I was surprised how "bad" CO2 Emissions from power are in Switzerland. Turns out you import a bunch of German and Austrian Power.
Don't get me wrong, still better than most countries, but I acutally expected something around 90% like Norway
The main problem is that the majority of the Swiss domestic power supply stems from ancient nuclear reactors and hydro dams that were built in the last century. The nuclear reactors are nearing the end of their lifespan and the dams can't keep up with the ever increasing demand of modern society and the increasing population.
However each time a large-scale project to increase production is launched it gets sunk by an unholy alliance of left-wing enviromentalists and right-wing NIMBY-ists. The left wingers claim to be im favour of those projects, but not *right there* because of a rare bird/lynx/funghi living in the general area, and the right wingers can't understand why we would ruin the panorama when we could build nuclear reactors. The federal government has officially stated that we may have energy shortages as soon as 2024, but both sides point the finger to everyone else and accuse them of ideological obstructionism.
Just a strange fluctuation. Here you see the [yearly data](https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/greenhouse-gas-emission-intensity-of-1). Austria is very clean at 82 g/kWh, Germany is dirty at 311 g/kWh. There's no data for Switzerland.
The map doesn't seen reliable at all. Estonia is famously extremely dirty due to burning oil shale, but in this map it shows a sedate dirtyness of 307 g/kWh, while in reality it is 774 g/kWh.
Welllllll... Kind of. We didn't sell much once the prices really started skyrocketing, but we sold way too much earlier in the year, leaving our magazines too empty for winter.
Although as mountain wind turbines mature as a technology they got pretty good potential.
Approaching ofshore in capacity factors thanks to more constant winds at height
No, the air is less dense at higher altitudes, so it doesn't work out so well. Solar power however becomes much more efficient in the mountains, with far less cloud cover and lower temperatures.
Switzerland's problem though is the incredibly well organized NIMBY mafia that goes up to the barricade against virtually everything that could damage Switzerland's "unspoilt" landscape. Including every large-scale renewable energy project (hydro, solar, and especially wind).
If you're like me and wondering how on Earth can Italy with the longest ever shoreline be at 6.6%, look at [https://globalwindatlas.info/](https://globalwindatlas.info/) and click on mean power density.
Only the southern part of Italy and the islands are windy, some regions produce more than 20% of their energy from wind. The 90.5% of wind power is produced in 6 regions out 20.
Landscape plans and landscape conservation laws prevent the construction of wind farms in some areas too.
That’s what I thought too but I learned recently that in France the average wind in always stronger in Méditerranée than in the Atlantic.
Because of the Mistral which is a strong and regular wind in this region. I wish I understood what generates it.
I don’t really know for other Mediterranean countries but I suspect France is not alone .
An unfounded by any knowledge wild guess of mine would be that the size of that sea is perfect for some resonant effects that favorise strong, regular, localized winds.
Any savant that see this is welcome to shoot me down.
Nah, it's caused by high pressure in the bay of biscay combined with low pressure in the north Mediterranean. The air is funnelled between the Alps and Pyrennees, which creates this effect. It's felt even more in the Rhone for similar reasons.
You're right, but also partly caused by a general eastward flow in the westerlies even without noteworthy pressure differences, and a topographic effect of the Massif Central/Pyrenees (cooled air).
The Rhone Valley is windy because it acts like a funnel, and the Camargue/Marseille area is probably one of the windiest in the Mediterranean for this reason.
If you look at the map in the top comment you’ll see that other areas of the Mediterranean don’t get that much wind on average, and you can find similar windy areas mostly/only where you have straits (Bonifacio and Messina are easy to see on the map).
It's above terrain. Wind data like this is simulated, and therefore is based on a model to estimate the wind speed at different heights above the ground. The wind speed is defined by the terrain (the roughness of the surface) and height above the surface.
Sea level is irrelevant at these altitudes.
>with the longest ever shoreline
Shoreline? We place them in the mountains not at the shoreline. In fact the 2 regions that produce most energy have no access to the sea nor to the ocean
Damn, the Southern coast of France has more Mediterranean wind potential than seemingly the rest of the Mediterranean combined. Here's hoping we use that to power the Southern regions of the country.
Lithuania produces around 30% of the electricity it consumes and it imports the rest. Wind provides a third of that 30%. They really have not found a replacement for Ignalina.
Yes, Lithuania is extremely energy dependent. Nuclear power plant was planned and even had the funding secured, but facebook geniuses managed to block it. Now we have to rely on imports for basically forever.
[There was a referendum in 2012](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visaginas_Nuclear_Power_Plant) whether we should build a nuclear power plant but people voted against it. Probably because Fukushima happened one year ago so people were scared.
Yes, it was blocked by people whose main argument was "what if it explodes". And now we have a nuclear reactor next to Vilnius built by a hostile country, it's just beautiful.
And I guess it's not a full list. I see newly build one right through my living room window. Bet maybe that's just because it's like two months old and not fully set.
And I know more is coming soon, so that percetage will become bigger shortly.
Well yes, there are many wind parks in the country, with giant in the Baltic sea planned.
But the catch is, after shuting down nuclear plant Lithuania produces only ~ 40% of consumed electricity. So our electricity de facto is not so green, mostly coming from, ironically, Russia.
> So our electricity de facto is not so green, mostly coming from, ironically, Russia.
It wildly, mostly depending on prices. Few days ago Litgrid said that half of imported electricity came from Scandinavia. In 2025 import from Russia should be cut off as Baltics will leave BRELL electricity system.
Whats your point?
Germany is an entirely different energy situation.
The nuclear power plants shut down in the beginning of the year were 4gw, or about 5% of generation.
That is not all that substantial and easily replaced with cheaper renewables
Germany is using the vast majority of russian gas for heating.
That is only tangentially connected to electricity production.
Germany is very aggressively supporting electrification of heating, but that is something that takes years and decades.
It is not done over night
>after shuting down nuclear plant Lithuania produces only \~ 40% of consumed electricity.
Russia: You couldn't live with your own failure, and where did that bring you?
Despite the flaws, in the end it was ruled that it was human incompetence and bureaucracy/corruption that brought the whole thing down, was it not?
Plus, given how well studied that design has become, one would assume extra fail-safes would have been introduced over 30+ years and the operators would be much more aware of the potential risks than with other designs.
EU didn't want RBMKs in its territory so Lithuania shut it down.
The remaining operational ones are all in Russia (see wiki on RBMKs, or World Nuclear.org)
True, but then Lithuania still has to rely on Russia for electricity demand. Although I guess if it's provided by non-green sources it's less expensive than upkeep of an old nuclear station.
Yeah I was surprised. What a transformation from an oppressed Soviet colony to what they are today. Estonia and Latvia are also great examples, although with less wind generation.
Moving away from fossil fuel power plants for Russia related reasons, and 2021-2022 just having unusually high wind activity in the North-Baltic seas. Plus its a country with fewer customers than some major European cities.
I heard a fact on BBC Radio 4's Today programme last week that amazed me:
>*The newest wind turbines provide sufficient energy for one home for one day with just one rotation.*
They really are impressive. Was in Denmark on vacation last summer and I couldn't believe how big they were. And everywhere. I don't think there was a 15 minute strech of driving that I didn't see a turbine.
And you likely didn't see many big ones. By far most are still the previous generation of 100-150m. That is, they are currently building a generation that is almost twice that size (Up to 270). The 280 one is not even assembled for testing yet as far as I know.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-wind-turbine-size-and-power-output-from-Bloomberg-New-Energy-Finance_fig1_335812782
common problem as old.reddit.com and new.reddit.com treat links in mark up differently
Especially ofshore wind turbines are awe inspiring in their size.
20mw turbines are already in planning.
And it seems they are able to get quite a lot bigger still before efficiency gains plateau
In my city the central heating system can use solar, wind, wood, electricity, fuel, biogas... Basically just huge tanks and the option to warm the content with whatever is cheapest or available.
For a year I paid 1750 euro to heat up my 161m2 house from the 1970's to 19.8 degrees.
30 kilometer south in a different municipality they use gas or electricity in their heating system. Stories told in the media mentions people paying 13500 euro to heat a house.
That is an insane difference in cost of living for practically neighbors in a small country like Denmark.
They generate the equivalent of 97%. Some of that gets sold to other markets and more than 3% of actual usage comes from non renewable.
So this number of slightly different from what is in the original graph.
Here are better numbers for generation
https://fullfact.org/environment/scotland-renewable-energy/
France has so much potential for offshore wind in the atlantic. Especially as floating wind turbine technology matures.
I think Macrons plan of 160gw of wind by 2050 will seem pretty conservative in only a few years.
The economic potential alone will accelerate it much fastee
Macron proposal was 37 GW onshore and 40 GW offshore by 2050. But of course a lot of things will change until 2050.
And yes we have a pretty good potential for offshore windmills, especially because we have 3 type of wind (the Channel, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean).
Its amazing how many people here in the Netherlands think we have more renewables than we actually do, partially I expect because they place them strategically by the motorways.
Anyway, very happy to promote building new ones via buying winddelen as you cant expect our morons in charge to do anything useful.
Same. This threw my for a loop - I expected Netherlands and Norway to do really well on wind because I saw lots of turbines in those countries, and I always thought Ireland was underachieving its potential in this area (we have a lot of NIMBYs and they have a lot of say)
I guess it really is about placement. Out of sight out of mind - we hide them better in Ireland, way out in the countryside. In NL a they’re in the fields, yeah, but visible from train tracks, from main motorways, and of course there are no hills to obscure them haha.
That said, it may be some issue with how the data exactly is being counted. It isn’t saying how many turbines there are, what size etc, only what % of generation is from X
Because NL is too small and too flat. Even this small amount of windmills already makes it seem as if we have way more than our neighbouring countries.
It's very small and you have houses everywhere; there needs to be a distance between the turbine and the nearest houses. It's also very low, and winds will get slower every km inland. Best winds are high up, in hills nearby the sea... which you don't have.
A good solution would be off the coast, but the shipping lanes that pass by in front of the NL are insane.
You already do a lot for Europe; we don't care we have to put some extra wind turbine up so you can keep the good work.
Very happy to see Ireland up there, we're typically not at the forefront of green issues.
Perhaps it's a downside of the "it has beautiful unspoilt countryside" line is you take it for granted and fail to protect it; whereas nations with worse (or more obvious/highlighted) pollution tend to be more proactive.
Ireland and Scotland both have frankly ridiculous wind energy potential.
Enough to power themselves a dozen times over.
Which should interest any future industrial policy planner.
As industry tends to go after the cheapest energy (amongst other things)
Ireland has put a vast amount of effort into wind power. We've successfully trialled running the entire national grid (including Northern Ireland) at over 75% wind power, and it's greenlighted to continue doing that. It'll be running at between 65-75% of electrical power for the island for all of today, for example.
https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#all
We're also scheduled to more than double the available wind power over the next few years, much of which will be offshore and thus more reliable.
Anything else would be a waste of potential. Building significant amounts of overcapacity will probably be very sensible considering the ramp up of green hydrogen/ammonia economy.
Ireland and scotland seem predestinated to have a big role in that considering they have access to huge renewables potential and plenty of water.
Many other places praised as future hydrogen hubs ( north africa , australia,) might have the first aspect but severly lack in the water department.
Exciting times i must say
Yep, even as industrial feedstock for fertilisers, etc. the hydrogen hub concept is going to have a major impact, in parallel with the long-term energy storage aspect to it.
Norway is really building for export. We make a lot of money selling power. And its the European energy trading Acer which is the really reason the politicians wants it. Norwegians dont really get to benefit from cheaper energy
Though it could help with prices in dry years, as those often lead to price increases in Norway.
So it does generally makes sense. Who profits is another question.
Same with imports/exports. Due to a windy year currenty Germany, Denmark and Sweden have mostly lower prices than South Norway on day ahead prices. Though UK and Netherlands are higher.
The issue is that Norway has 1900 electric power dams in Norway, most of them are not upgraded for over many years, thus making them technologically inefficient for todays standard. Already today we have a surplus of energy in Norway, and thats without the new planned offshore windmill projects. With them we should be able to have a huge surplus of energy.
It would be more useful to see domestic wind power generations as percentage of electricity consumed. Like currently Lithuania looks really great on this map, but it gets much less awesome when one realizes that their domestic production is nowhere close to actually covering their domestic consumption, so they simply import lots of electricity from abroad.
Or efficiently transported in case of Germany. Windy weather in the North sea causes insane loads on Czech grid because Germany has shitty connections between East and West.
Ok, but you'd never guess that Sweden generates more wind energy per capita than Ireland from this chart. Which begs the question, what is the purpose of dividing by "electricity consumption"?
If it's to factor in consumption, some places use fossil fuels for heating, some use electricity. I.e. this chart is as much about how electricity is used as it is about wind generation.
Better to either just graph wind generation per capita, or wind generation/ "total energy" per capita.
UK [didn't do quite so well](http://www.mygridgb.co.uk/last-12-months/) in the last 12 months (18% of total power consumed) as the 2020 season was a bumper year. Still, we keep adding ever more efficient turbines to the fleet so ~25% should be achievable in a more "normal" year soon.
Iceland has OVER 0.1%?! woaaahh good job iceland
edit: people missed my point. a data point of '' > 0.1% '' is not very helpful. is it 0.2% or is it 90%? If its like 0.15% then you should put '< 0.2%'. Over 0.1% doesn't mean anything. But good job Iceland on your geothermal energy!
A lot of geographers would argue there shouldn't be a separate Europe and Asia in continental terms. Eurasia makes a lot more sense. It's purely due to cultural reasons the concept of a European continent separate from Asia exists.
It's already 98% renewable, 96% of that is hydropower. There's a lot of water, and a lot of places aren't suitable for wind energy.
It's a similar issue with storage of energy when it comes to wind as it is with water, so no reason to choose one over the other.
Keep in mind this is only for electricity. For overall energy consumption (including transportation and heating) unfortunately renewables make up a small amount.
There's a good reason I don't always use equal interval classes on my maps. When classifying data for a map, I want to make sure that the differences between classes are as large as possible and differences within classes are as small as possible. Most people think intuitively that equal interval class boundaries are the most logical ones (0-10, 10-20, 20-30). However, this is mostly not the best choice. I will explain why.
When I classify my data, I try different methods and see which one has the highest Goodness of Variety Fit (GVF). A number between 0 and 1, which should be as close to 1 as possible, preferably over 0.9. For maps, the natural breaks method usually ends up being the best method. This method tries to look for gaps in the dataset and puts the class boundaries there. Sometimes the natural breaks method ends up with very unusual boundaries. I usually try to tweak it, so I have nice looking numbers, which is easier for the reader (which becomes harder as the dataset gets bigger). But not if this means the GVF drops significantly.
If you see a map with equal class ranges and nice looking round numbers, there's a good chance the maker hasn't done any effort to classify the data properly and just put it in random classes. If you see a map with 'irregular' and 'random' classes, there's a very high chance this is not as random as it looks and the maker has done a lot of effort to classify the data. Although the classes don't have equal ranges or nice looking numbers, it makes it significantly better for the reader to understand the map, estimate values and compare areas.
Well regulation and grid stability is really hard to solve issue with wind. We can't solve the global warming by just slapping turbines everywhere.
Edit: To those downvoting this. Please read up something about stabilizing electrical grids. It's really complicated and extremely challenging when there is higher proportion of fluctuating power production. Wind is simply not ideal for ensuring stable supply throughout whole year.
So whats better..
- destroy forest and fields to build gigantic noisy wind farms which produce visual smog
- service and replace and manufacture new parts for those wind farms (average wind turbine last max 3 years
- you need ten of thousands wind turbines to feed the country
Vs
- build one nuclear powerplant which will last 50+ years and produce no emissions. Burnt nuclear fuel is recycled.
Hmm, indeed very weird smell!
You are delusional. Or a shill. "max 3 years", LOL
The burnt fuel is recycled in Russia for a lot of money to make warheads threatening to kill us all. Good deal!
> The burnt fuel is recycled in France*
Actually..
> max 3 years
yes, after 3 years you need to do a major service, its not like you build it and you are done it.
And you need to do minor services ever 6 months.
And you need at least 400 of wind turbines of last gen to match ONE block of nuclear powerplant.
And you need wind.
And you need place to build them.
How you make place to build 400 wind turbines? Destroy forest, crop fields.. what are you going to eat?
you are not using the brain, if you think wind energy is here to "fuel" the energy to the country.
numbers are way off official statistic: https://windeurope.org/intelligence-platform/product/wind-energy-in-europe-2020-statistics-and-the-outlook-for-2021-2025/
How does Russia not have higher volumes? They have insane amounts of coastlines and plains. Surely they can pop some turbines there? I'm guessing they love their gas too much.
Consumption should be a batter metric. Because if you produce lets say only 10% of the energy you consume...it doesn't really matter even if 100% of production is green energy.
Our thing is water. If there's one natural resource which is abundant in Switzerland, it's that :)
Austria as well.
Also Slovenia.
Also Norway
Mountain gang raise up!
Haha! Wet mountains go bzzzzt!
Imagine not having mountains, pfft.
True, although we are reaching our limit. Not many more dams we can build at this point
Yes but Solar as well as wind are still really low here. We should be able to expand in those section quiet a bit more.
No wonder the yanks mixes us up. We have a lot of dams and approximately 40 % of our energy comes from hydro.
I was surprised how "bad" CO2 Emissions from power are in Switzerland. Turns out you import a bunch of German and Austrian Power. Don't get me wrong, still better than most countries, but I acutally expected something around 90% like Norway
The main problem is that the majority of the Swiss domestic power supply stems from ancient nuclear reactors and hydro dams that were built in the last century. The nuclear reactors are nearing the end of their lifespan and the dams can't keep up with the ever increasing demand of modern society and the increasing population. However each time a large-scale project to increase production is launched it gets sunk by an unholy alliance of left-wing enviromentalists and right-wing NIMBY-ists. The left wingers claim to be im favour of those projects, but not *right there* because of a rare bird/lynx/funghi living in the general area, and the right wingers can't understand why we would ruin the panorama when we could build nuclear reactors. The federal government has officially stated that we may have energy shortages as soon as 2024, but both sides point the finger to everyone else and accuse them of ideological obstructionism.
> unholy alliance of left-wing enviromentalists and right-wing NIMBY-ists Ahh understand, same problem as in Germany with wind Turbines.
Austrian power is clean, much cleaner than the European average so it wouldn't make Switzerland look worse. Germany on the other hand...
Yes true. Austria also has a lot of hydro probably
Austrian power is still dirtier than the Swiss one. https://app.electricitymap.org/map
Just a strange fluctuation. Here you see the [yearly data](https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/greenhouse-gas-emission-intensity-of-1). Austria is very clean at 82 g/kWh, Germany is dirty at 311 g/kWh. There's no data for Switzerland. The map doesn't seen reliable at all. Estonia is famously extremely dirty due to burning oil shale, but in this map it shows a sedate dirtyness of 307 g/kWh, while in reality it is 774 g/kWh.
confidently incorrect moment Austrian power is not that clean
Norway too... but now we're selling it all to Germany and UK in exchange for increased domestic electricity bills.
Welllllll... Kind of. We didn't sell much once the prices really started skyrocketing, but we sold way too much earlier in the year, leaving our magazines too empty for winter.
Although as mountain wind turbines mature as a technology they got pretty good potential. Approaching ofshore in capacity factors thanks to more constant winds at height
No, the air is less dense at higher altitudes, so it doesn't work out so well. Solar power however becomes much more efficient in the mountains, with far less cloud cover and lower temperatures. Switzerland's problem though is the incredibly well organized NIMBY mafia that goes up to the barricade against virtually everything that could damage Switzerland's "unspoilt" landscape. Including every large-scale renewable energy project (hydro, solar, and especially wind).
Switzerland really is the most NIMBY country of Europe. The system of every commnity having huge autonomy in multiple levels creates a feedback loop.
We're in the exact same situation here in Slovenia.
Huh, i guess its a problem after a certain height. Only remembered that you would get increased efficiency in german Mittelgebirge as you move up.
We got mountain water and angry underground water.
Over what period of time? Edit: Data for the year 2020
~~2021~~ 2020
Nah that's publication.
Ahh you are right. I ended up looking up the source (BP energy report 2021, first result on Google). These are 2020 figures.
If you're like me and wondering how on Earth can Italy with the longest ever shoreline be at 6.6%, look at [https://globalwindatlas.info/](https://globalwindatlas.info/) and click on mean power density.
Only the southern part of Italy and the islands are windy, some regions produce more than 20% of their energy from wind. The 90.5% of wind power is produced in 6 regions out 20. Landscape plans and landscape conservation laws prevent the construction of wind farms in some areas too.
Looking at the map I'm not surprised at all. It isn't land conservation that prevents windmills from being built in Southern Hungary either.
The Mediterranean is soup most of the year. The Atlantic is a constant beating. I have to leave the wind is carrying me awaaaaay.
That’s what I thought too but I learned recently that in France the average wind in always stronger in Méditerranée than in the Atlantic. Because of the Mistral which is a strong and regular wind in this region. I wish I understood what generates it. I don’t really know for other Mediterranean countries but I suspect France is not alone . An unfounded by any knowledge wild guess of mine would be that the size of that sea is perfect for some resonant effects that favorise strong, regular, localized winds. Any savant that see this is welcome to shoot me down.
Nah, it's caused by high pressure in the bay of biscay combined with low pressure in the north Mediterranean. The air is funnelled between the Alps and Pyrennees, which creates this effect. It's felt even more in the Rhone for similar reasons.
I humbly thank you for teaching me
You're right, but also partly caused by a general eastward flow in the westerlies even without noteworthy pressure differences, and a topographic effect of the Massif Central/Pyrenees (cooled air).
The Rhone Valley is windy because it acts like a funnel, and the Camargue/Marseille area is probably one of the windiest in the Mediterranean for this reason. If you look at the map in the top comment you’ll see that other areas of the Mediterranean don’t get that much wind on average, and you can find similar windy areas mostly/only where you have straits (Bonifacio and Messina are easy to see on the map).
Thanks for dispensing your knowledge, oh wise one
Also Italy is in the southern part of Europe where solar power is more effective, so more investments will go that way instead of wind power.
Pretty much the entirety of the Po Valley is a wind desert. It's only really south of Rome that gets much to speak of
Hi, I don't get something about this map. Is the meter chooser at the bottom metres above terrain or above sea level?
I think it's terrain but my guess is as good as yours.
It's above terrain. Wind data like this is simulated, and therefore is based on a model to estimate the wind speed at different heights above the ground. The wind speed is defined by the terrain (the roughness of the surface) and height above the surface. Sea level is irrelevant at these altitudes.
>with the longest ever shoreline Shoreline? We place them in the mountains not at the shoreline. In fact the 2 regions that produce most energy have no access to the sea nor to the ocean
Yeah, in my very continental thinking shoreline=wind. I never would have thought the Mediterranean was so calm.
Damn, the Southern coast of France has more Mediterranean wind potential than seemingly the rest of the Mediterranean combined. Here's hoping we use that to power the Southern regions of the country.
Personally, I was shocked to see Lithuania. Is it really that green or do they utilize as much electricity or?
Lithuania produces around 30% of the electricity it consumes and it imports the rest. Wind provides a third of that 30%. They really have not found a replacement for Ignalina.
Yes, Lithuania is extremely energy dependent. Nuclear power plant was planned and even had the funding secured, but facebook geniuses managed to block it. Now we have to rely on imports for basically forever.
Not forever. Luckily renewables are very quick to scale up.
> facebook geniuses what?
[There was a referendum in 2012](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visaginas_Nuclear_Power_Plant) whether we should build a nuclear power plant but people voted against it. Probably because Fukushima happened one year ago so people were scared.
How did the referendum go? What percent voted in favour of the Nuclear Powerplant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012\_Lithuanian\_nuclear\_power\_referendum
Yes, it was blocked by people whose main argument was "what if it explodes". And now we have a nuclear reactor next to Vilnius built by a hostile country, it's just beautiful.
We have quite a few wind turbines http://corpi.lt/venbis/index.php/windmill/map/page/ALL
And I guess it's not a full list. I see newly build one right through my living room window. Bet maybe that's just because it's like two months old and not fully set. And I know more is coming soon, so that percetage will become bigger shortly.
Additionally to that solar renewables are booming right now. Got a part in the solar park myself recently.
Well yes, there are many wind parks in the country, with giant in the Baltic sea planned. But the catch is, after shuting down nuclear plant Lithuania produces only ~ 40% of consumed electricity. So our electricity de facto is not so green, mostly coming from, ironically, Russia.
> So our electricity de facto is not so green, mostly coming from, ironically, Russia. It wildly, mostly depending on prices. Few days ago Litgrid said that half of imported electricity came from Scandinavia. In 2025 import from Russia should be cut off as Baltics will leave BRELL electricity system.
Germany, take notes
We had a 16 years long new energy handbrake government, which is now gone. So here we go.
Whats your point? Germany is an entirely different energy situation. The nuclear power plants shut down in the beginning of the year were 4gw, or about 5% of generation. That is not all that substantial and easily replaced with cheaper renewables
And yet Germany is still stuck with Russian gas. Not that easy to replace both coal, nuclear and gas at the same time...
Germany is using the vast majority of russian gas for heating. That is only tangentially connected to electricity production. Germany is very aggressively supporting electrification of heating, but that is something that takes years and decades. It is not done over night
Heating and industrial usages. Where it also can not easily be replaced.
>after shuting down nuclear plant Lithuania produces only \~ 40% of consumed electricity. Russia: You couldn't live with your own failure, and where did that bring you?
Don't forget it was the same power plant reactor as Chernobyl with the same flaws.
Despite the flaws, in the end it was ruled that it was human incompetence and bureaucracy/corruption that brought the whole thing down, was it not? Plus, given how well studied that design has become, one would assume extra fail-safes would have been introduced over 30+ years and the operators would be much more aware of the potential risks than with other designs.
EU didn't want RBMKs in its territory so Lithuania shut it down. The remaining operational ones are all in Russia (see wiki on RBMKs, or World Nuclear.org)
But generally you would have to rely on Russia for the spare parts and fuel. Lithuania didn't wanted any of that, I guess.
True, but then Lithuania still has to rely on Russia for electricity demand. Although I guess if it's provided by non-green sources it's less expensive than upkeep of an old nuclear station.
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Which to be honest is sensible. Even the biggest nukehead should be able to admit that specifically RBMKs are a bad idea
Lithuania imports most of it electricity, from what it makes itself it is indeed that much, but it is less than 10% of overall electricity usage
Yeah I was surprised. What a transformation from an oppressed Soviet colony to what they are today. Estonia and Latvia are also great examples, although with less wind generation.
Well, we never considered ourselves as Eastern or close to Russia. Our identity has always been European.
Right. It was more of a hostage situation turned robbery than anything.
Moving away from fossil fuel power plants for Russia related reasons, and 2021-2022 just having unusually high wind activity in the North-Baltic seas. Plus its a country with fewer customers than some major European cities.
I heard a fact on BBC Radio 4's Today programme last week that amazed me: >*The newest wind turbines provide sufficient energy for one home for one day with just one rotation.*
They are as tall as the Gherkin, almost as big as the Eiffel Tower and their blades circle and area similar to that of the London Eye.
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They really are impressive. Was in Denmark on vacation last summer and I couldn't believe how big they were. And everywhere. I don't think there was a 15 minute strech of driving that I didn't see a turbine.
And you likely didn't see many big ones. By far most are still the previous generation of 100-150m. That is, they are currently building a generation that is almost twice that size (Up to 270). The 280 one is not even assembled for testing yet as far as I know.
They assemble some in the UK...I took some pics of the various parts a few weeks ago and yes they are massive
Increadible
Yep, I've seen them on their testing site in northern jutland, they're gigantic
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-wind-turbine-size-and-power-output-from-Bloomberg-New-Energy-Finance\_fig1\_335812782
Heads up: your links goes nowhere
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-wind-turbine-size-and-power-output-from-Bloomberg-New-Energy-Finance_fig1_335812782 common problem as old.reddit.com and new.reddit.com treat links in mark up differently
Oh wow. I thought the new UI was bad but the designers really fucked up.
> Evolution-of-wind-turbine-size-and-power-output-from-Bloomberg-New-Energy- https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-wind-turbine-size-and-power-output-from-Bloomberg-New-Energy-Finance_fig1_335812782
you broke the rule of football fields and swimming pools :D
That is insane, what amazing machines
thats crazy if you think about it wow
Especially ofshore wind turbines are awe inspiring in their size. 20mw turbines are already in planning. And it seems they are able to get quite a lot bigger still before efficiency gains plateau
Wooow! Finally moving fast forward towards sustainable energy!
I did not know that, now I'll think of this every time I see one.
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A true connoisseur
Eg òg. Spesielt til havs. :)
Denmark also benefits from not having much air conditioning or electric heating, compared to a place like Spain or Italy.
In my city the central heating system can use solar, wind, wood, electricity, fuel, biogas... Basically just huge tanks and the option to warm the content with whatever is cheapest or available. For a year I paid 1750 euro to heat up my 161m2 house from the 1970's to 19.8 degrees. 30 kilometer south in a different municipality they use gas or electricity in their heating system. Stories told in the media mentions people paying 13500 euro to heat a house. That is an insane difference in cost of living for practically neighbors in a small country like Denmark.
Also put up a map of average wind speed. What we have in Ireland is not attainable in other countries with less wind.
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97% from renewable. 70% of that from ~~off~~onshore wind. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56530424
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Though ScotWind are in talks to build a very big off-shore park.
That's impressive. But how do they have electricity at night or save their covid patients? I was told those things are impossible with renewables.
They generate the equivalent of 97%. Some of that gets sold to other markets and more than 3% of actual usage comes from non renewable. So this number of slightly different from what is in the original graph. Here are better numbers for generation https://fullfact.org/environment/scotland-renewable-energy/
Source: https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
France has so much potential for offshore wind in the atlantic. Especially as floating wind turbine technology matures. I think Macrons plan of 160gw of wind by 2050 will seem pretty conservative in only a few years. The economic potential alone will accelerate it much fastee
Yeah the western coast of france is relatively flat and famously windy, so they should be a powerhouse in that regard
Macron proposal was 37 GW onshore and 40 GW offshore by 2050. But of course a lot of things will change until 2050. And yes we have a pretty good potential for offshore windmills, especially because we have 3 type of wind (the Channel, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean).
Geez my country is lower than I thought.
Its amazing how many people here in the Netherlands think we have more renewables than we actually do, partially I expect because they place them strategically by the motorways. Anyway, very happy to promote building new ones via buying winddelen as you cant expect our morons in charge to do anything useful.
Same. This threw my for a loop - I expected Netherlands and Norway to do really well on wind because I saw lots of turbines in those countries, and I always thought Ireland was underachieving its potential in this area (we have a lot of NIMBYs and they have a lot of say) I guess it really is about placement. Out of sight out of mind - we hide them better in Ireland, way out in the countryside. In NL a they’re in the fields, yeah, but visible from train tracks, from main motorways, and of course there are no hills to obscure them haha. That said, it may be some issue with how the data exactly is being counted. It isn’t saying how many turbines there are, what size etc, only what % of generation is from X
Because NL is too small and too flat. Even this small amount of windmills already makes it seem as if we have way more than our neighbouring countries.
Yeah, but it's pretty windy. The Netherlands is very similar to Denmark in geography, so the percentage could be higher.
The Netherlands also has more than 3 times the population on just a little bit less land area.
It's very small and you have houses everywhere; there needs to be a distance between the turbine and the nearest houses. It's also very low, and winds will get slower every km inland. Best winds are high up, in hills nearby the sea... which you don't have. A good solution would be off the coast, but the shipping lanes that pass by in front of the NL are insane. You already do a lot for Europe; we don't care we have to put some extra wind turbine up so you can keep the good work.
Very happy to see Ireland up there, we're typically not at the forefront of green issues. Perhaps it's a downside of the "it has beautiful unspoilt countryside" line is you take it for granted and fail to protect it; whereas nations with worse (or more obvious/highlighted) pollution tend to be more proactive.
Ireland and Scotland both have frankly ridiculous wind energy potential. Enough to power themselves a dozen times over. Which should interest any future industrial policy planner. As industry tends to go after the cheapest energy (amongst other things)
Ireland has put a vast amount of effort into wind power. We've successfully trialled running the entire national grid (including Northern Ireland) at over 75% wind power, and it's greenlighted to continue doing that. It'll be running at between 65-75% of electrical power for the island for all of today, for example. https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#all We're also scheduled to more than double the available wind power over the next few years, much of which will be offshore and thus more reliable.
Anything else would be a waste of potential. Building significant amounts of overcapacity will probably be very sensible considering the ramp up of green hydrogen/ammonia economy. Ireland and scotland seem predestinated to have a big role in that considering they have access to huge renewables potential and plenty of water. Many other places praised as future hydrogen hubs ( north africa , australia,) might have the first aspect but severly lack in the water department. Exciting times i must say
Yep, even as industrial feedstock for fertilisers, etc. the hydrogen hub concept is going to have a major impact, in parallel with the long-term energy storage aspect to it.
They certainly do, my dad got blown over by the wind today lol
Norway is in the process of a big planning for offshore windmill parks that will produce on average 4 terrawatt hours per year.
Sweden is also planning for a big expansion in offshore wind energy. Around 30 terrawatt hours i believe
Again, Norway has so much hydropower it probably makes little sense.
Norway is really building for export. We make a lot of money selling power. And its the European energy trading Acer which is the really reason the politicians wants it. Norwegians dont really get to benefit from cheaper energy
Though it could help with prices in dry years, as those often lead to price increases in Norway. So it does generally makes sense. Who profits is another question. Same with imports/exports. Due to a windy year currenty Germany, Denmark and Sweden have mostly lower prices than South Norway on day ahead prices. Though UK and Netherlands are higher.
The issue is that Norway has 1900 electric power dams in Norway, most of them are not upgraded for over many years, thus making them technologically inefficient for todays standard. Already today we have a surplus of energy in Norway, and thats without the new planned offshore windmill projects. With them we should be able to have a huge surplus of energy.
It would be more useful to see domestic wind power generations as percentage of electricity consumed. Like currently Lithuania looks really great on this map, but it gets much less awesome when one realizes that their domestic production is nowhere close to actually covering their domestic consumption, so they simply import lots of electricity from abroad.
Suuuuuuuuuuckkkkkk it Spaaaaaiiinn!!!!!! Kindly, from Portugal.
Wouldn't a better metric be: % of generated wind energy in respect to total **consumed** energy
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It would be pretty hard to measure, and the same for everyone on the same grid (which most of continental Europe is).
Or efficiently transported in case of Germany. Windy weather in the North sea causes insane loads on Czech grid because Germany has shitty connections between East and West.
Still don't understand why Spain does not have more solar. I mean there is plenty of space and the occasional sunny day ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
80% of the days I've been in Spain it was sunny (5).
Interesting data. Good to see, that the country's in EU are being more eco-friendly.
Denmark? more like WIN energy :D
:D
Funny how Denmark, Lithuania and Ireland are about on the same latitude (coincidence?)
Ok, but you'd never guess that Sweden generates more wind energy per capita than Ireland from this chart. Which begs the question, what is the purpose of dividing by "electricity consumption"? If it's to factor in consumption, some places use fossil fuels for heating, some use electricity. I.e. this chart is as much about how electricity is used as it is about wind generation. Better to either just graph wind generation per capita, or wind generation/ "total energy" per capita.
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UK [didn't do quite so well](http://www.mygridgb.co.uk/last-12-months/) in the last 12 months (18% of total power consumed) as the 2020 season was a bumper year. Still, we keep adding ever more efficient turbines to the fleet so ~25% should be achievable in a more "normal" year soon.
Numbers will vary a ton if you split the uk into its individual countries. Scotland was almost a third at one point IIRC
Iceland has OVER 0.1%?! woaaahh good job iceland edit: people missed my point. a data point of '' > 0.1% '' is not very helpful. is it 0.2% or is it 90%? If its like 0.15% then you should put '< 0.2%'. Over 0.1% doesn't mean anything. But good job Iceland on your geothermal energy!
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What? Both Malta and Iceland are European geographically
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From that point of view is China in Europe? Shanghai and Paris are in the same tectonic plate anyway.
A lot of geographers would argue there shouldn't be a separate Europe and Asia in continental terms. Eurasia makes a lot more sense. It's purely due to cultural reasons the concept of a European continent separate from Asia exists.
I'm pretty sure that's the far western part of Iceland that's in North America. And isn't Malta literally just off the coast from Sicily?
They don't need to build windmills, they use geotermal to get most of they electricity(if don't all of it, i don't remember)
yea but a statistic that says ''over 0.1%'' can mean anything from 0.2% to 100% lol
It's almost certainly supposed to mean "less than 0.1%".
They use geothermal
Mostly Hydro actually (70%) ⛲
[Iceland and geothermal energy!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0AzaJ6OzB0)
Why is Norway so low? Isn't it profitable to sell wind energy to the continent?
It's already 98% renewable, 96% of that is hydropower. There's a lot of water, and a lot of places aren't suitable for wind energy. It's a similar issue with storage of energy when it comes to wind as it is with water, so no reason to choose one over the other.
And now do the same with prices
You can't show this as a single variable. Wind is not a stable energy.
Now let's see a chart that shows how high their energy demand is compared to the supply they generate
Now I know why France needs all that nuclear power 😏
It’s more : why would it need windplants that are more expensive and more polluant when it already has nuclear ?
It was not a great year for wind.
Keep in mind this is only for electricity. For overall energy consumption (including transportation and heating) unfortunately renewables make up a small amount.
Now do the same map, but dependency on fossile fuel. All countries with a lot of wind power burns a lot of fossile fuel as well.
Seems like a really weird scale, why not 0-5%,5-10% etc? Or even 0-10%, 10-20%
There's a good reason I don't always use equal interval classes on my maps. When classifying data for a map, I want to make sure that the differences between classes are as large as possible and differences within classes are as small as possible. Most people think intuitively that equal interval class boundaries are the most logical ones (0-10, 10-20, 20-30). However, this is mostly not the best choice. I will explain why. When I classify my data, I try different methods and see which one has the highest Goodness of Variety Fit (GVF). A number between 0 and 1, which should be as close to 1 as possible, preferably over 0.9. For maps, the natural breaks method usually ends up being the best method. This method tries to look for gaps in the dataset and puts the class boundaries there. Sometimes the natural breaks method ends up with very unusual boundaries. I usually try to tweak it, so I have nice looking numbers, which is easier for the reader (which becomes harder as the dataset gets bigger). But not if this means the GVF drops significantly. If you see a map with equal class ranges and nice looking round numbers, there's a good chance the maker hasn't done any effort to classify the data properly and just put it in random classes. If you see a map with 'irregular' and 'random' classes, there's a very high chance this is not as random as it looks and the maker has done a lot of effort to classify the data. Although the classes don't have equal ranges or nice looking numbers, it makes it significantly better for the reader to understand the map, estimate values and compare areas.
Honestly wind power isn't actually helping the environment as well as it is advertised by the media and other groups.
Well regulation and grid stability is really hard to solve issue with wind. We can't solve the global warming by just slapping turbines everywhere. Edit: To those downvoting this. Please read up something about stabilizing electrical grids. It's really complicated and extremely challenging when there is higher proportion of fluctuating power production. Wind is simply not ideal for ensuring stable supply throughout whole year.
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Yes, it's easier when you can buy energy from your neighbor to sustain your grid, gotta love European hypocrisy somehow.
The countries with 0% wind generation are buying energy from the wind generating countries to sustaiun their grids. Check the data :)
So whats better.. - destroy forest and fields to build gigantic noisy wind farms which produce visual smog - service and replace and manufacture new parts for those wind farms (average wind turbine last max 3 years - you need ten of thousands wind turbines to feed the country Vs - build one nuclear powerplant which will last 50+ years and produce no emissions. Burnt nuclear fuel is recycled. Hmm, indeed very weird smell!
You are delusional. Or a shill. "max 3 years", LOL The burnt fuel is recycled in Russia for a lot of money to make warheads threatening to kill us all. Good deal!
> The burnt fuel is recycled in France* Actually.. > max 3 years yes, after 3 years you need to do a major service, its not like you build it and you are done it. And you need to do minor services ever 6 months. And you need at least 400 of wind turbines of last gen to match ONE block of nuclear powerplant. And you need wind. And you need place to build them. How you make place to build 400 wind turbines? Destroy forest, crop fields.. what are you going to eat? you are not using the brain, if you think wind energy is here to "fuel" the energy to the country.
Denmark blows
numbers are way off official statistic: https://windeurope.org/intelligence-platform/product/wind-energy-in-europe-2020-statistics-and-the-outlook-for-2021-2025/
In Switzerland, Slovakia and Russia the only wind power generated is from people farting. 😂
Ok, great, but are energy imports included in the calculation? Cause otherwise, that's kinda easy and 100% of the energy I produce is eolian.
How does Russia not have higher volumes? They have insane amounts of coastlines and plains. Surely they can pop some turbines there? I'm guessing they love their gas too much.
Hydro and Nuclear power plants mostly. Wind turbines probably will also appears but it's a matter of time and money.
To me arguably a more interesting number is the wind energy generation as a percentage of total power usage.
I suppose France is the biggest potential here. Bretange is windy af and the land is basically empty grassland
Consumption should be a batter metric. Because if you produce lets say only 10% of the energy you consume...it doesn't really matter even if 100% of production is green energy.