or batteries if there is some technological breakthrough and the price of stored energy drops way below it's current 200euro/MWh price.

When picking fruit from a tree, It's usually best to start at the lower branches.

> When picking fruit from a tree, It's usually best to start at the lower branches.

No, when picking fruit its best to pick it in the order it ripens, and as it does so, irrespective of position on the tree.

It is generally easier and requires less special equipment to pick fruit from the lower branches, hence the metaphorical description of simple tasks as low-hanging fruit. The metaphor (while it may also indicate optimal ordering for some other tasks) is not about optimal ordering for picking fruit from a tree.

Overbuilding wind and using HVDC transmission to move it around is sometimes cheaper than battery storage since it compliments solar peak times well.

A similar project is being constructed in the Southwest United States:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38801943

3,500 MW of wind+ HVDC transmission for 11 billion dollars.

Solar and Wind vary on both a diurnal and seasonal basis. It is one thing for the grid to have enough storage.

I was looking at this paper

https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost...

where solar is quoted at $1300/kwh and adding a battery that can store a little more than an hour of output brings that to around $1800/kwh. I see people quoting that one like it is gospel but that doesn’t seem to be enough storage. If you assume the system needs 12 hours of storage to get through the night you need 10 of those batteries and the cost is getting into the $3500/kwh range.

They quote the AP-1000 and NuScale around $6000. Solar looks cheaper now and maybe it is in the tropics but in the Northeast you are going to get a lot less power in the winter than summer so to keep the lights on all year you might need two of those solar installations (though I think the battery stays the same) and now you are getting around $5000/kwh so that gap with nuclear is getting smaller.

That estimate may be a bit pessimistic, but renewable advocates right now sound like the people who were saying nuclear would be “too cheap to meter.”

Now if you have excess capacity in the summer you could in principle use it for something but that is not trivial. If you use something half he year you basically double the capital cost. Do you hire workers to do nothing in the winter or do you lay them off? “Free” excess solar energy might be “free as in puppy” not “free as in beer.”

Ireland is bottom of the league in Europe for renewable use, so I don’t know why you think using them as an example is good: https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-bottom-of-eu-table-for-use...

You're conflating electricity generation and total energy use. Yes, 13% is crap, we're highly (and ridiculously) reliant on imported fossil fuels.

With respect to electricity generation then, Ireland is in the middle with 39% renewable electricity generation for 2022[0]. 2022 was "less windy" than average by about 2%, and 2021 lower again by about 6%[1]. The grid currently can sustain 75% renewables, substantial upgrades are in progress (capacity and ROCOF related) to get that up to 95%. This year (2023) was substantially better, in the first 10 months the average contribution from wind alone was 33%[2], this month the wind generation record was broken also[3] (~4.6GW). Hydro and other sources top renewables up by another ~6% [4].

[0] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/how-is-eu-el... [1] https://www.dnv.com/article/uk-and-ireland-windiness-2022-24... [2] https://windenergyireland.com/latest-news/7615-31-per-cent-o... [3] https://electroroute.com/new-record-for-irish-wind-generatio... [4] https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-st...