this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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The renewable mandate is not a bad idea per se, but the German opposition to nuclear power is incredibly harmful, and compounded by their inexplicable support for so-called e-fuels.
The e-fuels will ensure the "survival" of internal combustion engines, and obviously somebody is lobbying like crazy for that to happen.
And since this is Germany pushing them, we can more or less know who. Same people that tried to cover up and avoid liability for dieselgate.
The VW Group is all in on EVs. The big push is from niche sports car builders, which are an utterly insignificant amount of daily traffic and airlines.
Sports car builders are trying to keep a hobby alive, not part of the transportation industry.
It's true luxury cars are involved too, and secured themselves the so-called Lamborghini exception, and of course airlines are the major player here.
But EVs are a bit speculative still, and the existence of efuls is likely to delay them, and give these companies bad ideas about continuing to produce the same engines. I don't know for sure if they're involved in the push, but even if EVs are their plan A, I wouldn't at all be surprised to find out efuels are their plan B.
EVs aren't remotely speculative any longer. Fuel efficiency targets are locked in and anyone who wants to sell cars in 10 years is spending billions to get the infrastructure and development in place to make EVs.
Efuels are what are speculative and it is highly doubtful they will be anything but expensive. Which is fine for luxuries like sports cars. And even unnecessary international flights are a luxury. We just feel entitled to them.
Methane is always a possibility but I imagine that will be expensive while the infrastructure for that is put in place. And it is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built in the hydrogen sphere.
Is that really a problem? if I run a generator off hydrogen that was produced as a biproduct of a nuclear reactor thats still green energy. It only produces water when burnt after all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrofuel
This is the e-fuel that I was referring to. When burnt it releases carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere. It's better than nothing, but it doesn't decrease the carbon footprint. We should really be focusing on capturing CO2 and not releasing it back into the atmosphere.
Hydrogen cells like you described are a promising alternative.
They shouldn't have shut down their old nuclear reactors before having an alternative to coal and gas. But nuclear is not the future. It is not economically feasinle to build new reactors and renewable energy is cheaper.
Meanwhile nuclear is not profitable without subsidies or government garanties.
Solar wind and batteries are the best way to generate electricity riggt now.
Batteries are no more developed than affordable nuclear power at this point and are probably a bit behind. There is more of a supply chain for new nuclear power plants than for battery systems that are in the prototype stage at best.
I agree than the long term future is not nuclear but for this century, anything that can replace fossil fuels is welcome. In 20 years when the next new generation of nuclear plants is coming online if the large scale battery production for electrical generation is developed then we don't need to build any more.
If that doesn't happen, we'll be glad new nuclear plants are coming online.
Cheap, large batteries for large scale energy storage will likely happen, and relatively soon. But depending on that is counting a chickens that have not hatched.