'Energy independent' Uruguay runs on 100% renewables for four straight months

AndrewKemendo · 2023-11-17T14:57:59

So far in this thread nobody wants to believe the headline/article, and these are the leading reasons:

1. Citizens must be relying on wood instead and that's bad for the air

2. This doesn't cover ALL possible energy use, including petroleum powered vehicles (despite the fact that this wasn't in question)

3. Germany tried this and failed

Lets look at the claims from the article:

"In the three months to end-September 2023, the South American nation generated all of its electricity from renewable sources"

Note that it says "electricity" not "power"

Wood Burning and Petroleum Burning, for home heating and agriculture respectively are unrelated to "electricity generation" in this context so this article and the do not cover all possible forms of heat exchange and power generation

It is unambiguously good that Uruguay has shown it can replace the use of fossil fuel in it's core energy infrastructure with non-imported, low carbon energy production.

This is an unambiguously good news story, there's no reason to try and prove this wrong and doing so only makes you come off as an acerbic pedant, who doesn't want progress unless its perfect and all at once.

toomuchtodo · 2023-11-17T15:35:33

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/UY?wind=false&solar=fal... (ElectricityMaps: Uruguay)

Tangentially, Paraguay runs entirely on hydropower from the Itaipu dam, which also provides a substantial amount of power to Brazil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Paraguay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam

(if you know someone at the org who runs the Itaipu dam [https://www.itaipu.gov.br/], please have them reach out to ElectricityMaps to get that generation data on the map with a data source that can be parsed; last time I checked, they just had a broken PHP page that stopped counting total lifetime generation [https://www.itaipu.gov.br/sites/default/files/dado_op/dadosi...])

masklinn · 2023-11-17T18:28:18

> Tangentially, Paraguay runs entirely on hydropower from the Itaipu dam

Which is hardly incidental, having access to ungodly amounts of hydro power is the easiest way to run on 100% renewables. Iceland has similarly been 100% (or near enough) renewables for decades, despite more than 70% of its electricity going to aluminum smelters.

Norway similarly runs on 100% renewable electricity because it has enough hydro for pretty much all of it (Norway is the 213th country by population, but something like top 10 hydro producer)

alwa · 2023-11-17T19:51:16

I’d always lazily imagined Iceland’s renewable production to involve mainly their geothermal resources. I was surprised to learn that a phenomenal amount of hydro came online in a pretty quick period in the ‘00s [0].

A casual shufti suggests this was part of a broad policy push, but that it was mainly to do with a series of purpose-built hydro projects specifically to support Alcoa’s smelting facility. [1]

It smells like there’s a story of a few strong personalities with ambitious visions somewhere in the mix here. Would any of this crowd know where I might turn to find that story?

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

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kárahnjúkar_Hydropower_Plant... (with a fair bit of Wikipedian NIMBY-ish color commentary in the mix there)

kuhewa · 2023-11-17T22:36:59

Tasmania has long produced more than enough power from hydro.

sombragris · 2023-11-18T00:16:49

A Paraguayan here. The above claim is not entirely true.

Paraguay has access to Itaipú hydropower, and it certainly powers most of the energy grid, but not all.

There's also the Yacyretá dam, which is jointly held with Argentina, downstream from the Itaipú site on the same Paraná river. It generates quite significant amounts of electricity and Paraguay also uses some of it to power its grid.

And there's also the Acaray dam, which is wholly owned by Paraguay, in operation since 1973.

There's also a dam on the Yguazú river (not the same river than the one with the falls) which is not machinized but otherwise ready to enter production once it's equipped with turbines.

Some isolated locations on the Chaco (northern area) also run on solar power and some also on timber/wood-based plants, but these are rapidly being obsoleted by power lines coming from Itaipú.

With that provision aside, it could be said that Paraguay has been getting its electrity from wholly renewable sources since at least 1983.

toomuchtodo · 2023-11-18T00:51:06

Thank you for correcting me! Most of my information is from the Wikipedia page I referenced, so this is helpful context to be able to reference in the future.

akjshdfkjhs · 2023-11-17T16:52:17

Itaipu is mostly considered a brazillian infrastructure. Brazil paid for most of the construction, which is why they negotiated very good deals on the agreement with paraguay, which is the size of a brazillian municipality. They pay like $20 per Kw instead of the $400 the market would pay.

the deal is up now btw, so the media is covering paraguay attempt to renegotiate it.

cesarb · 2023-11-17T17:02:05

> Paraguay, which is the size of a brazillian municipality.

That's understating that country's size a lot; it's the size of a Brazilian state, not a Brazilian municipality (even if you consider the huge municipalities in the Amazon region).

skellington · 2023-11-17T17:38:47

He's talking about population, not physical size.

marcosdumay · 2023-11-17T17:01:31

There exists this page:

https://www.itaipu.gov.br/energia/geracao

But they don't seem to publish anything on the Brazilian data portal (that's bad), nor they seem to publish anything parseable on their site.

I also couldn't find any breakdown of the energy sold to each country. The Brazilian electric system operator (ONS) has the Brazilian numbers, but I don't know where to get the other ones.

cesarvarela · 2023-11-17T17:05:03

Uruguayan here.

Point 1 is wrong. The average Uruguayan house doesn't have the means to heat using wood.

I think we can do it because we have a small population, almost no industry, and neither summers nor winters get to extreme temperatures.

dhoe · 2023-11-17T17:39:53

45% percent of households use wood as the main source of heating, electricity is 24%. https://www.ambito.com/uruguay/con-el-precio-la-lena-aumento...

And obviously this reduces the consumption of electricity, making it easier to cover the electricity needed with renewables.

Doesn't take anything away from it, it's still great that this is happening.

eternityforest · 2023-11-17T23:41:29

How does wood compare to gas/coal/etc? I always hear that biofuels are not great compared to other renewables, is wood somehow different? Doesn't it make lots of particulate if you don't have a high end modern stove?

brucethemoose2 · 2023-11-17T18:08:19

That doesn't make it any less impressive. If a small industrial base can builds its own renewable infrastructure, then a larger, proportionally richer base should have less trouble doing it.

kuhewa · 2023-11-17T22:50:31

In terms of ease and industrial base required it seems to me much will come down to how much of the renewable generation is hydro (and how much is possible given an area's hydrology) since that is so much 'easier' than modern renewables. That's largely orthogonal to wealth/population/industrial capacity. Although I suppose greater industrialisation and wealth would increase energy demand per capita. In the US it is 6%. For Uruguay electricity is 37% hydro. It is still impressive though.

I reckon biomass is 'easy' as well but it is only so scalable.

brucethemoose2 · 2023-11-17T23:13:23

Neither is very sexy because of hydro's environmental issues (and in some cases water supply inefficiency), and biomass burning being... biomass burning.

The US has a lot of nuclear which I would call "renewable enough," and that's not very sexy either.

atypicaluser · 2023-11-17T17:07:26

> nobody wants to believe the headline/article

Look at the headline—

"'Energy independent' Uruguay runs on 100% renewables for four straight months"

and the article's very first sentence—

"Renewables alone have powered the Uruguayan economy for nearly four straight months."

versus the quote you use (the second sentence of the article)—

"In the three months to end-September 2023, the South American nation generated all of its electricity from renewable sources"

Both the headline and the first sentence are misleading. The writer did this on purpose. My guess is it's because he (Nick Hedley) likely knows that many (most?) people reading the headline won't go past that first sentence and will come away with a false sense of what really happened. Couldn't he have instead spread the good news with "Energy independent Uruguay runs its electrical grid on 100% renewables for four straight months"?

How is asking for upfront honesty being an acerbic pedant?

forgetfreeman · 2023-11-17T17:23:00

Proving OP's point in 3....2....1....

atypicaluser · 2023-11-17T17:53:58

It appears I have to explain myself better.

You've heard the phrase "read the room"? The OP added this article to HN, a site known for its detail-oriented minds (programmers, engineers, technicians, etc.) or, if you prefer another insult, "rules lawyers".

And then someone complains that these same detail-oriented folks find that some of the details in the article are lacking? And tries shaming them into giving up their detail-oriented ways?

Odd flex.

kristopolous · 2023-11-17T22:10:42

The issue is some people are quick to dismiss progress especially on technologies with political salience.

PaulDavisThe1st · 2023-11-17T23:59:56

> a site known for its detail-oriented minds

a site known for a commentariat that is, in aggregate, frequently wrong about details, particularly details that matter.

yes, it's great when people who really know what they are writing about show up here. But the great unwashed masses in the comment threads, for all of their fabled "detail-oriented minds" appear wrong at least as often as they are right.

"On the internet nobody knows you're an HN commenter with 3 years of JS experience".

forgetfreeman · 2023-11-18T01:35:23

Oh we know. We know. Man I miss n-gate.

regularjack · 2023-11-17T17:26:16

It's a clickbaity headline. That's it.

timmaxw · 2023-11-17T16:05:02

If Uruguay can run on 100% renewable energy, the unstated implication is "The US could do it too, we just lack the political will". (As opposed to the idea that "Renewable energy is a genuinely hard problem that will take time, effort, and technological advances to solve.") The implication that "we just lack the political will" can feel like a criticism of anyone who's not maximally-environmentalist. I think that's why people are getting defensive about it.

aoeusnth1 · 2023-11-17T16:44:32

Everything you just said may be true, but it’s also true that the US does lack the political will.

taylodl · 2023-11-17T18:36:29

It's impossible to solve difficult problems without the will to do so.

PaulDavisThe1st · 2023-11-18T00:01:09

The will do to do so is frequently more easily accessed when the problems are recognized as more tractable than previously thought.

AndrewKemendo · 2023-11-17T16:13:48

At no point in the article is that claim made.

aftbit · 2023-11-17T16:50:14

I think the problem is that the headline claims they are "Energy Independent", but when you drill down, it's only electricity that is being affected. Energy independence usually refers to other kinds of energy as well, including petroleum powered vehicles.

Well and of course people love to hate on renewables.

Will this be 12 months in a year? Or are they returning to power generation via petroleum?

locallost · 2023-11-17T17:26:28

That's fair, but electrification is the stated goal of all of the world. The article states they reduced their production costs by half, and although I didn't see actual numbers I tend to believe it. So it looks to me that Uruguay has people in charge that get it, and also now have results. There is no going back for them and they'll make progress very fast. People underestimate the long term effect of cheap renewables - you invest in them and save money long term, which you again invest in renewables. It's basically like compound interest.

Archelaos · 2023-11-17T22:56:31

> 3. Germany tried this and failed

Absolute nonsense. So far Germany never attempted to run 100% renewable for four months straight. To learn about the German government’s energy plans see for example here: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/clim... And here are the actual figures: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/rene... And here is a detailed report about the situation in 2021 (pdf): https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/47...

ineptech · 2023-11-17T19:56:37

And,

> In just five years, $6 billion was invested in renewable energy — the equivalent of 12% of Uruguay’s GDP.

Any country that invests 12% of its GDP in something over five years is probably going to produce some impressive results!

adolph · 2023-11-17T15:27:49

Agreed. What Uruguay is doing is interesting and worthy of further study. The linked podcast with transcript linked below goes into more detail about how long it took to build up the program, private/public partnerships, how expected consumer savings are partly negated by expanded usage. There are a lot of moving pieces.

In 2008 Ramón Méndez Galain, a particle physicist with no experience in government, was appointed Director of Energy for Uruguay and proceeded to reimagine the country’s electricity grid. In less than a decade, Méndez’s energy transition plan succeeded in freeing the country’s power sector from its growing reliance on imported oil, and achieved energy independence through a diverse electricity mix, approaching 100% renewables.

https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/podcast/how-uruguay-went-al...

toomuchtodo · 2023-11-17T15:55:43

He also did a TED talk.

https://www.ted.com/talks/ramon_mendez_galain_this_country_r... ("TED: This country runs on 98 percent renewable electricity")

mandmandam · 2023-11-17T15:36:44

> there's no reason to try and prove this wrong

Well, there is one reason: If Uruguay can do it, then it clearly demonstrates how blitheringly incompetent Western leaders are.

It shows how horrifically pointless our oil wars have been (outside of making the instigators even wealthier), and nullifies each and every bullshit argument of the fossil fuel industry completely.

Some numbers: Uruguay has $20k GDP per capita, compared to the US' $76k - basically a quarter of the wealth.

flavius29663 · 2023-11-17T17:38:21

When you have 50% of your electricity made using hydro-power, it's really easy to integrate as much renewable energy as you'd like. This is not even the best story, there are countries with close to 100% clean electricity, like Norway or Austria. It just doesn't scale that well for large countries where hydro can't amount to more than 10-20%.

oska · 2023-11-17T23:46:26

South Australia has sourced 71.5% of its electricity from wind and solar over the last 12 months. It was 86.9% in October of this year. And its main transmission company is forecasting it will be 100% by 2026/27 [1]

To be absolutely clear, the percentages above are wind and solar only. They don't include hydro of which SA has only one small generator (3MW), that is situated in the main city's gravity-fed supply pipes. [2]

[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-and-solar-meet-stunning-87-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_Storage_Mini_Hydro

mandmandam · 2023-11-17T18:30:58

There's no reason to speculate, much less pronounce the transition impossible. Smart people have down the math.

Transitioning the US to 100% clean power would cost - at most - $5.7 trillion.

We spent $8 trillion fucking up the middle east for oil.

Think about that - take all the time you need. Because if you still think this is about hydro access, and not leadership, you're holding up the change that is necessary.

flavius29663 · 2023-11-17T21:51:39

> Because if you still think this is about hydro access, and not leadership

I looked up the McKenzie report[1] where I think the 5.7 trillion comes from. In short, the renewable energy would be 1.5 trillion, and batteries 2.5 trillion (transmission is the rest). If you have 50% hydro, then you don't need batteries, so the cost for the US would drop by 2.5trillion. Having hydro is a big reason why some countries can do it easier than others. It's not a white and black situation, after-all, the US is already investing a lot in renewable energy.

Second, the report says it provisioned for 900 "gigawatts" of batteries. If they mean GW rather than GWh (Which I think they do), that is not nearly enough, that is just 2000 GWh at today's prices. The US needs 500GWh on average each hour, so you only get batteries for 4 hours. You need to either build much more PV, or buy many more batteries. Also, 2000GWh is about 2 years worth of current global battery manufacturing. It's just not the same building out a small country or a large country electrical grid.

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/shifting-u-s-to-100-percent-ren...

That being said, it will happen, we'll soon switch to PV production, and it will happen faster than people think. It will be a disruption previously only seen in software. By 2030 we'll probably be pretty much powered by PV panels.

gwright · 2023-11-17T21:36:36

I'd like to see some specifics in where you get the $5.7 trillion.

More specifically how was the problem of intermittent power solved? I'm not aware of any grid-scale solution to this problem unless you include vast amounts of hydro to provide power when there is no wind or no sun or both.

paiute · 2023-11-17T15:39:40

Hydro power… it’s like 50% of their power. Then wind, then biomass, then solar.

toomuchtodo · 2023-11-17T15:47:05

China has deployed more wind power this year than the UK's total aggregate generation capacity, and double US total aggregate solar generation. Yes, South America has a substantial amount of existing hydro power, but this is no excuse for developed world laggards. It is a choice to prioritize oil, gas, and other fossil fuel subsidies and infra support, but it is hopeless with global EV and renewables manufacturing flywheels coming up to speed (China is selling ~1 million EVs per month as of 2023Q4, solar PV manufacturing will reach 1TW next year). Just as Tesla (and BYD in China, credit where credit due) was the underdog and "David" until they rocketed passed legacy auto and became "Goliath", the same will happen to clean energy vs fossil tech. Like a recession, you're not going to be able to call it until looking back at trailing indicators.

https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update-j...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/13/chinas-carb...

> The most striking growth has been in solar power, according to Myllyvirta. Solar installations increased by 210 gigawatts (GW) this year alone, which is twice the total solar capacity of the US and four times what China added in 2020.

> The analysis, which is based on official figures and commercial data, found that China installed 70GW of wind power this year – more than the entire power generation capacity of the UK. It is also expected to add 7GW of hydro power and 3GW of nuclear power capacity this year, said the report.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-emissions-set-to...

> China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are set to fall in 2024 and could be facing structural decline, due to record growth in the installation of new low-carbon energy sources.

(my note: pedal to the floor, no one ever said "we have too much clean energy!")

zdragnar · 2023-11-17T18:15:02

When you have the benefit of being able to move millions of people by force to build a dam, and get to produce solar panels with slave labor, it's way easier.

toomuchtodo · 2023-11-17T18:20:23

Those are very bad things, no doubt whatsoever, but the data shows it is unnecessary for success. US solar and battery/storage manufacturing is exploding due to Inflation Reduction Act incentives, for example. Those bad things are not an excuse to not push scaling harder faster. Automation is a substantial component of solar and battery manufacturing, and you can build that automation with willing labor earning fair compensation.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/08/14/over-155-gw-of-u-s-so...

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

https://www.utilitydive.com/spons/ira-sets-the-stage-for-us-...

mandmandam · 2023-11-17T18:28:09

1 in 6 American workers stay in unwanted jobs just to keep their healthcare [0]. Is that so different? Americans will tell you with a straight face that giving people free college will affect the numbers joining the military - is that so different?

Also, seems to me that the 8 trillion, with a t, dollars that were spent creating terror in the middle east would have bought a few panels. To compare directly, the highest estimate for transitioning the US to 100% renewable electricity is 5.7 trillion dollars [1].

So, if we'd just killed about 600,000 fewer civilians we could afford the change. Pointing fingers at China is easier than accepting our own actions, but you know, there's a lot to be said for taking responsibility for what one can actually change.

0 - https://news.gallup.com/poll/349094/workers-stay-unwanted-jo...

1 - https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/cost-of...

ludston · 2023-11-17T23:22:58

Why are there two replies to you with the same content but two user names?

lost_tourist · 2023-11-17T21:29:51

You first point: that's not even close to being enslaved or forced to do whatever your government tells you to do under threat of imprisonment. Yes, it is very, very different.

dang · 2023-11-18T00:19:27

You can't use multiple accounts like this, so I've banned both of these. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ludston · 2023-11-18T02:41:26

It's pretty concerning that there are users on this platform operating like this given what it could imply.

manonthewall · 2023-11-17T21:32:41

You first point: that's not even close to being enslaved or forced to do whatever your government tells you to do under threat of imprisonment. Yes, it is very, very different.

mandmandam · 2023-11-18T00:16:30

In a country where thousands of people break the law just so they can get food and a little healthcare in prison - no, it's really not.

dmoy · 2023-11-17T16:52:07

Yea but like parts of the PNW are >50% hydro too (Seattle is >80%), but they still haven't ever closed the gap to 100% for any significant length of time.

lytfyre · 2023-11-17T17:36:50

BC Hydro (British Columbia electric power utility, government owned) was 98% renewable sources in 2022, ~91% of that hydro[1] - for the entire province.

that last 2% is going to take a lot of work to replace, but I'd be surprised to see it backslide.

[1] https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/...

iamawacko · 2023-11-17T17:22:33

Seattle City Light, according to a 2016 report (and its definitely improved since), was 88% Hydro, 5% nuclear, and 4% wind.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map reports Seattle City Light as 100% hydro, fwiw.

dhoe · 2023-11-17T11:49:33

I don't have numbers, but huge parts of Montevideo must be relying on wood burning for heating. The effect is very noticeable in the air quality in winter (I've lived there for three years recently).

z_killemall · 2023-11-17T13:20:51

Actually using fireplaces for heating has became more of a luxury than a need in Montevideo during the late years, as firewood costs have skyrocketed as well as air conditioning has quickly became by far the cheapest way of heating.

dhoe · 2023-11-17T17:42:24

Wood is the main source with a margin: https://www.ambito.com/uruguay/con-el-precio-la-lena-aumento...

kelnos · 2023-11-17T18:02:58

I assume you mean heat pumps? "Air conditioning" usually refers to cooling, not heating (even though the words don't actually need to mean that).

leonheld · 2023-11-17T14:38:08

Hey, I have a question for you (I'm assuming you know Europe/US): are the houses in Uruguay built to the same insulation standards as houses in northern/central Europe, for example?

I live in southern Brazil and I have yet to realize why we don't give a shit about proper insulation/modern heating techniques. Burning wood for heat in badly insulated homes drives me in-sa-ne during the winter months, terrible for my asthma.

Trufa · 2023-11-17T15:46:40

I'm Uruguayan and have lived in Europe (Austria) for many years, no, the isolation standards are not even close but you don’t quite need them as much.

Wood burning is becoming a rare thing here tho.

FredPret · 2023-11-17T15:34:14

Insulation is expensive and it's hard to be the first homeowner to install it - because when you sell your house, the next buyer has to pay a premium for your insulated house, which means they have to be convinced of the merits of insulation and be able to pay for it.

Countries that have both the money and the investment-friendly culture to insulate their houses tend to be the rich ones.

kelnos · 2023-11-17T19:34:44

Isn't it worthwhile enough to the current owner, in the form of a lower utility bill during the winter?

FredPret · 2023-11-17T20:03:13

It depends on the pay-off period. This is determined by heating costs, the insulation costs, and the interest rate. It could take many years to pay for some kinds of insulation.

ggambetta · 2023-11-17T16:04:28

The coldest winters of my life were growing up in Uruguay, where it rarely gets to 0 degrees in winter. And I say this having lived in London and currently living in Switzerland. That says a lot about the quality of insulation in Uruguay :(

dep_b · 2023-11-17T16:27:05

If it's anywhere the same as in Argentina, it's horrible. Single pane glass, walls made out of a single file of large, hollow bricks, maybe some insulation on the roof but not that much.

woodisgood · 2023-11-17T12:03:51

Is wood not a renewable resource? Closed loop of carbon.

skrause · 2023-11-17T12:13:03

Technically coal is also a closed loop of carbon because the CO2 once came from the atmosphere.

Which brings us to the problem: The CO2 shouldn't be in the atmosphere right now: If you burn wood today and the CO2 gets removed again by new plants within the next 100 years, that's still a problem.

fjni · 2023-11-17T12:26:03

I don’t understand why you’re being downvoted.

Your point is absolutely correct and as far as I can tell you pointed it out genuinely, not facetiously. Edit: read other later posts here: didn’t know about the bacteria part. Learned something today!

This is absolutely not my area of expertise but intuitively there are two categories of energy sources: one which releases co2 (or other climate change impacting gases) and one which doesn’t. Wood, oil, gas, coal falls into the former. It’s just a question of time as you say until the loop closes. Solar, wind, thermal, etc would fall into the latter as far as I can tell.

nroets · 2023-11-17T15:34:08

He gets downvoted because the real question is if burning wood causes climate change. Instead, he prefers to debate the exact meaning of closed loop.

Wood burning does not cause climate change provided it's matched by reforestation efforts.

As others point out, the real problem with wood burning is it's effects on air quality.

reducesuffering · 2023-11-17T18:36:25

Most wood burning happens in more rural areas where people are harvesting the renewing resource on their own land, like fallen trees in winter. Many times, areas need to do controlled burns to prevent uncontrolled wild fires, and it's better to manage that burning for a purpose, useful heat, that lessens the heat needed from other energy sources that aren't renewable.

cardiffspaceman · 2023-11-17T22:57:09

In California’s mountains (Sierra Nevada range and similar) people who want to burn wood legally have to use pellets. The stoves that burn them are meant to comply with pollution regulations. People kinda don’t like them but they use them.

Montevideo didn’t seem like a place where suburbanites were burning wood of any form, but I was there in the summer, just for a day.

reducesuffering · 2023-11-17T23:00:48

Got any sources? I know many people, including a firefighter and sheriff, that burn wood outside on the many burn days, or use it in wood fireplaces.

Here's one such county ordinance https://www.tuolumnecounty.ca.gov/365/Burn-Program

jiehong · 2023-11-17T12:22:03

Isn't coal the result of a massive accumulation of plant matter that couldn't be digested by any organism?

But then, once the current mushrooms and bacteria manage to digest it, there is no way for it to accumulate again like that.

Petrol might be a different story, coming from the plankton falling at the bottom of the sea instead.

naasking · 2023-11-17T16:50:18

> Technically coal is also a closed loop of carbon because the CO2 once came from the atmosphere.

As you say, the loop has to close on a timeline shorter than the greenhouse gas effect's impact on climate. That can be true of wood but not coal.

ajuc · 2023-11-17T12:16:55

Coal is not a renewable resource because bacteria and fungi evolved to decompose wood before it turns into coal. That's why almost all coal comes from (nomen omen) Carboniferous Period.

Emma_Goldman · 2023-11-17T12:45:39

A fun theory, but it's wrong. The likely explanation is tectonic:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-ancient-fo...

skrause · 2023-11-17T12:35:16

That's kind of missing my point. I obviously know that coal is not renewable.

The point was: When you burn wood today the atmosphere isn't going to be like "oh, but that CO2 was absorbed out of the atmosphere during the last 100 years, so that CO2 shouldn't contribute to global warming".

As long as we haven't solved climate change any CO2 released into the atmosphere should be avoided. It's okay to burn wood that would have rotted anyway.

But if you cut down a healthy forest, burn it and say "but it will be reabsorbed when the forst grows back, it's a closed loop" that's technically correct, but it still contributes to global warming because we now have additional CO2 in the atmosphere. Simply because it takes time for a forest to grow.

The closed loop argument is only really valid long term and when we've already solved climate change.

pragmar · 2023-11-17T13:20:09

The CO2 is going back into the atmosphere regardless, if the wood is not burned, it will decompose.

kelnos · 2023-11-17T19:56:40

Sure, but the CO2 from burning wood goes into the atmosphere right now. The CO2 from decomposing wood goes into the atmosphere over time, sometimes even over the span of years, depending on environmental conditions.

And, regardless, it's not like we only burn wood that's starting to decompose. Quite the contrary.

yCombLinks · 2023-11-17T14:44:06

Coal is possibly a closed loop on a geologic scale, while trees are a closed loop on a human lifetime scale. If a cut 100 acres, and burn it, replant it, I'm net neutral. If I burn the same amount of coal, I don't have the 100 acres to plant. Coal adds net carbon to our system on the timeline we care about.

Angostura · 2023-11-17T12:08:06

It is - but particulates are a massive health issue.

JR1427 · 2023-11-17T12:16:41

I totally agree.

In the UK, many (often well off) people in towns and cities want to have an open fire or wood stove for fun. It makes no sense for this to be legal in densely-populated areas, that can afford cleaner alternatives.

maccard · 2023-11-17T12:25:51

We moved into a house during COVID and it came with a stove - it was significantly cheaper to run the stove than our gas boiler - £3 roughly for an evening compared to probably £12-15 to heat with the boiler. Across 3-4 months of winter that's an enormous saving

dazzawazza · 2023-11-17T12:51:24

Cheaper for you but if you live anywhere near others the cost to the communities health is a lot more. London's air is often terrible thanks to wood burning and bloody fireworks! Why we allow this I will never know.

Ntrails · 2023-11-17T13:16:42

I'm gonna stick a "citation needed" here. I have discerned no obvious difference in air quality from wood burners in the winter so unless London has a lot of folks burning wood in the summer I find it unlikely. As for Fireworks, their usage is so infrequent that I find the idea of "often" slightly confusing.

Disclosure, my family had open fires and then log burners for as long as I've been alive. Not in London where I now live. I love a proper fire, it's great, one of the things I enjoy about visiting family in the countryside.

I am, however, ambivalent about the things and wouldn't resent them being banned.

maccard · 2023-11-17T15:07:02

I'm the person with a city center wood burner - They're terrible for air quality [0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/30/home-woo...

paiute · 2023-11-17T15:28:45

And not all particulates are the same. If i recall, wood burning yields rather large particulates which are less bad then something like diesel fumes, which are smaller. I find some of the comments here strange… complaining about lack of insulation and use of wood. While the alternative is over insulation with inevitable mold in the walls from vapor.

fullstop · 2023-11-17T14:01:43

> As for Fireworks, their usage is so infrequent that I find the idea of "often" slightly confusing.

Not in the context of London, but I live near an amusement park and they launch fireworks every weekend while the park is in season. I don't smell or notice any difference in air quality except for after the 4th of July when they launch a lot more of them.

hermitdev · 2023-11-17T14:45:46

You're probably not noticing any odors from your local municipal fireworks because they launch them quite a bit higher into the air than your typical neighbor is going to be sending their firecrackers and bottle rockets, making it someone else's problem. The reason industrial smoke stacks are as tall as they are is to get the smoke away from the immediate vicinity/surface.

fullstop · 2023-11-17T15:13:27

That absolutely makes sense.

cvak · 2023-11-17T14:03:42

lol at citation needed, just go out in a village that has more then 10 people running wood/coal stoves and try to breathe...

_Disclosure I also have open fire pit in a garden, and love occasional fire_

Ntrails · 2023-11-17T15:01:20

I mean, I grew up in environments like that and I and there is no noticeable difference as I walk out and back again (order miles).

I will say that if folks are having proper bonfires - that absolutely makes a difference. Largely because they are not burning dry wood.

maccard · 2023-11-17T15:02:58

> Cheaper for you but if you live anywhere near others the cost to the communities health is a lot more.

I live in the middle of a city centre. My next door neighbour burns coal in an open fire too, it's shocking.

I don't disagree with you, but when I'm looking at saving £250/month on top of all my other costs skyrocketing, it becomes an attractive thing to use.

jmopp · 2023-11-17T13:47:18

That makes me wonder: Can you take a car's catalytic converter and fit it onto a fireplace's stovepipe? It seems like it should be a simple fix for lowering the amount of soot that gets out

dmurray · 2023-11-17T14:47:20

Not sure why you're downvoted, but yes! Modern wood burning stoves can come with catalytic converters [0], which can make the stove burn more efficiently as well as lowering emissions.

Generally the stoves are designed specially for this. The stove burns hotter and may have a second combustion chamber. DIYers welding in the catalytic converter from a car is not the norm and not expected to be safe, but I bet there are some hackers who have made it work.

[0] https://ambassadorfireplaces.com/the-difference-between-cata...

ljf · 2023-11-17T13:50:51

Wow, either your boiler is inefficient, or your house is huge! We live in a 4 bed semi, victorian and could do with more insulation for sure - and (according to my smart meter) it is a very rare day that we spend £10 on gas for heating and hot water plus cooking.

Don't you still need to heat the rest of your house?

maccard · 2023-11-17T15:01:52

Inefficient boiler, yep. A medium-sized house, I would say.

I live in Edinburgh in a tenemant house with 12ft ceilings. Combine that with spiking gas prices last winter, it's a recipe for disaster.

ljf · 2023-11-17T16:52:01

Ouch! I can only imagine - then. I grew up in a stone built farmhouse with open coal fire in the living room and an Aga in the kitchen. Those two rooms were lovely and warm, the rest of the house not so much!

t-3 · 2023-11-17T12:35:40

You can burn wood cleanly and very efficiently, so why not just ban inefficient stoves rather than wood burning in general? A TLUD isn't going to be any worse for your health than a gas-burning stove or furnace.

brtkdotse · 2023-11-17T13:02:23

Our neighbour has a modern, top-of-the-line, highly efficient wood boiler. Still makes the area smell like a parking garage for a couple of hours each day during winter.

scott_siskind · 2023-11-17T13:37:45

It's not just about the stove. It's also about the state of the wood you're burning (humidity mostly). Very dry wood burns much more cleanly than less dry wood.

ZeroGravitas · 2023-11-17T12:45:53

We should be (and are) banning those as well though, because they're bad for your health and bad for the wider communities health.

cultureswitch · 2023-11-17T12:13:39

It's a renewable resource but burning wood for energy causes much worse environmental issues than climate change.

esteth · 2023-11-17T12:10:44

If we cultivate trees, then remove them from the earth and atomize them into the air, then plant more trees, they're a renewable resource but it's still causing climate change.

suoduandao2 · 2023-11-17T12:25:39

I don’t understand. There’s no net increase or decrease of atmospheric carbon in the scenario you describe

tyre · 2023-11-17T13:09:06

The effects of climate change are not instantly reversible. Imagine shifting weather patterns dry up a wetlands. Removing carbon from the atmosphere does not recreate that biome

yakubin · 2023-11-17T12:39:37

CO2 doesn’t disappear from the atmosphere the moment you plant trees. In fact, burning wood is worse than burning coal here, because, for the same amount of energy provided, burning wood is going to emit more CO2 than burning coal.

ponector · 2023-11-17T12:53:24

Is it? Energy output is directly related to carbon content. More energy density from coal mean more co2.

But coal is much much worse due to toxic pm2.5

yakubin · 2023-11-17T13:18:22

> Energy output is directly related to carbon content. More energy density from coal mean more co2.

No. It means you need to burn a larger volume of wood to get the same amount of energy. And when you increase the volume, you increase the emissions. The first sentence of this quote may be true, if we are talking about absolute amounts, but then in the second sentence density is a ratio (energy to volume), which is why it’s not true.

I don’t know all that much about relative PM2.5 emissions, but a brief search shows a paper, which argues that PM2.5 emissions depend more on combustion conditions than fuel type[1].

[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31340411/>

ponector · 2023-11-17T19:19:32

A ton of coal will create much more co2 than ton of wood, isn't it?

For the same amount of energy the result should be similar amount of co2.

Coal is worse for people because burning it creates many unhealthy chemical components. Sulfur, heavy metals, etc

yakubin · 2023-11-17T19:42:09

> A ton of coal will create much more co2 than ton of wood, isn't it?

Yes. But that hardly matters.

> For the same amount of energy the result should be similar amount of co2.

No. Apparently, wood is estimated to emit 30% more CO2 than coal for the same amount of energy[1].

> Coal is worse for people because burning it creates many unhealthy chemical components. Sulfur, heavy metals, etc

Is it more than when you burn wood though? I’m not knowleadgable enough to answer this question. I found one link about it[2], but currently I don’t have time to read it. In any case, the fact that it produces more CO2 than coal is a good argument against wood in my eyes. My argument is against wood, not in favour of coal. Coal is just a benchmark to measure against.

[1]: https://ecosystems.psu.edu/research/centers/private-forests/...>

[2]: https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/18644>

CorrectHorseBat · 2023-11-17T13:21:00

And wood is even worse in that regard

ponector · 2023-11-17T19:11:44

That is not true. Check out chemical components of coal ash.

I live in the region where people use coal for private heating. It is much worse than wood.

olddustytrail · 2023-11-17T15:52:53

Not from a carbon perspective. Forestry isn't cutting down ancient forests and then randomly thinking it would be nice to plant some new ones. Trees are a crop. They are planted, left to grow, and then harvested, in a cycle.

yakubin · 2023-11-17T16:35:05

It’s going to take time for a new tree to consume the CO2 produced by burning a tree. If instead you leave a tree standing and burn coal, you will produce less CO2, so it’s going to take less time to consume it (and the older tree is going to do it faster than a young one).

Moreover, it’s not only a question of net emissions. It’s also a question of location. People burn wood and coal in their homes and that affects the air most near them the most. It is the worst near cities, where you can’t plant a new forest. Instead just think about how the local air is going to be affected if people burn there 1MWh of wood vs coal. Because trees are not going to help here, if they're planted far away.

And, when trees die naturally, they don’t emit CO2 at the speed that they do when they’re burnt. It happens much slower, so it’s not that much of a problem.

Mind you I’m not advocating for burning coal. I’m advocating against burning wood.

reducesuffering · 2023-11-17T18:43:33

> I’m advocating against burning wood.

Ok, there are many rural properties in the world populated with trees. These trees naturally fall and contribute brush. Firefighters and forest management will tell you to clean up the brush by burning, otherwise it will decompose (still co2) and eventually lead to a natural wildfire (same effect). Better to burn it for heat than outside for nothing. What would you do instead?

yakubin · 2023-11-17T19:06:45

In this instance I’ll say burn it if you want. Although it leading to a natural wildfire is highly dependent on local climate. Where I live, for most of the year it’s too cold and humid for anything like this to happen, except during maybe 2 months a year. But I appreciate that in places like California or Australia it may be different.

pohl · 2023-11-17T13:30:03

There’s probably not a simple yes/no answer, but rather a function of the rates of both planting and harvesting trees, unless one is pedantic about the distinction between able-to-be renewed and actually renewed, which is useless in the context of our climate issues.

gen220 · 2023-11-17T16:42:50

It is, and can be done sustainably. But only in conjunction with (1) good harvesting / forestry practices (2) good wood "processing" [i.e. drying] practices (3) good insulation in the homes that use wood for heat (4) good wood-burning stoves and filters.

The Nordics, perhaps unsurprisingly, are the lead innovators in this space.

pxeger1 · 2023-11-17T12:06:28

That’s no good if replanting is slower than consumption.

olddustytrail · 2023-11-17T15:54:42

No, it isn't, but people who run a forestry business obviously plant enough trees to make sure they have enough timber to keep going.

hardlianotion · 2023-11-17T12:22:07

In the long run, perhaps. Depending on the rate of tree replacement of those used as fuel.

notachatbot123 · 2023-11-17T12:16:05

Theoretically maybe (ignoring all the other effects of burning wood and the time spans one has to consider), but globally we have a massive deforestation and loss of trees so it is sadly not a reasonable option.

t-3 · 2023-11-17T12:32:05

How do you expect to prevent deforestation if there is no economic value to keeping the forests? People, in general, don't object to deforestation because it's 'productive' - it's building things, making jobs, making money. If deforestation was destroying a valuable resource that provides heat and energy for your community, you would absolutely not allow it, and definitely not support it.

infecto · 2023-11-17T12:48:05

yeahhhhh....it is but I think when framing energy independence and renewables its a good call out to note if homes are heating with electricity or burning fuels.

Mrdarknezz · 2023-11-17T14:44:57

Yes but it's not sustainable, kinda defeats the purpose

adrianN · 2023-11-17T12:09:18

Depends on where the word comes from I would say

manc_lad · 2023-11-17T12:12:53

Using the same logic, you could say coal is renewable depending on your time horizon, no?

suoduandao2 · 2023-11-17T12:33:17

No, fungi evolved that can digest lignin now ;).

On a less facetious note, Solar needs time to renew the energy it made the day before as well. Time scale is very important to questions of renewables, and people have been sustainably burning wood for a long time. Unsustainably too, but I would bet that’s not the case here if it’s being included in a census of sustainable sources.

forinti · 2023-11-17T13:10:16

Montevideo in the 80s and 90s had really old Leyland diesel buses that polluted like hell. The buildings on 18 de Julio were black with soot.

It is much much better now.

ptero · 2023-11-17T12:16:51

This is a bit misleading. While the achievement is impressive, it talks about electric utility generation. Uruguay, with heavily agrarian economy, uses a lot of field machinery, which is not covered by this.

hef19898 · 2023-11-17T12:50:10

Love it how people are rediscovering primary and secondary energy, and the difference between those two...

baseline-shift · 2023-11-17T22:54:17

California runs on 100% renewables for 4.8 months each year in a sense too.

It has 40% renewables last time I checked I think in 2019.

If you assign that to what percent of the annual use, that is the equivalent of everything from Jan 1st-April 24ish California is runing on 100% renewables.

mschuster91 · 2023-11-17T11:02:25

> Because the state couldn’t fund a massive energy programme alone, it ran a series of clean power auctions, where it offered project developers 20-year contracts to sell electricity into the national grid at guaranteed rates.

This is a carbon copy of what Germany did prior to the infamous "Altmaier-Knick" and "Gabriel-Tief [1], both named after the utterly incompetent ministers responsible for cutting back on these programs. Prior to that, our solar industry was world leading in competence and production capacity, it all shifted to China afterwards.

[1] https://www.fraunhofer.de/de/forschung/aktuelles-aus-der-for...

cracrecry · 2023-11-17T11:44:33

As a Spaniard myself that have lived in several cities in Germany like Hamburg, I will tell you a secret: There is no sun in Germany. My eyes have to adapt to the luminosity change every time I go to southern Europe or north of Africa.

I have always believed that putting solar panels in Germany was a wrong solution.

I have also lived in Argentina and travelled to Uruguay. Those countries have a massive amount of natural resources compared with Germany for a population that is much smaller.

audunw · 2023-11-17T12:00:33

Your personal impression doesn't really matter though. What matters is the statistics.

Of course there is sun in Germany. Yes, there's less. But then it's also cooler which makes the solar panels more efficient. What matters is if it's economical to use solar panels there, which it is. In summer, where some areas will use quite a bit of AC, there's more daylight hours than regions further south. In winter, if you have vertically mounted panels, a nice effect you can get is that the snow reflects extra sunlight from the ground to the solar panel.

Fun fact, even the airport in Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway - an island close to the north pole - has solar panels. They're mounted vertically on the walls, since the sun is never very high in the sky. There's no sun at all in winter, but in summer there's sun 24/7.

https://sunpower.maxeon.com/int/case-study/energy-arctic-cir...

It's surprising how much production they get even that far north: "the PV system produces as much as 70 percent of what is typically produced in Germany"

So please don't use your subjective impression about how bright you feel it is to gauge the viability of solar. I can tell you from personal experience, it's not very bright in Svalbard even in summer.

BTW, much of the energy need in winter in northern climates is for heating. It's surprisingly effective to store thermal energy over several months. So it's actually viable to dump heat from excess solar in a thermal reservoir in summer, and use that heat in winter.

AnonymousPlanet · 2023-11-17T13:00:01

> It's surprisingly effective to store thermal energy over several months.

And how much would you need? Have you done the maths on this? I did. There are plenty of times in e.g. November when neither wind nor solar are good for much (production drops to like 1-2% of the average). That goes on for weeks. Just trying to compensate those losses for two weeks for the current amount of wind and solar Germany has, takes > 10 TWh of storage. How much thermal storage do you think would we need to build to get that?

I made those calculations to get an idea how much storage we would need to be able to finally shut down power stations running on coal or gas. I was quite shocked about the number.

Whenever someone points out the realities of things some people are quick to counter with some utopian ideas, but usually they don't do the math on it. I encourage you to always make a calculation, at least on a napkin, to get an idea of the magnitude of what would be required.

Your comment reads like it would be as easy as the flick of a wrist because something "is surprisingly effective". It's not. It takes the amount of many, many Stuttgart 21s in dedication, costs and time.

mschuster91 · 2023-11-17T14:06:17

> There are plenty of times in e.g. November when neither wind nor solar are good for much (production drops to like 1-2% of the average). That goes on for weeks.

So what. Either overbuild solar and wind to a degree that even with reduced generation capacity needs can still be met and use the over-generation in summer to produce hydrogen, e-fuels for air and maritime or whatever, or run the capacity of the storage until it's depleted and use gas peakers for the 2-4 weeks in the year where nothing else can fill the demand.

AnonymousPlanet · 2023-11-17T19:03:13

Please have a thorough look at https://www.smard.de and download their data to do some statistics on it. This should give you an impression of what, when and how long is missing. Hint: It's not just two to three weeks per year. There are many such gaps. And they're not just a couple of days long.

All your ideas hinge on storage that somehow magically comes to existence. I told you the numbers and you then argue with science fiction. No one knows how to build a reliable hydrogen network of the size that would be necessary. The efficiencies for generation are abysmal, especially if you try to generate just from water and electricity and not from natural gas. I don't believe you even remotely grasp the magnitude of the challenges ahead.

Again, I would like to encourage the use of real data and math. Less science fiction and wishful thinking.

adrianN · 2023-11-18T03:46:10

Try playing around with this: https://model.energy/

cbmuser · 2023-11-17T15:35:32

Overbuilding doesn’t help when there is zero wind or solar generation.

Wind is usually tied across the continent and low wind in Germany usually conincides with low wind in the rest of Europe.

rolisz · 2023-11-17T12:21:26

> It's surprisingly effective to store thermal energy over several months.

Do tell more.

nimeni · 2023-11-17T14:27:12

For example, this project [1] in Finland will provide 200 MW of district heating and can store 90 GWh. Cost estimate was 109M EUR in 2021 [2].

[1]: https://www.vantaanenergia.fi/en/we/carbon-negativity-2030/h... [2]: https://tem.fi/paatos?decisionId=0900908f8077a0e8

AnonymousPlanet · 2023-11-17T19:11:47

Cool, so you would only need about 120 of those to compensate Germany's current wind and solar power in the gaps without wind and sun. That's just 1.3 billion Euros. That's better than the last time I checked out heat storage. Then it was 100MWh for roughly a football stadium sized area with subterranean sand.

rolisz · 2023-11-17T15:37:12

Interesting. We'll see in 2026 when it's finished how much it actually costs and how well it actually works :)

cbmuser · 2023-11-17T15:33:56

Germany had to return 19 coal-fired power plants with a total capacity of 7.3 GW to the electricity market simply because neither wind nor solar provide dispatchable power and hence can never replace conventional power plants. They just help saving fuel.

https://www.smard.de/home/rueckkehr-von-kohlekraftwerken-an-...

Marvin_Martian · 2023-11-17T16:10:33

Germany was facing the cutoff from russian gas, which had provided more than half of its gas imports, and was also in the process of shutting down its last nuclear reactors.

To suggest that the return of those coal power plants was due to renewables underdelivering, seems to be misleading at best.

Personally, that whole fiasco served as a reminder of the dangers of fossil fuel imports from undemocratic states.

olddustytrail · 2023-11-17T15:57:33

No, they brought them in because of the issue of gas supplies after Russia invaded Ukraine. Didn't you hear about this? It was in the news...

KaiserPro · 2023-11-17T14:00:00

I live in the UK.

It rains here.

however with a 5kw array, and a 13kwh battery, we are self sufficient for at least 6 months of the year (as in 0kw from grid) and at worst 40% in the midst of winter. Today I have generated 10kwhr and its only 14:00.

Germany should have no real issues with solar production. I mean its not great, but its not anywhere near as bad as you imply.

Izkata · 2023-11-17T17:27:07

> I live in the UK.

> It rains here.

Funny thought popped into my head: Rain-based water wheel.

blkhawk · 2023-11-17T11:57:31

yes, but panels can be made cheap enough and there is plenty of surfaces you can plaster them on. To just put them on roofs was very much the right choice compared to say Desertec.

When you look into it then Desertec would have been a huge waste of resources. The issue at this point is not generation - its storage and to a lesser degree transport.

pydry · 2023-11-17T12:15:56

You can kind of tell when it's sunny or windy in European countries.

If it's windy renewables skeptics will tell you how little power is being generated right now by solar panels.

If it's sunny renewables skeptics will tell you how little power is generated by wind turbines right now.

This is partly because skeptics are gonna skeptic but also it's also because sun and wind anticorrelate way more than most people think, reducing storage requirements down to quite reasonable levels (such that pumped storage/hydrogen can economically satisfy most grids).

citation: https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...

closewith · 2023-11-17T12:23:47

Citation needed for that last claim, as it's patently absurd.

pydry · 2023-11-17T13:09:33

https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...

You can remove your downvote now.

closewith · 2023-11-17T15:54:30

As the other commenter pointed out, that source is more absurd than your initial claim, but I didn't down vote your comment.

pydry · 2023-11-17T17:01:26

He threw shade on it but without a good reason as the reply to him points out.

Rescaling existing production is exactly how to demonstrate whether the peaks and lulls of solar and wind would sufficiently line up in a 100% solar/wind/pumped storage/hydrogen storage grid. Real data > hypothesized data.

What's absurd is the fossil fuel/nuclear lobby's "for public consumption" models that assume that the sun and wind both go out for 4 weeks at a time every winter and that the only way to store energy is with lithium batteries from 2012.

abduhl · 2023-11-17T13:14:18

I have no horse in this race but just wanted to point out the absurdity of this methodology:

“The generation data for wind, rooftop and utility solar data was rescaled to supply ~60%, 25% and 20% of demand respectively over the year. For example, over the last year utility solar generation has met 5% of demand. The target for utility solar was 20%, so I rescaled the last 7 days of utility solar data by 4x (ie, 20% divided by 5%).”

ZeroGravitas · 2023-11-17T15:54:43

That's a perfectly sensible methodology, do you have a specific problem with it?

"Wind and Solar are fine as long as they're only X% of the grid, but you'd need of storage for lulls in wind and sun once they get close to 100%" is the question it's answering.

cbmuser · 2023-11-17T15:31:03

»This is a carbon copy of what Germany did prior to the infamous "Altmaier-Knick" and "Gabriel-Tief [1], both named after the utterly incompetent ministers responsible for cutting back on these programs.«

Germany installed more wind and solar capacity per capita than any other country in the western world.

Besides that, if an economic program heavily relies on subsidies, it’s not sustainable in the first place.

the_why_of_y · 2023-11-17T20:51:35

Would you say fossil fuels are not sustainable, given they are subsidized with trillions of dollars every year?

https://www.statista.com/chart/31016/volume-of-global-fossil...

CalRobert · 2023-11-17T11:09:21

Your car industry will be headed there next it seems.

mschuster91 · 2023-11-17T11:13:25

That's not due to incompetent politicians for once. The crisis of the German car industry is entirely of its own doing - they completely ignored electric power for years, and instead focused on lobbying to get rid of emission limits, which obviously left them stranded in a ditch after Dieselgate. On top of that, everyone but Volkswagen was/is focused on high-margin SUVs and luxury vehicles, which aren't really a thing outside of corporate "luxury" for upper level management and new-rich in China, and Volkswagen completely dropped the ball in software quality.

cpursley · 2023-11-17T11:37:34

That’s only part of it (China is eating and will continue Germany’s EV’s lunch), the other part is energy prices. Like it or not, cheap natural gas from a certain country was the backbone of a competitive German industrial economy. Can’t make an Bosch appliance or VW with solar power that can compete with Korea’s LG or Chinese brands. Energy is EVERYTHING.

hef19898 · 2023-11-17T12:05:19

Thenonly EV lunch Chinese OEMs aren't eating is Hyundais.

cpursley · 2023-11-17T12:26:52

Hopefully not, really looking to the competition!

RandomLensman · 2023-11-17T12:28:31

Germany could have cheap own energy, but usually any new infrastructure or whatever attracts huge opposition.

spaniard89277 · 2023-11-17T11:30:47

It's a disgrace that we're not able to buy cheap and light cars in the EU anymore. I just want a ~2010 Fiat Panda :(

V__ · 2023-11-17T11:38:57

Renaults Zoe also seems great, I see quite a lot of them on German streets.

archi42 · 2023-11-17T13:28:19

The Zoe is EOL and IIRC replaced by the Clio E-Tech. Also, Renault is french?

(Not to talk badly about the specific car or the move to BEV in general - I applaud that and am at the same time disappointed how our [German] manufacturers ignored the shift)

CalRobert · 2023-11-17T20:05:30

The Zoe has pretty horrendous crash ratings, sadly.

CalRobert · 2023-11-17T12:55:37

Even in Europe cars are becoming bloated and shoving everyone else off the streets. The Economist had a piece about the death of small cars in Europe a few months ago. https://archive.ph/KxzUK

There's really no escape, it seems.

hkt · 2023-11-17T11:50:46

There are cute little things like the Citroen Ami: https://www.citroen.co.uk/ami

They're nearly compelling enough for me to learn to drive. Nearly..!

la_oveja · 2023-11-17T12:35:18

just fyi, a citroen ami (2020+) is not a car is a quadricycle; it does not need a driving license, is like a electric bike.

id not want to use it to stay in traffic tho, crashing that does not seem safe

thworp · 2023-11-17T14:41:56

Yes, if your only concerns are the %age of renewables in the electricity mix and the health of an industry that could only continue to exist with direct subsidies it was incompetent.

Personally, I think the Energiewende is one of the most expensive failures ever. It cost about €500 billion in direct subsidies and indirect damage in the trillions due to lower economic growth. Not to mention the waste that was the installation of solar panels and wind turbines that were less efficient and became uneconomical to even upkeep.

And what was gained by this sacrifice? Today solar is the cheapest form of energy generation to build (even with storage and even in Sweden) and we got exactly nothing for being first.

Imagine if the Energiewende was a framework of laws and some light subsidies that allowed for an actually decentralized energy market. You sell your 10kW solar installation's power to your local farmer while you're at work and he sells you the power from his combo natgas and biogas reactor at night. All proceeds from this tax-free with no bureaucratic BS and guaranteed access to your local grid. Pretty soon there would have been small towns that were net exporters and the system would be extremely resilient.

Instead, because of lobbying by the privatized monopoly companies but mainly because politicians are allergic to self-orgazing and self-regulating systems (they cannot imagine them and they resent that they don't need their involvement) we got high prices, centralized and fragile generation, communities opposed to wind turbines because they did not see any benefits.

hef19898 · 2023-11-17T15:20:19

Wow, the Energiewende caused lower econic growth... Strong claims require strong evidence, especially if the come with specific numbers.

thworp · 2023-11-17T15:52:35

Strong claims? So you want proof that an increase in the price of energy, which is an input into absolutely every good and service, causes less goods and services to be produced? I don't think we have a basis for discussion here.

hef19898 · 2023-11-17T15:59:30

Unless you bring studies from actual economist making the same claim I agree, we don't have a basis.

Posted from the freezing, deindustrialzed, immigrant over run Germany.

billbrown · 2023-11-17T21:29:46

I didn't read the OP because I looked into Uruguay's previously-touted "98% renewable" last month and I doubt anything's changed.[1] I read a great study from 2022[2] and figured out the accounting trickery behind the claims.

Basically, the windmills are overbuilt past the demand, which is supplied by mostly hydroelectric and enough natgas. The wind energy is exported to neighboring Brazil and Argentina through interconnects.

[1] https://twitter.com/billbrown/status/1714311001569693749

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142152...

billbrown · 2023-11-18T00:20:32

Downvoted, hah!

vfclists · 2023-11-17T10:49:57

How much heavy industry is there in Uruguay?

artyom · 2023-11-17T10:51:50

Close to none. Most of the heavy industry products (e.g. cars) are imported from either Brazil or Argentina.

There's a lot of agriculture tho.

filmor · 2023-11-17T11:09:31

Yet, the per capita energy usage is much higher in Uruguay, according to these:

https://www.worlddata.info/america/uruguay/energy-consumptio... (3.4 MWh) https://www.worlddata.info/america/brazil/energy-consumption... (2.5 MWh) https://www.worlddata.info/america/argentina/energy-consumpt... (2.6 MWh)

repelsteeltje · 2023-11-17T11:43:14

I think there is considerable paper industry (which is notoriously energy hungry). Also growing software industry, so data centers might weigh in? Cement maybe?

phtrivier · 2023-11-17T11:21:02

Which makes the title "Energy independent" and "100% renewables" all the more infuriating. (To the point where i'm wondering if it's not bait for people who have a clue about the topic.)

If you have lots of mountains and lots of space to put solar panels / windmills, you can get a lot of your electricity from renewables sources, which is great for a lot of applications. (If you can have nuclear power, it's not "renewable" per se, but it's very low on carbon, which is useful in itself, whith the usual caveats.)

But the "small" issue is that tractors in the fields and trucks moving fertilizers and chemicals and produces around are, at the moment, mostly relying on oil.

So, at the moment, being "100% energy independent with renewables" means you have to make the small compromise of "not eat food."

Where is the "Tesla of tractors" ? Which EV company is seriously addressing "freight" ?

Retric · 2023-11-17T11:38:00

If you want to consider the energy balance of food production then every country runs 99% on renewable energy as plants collect solar power at a scale that absolutely dwarfs everything else. Even a very low estimate of 1,549,600 km2 of crops * 1% efficiency from photosynthesis * 15% capacity factor is ~2,000,000 TWh / year vs 27,000 TW from electricity. Add in forests providing lumber, grass feeding cattle, and plankton feeding fish etc and the numbers get much larger.

As such total energy balance isn’t a particularly useful metric. Instead we use subsets of total energy such as the electric grid and 100% renewable is perfectly valid in that context.

phtrivier · 2023-11-17T12:00:57

Of course, I agree that "total energy balance isn’t a particularly useful metric", given the impact of solar energy ; but picking the right subset is important.

I would argue that:

* excluding "the energy coming from the sun" is fair game, given that we as a society have very little impact on it

* excluding "the energy not transferred as electricity" is not fair, and misleading, given that it represent a minority of the energy for which the society has a choice.

If [1] gives roughly the correct numbers, Urugay is using ~200TJ/y, and ~40TJ comes from electricity. Not insignificant, and it's the right strategy to replace as much of the remaining 80% by renewables through electricity.

But as long as 20% !== 100%, and as long as people will mis-title articles for no good reason, people will have to correct headlines.

[1] https://www.iea.org/countries/uruguay

Retric · 2023-11-17T12:47:49

Where are you getting 200Tj total and 40Tj for electricity? The chart lists 2020 as Hydro 14,738 TJ, biofuels and waste 93,709 TJ, Oil 87,756, Solar/Wind/etc 21,375 TJ, Natural gas 2,504 TJ.

So renewables are (14,738 + 93,709 + 21,375 )/ (14,738 + 93,709 + 87,756 + 21,375 + 2,504) = 59% of total energy.

However that rather overstates energy from oil. ICE engines are only like 25% efficient but hydro is only counting the fraction of potential energy actually converted to electricity. And even before that refineries waste a lot of energy that’s in oil when producing gasoline.

PS: Sanity check electricity consumption is listed as 11.83 TWh * 60m/h * 60s/m * 1j/s = 42,588 TJ/year

phtrivier · 2023-11-17T13:19:03

Correct, I messed up my units, and miss-interpreted "biofuels and waste". Sorry. Graph is for:

Topic: "Energy supply"

Indiator: "Total Energy supply (TES) by source".

Looking at the stacked chart, for 2020, the sum is above 200 000 TJ (not 200 TJ as I wrote mistakenly). It's propably about 210 000 TJ.

Then, for electricity, I summed "Wind, Solar, etc..." (21 375 TJ) and "Hydro" (14 738 TJ). I assumed that "Biofuels and Waste" (93 709 TJ) was used mostly for heating as opposed to electricity generation, and neglected it.

It's not entirely the case, though ; in the "Electricity Generation by source", you can see that 2 752 GWh where produced using "biofuels and waste" out of the 811 + 2752 + 4094 + 5476 + 462 = 13595 GWh of electriciy (~20%.)

So I guess that we should add ~20% of those 93 709 TJ, and say that roughly (again, I'm doing ballpark computations here) 60 000TJ out of more than 210 000 TJ.

Still, 28% !== 100%, isn't it ;) ?

---

PS: Out of curiosity, from https://www.iea.org/countries/france, my home country would be at around 4% renewables, and 40% "non fossil" (given the share of nuclear in electricity), but as usual, we're outliers...

Retric · 2023-11-17T13:39:35

Ok, but again don’t forget about efficiency for biofuels.

If their Waste power plants are 30% efficient and produce 2.752 TWh that took / 0.3 * 60 * 60 ~= 33,000 Tj of fuel + 42,000 Tj of electricity from other sources. So, (33 PJ + 42 PJ) / 210 PJ = 36% of total primary energy supply used for electricity.

Which again shows why comparing pre conversion efficiency numbers to post conversion efficiency numbers gives rather silly results.

mcv · 2023-11-17T11:34:18

Every country has "lots of space to put solar panels". Except maybe city states that are all skyscrapers. But for now there's no shortage of space where you could put solar panels without them being in anyone's way. Put them on every roof, over every parking lot (where they help keep cars cool in summer), over ever bike path (where they help keep cyclists dry in the rain).

hef19898 · 2023-11-17T15:24:14

That what interconnected grids are there for... No need to stop an electricity grid at a border.

hef19898 · 2023-11-17T15:23:06

Freight transport using electricity? Trains. Followed by trucks from Renault, Volvo, Scania...

hkt · 2023-11-17T11:55:22

> ...nuclear power, it's not "renewable" per se, but it's very low on carbon...

Sorry, but no. The whole life carbon emissions (WLCE) of nuclear are deeply contested and estimates from academic studies tend to be much higher than those of governmental bodies like the UK's committee on climate change and the IPCC's estimates.

For more information that can dispel this myth, see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03062...

phtrivier · 2023-11-17T12:14:07

I wrote "very low on carbon" precisely to not write "zero carbon", so I'm not so sure we really disagree here.

From the abstract:

> Results for the process-based, input-output, and hybrid methods range between 16.55–17.69, 18.82–35.15, and 24.61–32.74 gCO2e/kWh,

That's in the ballpark of what you can get from other sources [1]. And it's still:

* an order of magnitude lower than coal

* almost an order of magnitude lower than gas

* in the same order of magnitude as the other renewables (PV / Wind / hydro.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emis...

p0w3n3d · 2023-11-17T16:25:37

Inhabitants of Atacama Desert are also 100% CO2 neutral

wholien · 2023-11-17T11:42:36

for another POV on Uruguay, here's Doomberg's recent article on Uruguay: https://doomberg.substack.com/p/false-utopia

kranke155 · 2023-11-17T12:00:43

I used to read him but soon find it tiring. His perspective is always "im right and everyone else is wrong".

RALaBarge · 2023-11-17T12:07:53

Sounds like he is one of us then!

gruppe_sechs · 2023-11-17T13:02:59

As opposed to other writers whose perspective is "I'm wrong"?

（评论） (comments)

（评论）
(comments)