Comment by Theodores
2 days ago
Truth be told, Europe has no energy and it was only with the Ukraine crisis that I realised this. Germany has been turning cheap gas from Russia into expensive cars, glass and chemicals for decades without me noticing that was all the deal was.
Europe just sucks in oil, gas, uranium and some coal from the rest of the world to give back what exactly?
So it is no surprise that renewable energy is showing up as significant these days, particularly when so much manufacturing industry is closed down and exported overseas.
The thing is that China and elsewhere in East Asia are burning those hydrocarbons now, so it is just globalization of the emissions.
Regarding nuclear, the French have been kicked out of West Africa so no cheap uranium for them, paid for with the special Franc they can only print in Paris to obtain as much uranium as they need from Africa.
The solar panels come from China so it is not as if Europe is leading the way in terms of tech.
All Europe government bodies also want the bicycle these days, with dreams of livable neighbourhoods and cycling holidays for all.
I doubt they care for solar panels or the bicycle, however, after the Ukraine crisis in 2022 it must be clear to some in Europe that there are no energy sources in Europe apart from a spot of Norwegian gas. When paying 4x for fracked LNG from Uncle Sam it must be an eye opener to them.
> Germany has been turning cheap gas from Russia into expensive cars, glass and chemicals for decades without me noticing that was all the deal was.
You're overstating this a bit; there is a lot of coal in Europe (natural gas only got ahead of coal in Germany over the last years).
> Europe just sucks in oil, gas, uranium and some coal from the rest of the world to give back what exactly?
Finished products (like cars), some services, bit of tourism? What exactly is the problem here?
Uranium mining in Europe would be perfectly viable, but no one wants to, because modern practices basically ruin groundwater quality for a long time (in-situ leeching). This applies to a bunch of other things, too; hard to justify mining cadmium in the Alps when you can just buy the finished product for cheaper while keeping your local environment intact.
> The solar panels come from China so it is not as if Europe is leading the way in terms of tech.
They used to produce lots of those in Germany-- it's just become way cheaper to buy them from China, especially after local subsidies ran out. You could make an argument that the germans shoulda tried to keep the industry somewhat alive for strategic reasons, though.
> Europe just sucks in oil, gas, uranium and some coal from the rest of the world to give back what exactly?
It's called "money". Numbers on a screen that you can exchange for goods and services. The people with the oil are typically quite happy to give Europeans that oil in exchange for some European money - and the Europeans don't have to give anything back at all. The exchange has been made.
Absolutely, and buying fossil fuel has definitely been working, and it'll probably continue to work.
But if in the future we don't have to buy as much fossil fuel as we do today, it'll probably have sizable effects on our economies.
> Europe just sucks in oil, gas, uranium and some coal from the rest of the world to give back what exactly?
That's called manufacturing, the best skills in the world. Yeah it's tough work and pay is not brilliant, but when shit happens that's the thing that is going to save EU.
Europe might not have much oil and gas, but the future is in renewables anyways. Western Europe has a lot of wind potential at the coastlines. Northern Europe and the alpine region already mostly run on hydro. Southern Europe has good solar potential. And the continent is very compact, so distributing the electricity can be done quite cheaply, since the distances are small. That seems like a pretty good setup for a clean energy future to me.
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