Hacker News Reader

Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

Quickest and most straightforward would be to convert those coal plants to natural gas.

But that gas has to come from somewhere, and I don’t think they like knowing that “somewhere” is Russia.

Well there is the hope than soon enough, that methane is made from atmospheric CO2, water and renewable energy. That would be pretty awesome as the infrastructure to store and move methane is already there.

I have this hope too, but it’s really energy intensive right now. I also have hope for renewable hydrogen, but we have a lot of research to do to reduce costs.

I love the way you say it so casually. In the grand scheme of things you are of course right, but I reckon converting a coal plant to gas is a non-trivial undertaking.

It's a lot quicker than nuclear. Dunno if it's cheaper to just raze the coal plant and build a natural gas one somewhere.

I'll assume any hydro opportunities are tapped out. Conservation is already big in Germany.

Wind and solar can only go so far. And natural gas would provide better peaking capacity to balance it out.

The article discusses the switch of a major plant in the UK to compressed wood pellets, sourced from the US. I would think that Germany (and most of Europe) would have a good climate for wood pellet production.

Ironically Germany removed a significant amount of forest to create those open pit coal mines.

I'd be curious what the dimensions here are. Surely a few km squares of strip mines isn't going to make a dent in the forested area?

I mean, yeah, it's slightly ironic, but is it not irrelevant?

are they for real? Wood is so inefficient as fuel that shipping it over anything more than 500km (number taken out of my behind, but it is in the ballpark) takes more energy than is contained in it.

The only reason to do so is to end up with high value in "biofuels" category. Just for show.

Not wood, compressed wood pellets. Energy density seems to be between 50-80% of coal. And remember that fuel is only part of the total cost, especially if the formulas include health costs, pollution or carbon emissions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com