PieFedRenewables overtake fossil fuels to provide 30% of EU electricity
www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/ju…
11 Comments
Comments from other communities
It's great to see plans working, everyone moaned when the infrastructure was being built that it's too expensive and everyone moaned that transition to renewables is too slow but with the systems in place we've reached the point of rapid uptake and are witnessing a sea change.
We're now at the point we're going to start seeing coal transportation decline to the point that established lines close, ports redevelop coal infrastructure into general purpose cargo or close all together, meaning the freight line feeding them stop and coal nines only have local industry to sell to - smelting works for example. Coal is horrible to transport and it'll be great to remove all that heavy machinery and dirty work, replaced with some simple straps of copper running underground.
Power generation from burning coal, oil and gas fell 17% in the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period the year before
I find it odd that those numbers dropped considering Germany closed their reactors in favor or gas and coal in 2023.
Renewables are cheaper than coal. And the replacement wasn't limited to gas and coal. There are articles which explained that there wasn't a massive increase in e.g. coal usage.
The CNN article article also briefly puts a high figure for coal on energy, which could lead to confusion.
Germany shut off their final three reactors. It's not like the country was massively relying on nuclear energy at any point in time really. Took them 12 years since the Fukushima disaster for the phase out.
It's not like the country was massively relying on nuclear energy at any point in time really.
Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors were generating almost 30% of its electricity a decade ago before they started phasing them out. It was their second largest source of electricity after coal.
Despite having built literally 100s of solar and wind farms in the past decade they still had to increase their coal output by 40 TWh to make up for the gap. A nuclear reactor generates a fuck ton of electricity.
And for what? Statically speaking 800x more people are killed in coal mining accidents per TWh generated than are killed by all nuclear power accidents combined. They phased out their largest source of carbonless electricity and the decision likely killed more people than would have died even if there was a nuclear accident.
^ this.
Ask any engineer, scientist, or even economist: shutting down nuclear plants requires a special kind of stupid.
This ignores the fact that the coal plants were producing greenhouse gas and insane amounts of unhealthy pollution for all these 30-50 years.
While we switched basically to gas generators for each nuclear power plant that went offline our increased power demand was met by renewables.
Since the war in Ukraine Germany has switched gears and replaced a lot of gas power plants with renewables.
alyaza [they/she]Power generation from burning coal, oil and gas fell 17% in the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period the year before, according to climate thinktank Ember. It found the continued shift away from polluting fuels has led to a one-third drop in the sector’s emissions since the first half of 2022.
Chris Rosslowe, an analyst at Ember, said the rise of wind and solar was narrowing the role of fossil fuels. “We are witnessing a historic shift in the power sector, and it is happening rapidly.”
The report found EU power plants burned 24% less coal and 14% less gas from the first half of 2023 to the first half of 2024. The shift comes despite a small uptick in electricity demand that has followed two years of decline linked to the pandemic and Ukraine war.
And what is the rest of EU’s energy mix?
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=EU&interval=year
Thanks!
So it looks like about 69% comes from low carbon sauces (combined renewables+ nuclear)... nice.
73.4% not 69%. 26.6% is fossil fuels.
I wasn't counting biomass
The EU runs on 70% on-understandable process and regulation, everyone knows that! Good to see renewables pick up the rest.
Please don't say energy when you mean just electricity. Primary energy demand is what we need to focus on.
22% of new registered cars are electric (fully or hybrid). Still going to take a while but beginning to make a dent. Re-focussing on rail is another approach but that's also a long-term thing, infrastructure doesn't get expanded over night.
Another big chunk is heat, both domestic and industrial. There's been huge dents due to better insulation and using more waste heat (mostly industrial settings), when it comes to source of heat that's a more difficult thing. France is big on electric heating so they're switching over automatically, Germany historically uses tons of gas and even with the new laws in place it's going to take decades before everything is switched over to heat pumps and stuff.
The last big chunk is industrial feedstock, I'm including steel smelting in that. Long story short Canadian and Namibian hydrogen is in the pipeline. Not literally, but investment-wise. The first smelters using hydrogen are already online, ready to get switched over from blue to green, and I'm quite sure BASF already knows exactly which pipes it needs to double up and which to repurpose, their precursor production stage is already flexible AF, able to react in practically real-time to what's cheapest on the market they'll be ready once the hydrogen comes flowing.
This is what I meant https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
Hydrogen from water electrolysis needs massive (look at world gas demand for scale) excess renewable electricity production and support infrastructure which isn't there nor are there credible buildout and financing plans for it. Even if it would happen it would cause demand destruction due to its high price.
This isn't an argument against doing it. It's just about the status quo and mid-term future.