General > General Technical Chat
"Gas Armageddon": Energy/electricity prices in EU/UK (and how to deal with them)
Siwastaja:
There is no need to ban anything, just let the limited natural resource price be controlled by the free market and people have to pay the real price (including the cost of uncertainty), and then people will automagically start buying heatpumps and PV systems without any need to add them to any "energy strategy".
Some amount of fossil fuels are inevitable in chemical processes and natural gas is by-product in oil drilling. In a free market, these products would be cheap until some point in demand, after which they quickly become very expensive. The balance is now on the super-expensive side because they have been artificially cheap for long and normal people did never realize this.
Fossil fuels have excellent synergy with renewables, because small amounts are not a problem for climate, political stability or price, only large volumes are. So it is enough we can supply bulk of our energy needs with renewables. Fossil fuels are trivial to store in annual time scale, so there is nothing wrong burning them when it's -20degC outside so air-source heatpump COP plummets to 1, while simultaneously wind is calm so little wind power is generated, and so on. It's not a problem because such conditions are a tiny percentage of total energy use. Right now the problem is we have to burn the fossils almost all the time, even during trivially good conditions for wind/solar. We still haven't picked the low-hanging fruits.
Zero999:
It's only super expensive at the moment due to conflict between governments. It was much cheaper, when the West and Russia were at least civil to one another. It would be even cheaper, if there were a free market.
Obviously it will get more expensive, as resources run out, but it makes sense to switch to nuclear long before then.
Siwastaja:
Geez. The war is not about "being civil" with each other. The war is at the core of this energy thing.
Are you really this oblivious? Do you think it is just a coincidence that there are significant natural gas resources in Eastern Ukraine, and Russia is just, by coincidence, denazifying or being "uncivilized" or whatever crap over there? Really?
No, this is classical demand and response. EU buys huge amounts of natural gas from Russia, because Russia wants to sell natural gas to EU (and elsewhere, too) -> resources are naturally limited -> get more gas, so you can sell more of it! It's no different from the oil wars of Mr. Bush at all, really.
It's really that simple. Above certain threshold of demand, the process of getting cheap fossil fuels involves war. And while war is expensive, the cost of war is never paid by the energy customers, even though the whole war really existed for the fuel.
Of course war is always decorated with some rationalization (weapons of mass destruction! denazification!), but modern wars are really all about energy, and specifically ---
FOSSIL FUELS.
Marco:
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on September 06, 2022, 06:48:10 pm ---Do you think it is just a coincidence that there are significant natural gas resources in Eastern Ukraine, and Russia is just, by coincidence, denazifying or being "uncivilized" or whatever crap over there? Really?
--- End quote ---
Russia's gas reserves dwarf Ukraine's. The cost in lives, man power and economic efficiency isn't remotely worth it. Though I don't think Putin planned to bury quite this many Russians, but he's pot committed too.
--- Quote ---No, this is classical demand and response. EU buys huge amounts of natural gas from Russia, because Russia wants to sell natural gas to EU (and elsewhere, too) -> resources are naturally limited -> get more gas, so you can sell more of it! It's no different from the oil wars of Mr. Bush at all, really.
--- End quote ---
Which didn't generate enough income for American companies to cover the cost to the American economy and also weren't about oil in the sense of gaining access to it. They were about oil in the sense of keeping Saudi Arabia happy and the Middle East functional. America world cop, but mostly doing it for free.
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on September 06, 2022, 06:48:10 pm ---(...)
Of course war is always decorated with some rationalization (weapons of mass destruction! denazification!), but modern wars are really all about energy, and specifically ---
--- End quote ---
All wars in history have always been all about energy actually, in the general sense (access to resources and territory, that's ultimately "energy" we get from that.)
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on September 06, 2022, 06:48:10 pm ---FOSSIL FUELS.
--- End quote ---
If you think that's only due to fossil fuels, IMHO you'd be deluded. There will still be energy wars when we stop using fossil fuels. Maybe even more of them, as things are possibly going to get more unstable when we reach that point, at least for quite a while. We'll just displace the quest to other resources (both natural resources and human), and I doubt it's going to help much in terms of stability. Just a thought.
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