i call BS: in Germany we're paying more than twice per kw than we were 3.5 years ago (it literally doubled in late 2022, from some 22c to 40-odd cents), and it just went up again in February 2026. Lots and lots of talk about lower energy prices, but _nobody_ "on the ground" is seeing it.
(Edit: unless, perhaps, they're installing their own solar arrays, which many single-family and duplex homes do, but not the apartment buildings most of us live in.)
It's a paramount imperative for Europe to wean itself from fossil fuels, regardless of environmental arguments (which are extremely relevant still). Getting a safe, unfettered provider of fossil fuels is getting a basically unsolvable problem. China is trying to build as much solar and nuclear capacity as humanly possible; we should do the same too. We've been having these energy shocks since the Yom Kippur war basically, it's like a broken cycle of instability and crisis we can't leave behind. There's no shale to be found in Europe, we just have wind, sun and nuclear to save our backs. And maybe geothermal pretty soon?
Wind, sun and geothermal we have. Albeit technology to harvest them seldom come from the Europe. But getting a safe, unfettered provider of nuclear fuel risk to be just another unsolvable problem.
I love how these articles pop up only after we exited couple of months long depressing, cloudy, rainy and snowy season into full blast sunshine for last two weeks or so.
I can't imagine how I and hundreds of millions of others can heat their homes during cold nights without fossils or a 30cm thick XPS insulation, about which hardly anyone talks about. I have solar on the roof and batteries and they are totally dead for 2.5 months in a row in a sunny country.
How can millions of car batteries be managed efficiently without heavy environmental damage? EVs don't scale for all even with serious infra (recycling, on spot change, fast chargers).
The only viable solution is to continue burning and burning, if we don't want to severely degrade our quality of life: now fossils, a little woodchips like Sweden and in the end biofuels, synthetic fuels and hydrogen. And let anyone use nuclear at their own taste. Solar/batteries cannot extend beyond a small window and wind is not reliable.
Don't worry, our minister for economic affairs and energy will make sure that we will stop this solar madness and return to good old clean and green gas /s
(she worked and lobbied for the gas sector before joining the current government)
Aren't power prices determined by the most expensive power source (i.e. gas) regardless of the prices of all other power sources? Otherwise nuclear/hydroelectric would be sold for pennies, no?
It is 2026. Germany - as a densely populated country - still does not have a safe location to store all the radioactive waste that came from those nuclear power plants.
Why is it, some always repeat the same argument without giving a single thought to the follow-up challenges and costs?
It's 2026 and Germany's rich neighbor is so good at nuclear power, and logistics and storage of said waste, that it sells Germany power from their nuclear power plants.
Why is it, some always repeat the same argument without giving a single thought to the follow-up challenges and costs?
I've lived in Germany, it's always so funny seeing Germans always complaining but never taking action, or a lot of "too late for that" nonsense. Always tons of excuses for bad policy.
Let me explain why fossil fuels are so politcally sticky in general.
If you build oil wells that produce say 1Mbpd (million barrels per day) in oil then, depending on what area of the world you're in, the production declines. In the Permian Basin (fracking in the US), that decline rate is 15-20%. So, in a year you need to build 150-200kbpd of new wells just to maintain your current production.
So why does this make fossil sticks politically sticky? Jobs.
If you build a wind or solar farm it requires almost no maintenance and has no decline. Windmills need some maintenance. Power lines need some maintenance. Solar panels need to be cleaned. The last one can mostly be automated. But all of this requires a whole lot less work than drilling a bunch of new wells.
And why is nuclear so politically problematic? Because of failure modes. And it's super-expensive. HNers like to wave away the worst disasters and pretend with basically no evidence that Chernobyl or Fukushima can't happen again. Fewer than 700 nuclear power plants have ever been built. Not one has been built without government subsidies. Nuclear defenders will focus on operationg costs and brush over capital costs for this reason.
As a reminder, Chernobyl's absolute exclusion zone 40 years later is still 1000 square miles and Fukushima's clean up is likely to take a century and the cost will likely exceed $1 trillion. For one incident.
I'm sorry but nuclear is not going anywhere. The future is solar.
Trump already talks about the war being done and phones with Putin. Why? Do they discuss that the stupid Europeans are now under the LNG thumb of the US and Putin can have Ukraine and Trump can have Greenland?
Any solar energy is welcome, but energy prices are ruining households anyway. Especially those that were told by the government 30 years ago that natural gas is the future.
The EU cannot leave energy policy to Trump and Putin and hope for the best. Gas is not only needed for heating. It is needed for producing fertilizer. The whole policy of letting Russia hoard its resources and be the last country with the highly valuable raw material for the chemical industry is insane. Especially for those countries that fear Russia.
We absolutely need more investment in renewables and proven nuclear. But it is not only about this, more high-voltage inter-connections are needed. My understanding is that there is an EU initiative on this, just can't find the source right now.
Regarding nuclear, how much money did the ITER member states dump into something that is always 10 years away? That money could go into solar/batteries or fusion.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 32.0 ms ] thread(Edit: unless, perhaps, they're installing their own solar arrays, which many single-family and duplex homes do, but not the apartment buildings most of us live in.)
How can millions of car batteries be managed efficiently without heavy environmental damage? EVs don't scale for all even with serious infra (recycling, on spot change, fast chargers).
The only viable solution is to continue burning and burning, if we don't want to severely degrade our quality of life: now fossils, a little woodchips like Sweden and in the end biofuels, synthetic fuels and hydrogen. And let anyone use nuclear at their own taste. Solar/batteries cannot extend beyond a small window and wind is not reliable.
(she worked and lobbied for the gas sector before joining the current government)
Why is it, some always repeat the same argument without giving a single thought to the follow-up challenges and costs?
Why is it, some always repeat the same argument without giving a single thought to the follow-up challenges and costs?
I've lived in Germany, it's always so funny seeing Germans always complaining but never taking action, or a lot of "too late for that" nonsense. Always tons of excuses for bad policy.
If you build oil wells that produce say 1Mbpd (million barrels per day) in oil then, depending on what area of the world you're in, the production declines. In the Permian Basin (fracking in the US), that decline rate is 15-20%. So, in a year you need to build 150-200kbpd of new wells just to maintain your current production.
So why does this make fossil sticks politically sticky? Jobs.
If you build a wind or solar farm it requires almost no maintenance and has no decline. Windmills need some maintenance. Power lines need some maintenance. Solar panels need to be cleaned. The last one can mostly be automated. But all of this requires a whole lot less work than drilling a bunch of new wells.
And why is nuclear so politically problematic? Because of failure modes. And it's super-expensive. HNers like to wave away the worst disasters and pretend with basically no evidence that Chernobyl or Fukushima can't happen again. Fewer than 700 nuclear power plants have ever been built. Not one has been built without government subsidies. Nuclear defenders will focus on operationg costs and brush over capital costs for this reason.
As a reminder, Chernobyl's absolute exclusion zone 40 years later is still 1000 square miles and Fukushima's clean up is likely to take a century and the cost will likely exceed $1 trillion. For one incident.
I'm sorry but nuclear is not going anywhere. The future is solar.
Any solar energy is welcome, but energy prices are ruining households anyway. Especially those that were told by the government 30 years ago that natural gas is the future.
The EU cannot leave energy policy to Trump and Putin and hope for the best. Gas is not only needed for heating. It is needed for producing fertilizer. The whole policy of letting Russia hoard its resources and be the last country with the highly valuable raw material for the chemical industry is insane. Especially for those countries that fear Russia.
Regarding nuclear, how much money did the ITER member states dump into something that is always 10 years away? That money could go into solar/batteries or fusion.