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0 pointstoomuchtodo13d ago0 comments

Yes, energy is more expensive than when Europe received favorable fossil gas prices from Russia (as the Ember graphs demonstrate) prior to the Russo-Ukrainian war. Europe is not going back to Russia for energy. Europe has sufficient domestic renewable and low carbon (nuclear, hydro) energy potential to achieve a similar "energy cost ratio" as they previously achieved when cheap Russian fossil gas was procured. Europe will experience elevated energy prices until they have deployed enough renewables and storage to achieve historical energy costs.

How long it takes for Europe to achieve this outcome is a capital investment and deployment velocity decision. The capital exists, the technology and manufacturing capacity exists. How competitive does Europe want to be from a manufacturing perspective? The answer to that is the speed at which they drive down energy costs using the various technologies I've enumerated.

I've reached out to an Ember contact to inquire if they could communicate this time window and velocity in some fashion on their graphs for Europe ("time to historical energy price levels via energy transition").

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ralgland13d ago

We had positive announcements like these 40 years ago, ways before Nord Stream was even planned, when Natural Gas was the future and households converted to Natural Gas heating.

It seems very unlikely that with sustained temperatures of -5 to -8°C in the winter months, which seem to get longer again, heating can be achieved with renewables in any way.

Heat pumps were already collapsing and making irritating fan noises at -8° this winter. Converting to heat pumps is expensive and the service costs are expensive, too.

LNG is needed for fertilizer and other chemical products, too and is hard to replace at all.

By all means, try renewables, but these enthusiasm waves leave me skeptical.

toomuchtodoOP13d ago

Heat: 250MWh 'Sand Battery' to start construction in Finland - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46073855 - November 2025 (249 comments)

Low carbon fertilizer production: Green ammonia production: Process technologies and challenges - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00162... | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2024.131808 - Fuel, Volume 369, 1 August 2024, 131808

Skepticism is important, but the evidence so far proves out we have a long way to go with the "easy" parts of decarbonizing until we have to solve the last "hard" parts. Capital and cashflows saved on fossil fuels from the easy parts can be directed towards the hard parts when that time comes. Enough sunlight hits the Earth every 30 minutes to power humanity for a year; it's a capture, transfer, and orchestration story broadly speaking. We are bound mostly by the laws of physics.

the_why_of_y13d ago

If heat pumps don't work in the winter, how come Sweden has (as of 2022) 2.2 million heat pumps (209 per 1000 residents) and Finland 1.4 million (251 per 1000 residents)?

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...

joe_mamba13d ago

Most of Europe isn't Sweden, and many industry manufacturing doesn't run on heat pumps, but on gas.

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