The Future of European Energy
October 8th, 2008
|
| Share |
Western Europe seems to have a problem: Like the rest of the world, energy needs are increasing, especially when it comes to electricity. Yet at the same time, european countries are pledging to cut back on CO2 emissions. In the UK, many nuclear power plants may be closed in the near future. Germany has already committed to the extermination of all nukes as part of a final solution that they hope to have completed by 2020. Germany’s ally Itally has already eliminated nukes and other countries have faced steep opposition. Spain has a strong anti-nuclear movement and has been investing a great deal of money in solar power.
So how will the nations of Europe meet their energy needs while keeping their commitments? I think it can be done. It will require a lot of improvements to the energy grid and possibly some new transmission methods, but if things continue to go the way they are, this is very likely to be the future of European energy policy.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Humor, Nuclear, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
October 8th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Very funny, but I think you need much fewer lines. Especially into Germany and Spain. The high energy prices there are already causing industry to leave in droves. Germany experiences now the largest emmigration wave since 1954. Most emmigrants are well educated engineers, technicians and scientists. As industry dies, there’s also not much need for power. If they continue their course, Germany will turn into a country populated by freezing sociology/politology majors and former government employees, and maybe a few farmers. The Greens there of course will continue to get their paychecks from Gazprom.
Italy already wants to build more nuclear plants. So they have come to their senses. In the UK a similar shift is on the way. Same in the eastern european countries, and the Skandinavian countries have abundant water power and nuclear.
Quote Comment
October 8th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Très drôle. Cette absence de vision commune entre États de l’Union européenne crée un environnement politique globalement peu favorable au nucléaire, et pourtant cette énergie occupe aujourd’hui une place importante en Europe. Aujourd’hui, les centrales nucléaires existantes, amorties en partie, constituent d’importantes sources de profits pour la France. Enfin, en France, le projet de loi d’orientation sur l’énergie confirme la contribution majeure de l’énergie nucléaire dans le futur.
Quote Comment
October 8th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
The sad thing is that while that may be a comical overstatement of the facts, it is not so far from reality. In the UK building new nuclear plants seems to be all but impossible due to the strong effort to prevent it which has been ongoing since the early 1970’s and has grown stronger since then.
Every time a nuclear plant comes up it is talked about as if it is sinister and the invariable issue of the money involved comes up. It is reported like “The government has a dirty secret – they are planning new nuke plants that could mean billions in sales to powerful nuclear companies.” That seems a very potent argument that the prime minster or politicians are planning on +imposing+ this on everyone and the tone that it is some kind of conspiracy.
The French are generally well accustomed to nuclear energy by virtue of the fact that they have lived with it and come to see the direct benefits. The French government is very pro-nuclear simply because they see it as being good for security, economics, safety. Their policy has made them a big exporter of electricity.
The UK recently sold a large stake in nuclear generating to France. The sad thing is that the current domestic nuclear capabilities are poor. They have been allowed to age and have reached the point where we are pushing the useful lifespan and where the necessary upgrades or overhaul is very strongly opposed. So we will loose many nuclear plants in the near future if something does not change.
I am very concerned about this, to be honest because electricity rates are not good as it is. There has been talk about bringing in more electric transmission through the Eurotunnel which has already been used in similar capacities for communications cables. The proposal was to share electricity and better tie to the European grid and there was talk about how we could export wind power and this would help us do so. Reality though is we all know power would only be flowing in one direction in such a link. There are already other undersea cables.
Quote Comment
October 8th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Vive la France!
Actuellement en Belgique, les Wallons travaillent à améliorer leurs capacités industrielles. J’espère qu’ils vont profiter de l’expérience de leurs voisins du sud et vont construire des centrales nucléaires aussi. (Les Belges ont 7 centrales nucléaires aujourd’hui, et l’énergie nucléaire fournit 45.000.000.000 kWh par an.)
(DV82XL, sorry if I butchered that!)
Quote Comment
October 8th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Pas trop mal, alore, ma chère
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 1:04 am
I don’t think that most French actually wear the striped shirts and scarfs or or any of that as shown in cartoons. Berets might be french, but I also don’t think everyone in the country wears them. I don’t honestly know how common the curled mustache is in France.
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Do you think this may help to change the Germans’ minds on nuclear energy?
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 2:55 am
mlp said:
Espérons surtout que cette loi stupide de 2002 concernant la sortie de l’énergie nucléaire soit abrogé, avant que ces idiots verts démolissent des réacteurs parfaitement en ordre. Mais selon moi on n’a pas 7 centrales nucléaires, mais 7 réacteurs, groupés dans deux centrales (Doel et Tihange).
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 6:04 am
as everybodies writting in non-english
Nein, die Teutschen werden, sobald Ihnen die Energie ausgeht einfach mal wieder ihre Nachbarstaaten überfallen…darin haben wir ja Übung!
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Na, hoffentlich nicht! Die Zeiten sind vorbei….
As a German I desperately hope that the Greens influence subside soon and we may start to follow a serious, sustainable energy policy again. This has to include nuclear.
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Doc,
Your resort to racial stereotyping and references to past genocides merely serves to underline the poverty of the arguments in support of your position.
France may indeed be well on the way to providing a nuclear energy monopoly in the European Economic Area, as well as being the only truly independently nuclear-armed state in the European Union. That suits me just fine. As long as the British taxpayer is off the hook, with the French state providing the subsidies, I’m very happy.
The one cloud on the horizon is that current economic difficulties may force closer political union in support of the Eurozone monetary union, with all Eurozone taxpayers thus being on the hook. What a delight that the UK dodged that bullet of monetary union. I was in favour of it at one point. These days, I tend to favour the Finlandisation of Northern Europe. As the Icelandic PM said yesterday “…new friends.”
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Sceric said:
Ohne Energie gibt es siemlich wenig transport. Und selbst französchise Generale sind moderner als 1800.
(Ok, my German is far from perfect.)
McGlashan said:
Твой новий друг Гаспром илли Госбанк? (Your new friend is Gasprom or Gosbank? – as we are using so many languages, why not Russian?)
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
McGlashan said:
McGlashan, go buy yourself a sense of humor. The striped shirt, red scarf and beret wearing ‘Onion Johnny’ is more iconic than an insult to anyone, in fact there is an Onion Johnny museum that opened in the town of Roscoff, France to celebrate the enterprising Breton farmers that the image is drawn from.
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
One of the blogs I read (warning: very anti-American!) suggests that European countries should seek close ties with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries in order to neutralize the Russian natural gas weapon. I suggested nuclear power – the reply was “Nuclear yes – but it may not be enough…”
Quote Comment
October 9th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
George Carty said:
I’m not sure how much allying with the middleeastern countries will really help. It’s a global market. Gas will come from whoever can supply it. Russia does have the advantage of having a system of distribution into Europe, but it really doesn’t matter where the gas comes from or doesn’t.
Quote Comment
October 10th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
drbuzz0 said:
You’re only right in the long term; in the short term Europe just hasn’t enough capacity (ports and ships) to import on short notice the same amounts from the Middle East as from Russia. Also, gas from the Middle East will (very probably – I’m discounting any monopolistic tendencies of Russia) cost more, because of the transport by sea. Maybe someone will build some pipelines through the mediterranean, but if the gas has to come from a Gulf state, it will probably have to pass through some unstable territories.
Quote Comment
October 10th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Vjatcheslav said:
Correction: Purposely de-stabilized territories. Russia’s intervention in Georgia put a stop to talks of passing a pipeline through that country, and was probably the main reason she did so. Azerbaijan and Armenia have also been told in no uncertain terms to take a lesson to what has happened to their neighbor. Russia intends to keep a stranglehold on gas supplies to Europe, and will do what it can to stop any overland supply lines from the Middle East.
Quote Comment
October 10th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
CNBC will be airing “The Nuclear Option” Tuesday October 14th at 9p ET. Melissa Francis goes inside the nuclear energy debate with a provocative look at the facts and fears behind this controversial energy source. See why some are even arguing for a nuclear power plant in their own backyards.
Additional web extras can be found at http://www.cnbc.com/id/26868716?__source=vty|thenuclearoption|&par=vty .
Please let me know if you would like any additional information.
Thanks,
Kevin
201 735 4730
Quote Comment
October 10th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
DV82XL said:
I didn’t think of the Caucasus, but more of Iraq, Libanon, Syria et cetera (from where for example Greece or Italy could be reached), where radical islam is gaining grounds. Going through the Caucasus isn’t a good idea if one wants to avoid Russia, since they are re-establishing themselves as the local masters (which is as legitimate as the control the US exerts over Latin America). That being said, you’ve raised a valid point, which I didn’t pay much attention to.
Quote Comment
October 10th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Vjatcheslav said:
In either case Europe is screwed. With Russia they are under control of the Russians, which can at any time use energy supply as a political weapon. With a pipeline through the Middle East, Europe can be easily and badly hurt by islamic terrorists. A gas pipeline over such a distance, a lot of it through territory hostile to the West, is just too easy to blow up.
Quote Comment
October 10th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
KLA said:
Its not the blowing up I would worry about, as much as the fact that again you have another power with its hands on the valve that can exert a massive amount of leverage over their customer’s foreign policies.
Quote Comment
October 11th, 2008 at 1:14 am
I know this is a bit dated, but so am I. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRrFjwB0K3Q
http://www.metrolyrics.com/party-in-paris-lyrics-uk-subs.html
Quote Comment
October 27th, 2009 at 2:58 am
Actually you could not be more wrong about this. France is the furtherst behind in europe because they have relied on nuclear powe and now find it is too expensive and dangerous and dirty to use. Germany is number 1 for solar and wind and Spain and Austria and Denmark are catching up. Germany is the example of the best energy policy because they have created millions of jobs and are shuting down nuclear in favor of renewables.
Renewables are the best way as you never run out of fuel and they give limitless energy so Germany and Spain will soon be the worlds zero fossil fuel societies. They are already building cars that run on hydrogen but now there;s something even better because in Spain they have a car that runs on air.
Don’t you wish the US was catching up with them? We better because we’re going to be a hundred years behind. France looks like idiots right now with their ticking nuclear waste timebomb.
Quote Comment
October 27th, 2009 at 6:04 am
You must have some very out of date information if you actually believe that Germany is shutting down nuclear when a government that promised to not do that was just elected.
Anyway, from a CO2 emissions point of view France is way ahead of almost everyone, not just in Europe (France is also a lot closer to being zero fossil fuel than Germany and Spain are).
Quote Comment
October 27th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Anonymous said:
Don’t feed the troll…
Quote Comment
October 29th, 2009 at 9:14 am
So speaking the truth makes me a troll?
Read it and weep;
http://cleantechnica.com/2008/07/29/4-reasons-why-germany-is-a-renewable-energy-success-story/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/spain_renewable_energy.php
Quote Comment