European energy crisis, 2022/2023

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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European energy crisis, 2022/2023

This is about an ongoing current event that I think deserves a thread. Occasionally this has been touched on in the “Russia invades Ukraine” thread.

Developments within the last few weeks in Germany, perhaps others will report from other European countries:

  • Russia implicitly plays the “You cannot fire me, I quit” card with regards to natural gas delivery. Gas delivery gets throttled due to “maintenance”.
    Current status of gas supply situation according to the Bundesnetzagentur
  • Russia has to flare a lot of gas that it cannot or wants not to deliver to Germany. The gas being flared is worth about 10 million € per day. The flare is visible from Finland.
  • The gas turbine driving a Nordstream pipeline compressor that Germany spent a lot of political capital getting back from maintenance from the Siemens facility in Canada, now sits in storage in Germany because Russia says there are documents lacking for delivery to Russia.
  • Stage 2 of the 3-stage federal gas emergency plan has been activated two months ago. Stage 3 will mean explicit rationing
  • Gazprom Germania (a subsidiary of Gazprom) has been taken under German federal administration, now is named SEFE Securing Energy for Europe GmbH, and is being sanctioned by Russia.
  • Gas consumers will be hit with a 0.024 €/kWh (plus 7% VAT) surcharge from October, to bail out gas wholesalers who’d go under else, taking the gas system down with them
  • Those gas consumers whose yearly contracts have been or will expire, will experience multiples of their current price
  • Industry and other stakeholders are fighting over public opinion about who gets gas when rationing will have to kick in. The problem is: There is no practicable way to ration piped gas to households - if you shut up gas supply the underpressure trips in households must be reset by qualified gas fitters.
  • Federal government has mandated energy saving measures in public buildings and facilities: cap on room temperatures, no lighing public buildings etc.
  • Federal government has relaxed requirement on landlords on the room temperature they have to guarantee to tenants

Page of the German federal government on gas savings efforts

  • Baden-Württemberg state premier has drawn criticism by implicitly asking population not to shower every day in winter, saying “washcloths are an useful invention”.
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This is probably going to be a lot worse for parts of Europe than the Gas Crisis was for the US in the 70s. That is my only frame of reference.

How long will it take a country like Germany to untie itself from Russia Natural Gas?

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Power-generating plants do not go from an empty lot to commissioning overnight. What is already in the pipeline for construction in Germany?

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It seems pretty dire for some of the EU countries.

Russia supplied the EU with 40% of its natural gas last year.
Germany by far the largest importer.

The UK has imported no Russian Gas this year down from 4% of their gas last year.

A lot of good details in the BBC article I linked.

I think Wind, Solar and even Nuke projects all need to be accelerated.

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Unfortunately, our energy costs are very much linked to the global price of natural gas. So we are all facing swinging increases in energy bills, made worse because much of our electricity generation is gas-powered.

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Nord Stream has been shut down (temporarily it’s said, but it’s been at a much reduced flow for a while), but there is a completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline that Germany has refused to certify so it stands idle. The Yamal-Europe through Poland is closed as Poland refuses to pay in Rubles, Finland is also refusing. Much of the supply that passes through Ukraine is closed now which is affecting those Southern European countries who are prepared to pay.

How much Russian gas and oil is actually entering Europe is a bit cloudy because of countries like India who are acting as middle-men for Russian fuel exports.

Economic sanctions are a weapon that can be used by both sides of course, and with the rise in prices for gas Russia can afford to use a lot of pressure against Europe.

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Accelerating Wind and Solar is what got them into this mess. Nuclear takes time - Germany should look at re-opening the nuclear plants they’ve closed that have not been fully de-commissioned, and it would be insane to continue closing the three that are still operating - but last I heard the Germans are still planning to shut them down. Insanity.

Their bed is made for this year. Unless they have projects that are just on the verge of completion there will be no new energy for Europe in the short or medium term. I did a search for new energy projects in Europe, and all I could find was more wind and solar. Woe be to them. The only supply that might come on line in a useful way will be when France finishes maintenance on their nuclear plants.

The sad irony is that the fastest plants you can hurry into production are natural gas plants. But if you’re short of natural gas…

Europe is now reaping the costs of their early shutdowns of coal, gas and nuclear plants. These are not decisions that can be reversed quickly, except perhaps for the nuclear plants in Germany that have been shut down but not de-commissioned. But no one is talking about opening those again.

Solar in particular is a very problematic energy source for northern countries. We are roughly at the same latitude as Germany here in Alberta, and last year we went the entire month of January with solar and wind together running at only 2% of capacity. Solar cells in winter get at best about 1/4 of the energy from the sun they get in summer.

In addition, the paradox of wind and solar is that the more of it you have on the grid, the MORE natural gas you need. You then need natural gas not just to provide load-following power when loads are applied to the grid, but for ‘supply following’ when wind and solar drop off. Killing baseload plants like nuclear, coal, and oil and replacing them with intermittent power is precisely the problem Europe now faces.

Today it’s sunny and breezy in our province, and just after noon. Best conditions for wind and solar. Wind is running at 38% capacity, and solar at 37%. 88% is coming from fossil fuels. But we just went through two weeks of calm weather where wind stayed around 5% of capacity. For example, three days ago at this time wind was at 5.1% and solar was at 27%.

20.1% of our capacity is wind and solar. Three days ago it was providing 4.7% of our energy during the day, and at night it dropped to 1.7%.

We could build out wind and solar by 10X, giving us twice as much capacity as we need on sunny, beezy days, and still would have only produced 17% of our power from it that night, and only 20% of our power needs for the entire month of January.

Germans have a word, “Dunkelflaute” which means ‘Dark Doldrums’. They have a word for that because it’s not uncommon to get periods of heavy cloud cover and calm weather lasting at least 24 hours. They get 2-10 of them every year, and a few years ago had one that lasted for weeks. They are most common from October to February, when power is needed the most. There is no amount of wind and solar that will save you from that.

Wind and solar without storage are niche energy sources. If we continue focusing on them and ignore nuclear and natural gas, we’ll be in the same boat as Europe very soon. They are just a bit ahead of us in the ‘great transition’.

We should be accelerating fracking and other sources of natural gas production. We are going to need it, for a very long time. Net zero by 2050 is a fantasy, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we’ll stop making stupid decisions like banning new oil drilling and fracking and moving on nuclear at a snail’s pace.

Moving to wind and solar will also put about 80% of our energy supply chain in the hands of China, repeating the same mistake Germany made with Russia.

Wind and solar have a place, and with some battery storage can even take the place of some natural gas. But if we try to power our industrial economy on primarily wind and solar, we will freeze in the dark. And the hit to the economy will be far worse than what was expected in 2100 from global warming.

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There is an extensive cross border European gas pipeline network and Russia was a big supplier, but not the only one. Pipelines from Norway supply a lot of natural gas in this way. There are also LNG terminals where gas tankers can unload their cargo and feed it into the gas network. Supplies come from Qatar, Canada, the US and other LNG exporting countries.

Germany is working hard to assemble several temporary floating terminals to handle LNG. Other countries, such as the UK, have several and export gas using gas interconnects.

A lot of gas is used to generate electricity in power stations. Until recently, the plan was to use natural gas as a transition fuel, reduce coal and oil and as renewables (wind,solar, biomass,etc) develop gradually reduce the dependency on gas. Nuclear power can and does supply baseload power, but it is hugely expensive to develop new facilities and decommission old nuclear power stations. France, has a lots of nuclear power plants and is facing this problem.

Each European country has an energy policy determined by geography, history and economics. The dependence of the huge Russian gas pipelines, the open cast brown coal mines of Germany and Poland. The excess hydro in Norway and surplus nuclear power in France. Surplus wind power in the UK North Sea wind farms. It is a complicated picture.

Part of the solution is electricity interconnects between grids. Surplus power on one grid can be exported to an adjacent country. This is a major growth area and it may evolve into an international supergrid.

All of this would be a matter of long term planning of infrastructure to accommodate the development of cheap renewables and the phasing out of environmentally damaging fossil fuels.

But those plans came to a juddering halt with Putins invasion of Ukraine. Natural gas and oil from the huge Russian fields could no longer be relied upon and Europe now finds itself in an economic war with Russia.

Few politicians saw that coming and binding Russia to the EU by long term trade seemed a sensible strategy until the February invasion.

There is now frantic effort to switch to alternative suppliers and also build up natural gas storage to meet demand over the winter and keep some fossil fuel power plants operational for longer.

These tactical measures will be complemented by a strategy to accelerate migration to renewables, build interconnects and look again at nuclear for longer term baseload. That will be a debate in each country.

There is a great deal more to this that power generation. Natural gas is used extensively for home heating. Many of the former Soviet states now in the EU were wired into the Russian gas network. They now have to be supplied from the West, from Norway the LNG ports. Moreover Russian gas was cheap. LNG is in demand in Asia as well and the prices have rocketted.

So the immediate effect is high energy prices. Widespread fuel poverty and inflation. European governments are all having to support the poor and those on fixed incomes and that means more borrowing, more interest and less money for public services.

I guess the US and Canada will benefit greatly selling huge amounts of LNG. Norwegians will also be crying all the way to the bank as will the Qataris. There are always winners and losers.

But is the answer to revert back to fossil fuels for power generation as a strategy? I don’t think so. Renewables are now very attractive on cost and they are often home grown resources. Interconnects and some kind of grid storage will make them better. Natural gas can be stored and if it were simply used as a buffer to deal with times when renewables do not deliver, that would reduce the natural gas requirement considerably.

However, the immediate energy and cost of living economic crisis is the big issue facing European governments. It will test the political leadership quite severely.

If anyone wants to see what not to do in such a crisis, look no further than the UK. It privatised the energy industries long ago and is now finding this is a considerable disadvantage when government action is needed in such an international crisis. Other governments where the generation and distribution is state owned have much more control.

This winter is going to be very difficult. There is talk of an economic crisis possibly as bad as the 1970s Oil Crisis and this coming after a global pandemic. It is all very worrying.

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Measures to take effect in Germany from 1 September:

  • Clauses in rental contracts requiring renters to maintain a certain minimum temperature are suspended
  • Private swimming pools are not allowed to be heated with gas or electricity, except when needed for therapeutic applications. Public pools not yet affected.
  • Energy suppliers required to inform customers about rising energy prices and ways to economise (i.e. this applies to customers who have been living under a rock for the last half year)
  • Work venues may not be heated above certain temperatures, depending on level of effort - offices not above 19 °C (66 °F), rooms where hard physical work is done not above 12 °C (54 °F)
  • In public buildings, halls, corridors, auxiliary rooms must not be heated, except for hospitals, nursing homes, daycare
  • Retail stores must not keep their front doors open
  • Advertising must not be lighted from 22-6 hours (10 pm to 6 am)
  • Public buildings and monuments must not be illuminated at night, except when necessary for safety

In other news, tomorrow 31 August sees the end of a large scale experiment running June-August 2022 - all public transport in all of Germany including regional rail could be used by buying a monthly ticket costing 9 €. That has not only affected commuters but also a lot of people have made touristic trips by rail. A first survey by the association of public utilities says the fuel savings in these three months was as much as a speed limit on autobahns would save in a whole year. Personally my experience as a rail commuter was that trains were noticeably more crowed in these three months. My wife has made a number of rail trips to other cities with her girlfriends in there three months.

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Meanwhile in the UK, the party political process of electing a new Prime Minister means that preparing for the economic tsunami remain on hold.

There is much talk of local governments preparing public buildings as ‘warm rooms’ for people unable to heat their homes because they cannot afford the bills.

It seems doubtful that there will be a shortage of supply of natural gas, but the wholesale cost had increased dramatically. Russian natural gas was cheap, LNG is expensive. This is hitting both domestic customers and many businesses. There could be a lot of business failures unless there is government support to spread out the price increases,

This is an economic hit just as bad as the Covid lockdowns and it needs political leadership and some swift action. So far the candidates for Prime Minister are reluctant to reveal any plans. Because, you know, it is getting elected by your party that counts.

Every day we get projections about higher and higher fuel bills. Inflation forecasts are alarming. Strikes are taking place for higher wages. The new Prime Minister will be under a lot of pressure to come up with a plan very quickly. No amount of PR and spin is going to stop gas and electricity bills becoming unaffordable.

This is Putin’s economic counter attack against sanctions by the West. Pretty much every European government is exposed to this until the international market for Natural Gas stabilises and more production comes on stream. That will take a year or more. It will also affect Russia. The big pipelines are to Europe. It cannot easily divert such huge volumes to other markets. Not enough pipelines and not enough LNG terminals and tankers. The Russian economy will lose a lot of revenue. The natural gas is already being flared off in huge amounts.

It is a game of chicken.

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This is the year that people learn that energy is inseparable from wealth. It is the feedstock of a modern economy. Shutting down fossil sources without reasonable replacement was a gigantic mistake. Even bigger was the plan to shut down perfectly functioning nuclear plants.

If you think supply chains are strained now, wait until factories across Europe start shutting down because there is no power to keep them running.

Dreams of a ‘low energy’ future are about to become a reality, and people aren’t going to like it. But some countries are coming to their senses:

Most interesting is that JAPAN has shifted back to nuclear, after Germnay shut down its nuclear in response to Fukashima:

Now start fracking again, and realize that we are nearing the maximum amount of solar power we can handle. The future of a ‘green’ grid for northern countries requires a mix of nuclear power, natural gas and renewables, with non-hydro renewables making up maybe 20-30% of the mix, with 70% of that being wind and 30% solar. You can make a stable grid out of that mix.

If you want less natural gas, build more nuclear. You can’t replace gas with wind and solar past a certain percentage. After that, the more intermittent power you add to the grid, the more natural gas you need.

Of course, this is what many of us have been trying to say for more than a decade now. It was always obvious that wind and solar could not be the prime energy sources in a modern power grid without weeks of energy storage (which we don’t have, and won’t have for a long time if ever).

In the meantime, our brilliant Prime Minister said that there was no ‘business case’ for us to ship LNG to Europe, despite LNG prices being ten times higher than last year. After being laughed out of the room for that, he changed his mind - now we can’t do it because we’d have to build an LNG pipeline in Quebec, and that’s not good for the environment. So Europe can freeze in the dark, and Canada can forego billions of dollars in revenue. For the environment.

We will probably have to go through what Europe is facing before people smarten up and start thinking rationally.

At this moment, Alberta’s 20.1% capacity of wind and solar is providing 6.1% of our power, on a sunny, breezy summer day. 88.1% is coming from fossil fuels.

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Sure it will be bad in the short term, but it is, as usual there is a lot of an exaggerated point being made there.

As wind and solar power have become dramatically cheaper, and their share of electricity generation grows, skeptics of these technologies are propagating several myths about renewable energy and the electrical grid. The myths boil down to this: Relying on renewable sources of energy will make the electricity supply undependable.

Last summer, some commentators argued that blackouts in California were due to the “intermittency” of renewable energy sources, when in fact the chief causes were a combination of an extreme heat wave probably induced by climate change, faulty planning, and the lack of flexible generation sources and sufficient electricity storage. During a brutal Texas cold snap last winter, Gov. Greg Abbott wrongly blamed wind and solar power for the state’s massive grid failure, which was vastly larger than California’s. In fact, renewables outperformed the grid operator’s forecast during 90 percent of the blackout, and in the rest, fell short by at most one-fifteenth as much as gas plants. Instead, other causes — such as inadequately weatherized power plants and natural gas shutting down because of frozen equipment — led to most of the state’s electricity shortages.

In Europe, the usual target is Germany, in part because of its Energiewende (energy transformation) policies shifting from fossil fuels and nuclear energy to efficient use and renewables. The newly elected German government plans to accelerate the former and complete the latter, but some critics have warned that Germany is running “up against the limits of renewables.”

In reality, it is entirely possible to sustain a reliable electricity system based on renewable energy sources plus a combination of other means, including improved methods of energy management and storage. A clearer understanding of how to dependably manage electricity supply is vital because climate threats require a rapid shift to renewable sources like solar and wind power. This transition has been sped by plummeting costs —Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that solar and wind are the cheapest source for 91 percent of the world’s electricity — but is being held back by misinformation and myths.

Myth No. 2: Countries like Germany must continue to rely on fossil fuels to stabilize the grid and back up variable wind and solar power.

Again, the official data say otherwise. Between 2010 — the year before the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan — and 2020, Germany’s generation from fossil fuels declined by 130.9 terawatt-hours and nuclear generation by 76.3 terawatt hours. These were more than offset by increased generation from renewables (149.5 terawatt hours) and energy savings that decreased consumption by 38 terawatt hours in 2019, before the pandemic cut economic activity, too. By 2020, Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions had declined by 42.3 percent below its 1990 levels, beating the target of 40 percent set in 2007. Emissions of carbon dioxide from just the power sector declined from 315 million tons in 2010 to 185 million tons in 2020.

So as the percentage of electricity generated by renewables in Germany steadily grew, its grid reliability improved, and its coal burning and greenhouse gas emissions substantially decreased.

In Japan, following the multiple reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, more than 40 nuclear reactors closed permanently or indefinitely without materially raising fossil-fueled generation or greenhouse gas emissions; electricity savings and renewable energy offset virtually the whole loss, despite policies that suppressed renewables.

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That article is either ignorant or gaslighting.

Solar and wind are getting cheaper. But usable solar and wind have to be dispatchable, and that is NOT getting cheaper. This is why jurisdictions putting in ‘cheap’ solar and wind are seeing their power prices rise dramatically.

Dispatchable wind and solar require storage of energy. That is expensive and getting more so, and the limits of current technology means we can’t come close to storing the piwer we need.

I love this next one:

They start by saying that intermittency wasn’t the problem, throw in a sop to global warming, then conclude that there was a lack of ‘flexible sources’ (ie dispatchable power, or natural gas), and not enough storage. That is a roundabout way of saying that the problem was too much intermittent power.

It’s what I have been saying for the last decade. The only way solar and wind can get above a certain percentage of power is with storage - and we don’t have it and won’t have it for a long time, if ever. And as we build storage into the mix, the price of wind and solar goes way up.

And they really shouldn’t have picked Germany as an example of how well wind and solar works. Have you read the news? And Germany’s CO2 reductions up to 2020 were largely the result of replacing coal with natural gas - gas that made them subject to the whims of one Vlad Putin. It was a terrible tradeoff for Germany and for Europe.

No kidding. They just said what I did - that you need ‘other means’ to make it work - including storage. Unless they tell you how much storage, what it will cost and show feasible plans for building it out, this is just useless glurge. The time for hand-waving little details like this - which turn out to be the critical details - is over.

As for Germany’s 149 TWh of renewables, that’s another shell game. Renewable power is not like fossil power. The ‘nameplate’ value represents 100% production, You get close to that with gas and coal. With wind and solar, you can go long periods where you only produce a tiny fraction of nameplate power. Germany has 8-10 ‘dark doldrums’ per year, each lasting at least 24 hours and sometimes for many days, where wind and solar produce almost nothing. They typically happen between October and February, when the need for power is the greatest.

The largest battery storage in the world just opened in China. It is 800 MWh. That would back,up Germany’s power needs for about 50 seconds, based on 2018 consumption.

So their little hand-wave about storage is in fact the whole ball game. Without it, given the reality that both wind and solar can drop to almost nothing for extended periods, you need to keep a completely separate fossil grid going or face long blackouts during the coldest part of the year. That’s what makes it expensive.

I don’t know if you saw it, but I pointed out upstream that last January Alberta went an entire month where wind and solar combined stayed around 2% of capacity or less. We could have 10X as much wind and solar, equal to 200% of our needs at nameplate capacity, and we still would have managed to provide only 20% of our power for an entire month - which happened to be the coldest month of the year. Germany is at the same latitude we are. We would have needed a month’s worth of storage to survive that without fossil fuels. There is no known storage that can provide anything close.

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Nope, it is really your opinion that needs to be reduced. Again, you do like to repeat the problems that are at hand, not the solutions.

As in a previous example of what can be done lets remember that what you are doing is like the critic that claimed that nothing could be done to fix the lack of clean water or sanitation in a big city. Sure, one can continue to describe and despair about how inadequate the solutions are for the time being, but what it is clear is that without solar or wind Germany would be in an even bigger disaster. As it is, I can see that it will be bad, but less so than if they had not done what many in the USA (or Canada) think it is impossible.

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Europe is blessed with the shallow areas of North Sea being very suitable for offshore wind farms. The UK has an energy policy that features the development of many huge windfarms. This seems to be proceeding very well. The worlds largest windfarm, Hornsea 2, just became operational. The technology is steadily improving, the turbines are becoming bigger and more efficient. The contracts put in place guaranteed a minimum price for the power generated and pay back if the market price goes high.

These wind farms are proving to be reliable and efficient and they leverage a lot of skills of the. established off shore Oil and Gas industry as those wind down. There is potential to bury a lot of CO2 in the spent gas fields under the North Sea.

Several other countries bordering the North Sea have similarly ambitious plans for wind farms and high capacity interconnectors to allow the power to be exported.

Nuclear is also part of the strategy, but that is proving very dufficult. Huge up front costs, ten year builds and huge decommissioning costs of older reactors coming to the end of their operational life. Maybe new ‘modular’ reactors will prove successful, but nuclear power technology has always been oversold. ‘Power too cheap to meter’ was the marketing jive. Sadly reality fell far short of the dream. These things are simply too costly. Renewables are cheap and interconnectors between grids can even out some if the variability. Natural Gas will still play a role, but it will be much reduced.

Fracking requires a suitable geology and preferably well away from population centres like the North American Permian basin. When fracking has been tried in the UK, the earth tremors that spooked everyone and led to protests. It is not suitable for a crowded island.

There is not one energy policy that is suitable for all countries. Geography and geology play an important part in deciding the best energy mix.

There is, of course, a strong push back from established fossil fuel companies and the nuclear lobby. They have sunk assets and want things to remain as they are for as long as possible.

Hopefully they will take note from the Auto industry and its experience with EVs. There comes a point when no amount of lobbying can insulate an industry from change. Oil and Gas are responsible for a hundred years of wars, environmental damage and climate change. Better to get with the program and develop renewable technology and upgrade the power grids fast rather than leave all the innovation to China.

Europe will get around the dependency on Russian natural gas in the next few years. There will be some tactical delays to the decommissioning of fossil fuel power stations, but it will also accelerate the transition to renewables and networks to move power and gas between countries.

This winter is going to be challenging. It will be interesting to see how the politicians in each country handle it.

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Yes, PROBLEMS ARE IMPORTANT. I would LOVE to talk solutions. So let’s get started. Whay’s the solution to the storage problem? Because ignoring it as some kind of ‘future problem’ we don’t need to talk about is how Europe got into the mess it is in.

So how do we solve the storage problem, what are the technologies, and where are the plans to build them? Because if you want that problem solved by say, 2040 or 2050, plans had better be underway NOW. These things take time. No more hand waving.

And I’ll point out that I’m the only one who has brought actual data and math to this party.

So because someone somewhere said a thing about something that couldn’t be done and was, my opinion is invalid and we must all assume that anything tough standing in our way can also be done? Holy non-sequitur. I can smell the straw burning from here.

It is? They didn’t have wind and solar for most of the last century, and they muddled through just fine.

And you say this based on what evidence? Just how would it be worse for Germanynif they hadn’t shut down most of their nuclear plants and replaced them with inadequate sources?

The fact is, if Europe still retained the power mix they had 20 years ago, they would be basking in energy right now. I don’t know how you can possibly dispute that, given the massive crisis they are currently facing.

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Yes, like the guy that reported that nothing can be done about cleaning the city of Edinburgh, as the article I cited mentioned also what is being done it seems that you are protesting too much.

BTW speaking of straw manning, I never said that in the meantime that Germany should not look at using other sources of natural Gas.

That and more development of solar and wind is a way to give the raspberry to Putin.

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Natural Gas can be stored in large quantities. Many European countries have storage for months. This will be an important consideration if Russian gas is turned off completely this winter.

Long term, if Natural gas is eventually reduced for on demand heating and power generation, some capacity can be retained in storage and used in gas power stations when renewables fail to deliver. It this way it can be used like a grid storage battery until carbon neutral grid scale battery technologies become viable. Natural gas is a transition fossil fuel helping first to transition from dirty coal, then later buffer renewables variability. Over dependence on cheap Russian gas is a separate political issue. That lesson has been learnt. Every country affected will be looking for ways to reduce gas consumption.

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Curious, the time run out for an edit and it still showed a moment ago as if the change was done, now the changes to this post are gone, so:

I never implied that Germany should not look at using other sources of natural Gas, or ways to reduce the use of it while waiting to get more renewables online.

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Living on an island, and near one of its more powerful tidal rivers, I’d like to know why we don’t hear more about wave and tidal energy. The tides particularly are, after all, reliably predictable.