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MrMakabar

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Europe's Spending Billions on Green Hydrogen. It's a Risky Gamble ( www.bloomberg.com )

To be clear: we're going to use renewable hydrogen for some things, such as fertilizer manufacturing — there isn't any other way to do them sustainably. There are applications for which it's one of the most expensive choices, such as home heating, and a whole host of industrial processes and aviation sitting in between.

MrMakabar ,
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Your bonus is for e-fuels, which is not hydrogen, but basically currently oil based fuels, like petrol, kerosin and so forth made from hydrogen and CO2 using electricity.

MrMakabar ,
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That would be red, unless you have something else in it. But it is actually about turning iron ore, which is basically dirty iron oxide, into pure iron:

Fe203 + 3H2 → 2Fe + 3 H2O

MrMakabar ,
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Add to that people of fighting age leaving Russia to not get drafted. The men dieing are the potential fathers of the next generation. We also saw what happens to birth rates and migration, when Russia is in an economic crisis. We pretty much know that Russia is heading towards another one right now.

MrMakabar ,
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Not necessarily. LNG prices have been falling to pretty much 2020 levels. So less profit. The other factor is consumers. The big ones are Japan, China, EU and South Korea. The EU has falling gas and LNG demand. China does not want to be depended on US LNG. Japans natural gas consumption has decreased every year but 2017, since 2014. For South Korea it looks like gas consumption might also fall.

So there is reason for hope.

MrMakabar ,
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First of all EVs do not need that much power. We are talking something like 25% more electricity production for a country like Japan. Then Japan has rather a lot of onshore and even more offshore wind potential. Mountains are a problem, but hardly something which can not be overcome. Solar can easily be installed on roofs and mountains are even less of a problem.

Also really important to say it. Combustion engines in cars are massivly inefficent. So an EV is still better for the climate, even if run with coal electricity. The other factor is that Japans population is falling. So they will need less power over the long term.

MrMakabar ,
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Social media in general loves controvery. So they push radical ideas, as they create conversation, clicks and other interactions, which means more time on the site. That then allows for more ad money.

The truth is most Americans are not that radical, due to just not caring too much about politics. They just want things to keep going as they are.

The other part of it is none Americans on social media. For Europeans for example Biden looks center right for the most part. Then again Europeans have options further left.

MrMakabar ,
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Meeting climate goals has to create an actual advantage for countries or well avoid them punishment from the international community. Blind cooperation is nice in theory, but it just does not work in practise. So we need proper funding from the wealthy countries, maybe leveraged from tariffs based on historic emissions, which then can go to poor countries, which only recieve the money, if they meet certain targets like stay below emission per capita levels or new fossil fuel infrastructure. At the same time we need to punish current emissions. For that systems like emissions based tariffs would work well. Other things can be done in trade agreements as well. I really like tariffs here, because they create a real monetary insentive for good action and that is kind of what works.

But be nice to China, otherwise they kill the planet is not going to work. Same story for the US and every other country on the planet. Nice words from politicans do not save the climate.

MrMakabar ,
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To be fair the biggest reason the region has a water problem is that the lignite mines upstream pump less water downstream and they are even starting to fill some of them up after the mining is stopped.

MrMakabar ,
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He got a point here and lets see what happens. German authorities have been way to hard on anything, which even smells a bit anti Israel. Especially Berlin is insane on this. When you start canceling jews for critzising what happens in Gaza right now, you really have a problem. Just to say it Yaroufakis is as far as I know not Jewish, but he also as far as I know ever called for the destruction of Israel as such, but the end of the illegal activities of Israel in Palestine.

MrMakabar ,
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Biden has actually stopped taking oil financing for his campaign. If you are not in a swing state, it is probably a good idea though to show that there is support for further left politics.

MrMakabar ,
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The simple truth is Biden has been the best president in lowering US emissions and his laws would lower it even more. So yeah, I believe that.

Also Biden has said that he will stop US arms deliveries to Israel, if Israel attacks Rafah. That is by far the most anti Israel thing, the US has done in decades.

And that is the thing. Biden actually improves a lot of things. That does not make him perfect, it does not mean he does as much or even as quickly as he should(as Gaza clearly shows), but Biden has been surprisingly good as a president. There are third party canidates, which are better then Biden, but given how the system works, voting Biden is a good choice in a swing state. In states, which are not swing states vote third canidate for sure, to show that going further left can win the Dems some votes.

MrMakabar ,
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Which still means that fossil fuel power plants loose money in those periods due to low electricity prices. Those low prices also lead to electricity storage and more electricity consumption. The later is good, when it replaces other fossil fuel consumption(usually that is).

MrMakabar ,
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There are basically three options to deal with overproduction:

  • export
  • storage
  • shutting it done

The cheapest way of using wind and solar actually includes shutting done some of it at excellent days, so the capacity is enough to provide enough power at just okay days. The other problem is that storage is an issue. Right now pumped hydro and batteries are the only ways we have economically somewhat able to actually store electricity economically and both are at the expensive end. So they are usually just used to balance the grid. Hence the optimum is more in having overcapacity. The other option is to use the water reservoir of large hydro river plants, to vary the electricity production. that works rather well. The other big one is exports. As soon as a grid is large enough(continent sized), the weather matters a lot less. So you might see a lot of hvdc lines going from your country to other ones being planned, built and finished.

However most of the world is not even close to that. At 30% and a lot of it hydro, renewable electricity production is mostly just replacing fossil fuel.

MrMakabar ,
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Vermonts electricity was 48% clean energy(renewables and nuclear). To go to 100% they need to add storage, a lot more renewable generation and upgrade the grid. All of that requires planning, ordering the parts and then building it. Doing it in a decade is a realistic, but ambitus target.

MrMakabar ,
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Oil companies usually do not, but electricity companies do. The problem is that oil companies are great in geology, drilling and chemistry. Geothermal is a similar skill set and chemistry can be used in other products, but the first is small business and the other not renewable nexessarily.

MrMakabar ,
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That is, if the digital technology would not be used for none remote workers.

MrMakabar ,
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29 April 2022
You know up to date polling.....

MrMakabar OP ,
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If you built dense cities, like this you massively reduce land usage of cities. It also removes the need for cars and allows for easier sharing of many other resources. This means dense cities have a much lower carbon footprint then other forms of living. London for example has per capita emissions of 3.3t. Skyscrapers are not the best solution for density, but they work and in this case thats mid density housing.

This is a good way to have some greenery in a place, where planting a tree is difficult. This is a 6m wide street with shops on both sites, which is mainly used by pedestrians. If you plant a tree on the sites of the street, it does not get enough light. In the middle of the street it ends up blocking trucks from resupplying the shops, which is also not an option.

MrMakabar OP ,
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It does have an irrigation system. You can see the pipe assembly on the left. It is that big white thing running through. That goes to a water tank, which collects the rainwater from the sails and then pumps it back up when needed.

MrMakabar OP ,
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MrMakabar OP ,
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MrMakabar OP ,
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That might be me having a bit of a skewd idea of what having trees everywhere means. Still too many cars though and obviously relatively new.

Deconstruction crew disassembling abandoned McMansions so the material can be reused - Postcard from a Solarpunk Future ( pixelfed.social )

Houses require maintenance. How much and how often depends on the design and its surroundings. They also require occupants - in my brief experience at least, they degrade much faster when they’re left cold and empty than when someone lives there, even if that someone doesn’t fix things. Weather, encroaching water, mold, ice,...

MrMakabar ,
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Suburbs are like most cities built on good farm land. It is also usually around a dense city core. So it would make a lot of sense to me to turn suburbs into an agricultural zone, rather then complete wilderness. That is some suburbs should also be densified. Something like a McMansion could be turned into multi family housing, the garage into a flat and so forth. Roads are around and parts of them can be turned into protected bike lanes and some proper public rail based transport is an option as well.

MrMakabar ,
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You have to keep in mind that the decline in profits is mainly from selling fossil gas, that is the gas not liquid, to the EU. Blowing up oil infrastructure is a new thing.

MrMakabar ,
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There are a few ways of going about it. One is third parties. If you vote for the Green Party for example, you get voting reform, anti genocide policies and a much better enviromental policy. At the same time Biden is still much better then Trump and being realistic about what you can get should also be part of voting strategy. Also it is incredibly important to say, that citizenship does not end at the ballot box. You got to and can do more to influence politics. So I would probably vote Biden in a swing state and Green Party in an state, which is not a swing state. This matters in two ways. Firstly the more people vote third party, the more likely they can get into some actual power, but also the Democrats see that they can gain potential votes, by improving policies.

Also no lesser evil has to be distinguised from compromise and deals. If you get an actual improvement out of doing something, it can be worth doing even at a price. So if two countries face a powerfull invader, it can be worth making a deal that country A gets 40% of the invaders land and country B also 60%, if country B is already stronger for example. In that case both get something out of it. However without the alliance both would probably fail. In this case the question is, if Biden would actually net improve the US compared to today.

MrMakabar ,
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In Pakistan the Lahore High Court was able to rule that the government was in violation of climate protection. So I guess rule of law is better in Pakistan then it is in the US.

MrMakabar ,
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The EU Fuel Quality Directive has certain rules regarding fuel emissions and one of the options is to buy these Upstream Emission Certificates to show that the fuel was pumped out of the ground with relativly low emissions. Since EU oil production is low, this means production somewhere else has to be cleaner.

The smart move would be to ban those certificates and force them to use direct air capture or e-fuels instead.

MrMakabar ,
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There is a legal system and companies can be sued for damages. Having a lot of this in a very offcial place like the Senat helps. Also way to many still believe fossil fuel lies.

MrMakabar ,
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Big fossil fuel spending a lot to defend their profits. Good news is that once they are broken, they loose influence.

MrMakabar ,
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It is the most realistic way of making steel without fossil fuels. Also when you use fossil gas to make steel, you first crack it into hydrogen. That part of the process works very well and on scale. The only really important thing is to make hydrogen in a green way and that is difficult.

MrMakabar ,
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With carbon pricing it becomes more attractive. Otherwise it has no chance.

MrMakabar ,
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The EU is doing that for some time. During the process of becoming a member, the country can already take out some money from EU funds for developing. Moldova and Ukraine are the poorest countries in Europe, so they will be able to get a lot of money. However it is linked to progress in becoming a member, which makes sense given how corrupt both Ukraine and Moldova are.

Also Russia should pay for the damages her actions caused in Ukraine. That is not on the EU.

MrMakabar ,
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Great to hear that Japan is phasing out coal.

MrMakabar ,
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Between 2012 and 2022 electricity generation from coal has gone down from 2400TWh to 1427TWh for the G7. Most of that comes down to the US, Japan and Germany in that order.The UK and France have basicaly no coal left, besides some rarely running plants and Italy and Canada do exit coal a bit slowler, but do not have too much left anymore.

To look a bit closer. The US has the inflation reduction act and is building out renewables at record pace, while gas is killing coal in most places. The speed in decline is rather rapid. Japan has closed down its nuclear power plants after Fukushima, but is restarting them about now, so a decline in coal consumption is possible. Germany did phase out all its nuclear power plants until last year, but still managed to have a decline in coal electricity generation, due to building out renewables fairly quickly. This means that should go even faster.

So yeah, this might happen. Japan is the one to watch though. It really does not built much clean energy these days.

MrMakabar ,
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France had 0.9TWh of coal electricity production last year. That is 0.5% of electricity generation.

MrMakabar ,
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With resurgence you mean 33.2% drop in electricity generation from coal between 2022 and 2023 and shutting down 15 coal power plants this year already? Cause that is what is actually happening.

MrMakabar ,
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The list includes:


The reason for that is a bunch of coal power plants being kept on the grid to keep the grid stable due to a cut of gas supply from Russia. However a fairly large drop in general electricity consumption, meant that coal electricity generation dropped massively. Also 8 wind turbines are a rounding error for a country like Germany and are easily made up for with new ones built in other locations. So as the Guardian states in the first link:

while coal’s share dropped to 26% from 34%, according to the federal network agency.

German renewable energy: lack of network expansion ( www.youtube.com )

Although Germany has massively invested into green energy, the issue is that the electric network has not been sufficiently expanded. This means that solar and wind energy has to be turned off to not overload the network. However, the owners of solar/wind energy still get paid. This means that in Germany, the price of energy...

MrMakabar ,
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We also have to create a system, which values the location of the energy production. So something like electricity price zones or something similar.

MrMakabar ,
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The problem is that you need a reason to transport the electricity from Spain to Germany. There are very real limits to the electricity grid and that means, that you can not ignore the location of the electricity production. So in a market based system, electricity in Spain has to be cheaper then in Germany, the difference being the cost of electricity transport and/or the cost of flexible electricity generation in Germany, depending on the grid having enough capacity.

That does not mean barriers, just a system to not pretend the weather in Spain and Germany is the same at all times or that the electricity grid is not limited in any way.

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