In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/europe-wind-solar-fossil-fuels

by speckx • 6 months ago

717 762 6 months ago

e360.yale.edu

mekdoonggi11• 6 months ago

Curious if this will eventually change China's calculus with regards to Russia. If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia.

It already seems like Russia is positioned to be completely subservient to China in the future.

mschuster912• 6 months ago

If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia.

China wants Russia to at least keep the Ukraine war going, if not eventually win the darn thing. Russia winning (or getting away with an armistice that lets them keep Crimea and Donbas) means a precedence China has for a land-grab of its own - obviously Taiwan, but other countries in its "sphere of influence" have seen hostilities for years, from land grabs [1] to overfishing [2], not to mention the border dispute with India.

And as long as we are distracted with Israel/Palestine or Ukraine/Russia, China has free rein to do whatever they want.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...

[2] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/chinas-overfi...

mekdoonggi11• 6 months ago

That makes sense, but if that's the case, why aren't they invading Taiwan now? Wouldn't now be the perfect time?

mytailorisrich• 6 months ago

I don't think that mainland China needs any sort of precedent over Taiwan should they decide on military action. The situation is completely different from Ukraine. The South China Sea is also on long-running dispute that predates the PRC (and dates from a time where all the neighbouring countries were Western colonies...) and what has been happening is more a policy of "fait accompli" by occupying unoccupied disputed islands first rather than an "invasion".

I don't know what is the thinking on Ukraine now in Beijing, but they were massively pissed off when Russia invaded because it has caused a lot of disruption to belt and road and to East-West relations in general.

WarmWash3• 6 months ago

Donbas is mostly wheat fields, Taiwan is mostly SOTA semiconductor fabs that currently are the sole pillar holding up the AI (and compute in general) zeitgeist.

The global response would not be the same, even remotely. And what would China get from it? A tiny island of rubble and an ego boost, while losing enormous global favor? The cost of that island may well be a few trillion for China, just so they can say they defeated the nationalists.

david_draco• 6 months ago

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visted Europe and openly said to Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign-policy chief and other EU ministers: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not want to see Russia defeated in Ukraine, fearing that the U.S. would then shift its full attention toward Beijing.

https://www.economist.com/international/2025/10/28/china-is-... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyxk4ywppzo

pmezard• 6 months ago

USA already set the precedent with Venezuela. The rest also follows from Donroe Doctrine.

munk-a4• 6 months ago

China is happy as a clam that Russia is self-isolating and destroying their internal economy. The natural resources of Russia are vast and if China is the only one exploiting them and funneling them into the Chinese economy it'd be an excellent outcome. I don't think China is opposed to strong economies as trade partners but dependent economies are much easier to control and monopolize.

raincole• 6 months ago

If Europe were a big customer for Russia energy, it seems like Russia would have an incentive to not antagonize it.

Oh, see how well it went.

jhrmnn2• 6 months ago

Europe was a bit customer for Russia energy, and Russia invaded an EU neighbor nonetheless. After which it stopped being the customer. So it seems like that incentive didn't really work.

microtonal3• 6 months ago

It also works the other way around and I am pretty sure that was what Russia was betting on - with Europe's dependence on Russian energy, Europe would not react strongly to Russia's invasion.

That did not go as expected for Russia either.

rsynnott4• 6 months ago

China is usually seen (I think broadly correctly) as more of a rational actor than Russia. Russia is much more run for the benefit of a weird dictator than run as a country.

arrrg• 6 months ago

It worked until it didn’t. That’s how it goes. Peace is always hard work and irrational actors (in terms of: well being of people, not necessarily aspirations of empire) can muck everything up.

Economical co-dependency is a good tool for increasing the price of going to war and making it irrational. It’s also not a zero sum game and tends to profit both sides. However, it can suck if you do it with non-democratic regimes and autocratic rulers who trample human rights.

So between France, Germany, Poland and all the other EU members it‘s keeping the continent at peace and generally does not suck because it‘s between broadly democratic nations. It also benefits each one massively and makes things possible like a common electric grid that increases reliability in general. So nearly all upside.

I do think economic cooperation with the Soviet Union and later Russia - much, much more limited than between EU members - was helpful in cooling tensions and making the world a bit safer, sure, but Russia has clearly behaved in a way that makes that no longer a good idea.

ZeroGravitas7• 6 months ago

Russia did have a big incentive to not antagonize Europe.

But sadly they have a political system that doesn't reflect what is best for the ordinary person. So those incentives can be ignored by those making the decisions.

See also, Trump invading Greenland.

filloooo2• 6 months ago

Your geopolitical views are so naive it's hard to take seriously.

EU is now an unwilling dumping ground for China, hostility and paranoia are growing by the day now that China is no longer a lucrative market itself and is pursuing its interests outside commerce, the cordial days are numbered.

Russia would never be subservient to China, once the war ends Russia would be back being a geopolitical player because of its vast natural resources, and they are already import substituting even Chinese products.

Russia can turn to the west to be a real western country whenever they see fit, the eternal fear for China.

This is why China is going as far as it can to accommodate Putin, even souring it's relations with the EU which isolated itself.

In this sense, it is China being "subservient" to Russia.

mekdoonggi11• 6 months ago

I am certainly not an expert. What resources or military capability does Russia have that China could not eclipse, replace, or source from a partner?

What would it mean for Russia to become a "real" western country? Why would China fear that?

Whatever happens, Russia needs to sell resources to stay afloat. I have a hard believing that if it came down to it, China couldn't just seize Vladivostok.

Tade02• 6 months ago

Russia recovering from this invasion they started is the naive take.

It's currently selling its resources at a steep discount and that is unlikely to change because its customers are only in it for the bargain they're getting.

warkdarrior• 6 months ago

Ah, yes, Russia can become a "real western country", "geopolitical player", strong economy "substituting even Chinese products" any time it wants! Just like an alcoholic can quit any time he wants.

testing2232118• 6 months ago

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians.

Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.

It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time.

Dad in Victoria Australia just got 10.6kw fully installed and operational for $4000 AUD. ($2,700 USD)

Australia has so much electricity during the day they’re talking about making I free for everyone in the middle of the day.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-03/energy-retailers-offe...

jacquesm7• 6 months ago

And that's $1000 per year at today's energy prices, which surely will go up over time.

testing2232118• 6 months ago

They’re already locked in approved to go up at least 6% a year here. It just went up 16% this year for people out of town.

njarboe3• 6 months ago

One could hope with improving tech and decreasing regulations we could have decreasing (nominal) energy prices in the future. That would be progress.

munk-a4• 6 months ago

And that on-roof-solar helps (as it becomes widespread) mitigate the growing need for additional grid capacity. Canada is a big country and, outside the major cities, upgrading grid capacity is quite expensive per capita. It's a win-win in Canada, investing in self-sufficiency while reducing the maintenance burden of infrastructure.

GuB-42• 6 months ago

If there is no in-house storage to match, how does it help the grid? It is still needed for cold winter nights, where demand is high and solar panels produce nothing. Hydro can provide the power, but the grid will be running at full load.

Night_Thastus2• 6 months ago

It may slightly help with capacity, but it causes bigger problems financially. Even if a home uses next to no power, it still must be connected to the grid. The total number of such homes ends up meaning a lot of power lines, transformer stations, monitoring equipment, and people to do all the work.

If you have all of that expense, and suddenly people have solar panels so pay $0 for an energy bill - do you see the problem? The actual cost of fuel/generation is very small compared to the fixed costs.

The more people use solar, the more in the red the utility becomes. You can 'fix' this by making it so every home has a fixed 'connection cost' and then a smaller 'usage cost' on top, but that destroys the incentive for solar panels - they'd never break even for the average buyer.

Solar is great, fantastic even. But it should be done centrally, or people will have to get used to the idea that they will never pay themselves off and are just doing it for the environment.

WheatMillington2• 6 months ago

Solar does basically nothing to help with grid capacity.

phil213• 6 months ago

I think the inverse has proven to be largely true. If a home that uses effectively net-zero power is still connected the grid, it becomes a liability to grid stablity and expense.

There still needs to be enough power to supply to all those homes in the event of a protracted time where solar is unavailable. It gets less applicable as homes start to get multi-day battery banks installed, but those are incredibly rare since they are too expensive.

The whole "wealthy homeowners get subsidized solar and then effectively free backup power paid for by everyone else" needs to end.

slavik813• 6 months ago

The Greener Homes Grant and Greener Homes Loan you describe have ended, but the 160% tarrif on imported solar panels remains. Solar prices in Canada are still quite expensive, and regulations are needlessly strict. Solar fencing is illegal in many jurisdictions, balcony solar is illegal everywhere, and utility-scale solar is effectively prohibited in the regions with the most sunlight.

Solar production in Canada will continue to grow, but we're not doing nearly as much as Europe to encourage it.

standeven• 6 months ago

Some provincial grants remain ($5k in BC last time I checked), but yes - Canada can and should do more. Balcony solar seems like such an easy win. Hopefully tariffs get dropped now that we’re talking to China again. And federal Liberals could force municipalities and provinces to reduce some of the red tape surrounding solar installations. Come on Canada, unlocking clean energy shouldn’t have to be a fight!

evolve2k• 6 months ago

I’m wondering out loud if you might be able to purchase what would essentially be the component parts of a solar panel but deconstructed (eg frame, cells, glass, wires; maybe the cells need further deconstructing) and do final assembly in Canada such that the final panel meets criteria to be “built locally”, potentially built of local and imported parts.

Surely local manufacturers don’t use 100% Canadian made parts.

mrits2• 6 months ago

It's not always a no-brainer. If you live in a good established neighborhood in a warmer climate you'd have to remove tree coverage. Even if you did that, it's the other guys not oil or gas that will make it a hassle.

Tepix2• 6 months ago

Houses where the roof is completely in the shade from trees? That's not a very common sight.

testing2232118• 6 months ago

New panels are much less impacted by shade. Friends out of town just installed the same setup as ours, didn’t want to cut down three monster Doug firs shading their roof in summer.

Made 6.9Mwh in 2025, only just less than ours with no shade at all.

DetectDefect4• 6 months ago

Missing from your calculus is the cost of creating, cleaning, maintaining and eventually replacing the hardware. None of that is "free" - it is merely externalized to a vulnerable population or to your future self.

microtonal3• 6 months ago

Missing from your calculus are the healthcare costs of every person in a country breathing in fumes from electricity plants that burn coal and fumes from cars that burn gasoline.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266675922...

(And a gazillion other studies.)

adrianN6• 6 months ago

Panels have warranties of over twenty years now. They pay for themselves much earlier. You probably have to replace the inverter earlier, but that’s not a huge expense. I don’t know anybody who lives in a place where it rains who cleans the panels on their roof.

munk-a4• 6 months ago

Roof maintenance is a need in Canada regardless of the presence of solar. Solar roofs do demand additional maintenance but the benefits over relying on natural gas for power (which is the alternative in Canada outside ON/QC) is worth it.

I will stand by your statement from the philosophical point of view that nothing in life is free and everything has its trade offs - but this is a pretty clear positive. In addition, Canada has pretty decent workplace safety enforcement for the sort of workers that'd be doing the maintenance - it certainly isn't perfect but it is something that Canadians seem to find important.

account422• 6 months ago

Yeah of course solar is cheap if you get everyone else to pay for it.

testing2232118• 6 months ago

I’ve had the system 18 months now. I’ve never once cleared snow or washed them. We get tons of snow.

Zero maintenance.

direwolf2013• 6 months ago

Solar panels last practically forever. Despite the official lifetimes of 25-30 years, that was a conservative estimate for budgeting purposes, and they're still working after that time, with moderately reduced efficiency (around 70-80%).

micromacrofoot2• 6 months ago

I've had my system for 10 years and maintenance has literally been 0. Rain and snow clean the panels. Panels themselves warrantied for 30 years but will likely last longer.

Roof-based panels also take on some roof wear, increasing longevity of roofing as well.

ricardo815• 6 months ago

Canada is blessed with cheap energy, the abundance of hydro surely helps to bridge any intermittency other renewables have. I lived there 10 years back, your energy is less than half the cost of mine in Scotland. In Scotland's case we're part of the UK and the rest of the UK is less blessed with the geography for hydro. The incumbent Scottish government also has an anti stance to nuclear.

I hope the incentives for cleaner energy continue to stack up. With the surge in demand from AI surely productivity will be more tightly coupled with energy usage and cost.

toomuchtodo6• 6 months ago

There is enough wind potential in Europe to power the world [1]. Combined with interconnects to Europe and battery storage, there is no reason power costs can't be driven down. To not do so is a lack of will. Scotland currently generates a surplus of renewables [2], exported. kieranmaine's sibling comment citations dives into the lack of will part.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722022 (citations)

[2] In Scotland, Renewable Power Has Outstripped Demand - https://e360.yale.edu/digest/scotland-renewable-energy-100-p... - January 30th, 2024

(at the rate it takes to deploy transmission, might as well start dropping TBMs in the ground and let them grind towards each other from interconnect landings, potentially faster than the approval grind, complaints from locals about land use and right of ways, etc)

kieranmaine6• 6 months ago

Related to UK energy I read this interesting article on transmission congestion between Scotland and England and how this is increasing energy costs due to curtailment of renewables.

https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...

TL;DR - Until new interconnectors between Scotland and England are finished in 2029, there will be significant curtailment of Scottish wind power which increases costs.

This is also an interesting site for seeing curtailment per wind farm - https://windtable.co.uk/data?farm=Seagreen

fullstop2• 6 months ago

Everything that I learned about energy in Scotland comes from Still Game, so I must ask -- how many bars?

JetSetWilly• 6 months ago

In Scotland one issue is that the UK electricity market is national (unlike in eg norway). So even if local supply is very high and interconnects are not large enough to export to england - we must pay the higher national rate. As octopus ceo suggested if the UK energy market has regional pricing then electricity in scotland would often be a lot cheaper and in some cases industrial demand would move there. But that would disadvantage the SE of England so will never happen.

Conversely, standing charges ARE regionalised - because that does advantage the SE of England. Oh well!

Tepix2• 6 months ago

450W-500W solar panels are as low as 52€ here in Germany if you buy a couple of them. Batteries are also very affordable and I look forward to them getting a lot cheaper soon, thanks to Sodium-Ion.

testing2232118• 6 months ago

The price of panels is falling so fast I don’t think anyone truly understands.

I paid nearly double that for our 450w panels 18 months ago.

choeger2• 6 months ago

The panel price doesn't matter. It's the installation and the surroundings (electrical setup, converter, battery) that determine the price nowadays.

boringg10• 6 months ago

What? No Canada isn't cheap solar power -- last I checked rooftop ballasted solar is a 12-14 year payback on avoided costs. Inverter will go beforehand and that excludes any op costs. 8k$ free loan doesn't really provide as much value as you would think.

FWIW - I am all for solar but selling rooftop solar in canada as cheap and no-brainer is false.

3-4 year payback would be a no brainer. 8-13 year payback with an inverter upgrade and op-costs is definitely a decision that needs to be thought out.

The grid you are offsetting is fairly green to begin with so the net benefit is marginal.

If you are going to be isolated and put backup power into the equation. You ROI tanks further but at least you have about a day or two worth of energy in the storage asset.

aclatuts• 6 months ago

Anything under $2.25/watt would put it within under a 4 year payback period, Alberta has good rates for solar. Rooftop solar doesn't have operating costs that I can think of unless you want to clean them and clear snow which is optional. And inverters usually have a 20-25 year warranty.

rngfnby2• 6 months ago

Largely agree, with one big nitpick.

Canada is a massive exporter of electricity to the USA. The more clean energy CND produces the more there is to displace North East's coal.

Of course, solar on Canadians' roof is a joke. A proper regulatory regime would encourage solar in Arizona and encourage lettuce Canada; not vice versa.

testing2232118• 6 months ago

You know, when I was researching my system and if it would be worthwhile there were literally dozens and dozens of people who were adamant it couldn’t work here. Too much snow, too tight a valley, electricity already kinda cheap.

I went ahead anyway because I’m a “I’d rather have hard numbers than speculation“ person, and it was literally $0 of my money.

Here we are 18 months later. I have all the hard data, numbers and proof that this system will cost me $0 in the short term, make me over $20,000 in the long term, requires no maintenance and is great.

And yet there are still people like you telling me it can’t work.

I’m proving it does, very well. Panel prices are falling so fast your “last time I looked into it” is woefully out of date.

Why are you denying reality?

PunchyHamster4• 6 months ago

We have similar problem with prices being high despise renewable energy being cheap ;/

dyauspitr3• 6 months ago

What is the underlying reason in the US though? You would think if they are artificially inflated prices the market would fix that. What I’ve found is that a large part of the cost is the actual labor for the installation, how are other developed countries getting around this?

account422• 6 months ago

Mostly by giving people free money to install them so they go on the internet to say how cheap they are.

philipkglass2• 6 months ago

It's mostly due to higher "soft costs" such as complicated/slow permitting and high customer acquisition costs. Australia has a higher minimum wage but much lower costs to get a rooftop system installed.

"How to cut U.S. residential solar costs in half"

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/07/11/how-to-cut-u-s-reside...

Birch points to Australia, where he said the average 7 kW solar array with a 7 kW battery costs $14,000. That equates to $2.02 per W, with batteries included.

“You can sell it on Tuesday and install it on Wednesday, there’s no red tape, no permitting delays,” said Birch.

...

In the United States, that same solar and battery installation averages $36,000, said Birch. Permitting alone can take two to six months, and the cost per watt of a solar plus storage installation is up to 2.5 times the Australian price, landing at $5.18 per W.

AnotherGoodName2• 6 months ago

Australia has so much electricity during the day they’re talking about making I free for everyone in the middle of the day.

Not just talking about it, if you get a smart meter and sign up for a plan that matches the grid rates you can actually be paid to take electricity during the day right now.

If you're wondering "couldn't you just make bank with a battery" yes you can. In fact Australia dominates the world in grid connected storage (per capita) and this chart itself is actually out of date (it's growing even faster than shown).

https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/top-20-countries-by-ba...

I'll also point out that gas and oil generation has declined rapidly.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-rise-of-battery-storage-and-...

For anyone that thinks renewables can't phase out peaker plants it happens very naturally and rapidly once there's enough solar to set rates negative in the day.

bmelton• 6 months ago

How is it that people haven't turned to bitcoin mining (or similarly large energy dumps) during the daytime?

dataviz1000• 6 months ago

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians.

It would be worth including control of the people who vote for the politicians by direct investment such as when the oil producing Saudis bought the second largest stake in NewCorps which controls FoxNews controlling the content that influences voters. And, less than ethical control using bots on social media by Russia.

A lot of what influences "solar prices in the US" is controlled by foreign oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia controlling content and media consumed by American voters.

apercu2• 6 months ago

I agree wholeheartedly, and the technocrats are complicit with the GOP here.

It's funny how “free markets” keep producing the most expensive solar prices in the developed world. Don't get me started on Healthcare (I just moved back to the U.S. a couple years ago after 18 years in Canada, what a cluster*ck).

Oil and gas buy politicians, foreign oil money buys media influence, and social-media bots keep voters angry at the wrong targets.

Saudi capital helps shape the messaging, Russia helps amplify the noise, and Americans get stuck paying more for clean energy while being told it’s patriotic.

But hey, Make America Great Again, right?

vondur• 6 months ago

Here in California, they drastically cut back on the price that you get for solar powered electricity from homeowners. It used to be around $0.30/kWh at any time of day and now it's can drop to $0.00-$0.05/kWh during the day when the state is sunny. If you can afford to have a battery installed, the rates are far better as you can either run off the battery when rates are the highest in the evening, or you can export it back to the grid when prices are much higher.

yosefk• 6 months ago

The list of the oil producers listed and omitted on a given forum in these contexts is always interesting. On HN it is often SA or Russia, and almost never Qatar or Iran.

epolanski8• 6 months ago

I'm kinda tired of the argument where we only focus on some bad actors when it comes to online influencing.

Our countries absolutely do the same if not more to influence voters both here and in these other countries, especially online.

ApolloFortyNine4• 6 months ago

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.

This very well may be true, but taken at face value Canada seems to be paying you around $7k to install solar panels on your roof (that's 8k interest free loan is losing out to inflation + any interest it would have earned).

Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.

Zigurd• 6 months ago

Be less annoyed because utility demand declines.

testing2232118• 6 months ago

if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.

As a non car owner are you annoyed everyone gets subsidized roads?

Are you annoyed corn farmers get subsidies for growing corn?

Would you be annoyed if people got subsidized life saving health care?

It feels like the US can’t have nice things because people are hell bent on others not having nice things.

What a shame.

embedding-shape8• 6 months ago

Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.

What kind of selfish point of view is this? Don't you want people to use energy sources that are better for our entire world, even if it costs you like $10 more in taxes per year? Seems like a no brainer deal if you like "the outside" and you want it to still be there.

I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me. But I also feel the same about elder care, health care and a bunch of other things, do you feel the same for those things too, or this is specifically about solar or owning vs renting?

henry2023• 6 months ago

if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.

You probably wouldn’t. I hear more people complaining about hypothetical government spending than actual government spending.

kwanbix• 6 months ago

Yeah, truly awful. Unlimited electricity that barely contaminates, and at the lowest possible cost for everyone. Just terrible.

matthewdgreen6• 6 months ago

If you're a renter/condo then you're probably getting excess solar generation delivered to you from homeowners with nearby solar roofs. So presumably there is some benefit to you in terms of cheap generation.

pimeys• 6 months ago

In Germany you are allowed to install solar to your balcony as a renter.

epolanski8• 6 months ago

Your last argument could apply to anything really.

Why should I subsidize farmers if they can't compete?

Why do I have subsidize our own manufacturing companies if they can't compete so their workers have a job, at my expense?

Why do I need to subsidize car owners to have yet another lane but can't get a decent train instead?

Here in Poland suddenly all miners pretend to be subsidized by the state, even if they work for private companies.

Why do I need to subsidize them if the companies they work for can't turn a profit, or when they did for decades chose to pay dividends and do buybacks instead of investing? And now I pay the bill?

I mean, at some point you need to cope with the fact that money has to be spent and circulate in some fashion to promote economic activity and projects.

You could argue that subsidizing solar brings energy prices down in any case.

pear01• 6 months ago

US also tariffs Chinese EV makers out of the US market so they can keep peddling the fiction that EV sucks or China can't build anything we can't.

This has the same corrupt nexus with the anti-renewable mantra. Essentially subsidize oil and gas under the table and punish renewables then tell the electorate that the latter is worse than the former.

Instead of giving Americans free choice American automakers pay American politicians to prop up their uncompetitive prices and subpar offerings. All while they take in huge private profits. American workers could work on foreign automobiles, just as they do with other automakers not from China. It's not about workers, it's not about national security. You don't even have to go into all the environmental concerns that of course disproportionately affect poorer individuals.

It's corporate welfare. And yes, it should be criminal. At the very least, if the American people are going to inflate CEOs salaries they should have seats on the board.

This is actually not a wild idea. You might be surprised to find who one of the largest shareholders of the Volkswagen group is. It's not like that is an obviously mismanaged socialist hellhole company, it's a perfectly competitive and well regarded car company.

Americans need to start demanding more equity or oversight in operations their governments are already paying for. The fact most Americans think this amounts to communism just means more people have to call out the money is already flowing.

testing2232118• 6 months ago

I’m really happy Canada just dropped the Chinese EV tariffs.

apexalpha• 6 months ago

Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.

€13.000 for this still seems expensive.

Are there tariffs on Chinese PV in Canada?

canucktrash6692• 6 months ago

13k CAD is €8.000

matthewdgreen6• 6 months ago

Most rooftop install costs are labor. The PV is now a minimal slice of it. Which is why mandating solar on new construction is such an important policy: don't make two sets of laborers clamber around the same roof.

jeorb• 6 months ago

The quotes for solar on my home in the US ranged between $40,000 (local company) and $120,000 (Tesla). How did you get solar installed for only $13,000?

abhinavk• 6 months ago

They are in Canada.

pbasista• 6 months ago

Those numbers are meaningless unless you specify what you get in return.

It is like saying that you pay $30,000 for a car. But the most important question is: For which car?

Also, if the installation services are so expensive, you can always install everything yourself.

Study how to do it, get the tools and materials, and then do it. It would be time-consuming, challenging and perhaps it would carry extra risks. Absolutely.

But it is not rocket science. It can be done. As long as there is a motivation to do it, i.e. a good value you will get out of it in return, it should be a valid approach to consider, in my opinion.

micromacrofoot2• 6 months ago

Almost identical array in the states (7.8kw) — $25K out of pocket, down to about $12K after state and federal tax incentives.

Still made sense financially, pays for itself after ~8 years and the panels are warrantied for 30... but we're seriously lagging.

There's a similar phenomenon with heat pump systems. Installation costs are absolutely absurd.

choeger2• 6 months ago

Dad in Victoria Australia just got 10.6kw fully installed and operational for $4000 AUD. ($2,700 USD)

How the heck are the panels even installed and connected for that price? That's about 25 panels, IIRC. What about the installation material and the ac/dc converter?

testing2232118• 6 months ago

All covered in that price.

Government incentives. Spend tax dollars putting solar on literally every roof in the country instead of more coal or nuke plants.

blell• 6 months ago

OTOH, oil and gas prices in Europe are criminal, so there's that.

bojan2• 6 months ago

Europe has to import both, and the sellers tend to abuse Europe's dependency on it. Europe has what is becoming a survival interest to replace oil and gas as soon as possible.

buckle80174• 6 months ago

Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.

So solar only makes sense when it's nearly completely subsidized?

That's not the statement you think it is.

WheatMillington2• 6 months ago

It's criminal to not hand huge subsidies to people like you who are already likely well-off, so you can generate passive income for the rest of your life?

rfrey5• 6 months ago

Oil and gas subsidies in Canada dwarf whatever pittance is tossed out to renewable energy. People getting an interest free loan for rooftop solar may be well off (they own houses), but I guarantee the CEO of TC Energy is doing even better.

testing2232118• 6 months ago

A few things

If enough people adopt solar, it gets cheaper, and everyone get cheaper power, or even free like Australia.

Tax dollars could be spent on new coal or nuke plants, or to incentivize solar installs. Which one is the right future? Do new coal and nuke plants result in free power like Australia?

prometheus76• 6 months ago

Another impact on solar adoption in the United States is that many home insurance companies are refusing to pay on claims against roof damage from poor installs. And there are a lot of poor installs, which has led to this problem. So now the homeowners are taking all of the risk on a solar install that already has an 8-10 year ROI.

vjvjvjvjghv2• 6 months ago

“Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians.”

I think a big part of why the US GDP is so high is that a lot of things are just f…ing expensive. Education, health care, solar, restaurants and so on. You have to actively resist the “usual” lifestyle or you end up in a sea of debt.

andsoitis2• 6 months ago

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians.

Are you saying that because you assert cost is driven up “artificially” by taxes or other structural headwinds? Or are you saying that fossils enjoy an advantage due to lopsided subsidies? Or something else?

bryanlarsen2• 6 months ago

Figure out what you can do without a permit or inspections in your jurisdiction.

For example, in my jurisdiction it's: < 5 square meters of panels on your roof, <60V DC, AC on homeowner side of panel (as long as electrical work done by homeowner).

That's not a lot, but my primary purpose is as a generator replacement -- keep my fridge powered during a summer power outage or my furnace fan powered during a winter one. The other 364 days of the year it just slowly pays for itself.

Panels, battery, wiring and paying a roofer to install the flashings for the mounts all cost under $3000. A single one of the required inspections would have cost about that much.

flexie• 6 months ago

But Trump explained to us yesterday, how wind and solar is for losers. Surely, we should be looking in to how we can transition back to fossils.

nxm• 6 months ago

At the end of the day, the retail cost of electricity in many EU member countries can be two to three times the cost of electricity in the US. Ultimately that’s what matters to consumers and businesses.

Also, Trump called out the idiotic decisions by greenies such as shutting down nuclear power plants and make long your industries less competitive as a result.

coredev_2• 6 months ago

If this is true, it has nothing to do with solar or wind but rather strange decisions in the past in some countries that they (and their neighbors) pay for now (looking at you Germany).

KaiserPro7• 6 months ago

in many EU member countries can be two to three times the cost of electricity in the US.

Yup, I wonder why that might be, perhaps its due to our main supplier of gas and oil invading a country. Not sure though, if only the price graphs reflected that. oh wait.

shutting down nuclear power plants

Germany fucked up there. but france and Finland haven't done that.

Spain has cheap electricity because of solar power its wholesale price is currently lower than the US, in winter.

EdiX• 6 months ago

Declining industrially and demographically, no innovation, soaring energy prices, and our share of the world economy has shrunk for ten years straight and is projected to continue shrinking in the future. By all metrics us europeans are losers.

jhrmnn2• 6 months ago

Now, let's aim at total energy consumption, not just electricity generation.

standardUser• 6 months ago

~30% of total energy consumption in Europe is from ICE vehicles. So selling more EVs and winding down ICE sales can resolve 1/3rd of the issue.

spants• 6 months ago

The UK has some of the highest energy costs in the world due to the stupid Net Zero taxes. Our economy and manufacturing is suffering.

mekdoonggi11• 6 months ago

Have you considered that what you're paying for isn't just energy now, but energy security in the future?

doublerabbit5• 6 months ago

I don't see any energy security for the future for the UK unfortunately. We sold ourselves short during the GW/Blair Neo-labour era. Scotland maybe, they have wind-farms but the UK likes to tax that. We've just started the era of paying for the cost of Brexit. It's hitting hard.

My weekly supermarket shop for the basic essentials (cheese, eggs, flour, vegetables) now come to around $60/80 a trip.

Parmesan Cheese is around ~£22-£45 ($30-$60) per kg compared to the US $7–$24+ per kg.

atwrk• 6 months ago

Looking at the data it seems that uk industrial electricity is the most expensive before taxes, is that not correct?

ricardo815• 6 months ago

The social and environmental cost part is being removed in April and should save around 15-20% of the bill. I guess that is what you mean by net zero taxes?

mrks_hy3• 6 months ago

due to the stupid Net Zero taxes.

No. Citation neede. The issue is the moronic way energy auctions are done, first by setting the price to the highest source that can satisfy (always gas) but ignoring (!) geography. Then, phase 2, dropping the impossible providers (i.e. Scottish hydro in the North for South England), and doing another (much more expensive pass). The Octopus CEO had a succinct explainer recently, can't find the video...

Found it: https://youtu.be/5WgS-Dsm31E?t=91 starts at 1:31

Moldoteck33• 6 months ago

this is not moronic. This is done everywhere in the world. In fact, merit order does justify more ren deployment even if economics aren't that great, because operators will be paid according to merit order, needing less cfd's. You can also check out how much of the gas electricity price is just carbon tax. And how transmission spending evolved. And how CFD's for different tech evolved in each AR round

nindalf• 6 months ago

This is a glib statement that disregards a massive amount of complexity.

Energy is not expensive because of Net Zero taxes. Here's a breakdown of the average UK electricity bill over time [1]. The Renewables Obligation, that subsidised wind and solar at a time when they were infeasible without subsidies, was a scheme that ran between 2002 and 2017. It was stopped once renewables became cheaper than the alternatives. We will continue to pay for the renewable plants set up back in the day, but this will gradually taper off. In this electricity bill estimate for 2030 [2], you'll find that the Renewables Obligation is much lower (£17 rather than £102) for two reasons: plants losing subsidies as they age out and a chunk of the subsidy being borne by the treasury from general taxation.

So why aren't electricity bills coming down? Because we're recognising the reality that we will need to be powered by a mix of nuclear, wind and solar. Check out this real time dashboard of electricity generation in the UK [3], which shows you how Wind has zoomed in the last 14 years. From 2GW to 14GW, wind is now the single largest source of energy generated in the UK.

Wind is only going to grow, because it is cheap compared to the alternatives. In the Jan 2026 auction for wind power, an 8.4GW contract was awarded for a price 40% lower than the cost of a gas power plant. And unlike gas you aren't at the vagaries of global gas prices, like we were in 2022.

And now you're thinking, if wind is so cheap and we're continuing to build more, why is the estimate for the 2030 electricity bill higher than 2025? The 2030 page explains this - the wind is being built in the North Sea, far from where it is needed - in the South of England. This means investing in the transmission network, which will cost £70B over the next 5 years. That cost will be passed onto consumers.

So no, bills aren't high because of renewables. The decision to double down on wind, solar, batteries and nuclear by the previous and current government are sound. We will be more energy independent than we were in 2022 and possibly paying a bit less in overall bills. The reduction in carbon emissions is a nice bonus.

[1] https://www.electricitybills.uk

[2] https://www.electricitybills.uk/2030

[3] https://grid.iamkate.com

Moldoteck33• 6 months ago

bills are higher because of co2 tax, cfd's paid through AR rounds, and transmission expansion

pornel2• 6 months ago

OTOH, 60%-80% of electricity production is already renewable/low-carbon.

kokey• 6 months ago

Every time, over the years, that there has been some kind of headline saying renewables have overtaken fossil fuels, when you look at it a bit more closely there is always a big 'but'. For example, it was compared to coal (not taking into account electricity from gas), or it was for one day, or it was a percentage of new installations, or it excludes winter, includes nuclear etc.

This time, however, it looks like it's actually true and that's just for wind and solar. This is incredible, and done through slowly compounding gains that didn't cause massive economic hardships along the way.

fred_is_fred• 6 months ago

How much did Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine and nat gas price and supply changes accelerate things?

toomuchtodo6• 6 months ago

Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs - https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an... (updated daily)

ZeroGravitas7• 6 months ago

Sadly we got a warning in 2014 with Crimea being seized and fossil apologists like Bjorn Lomborg argued against rolling out wind and solar faster in response.

Because he's so "reasonable" and "pragmatic", he didn't say we shouldn't phase out Russian gas, he just said solar and wind don't work and so we should invent some totally new type of energy for this purpose.

It's only with a few years hindsight that he's obviously a shill. You had to be paying close attention at the time to notice.

And sadly that kind of engineered delay is widespread.

7952• 6 months ago

The problem is that it lead to investment on the expectation of high electricity prices in the future. Oil companies went and overspent on offshore wind concessions. When the prices dropped they were back to relying on strike prices that didn't offer enough profit and cancelled schemes. At least in the UK offshore wind has been somewhat stalled by that and by delay to grid connections.

pranavj6• 6 months ago

This is an important observation. For years these headlines came with asterisks - one sunny/windy day, excludes gas, new capacity only, etc. This being actual annual generation for wind+solar combined vs all fossil fuels is genuinely significant. The compounding nature of it is key too - solar capacity is now large enough that even modest percentage growth adds enormous absolute capacity each year.

jl6• 6 months ago

The “but” this time is that we are talking about electricity demand, not total energy demand. Electrification of heating is the next big milestone.

It’s still a great trend.

RationPhantoms2• 6 months ago

In my opinion, the "but" is still the "hellbrise" considerations brought up in the Decouple podcast. Renewable energy is fantastic but, at grid scale, has to be coupled with sufficient storage: https://www.decouple.media/p/hellbrise

adrianN6• 6 months ago

You can get pretty far with negligible storage. There is a cost tradeoff between storage, peaker plants (those could burn hydrogen, not just natgas) and grid size. 70% renewable with no storage is rather easy.

owenversteeg3• 6 months ago

The only asterisk this time is that this is electricity, not energy. Still impressive, but electricity is only 22% of total energy use, so they are at about 12% of the total for the EU and 7.8% for Europe.

For that, you want this graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

Fun to play around with, you can also change the selection to view the world, US, China, individual EU countries etc.

You can see that this the gain in renewables in the EU has been mainly at the expense of coal (down >50% as a share of total energy use in 10 years), gas (down 4%), and nuclear (down 20%.) Oil use as a share of the total is up by 5%.

eigenspace12• 6 months ago

It can be rather misleading to to talk about renewable energy generation versus total energy usage.

Most uses of fossil fuels are very inefficient. For instance, when you step on the accelerator in your car, only around 30% of the energy in the fuel you use actually is being used to propel you forward. The majority of the energy is wasted as heat. In a power plant that's more like 70% being captured and going towards the goal (electricity generation).

Another large quantity of energy-usage is heating, and electrical heat-pumps can be around 3-5x more energy efficient at heating an enclosed space than combustion or resistive heating.

So while things like heating an transportation use a very large amount of energy, conquering them with renewables actually won't require that Europe installs 10x or whatever more wind and solar, since electrification also brings significant new efficiencies.

______

If you want to compare renewables against the amount of fossil fuels being burnt, then it'd be a lot more representative if you calculate the amount of wind energy impacting a wind turbine blade, or the amount of energy in solar radiation incident on a solar panel. That's an easy way to inflate the renewable numbers by ~5x or whatever

nandomrumber11• 6 months ago

The only asterisk this time is that this is electricity, not energy. … and 7.8% for Europe.

Yes, the _!ONLY!_ thing is, this won’t move the needle at all on climate change.

Wind and solar for electric is the lowest of low hanging fruit.

No one has even proposed that they have maybe even possibly have perhaps thought of an idea to address transport and agriculture related emissions.

Lithium ion batteries, or a solid state alternative aren’t it. Not without being some orders of magnitude more energy dense and lighter. And you still need to electrify those sectors to be able to charge the batteries.

anovikov4• 6 months ago

Overall renewables (including the "bad" ones like biogas, and the finite ones like hydro) are at around 27% of TFC in EU today (25.2% in 2024 and growing at around 1% per year). Not bad. But far from replacement.

Renewables plus nuclear is now at around 70% of all energy (by final consumption) that is produced in EU though, it's just that the rest is imported.

black_puppydog• 6 months ago

Nice link, thanks! Still, the renewables (I'm not counting nuclear and biofuels, but counting hydro and "other renewables") make up 21.1% of the total energy consumption as well, up from 13.3% in 2015. That's still quite marked.

Also after clicking the "settings" button to show absolute values, I was surprised to see that total energy consumption peaked in 2006 (hey, that's 20 years ago!) at ~18,900TWh, and is now at ~15,700TWh.

I'd guess that demand for Oil is so inflexible mostly due to its use in transportation? If that's the case, we should see this value drop as the adoption of EVs progresses, but clearly so far they haven't made a dent.

Edit: after clicking around a bit more, it seems that the EU energy use reduction might be mostly due to off-shoring energy intensive industries... ayayay. XD

youngtaff4• 6 months ago

If you take a look at the All Time view on https://grid.iamkate.com you'll see wind overtook gas a few years ago in the UK

dmix• 6 months ago

compounding gains that didn't cause massive economic hardships along the way.

I’ve read multiple stories of European manufacturers saying they are struggling with high operating costs, with energy being a major factor making it difficult to compete with China who has invested in every sort of energy broadly. China doesn’t just compete on labour costs like people think, they figured out ways to make every part of operating there cheaper.

Just keeping the prices baseline to something else that’s already relatively expensive shouldn’t be the only goal. But it’s progress I guess.

b3orn• 6 months ago

The largest "but" is that they only look at electricity generation, not energy in general. There's a lot of heating with natural gas and of course most cars still have internal combustion engines which burn petrol or diesel.

samus2• 6 months ago

Heating with gas is difficult to phase out since it's a major investment. It would require large-scale build out of remote heating.

Replacing IC engines is a whole different story, and it's not clear whether electric cars are a complete replacement yet.

ricardonunez• 6 months ago

This of what Germany needed to do and not go nuclear… on nuclear.

altern812• 6 months ago

Well, OK--but at what cost?

Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S., and as a result EVERYTHING is more expensive.

Mix that with lower buying power and taxes and we spend 2-3 times for stuff.

I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws.

Our companies are also less and less competitive because of these initiatives, and companies from China take over in part thanks to the complete lack if environmental and labor laws over there.

Seems to me like this is happening more and more, and it's so widespread and obvious that it almost makes you think that politicians are being bought by Chinese companies/government.

torlok3• 6 months ago

Renewables lead to energy independence and a more distributed energy grid. It's fundamental to security, and can't be so easily measured in terms of money. The EU is increasing its independence from China via initiatives like the Net-Zero Industry Act. And this talk of "politicians being bought by Chinese companies" is laughable in the face of what oil companies are doing, to the benefit of exporters like USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other regimes, and definitively not the EU.

altern812• 6 months ago

I'm not sure, I'm in Poland and all we had was coal. Now it will take a few decades to have our own source of power again. Maybe 20-30 years..?

What are oil companies doing to drive European companies out of business (not saying they aren't, I just don't know)?

p0pularopinion4• 6 months ago

Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S.

Maybe because Europe as a whole has little to no signifcant oil reserves ready for extraction? Very much unlike the US.

I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws.

The US does have plenty of cheap energy and yet its industrial output is dwarfed by Chinas, which is increasingly relying on domestically products green tech. Also, people seem to be not very concerned with energy prices. If they were, they would not act as irrational when it comes to topics like heatpumps or electric vehicles.

that it almost makes you think that politicians are being bought by Chinese companies/government.

Looking at the energy policy of some countries (Germany specifically), it seems vastly more likely that politicans are bought by oil companies.

altern812• 6 months ago

True, there is no oil and we just relied on cheap gas from Russia--which I guess it didn't turn out to be a good strategy after all.

That's interesting about oil companies. Is that who's lobbing to pass laws that just seem (to me) to be written on purpose to make our companies less competitive? How does that work, how do oil companies profit from that?

Moldoteck33• 6 months ago

big part is co2 tax. EU now has neptune deep and could explore north sea too. In Germany current transition pathway of ren+gas and no nuclear was defined when Energiewende got introduced with red greens under Schroeder, a gazprom lover and later extended by red blacks

pranavj6• 6 months ago

EU electricity prices are high, but attributing this to renewables is backwards. Wholesale electricity prices drop when wind and solar are producing - that's been documented extensively. The high prices are largely due to: (1) gas setting marginal prices during peak hours, (2) grid infrastructure that hasn't kept pace, and (3) taxes/levies that fund the transition. As battery storage grows and reduces gas dependency for peaks, prices should moderate. The countries with the highest renewable penetration (Spain, Portugal) often have lower prices than those still dependent on gas imports.

altern812• 6 months ago

I'm not attributing to renewables, but green initiatives.

For instance, the rising prices of carbon permits under the EU emissions trading scheme.

So, my point is that countries that don't ignore the economy just to be green--like the U.S. and specially China--seem to have vastly cheaper electricity and gasoline, which I would guess makes them more competitive/lowers prices.

Over here we have no NG and no oil, and on top of that we tax our companies because of emission limits, while in China they burn coal like there is no tomorrow.

We wanted to outlaw non-electric cars, while the car industry in Europe is huge and we don't have a way to build batteries, etc. etc.

Seems to be a pattern that is hard to understand.

mrweasel4• 6 months ago

Well, OK--but at what cost?

It costs less? The Danish organisation for green energy interest (biased I known) has calculations that shows a 5 billion DKK saving per year for the Danish consumers. So about €0.02 per kWh.

I also think you're wrong about prices. I think most will pay more, if they get clean energy. Not a lot more, but if it's only a few cents, I think many/most will pay that, perhaps not happily, but still. People, in parts of Europe at least, are perhaps more baffled that the Americans won't pay the slightly higher cost and and protect the environment. As it happens that's not a choice we need to make, wind and solar is now cheaper than fossil fuel.

altern812• 6 months ago

I'm not sure, prices here in Poland have skyrocketed because of the EU green initiative and we started exporting and prices went up 3-4 times.

I'm good with protecting the environment. Here, though, we're making European companies less competitive. They shut down, and Chinese companies fill the gap, flooding us with products that are worse for the environments because they have no laws, bad for workers because they have no laws, and bad for the environment again because instead of local they're shipped across continents on boats that burn as much fuel as a whole country for a year just to bring cheap plastic stuff that we used to make better ourselves.

Moldoteck33• 6 months ago

there's a meme with a few cents more in germany, can search on the google "eis kugel energiewende"

DK has one of the highest household prices in EU per eurostat https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Imo CO2 tax should be gone to alleviate this, especially when China and US dont have it. This just causes offshoring.

If you want electrification, you need cheap electricity. If you want more ren, you put more incentives there instead of overtaxing fossils to make own industry uncompetitive

usrnm• 6 months ago

The article uses the words "more power" and "overtaking fossil fuels", but the graph is actually about electricity generation. They are not the same thing, at least, in my head, because not all energy consumed in Europe comes in the form of electricity. If I heat my home with natural gas and drive an ICE car, this is me using fossil fuels in a way that has nothing to do with electricity and it won't be reflected in that graph. This is an important stepping stone, but it is not "solar and wind overtaking fossil fuels in Europe"

pranavj6• 6 months ago

Good catch. Electricity is maybe 20-25% of final energy consumption in most EU countries. The real test is whether cheap renewable electricity can pull heating (heat pumps) and transport (EVs) onto the grid fast enough. The encouraging sign is that both are happening - heat pump sales have surged in several EU countries, and EV adoption is well ahead of most forecasts from 5 years ago. But you're right that "overtaking fossil fuels" in total energy is still years away.

wat10000• 6 months ago

"Power" usually means electricity when used colloquially.

p0pularopinion4• 6 months ago

I'm curious as to how this will shift once the shift towards more electrification continues. This is only about electricity generation, not total power consumption.

Nowadays, for very energy intenive things like heating or driving a car, fossil fuels still are more prevalent than electric alternatives. Once demand shifts in favor of the electrified alternatives, electricity demand is continuing to raise (although not as steep as the drop in demand for the fossil fuels will be). Particularly in heating, where peak demand is in times with very little solar generation, it seems like this will be challenging.

While the prices of energy storage have come down significantly and are projected to continue to drop, there is still a noteable lack of cost effective long term storage solutions.

kieranmaine6• 6 months ago

Regarding the affect of EV adoption on electricity consumption the site https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/ has some interesting data. I'd recommend looking at the following graphs:

* Distance travelled by passenger cars in Norway

* EV electricity consumption and total power generation in Norway

EVs now make up approximately 1/3 of miles travelled, but the increase in total electrcity consumption is fairly small.

dalyons2• 6 months ago

now that 98% of cars sold are BEV, i wonder how long its gunna take for that 1/3rd to get to 95%

eigenspace12• 6 months ago

Particularly in heating, where peak demand is in times with very little solar generation, it seems like this will be challenging.

Heating is actually likely to be one of the easier questions here, because heat is just fundamentally an easier problem to tackle than most other intensive uses of energy in the modern world.

1. Solar isn't the only incredibly cheap form of intermittant renwewable energy production. Wind is also great, tends to support local manufacturing economies more than solar, and is anti-correlated with peak-sunshine. The wind tends to blow hardest in the winter and around sunset.

2. Heatpumps can pretty comfortably achieve 300+% coefficients of performance, meaning that for every joule of energy you put into a heatpump, you'll get 3+ joules of heat pumped into your home, office, or city-scale heat thermos

3. Heat energy storage is cheap compared to batteries. You just store large quantities of water or sand and heat it up with a resistor or a heat pump. The scaling of surface area versus volume ensures that the bigger you make the heat-battery, the less energy you'll lose from it over time (percentage wise).

4. Heat is a waste product from many other forms of energy usage, and can be harnessed. For instance, gas peaker plants aren't going away any time soon, and cities which aren't harnessing the waste heat from those peaker plants and using it in a district heating system are wasting both money and carbon.

Just a couple kilometers from my home for instance is a gas power plant that stores waste heat in giant thermoses, and pumps hot water to my building to to be used for heating. They currently have the largest heat pump in europe under construction on the same site intended to supplement the gas plant, both to take up slack from the fact that it'll be running less often, and to expand the service to yet more households.

Moldoteck33• 6 months ago

the prerequisite for fast electrification is cheap electricity. Currently many EU countries have expensive electricity for households

p0pularopinion4• 6 months ago

This is just objectively untrue. Source: I live in Germany, a country with some of the highest electricity prices, I drive a BEV and I heat my home with a heatpump. My systems SCOP hovers around 3.5, which means that my kWh of heat made from my heatpump with electricity is cheaper than my current gas rate.

My heatpump electricty bill is significantly lower as compared to my apartment (Gas furnace), despite both buildings being roughly comparable late 80s construction.

I charge my car at my standard electrcity rate of 32ct/kWh, and I pay now about half for the same usage.

Electricity is expensive, yeah. But electrified stuff is also significantly more efficient than fossil tech

pranavj6• 6 months ago

The most underreported part of this story is the battery piece at the end. Batteries are beginning to displace natural gas in evening peak hours - that's the exact window where solar critics have long argued renewables fall short. If this trend accelerates (and battery prices are dropping faster than most models predicted), the "intermittency problem" starts looking more like a solvable engineering challenge than a fundamental barrier.

The next milestone to watch: when battery-backed solar becomes cheaper than gas peakers for evening demand across most of Europe. We might be closer than people think.

bryanlarsen2• 6 months ago

Those are two thresholds: cheaper than peakers using piped gas from Russia, and cheaper than peakers using LNG shipped via tanker ship. I imagine the latter threshold has already been met, only depending on the amortization period you choose for the battery purchase.

mekdoonggi11• 6 months ago

I looked into sodium-ion batteries for which factories are coming online in China. The theoretical manufacturing cost of those is very very low, which will make solar + batteries very cheap. I suspect China will reach those costs ahead of schedule.

danny_codes• 6 months ago

IMO this is a classic case of underestimating how far manufacturing improvements can get you on the cost scale. You see a promising technology in the lab and it’s hard to imagine a 1 million x reduction in price, yet we see that time and time again as tech gets scaled out.

What’s wild to me is how the US is leaving itself in the dust. How the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce electricity 10x cheaper than we can is a wonder in itself

bee_rider3• 6 months ago

Intermittence really has always had the flavor of an engineering problem instead of a physics problem (it is about putting the energy when/where humans want it, rather than having enough of it). IMO load shifting seems like a cleverer and more engineer-y solution. Imagine a giant smart system where all of our appliances talk to each-other and can optimize the timings of their workloads. It’s a magnificent society-wide scheduling problem! The papers we could write!

Throwing batteries at it is a kind of blunt and uninteresting solution (I guess the market will prefer that one!).

epolanski8• 6 months ago

I ain't gonna use the dishwasher when the system wants me to, but when I can or want.

I pay low energy prices during night than day, that's normal, but I'm still not gonna do laundry at 9 pm, I'd rather pay the 10/20 cents more during the day.

evan_a_a• 6 months ago

In engineering the simple solution is often the best solution. Creating a demand-side network of devices is not that.

Plus, such a system would provide even more ways for nefarious actors to sabotage the grid, by influencing the demand side. For example, setting every appliance to run its load at the same time. The grid would be fucked.

terj74• 6 months ago

This is already happening with market pricing of electricity energy demands that can be shifted. Our car charges, and our dishwasher/clothes washer run when pricing is low. The price differential is not big enough yet between high and low demand times for us to invest in a battery to soak up cheap power. If battery prices continue to go down, or if the price differential goes up that equation will change. The other main expensive energy user is HVAC and we don't have a way of moving that demand to a different time of day other than a batterv. :(

salynchnew• 6 months ago

It's a great idea, but I feel like that way ends up with the nightmare scenario of each of us managing an AWS-style admin console for washing the dishes, etc.

That way lies madness, although I suppose there might be one or two family members I would want to lock out of the dishwasher.

IshKebab4• 6 months ago

The problem with solar isn't the night. Getting enough batteries to cover that is totally doable. The issue is the winter. And not even because of fewer daylight hours - on sunny winter days there is usually still a good amount of solar.

The problem is its often very cloudy in the winter. In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days in a row where solar output is virtually zero.

I don't know what the answer to that is. In a calm cloudy winter week all renewables and battery storage are totally screwed. Space based solar is a scam. Maybe we just have to live with it until fusion works (if it ever does).

(But it's still academic at the moment because we're still far from the point where building more renewables is a bad idea.)

KaiserPro7• 6 months ago

In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days

True, but then for the UK solar power isn't the right thing for winter, hence why we need a massive mix of other stuff.

Also we have the advantage that france isn't that far away.

In the UK battery is about grid stabilisation, as in making sure that it hums at 50hz rather than 49.

kieranmaine6• 6 months ago

Regarding long term storage keep an eye on the UK's Cap and Floor scheme which offers guaranteed revenues to long term storage technologies [1].

Page 7 of https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-09/LDES%20... lists the technology types of the project applications. The majority are Li-Ion BESS, but there are also other battery chemistries and Liquid/Compress Air Storage

1. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-release/super-battery-project...

micwag• 6 months ago

In a calm cloudy winter week all renewables and battery storage are totally screwed. Hydro doesn’t really care about a calm cloudy winter week and is the reason my state was 100% renewable last year. So it’s definitely not a problem for ALL renewables.

MakersF• 6 months ago

It's unfair you're being down voted, you're right. I used to think that we could get by with just solar wind and batteries, but then after collaborating with people on an ideal energy mix the numbers were obvious: there is a (small) fraction that cannot be covered. Not with storage (the discharge cycles are so few that the cost is prohibitive. How can a battery pay for itself with 10-20 discharges a year? And this applies to any kind of battery that needs to be built, including hydro). Likely there will need to be some baseload nuclear (which then increases average prices, since to make it economical you need to buy all the electricity it produces, and so it partially displaces renewables). The alternative is overbuilding solar+wind+battery something like 5/8 times the average need. Maybe if the prices drop enough that could be feasible.. The big win would be if there is some way to get predictable power at a lower cost than nuclear (e.g. tidal), which could be used to smooth the troughts, or alternatively a low capex but potentially high opex solution which is turned on only when needed (gas is an option, but not co2 free. And sizing the power needed is not super cheap, although now it's not a problem since we have enough gas capacity which is going to be displaced, so it won't be needed to be built)

kilroy1232• 6 months ago

Just over build the solar. Build out solar so demand in winter is met.

Use the excess power in summer for some kind of industrial use.

ViewTrick10025• 6 months ago

Keep some of the existing natural gas plants around as an emergency reserve. Run them on hydrogen or hydrogen derivatives for zero carbon fuel, if the emissions are large enough to matter.

pfdietz19• 6 months ago

This just shows batteries shouldn't be the only storage technology, at least at high latitude. There needs to be a complementary long term storage technology with low capacity capex, even if its round trip efficiency is bad. Examples: green hydrogen, ultra low capex thermal storage.

To see the effect of including such, go to https://model.energy

Using a long term storage technology (in addition to wind/solar/batteries) can cut the cost in half at high latitudes.

hexbin0103• 6 months ago

Try 2 weeks of seemingly endless cloud up this way lol. This winter has been seriously depressing so far

tremon2• 6 months ago

Space based solar is a scam

It's not a scam, it's a weapon. The same proliferation arguments that have been used against nuclear also apply to space-based solar.

epolanski8• 6 months ago

A huge part of this calculus though is that the gas we buy since Russia disappeared as a provider is insanely high.

Our economics may not match Canadian or US ones.

Gibbon1• 6 months ago

For an example one can look at California. Batteries deleted the duck curve.

andsoitis2• 6 months ago

There’s a certain poetic aspect to this.

Fossils are dead, slow.

Wind moves fast. Photons move even faster.

dotdi• 6 months ago

At the same time subsidies are being phased out. I was about to get 8kW panels + batteries installed when my country decided to pull them, and I'm not going to spend 10k out of pocket.

sp4cec0wb0y2• 6 months ago

Imagine the powerhouse America would be (pun intended) if we subsidized nuclear energy to become the defacto producer of nuclear power plants world wide. Sometimes it is easier said than done but this really is as easy as said.

mrks_hy3• 6 months ago

You have it backwards. At the current cost curve for renewables and storage, Nuclear will never again be able to compete.

See: the overly optimistic SMR plans being predictably scrapped in many places.

What you do have is ample land to build out solar and export eg. Ammonia (made out of Hydrogen) for "free" energy.

sp4cec0wb0y2• 6 months ago

Correct me if I am wrong but the only reason nuclear is expensive is because of how costly the facilities are to build and maintain. If we were not setback during the anti-nuclear era, we would have gained economies of scale. The reason why solar is so cheap is for the exact same reason is it not? I am not an expert on this topic so take everything I say with a massive grain of salt as I am willing to be wrong on this.

Edit: After further reading it appears that solar will be the defacto affordable option in energy production, even with SMRs and streamlined construction in the picture. Perhaps a mix of renewables, better battery infra, and SMRs for stable sources of power is the future.

Moldoteck33• 6 months ago

nuclear can compete if we re-learn to build on time and on budget. Japanese abwr did cost 3bn and done in <4y. China does the same now for cheaper. There's no such thing as free hydrogen, nor it will be

thinkcontext6• 6 months ago

The US gave the nuclear industry a chance for a nuclear renaissance with the subsidies they asked for towards the AP1000. The industry whiffed big time. Looks like nuclear will get another chance with the increased subsidies begun under Biden, the deregulatory approach of Trump and the huge demand spike in electricity. Its an open question on whether they'll be able to deliver.

pfdietz19• 6 months ago

Judged historically, it will be a massive fiasco.

Havoc• 6 months ago

Now we just need to figure out scalable storage. Ideally something like the sand batteries that you can scale with construction equipment rather than just adding more rows of tiny lithium batteries

eigenspace12• 6 months ago

The answer is likely going to have to be hydrogen, but there's a pretty difficult catch with hydrogen: it makes zero sense to invest in any hydrogen electricity storage infrastructure until the grid is already like 80+% renewable.

There's simply no sense in turning electricity into hydrogen so that it could be used in 6 months (losing 50+% of the energy along the way as heat!) when you could just sell that electricity right now, or stick it in a battery so you can use it 6 hours from now.

There will be an economic case for hydrogen energy storage in Europe in 10 years, but unfortunately the technology is basically sitting at a standstill right now with no attention and no investment because it's not needed yet.

Moldoteck33• 6 months ago

even in 10y h2 is economically unviable. Check out Norway/Sweden, they got tons of ren. Are they some _cheap_ H2 generation meccas? There are some chances for other synth fuels but H2 is just a pipedream

lambdaone10• 6 months ago

Syngas makes a lot more sense than hydrogen, in the short term. But what really makes sense in the longer term is massively scaled Carnot batteries. Slightly less efficient than batteries, but really cheap to build (it's a combination of resistive heating and old-fashioned thermal power station technology) overbuilding renewables is cheap, and you can charge your Carnot battery [almost] all year long.

baxtr• 6 months ago

If you’re interested in this topic I highly recommend Tony Seba’s analyses.

He argues that because solar and wind are now the cheapest forms of new energy generation, they are on an unstoppable exponential "S-curve" that will make coal, gas, and nuclear power obsolete by 2030.

Look up his videos on YT, for example this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj96nxtHdTU

frm88• 6 months ago

Thank you for that link. His vision of SWB as a global disruptor is spot on. Currently we're seeing massive delays worldwide on that S-curve with subsidies cancelled and political movements calling for a stop to green energy not only in the US, so his time line to transportation as a service might not come as soon as predicted. Off topic but I really can't see precision fermentation replace dairy by 2030. There would be a cheese lover revolt all over Europe :)

1970-01-01• 6 months ago

Solar with a modern LFP battery system is a no-brainer solution for 21st century energy infrastructure. The safety record beats pretty much everything else, and as long as the sun is out, it just works.

pornel2• 6 months ago

In the UK just having batteries already helps. There's a surplus of wind at night. Shifting it to 5pm peaks pays back the cost of the battery quicker than solar panels pay for themselves.

eigenspace12• 6 months ago

Focusing on Solar+Battery is only effective when the solar is not accounting for a majority of electricity generation (at least in geographies significantly north of the tropics). The problem is that while the sun shines, solar will drive everyone else out of business, but then leaves you stranded in the winter, and no practical amount of electricity storage will save you.

Fortunately, wind energy generation also exists, and is a nearly ideal complement to solar power, because it's nearly as cheap as solar, and its energy peaks are mostly anti-correlated with solar energy peaks (typically the winter and sunset are the windiest parts of the year / day).

Wind's main problem is that it's more reliant on large scale projects (rather than solar which scales all the way from a pocket calculator to an installation the size of city), and wind is also more susceptible to regulatory / NIMBY sabotage than solar.

Especially with China currently flooding the market with cheap solar and batteries, I think it makes sense for governments to focus much more of their attention and efforts on promoting (or at least getting out of the way of) wind projects, and let the market drive solar adoption.

benjymo7• 6 months ago

Don't forget wind.

For example in germany, wind is 31.4% of production, solar is 16.8%. For the EU it's 18.1% for wind and 11% for solar.

Wind is often producing more during the morning/night where solar falls short.

weslleyskah2• 6 months ago

In 2025, both Ireland and Finland joined the ranks of European countries that have shuttered their last remaining coal plants.

Interesting, they mentioned Finland. I wonder how Norway and Finland fair using solar since they have rigorous winters with polar nights.

fulafel• 6 months ago

Hydro in Norway, nuclear+wind in Finland.

https://www.iea.org/countries/norway/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/finland/electricity

weslleyskah2• 6 months ago

Very interesting.

I was also reading: https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2019/10/the-way-forward-for...

Tor37• 6 months ago

It's actually hydro+wind in Norway, not just hydro. Hydro has been able to cover nearly 100% of household needs, and most of industry, up till now. The wind, controversial as it is in some places, has managed to offset some of the problems with hydro (nowadays the inter-European deals in practice forces Norway to sell off electricity from hydro in the summer, where in the past that would be saved for the upcoming winter)

canucktrash6692• 6 months ago

WW3 called and said solar is harder to disrupt through bombing than massive power plants. Seems like a great deal even if it was more expensive.

Moldoteck33• 6 months ago

disrupting the grid will still be easy. And cluster bombs can heavily impact land solar

jojomodding2• 6 months ago

It might be, but to disrupt the solar array on my rooftop you need to bomb it specifically. Times a hundred million, it becomes infeasible.

when_creaks• 6 months ago

Encouraging. However, it isn't clear from the article at first glance (or the deeper analysis being referenced) how electricity consumption by power source is changing.

In other words, as an example, a 10% increase in solar power generation does not necessarily mean that there was a 10% increase in electricity consumption where that electricity was generated via solar.

i.e. It is entirely possible for a growing solar fleet to generate more power during the middle of the day than previously, and simultaneously for not all of that increased power to be used / usable.

eigenspace12• 6 months ago

What you're talking about is commonly called "curtailment", where power generators like wind and solar can be told to basically stop feeding into the grid, effectively wasting their energy.

From what I recall, curtailment of wind and solar at least in Germany amounts to about 3% wasted energy from those sources, so no, it's not a very significant worry. These renewable sources really are displacing fossil fuels.

A big part of this story is batteries. Especially during the summer, the wholesale electricity price in Germany can swing daily from -10 to +10 cents per kWh during the mid-day, up to 150+ cents per kWh at night, due to supply-and-demand.

This gradient in prices creates a huge incentive for people to build batteries that buy up cheap electricity during the day (sometimes literally getting paid to do so), so that they can sell it back later on in the day when prices rise. This incentive helps make sure energy does not get wasted, it encourages more batteries to be installed, and it encourages businesses to shift the their energy usage to times of the day that align with high renewable output.

benjymo7• 6 months ago

Batteries are relatively cheap and ideal for shifting solar power generation from noon into the evening.

softwaredoug• 6 months ago

It used to be the big worry among climate activists that you'd never get every country organize and move in one direction. Like you'd need some global body to clean everything up.

That's very fragile.

Luckily, we're moving to a world where a disjoint, self-interested response can be an advantage. Countries decide, for their own selfish reasons, to adopt green energy. For energy independence, affordability, clean air, etc.

So when one country politically rotates out for dumb reasons, other countries pick up the slack and make a bit of progress.

buckle80174• 6 months ago

Oil the west doesn't use isn't magically staying in the ground.

Middle and low income countries (most notably China) increased consumption is more than offsetting reductions from high income countries.

thinkcontext6• 6 months ago

More than 50% of cars sold in China now come with a plug, on top of the most of the buses and 2 wheelers. Most analysts say they have plateaued and will begin declining in the next few years. They also are beginning to ramp up EV exports to other developing economies.

triceratops15• 6 months ago

Middle and low income countries can't print dollars to buy oil. They'll happily take free energy from the sky.

lambdaone10• 6 months ago

Although it looks like bad news in the short term, China is building even more renewables than they are coal stations, with the result that the fraction of fossil power consumption in China is actually decreasing: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...

BLKNSLVR3• 6 months ago

There's also the case in Australia where, despite successive governments that were (likely monetarily* ) opposed to solar and wind, people power kinda took over to get the unexpectedly high penetration of home solar panel installations, going back beyond a decade, and currently home battery installations.

Both were due to government incentives, I'm not sure if both parties may have initiated parts of these incentives, but only one party significantly and constantly talked down solar and renewables (and still would, although they don't currently have the platform)

* I have to assume the reason is money (read: lobbying) for any political party to downplay Australia's potential to lead the world in solar power generation given our natural massive, otherwise mostly useless land mass and beyond plentiful sunshine. Also, Australia's dependence on petrol / oil from overseas should be treated as a national security issue. Australia does have plentiful coal reserves, however, which is where I believe the lobbyists (and therefore unimaginable amounts of money) come from.

nandomrumber11• 6 months ago

despite successive governments that were (likely monetarily* ) opposed to solar and wind,

What are you talking about?

Both were due to government incentives,

How can the government be opposed to it, while also providing rebates to rooftop solar?

Anyway, it was all a big bait and switch manoeuvre, as the solar feed in tariff per kWh is only a fraction of what you pay, but it didn’t start out that way.

That continued existence of any incentive to add rooftop solar is dependent on continued electricity price hikes that out pace general inflation.

That’s how intelligent Australian voters are.

We have the world’s largest known uranium deposit, which we’re happy for others to use, but instead we voted for this shit.

Rooftop solar is a scam.

What it does is shifts the long term maintenance costs from the industrial sector, or government if you’re a socialist, to the owner of the roof owner, the residential / business customer. All the while leaving the affordability of the entire fiasco up to whichever bunch of wankers are in Canberra this week deciding the feed-in tariff.

Why would anyone think any of that is a good idea.

And I say that as someone who recently installed solar.

throw7• 6 months ago

And in U.S., Trump stopped the coastal wind farms here in the east... for "national security" reasons.

buckle80174• 6 months ago

I'm extremely skeptical of that graph because it has zero seasonal variation.

Solar performs dramatically worse in the winter than in summer.

azornathogron• 6 months ago

The graph I see in the article displays a single data point per year. You're not going to see seasonal variation in a graph with that resolution. Is there another graph that I missed?

hbarka• 6 months ago

In Davos yesterday, our great leader was gaslighting the audience to believe that Europe buys wind power equipment from China whilst China themselves do not believe or use the very windmills they sell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China

pranavj6• 6 months ago

Related: The 80% Problem: Why the Energy Transition Isn't What You Think - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46724535

baal80spam• 6 months ago

Thanks a lot, this is eye-opening.

Zentrix• 6 months ago

Hey, thank you for your post.

I noticed that you are missing an important part of the story, the argument for why the 80% might not be that hard. Here is a video from Simon Clark that explains it. [1]

Also, you seem to have used old data in your analysis. You need to look at/use data for 2025 because renewables are on an S-curve so the predictions for their growth are constantly underestimated.

Hope that helps.

[1] https://youtu.be/6c94vRmbM6Y?si=pPmvfJAGjHa2zOF1

tsoukase• 6 months ago

All these milestones of renewables Vs fossils are low hanging fruits. Sometime soon they will hit a wall of diminishing returns: more solar improves nothing.

Also, if a large share of heating and transportation converts to electricity then renewables will become a single digit share and we are back to burning. We desperately need a new breakthrough energy saving technology from summer to winter/vehicle, either electrical or chemical. I bet on hydrogen/eFuel. Or else nuclear.

jmward012• 6 months ago

Is anyone accurately predicting solar and renewable adoption? Year after year I see terrible predictions that fall way short of the reality in the world. If so, when do those models predict the death of fossil fuel based power plants? There is generally some moment where keeping the infrastructure going becomes so expensive that things just shut down. Are we close? I wonder what the graphs of fossil fuel plan construction and upgrades looks like. Are they near 0 yet?

FrancisMoodie• 6 months ago

I don't understand why it always has to be one or the other? Why can't we have both? More sources of energy means more reliable energy distribution, multiple fail-safes, in summer there is more solar, in fall there is more wind, in winter we probably need power plants to uphold the need for energy so everyone can stay warm. But this polarization of things, just like with politics, is so stupid. They all have pro's and con's. We should be investing in all of them, maintaining as much different sources of energy as possible and reassess the situation over time. Or am I missing something in your comment?

jmward012• 6 months ago

I am a huge fan of the diversity argument. I think though that the proven negatives of fossil fuels and the massive difference in cost compared to renewables + batteries will end up making fossil fuels a niche at best in the not so near future. The goal is diversity, not maintaining every possible system. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, nuclear and batteries give us a pretty diverse system compared to oil+coal+natural gas that has dominated so far. My point was that fossil fuels are likely heading towards a tipping point where the already massive subsidies keeping them going won't be enough and they will likely collapse suddenly. I, for one, am not willing to continue to subsidize them just to maintain more diversity especially considering how much we subsidize them already.

Kon5ole• 6 months ago

I don't understand why it always has to be one or the other? Why can't we have both?

I basically agree with you but I think the other point here is valid too. Solar (and some other renewables) are so cheap they basically make it impossible to operate expensive powerplants, and then it kinda becomes a "one thing or the other".

To me it seems that this is a problem with the current business model, which should be adjusted. We should not expect to make money from producing electricity, but instead from consuming electricity.

Basically electricity should eventually be free, since we are in fact being sent orders of magnitude more energy than we need every day.

We have recently discovered how to harness this free energy very cheaply, but are stuck in business models from the time when producing energy was expensive.

clarionbell• 6 months ago

Meanwhile European chemical manufacturing is collapsing under weight of record energy costs.[1][2] Most of other manufacturing is somehow tied to chemicals, you can't build things without material after all. So this will feed ongoing industrial collapse, which now affects even Germany.[3]

Meanwhile, low income households are running into financial issues if they want to turn up the heat.[4]

The whole process has been mismanaged at best.

[1] https://cen.acs.org/business/economy/Europes-specialty-chemi...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europes-chemical-ind...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_economic_crisis_(2022%E...

[4]https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/heating-eating-energy-b...

kolektiv• 6 months ago

There's absolutely mismanagement, and politicians could do an awful lot to change this. Ironically, in the UK at least, most of the reasons why they don't are due to historic regulations designed to protect either the fossil fuel industry or an initially weak green energy industry, which no longer serves any purpose except to push both households and businesses into decline.

fundatus2• 6 months ago

And the reason for that? Fossil fuels. Cited from one of your articles:

“Our industry continues to face difficult market dynamics and challenging energy costs, with European gas prices around three times higher than the US,” Arnaud Valenduc, business director for Ineos Inovyn, the Ineos business that makes chloromethane, says in the press release.

dr_dshiv• 6 months ago

Netherlands is sitting on a massive, massive natural gas reserve. Off limits due to earthquakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field

Synaesthesia2• 6 months ago

Well you need fossil fuels for feedstock in the chemical industry. It's one place they can't be replaced.

The real reason is because Europe cut itself off from cheaper Russian gas.

padjo3• 6 months ago

Gas prices are high at least in part because of reduced exploitation of resources. For example here in Ireland we have stopped extracting our own gas and now import.

I'm I'm favour of increased renewables, but we need to be truthful about the costs. A fully renewable energy system is probably always going to be more expensive per unit than a fossil fuel based one.

cm2187• 6 months ago

Not sure about that. If you plot energy cost and % of wind power by country, it is highly correlated.

DrBazza2• 6 months ago

That quote mentions gas only. What about coal, oil, and biofuel?

Record energy costs are a thing. If solar and wind are 'free', why have European energy prices risen so much?

The real-world contra-indicators are the USA, China and pretty much any country outside the groupthink of the G20.

Whilst state interference is a factor, more tellingly they haven't slavishly followed the suicidal empathy of being 'green' and shutting down nuclear and fossil fuel power plants before a sufficient replacement was available.

ZeroGravitas7• 6 months ago

If you don't propose what you think is a better alternative we don't know what we are agreeing with by upvoting. Is it:

1. Let Russia take most of eastern Europe in exchange for gas

2. Make Europe Great Again i.e. complain loudly about current politicians then do everything even worse with no plan or logic

3. Fully automated Luxury Communism

4. Ask Harry Potter to make chemical inputs with his magic wand.

5. Nuclear, just because we think it's neat.

Dig1t• 6 months ago

Let Russia take most of eastern Europe in exchange for gas

Do people seriously think this is a possibility? Or is that hyperbole?

Russia can barely manage to hold the eastern half of Ukraine, I genuinely don’t see how they could take the eastern half of all of Europe..

sahilagarwal• 6 months ago

Better management?? Easier processing for residential solar panels? How about government subsidies on solar panels for lower income homes?

Hell, maybe create a unified portal when companies buy energy - show the cost difference side by side.

throwaway_20357• 6 months ago

Why "abundant cheap energy is a key requirement to survive in today's globalized markets" has not made it into the EU leaderships' mindset is beyond comprehension.

myrmidon• 6 months ago

Because it's reductive bullshit.

Energy price is just one of many inputs for the viability of industry.

Availability of (educated) labor, wage level, infrastructure, political stability and a ton of other factors are at least as if not more important.

Why should we keep tolerating irreversible damage to planet/climate just to keep costs/prices low? If you can't produce some shit sustainably because that makes it too expensive, then maybe it should not get produced in the first place?

corford• 6 months ago

Ed Conway (of Sky) did a nice piece on this recently covering the UK's chemical industry decline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ3hT8tqZgo

My takeaway was that it's not really high energy costs (though for sure that doesn't help) but, in the UK's case at least, much more caused by political and policy ignorance over decades. Industrial, polluting industries were simply not vote winners and none of the politicians understood or cared about the strategic implications of letting these industries collapse.

I suspect this is now changing.

locallost• 6 months ago

The problems of the chemical companies are related to natural gas prices, not electricity. This is because gas is used in the production. It even says so in one of the links you posted:

“Our industry continues to face difficult market dynamics and challenging energy costs, with European gas prices around three times higher than the US,” Arnaud Valenduc, business director for Ineos Inovyn, the Ineos business that makes chloromethane, says in the press release

benjymo7• 6 months ago

There's a recent case of Wacker. They tried to build their own windpark in Germany but this got shot down by residents. Now they are moving to a chinese industrial area that is connected to windparks and battery storage providing cheap energy.

sajithdilshan• 6 months ago

Another sensational headline. As someone living in Berlin, the capital of Europe’s largest economy, I see the effects firsthand. Germany’s aggressive green energy push has driven energy costs so high that heating has effectively become a luxury. This winter, air quality has been among the worst in recent years because many people are burning wood to stay warm instead of using central heating. At the same time, manufacturing companies are leaving the country, pushed out by some of the highest energy prices in Europe.

benjymo7• 6 months ago

Do you have any sources for this?

I'm also living in Germany and heating is in no way considered a "luxury" nor have many people started burning wood. I don't even think many people would have the possibility to burn wood for heating in Berlin of all places.

cap11235• 6 months ago

Don't feed the bot.

PeterStuer• 6 months ago

- Blow up our pipeline.

- Force us into sactioning our cheap energy supplier

- Make us buy your expensive LNG

- Watch our industry collapse

- Tell us it is because of our renewables obsession

snickerer• 6 months ago

There is always so much grumbling and nitpicking about this topic, which I don't understand.

The production of renewable electricity is skyrocketing everywhere, far better than predicted. And that's not because of clever politics, but because the technology is good and cheap.

This has only advantages for everyone. Except for a few fossil fuel investors whose profits are marginally reduced. We may even be able to limit global warming to three degrees, giving us a better window of opportunity to come up with solutions for large-scale carbon capture in the 22nd century.

What's more, photovoltaics is super interesting and great to tinker with—it's huge nerd fun.

Can't we all just be happy when we see headlines like this?

constantcrying• 6 months ago

Germany is rapidly deindustrializing, caused partly by high energy prices. Whenever I see a headline like this, I only see that I will soon be out of a job, together with millions, and prosperity in Europe will come to an end.

In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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