Will the EU energy crisis start to pull us away from reliance on fossil fuels?

[Forogil]

You realize the data on the graph I think you're looking at starts in 2005, right? Because the 2020 data on power generation (last before forecasted values) only has 6.7% of Ontario power generation via natural gas, and no other appreciable fossil fuel use.

Dude, you have to click on "sector" and then "residential" to see how much the residential sector uses:
https://apps2.cer-rec.gc.ca/energy-f...S,HYDROGEN,OIL

So less than 30% electricity for residential and more than 60% natural gas (a fossil fuel) in 2022. Are you really that ignorant of how much (and what kind) of energy is used for heating of homes in Canada?

It hasn't changed much since 2005 - but the "forecast" predicts that electricity will increase in the future. That's quite common - fossil fuels are used a lot for heating and transportation, not only for electricity ("power") generation - and when that happens electricity use will increase during winter, when you get less solar energy.

The EU energy crisis is discussed because winter is coming and there's a similar reliance on fossil fuels for heating.

[bladeXcrasher]

Ok it is several hours to days but still to much to react to changes in the energy grid. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956

The french have faster reacting plants but they had to shut them down this summer because the water from the surrounding rivers was to low to keep them working. I also would like to build several fusion reactors and be done with this topic but this seems to be a possibility for 2050 and beyond. Until then solar, wind, geothermal and water are the tested solutions which gets us the most bang for our buck.

Those are planned maintenance downtime...and typically plants have multiple units that rotate through shutdowns. Shimming rods takes no time at all to adjust to requirements during normal operations.

[Endus]

Dude, you have to click on "sector" and then "residential" to see how much the residential sector uses:
https://apps2.cer-rec.gc.ca/energy-f...S,HYDROGEN,OIL

So less than 30% electricity for residential and more than 60% natural gas (a fossil fuel) in 2022. Are you really that ignorant of how much (and what kind) of energy is used for heating of homes in Canada?

And residential is tiny compared to other sectors, so this does nothing to "correct" my statement of the overall proportions, across all sectors. Yes, residential heating is largely done by natural gas, but that's part of the ~6.5% of energy use in Ontario that uses natural gas.

Also, it bears noting that the natural gas use for home heating involve natural gas piped directly to the home and burned in that home's furnace, the only way to move beyond that would be to pay to retrofit every single home in Ontario to use electric heating. It has to be done house-by-house, because that's where the fuel is being used, it's not as easy to address as building a new power plant.

[Forogil]

And residential is tiny compared to other sectors, so this does nothing to "correct" my statement of the overall proportions, across all sectors. Yes, residential heating is largely done by natural gas, but that's part of the ~6.5% of energy use in Ontario that uses natural gas.

Incorrect again.

Now click on "by sector" and "total demand" and see that 28.26% of energy use in Ontario is natural gas and 45.72% is oil. (Electricity that you focus on is 16.88%)

Residential energy use isn't tiny compared to other sectors; it's slightly larger than commercial (that also use natural gas for heating). So: residential is 12.6%, commercial 11.5%, industry 52.4% and transportation 23.3%. Fossil fuels are more dominant in the industry sector (but not for heating), and transportation is even more heavily dominated by fossil fuels.

Your 6% is natural gas for electricity as percentage of electricity production, so part of the 16.88% of the total energy use. (You can click on "electricity" to the left to see that split.)

Also, it bears noting that the natural gas use for home heating involve natural gas piped directly to the home and burned in that home's furnace, the only way to move beyond that would be to pay to retrofit every single home in Ontario to use electric heating. It has to be done house-by-house, because that's where the fuel is being used, it's not as easy to address as building a new power plant.

No-one said it would be easy.

- - - Updated - - -

This might seem silly, but the first part of understanding the energy crisis is understanding the problem.

The EU is preparing for the winter when energy use will increase due to heating concerns.

That follows the sharp increase of energy prices in EU (and rippling through other parts of the world) during the summer and autumn was in part because the need to build up reserves of natural gas for the winter (which is part of a normal seasonal cycle as heating demands increase during winter), especially as Russia was no longer supplying as much as before.

It was in part caused by German hubris (fossil and nuclear free), and at least the last nuclear plants will not close as stupidly early as planned in Germany; https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...et/ar-AA138U34

[Vakna]

As long as you don't care about its waste and deconstruction of power plants...

No, including all it's problems and risks, it is still the greenest energy. By far, actually. Even wind and solar statistically cause more deaths/damage to the environment, and if you looked at the statistics on how much damage and death burning fossil fuels causes every year, you'd think humanity was stuck in a world war or something.

[Forogil]

Not all renewables have consistency issues; hydro is nearly immune to consistency problems, with proper design. Even in drought conditions, you can have significant reservoirs at elevation that you use "extra" power to pump water to when power production is high, and if drought conditions emerge, you release water from that reservoir. While that can, eventually, run out, so can fossil fuels, and with a lot longer of a lead-time before you're in crisis.

The drought part isn't really true, and even if pumped hydro is good and cheap energy storage compared to alternatives it's not perfect and not enough. (And normal hydro is also really good when possible.)

First and foremost hydropower is limited, and in e.g. Germany, around 80 % of the usable hydropower potential has already been exploited and the idea is to not build more in the remaining smaller rivers due to environmental concerns (according to German Federal Environment Agency.)

And consider the Hoover Dam in the US. It generates about 12PJ per year recently - the annual maximum was 37PJ, but droughts since 2000 have decreased it - and that number roughly corresponds to the energy stored in Lake Mead; indicating that they are not ideal counters to year-long droughts (and especially not to multi-year droughts).

As for pump water storage, there are plans to transform Lake Mead into such a storage (it will cost billions of dollars) - that indicates the scale we need to work on - and still: Ontario alone uses 3000PJ per year in total energy, whereof 563PJ is electricity; compared to Lake Mead's maximum 37PJ. Three gorges dam in China produces 366PJ per year - and the surface area of that dam is about as large as New York City; and there were a lot of concerns when it was built. In total China has about ten three Gorges dams in terms of hydro power.

Remember that if we want to reduce fossil fuels, we don't only need to consider the current electricity use, but also the rest of the energy use.

For comparison the biggest tidal plant (Sihwa in S.Korea) generates 2PJ per year, and the biggest nuclear reactors (Taishan in China) each net-generates 33PJ per year (SMRs target about 10PJ). Europe uses about 82,000PJ per year - whereof 58,000PJ is fossil, in terms of electricity, it is 14,000PJ per year, whereof only 5,000PJ fossil. (Numbers for 2021 from bp - it will clearly be different this year.)

Not saying that it is impossible, merely that it will require a major shift - and hydropower alone is far from sufficient, and there isn't a huge untapped potential.

As illustrated by the following image

from

Also graph shows that the rivers have been tapped quite well so far. Norway does miss about 30% of possible power they could use but for rest of countries with few execption have utilized this natural power source well.

Note that China now also uses more than 60% of its available hydropower, and are no longer aggressively building hydropower.

[MoeSzyslak]

No, including all it's problems and risks, it is still the greenest energy. By far, actually. Even wind and solar statistically cause more deaths/damage to the environment, and if you looked at the statistics on how much damage and death burning fossil fuels causes every year, you'd think humanity was stuck in a world war or something.

Citation needed, because this is oposed to every source I can find. Water kills more people than nuclear thats correct but not wind and solar.

[Forogil]

Citation needed, because this is oposed to every source I can find. Water kills more people than nuclear thats correct but not wind and solar.

I was curious and tried to see what is correct.

One source is https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesco...h=389521d2709b
And it gives Solar(rooftop) at 440, Wind 150, and Nuclear at 90 (including Chernobyl and Fukushima) in deaths/PWh if I understand the units (1 PWh=3,600 PJ).

But that source is a bit old, and in general it depends a lot on worker and environment protection in each country; hydro globally killed 1,400 - but 5 in the US (for comparison nuclear in the US was at 0.1).

Similarly, coal had a global average of 100,000 - with China at 170,000 (bad scrubbing) and the US at 10,000.

[Nymrohd]

I was curious and tried to see what is correct.

One source is https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesco...h=389521d2709b
And it gives Solar(rooftop) at 440, Wind 150, and Nuclear at 90 (including Chernobyl and Fukushima) in deaths/PWh if I understand the units (1 PWh=3,600 PJ).

But that source is a bit old, and in general it depends a lot on worker and environment protection in each country; hydro globally killed 1,400 - but 5 in the US (for comparison nuclear in the US was at 0.1).

Similarly, coal had a global average of 100,000 - with China at 170,000 (bad scrubbing) and the US at 10,000.

Wait those deaths from Solar, are they during installation/maintenance like with wind? Damn

[Endus]

Wait those deaths from Solar, are they during installation/maintenance like with wind? Damn

A lot of self-installation without proper harness equipment, I imagine.

[Vakna]

I was curious and tried to see what is correct.

One source is https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesco...h=389521d2709b
And it gives Solar(rooftop) at 440, Wind 150, and Nuclear at 90 (including Chernobyl and Fukushima) in deaths/PWh if I understand the units (1 PWh=3,600 PJ).

But that source is a bit old, and in general it depends a lot on worker and environment protection in each country; hydro globally killed 1,400 - but 5 in the US (for comparison nuclear in the US was at 0.1).

Similarly, coal had a global average of 100,000 - with China at 170,000 (bad scrubbing) and the US at 10,000.

The problem is that government decisions are at the whim of public vote and the public only sees the big stuff like Chernobyl and Fukushima, and have generally no education on how nuclear power actually works. I would like to live in a world where you are required to be fully educated on a matter before you are allowed to vote for or against it.

I don't want to come off as anti-democracy here but I think the general populaces feelings on a matter should be irrelevant when it comes to construction of vital infrastructure, and also when the political party running your country can change every few years shit never gets done and lots of money gets wasted.

[PC2]

I don't want to come off as anti-democracy here but I think the general populaces feelings on a matter should be irrelevant when it comes to construction of vital infrastructure, and also when the political party running your country can change every few years shit never gets done and lots of money gets wasted.

But who has the authority to build a nuclear power plant in a country without the consent of the citizens? Nobody... Simply dealing with the effects of a temporary energy shortage and ACC would be less dangerous than living in a society with a non-democratic source of authority.

[Muzjhath]

I'm extremely curious if the impacts of mining Uranium is included in any of those impact reports.

[Vakna]

But who has the authority to build a nuclear power plant in a country without the consent of the citizens? Nobody... Simply dealing with the effects of a temporary energy shortage and ACC would be less dangerous than living in a society with a non-democratic source of authority.

Forever living with only the next 4 years in mind then.

[PC2]

Forever living with only the next 4 years in mind then.

Yes of course but democratic updates can be every 3 years or 5 years or a bit more or less because the exact number doesn't matter very much. Society will never reach an ultimate state of completion where the leaders can stop caring about the on-going consent or criticisms of the general populace.

[Forogil]

I'm extremely curious if the impacts of mining Uranium is included in any of those impact reports.

Yes, Forbes writes: "Nuclear has the lowest deathprint, even with the worst-case Chernobyl numbers and Fukushima projections, uranium mining deaths, and using the Linear No-Treshold Dose hypothesis (see Helman/2012/03/10 )."

Note that the article is a bit old, and that year United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) dropped the use of the Linear No-Threshold Dose hypothesis (which had increased the estimated number of deaths for Nuclear).