Having been a fan of this for so long this is just sad and pathetic that we now have to consider things like rolling blackouts.

That this is a thing in Europe in general is sad.

The "anti-nuclear" camp has won, but based on what sort of logical argument? Fear? what about Chernobyl?

It is one thing to be "anti-nuclear" but they failed to provide alternatives. "WIND" or "Solar" is not going to replace 3,500 MW of nuclear power without damaging a LOT of land.

Now millions face rolling blackouts and energy shortages when nuclear could have been providing clean energy. I live within 8KM of a nuclear plant which has been running accident free 24x7 since 1971.

Now nuclear costs 3-5x more compared to renewables and is simply not relevant.

> "WIND" or "Solar" is not going to replace 3,500 MW of nuclear power without damaging a LOT of land.

If land use is what you measure impact based on a much better target is the beef industry.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore

Compared to what ? Energy prices have jumped 2-3x in some places so far, and it's not even winter yet. Comparing renewable prices as averages or whatever is fine if you like blackouts ?

People throw out whatever nonsense they like to support their position.

"Nuclear costs 3-5x" and as you point out, compared to what?

The cost of sitting around for 20 years debating this and not taking any action at all has lead to much worse problems - power shortages.

These "anti-nuclear" types fail to apply logic to their debate.

I asked how much power is produced by solar during the long winter months, i suspect they will not respond as it is against their view - solar is NOT viable in cold-weather climates. You need a reliable "base" system and nuclear is very well suited for this. Our plants (CANDU) can be refuelled while producing near-full power greatly reducing the need to shut them down.

The reason the temperatures fall below zero during the winter where i live is obvious.. The energy we receive from the sun has been greatly reduced.

How would solar power address the reduction in available solar energy, and the increased demand for energy for heating?

For the cost see for example:

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

I sold solar panel for 10 years. Both solar thermal and PV. This is simply not true. You need to greatly oversize your panels (≥6x) and also have a passive house with a huge storage buffer (>5000 liters). In the summer you end up having to pump the waste heat into a pool. There are also maintenance costs. For PV you need huge amounts of battery storage. It's simply not economical above the 40° parallel to use solar for heating. For DHW or charging your EV it's okay, but in the winter you'll get at most 1/6 the amount of heat or electricity that you get in the summer provided that the panels are not covered in snow.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but also don't fall into the trap of what you are accusing others of doing.

In places like Germany, Wind and solar actually counter-balance each other very well. [0]

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Seasonal-cycle-of-the-ca...

10 years ago I was assured that coal was dead, killed by wind and solar, which were already cheaper than coal at $60/T, and falling. How is it possible then that 10 years on with all the vastly expanded and even cheaper and better renewables, that people are paying $430/T for coal? And it's not the remaining few legacy assets winding down as they compete for a dwindling supply of fuel, global coal production is rising, new coal power plants are being built.

I've never heard any of these people go back and reflect on what they got wrong about their predictions about coal, what they missed and where their logic was flawed. What I do hear frequently though is "nuclear is dead, renewables are already cheaper"... I'm a little less open minded this time around.

For the rest of the world that is not the case. It's very easy and fast to build a coal plant and pretty much every country has access to the raw material (independency). For the most part you don't need a specialized workforce either, which you do need for nuclear. It's also not intermittent like solar and wind and the supply chains for solar and wind wouldn't have been able to keep up anyway.

Coal extraction in the western world is making huge amounts of money and scaling up production, exactly the opposite of what the naysayers were incessantly parroting.

Coal is no different than wind and solar in terms of accessibility of plant or product. Actually renewables are significantly easier to acquire and scale and deploy in many cases -- millions of people have solar panels on their houses for example. Private, as well as municipal or county level installations are common. As are much larger ones.

> For the most part you don't need a specialized workforce either, which you do need for nuclear.

You certainly do. You can't just throw a bunch of people from the street together and tell them to run a coal mine, supply line, and power plant.

> It's also not intermittent like solar and wind and the supply chains for solar and wind wouldn't have been able to keep up anyway.

Might be zeroing in on some of the problems...

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/coal-pro...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184333/coal-energy-consu...

https://www.worldometers.info/coal/australia-coal/ Australia has consumption going down but production going up, they're selling to China and India.

I hope this clears up your confusion.

> Actually renewables are significantly easier to acquire and scale and deploy in many cases -- millions of people have solar panels on their houses for example. Private, as well as municipal or county level installations are common. As are much larger ones.

You missed my point. You need a lot less materials for the same amount of power in a coal plant and digging for coal is easier to scale up.

Here is the IEA World Energy Outlook from 2010. The presentation is simplified, check out page 11 in [0] for example. As you can see the OECD numbers go down, but the China, India and other developing market numbers go up. Giving us a total increase. You can check out the more in depth IEA report here [1].

[0] https://www.oecd.org/berlin/46389140.pdf [1] https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/1b090169-1c58-4f5d-...

Why the intellectual dishonesty? Why do you try to discredit what I say, backed by sources, when you rely on nothing but your own fallible memory to back up your claims? Just back up your claims with sources, it's really not that hard.

> Your claim that it was just in the west doesn't make sense because mines in western countries export to China and India etc.

If you check the previous links that I posted, you will see that coal production in the west has reduced as well.

> If you check the previous links that I posted, you will see that coal production in the west has reduced as well.

You keep blathering about things that don't address anything I wrote. Go back and actually read what I wrote and have a think about what you're actually trying to say about it before you try again.

Coal production in (at least some) western countries, e.g., USA has actually started to increase in the past year or so in response to demand.

That's what I claimed, I'm happy you agree. This claim did not extend towards the rest of the world (so not like you claimed), the consensus among experts was that they would be increasing their coal consumption. This is also what happened.

> Coal production in (at least some) western countries, e.g., USA has actually started to increase in the past year or so in response to demand.

I don't think anyone missed the gas crisis.

It did ,because western countries export coal to the rest of the world.

Look if you can't admit you were parroting that coal was killed by renewables without any understanding of commodity boom/bust cycles or energy demand trajectory the world that's quite understandable it's difficult to face reality, but you don't have to keep at it.

As I said, coal production and consumption in the west has gone down. Coal plants and mines have closed. The trend is downwards. Do you really refuse to accept this when it's what the data says? This is quite worrying I must say, is there some ideological bias at play here?

> Look if you can't admit you were parroting that coal was killed by renewables without any understanding of commodity boom/bust cycles or energy demand trajectory the world that's quite understandable it's difficult to face reality, but you don't have to keep at it.

Coal is being killed by renewables, nuclear, hydro, gas, ... in the west. Whatever is cheaper tends to win out in the end. All you have to do is look at the data, I even linked it for you. Although it's experiencing a hiccup right now due to the gas crisis. It will obviously take a bit longer for the rest of the world to catch up, even without the current crisis.

You were wrong if you were reciting the popular prayer "coal is dead, killed by renewables" a few years ago. Hopefully you come to understand that and reflect on what that means for the credibility of the kind of sources you get your information from, and what that means for your ideas about nuclear and other things too.

Did you not claim:

>"coal is dead, killed by renewables." was said by people around 10 years ago and that this referred to the entire world?

I'm assuming people aren't just random Twitter users but actual reputable people.

I have provided a reputable source from 2010 that said that total coal consumption would rise and that this increase is due to an increased usage in the developing world. This is true today, see [0] so the prediction was on point. All you have to do is show us that a reputable source has claimed that coal was dead and that this referred to the entire world. Somewhere around 2010. This would settle the debate.

> You were wrong if you were reciting the popular prayer "coal is dead, killed by renewables" a few years ago. Hopefully you come to understand that and reflect on what that means for the credibility of the kind of sources you get your information from, and what that means for your ideas about nuclear and other things too.

Don't you think it would be really weird if I was supposedly reciting something that I say wasn't claimed in the first place? The claim you mention refers to the west and no real energy expert worth his or her salt would have claimed that this would be the case for the entire world. It's simply not possible for the developing world to do that. It wasn't possible in 2010, when the costs for renewables were much higher than they are now, and it isn't possible now.

I think the International Energy Agency is quite a reputable source? They do research and advice policy makers all around the world.

Also I'm a bit confused... My ideas about nuclear and other things? I'm not following here, what do you mean? And what does it have to do with the topic at hand?

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

They were just led astray by misinformation from special interests, and they were wrong.

The same people have also been claiming that nuclear is dead, killed by renewbales. Their credibility speaks for itself.

No need to reply with apologetics, or arguments about something I didn't say.

Renewables are more reliable. $10 will get you one watt of nuclear which will be off 10-40% of the time. $10 of solar + wind + storage will get you at least 1 watt every hour of the year in and at least 1W of variable power even in Germany or Canada at any scale from micro generation to 100s of MW.

As an example, in my zone, if someone provided 1x energy at 7pm, and I repaid that by providing 3x of that energy at 3am, I would still earn a profit of about 25%.

The price prognosis for tonight is even lower, so I could trade 1x for 6x and still make a nice profit from the price difference.

what does "beef" have to do with converting land to wind farms?

perhaps you could respond back with how solar panels are not actually very environmentally friendly? They produce a lot of toxic chemicals to manufacture.

Tell us, to replace 3,500 MW of nuclear power, how many acres of land must be converted to wind/solar? what is the environmental/social impact of doing this?

How much power is produced in a cold / dark winter via solar/wind vs nuclear.

Of course, they have cows, for milk, for the cheese industry that they do have. But raising dairy cattle has only a fraction of the impact that beef cattle do (as you're not constantly slaughtering them and feeding up new ones.)

We're seeing the hidden cost of renewable energy now, aren't we? Cheap because it's supplemented with natural gas to provide base load. If the politicians actually cared about the climate, they would be adamant about supplementing with nuclear, which is far far more energy dense.

https://xkcd.com/1162/

We should definitely spend our money on a system that will provide 1W of baseload 60-80% of the time and require gas for the rest, rather than a wind+solar+storage system that will provide at least 1 watt 100% of the year and average 2-5W depending on location.

Boring but sensible answer:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-9-2022-00127...

> Russia is one of the world’s biggest producers of oil, gas and coal. Continuous reliance on fossil fuels and delays to clean energy transition benefit Russia.

> Following on from this the Commission has put forward an additional proposal to speed up transition to clean energy sources by amending the directives on the Energy Performance of Buildings, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy[3].

For the build price of 1 watt of nuclear plant which will be at best 90% available (but more likely 60-80) you can get a solar/wind mix at retail micro generation prices further from the equator than 90% of the population with zero hours of producing less than 1 watt (much of which is dispatchable too) and 1 additional net watt of variable energy. Allow for the same availability as a nuclear reactor and the price is a fraction. Then for just the running costs of an already built nuclear you can pay the whole thing off before the reactor even opens. Give it five years and the LCOE of solar will be less than the fuel costs.

The solution was to stop wasting billions on nuclear and subsidizing fossil fuels and actually invest in renewable tech half a century ago.

Solar energy density is such that just covering structures and open paved areas in any region with less than 10k people per km^2 can cover average primary energy (not just electricity). It's far less than cattle grazing land or land used for fuel ethanol to greenwash the auto industry. The land use is a complete non-issue.

Well, let's see. Wind uses negligible land if incorporated onto farms, so I'll assume it's all solar.

Nuclear capacity factor (fraction of the time it's operating): 0.9, call it 100%.

PV capacity factor 0.2

PV nameplate panel production per square metre 200W

PV land coverage fraction (access paths beside PV panels take up space) 0.5

Total land needed for PV to deliver equivalent power:

3 500 000 000 / (200 * 0.2 * 0.5) = 175 000 000 m^2 = 175 km^2.

Switzerland's population is 8.5M. Assuming it is 80% urbanised and 20 m^2 per person in cities (less than in Dhaka, 8.9M / 306 km^2): then Switzerland's cities take up 136 km^2. In reality, probably several times this figure.

So the land area is probably less than Switzerland's cities.

If Switzerland wished to accelerate the development of two-layer PV cells, increasing production per area by 50%, then the bulk of the 3.5GW could be provided by rooftop solar in cities.

In reality a mix of wind and PV would be used. Wind is highly compatible with pastoral farming, leaving 90% or more of the land area it "occupies" free for grazing.

The real challenge at present would be sourcing enough storage for the daily usage cycle.

Now, damage. Covering land with inert PV panels does indeed change the soil ecology, but not irremediably. Remove the panels, and the soil would be back to normal inside a decade. Contrast with coal mines and ash piles, and uranium mines. And, as above, the PV could all be on rooftops, which have already damaged the land. Get rid of the buildings!

TLDR: the "LOT of land" is not much, really, and the damage is minimal.

Like you say, wind can be co-located on farms or other areas that are not otherwise economically useful, with minimal environmental obstruction. Something on the order of 99.99% of the acreage occupied by windmills can continue to be used for other purposes. Solar panels can also be efficiently and thoughtfully located.

Of course, they can also be located poorly as well but it's not something that's like definitionally baked into the technology, it's a matter of having good policy about siting.

It's quite well researched, and for someone who was also wondering why there is European aversion towards nuclear power, it showed me that it's not that simple. Nuclear power is quite inconvenient and not as magical "free energy" as it seems.

If even a fraction of this installed capacity would run in times of shortages, this should further reduce demand without causing disruption on industrial production or even having to schedule rolling blackouts.

[0] (German) https://www.srf.ch/news/wirtschaft/drohende-energiekrise-str...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_services_(electric_p...

Secondly, I think “essential” will depend on the duration of the blackout. For a blackout of a few hours, keeping WiFi running so that work from home can continue probably is more essential than heating a water boiler. If the blackout takes a few days, that may change.

We already have interconnect devices for A/C and water heating and car charging in some locations.

This makes ZERO sense..

I live in a cold climate.. Our furnace is "essential" to prevent my family and i from freezing to death. Under your plan we should pay more for this?

And those who cant afford it? Let me guess, government rebates, making a complex program even more complex?

Any time your solution requires "rebates".. it is flawed from the start.

If seen that way, you wouldn’t pay more; you would have to he choice to get cheaper electricity.

I foresee high demand for electronics that seamlessly switch from the lower quality of service feed to the ‘essential’ one when that cheaper feed stops working, though.

The alternative as presented was some sort of compliance program hoping people wouldn't just run everything off the 'essential' feed regardless of need, or rolling blackouts as currently practiced.

It seems you agree that 'essential' loads have much more value to you and others, but you're not willing to pay the value?

what does taking what i wrote, then reworking the sentence to suit your purpose serve?

I did not agree that essential loads have more "value"... you did.

If you think that heating your home is not essential, come by in the winter and i can put a tent in the back yard for you. It reaches as low as -24C, but i'm sure you will be fine.

If you think that people should be forced to pay more to heat their homes.. you are mistaken. No one should have to choose between food and heat and any program structured such that "essential costs more" will NEVER work.

I said that it is UNFAIR to charge more for essential loads, and that if a program depends on "rebates" it is flawed.

There are many other alternative solutions, such as what we have here via "time of use" billing that is also seasonally adjusted.

this "pay more for essential services" logic is severely flawed, much as you twisting my words to suit your purpose was.

the persons below really made the point when they wrote "It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand "

what you are proposing is unethical...

In a similar sense that I'm not willing to pay more for "essential" food than for luxury food; or in the same sense that it seems unfair to have to pay for life-saving medical treatments.

It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand — the whole meaning of the word "inelastic" being that changing the price of it won't incentivize people to use any more/less of it.

Inelastic demand should, at the very least, be subsidized. This is why public healthcare exists; why food stamps exist; etc. But better yet, inelastic demand — because it is so predictable — should be optimized heavily for by suppliers (for power plants, this is "building out base-load capacity") such that economies of scale enable the supply for inelastic demand to be satisfied with lower cost than the supply for elastic demand.

With food, it's possible to manage supply through stockpiling. With electricity, storage is tricky, so when there's a change to supply, demand has to be changed to match. You can do that with blackouts or economics. Many large customers have contracts where they pay a lower rate in exchange for disconnecting their load when needed to reduce demand. Anything essential would be on another meter that has a higher rate.

Why is it a problem to apply the same principle to residential connections?

Of course, in my area, most of my utility outages are a result of interrupted lines and not supply issues, both essential and non-essential would be equally disrupted. And, it's not feasible to switch a significant number of residences to a two-meter system in any reasonable amount of time, so this is firmly in the thought expirement category.

WELL PUT.. the logic on this debate is astonishly bad..

"Charge more for essential services" just sounds terrible and you are correct, inelastic demand needs to be affordable, and subsidized if it is NOT affordable.

i dont understand how someone would advocate that "essential services has higher value to me and should cost more".

Essential services like heating my home does not have a higher value, it is an absolutely essential service to prevent death from cold temperatures..

This person should try living in -24C without heat and see if it changes their views.

As it is, I live in a climate that does dip below 0C from time to time, and having access to heat is important, so I have a backup generator for the house, and another for the well, because water is important too. When I use them, just the energy cost is much higher than utility power, so I don't use them when utility power is available. There's capital cost and operational costs to pay too. Many people who live around me don't have generators, so they have to hope outages won't be too long, or that they can make it to a warming center --- but outages are often coincident with locally heavy snowfall and our roads are always steep, so that makes it difficult to travel even short distances to get to warmth.

In my area, the issue isn't rolling blackouts, it's usually lines broken due to falling trees. Paying more for uninterupted utilities wouldn't fix that, but if it were rolling blackouts, I would certainly prefer to pay more for utility power for essential loads rather than paying more for local generation for essential loads.

Richer people likely also would counter this with battery or diesel powered backup power (already happens a lot in countries that have irregular blackouts). If they use batteries, their power usage would even go up dues to losses in the charge/discharge cycle.

If the light was on, people paid significantly more. It was very very effective at reducing peak consumption.

Consumer awareness of what appliances use the most power should really be a lot higher. It's actually pretty simple too - devices that generate a lot of heat are the ones consuming a lot of energy. That includes devices whose purpose may be to keep things cool - your fridge and A/C still generate significant waste heat even in the latter case it's vented externally. A rare exception would be a car-battery charger, which can obviously draw significant power but the heat is generated later when the power is drawn from the battery and in a dissipated fashion that's hard to detect directly but is still significant.

Have houses automatically heat up earlier in the morning before people start waking up and consuming more power

Prior to "Time of use" billing (and having to upgrade all our meters in like 2016) i dont see how this was possible.

The old meters simply measured how much power was used, they had no idea of WHEN it was used.

The electric company would go house to house and "read the meter" once a month and report this back to billing. Based on your usage a bill would be produced and sent to you.

How/when would a "high usage light" come into play?

I grew up in a house which was over 40 years old, there was no "high-usage" lights near the waster/dryer. Mostly because homes built back then had the waster/dryer in the basement and any "usage lights" would be ineffective.

But since it's been around since the late 70s, clearly you can do this without needing too much advanced tech - which is what I interpreted as being the perceived problem. (Perhaps incorrectly, but it looks like I wasn't the only one...)

I wasn't debating if these meters exist or not, it was that they were never used in Ontario.

Continuing your logic, did Canada ever use these "multiple-tariff" meters? If they did, what was the point of the light the OP mentioned?

Great for reducing electricity consumption; not great for reducing total energy usage.

- Make it for all energy use, not just electricity

- Give an extra allowance for electric car owners

During the Texas winter crisis, virtually no residential customers saw a financial incentive to wind down power usage. Only those crazies on Griddy, et. al. were impacted.

But most Texas utility customers now pay a surcharge every month to pay off the accumulated debt of that crisis.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2022/02/11/how-much...

https://www.yahoo.com/video/senior-asian-couple-california-g....

That's only a valid strategy if your customers can be more responsive, but in a freak cold snap where most customers are running heaters at 100% to keep their homes habitable, there's little they can go to reduce demand.

Many people have purchased generators after that crisis, but telling (and maybe subsidizing) millions of people to buy a generator and stockpile fuel because the grid can't handle cold weather is not good energy policy.

It'd be better if regulators required demand-response automation that would let them intelligently scale back demand of high-energy appliances before the grid reaches critical levels without heavy-handed rolling blackouts.

The complicated one is daily tiers - when power is more or less expensive at different times.

The solution is power storage either at a grid level or at a home level where the information is available to the smart batteries. And/or so much excess solar and wind that we just don’t care.

I'm also planning to add one or two small 800Wp PV systems "Balkonsolar" to our flat (we have plenty of space on the south facing side) this will also involves pre planning for energy intensive stuff including a planned AC in the summer... let's see how this works out :)

You’d have to do it on a day to day basis or hourly. That could actually work - use too much power in an hour or day and it shuts off for awhile.

This would require some additional infrastructure, but might be worth it if the blackouts are going to be too frequent.

Of course there's already a hard cap (usually ~9kW over here), but I suspect most people never reach it.

There are plans in Belgium to charged based on peak power (something silly like "max power used in any 15 minute period"), which would drive up the cost for the average consumer without reducing demand (as people tend not to have much choice in when they use their most power hungry appliances).

That is actually not a bad idea. Would only decrease power though, not energy consumption.

(Assuming the freezer is built to read the power meter and decide when to not run the compressor).

High power US home is 200 amp times 240 volts. More typical homes are 100 amp or 150 amp.

Houses in north America are fed with two 120V "legs" and so the 100A is actually at 240V.

200*220*sqrt(3)=76210 watts

The idea is to move "load" from peaks to avoid shortages by charging more to use power during peaks.

The idea of "priority customers" has a long standing principle. "High usage" customers often agree to be the first to be cut in return for discounts.

Targeting "residential customers" in this way is NOT effective as it takes a LOT of houses to equal the amount of power "commercial/industrial" users consume.

Time of use billing is probably the better option.

But politicians say it’s going to be ok. So you know, we’re probably screwed.

I lived in Switzerland and of course they are doing great, but Swiss people won't be the ones freezing to death in winter.

Also the amount of LPG redirected from India and Pakistan to Europe will have a huge effect on those countries.

In Hungary the country is trying to get back to wood burning and lignite (the worst type of coal), which will increase air pollution enourmously, but I believe it will the worst winter there since I was born (40 years ago).

Not just energy, but food, vaccines, medical supplies, consumer products, etc. This has always been the case but now it's at the point where third world countries will probably have major civil unrest and emigration due to the shortages of food and energy they will face from being outbid by Europe and other rich countries during this shortage.

Europeans can resort to going on fewer and less expensive vacations to compensate for the increased prices of energy, food, game consoles and GPUs, but I doubt anyone here will actually starve or freeze to death, while that may be an actual reality for some people in some developing nations.

I am sure that living from $70/month would be hard for any of us, but some people have to keep their whole family alive from that money, and definately depend on the government this winter. If they freeze, nobody will know about them and they will be just deleted from the statistics.

Heres a video of how the poorest part of Hungary looked like a few years ago, and I am sure their life has just gotten much worse since a few years ago: https://youtu.be/FvoTaqutfVk

I am from Eastern Europe (Latvia) and this does mostly hold true for the countryside: wood burning stoves are common.

However, it is likely that inflation and other cost increases will also affect the prices of firewood from here on out, as well as getting it delivered (unless you decided to secure your own, though depending on where/how you do that, the legality might be dubious).

From what I know of, most people are noticeably hit by the increase of prices in the stores (as well as a somewhat decreased selection of what's available), in addition to greatly increased electricity prices, which has been a topic that gets brought up often in the news.

There aren't that many great solutions for that, to be honest - both diesel generators and solar panels are too expensive for most people, even though there are programs to aid families with purchasing and setting up their own, if they're capable of partaking in those: https://www.altum.lv/en/services/individuals/energy-efficien... (the Latvian translation has more information https://www-altum-lv.translate.goog/pakalpojumi/iedzivotajie...)

That said, it's probably difficult to undertake something like that, when you're living from paycheck to paycheck.

In Eastern Europe, not so much.

edit: I'm glad that you mention Eastern Europe, which is where I come from. Paradoxically, more people die from cold in the West, because their milder climates don't force them to invest in insulation.

edit2: the previous claim may be based on flawed methology, see https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/38/4/806/2966950

Should've bought local, but as someone from a poor country neighbouring the EU - fuck that, learn to make quality or you deserve to go under. I'm not paying 2.5x the price for local atrocious quality.

And farmers saying lack of rain will ruin them can Google "artificial irrigation" on their gigabit fiber and unlimited 4G. But hey, I guess those new BMWs were worth it.

India's buying the excess gas from Russia though, so they have access to a seller that Europe won't touch.

Although the troubles with Nord Stream 1 are well known, the termination of the other pipelines is less well understood. Poland for example closed the Jamal pipeline due to the war in Ukraine:

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/poland-terminates-yamal-gas-...

We also have to remember that Europe seized Russian euros and broke contracts in other ways, so at this point even if the pipelines were re-opened and the equipment properly repaired, it's not really obvious if Russia would even want to go back to selling to Europe. Unreliable partner after all compared to China, India and elsewhere. Europe is buying their gas anyway due to arbitrage so it looks like a winner for Russia unfortunately.

It is assumed that Russia sent a warning message to EU countries not to interfere. Fortunately, most EU countries recognized that Russia was no longer a reliable supplier. And imposed sanctions, delivered weapons anyhow.

Russia thought they could threaten their most important customers. The problem Russia now has, it that there is hardly any capacity to sell gas to other countries. Building pipelines will take many years and will have to happen without western technology (I'm sure Russia would like China to own their pipelines). Or Russia has to build more LNG terminals, but that is also not ideal. And ship from western countries probably won't go there.

Of course, the downside of relying to much on Russian gas is that EU countries now have to deal with an enormous energy shortage.

The Russians are selling more to China and India since the war. The higher price of gas means in the short run they are making more money.

Yes, some sanctions might be annoying, in the way a mosquito is annoying to you, but basically nothing europe has done has really had an impact. (Most weapons have come from the US).

So while parts of what you say is true, frankly the situation is terrible for Europe, quite bad for Russia, and pretty awesome for the US

Yes, Russia makes a lot more money at the moment because the small amount of gas they still sell to EU countries is expensive enough that it nets more money.

Anybody who has been following the war a bit will notice that Russia is now seriously running out of modern weapons. By the time tanks from the early 60s show up at the front line, you can be sure something is wrong. At the moment, and due sanctions, Russia has a bit of a production problem.

Since the 2014 sanctions, Russia has a bit a problem with obtaining micro-electronics. The effects of that are also quite noticeable.

In any case. Over the summer, EU countries managed to fill their gas storage while producing enough electricity to keep most stuff running. So yes, the situation is bad for the economy and EU countries have to figure how to help people pay their energy bill, etc. But if the current situation is 'terrible' then I wonder what word has to be used for a real disaster.

I have no interest in discussing this with you as you're not here with good intentions, but I would let others know that Western countries were very accommodating with the spare parts, which in practice called the Russian bluff. I doubt Germany will go back to Russian gas after they pulled this one.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nord-stream-turbine-...

First point is true, but the second ist not. Germany went out its way to ensure all contracts are fulfilled to avoid this claim.

> it's not really obvious if Russia would even want to go back to selling to Europe.

Russia very much wants to go back to selling gas and oil to europe, they have after all no other relevant industries and pipelines to China/India don't have the capacity to replace european delivery.

> Europe is buying their gas anyway due to arbitrage so it looks like a winner for Russia unfortunately.

Even chinese and indian experts see russia as the loser of this conflict and to be relegated to a possible chinese puppet state in the future.

how is the ruble doing on international currency exchange?

> "Repeated case of interference of the Bank of Russia into implementation of the budget rule in terms of foreign currency purchases means that the floating currency rate regime existed from the end of 2014 until early 2018 is ‘only on paper now’ and is actually substituted by regulation of the currency market by the Bank for Russia for the purpose of eliminating threats for financial stability, jeopardized by the budget rule effect,"

https://tass.com/economy/1026029

This was 4 years ago, and is even more so true now. The ruble at the moment is NOT free floating.

Russia is the definite loser out of this, and indeed everyone is, the decision to invade was a catastrophe for everyone on multiple levels.

I always find it strange when people post comments like this. It is a clear indicator you don't understand financial markets.

If you were to look at the data yourself, you would see in Oct 2017 it was 58.11 and in Oct 2022 it is 57.88 (vs USD)

In your opinion, what does this indicate? FX is always "Currency vs currency", so has the Ruble weakened? Perhaps the US dollar strengthened? What caused the change? Is the change even meaningful?

Is the change "market driven" or has the state intervened?

It looks like the state has been actively defending it, so what is your actual point?

It's well known that this is not true. You are perpetuating russian propaganda.

Anyway it doesn't matter. NS2 is there ready and waiting to go, but Germany won't switch it on ... due to sanctions.

There are another two gas pipelines that are available to Russia (bypassing Poland), which they have also used a bit during the first NS1 shutdown, but they reduced/stopped deliveries via them too - NS2 wouldn't change anything about that either. At this point it's obvious what Russia is trying to do. They went all-in with stopping of the gas deliveries to try to get the West to stop supporting Ukraine. But it looks like they might have played that card too late.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-sanction-exemption-f...

And nobody, not the Canadian government, not the British government nor Siemens is disputing that the equipment needed maintenance.

Now that's changed and Siemens is claiming it's safe to run a high pressure gas pipeline when the machinery is broken and leaking. That is absurd - if there's one place safety is critical it's right next to a pipeline full of explosive gas. We can safely assume Siemens is under tremendous pressure to support this Ruskies-doing-it-to-us narrative as a consequence.

Yes, all the pipelines were closed due to sanctions. Russia was still pumping gas at full speed through one of the pipelines that passed through Ukraine as recently as August:

https://www.ft.com/content/8ed4ccdb-522a-4003-8010-1a786af18...

It got shut down because Ukraine could not receive transit fees from Russia due to EU banking sanctions. EU was "looking into it". Their sanctions turn out to block things they didn't intend all the time.

If our governments really thought Russia was lying about the equipment they could just authorize NS2 and then say - see? - when no gas flows. They aren't doing that. Instead they blocked all the other pipelines via sanctions and then let the last one break, again due to sanctions. Then having successfully blocked Russian gas they blamed Russia for it, knowing full well after COVID that people will happily swallow almost anything no matter how contradictory it is.

It's very much in Russia's interest to shift blame away from themselves to sow dissent (which you are totally falling for) and also perhaps for later court cases about breaches of contracts (not sure how relevant that continues to be).

The FT article is talking about oil and not gas. It also explicitly states that oil and gas payments were exempt from sanctions. I think that (plus your other replies with similar factual errors) is more than enough evidence for me to conclude that you are arguing in bad faith.

"It's very much in Russia's interest to shift blame away from themselves to sow dissent"

The argument you're making here about Putin playing 4D chess is totally illogical. It only sounds right to you because of years of nonsense from certain political quarters about social media bots, "sowing dissent" etc as a way to explain their domestic woes, not because it makes sense.

Russia's actual interest here is to trade gas for money + ending of general sanctions against them and maybe ending of support for Ukrainian forces. That's it, that's what they want. Pretending very specific pieces of equipment are broken in very specific ways is the exact opposite of what's in their interests because it means saying "ending narrow sanctions on one sector is sufficient to get gas moving again", instead of delivering ultimatums about general geopolitical goals.

If the gas was being stopped to try and force Europe out of the Ukrainian war then it would all have stopped overnight in one go, and Russia would have stated very clearly "the gas is stopped because we want you to change tactics, and we will resume it the moment you do so". They haven't done this. Conclusion: they do actually want to sell gas to Europe.

"The FT article is talking about oil and not gas. It also explicitly states that oil and gas payments were exempt from sanctions"

What it states is that nobody is denying that the payments couldn't be made.

Western governments have all sorts of intentions they routinely screw up and the whole sanctions regime is very decentralized. It works by punishing anyone retroactively found to have been violating sanctions, where "violation" is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. It's very easy for high level bureaucrats in Brussels to say "everything is sanctioned, you got to prison if you violate these vague rules, but stuff we want isn't sanctioned" and assume everyone will just do what they intend (both in the civil service and in industry). But the cost of getting it wrong for finance workers is prison time so it's obvious they're going to be hyper-conservative, hence the constant blockages and problems. This is a normal factor of sanctions regimes, they always whack all kinds of random innocent third parties that weren't intended to be sanctioned at all due to stuff like name collisions or bureaucratic cockups, and we aren't even talking about mistaken identities here.

"also perhaps for later court cases about breaches of contracts"

The EU seized - as in stole - all the Euros Russia had earned by selling gas but hadn't already converted into rubles and then prevented payments to Russia in euros, even though the gas contracts were denominated in that currency! This was an utterly unprecedented move given Russia and EU countries aren't at war. Contracts are thus irrelevant at this point, the EU tore them up right at the start. If anyone would sue anyone in courts of law it'd be Russia suing the EU (not that they'd be able to).

"Re: spare turbines, leaks etc"

Do you think it's reasonable to expect Gazprom employees to work with equipment after being cut off from all support by the manufacturers? Think about how allergic big companies are to even running software that isn't under a support contract, and that's in way lower stakes situations. Also, Siemens is a manufacturer that can remotely monitor and even control those turbines - one of Gazprom's concerns is that Siemens will remotely disable the turbines (again due to sanctions) and they want written legal assurance it won't happen. That's a very mild response all things considered. If I were a gas engineer I wouldn't consider such an assurance as worth the paper it was printed on.

Fundamentally, the west built and to some extent still runs that NS1 pipeline. The NS2 pipeline was built with Russian equipment and Russia has been clear that they could have turned it on at any point Germany wanted .. right up until both NS2 and NS1 appear to have been blown up this morning. Whichever country did that very obviously believes Russia will sell gas through both pipelines given a chance.

You are underestimating the complexity of this issue. There are long term delivery contracts that force Gazprom/Russia to deliver. All the things you are seeing are thinly veiled attempts to create a "force majeure" exception as a superficial narrative to shift blame and still cause damage.

Don't be naive.

Nope, it just broke.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/26/nord-stream...

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-germany-berlin-swe...

Well known? Is it? Could you please give some reference then?

No one would be surprised to see a "work-to-rule" action, but how is it "russian propaganda" that Europe had sanctioned Russian energy industry and it "somehow" had consequences?

The desire for punishing Europe certainly stems from Europe's similarly uncompromising economic warfare against Russia, but let's at least try to focus on the ground truths and not get caught up in a bunch of transparent lies.

I don't need peer-reviewed double-blinded study. I need something that has at least a bit more substance than "well known", "obvious" or other argumentum ad populum

> The desire for punishing Europe certainly stems from Europe's similarly uncompromising economic warfare against Russia, but let's at least try to focus on the ground truths and not get caught up in a bunch of transparent lies.

The ground truth is that the US and Europe (for however justified reason) had declared an economic war against Russia (sanctions), which has no means or strength to wage a real economic war of its own. And another ground truth is that they were not properly thought through as 2/4 pipelines are sanctioned and cannot be used, financial operations are sanctioned and cannot normally be performed, technology export and maintenance is sanctioned. All this to disrupt Russia's operations, while Europe STILL depends on it.

Replace Russia with any random variable and you would still get the same effect if you don't mind where you shoot and nuke half your own energy market. It doesn't even have any real means to "punish poor Europeans with all it's economic might", otherwise there wouldn't be ANY gas flowing to Europe for months now. Instead Russia simply does absolutely nothing to mitigate Europe's own risks of continuing running operations restricted and sanctioned all around by itself, while still profiting from it.

Please stop defending incompetence and labeling every uncomfortable piece of reality as "Russian propaganda".

But to no-one's big surprise, Russia has declined. So the conclusion is obvious.

It would of course be interesting to do a 40 page research essay in the style of WaitButWhy every time Russia makes a statement that fails to pass the smell test -- reeeeeeally document in detail why the statement is lower probability than a lie. The problem is, Russian authorities routinely lie, so often that following this strategy would lead to spending all one's time authoring (and then communicating) these explanations. Such a course of action is nothing but playing right along with the intentions of the propaganda.

If Russia one day wakes up and makes a true but surprising statement and no one believes them, they will only have themselves to thank for it.

That German energy politics since March 11 2011 has been a shitshow of incompetence is something we can both agree on, but Russia's present-day capitalization on this mistake is anything but.

What "problems" are you referring to specifically? It would be nice to read some source, cuz to my knowledge there are quite a lot of warranty nuances - it would be curious to see something substiantial on the matter, coming from official sources, that are not Russian, even if confirmed by Siemens engineers on-site.

> Russian state energy giant Gazprom cut all deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Wednesday in what it said was a planned shutdown until Saturday for maintenance work.

> In recent months, Gazprom has slashed flows through Nord Stream 1 to just 20% of capacity, citing maintenance issues and blaming Western sanctions on exports of technology imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

> Russia has also cut off supplies to several “unfriendly” European countries and energy companies over their refusal to pay for gas in rubles, as the Kremlin insists, rather than the euros or dollars stated in contracts. European leaders say Russia is trying to blackmail countries over their support for Ukraine.

> France’s Engie (EGIEY) is the latest casualty. On Tuesday, Gazprom said it would completely suspend deliveries to Engie (EGIEY) from Thursday, claiming that it had not received full payment from the company for the gas it supplied in July.

Someone can probably look up Gazprom's own PR response and see how it matches up (or doesn't) with the statement by Engie, as well as what differs. Most of the time it's good to look up what various sources say, if you're interested in it, and come to your own conclusions.

From my perspective, reliance on another country, the relations with which have historically been troubled (and are now further strained, given the geopolitical events), does not seem like the best of ideas - alternative means of securing the resources that are needed for providing electricity/heat are more than welcome.

Add to that the NS2 pipeline, that could have been started, but never was. And Yamal-Europe pipeline that was shutdown by due to sanctions.

Diversification of supply is a good thing, sure, but how would it affect the competitiveness of European industry is a curious matter.

Interesting. Here in Finland the plan is to target domestic use first if the push comes to shove, to keep the industry up and running.

Time to buy some powerbanks

Remember to dress well so you won't freeze

A starter battery is about 1kWh.

Or just keep a lead acid battery around charged up and connect a ciggarette lighter socket to it.

https://www.anker.com/eu-en/products/a1770

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE447r1mFXM

The link to the article in question: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/09/23/en-s...

With a copy of the text (in French) as it's behind a paywall. Deepl should do a decent enough job to translate it to English.

INTERNATIONAL

En Suisse, l’angoisse énergétique tourne à la crise de nerfs Dépendant de ses voisins allemand et français pour assurer une partie de son approvisionnement électrique en hiver, le petit pays alpin découvre, mais un peu tard, qu’il n’a pas assez investi dans les énergies renouvelables. Par Serge Enderlin (Genève, correspondance)

LETTRE DE GENÈVE

Felix Suhner est le patron de l’hôtel-restaurant Bad Bubendorf dans la localité homonyme, un village à une vingtaine de kilomètres au sud de Bâle. De lui, on peut dire qu’il a à la fois la tête sur les épaules et pas froid aux yeux. Depuis la semaine dernière, il n’ajoute rien moins que 5 % à toutes les additions. Le motif ? Une « contribution aux frais d’énergie », en forte augmentation dans la Confédération suisse comme partout ailleurs en Europe.

Dans un pays où il n’est pas rare qu’un simple café coûte près de 5 euros dans des endroits parfaitement anodins, cette hausse inédite n’est pas passée inaperçue. Conscient de la moue de ses clients, Felix Suhner plaide la transparence : « J’indique clairement et systématiquement cette charge séparément sur chaque quittance. Sans cela, je ne pourrais pas rester rentable. » L’association suisse des restaurateurs, GastroSuisse, a pris une position très helvétique : elle n’encourage pas la démarche, mais ne la condamne pas non plus. L’anecdote est en tout cas révélatrice du climat délétère qui s’est installé en Suisse depuis deux mois, où la peur de manquer d’énergie tourne à l’obsession.

Lenteurs helvétiques Le pays alpin pourrait en effet vivre cet hiver ses premières coupures de courant depuis la seconde guerre mondiale. Une perspective qui crispe la classe politique et le gouvernement fédéral, contraint d’affronter une seconde crise majeure après celle liée au Covid-19 au cours de laquelle il n’avait guère brillé. « Quand la pandémie a surgi, l’Office fédéral de la santé [le ministère] fut d’abord incapable d’estimer le nombre de cas : les données, tardives et incomplètes, étaient parfois communiquées… par fax. Rebelote avec la crise électrique annoncée : le gestionnaire du réseau, Swissgrid, publie les chiffres de consommation globale avec plusieurs mois de décalage ! », dénonce un éditorialiste.

De fait, il est impossible pour les ménages et les entreprises suisses de connaître avec précision leur consommation de courant en temps réel. Pour cela, il aurait fallu pouvoir compter sur des compteurs intelligents, type Linky, mais « la Suisse, véritable tiers-monde numérique, ne les a pas installés ». La Confédération ne connaît donc pas la consommation d’électricité en juin dernier en Suisse ; elle ne dispose de données fiables que jusqu’en mai. Or, ce n’est que sur la base de chiffres actuels que l’on peut décider si les efforts d’économies entrepris sont suffisants ou si des restrictions, des interdictions ou, dans le pire des cas, des contingentements sont nécessaires. La situation est encore pire pour la consommation de gaz : Berne ne reçoit les données qu’une fois par an.

« S’il fait froid cet hiver, ce sera très serré », a confirmé, mercredi 21 septembre, Bastian Schwark dans le Neue Zürcher Zeitung. L’homme a été nommé manageur de la crise énergétique par la Confédération. Et que fait le gouvernement pour anticiper la pénurie annoncée ? Comme durant la pandémie, il met sur pied une task force, dont le rôle consistera d’abord à consulter les cantons, fédéralisme oblige. Ce mécanisme hautement démocratique, qui est l’une des forces de la Suisse (où citoyens et collectivités publiques sont écoutés en permanence), devient un lourd handicap quand les nuages s’amoncellent et qu’il faut réagir vite. La Suisse, dit le proverbe, n’est pas taillée pour le gros temps.

Comment en est-on arrivé là dans un pays dont les deux tiers du territoire sont recouverts de montagnes, qui abritent plusieurs dizaines de gros barrages et des réseaux d’adduction d’eau vertigineux pour alimenter les lacs de retenue en altitude ?

D’abord, l’hydroélectricité ne couvre que la moitié des besoins. Ensuite, la Suisse ne compte plus qu’une poignée de réacteurs nucléaires depuis qu’elle a décidé de quitter l’atome au lendemain de l’accident de Fukushima, en 2011 – même s’il est désormais question, comme en Allemagne, de « sortir de la sortie du nucléaire ». Enfin, elle n’a jamais su, ou pu, prendre le virage des énergies renouvelables, notamment en raison du droit d’opposition des citoyens, favorisé par la démocratie directe. A titre de comparaison, on ne dénombre qu’une quarantaine d’éoliennes sur le territoire suisse contre près de 3 000 en Autriche, pays à la topographie et à la population presque identiques.

Pour pallier ces déficiences, Berne avait toujours pu compter sur ses voisins français et allemand en important de l’électricité pendant la saison froide et les pics de consommation. Les centrales nucléaires de l’Hexagone, les dizaines de milliers d’éoliennes et les centrales à gaz allemandes fournissaient en courant excédentaire ce qui faisait défaut dans la production suisse. Mais, pour la première fois, il n’est pas certain que la France et l’Allemagne disposent d’excédents ces prochains mois. Côté français, le parc nucléaire est en difficulté. Et côté allemand, l’incertitude sur les livraisons du russe Gazprom annonce une saison froide, où toutes les capacités disponibles seront réservées en priorité à la consommation nationale.

Pour préparer la population suisse à l’hiver de tous les dangers, le Conseil fédéral s’en remettra, comme souvent, au bon sens de ses citoyens. Qui devront économiser l’énergie, quitte à être infantilisés. Fin août, le gouvernement a lancé une grande campagne de communication à 10 millions de francs suisses (10,5 millions d’euros). Pleines pages d’annonces dans la presse nationale, affiches dans les rues, numéro vert et un site, Stop-gaspillage, sur le thème « L’énergie est limitée. Ne la gaspillons pas. »

Parmi les perles : « Le fait de s’habiller chaudement plutôt que de monter le chauffage est recommandé. » Ou encore : « Toute lumière allumée dans une pièce vide gaspille inutilement de l’énergie : il faut toujours penser à éteindre les lampes lorsqu’on quitte une pièce. » Lapalissades ridicules ? Sans doute, mais c’est aussi un moyen pour l’Etat de se dédouaner par avance des reproches qu’on ne manquera pas de lui adresser quand les factures des consommateurs exploseront. Fidèle au dogme libéral du pays, il n’interviendra pas pour les aider.