Hacker News Reader

Comment by altern8 | Hacker News Reader

Well, OK--but at what cost?

Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S., and as a result EVERYTHING is more expensive.

Mix that with lower buying power and taxes and we spend 2-3 times for stuff.

I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws.

Our companies are also less and less competitive because of these initiatives, and companies from China take over in part thanks to the complete lack if environmental and labor laws over there.

Seems to me like this is happening more and more, and it's so widespread and obvious that it almost makes you think that politicians are being bought by Chinese companies/government.

View on HN

EU electricity prices are high, but attributing this to renewables is backwards. Wholesale electricity prices drop when wind and solar are producing - that's been documented extensively. The high prices are largely due to: (1) gas setting marginal prices during peak hours, (2) grid infrastructure that hasn't kept pace, and (3) taxes/levies that fund the transition. As battery storage grows and reduces gas dependency for peaks, prices should moderate. The countries with the highest renewable penetration (Spain, Portugal) often have lower prices than those still dependent on gas imports.

I'm not attributing to renewables, but green initiatives.

For instance, the rising prices of carbon permits under the EU emissions trading scheme.

So, my point is that countries that don't ignore the economy just to be green--like the U.S. and specially China--seem to have vastly cheaper electricity and gasoline, which I would guess makes them more competitive/lowers prices.

Over here we have no NG and no oil, and on top of that we tax our companies because of emission limits, while in China they burn coal like there is no tomorrow.

We wanted to outlaw non-electric cars, while the car industry in Europe is huge and we don't have a way to build batteries, etc. etc.

Seems to be a pattern that is hard to understand.

China is has started to trend their fossil fuel consumption downwards since last year and have a similar per capita consumption as Europe.

> Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S.

Maybe because Europe as a whole has little to no signifcant oil reserves ready for extraction? Very much unlike the US.

> I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws.

The US does have plenty of cheap energy and yet its industrial output is dwarfed by Chinas, which is increasingly relying on domestically products green tech. Also, people seem to be not very concerned with energy prices. If they were, they would not act as irrational when it comes to topics like heatpumps or electric vehicles.

> that it almost makes you think that politicians are being bought by Chinese companies/government.

Looking at the energy policy of some countries (Germany specifically), it seems vastly more likely that politicans are bought by oil companies.

True, there is no oil and we just relied on cheap gas from Russia--which I guess it didn't turn out to be a good strategy after all.

That's interesting about oil companies. Is that who's lobbing to pass laws that just seem (to me) to be written on purpose to make our companies less competitive? How does that work, how do oil companies profit from that?

If you can sell more oil and at a higher price, you get more money.

OK, but how, they lobby to pass laws against coal and nuclear, so that you burn more oil..?

Yes, and against bike lanes so more people have to drive, and against subsidies for public transport, and against public transport entirely, and so on.

I see.

That makes sense, every interesting thanks.

big part is co2 tax. EU now has neptune deep and could explore north sea too. In Germany current transition pathway of ren+gas and no nuclear was defined when Energiewende got introduced with red greens under Schroeder, a gazprom lover and later extended by red blacks

Yes, 100%.

That's part of what I meant by "green initiatives".

> Well, OK--but at what cost?

It costs less? The Danish organisation for green energy interest (biased I known) has calculations that shows a 5 billion DKK saving per year for the Danish consumers. So about €0.02 per kWh.

I also think you're wrong about prices. I think most will pay more, if they get clean energy. Not a lot more, but if it's only a few cents, I think many/most will pay that, perhaps not happily, but still. People, in parts of Europe at least, are perhaps more baffled that the Americans won't pay the slightly higher cost and and protect the environment. As it happens that's not a choice we need to make, wind and solar is now cheaper than fossil fuel.

I'm not sure, prices here in Poland have skyrocketed because of the EU green initiative and we started exporting and prices went up 3-4 times.

I'm good with protecting the environment. Here, though, we're making European companies less competitive. They shut down, and Chinese companies fill the gap, flooding us with products that are worse for the environments because they have no laws, bad for workers because they have no laws, and bad for the environment again because instead of local they're shipped across continents on boats that burn as much fuel as a whole country for a year just to bring cheap plastic stuff that we used to make better ourselves.

Arguing that European business should be allowed to pollute the environment more, because that's what China does is a little backwards I think. In my mind we should enforce the rules on a per product basis, rather than per country. Where a product is made shouldn't matter, a product should be taxed based on the pollution it has generated, shipping included.

Want to sell to the EU: Workers can only work e.g. 40 hours a week, must have five weeks of vacation per year and here are the tax rates for various types of pollution.

Yes, this would be good but I have a feeling it will never happen.

there's a meme with a few cents more in germany, can search on the google "eis kugel energiewende"

DK has one of the highest household prices in EU per eurostat https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Imo CO2 tax should be gone to alleviate this, especially when China and US dont have it. This just causes offshoring.

If you want electrification, you need cheap electricity. If you want more ren, you put more incentives there instead of overtaxing fossils to make own industry uncompetitive

But the energy from windmills doesn't have a CO2 tax (it did at some point) and it frequently provides most, if not all, of the Danish energy (electricity) consumption. There's ONE coal fired power plant left in the country and it's scheduled to close in 2028. I get that we then have gas and garbage incinerators for heating, but we are getting electrification and lower prices.

I frankly don't care what the US and China is doing, because they're doing the wrong thing. You're arguing that because you neighbour is throwing trash in the street you want to be able to do the same. I'd much rather make environmental demands of the products being sold to be from else where, and have them live by the same rules, allowing everyone to benefit.

Co2 tax is just an indirect subsidy for renewables. When prices are low those are subsidized through cfds. When high- through merit order artificially pumped by co2 tax. This isn't bad per se but it affects negatively final consumer prices and industry which is bad.

Problem is not about the neighbors throwing trash. Unilateral co2 tax means industry relocates to regions where it's not present. In your analogy it would look like you are sending trash to US to deal with it.

DK is lucky to be able to get firming from nordics, but not everyone can do this. And from what I remember Norway already said one of the interconnectors will not have extended license at EOL

Renewables lead to energy independence and a more distributed energy grid. It's fundamental to security, and can't be so easily measured in terms of money. The EU is increasing its independence from China via initiatives like the Net-Zero Industry Act. And this talk of "politicians being bought by Chinese companies" is laughable in the face of what oil companies are doing, to the benefit of exporters like USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other regimes, and definitively not the EU.

I'm not sure, I'm in Poland and all we had was coal. Now it will take a few decades to have our own source of power again. Maybe 20-30 years..?

What are oil companies doing to drive European companies out of business (not saying they aren't, I just don't know)?

Poland still has majority coal power production! It's one of last places you can possibly blame renewables for pricing.

Well, green initiatives made us stop using coal.

Also, we've started exporting because of carbon credits--which caused prices to skyrocket.

prices in poland are dictated by coal. Coal got insanely expensive due to co2 taxes

Correct. Exactly my point.

So, it's not renewables fault, it's that you're no longer getting away with distributing your negative externality over the world for free.

I'm sure my sewer bill would be a lot lower if I could just pipe my sewage into your garden.

Co2 tax is less about externality and more about putting this extra money into renewables. When ren are underperforming but bidding low prices, they will still be compensated by the merit order which is artificially bumped even higher with CO2 tax.

And the worst thing is other regions like US or China don't have such a tax, causing industry offshoring. It's a noble case to want to subsidize ren sector, but this method is hurting EU more than helping

They could put the money into renewables, but there's nothing mandatory about that policy choice. The idea of a Pigouvian tax is to eliminate the market distortion negative externalities create. In general, you want to tax things you don't want, like pollution, not things you want, like productive work.

yes, but since this tax is done only at EU level, it causes industry offshoring and $ redistribution. EU could have just subsidized ren more instead of this tax. This way electricity/production prices would be lower while ren tech still supported

Industry offshoring is dealt with via CO2 tariffs, which the EU has also introduced.

Subsidizing production is itself a market distortion.

Only small part of the problem is dealt with tariffs. And these were introduced only recently.

Market is always distorted one way or another depending on the goals. Co2 tax too is a market distortion since the tax value is chosen arbitrarily

Very weak arguments there. Adding distortions is ok because other distortions exist? Non sequitur. Tariffs don't currently do everything therefore they cannot ever solve the problem? Also a non sequitur.

Yeah. Very weak. Just like German economy.

Europe, especially central and eastern away from the coasts, is in the unenviable position of being the renewable energy armpit of the world. So their choice is either not be competitive in energy-intensive industries in a renewable world or continuing to be competitive in a fossil-fuel-doomed world.

This dilemma leads to various kinds of magical thinking, like "nuclear will save us" or "climate change isn't real".

for nuclear at least we know what final result may look like, in France. We know both costs and timeline to achieve decarbonization. We also know more or less the same about Germany which took a different path, starting from 2000 under red-greens and schroder and continued by cdu. To me it sounds much more magical to hope DE will have anytime soon abundant cheap hydrogen to firm it's 80GW+ of gas plants according to Fraunhofer's ISE plan.

I'm from Poland too and the only thing we have is land, the sun, and wind. Coal poisons the air we breathe, and hurts the climate our children will live in. It's not about money, it's about security. The worst thing for polish security is being dependent on foreign oil and gas, and to be reliant on a few power plants that are an easy target for russian drones, and rely on water from rivers that are running dry more and more often. The transition away from coal should've come much, much sooner. When you hear a push back against renewables, and people praising oil and gas, who's benefiting from this? Poland, or oil suppliers like Russia?

I like nuclear.

But I think it's a huge investment that would take decades.

I'm fine with supplementing with nuclear, but it's still a single point of failure, and needs water. France and Switzerland had to shut down nuclear plants last year because the rivers got too hot. This issue is not going away.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com