throwaway473825

Finland is a cold country that needs cheap electricity for heating during winters. Burning gas isn't an option.

It should be noted that Russian gas was more expensive than any other source of electricity in Germany:

https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...

Hungary still uses it, and it's not helping (aside from potential kickbacks):

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_average_map/char...

China also stopped importing electricity from Russia since it couldn't compete with China's own coal, renewables and nuclear.

The truth is that Germany was bound to struggle as it decided to phase out nuclear and coal but keep gas.

It depends on the region. The US has shale gas which is genuinely cheaper than coal. Europe doesn't want to use coal for political reasons. China and India barely use gas since it can't compete with coal.

That's still not enough to bridge the gap between coal and gas. See for example this article:

https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...

The US is an anomaly due to shale gas:

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/05/11/how-much-has-s...

Card fees aren't paid by end customers either. The Swedish iDEAL equivalent, Swish, is more expensive than cards for smaller transactions (below 15 euros). Wero will be like Swish, not Pix.

The EU would obviously benefit from a digital euro, but the banks won't give up without a fight:

https://euperspectives.eu/2026/02/digital-euro-timeline-at-r...

Private banks are resistant to a digital euro both as a payment method and a store of value. The digital euro is designed to be a free, public payment method, directly challenging fee-based systems operated by banks. This is its key usefulness in terms of sovereignty. But it could also be used as a digital wallet and users may move their money out of private bank accounts to central bank-backed digital euro wallets meaning banks lose out.

So far they have successfully delayed any implementation.

Most likely because your country's banks are heavily lobbying against such initiatives.

It's easy to blame Visa and Mastercard, but the reason why the EU doesn't have this is that the EPP (the largest political group in the European Parliament) answers to European banks, which don't want it.

Sweden has a similar "initiative" set up by a consortium of banks (Swish), as do many other European countries.

Usually these systems raise their fees after being established, sometimes even higher than Visa/Mastercard.

Brazil's Pix is something else. It wasn't created by private entities to make money.

The Swish system is private, which means that the fees are as high as the market can bear. In many cases cards are cheaper.

If the e-krona happens, that would be a better comparison.

Of the big tech companies, Apple is definitely the one that has embraced America First the most. If you live outside the US, you get features later (if at all) and have to pay more for that privilege.

People burn coal to heat their houses. That doesn't mean it's healthy. Gas stoves are known to cause asthma.

Freight will eventually go electric as well. It's crazy how fast it's happening in China:

https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...

Is there anyone using only cameras except Tesla?

Hydrogen was marketed as a stopgap until batteries are good enough. Well, batteries are good enough for trucks now:

https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...

Once you go battery electric, you never go back. It's the most efficient way to move vehicles.

Liquid hydrogen loses 1% of its volume per day due to boil-off. Hydrogen is incredibly difficult to move without huge energy losses.

Buses are already largely electric (with the US as a notable exception), and trucks are quickly getting there:

https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...

Meanwhile, hydrogen trucks are nowhere to be found...

Sweden has very little natural gas in its energy mix:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

I highly doubt that hydrogen heating was ever considered. It's usually pushed by the gas lobby (since most hydrogen comes from gas), and Sweden doesn't have a strong gas lobby.

The EU will probably wait until the launch of a digital wallet that can do anonymous age verification. Otherwise it won't get enough political support.

It depends on the implementation. The EU's European Digital Identity Wallet will allow users to prove that they are over 18 without sharing any other personal information.

On the contrary, third parties will only get to know the age of the users, not their identities.

You're describing a CBDC, not a coin. Why isn't it being done? Because commercial banks are vehemently against that. The current administration in particular will never go against the big banks.

That's a commercial service backed by some European banks. It's not at all comparable with a non-profit service like Brazil's Pix.

The closest EU equivalent would probably be the planned digital euro, but the banks are fighting tooth and nail to prevent that.

Well, I like that the people that think like this also probably live I places where you are actually driving a coal powered car.

That's still an improvement for both global and local emissions.

Biodiesel doesn't solve the pollution problem. It's also very expensive, and often produced in an unsustainable way.

Sodium-ion batteries have extreme good performance in low-temperature environments. CATL is working on sodium-LFP dual-power batteries to get the best of both worlds:

https://www.catl.com/en/news/6401.html

That's mainly for EVs though.

subsidized by a communist state, to stifle worldwide competition

China primarily wants to cut oil and gas imports. Exports are a bonus.

Heating generally uses much more energy than cooling, and even more so if something is burned.

However, it's true that places with low heat pump adoption tend to have few ACs. For example, ACs are rarer in Germany than in Norway, despite Germany being warmer.

Europe isn't optimizing for lower prices. It's trying to phase out coal, which might lead to higher prices if gas is used more often:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/20/why-the-uks...

Apple might also have helped BYD with its $10 billion car project:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-16/apple-sec...

Today, BYD’s entire car lineup is powered by the Blade system, which uses a battery pack design that people involved in its development say was informed by lessons from the Apple work.

In 2023, Germany overtook Japan as the world's third largest economy. This year, India is projected to overtake Japan as the world's fourth largest economy. I wonder if the article has taken India into account.