Russia cuts gas supplies to Poland – reports | Hacker News Reader

Russia cuts gas supplies to Poland – reports

theguardian.com

11 pointstosh4 comments

Poland will adapt, save energy, use alternate sources, pay a bit more. The government might reduce costs or give grants to the less wealthy. As the sanctions bite, after the flesh the bone is reached and the diet of US$ is curtailed. Germany and others will face and adapt. Europe has high fuel taxes = more room to mitigate - all of Europe will work together. In the long run, wind, tide, nuclear, solar will all grow. The greatest saving will come from high efficiency insulation. The is also called 'super insulation' or R2000 insulation. Such houses are used in antarctic climates and can stay warm with human occupancy heat alone. They have countercurrent heat exchangers for ventilation for air exchange that are in the 95% efficiency area.

That all nice and well. Not to sound to much of a "doomer":

But, in the meantime, how are you going to manufacture all of the necessary inputs for the eco-transition if half of europe's manufacturing capacity is offline for lack of electricity ? How are you going to manufacture R2000 insulation without the necesarry petrochemical inputs ?

Nobody has alternate sources. It'll take the US 2 years to put offline a tenth of what Russia delivers, 5 for a quarter, and... that's it. Oh, and let's not forget how much coal Poland imported from Russia.

I think at this point it's time to accept it'd been smarter for the EU Nato members to arm themselves more, get Ukraine into the EU first, operate the eco-transition of the continent by 2030, and then play at extending nato.

Which ironically is basically what, except for the last part, Lavrov proposed last November...

Yes, the severest shortages will hit first if all pipes are closed down, it will be a long uphill slog on the fronts you mention - or you can let Russia own you as you pay the bills!! Every increase in heating efficiency is cumulative as well as permanent. Same with Solar/wind/tidal/geo - in effect they are being forced on all fronts. A huge increase in employment will ensue, as workers are needed on all fronts. Feedstocks can be thermally cracked from plastic waste - costs are similar to petroleum and need automated sorting, but once in the fluid state steel or char can be filtered out. It may not be as good as virgin feed due to color etc, but it will serve many applications. There will also be economic limits on what you do with virgin feed = less for fuel, less for plastic bags(which are 90% waste). More uses of plant based sources, hemp for bags, hemp for paper etc. For decades hemp was associated with marijuana - this is fading. A woody mass of hemp/bamboo grows 10-20 times as fast as tree wood. The tree wood industry lobbied against Hemp (waving marihuana flags) for almost the past 100 years. An amazing number of things we used to make from wood can readily be made from bamboo/hemp just using the basic waste lignin from all woods as lamination glue. Paper from hemp/bamboo yields and lot of lignin as a byproduct and it is a good feed for lamination glue making. Sure bamboo/hemp paper is not pure white, but I can tolerate off white paper, and if I want white, just add a little chalk to the process - as is done with many office papers now, both flat as well as glossy.

No worry. Europe has secret source of energy:

(Google-translated. This information is only in Finnish Wikipedia.)

"Finland's peat reserves are double those of the known oil reserves in the North Sea and 2/3 of Norway's known oil reserves. Finland's peat resources are almost ten times the energy of our country's wood resources and 35 times the volume of the forest."

Only problem is the current Red-Green government which has banned and destroyed this industry which once (2007) employed 12000 people.

But no worry, those wimps do always what European Union tells them to do. This energy is definitively more "environmental" than Russian Gas. Also you can generate gas from those peat fields too.

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