The EU proposes slashing pollution 90% by 2040
theverge.com
theverge.com
This is as "trustworthy" as the "Only sell EVs by 2035" EUs proposal, and Musk's mission to Mars.
Instead production in signatory countries hit 0 by 1996.
Measured scepticism is rational. Blind scepticism isn't.
[1] https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/
[2] https://www.euronews.com/business/2023/10/09/europe-can-beco...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/23/heat-pum...
[4] https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/new-registr...
[5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240108/road-transportat...
it's written in the style of "currently EU consumes this much energy, we project this to grow to that much until 2030/2040, we currently produce this much energy from renewables, so we need to multiply the amount of renewables with the correct number".
completely ignores the largest problem with solar/wind, storage. it just says that we should build enough storage. that's easy to say. i don't know of any country on this planet that made it work with purely solar/wind (please just tell me which one does, bonus point for one with a similar climate to europe), so it means we need to literally develop the technology (pls note, we do not even know what that technology will be) and then deploy it... in 6 years. that's completely unreal.
also, they recommend that we let the nuclear power generation go to zero, arguing for example, that nuclear-fuel needs to be imported into europe, but seems to be totally fine with importing in anything else (rare earth minerals etc.)
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map?wind=false&solar=false
https://www.energy-storage.news/europe-reached-4-5gw-of-batt...
I have nothing agains further improving the network and load-balancing it smarter, but it's just in my interest to have some local duplication of energy generation. Or with my heatpump being out of service I may freeze or will have to buy a generator.
[1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/12/battery-storage-syste...
[2] https://assets.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/documents/resources...
[3] https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april...
[4] https://electrek.co/2023/11/20/world-may-be-on-track-for-tri...
Obviously having all of Europe's electricity being generated on a single corner of Spain isn't feasible. But nobody is talking about 100% wind & solar. Hydro, storage, geothermal & nuclear can all add diversity and reliability. This can be modelled. We cannot get to 100% reliability but nothing can; local distribution SPOF bottlenecks limit reliability 99.99% regardless. And 99.99% is possible.
Not for something general, like overall polution, of which there's 0 chance to reduce to 90%, or even 50% by 2040.
Let's wait and see who called it.
The top three air pollution sources are electricity generation, heating and transport. There are zero emission replacements at hand for all 3, all being actively deployed.
CFCs were replaced fairly easily with HFCs (which also contributed to climate change. GreenAmerica says `They were replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which do not deplete the ozone, but they do have up to 9,000 times greater warming capacity than carbon dioxide.`)
What's the alternative for fossil fuels?
Even if we increase production of nuclear energy and renewables, we're still left with cars. Electric cars require tons of lithium and after the battery did its course they lose a good chunk of their value. The economics in EV are just completely different compared to petrol cars and that's doable only if you are wealthy.
An EV with thermal battery protection lasts about 250,000km, about the same as a gasoline car.
You can buy an EV that has passed European safety homologation (the BYD Seagull) for $8,000 in China. The TCO of that is obviously a lot better than a gasoline vehicle. The fact that you can't in Europe or North America is not due to economics.
Of course, there's an entire plan, with shorter term goals and ways to achieve them. With actionable steps, what is a huge change from most climate accords. The article just does a very bad work of citing those and not getting at any detail at all.
To do what? If nothing happens it wasn't worth it to point it it.
So apparently you care enough about this topic to complain were is your solutions than to add something useful to it?
People don't seem to realize that in 2023 they broke the record for most amount of launches of any entity on earth. They beat the second best record (Soviet Union at 60 launches in a year). His Falcon heavy updates broke the record for most amount of cargo delivered(beating Saturn V).
The rate they are iterating on Starship means they may make their targets on that ship this year.
The private sector has made incredible progress in getting this green initiative done. While the investments in EVs and batteries have definitely helped, a lot of this rhetoric based targets have gone nowhere. Just look at the results of COP21. I was there in Paris. It feels like such a long time ago now.
The real question is why these initiatives fail? Maybe its just not possible to have the entire population transition over to a new way of thinking about emissions. After all what are emissions? They are an unaccounted for externality. Some percentage of the population cannot make their lives/businesses/operations work if they have to account for this cost.
A large contributor of projected Danish emissions has been low-lying wetlands converted to farmland via draining. Calculations predicted that reflooding these areas could saves millions of tons of emissions, so this became a hot political topic. However, the Danish climate minister recently announced that he had wonderful climate-related news to share; the emissions from these areas were significantly less than first anticipated! And with these magical news, Denmark's 2025 emissions goals have now been met. However, what the minister failed to mention was the fact that the only reason these lands emit less than anticipated is because they have already emitted most of the greenhouse gasses stored in them, just at a much faster rate than initially predicted.
This sounds desperate and counterproductive so good of they can 'justify' not doing it.
But emission is already down 45% since 1990 in the EU and they're ahead of the original targets because of the war with Russia.
In 2023 alone emission from the power sector was cut by 23%.
I would not be surprised if this target is met a lot sooner than 2040.
Source: https://electrek.co/2024/02/06/eu-coal-and-gas-collapse-wind...
Investing in the energy sector makes a lot of sense for the EU because one of its biggest problems is the cost of energy, mainly caused by its reliance on fossil fuels.
So also purely from an economical point of view this is a good strategy.
At the same time, a lot of spending on green technologies often means a lot of local jobs. Which can be good for the economy if the money would otherwise be spend on products or services that come from outside the EU.
Finally, economic indicators often don't quite capture quality of life, etc. For example, if EU cities make it harder to drive a car into city centers then that may result in lower economic growth, because fewer cars are needed. But people might be more happy walking, biking, etc.
Or they might drag their tractors into the highways and block off all access to the city in protest.
I feel like I had this same conversation against a presenter at CCC recently. Do people really not see the backlash brewing against the left for proposing these ideas onto others?
At least in the US it is done one of three ways
1: For corrupt stealing of funds, stuff a contract into some other bill that marginally helps people. Example: The "Inflation Reduction Act" is 270+ pages. Its filled with giveaways here and there that wont be noticed by people directly, it will just eat away at them longterm in the form of higher taxes and inflation. They could totally enact small rule changes here and there to curb emissions in all of these bills and if you do it over an extended time period people wont notice the small changes.
2: Have the private sector solve it so that way people can "feel" like they can refuse. But what happens is that the market takes over and eventually this option is what people are stuck with since it becomes the cheapest. We are seeing this with EVs and hopefully we will reach a point where EVs get cheap enough and chargers become ubiquitous enough that the flywheel effect that keeps gas prices low will slow down and it enters a death spiral.
3: Have a national tragedy and use the opportunity to ram through a piece of legislation to affect massive change by forcing the opposition to have to take an unpopular side. Examples: LBJ pushing the Civil Rights Act after JFK's assassination, Patriot act after 9/11 etc.
However, in The Netherlands it basically seems that they protest for a right to pollute. Nature gets destroyed by to much nitrogen in the soil, to much polluted water. Bad water levels to support farmers, etc. Too much use of pesticides and herbicides that end up everywhere.
You can call it left to fight against pollution. In that case, I'm happy to be left.
There is an underlying problem where farmers have to work on large scale because margins are to thin.
But then rhetoric starts. For example, consumers are blamed for not wanting to pay more for produce. But conveniently left out is what about goods that get exported. You can hardly blame Dutch consumers for not paying more for goods that get exported out of The Netherlands.
We're already seeing this happening in Europe.
CO2 emissions from power production decreased by 46% in EU in only 7 years (2016-2023) and are in freefall now. Just as an example.
Nice sleight of hand there. Are you saying these policies won't do absolutely anything at all to reduce the rate of global warming?
Could you predict Brexit in 1980?