It's interesting how trade relationships that are centuries old, are now seen in a negative context solely on a foreign policy basis that's often dictated from across the Atlantic. Particularly when they go completely contrary to the other stated goal; Climate change.

Western Europe has been dependent on Eastern Europe's resources for a very long time, as Siberia is the largest concentration of natural resources on the continent and one of the largest on the whole planet.

It's not something anybody has much choice over; These resources are where they are, that geographic proximity also lead to their use being integrated all over the continent.

We can't replace that with wishful thinking, we can't just wish metal ores and minerals into existence or gas for industrial manufacturing.

Case in point; Germany's gas dependence, which is commonly framed as "Germany now uses more gas because it shut down nuclear reactors", when in reality only 14% of Germany's gas consumption is for electricity production [0].

The biggest chunk of German gas consumption is for industrial applications, like heavy smelting for the car industry or the chemical industry to create high demand chemicals like ammonia. Another huge chunk is household use for heating and kitchen appliances, together these two sectors account for 67% of Germany's gas consumption.

Nuclear reactors do nothing for that demand, at least not without taking a detour trough hydrogen, a detour that traditional renewables can also do [1]. While trying to supply that demand with imported American NGL would be the complete opposite of "Think of the climate!".

That's why declaring Eastern Europe's resources just as "taboo" is not a solution that will get us anywhere useful. Fighting climate change also means making the supply chains more local, you can't do that in Western Europe by declaring the largest collection of resources, in proxmity, as "off-limits for political reasons".

At some point we have to decide what's more important; Fighting climate change as a species or instrumentalizing it for these kinds of foreign policy games that usually leave everybody worse off, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

[0] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37985/umfrage...

[1] https://www.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/zv/de/ueber-fraunhofer...

Europe need a to take some quick and uncomfortable decisions here. It can’t be acceptable to have homes heated with fossil fuel anywhere in the rich part of the EU at least, even just a decade from now. This was just a climate issue up until the annexation of Crimea. Now it’s a question of what western democracies can and can’t do (such as: would if Finland wants to join NATO and Russia threatens Germany with gas shortages unless they veto).

The grants for switching fossil burners for heat pumps in single family homes have existed (at least in Sweden, Finland etc) for what, 20 years now? What’s happening on that front on the continent? Are there no grants? Are they not attractive?

Conversely, poorest people rent the shittiest and least efficient homes, but they don't have the choice to replace the heating system - that's the landlorsa decision. But he doen't pay the utilities, the tenants do, so why would he care?

These are cash grants not deductions (as they should be! They are covering a one-time cost!)

This is for single family detached homes (which are almost invariably owned)

A boiler makes hot water in a tank in the basement and showers, radiators and taps use that hot water?

I have seen (In Scotland) some extremely weird contraptions where water was heated in the shower by what I can only assume was an flame in a box on the wall. But surely that’s not what Germans and others on the continent are using? They do have a central hot water system?

How else is water coming to the radiators? I guess my question is: are there gas lines around a typical home to any other place than the boiler and possibly stove? Why?

The gas boiler can directly heat up cold water and provide sufficient flow for a hot shower, but the heat pump cannot. Because of this you need to buffer the heat in a hot water tank, usually something that's a few hundred litres, and heat it up over time. I believe boilers using heating oil work somewhat sim

In the UK houses heated with gas usually don't have a hot water tank, or even anywhere to put it. You can get all-in-one heat pump units that are the size of a large fridge which have a built in tank, but I've lived in places where there wouldn't even be space for that.

The boxes in the showers used in the UK are electric. They work pretty well (esp. considering most homes in the UK are single phase), but I am always concerned by the fact that an electric wire carrying 30kW of power is running right next to running water :-) Other than a gas boiler older homes may have a gas fireplace, but they are not so popular now.

There's also issues of the flow temperature for the heating system. Traditional central heating usually has a temperature of 70-80C, where as underfloor heating systems using a heat pump usually have a max of 35C. With a heat pump the efficiency drops with the temperature delta, so they are optimised to produce lower temperature water. But traditional radiators work better with higher temperatures.

It also connected directly to 4 pipes hot/cold tap and hot/cold radiator water making an easy swap.

Are you saying the space requirement of 60x60x180cm would really be the problem?

When you talk rent in London the first question asked tends to be "bills included?". This suggests to me that a non-trivial number of landlords would be interested in efficiency. Anecdotal, I don't have the data for the whole UK.

In my entire life I have only seen bills included in properties that were rented room by room, i.e. each room has a different tenant. I have never seen that for entire property rented to a single tenant

is this something new? i have been renting in London for almost a decade and I have never heard of a landlord or agency offer to pay my bills.

Thank you for putting this more clearly than I could.

Europe's got to move to more heat pumps and more industrial use of electricity to be greener. Then the question becomes: where is the best source of that electricity?

Maybe some of it can be very efficient natural gas plants-- especially if power-to-gas provides viable to eat up solar surpluses during the day. But nuclear is a good thing to have in the mix, too.

Still, I think a share of decent, predictable base load makes everything easier, and that's where nuclear can shine.

If Germany used more nuclear, then more houses would probably start heating with electricity (or at least newly built houses), like in France.

But Siberia is not Eastern Europe, is it? It lies fully in the Asian part of Russia. Why are you labelling this an East/West thing?

In practicality it's not an "East/West" thing as Eurasia is one continental mass, the colloquial distinction between Europe and Asia isn't one based on geography, but mostly politics.

That why "It's not in Europe but Asia" might be an interesting technicality, but doesn't change the geographic proximity, or how we are very much still talking about Russia.

Propaganda.

But this is pretty much connected. If you have cheap electricity, you can easily use it for heating instead of natural gas.

So Russian sabre rattling is actually the US? There is a long and complicated history between Western Europe and Russia, but the time when one is selling gas to the other is just the final 20 years. It is not in the EU’s interest to depend on an unreliable partner that is trying to destabilise it. Even more so for something as vital as energy production.

> Particularly when they go completely contrary to the other stated goal; Climate change.

How is getting rid of gas contrary to the climate change related goals? These call for the end of all fossil fuel generated electricity.

> Western Europe has been dependent on Eastern Europe's resources for a very long time

Some references would be useful here. I don’t really doubt it but as you wrote it, it sounds too much like hand waving.

> Another huge chunk is household use for heating and kitchen appliances

Electricity is perfectly fine for these uses. Transitioning is expensive but mitigation if we don’t will be even more.

> While trying to supply that demand with imported American NGL would be the complete opposite of "Think of the climate!".

It would also be contrary to the EU’s long term interest. We love the Americans, but we’ll be wary that another Trump could tear down treaties and agreements way too easily. Some companies are already importing shale gas from North America and nobody is pleased.

> That's why declaring Eastern Europe's resources just as "taboo" is not a solution that will get us anywhere useful.

It’s a good thing nobody is doing that, then.

> At some point we have to decide what's more important; Fighting climate change as a species or instrumentalizing it for these kinds of foreign policy games that usually leave everybody worse off, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

Cute. Now, in the real world, we’re not going to fight climate change with gas either. Also in the real world, the EU is not the US.