Energy Post is a European site covering energy policy, renewables, nuclear power, and the energy transition.
HN commenters cite it to rebut claims about EV emissions, nuclear baseload, and Germany's Energiewende, though others raise coal use against it.
The difference was that investigative journalism used to cough up documents, videos and proofs before running to the presses.
Now it's a string of 'anonymous official' and the new form that tries harder to be legit 'anonymous official heard X person say', with X a famous and readily recognizable character out of government.
At that point is hearsay vs hearsay. Reputable outlets are trashing their reputation and dragging it in the ground in the name of 'faster news' - but then it's even harder to normal people to tell what's grounded, what's likely, what's a half truth and what's propaganda.
It's far to easy to get position from a crackpot conspiracy theorist and wash them up into a better thought post on a unbranded website, so google searches now dig up as much trash as good posts for many important topics, and because the writing style and source weight is the same (hearsay) it'll be increasingly difficult for people to process.
This is especially true for controversial topics that sit at the edge of personal knowledge. I.e. some day ago I was curios about methane plant total lifecycle impact compared to solar panel disposal or solar concentrator plants, and happened across this article that brings up some interesting points, backs them up with some easily verifiable math and shows a greater complexity to a topic I thought was more straightforward:
http://energypost.eu/wind-solars-achilles-heel-methane-meltdown-porter-ranch-means-energy-transition/
and the problem…
> However, this takes off-line about 40 percent of Germany’s nuclear capacity and Germany is one of the two countries along Great Britain from which France imports electricity during the high-usage months in the summer. The reason importing electricity from Germany and the U.K. will be particularly important for France during a drought is because 24 of its 58 nuclear reactors do not have cooling towers and purely depend on the flow of river water to cool the reactor cores. What this means is that if the level of water in rivers drops, it means that some of the reactors may have to be shut down especially those on the Rhone River in southwest France, where temperatures are expected to be particularly high due to its geographical location.
http://www.businessinsider.com/french-heat-wave-one-tumultous-summer-2011-6?IR=T
> France imports UK electricity as summer heatwave puts a third of its nukes out of action
https://thinkprogress.org/france-imports-uk-electricity-as-summer-heatwave-puts-a-third-of-its-nukes-out-of-action-5a314d4d554b/
> Germany powers France in cold despite nuclear u-turn
https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-power-supply/germany-powers-france-in-cold-despite-nuclear-u-turn-idUSL5E8DD87020120214
> France was heavily dependent on power imports from Germany during the first cold spell of this winter, despite the fact that most of the country’s nuclear reactors are back online
http://energypost.eu/france-cant-meet-power-demand/
Including Germany, who peaked around 50% (they use a lot of oil which is bad for climate, but good for fuel diversity).
https://energypost.eu/no-energiewende-without-warmewende-making-germanys-heating-emissions-climate-neutral-nearly/
> For almost a decade, emission reductions have stagnated.
Weird that this phrase comes up so much in relation to German progress on renewables and climate change.
> Opportunities missed since 2008
> Indeed, the German government has stumbled in several attempts to put efficient heating on the agenda. In 2019, the interior ministry led by Horst Seehofer cancelled the buildings commission intended to identify ways to reduce the sector’s carbon footprint, while in 2017, the German government coalition failed in a first attempt to agree on a building energy law, which would have set new standards for efficiency in buildings. The NGO Environmental Action Germany has compiled a “chronology of failures” in the sector, starting from 2008.
> Past success, but still 28m tonnes off target
> After years of standstill, the energy used in Germany’s buildings has not fallen nearly as much as targeted. Instead of dropping by 20 percent between 2008 and 2020, final energy consumption had only gone down by 6.9 percent in 2017. Although greenhouse gas emissions in the building sector have fallen by about 44 percent since 1990, progress has largely stagnated since 2011 and studies show the need to significantly ramp up action.
For my taste - wind turbines are disgusting. A blight on the landscape for minimal benefit compared to other energy sources. Give me 1000’s of acres of solar vs 100 acres of wind farm. If you have to live close to them - they never go away… everywhere you look, giant white (why are they white anyway? Why not sky blue?) Not to mention the nighttime visual pollution. Drive into Rockport, TX after dark and its endless skyline of red flashing lights — that all cycle at the same time. Beyond obnoxious.
That just my view of the aesthetics…
Nobody ever bothers to talk about what will be done with these football field sized blades (I’m guessing at least 100k of them by now?) when they’re decommissioned? Completely useless material that has to be buried somewhere… I guess everyone here will volunteer to bury one in their backyard?
You think the “buy and dump” problem is bad in oil and gas? … do you think any of the companies who signed these 30 year leases will be around to de-com the turbines when they start falling apart? (Answer is no)
https://www.power-eng.com/news/evolving-regulations-for-wind-turbine-end-of-life/
Then there’s the never ending problem of freezing… nobody has good solutions and most of them involve the same harmful chemicals or secondary energy sources or helicopters or whatever that all derive from the hydrocarbons everyone seems to hate.
https://www.windpowerengineering.com/the-cold-hard-truth-about-ice-on-turbine-blades/…
Totally agree on pumped power storage capacity being needed. But those are massive infrastructure projects. Erecting a damn, to store the potential energy is bound to meet resistance.
Alternative solution: Build Lots of pressure-piston, that are stable standing on its own. Basically, a pillar of ice, coated in insulation, standing upon a small lake that provides water at pressure. If additional energy is needed after the extraction, heat is added to the system and the lake replenishes, while the piston shrinks.
If energy needs to be stored, additional water is pumped on top and frozen.
If additional heat reservoirs are nearby or something in need of coolant is nearby, additional heatpump like bonuses should be findable.
Similar concepts have been explored:
https://energypost.eu/gravity-batteries-any-nation-can-do-it-at-scale-using-rocks/ but they need massive construction efforts.
Instead of having the building up storage provide its own structure, with little more then a concrete base and some grain silo walls. https://i.imgur.com/iCg9LzY.png
The piston sealing the under pressure water, could be archieved via "onion" layers, steps leading down, taking up a part of the pressure, until it drops to "holding back by atmosphere" on the outmost layer.
They’ve literally just started so it’ll take a while for them to see the problems. But already:
https://www.solarpaces.org/spain-now-needs-csp-for-grid-stability-study/
https://energypost.eu/spain-as-renewables-rise-managing-supply-and-demand-is-the-next-challenge/
We’ve already carried out this experiment. Rooftop solar is a luxury good that doesn’t actually reduce fossil fuel dependence.
Thankfully Spain has learned the lesson of California & is only giving a wholesale rebate on the bill meaning you’ll never make money from rooftop solar:
https://www.ecovidahomes.com/blog/can-you-sell-electricity-back-to-the-grid-in-spain
But that doesn’t change the math that using public funds to incentivize rooftop solar is a populist direction that isn’t actually a good idea for the grid. Once enough rooftop solar is installed, watch the grid in Spain start to struggle financially if they haven’t priced the T&D hookup fee correctly (+ expect that fee to rise over time). All that being said, Spain & Europe are slightly different stories - they have a unified electricity grid I believe which lets them export their surplus. Not sure if that actually works for rooftop solar but may help mediate some of the problems that we have in the US.