The European Tribune is a forum for thoughtful dialogue of European and international issues. You are invited to post comments and your own articles.
Please REGISTER to post.
A two-day summit ended in Brussels today (21 March), with EU leaders tasking the European Commission to come up with a plan for decreasing energy dependence, primarily from Russia.
Well... you can keep dreaming. (And wasting time & money on useless studies.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Pity it takes so much of an external shock, when the obviousness of that should have been seen a mile and 30 years away. It was our oligarchs who decided to made Putin rich as Croesus by enslaving Europeans to antiquated, fragile fossil fuel dependency chains. How many UN observers will it take to patrol thousands of miles of highly inflammable pipelines?
So while China is now rich enough to take over that job, we can go back to figuring out how to make Europe energy self-sufficient without nukes or fracking.
Energy is the new gold. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
Or one could bet big on small-scale fusion.
1:installation costs for distributed solar has stubbornly not fallen to any significant degree and are now dominant - free solar panels would still be obnoxiously expensive power if you insist on rooftop solar. It should be possible to drive the cost of balance-of-plant way down with plant in the desert.
2: Seasonal variation in solar flux in europe proper runs counter to seasonal variation in power demand. This is a fatal problem. Equatorial installations are at least steady year round.
Erm, nukes give baseload, gas doesn't, they aren't replacements for each other. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Solar is a somewhat better fit for the supply curve currently covered by gas, but if the motivation is to lessen the geopolitical vulnerability of our energy supply..
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
The accelerated time table is still somewhat lacking in ambition, people have been doing design and lab work on molten salt reactors for fifty years, at this point the thing to do is to build one. And the reactor bit will work - I am somewhat less confident about the online reprocessing being economical.
DoDo:
Meanwhile, there is more than enough building surface and non-arable land available for solar power within the EU and enough land and off-shore areas for wind power.
Renewables offer the attractive advantage of generating from indigenous sources. Where is the point in swapping one form of energy import dependence for another?
What hope of security, in these conditions, for cables bearing essential supplies of electricity to Europe, and obvious magnets for terrorism?
Yes they would be vulnerable, as indeed any grid is, so clearly the shorter the supply chain the less vulnerable, thus any homeharvested energy trumps long undersea cables.
Still when you think that water supplies can be attacked too, where does that leave nuclear with its massive need for daily cooling of fuel rods?
That's vulnerable for ya...
As for re-colonisation, point taken, but the shoe may fit better on the other foot, ie the former colonies would have us over a supply barrel, much as Russia is doing now with her gas, threatening to switch off or increase prices.
Sure the Sahara has huger potential supply, but until we have solar-roofed every possible building in Southern Europe, we shouldn't need to go there. Ditto for tidal and wind.
In fact a Marshall Plan to do just that would be the ideal Keynesian stimulus to save the peripheral economies, surely?
In a perfect world free of fossil fuel lobbies, natch!
Shoot for the stars, settle for the moon... 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 22 3 comments
by Cat - Jan 25 17 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 26
by Oui - Jan 9 21 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 13 28 comments
by gmoke - Jan 20
by Oui - Jan 15 90 comments
by gmoke - Jan 7 13 comments
by Oui - Jan 2716 comments
by Cat - Jan 2517 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 223 comments
by Oui - Jan 219 comments
by Oui - Jan 21
by Oui - Jan 20
by Oui - Jan 1839 comments
by Oui - Jan 1590 comments
by Oui - Jan 144 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jan 1328 comments
by Oui - Jan 1212 comments
by Oui - Jan 1120 comments
by Oui - Jan 1031 comments
by Oui - Jan 921 comments
by NBBooks - Jan 810 comments
by Oui - Jan 717 comments
by gmoke - Jan 713 comments
by Oui - Jan 68 comments