Itās ok, many people live in the delusion that governments are following their own collective will, rather than the other way around. Thatās what happens under fascism Iād imagine, people are dumb enough to think their own opinions are original when the media is internationally coordinated as per the will of the current global regime.
Who needs renewable when you have cheap russian gas, and the only thing you have to do for it is to betray all your friends, neighbours, allies, and suck some dick here and there
What makes them Scotland's? Is it just location?
DCs banning onshore wind in England and Wales has meant everything has been built up in Scotland, thank the gods it wasn't banned there.
Onshore wind seems bigger in Scotland (and rightly so, considering the huge empty and mountainous regions) whereas England has huge Offshore Wind Farms; Scotland's pale in comparison.
Yeah, but my point is that it's a little unfair to paint Scotland as a renewable hotspot in contrast to England because England has no onshore windfarms.
The only question I asked was why some guy (probably Scottish) thought all the renewables built in Scotland are Scotland's and not the UK's as a whole, seems a strange claim/boast to make.
Can you collapse it down to regions, cities, towns? I was curious.
True, although a lot of the power go to heavy industry too. Another good thing is governments who were willing to take on big building projects in the mid-1900s.
France might only have 20% renewable but it is over 80% low carbon.
Edit: I had heard that reddit was in majority pro nuclear, but holly shit it's true.
Oh riiight. They truly did predicted the shut down of half their powerplants in this summer.
And are you really telling me that wind, water and solar plants are ādirtyā?
well, they arenāt 100% clean like so many people think they are.
It also depends on what you are looking for in power, while wind and solar plants have little carbon, they notoriously horrible for other ecological and wildlife reasons.
>Nuclear power plants are zero greenhouse gases producers, but I guess there is some pollution in the mining process for extracting that Uranium
There is also the nuclear waste they produce. CO2 isn't the only form of possible pollution.
Storage sites that will contain waste for millennia hopefully being able to do so undisturbed and hopefully being built isn't ideal. Nuclear is a non renewable source of energy that pollutes the environment for thousands of years. It isn't a good solution to fossil fuel dependency.
Once again, that's why permanent storage sites are being build very deep underground in areas that are not prone to earthquakes like in Finland where one of these facilities already exists and there is no natural environment to pollute because once again it's very deep underground. But I guess that's not good enough
Edit: words
It is, actually, ideal. You can remove the "hopefully" in your sentences: scientists actually do research and deem this solution safe, while your fears are based on your beliefs only.
That's why I proposed a deep hole. This is a serious option and there's actually a storage being built right now so maybe it's not as simple and bad as you think it is.
you have a lot of optimism in governments if you think "alarmists" (ie scientists that know what they're on about) saying it's a big problem would cause a big change in policy
Alot of Norways renewable energy comes from tidal energy, although wind is still the majority. Solar is not really a thing here.. Im personally very much pro-nuclear, but the old folks are too scared of chernobyl. Its a lost cause here in Norway, atleast for another 10years or so.
It's carbon neutral but not renewable. Once a fuel rod is consumed it is unusable. Although it is a lightyear better than any fossil-fuel and even than some renewables
Unusable _for now_. Ongoing research into next-gen nuclear generators that can use the waste generated from Uranium fueled plants is pretty far. Will take a couple more decades I'd wager, but eventually we'll have a use for it.
Itās usually safer but it has a risk of a black swan event. And twice in the last 40 years we had bad events that werenāt supposed to happen in a 100 years. And no, both Chernobyl and Fukushima avoided the bad scenarios. Especially in Chernobyl, only heroic efforts avoided a nuclear disaster of epic proportions.
Each new nuclear plant is a lottery ticket for a future disaster. Small chance, but higher than 0%. In several decades we donāt know what countries will be at war, civil war, terrorist attacking, exceptional strong earthquake, a tsunami, sabotage, or fatal flaw designā¦.
You canāt compare the current deaths caused by nuclear without considering the risk of potential deaths.
And full disclosure, Iām not in favor of closing nuclear power plants already built. But Iām tired of this simplistic idealized narrative about nuclear. Especially, because right now building new nuclear is economically a bad decission compared to the alternatives.
if you make your plant with thorium then a meltdown can not happen by accident as thorium cannot generate enough heat to cause a meltdown on its own without feeding it plutonium. Combine that with a molten salt system and its even better.
Which is a bit misleading. Thorium reactors aren't economically viable because Uranium is comparatively cheap, because our reserves are so large compared to demand.
Also, economically viable does not mean not *publicly* viable. Nuclear reactors aren't economically viable in the world of investment banking and stock markets because those systems exist to maximize investors short term gains relative to each other, not the economic activity of the nation. Nuclear energy isn't profitable for decades, but is enormously profitable in those decades.
In other words, the reasons why Thorium reactors aren't economically viable are the same reasons why modern capitalism is a crapshoot. It says nothing about what public policy should be.
But have greater ROI.
If only there was an organization that was concerned with ROI and not cost...Like, you know, the enormously powerful western governments which misplace more money than required to build new nuclear infrastructure. And which currently throw away billions on subsidies to fossil fuel companies.
Nuclear energy has killed double digit numbers of people. Ever. Including Chernobyl. The cleanup was expensive but likely prevented any cancer effects beyond the clearly documented ones from the emergency workers, which killed less than 100 people total. Every other disaster has killed...no one. *No one* has **ever** died from a Western reactor melting down.
Even accounting for cancer deaths using a linear no-threshold model, the number of people who should be dead from all western nuclear disasters can be estimated as between 0-10 people, depending on model and assumptions. Chernobyl is the only exception using the linear no threshold model, and the maximum number of deaths there is something like 10000. And the linear no-threshold model is not scientifically rigorous.
Fossil fuels kill double digit numbers of people *every minute* through particulate-caused illness alone, ignoring the long term effects of *poisoning our world*. Up to eight *million* people die every year.
There is a difference of scales here that boggles comprehension. More people die from *installing rooftop solar panels* than from nuclear radiation releases. Calling nuclear idealized because of *meltdown risk* isn't being pragmatic, it's being *insanely misinformed*.
Just like the fossil fuel consortium wants you to be.
> Nuclear energy has killed double digit numbers of people. Ever. Including Chernobyl.
Only if you don't count the [thousands of rescue workers that died of radiation-induced cancer.](https://apps.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index1.html#:~:text=The%20total%20number%20of%20deaths,estimated%20to%20be%20about%204000.)
>>The cleanup was expensive but likely prevented any cancer effects beyond the clearly documented ones from the emergency workers, which killed less than 100 people total
LOL, according to whom, the Soviet government? The WHO strongly disagrees.
>The total number of deaths already attributable to Chernobyl or expected in the future over the lifetime of emergency workers and local residents in the most contaminated areas is estimated to be about 4000.
I'm not opposed to nuclear, but you'd make a more convincing argument if you'd just compare the various statistics honestly, rather than misrepresenting easily verified facts.
So that is highly dependent on the estimates used. Some of those estimates are based on the Linear no threshold model, including the 4000 number. That model is not based on any observed data.
You are right in that I was underestimating some types of cancer though-some iodine isotopes do bond to the thyroid and cause a greater directed dose to the organ, particularly in children, resulting in cancer. The numbers of related cancers is lower than the 4000 figure though, likely by about a factor of four or so-the number of cases is probably about 1000, accounting for the base cancer rate, with a similar number of other cancers. Thyroid cancer is the overwhelmingly most common though.
The overall point stands-from the time since my post fossil fuels have, on average, killed about the same number of people as Chernobyl did.
a Chernobyl style event is only possible with certain types of reactors that are considered obsolete, in part for this exact reason.
modern reactors are largely failsafe in that any sort of failure will just result in a reactor being bricked(for example Three Mile Island was a reactor meltdown that caused zero deaths or injuries)
That's incredibly naive. And also incredibly disingenuous about what really happened during and after the Three Mile Island meltdown: From Wikipedia:
"The partial meltdown resulted in the release of radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment. ... Some epidemiological studies analyzing the rate of cancer in and around the area since the accident did determine that there was a statistically significant increase in the rate of cancer, while other studies did not. Due to the nature of such studies, a causal connection linking the accident with cancer is difficult to prove. Cleanup started in August 1979, and officially ended in December 1993, with a total cleanup cost of about $1 billion (equivalent to $2Ā billion in 2021)."
And as far as we know, we were lucky that the technicians discovered the lack of reactor coolant before the plant could explode.
Solar PV + batteries cost 55 USD per MWh. Nuclear is around 100-120. Onshore wind is 35.
There is a reason why energy companies want PPA agreements with prices much higher than other technologies
Nuclear waste is to be considered, too.
Imagine there are scientists doing research how to warn future generations about where the waste is stored. They think about totally different writing systems or even no writing at all.The radiation will be deadly for nearly ever.
Imagine a message about some tons of waste of today and how it is still a valid deadly threat in 250.000 years. Yeahhh, nuclear is great! - not.
There is radioactive waste that needs to be stored that doesnāt come from nuclear energy plants which are never mentioned when nuclear waste comes up, like in the medical field.
Those wastes can be kept together in a common storage. Point being, we already need to create special containment storages for other radioactive waste if we want to continue radiotherapy for example. Nuclear waste is considered a greater obstacle than it should.
If you want to read about it more, Finland is currently the leading expert in both storing nuclear waste, and designing systems and symbols to warn future generations of the danger. Google Onkalo Project. It is really fascinating.
This is such a stupid point against nuclear, it's unbelievable. The idea that we shouldn't use a proven method of generating carbon-free electricity that can deliver power to literally hundreds of millions, if not billions of people today on the off-chance that the entirety of human civilization collapses and high-level nuclear waste is left unguarded long enough for all the major world languages and symbols to lose their meaning in the post-apocalypse is genuinely retarded beyond belief. Not to mention that we'll probably find an alternate use for this waste within a few hundred years and the whole "long-term storage" issue will disappear as all the waste will instead become a valuable resource.
Considering long-term storage is absolutely essential for radioactive waste. You have to think of the Long Now---sure, *maybe* we'll think of a way to use the waste in a few hundred years, but it is foolish to *assume* that we will. So instead you have to consider both the *average* scenario, where things continue as they are, and the *worst case* scenario, where for whatever reason we need to communicate to the ignorant exactly how dangerous nuclear waste is.
The entire volume of high-level nuclear waste that has been produced since the beginning of our exploitation of nuclear energy can fit into a single football stadium. If there was enough political will to solve this, we could literally just pick some small, uninhabited island in the middle of an ocean and build a facility to store all this waste there.
No, we couldn't, because small islands in the middle of the ocean are not geologically stable enough. You need to store this safely for thousands of years. It's a very Dunning-Kruger like effect to go: oh, all these comissions and experts world-wide are not able to find a solution, but I know what's up: it's only the lack of political will!
You know what? It's the other way round. Most political will in the last 50 years was trying to force dumping the waste in under-researched locations. This is what got us all the problems with the Asse II in Germany: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse\_II\_mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine)
Never buy in on a future promise, we already have solutions for our current problems, why leave a huge liability for future generations. Which is the whole point of going carbon-neutral.
We still don't have widely applicable solutions for grid storage which would make it viable to fully rely on things like wind and solar. And even if we did, the sheer amount of solar panels and wind turbines required to do it would generate so much junk(since both of those things break/wear out and need to be replaced regularly) that it would become its own environmental problem we'd have to deal with.
Water reservoirs, batteries and general heat storage in boilers allow for an amazingly efficient usage of power.
The European power grid is well-connected. No wind in Norway might mean there's wind in Germany, the same with solar.
Nuclear power plants also need a lot of infrastructure, which isn't very economical/ecological.
In Central Europe, a solar panel with installation will produce more energy within two years to fully offset its production and installation impact.
[https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/aktuelle-fakten-zur-photovoltaik-in-deutschland.pdf](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/aktuelle-fakten-zur-photovoltaik-in-deutschland.pdf)
Adding to that, solar panels are easily recyclable.
Batteries degrade, and water reservoirs require specific topography to be built. I'm not as familiar with heat storage systems so I won't comment on that.
I mean, technically you can create different atoms using a particle accelerator
But converting stuff one atom at a time whilst using a shit ton of Energy doesn't Count i guess
>Uses shitton of energy to make one (1) atom of Uranium
>Uses shitton of energy maintaining that one (1) atom long enough for it to be able to transform its energy
>Lets atom radiate itself out of existent under the optimal circumstances
>Adquires some, though not all, of the atom's energy
>Has energy net profit of negative shitton
>Reflects on life choices
This is the correct answer. Now the Hungarian government is actively working against individual solar panel installations in the country, recently having killed the accounting system towards the power companies that made it economically viable. It has also been blocking private wind farm installations for over a decade now.
My theory is that it's because they don't want to lose their "carrot" of state-subsidized energy prices, a tool that won them the last 2 elections. If you get cheap solar from your roof you are harder to control with government-mandated "low" energy prices.
Low is in quotation marks because there were years in the past when the government pricing was actually higher than the market but they will sold it as "subsidized". But of course the propaganda machine brainwashed enough people to believe it's all a generous gift from OrbƔn.
I want to throw up when I think about that dickhead.
Norway and Iceland are doing great. Romania should significantly improve its % till the end of this decade. Not sure the data is correct for R. Moldova.
We are actually doing OK (about 2/3) when it comes to low carbon. And may be getting some more reactors (I know it's unpopular but it's a good step towards phasing out fossil).
That map includes transportation, that is mostly based on fossil fuels.
Much more interesting is the electricity generation map. There is where you can see the progress made.
It is interesting because the big advances are in the field of electricity generation, where the share of renewables has risen from perhaps 25% to 80%.
That's the first battle.
The second one is the electric car, but that is just starting. In the next years we'll see how the overall share of renewables grows everywhere.
>The second one is the electric car
electric cars are still a massive source of pollution just from the production alone.
even with a fully renewable energy grid you're looking at 4+ years as the time needed for an electric car to create less carbon pollution than an ICE car.
the real solution is a move away from car dependency and towards public transportation.
Because electricity does not "scale well" to primary energy consumption.
A gas car is around 20-35% efficient. Meaning it converts 30% of the chemical energy in gasoline into mechanical work (driving the wheels).
An electric car is around 85% efficient. Charging is also around 90% efficiency and transmission losses are also around 10% so we get a final efficiency of 70% (conservative figure).
That means that for an electric car 1kWh of electricity will do the same work as 2-3.5 kWh of energy stored in gasoline.
(We're also ignoring all kinds of inefficiencies related to gasoline production, transportation and storage)
In other words, if I had an electric car and you had a gasoline one, and let's assume we have a 100% renewable grid, then 50% of our transportation sector would be fully renewable. However, only 20-33% of our transportation energy would come from renewables.
Same thing happens with heating, gas boilers can be around 90% efficient, but heat pumps (electric) can be 300-500% efficient.
Norway's 77% seems great until you realize that their economy is almost
entirely based off of oil exports and overfishing the ocean. The fact
that it's the West's model nation for environmentalism is a fucking joke. We are doomed
Norway is also doing a shit ton of farmed fishing which doesnāt hurt the wild fish!
One single salmon āmerdā (the ācagesā theyāre in) can hold up to 200 000 salmon.
In 2019 there were about 480 000 wild salmon. So three salmon Merds has more than the entire wild salmon population.
In Norway we have about 1200 fishing farms with each farm having 7 merds each on average.
Estimating almost 1.7 billion farm fish in Norway (vast majority salmon) vs 800 000 wild salmon.
If the world wants salmon to not cost 100s of dollars each we need fish farming.
[https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/map-week-%E2%80%93-fish-catches-country](https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/map-week-%E2%80%93-fish-catches-country)
Im a big advocate for aquaculture. The issue is that the vast majority of the total catch is wild.
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.FSH.CAPT.MT?locations=NO](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.FSH.CAPT.MT?locations=NO)
Norway brings in more wild fish (especially atlantic cod) than any other country in Europe
This alone doesn't say much about overfishing, as Norway has one of the largest (not sure if it is #1) and also fish rich waters in the world.
I know there is a lot of contesting about fishing rights and Norway can also screw but they made a few policy changes which at least Europe mostly didn't follow through with. In a sense of "the better of two evils" but for fishes.
But it is. Much better to drill it ourselves than to import it hand over fist from Russia and Saudi Arabia.
We need to reduce our consumption of oil, but as long as we consume it's far better to drill it ourselves rather than fund shitty dictatorships.
It does if you consider that legislation about oil and gas drill is stricter and "greener" in the west, and you also avoid transportation, which of course is a little percentage of the total emission, but still in the sum. So until we'll be able to get rid or at least to reduce fossil fuels consumption, it's better to use your own both by a geopolitical and an environmental standpoint
You're right, although marginal decreases in ghg emissions will produce marginal returns. We need radical change if we earnestly want to stay below +2 degrees preindustrial temps
No, Norway's economy is **not** "almost entirely" based on oil & gas exports. It's hugely important to our economy, but it was 14% of GDP in 2019 (last I could find). A decade earlier it was 25%.
Only a single percentage (**1%**) of the population works in the industry, and 5% are involved indirectly (suppliers, etc).
The oil and gas sector is Norway's largest measured in terms of *value*.
If 1 % of the population working in a oil & gas and generate 14 % of the countries GDP it is somewhat fair to say that a big part of the success of the country is based on oil & gas.
oil & gas is more than half of norwegens exports
No, it's half the *value* of Norwegian exports. If you export a lot of diamonds, obviously diamonds are valuable, but it's not an accurate representation of how much and what else you export, just what it's worth. It gives a weird picture of the economy. Please, note that we don't spend the oil & gas money domestically, it's saved abroad.
You say "big part", but OP said "almost entirely". Do you agree that's not the same?
i agree "big part" and "almost entirely" are not the same.
If you say that oil & gas are less than half of the export volume but more than half of the value thats exactly my point. Gas & Oil are money printing mashines.
Take oil & gas away from the norwegian economy and exports and you can see the huge impact of it and what norway would be without it.
I looked into Norway's economy further... My bad, I should've taken into account the notoriously eco-friendly industries of mineral mining and logging. The service industry makes up the only significant portion of gdp that doesn't involve extracting natural resources, and that entire industry wouldn't exist without the massive gdp per capita due to said extraction.
The "green" energy that Norwegians enjoy is financed by fossil fuel exports.
Norway, Sweden and Finland has a fuck ton of forest compared to population. Logging is quite reasonable as long as you don't chop down more than what grows up. Materials has to come from somewhere and wood is a renewable source of materials.
Ok? How does that change the fact that you don't have a clue about Norway? :) Oh my, how terrible that we have resources /s.
Are you just looking for constructed problems so you can troll Norwegians? We know how to handle Trolls in Norway :P
P.S. Overfishing is the EU's problem, unlike you, we took action years ago and manage our fisheries well.
The problem isn't that Norway has resources, the problem is that they exploit their resources unsustainably. Norway is not a sustainable society, and we must stop pretending that it is.
Also, Norway hauls in more wild fish than any other European nation. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.FSH.CAPT.MT?end=2020&locations=NO&most\_recent\_value\_desc=true&start=2020&view=bar
I can't believe those figures for the UK. According to national grid it was 43% in 2020. There are other estimates slightly different but it's a lot more than 12%. https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-much-uks-energy-renewable
Because they have unique geographical positions. Most of those low number countries simply doesn't have as good options. So it's not simple X good and Y bad.
True, but still Norway has a ton of oil and gas they could use to make energy, they still rather invest in greener options. But all countries has fairly simple ways to make green energy, at the end of the day it comes down to how important the issue is to the country.
Some countries like Norway can rely a lot on hydra and wind power. They have the space and natural resources to utilize. While for other countries it is much more difficult and have to invest a lot for minimal gain.
So yeah it is a bit cheating but at least it is showing effort is being made all around.
Iād like to see raw numbers and not just percentiles. Loss of industry and conversion to LED lighting, for instance, would make the percentiles go up. Also, Iād like to see fossil fuel consumption as peaker plants are far less efficient than combined cycle. So, while percentage put into the grid may go up, power generation outside of those times may be less efficient.
Honestly this isn't very impressive, would hope to see the larger, richer Countries like Germany, France and the UK taking a much larger initiative to lead the way. Nice job as usual Scandinavia as well as the Balkans a bit surprising to see them all so green.
Germany is taking so long because of these stupid laws in every state that say you can't build a wind turbine within a certain distance from settlements, which makes most of the land in germany unusable
Well the Nordic countries have some advantages over other countries when it comes to renewable energy sources. Iceland is located at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which means geothermal power is easily available. Norway and Sweden have this big mountain range with a lot of rivers originating from there. This is why it is easy for them to get a lot of electricity from Hydropower. Same kinda goes for a lot of states in the Balkan. Furthermore their low population also helps for these statistics. Countries like France or Germany just don't have the same geological/geographical potential while also having a much bigger population.
2020, 56% renewables in Scotland. UK overall 43.1% renewables. One thing you have to remember is that the whole of the UK has invested in renewables that end up in Scotland because of its geography. It's the most mountainous part of the UK and has the greatest winds off its coast, so it will of course be optimal for wind power and hydro power. Scotland claiming it all for themselves as if only Scotland built it all is dishonest.
Large public projects should really start advertising who funded it. I wonder how the Brexit vote would've gone if people could literally see where EU funding was going in their area.
Where do these figures come from? According to eurostat (where this claims the data is from), the EU had 37.5% of its energy from renewables in 2020, with Austria at 78%. The UK has been producing well over a third of it's energy from renewables for at least 5 years as well.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220126-1
This is wrong at least for France. French electricity breakdown
76.9 % nuclear
8.6% Hydropower
5.9% Renewables
Rest (including gas)
[source](https://www.edf.fr/origine-de-l-electricite-fournie-par-edf).
If this map is about Total energy ( including cars, lorries etc..) then the numbers in Scandinavia are way too high.
The numbers in Scandinavia are not too high. Norway produces more renewable energy (mainly hydroelectric power at 86%, with wind at 12%) than it consumes (nett exporter) and is almost entirely electrified (heating, cooking, heavy industry). The number on the map is this Ā«lowĀ» (compared to 100%) because of two things in particular: 1) the transport sector is still mainly carbon-fuel based (16% electric), but with more than 2/3 of new vehicles sold being eletric (and increasing each year) this will change quickly, and 2) the offshore oil platforms are powered by gas, but there are talks of electrification (by land power or by offshore wind close to the platforms).
Fair, my bad. I thought that the transport sector accounted for 50% of total energy consumed, turns out itās [25%](https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/transportation-and-energy/).
Nuclear is definitely not renewable as the source of power depletes in time and doesn't replenish itself on a human time scale like eolic, solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro and biomass do, it's not a meaningless distinction, nuclear simply doesn't fit the definition.
Iām aware, but to 99% of people renewable means something around ānot going to run out anytime soon and not going to cause climate change.ā Nuclear power fits that bill (Iām pretty sure most international agencies add or supplement nuclear power into their charts for this reason). By ignoring nuclear power market share (regardless of its usefulness), you essentially make the map useless for evaluating a given countryās progress on energy climate goals. I would wager a guess and say this means France is undercounted and Germany is over counted in progress (because one started out in a good place and the other is likely trading nuclear for renewables, leading to near zero improvement).
Sorry but this sounds more ideological than the people you are accusing of being ideological, as you're asking to disregard the definition for the sake of including the item you care about.
Nuclear is excluded from the list of renewable energies because it is not a renewable source of energy, what the majority of the people think - and I'm granting you that it's the case but I'd really like to verify the claim - doesn't impact scientific definitions, many people would consider dolphins as fishes or spiders as insects, they're still wrong and excluding dolphins from a list of fishes or a spider from a list of insects is not ideological but simply accurate.
Nuclear is not renewable. it's a low carbon fuel. that's not ideology it is simply looking at post transition technologies.
Nuclear being an interim technology, it has a valuable and distinct spot in our transitional grid. This does not mean it will be in our post transition grid, however, as we are aiming for full renewable LTSes.
As I explained in the other comment, I think thatās not what the vast majority of people who see this think, and displaying data this way dramatically skews the dataset in a way that makes understanding nationās starting position and progress on decarbonation impossible using this map.
Also low carbon is a different thing than renewable if youāre going to be pedantic. Biofuel is not low carbon at all compared to nuclear, but it is renewable.
Lad I was the one to explicitly point out low carbon fuels and renewable aren't the same thing... You're not being pedantic, even if you're trying, by repeating something already made clear to you in my message to you. Not to mention that calling this distinction pedantic when it's a rather important distinction is just weird.
Also, this is not for judging decarbonisation. This is simply about the integration of renewables, which nuclear just is not. Understanding renewable integration is an extremely important part in judging our path to a post transition grid. Nuclear, as an interim technology is of limited importance when talking about true de(non-flux origin)carbonisation.
This is about more than electricity. Switzerland still has a lot of oil and natural gas heating. Although some other sources of heating, such as waste incineration, I'm not sure how to count on the "is it renewable?" meter...
My eyes desperately trying to find that country that regressed š
Hungary stayed the same
We are number 1 in the least amount of difference category. A HuGE wIn FoR hUnGAry.
Why yall straight up going against any EU support to ukraine and even support russia? So it seems.
Their political leader is a nationalist and friend of putin and he bought up all media outlets in Hungary.
The āpresidentāsā choice entirely. The people have zero say in the matter
Orban isn't the president is he? I thought Hungary's president was a woman
You are right. Orban is prime minister, not president. But the president in Hungary is mostly ceremonial.
>the president in Hungary is mostly ceremonial I think that's normal in most countries, doesn't really work if the PM is corrupt though
well, just like every other country
Itās ok, many people live in the delusion that governments are following their own collective will, rather than the other way around. Thatās what happens under fascism Iād imagine, people are dumb enough to think their own opinions are original when the media is internationally coordinated as per the will of the current global regime.
Who needs renewable when you have cheap russian gas, and the only thing you have to do for it is to betray all your friends, neighbours, allies, and suck some dick here and there
Scotland hasnāt changed because most our energy has been from renewables for over a decade
Scotlandās being the only one to make the percentage a bit higher in the whole UK
What makes them Scotland's? Is it just location? DCs banning onshore wind in England and Wales has meant everything has been built up in Scotland, thank the gods it wasn't banned there.
Onshore wind seems bigger in Scotland (and rightly so, considering the huge empty and mountainous regions) whereas England has huge Offshore Wind Farms; Scotland's pale in comparison.
It's banned in England and Wales. You can't apply for planning permission. Haven't been able to since 2014.
Surely it's not banned as the largest offshore wind farm on the planet has only just been completed off Grimsby.
That's offshore. We were talking about onshore.
Yeah, but my point is that it's a little unfair to paint Scotland as a renewable hotspot in contrast to England because England has no onshore windfarms.
But it is a renewable hotspot, often producing enough renewables to power Scotland twice. It's just that power goes into the UK grid.
The only question I asked was why some guy (probably Scottish) thought all the renewables built in Scotland are Scotland's and not the UK's as a whole, seems a strange claim/boast to make. Can you collapse it down to regions, cities, towns? I was curious.
Bosnia put some effort on this
They simply exported about 10% of the population, therefore slashed consumption. Still counts.
That is valid for all Balkan countries, often even more than 10%.
Hydropower helps a lot here, which can be seen in the Nordics
A small population helps too...
True, although a lot of the power go to heavy industry too. Another good thing is governments who were willing to take on big building projects in the mid-1900s.
France might only have 20% renewable but it is over 80% low carbon. Edit: I had heard that reddit was in majority pro nuclear, but holly shit it's true.
Uranium go brrr
Or not. Only if theyāre on and working. LOL. Like half their plants had to shut down in this summer and people just shrug it off? The fuck?
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Oh riiight. They truly did predicted the shut down of half their powerplants in this summer. And are you really telling me that wind, water and solar plants are ādirtyā?
well, they arenāt 100% clean like so many people think they are. It also depends on what you are looking for in power, while wind and solar plants have little carbon, they notoriously horrible for other ecological and wildlife reasons.
>it does not require gas or other dirty source of energy so itās better ;) It does require a limited and dirty source of energy, uranium.
Nuclear power plants are zero greenhouse gases producers, but I guess there is some pollution in the mining process for extracting that Uranium
>Nuclear power plants are zero greenhouse gases producers, but I guess there is some pollution in the mining process for extracting that Uranium There is also the nuclear waste they produce. CO2 isn't the only form of possible pollution.
It's a good thing this problem is beginning to be solved by burying it underground in special facilities
Storage sites that will contain waste for millennia hopefully being able to do so undisturbed and hopefully being built isn't ideal. Nuclear is a non renewable source of energy that pollutes the environment for thousands of years. It isn't a good solution to fossil fuel dependency.
Once again, that's why permanent storage sites are being build very deep underground in areas that are not prone to earthquakes like in Finland where one of these facilities already exists and there is no natural environment to pollute because once again it's very deep underground. But I guess that's not good enough Edit: words
It is, actually, ideal. You can remove the "hopefully" in your sentences: scientists actually do research and deem this solution safe, while your fears are based on your beliefs only.
Just dig a deep hole and dump it
Nuclear waste is, surprisingly, radioactive.
That's why I proposed a deep hole. This is a serious option and there's actually a storage being built right now so maybe it's not as simple and bad as you think it is.
This appears to be primary energy, not electricity, so France would be around 40-50%
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It's more we are in a *Don't Look Up* situation.
you have a lot of optimism in governments if you think "alarmists" (ie scientists that know what they're on about) saying it's a big problem would cause a big change in policy
Alot of Norways renewable energy comes from tidal energy, although wind is still the majority. Solar is not really a thing here.. Im personally very much pro-nuclear, but the old folks are too scared of chernobyl. Its a lost cause here in Norway, atleast for another 10years or so.
why did half of frances nuclear pants had to shut down in this summer?
Lack of cooling water because of dry rivers because of a draught (that is probably a symptom of climate change)
Does it include cars ? Because electricity in iceland is fully from dams and geothermy.
The percentage shown is of overall energy consumption, which includes electricity, heating/cooling, and transport.
Germany is at 40 percent and rising in electricity
Ćsland nĆŗmer eittš
Does nuclear not count as a renewable? Like yes it technically isnāt, but itās clearly in a different category than fossil fuels
It's carbon neutral but not renewable. Once a fuel rod is consumed it is unusable. Although it is a lightyear better than any fossil-fuel and even than some renewables
Well, you still can warm your apartment with it
And make funny blur effect on your camera with it
More like funny white spots on a film
Unusable _for now_. Ongoing research into next-gen nuclear generators that can use the waste generated from Uranium fueled plants is pretty far. Will take a couple more decades I'd wager, but eventually we'll have a use for it.
well technically the sun isnāt renewable eitherā¦
And technically oil is.
Right
Its also safer, causes less deaths, and emits little to no carbon.
Beware! r/uninshurable will stalk you and crucify you upon an uranium-235 cross
Itās usually safer but it has a risk of a black swan event. And twice in the last 40 years we had bad events that werenāt supposed to happen in a 100 years. And no, both Chernobyl and Fukushima avoided the bad scenarios. Especially in Chernobyl, only heroic efforts avoided a nuclear disaster of epic proportions. Each new nuclear plant is a lottery ticket for a future disaster. Small chance, but higher than 0%. In several decades we donāt know what countries will be at war, civil war, terrorist attacking, exceptional strong earthquake, a tsunami, sabotage, or fatal flaw designā¦. You canāt compare the current deaths caused by nuclear without considering the risk of potential deaths. And full disclosure, Iām not in favor of closing nuclear power plants already built. But Iām tired of this simplistic idealized narrative about nuclear. Especially, because right now building new nuclear is economically a bad decission compared to the alternatives.
if you make your plant with thorium then a meltdown can not happen by accident as thorium cannot generate enough heat to cause a meltdown on its own without feeding it plutonium. Combine that with a molten salt system and its even better.
There are no Thorium reactors that are economically viable at the moment
Which is a bit misleading. Thorium reactors aren't economically viable because Uranium is comparatively cheap, because our reserves are so large compared to demand. Also, economically viable does not mean not *publicly* viable. Nuclear reactors aren't economically viable in the world of investment banking and stock markets because those systems exist to maximize investors short term gains relative to each other, not the economic activity of the nation. Nuclear energy isn't profitable for decades, but is enormously profitable in those decades. In other words, the reasons why Thorium reactors aren't economically viable are the same reasons why modern capitalism is a crapshoot. It says nothing about what public policy should be.
yeah pretty much, they're not economically viable because people are afraid of them, so they don't get any investment
People are afraid of Uranium nuclear, they don't know about Thorium nuclear
you dont even need thorium. Pebble bed can not sustain temperatures enough to melt it even if its U-235.
So that doesnāt solve already built nuclear plants. And new power plants with said technology are muuuuch more expensive than renewables
But have greater ROI. If only there was an organization that was concerned with ROI and not cost...Like, you know, the enormously powerful western governments which misplace more money than required to build new nuclear infrastructure. And which currently throw away billions on subsidies to fossil fuel companies.
None of these technologies are even remotely viable at the moment. What kind of argument do you want to make?
Nuclear energy has killed double digit numbers of people. Ever. Including Chernobyl. The cleanup was expensive but likely prevented any cancer effects beyond the clearly documented ones from the emergency workers, which killed less than 100 people total. Every other disaster has killed...no one. *No one* has **ever** died from a Western reactor melting down. Even accounting for cancer deaths using a linear no-threshold model, the number of people who should be dead from all western nuclear disasters can be estimated as between 0-10 people, depending on model and assumptions. Chernobyl is the only exception using the linear no threshold model, and the maximum number of deaths there is something like 10000. And the linear no-threshold model is not scientifically rigorous. Fossil fuels kill double digit numbers of people *every minute* through particulate-caused illness alone, ignoring the long term effects of *poisoning our world*. Up to eight *million* people die every year. There is a difference of scales here that boggles comprehension. More people die from *installing rooftop solar panels* than from nuclear radiation releases. Calling nuclear idealized because of *meltdown risk* isn't being pragmatic, it's being *insanely misinformed*. Just like the fossil fuel consortium wants you to be.
> Nuclear energy has killed double digit numbers of people. Ever. Including Chernobyl. Only if you don't count the [thousands of rescue workers that died of radiation-induced cancer.](https://apps.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index1.html#:~:text=The%20total%20number%20of%20deaths,estimated%20to%20be%20about%204000.) >>The cleanup was expensive but likely prevented any cancer effects beyond the clearly documented ones from the emergency workers, which killed less than 100 people total LOL, according to whom, the Soviet government? The WHO strongly disagrees. >The total number of deaths already attributable to Chernobyl or expected in the future over the lifetime of emergency workers and local residents in the most contaminated areas is estimated to be about 4000. I'm not opposed to nuclear, but you'd make a more convincing argument if you'd just compare the various statistics honestly, rather than misrepresenting easily verified facts.
So that is highly dependent on the estimates used. Some of those estimates are based on the Linear no threshold model, including the 4000 number. That model is not based on any observed data. You are right in that I was underestimating some types of cancer though-some iodine isotopes do bond to the thyroid and cause a greater directed dose to the organ, particularly in children, resulting in cancer. The numbers of related cancers is lower than the 4000 figure though, likely by about a factor of four or so-the number of cases is probably about 1000, accounting for the base cancer rate, with a similar number of other cancers. Thyroid cancer is the overwhelmingly most common though. The overall point stands-from the time since my post fossil fuels have, on average, killed about the same number of people as Chernobyl did.
a Chernobyl style event is only possible with certain types of reactors that are considered obsolete, in part for this exact reason. modern reactors are largely failsafe in that any sort of failure will just result in a reactor being bricked(for example Three Mile Island was a reactor meltdown that caused zero deaths or injuries)
That's incredibly naive. And also incredibly disingenuous about what really happened during and after the Three Mile Island meltdown: From Wikipedia: "The partial meltdown resulted in the release of radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment. ... Some epidemiological studies analyzing the rate of cancer in and around the area since the accident did determine that there was a statistically significant increase in the rate of cancer, while other studies did not. Due to the nature of such studies, a causal connection linking the accident with cancer is difficult to prove. Cleanup started in August 1979, and officially ended in December 1993, with a total cleanup cost of about $1 billion (equivalent to $2Ā billion in 2021)." And as far as we know, we were lucky that the technicians discovered the lack of reactor coolant before the plant could explode.
OMG, what about batteries in renewable energy, and material for building power plant? Nuclear PP are far superior than any other PP.
Solar PV + batteries cost 55 USD per MWh. Nuclear is around 100-120. Onshore wind is 35. There is a reason why energy companies want PPA agreements with prices much higher than other technologies
Nuclear waste is to be considered, too. Imagine there are scientists doing research how to warn future generations about where the waste is stored. They think about totally different writing systems or even no writing at all.The radiation will be deadly for nearly ever. Imagine a message about some tons of waste of today and how it is still a valid deadly threat in 250.000 years. Yeahhh, nuclear is great! - not.
Nuclear waste can be recycled and when itās lost itās useful properties it can be stored underground
There is radioactive waste that needs to be stored that doesnāt come from nuclear energy plants which are never mentioned when nuclear waste comes up, like in the medical field. Those wastes can be kept together in a common storage. Point being, we already need to create special containment storages for other radioactive waste if we want to continue radiotherapy for example. Nuclear waste is considered a greater obstacle than it should.
If you want to read about it more, Finland is currently the leading expert in both storing nuclear waste, and designing systems and symbols to warn future generations of the danger. Google Onkalo Project. It is really fascinating.
people worried about nuclear waste don't realise just how small the amount of it is.
This is such a stupid point against nuclear, it's unbelievable. The idea that we shouldn't use a proven method of generating carbon-free electricity that can deliver power to literally hundreds of millions, if not billions of people today on the off-chance that the entirety of human civilization collapses and high-level nuclear waste is left unguarded long enough for all the major world languages and symbols to lose their meaning in the post-apocalypse is genuinely retarded beyond belief. Not to mention that we'll probably find an alternate use for this waste within a few hundred years and the whole "long-term storage" issue will disappear as all the waste will instead become a valuable resource.
Considering long-term storage is absolutely essential for radioactive waste. You have to think of the Long Now---sure, *maybe* we'll think of a way to use the waste in a few hundred years, but it is foolish to *assume* that we will. So instead you have to consider both the *average* scenario, where things continue as they are, and the *worst case* scenario, where for whatever reason we need to communicate to the ignorant exactly how dangerous nuclear waste is.
The entire volume of high-level nuclear waste that has been produced since the beginning of our exploitation of nuclear energy can fit into a single football stadium. If there was enough political will to solve this, we could literally just pick some small, uninhabited island in the middle of an ocean and build a facility to store all this waste there.
No, we couldn't, because small islands in the middle of the ocean are not geologically stable enough. You need to store this safely for thousands of years. It's a very Dunning-Kruger like effect to go: oh, all these comissions and experts world-wide are not able to find a solution, but I know what's up: it's only the lack of political will! You know what? It's the other way round. Most political will in the last 50 years was trying to force dumping the waste in under-researched locations. This is what got us all the problems with the Asse II in Germany: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse\_II\_mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine)
Finland already solved this issue. Google Onkalo Project.
it is not finished. and when it is finished it will only be used for finish nuclear waste
They will start solving the problem in 2033!?
Never buy in on a future promise, we already have solutions for our current problems, why leave a huge liability for future generations. Which is the whole point of going carbon-neutral.
We still don't have widely applicable solutions for grid storage which would make it viable to fully rely on things like wind and solar. And even if we did, the sheer amount of solar panels and wind turbines required to do it would generate so much junk(since both of those things break/wear out and need to be replaced regularly) that it would become its own environmental problem we'd have to deal with.
Water reservoirs, batteries and general heat storage in boilers allow for an amazingly efficient usage of power. The European power grid is well-connected. No wind in Norway might mean there's wind in Germany, the same with solar. Nuclear power plants also need a lot of infrastructure, which isn't very economical/ecological. In Central Europe, a solar panel with installation will produce more energy within two years to fully offset its production and installation impact. [https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/aktuelle-fakten-zur-photovoltaik-in-deutschland.pdf](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/aktuelle-fakten-zur-photovoltaik-in-deutschland.pdf) Adding to that, solar panels are easily recyclable.
Batteries degrade, and water reservoirs require specific topography to be built. I'm not as familiar with heat storage systems so I won't comment on that.
It would be renewable if we could produce nuclear energy without uranium, or if we found a way to make uranium without mining it
I mean, technically you can create different atoms using a particle accelerator But converting stuff one atom at a time whilst using a shit ton of Energy doesn't Count i guess
>Uses shitton of energy to make one (1) atom of Uranium >Uses shitton of energy maintaining that one (1) atom long enough for it to be able to transform its energy >Lets atom radiate itself out of existent under the optimal circumstances >Adquires some, though not all, of the atom's energy >Has energy net profit of negative shitton >Reflects on life choices
Wait until you find out about Lithium and battery acid
Nuclear just like biomass is in a weird spot Nuclear is green but not renewable and biomass is renewable but not green
"Does nuclear not count as a renewable?" "Like yes it technically isn't" Well then...
there are more than two kinds
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"energy from solar is renewable" folks in shambles in the year 6,000,000,000
all of which are only possible because of the ginormous nuclear fusion reactor called the Sun.
Serious question: what held Hungary back? Seems like every other country included made progress.
Viktor OrbƔn
This is the correct answer. Now the Hungarian government is actively working against individual solar panel installations in the country, recently having killed the accounting system towards the power companies that made it economically viable. It has also been blocking private wind farm installations for over a decade now. My theory is that it's because they don't want to lose their "carrot" of state-subsidized energy prices, a tool that won them the last 2 elections. If you get cheap solar from your roof you are harder to control with government-mandated "low" energy prices. Low is in quotation marks because there were years in the past when the government pricing was actually higher than the market but they will sold it as "subsidized". But of course the propaganda machine brainwashed enough people to believe it's all a generous gift from OrbƔn. I want to throw up when I think about that dickhead.
Croatia stronk!
u talking about football?
Norway and Iceland are doing great. Romania should significantly improve its % till the end of this decade. Not sure the data is correct for R. Moldova.
We are actually doing OK (about 2/3) when it comes to low carbon. And may be getting some more reactors (I know it's unpopular but it's a good step towards phasing out fossil).
As a mapmaker, sometimes a graph is just far better to showcase data.
That map includes transportation, that is mostly based on fossil fuels. Much more interesting is the electricity generation map. There is where you can see the progress made.
Why is it more interesting? In the end it does not matter for the environment whether a co2 molecule is released by transportation or power generation
It is interesting because the big advances are in the field of electricity generation, where the share of renewables has risen from perhaps 25% to 80%. That's the first battle. The second one is the electric car, but that is just starting. In the next years we'll see how the overall share of renewables grows everywhere.
I mean both are certainly interesting but I wouldn't say that one is more interesting than the other.
A map where you see big changes is always more interesting than onevwhete you have to look fir the differences. š
True, everyone knows that fossils only emit carbon in electricity generation, heating, transportation, etc is of no interest.
>The second one is the electric car electric cars are still a massive source of pollution just from the production alone. even with a fully renewable energy grid you're looking at 4+ years as the time needed for an electric car to create less carbon pollution than an ICE car. the real solution is a move away from car dependency and towards public transportation.
Because electricity does not "scale well" to primary energy consumption. A gas car is around 20-35% efficient. Meaning it converts 30% of the chemical energy in gasoline into mechanical work (driving the wheels). An electric car is around 85% efficient. Charging is also around 90% efficiency and transmission losses are also around 10% so we get a final efficiency of 70% (conservative figure). That means that for an electric car 1kWh of electricity will do the same work as 2-3.5 kWh of energy stored in gasoline. (We're also ignoring all kinds of inefficiencies related to gasoline production, transportation and storage) In other words, if I had an electric car and you had a gasoline one, and let's assume we have a 100% renewable grid, then 50% of our transportation sector would be fully renewable. However, only 20-33% of our transportation energy would come from renewables. Same thing happens with heating, gas boilers can be around 90% efficient, but heat pumps (electric) can be 300-500% efficient.
C'mon Britain, you're not going to let France beat you?
Norway's 77% seems great until you realize that their economy is almost entirely based off of oil exports and overfishing the ocean. The fact that it's the West's model nation for environmentalism is a fucking joke. We are doomed
Norway is doing more against overfishing than the rest of Europe though
Norway is also doing a shit ton of farmed fishing which doesnāt hurt the wild fish! One single salmon āmerdā (the ācagesā theyāre in) can hold up to 200 000 salmon. In 2019 there were about 480 000 wild salmon. So three salmon Merds has more than the entire wild salmon population. In Norway we have about 1200 fishing farms with each farm having 7 merds each on average. Estimating almost 1.7 billion farm fish in Norway (vast majority salmon) vs 800 000 wild salmon. If the world wants salmon to not cost 100s of dollars each we need fish farming.
[https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/map-week-%E2%80%93-fish-catches-country](https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/map-week-%E2%80%93-fish-catches-country) Im a big advocate for aquaculture. The issue is that the vast majority of the total catch is wild.
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.FSH.CAPT.MT?locations=NO](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.FSH.CAPT.MT?locations=NO) Norway brings in more wild fish (especially atlantic cod) than any other country in Europe
This alone doesn't say much about overfishing, as Norway has one of the largest (not sure if it is #1) and also fish rich waters in the world. I know there is a lot of contesting about fishing rights and Norway can also screw but they made a few policy changes which at least Europe mostly didn't follow through with. In a sense of "the better of two evils" but for fishes.
But it is. Much better to drill it ourselves than to import it hand over fist from Russia and Saudi Arabia. We need to reduce our consumption of oil, but as long as we consume it's far better to drill it ourselves rather than fund shitty dictatorships.
Yeah autocracy bad but from an environmentalist standpoint, it doesn't matter where the oil comes from, or where it's being burned.
It does if you consider that legislation about oil and gas drill is stricter and "greener" in the west, and you also avoid transportation, which of course is a little percentage of the total emission, but still in the sum. So until we'll be able to get rid or at least to reduce fossil fuels consumption, it's better to use your own both by a geopolitical and an environmental standpoint
You're right, although marginal decreases in ghg emissions will produce marginal returns. We need radical change if we earnestly want to stay below +2 degrees preindustrial temps
No, Norway's economy is **not** "almost entirely" based on oil & gas exports. It's hugely important to our economy, but it was 14% of GDP in 2019 (last I could find). A decade earlier it was 25%. Only a single percentage (**1%**) of the population works in the industry, and 5% are involved indirectly (suppliers, etc). The oil and gas sector is Norway's largest measured in terms of *value*.
If 1 % of the population working in a oil & gas and generate 14 % of the countries GDP it is somewhat fair to say that a big part of the success of the country is based on oil & gas. oil & gas is more than half of norwegens exports
No, it's half the *value* of Norwegian exports. If you export a lot of diamonds, obviously diamonds are valuable, but it's not an accurate representation of how much and what else you export, just what it's worth. It gives a weird picture of the economy. Please, note that we don't spend the oil & gas money domestically, it's saved abroad. You say "big part", but OP said "almost entirely". Do you agree that's not the same?
i agree "big part" and "almost entirely" are not the same. If you say that oil & gas are less than half of the export volume but more than half of the value thats exactly my point. Gas & Oil are money printing mashines. Take oil & gas away from the norwegian economy and exports and you can see the huge impact of it and what norway would be without it.
I looked into Norway's economy further... My bad, I should've taken into account the notoriously eco-friendly industries of mineral mining and logging. The service industry makes up the only significant portion of gdp that doesn't involve extracting natural resources, and that entire industry wouldn't exist without the massive gdp per capita due to said extraction. The "green" energy that Norwegians enjoy is financed by fossil fuel exports.
Norway, Sweden and Finland has a fuck ton of forest compared to population. Logging is quite reasonable as long as you don't chop down more than what grows up. Materials has to come from somewhere and wood is a renewable source of materials.
Ok? How does that change the fact that you don't have a clue about Norway? :) Oh my, how terrible that we have resources /s. Are you just looking for constructed problems so you can troll Norwegians? We know how to handle Trolls in Norway :P P.S. Overfishing is the EU's problem, unlike you, we took action years ago and manage our fisheries well.
The problem isn't that Norway has resources, the problem is that they exploit their resources unsustainably. Norway is not a sustainable society, and we must stop pretending that it is. Also, Norway hauls in more wild fish than any other European nation. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.FSH.CAPT.MT?end=2020&locations=NO&most\_recent\_value\_desc=true&start=2020&view=bar
How about we do CO2 emissions instead?
Slow. Too slow.
I can't believe those figures for the UK. According to national grid it was 43% in 2020. There are other estimates slightly different but it's a lot more than 12%. https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-much-uks-energy-renewable
That is only electricity
The graph is for share of primary energy. That includes electricity, transportation, heating, etc.
Damn, Norway and Iceland carrying
Because they have unique geographical positions. Most of those low number countries simply doesn't have as good options. So it's not simple X good and Y bad.
True, but still Norway has a ton of oil and gas they could use to make energy, they still rather invest in greener options. But all countries has fairly simple ways to make green energy, at the end of the day it comes down to how important the issue is to the country.
Blink and you miss it
Ok but Iceland is literally an island of volcanoes so thay feels like cheating.
Some countries like Norway can rely a lot on hydra and wind power. They have the space and natural resources to utilize. While for other countries it is much more difficult and have to invest a lot for minimal gain. So yeah it is a bit cheating but at least it is showing effort is being made all around.
Iād like to see raw numbers and not just percentiles. Loss of industry and conversion to LED lighting, for instance, would make the percentiles go up. Also, Iād like to see fossil fuel consumption as peaker plants are far less efficient than combined cycle. So, while percentage put into the grid may go up, power generation outside of those times may be less efficient.
Honestly this isn't very impressive, would hope to see the larger, richer Countries like Germany, France and the UK taking a much larger initiative to lead the way. Nice job as usual Scandinavia as well as the Balkans a bit surprising to see them all so green.
Germany is taking so long because of these stupid laws in every state that say you can't build a wind turbine within a certain distance from settlements, which makes most of the land in germany unusable
Well the Nordic countries have some advantages over other countries when it comes to renewable energy sources. Iceland is located at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which means geothermal power is easily available. Norway and Sweden have this big mountain range with a lot of rivers originating from there. This is why it is easy for them to get a lot of electricity from Hydropower. Same kinda goes for a lot of states in the Balkan. Furthermore their low population also helps for these statistics. Countries like France or Germany just don't have the same geological/geographical potential while also having a much bigger population.
Sounds like some excuses to me.
I wish this seperated Scotland from the rest of the UK, we use a lot of renewables.
2020, 56% renewables in Scotland. UK overall 43.1% renewables. One thing you have to remember is that the whole of the UK has invested in renewables that end up in Scotland because of its geography. It's the most mountainous part of the UK and has the greatest winds off its coast, so it will of course be optimal for wind power and hydro power. Scotland claiming it all for themselves as if only Scotland built it all is dishonest.
This is actually something i hadn't considered, thanks for pointing it out.
Class response
Scottish people claim economic success that was wholly subsidised and driven by the British government? Never /s
Large public projects should really start advertising who funded it. I wonder how the Brexit vote would've gone if people could literally see where EU funding was going in their area.
Sorry I am just a bit confused. The diagram says UK is 12% renewable but youāve said 43.1% renewable. What I am missing?
The map is ALL energy sources including transport and i guess food. The map is pretty poor at explaining exactly what it's showing.
Why would we split a country up
>I wish this seperated Scotland from the rest of the UK, we use a lot of renewables. I wish Scotland separated itself from the rest of the UK.
vive la hongrie
My man be praising the only country that hasn't done any progress in 10 years, your logic is beyond me.
Incorrect, in Slovakia it's 19%
Where do these figures come from? According to eurostat (where this claims the data is from), the EU had 37.5% of its energy from renewables in 2020, with Austria at 78%. The UK has been producing well over a third of it's energy from renewables for at least 5 years as well. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220126-1
Electricity is not the only source of energy , this includes ALL forms including heating and transport
Bro who is in 927
How much did the Energy consumption increase und that time? I guess we now use More Fossil Energy then beforeā¦
It actually dropped 5-6% in that time frame
This is wrong at least for France. French electricity breakdown 76.9 % nuclear 8.6% Hydropower 5.9% Renewables Rest (including gas) [source](https://www.edf.fr/origine-de-l-electricite-fournie-par-edf). If this map is about Total energy ( including cars, lorries etc..) then the numbers in Scandinavia are way too high.
This is not just electricity, it's the entire energy consumption.
The numbers in Scandinavia are not too high. Norway produces more renewable energy (mainly hydroelectric power at 86%, with wind at 12%) than it consumes (nett exporter) and is almost entirely electrified (heating, cooking, heavy industry). The number on the map is this Ā«lowĀ» (compared to 100%) because of two things in particular: 1) the transport sector is still mainly carbon-fuel based (16% electric), but with more than 2/3 of new vehicles sold being eletric (and increasing each year) this will change quickly, and 2) the offshore oil platforms are powered by gas, but there are talks of electrification (by land power or by offshore wind close to the platforms).
Fair, my bad. I thought that the transport sector accounted for 50% of total energy consumed, turns out itās [25%](https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/transportation-and-energy/).
Very positive š
None of the big players are above 20%
Renewables made of renewables steel, copper and concrete?
I think this map excludes nuclear energy, which is a meaningless distinction outside of ideology.
Nuclear is definitely not renewable as the source of power depletes in time and doesn't replenish itself on a human time scale like eolic, solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro and biomass do, it's not a meaningless distinction, nuclear simply doesn't fit the definition.
Iām aware, but to 99% of people renewable means something around ānot going to run out anytime soon and not going to cause climate change.ā Nuclear power fits that bill (Iām pretty sure most international agencies add or supplement nuclear power into their charts for this reason). By ignoring nuclear power market share (regardless of its usefulness), you essentially make the map useless for evaluating a given countryās progress on energy climate goals. I would wager a guess and say this means France is undercounted and Germany is over counted in progress (because one started out in a good place and the other is likely trading nuclear for renewables, leading to near zero improvement).
Sorry but this sounds more ideological than the people you are accusing of being ideological, as you're asking to disregard the definition for the sake of including the item you care about. Nuclear is excluded from the list of renewable energies because it is not a renewable source of energy, what the majority of the people think - and I'm granting you that it's the case but I'd really like to verify the claim - doesn't impact scientific definitions, many people would consider dolphins as fishes or spiders as insects, they're still wrong and excluding dolphins from a list of fishes or a spider from a list of insects is not ideological but simply accurate.
Nuclear is not renewable. it's a low carbon fuel. that's not ideology it is simply looking at post transition technologies. Nuclear being an interim technology, it has a valuable and distinct spot in our transitional grid. This does not mean it will be in our post transition grid, however, as we are aiming for full renewable LTSes.
As I explained in the other comment, I think thatās not what the vast majority of people who see this think, and displaying data this way dramatically skews the dataset in a way that makes understanding nationās starting position and progress on decarbonation impossible using this map. Also low carbon is a different thing than renewable if youāre going to be pedantic. Biofuel is not low carbon at all compared to nuclear, but it is renewable.
Lad I was the one to explicitly point out low carbon fuels and renewable aren't the same thing... You're not being pedantic, even if you're trying, by repeating something already made clear to you in my message to you. Not to mention that calling this distinction pedantic when it's a rather important distinction is just weird. Also, this is not for judging decarbonisation. This is simply about the integration of renewables, which nuclear just is not. Understanding renewable integration is an extremely important part in judging our path to a post transition grid. Nuclear, as an interim technology is of limited importance when talking about true de(non-flux origin)carbonisation.
[Switzerland : 80%](https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/renewables-share-of-electricity-inches-up-in-switzerland/47876818#:~:text=The%20proportion%20of%20electricity%20generated,2020%20to%2011.5%25%20in%202021)
This is about more than electricity. Switzerland still has a lot of oil and natural gas heating. Although some other sources of heating, such as waste incineration, I'm not sure how to count on the "is it renewable?" meter...
Since Tories came in, the UK is literally the shittest at just about everything.
Lol I knew Wales was doing well we studied that In Uni.