throwaway473825

There is a reason why the US is special - Buy America Act. New Flyer and Gillig would collapse almost immediately if they were exposed to global competition.

That's a de facto ban since nobody has achieved a capture rate of 90 percent, and not for lack of trying:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-does-the-world-need-carbon-ca...

My point is that there's no party in the UK that wants to drill as much as possible as well as burn as little as possible. It's either one or the other, never both like in Norway.

It's really sad comparing the UK with Norway. The latter did "drill baby drill" before it was cool, but almost exclusively for exports. Some of that money has been invested in rapid electrification - so that Norway can export even more!

Meanwhile, the left in the UK doesn't want to drill (so less money for electrification) while the right in the UK doesn't want to electrify (so less money due to more imports). Why doesn't anyone want to copy the Norwegian model?

There's a difference between electricity and energy. Last year, fossil fuel usage fell for power generation, but not as a whole.

This year, oil and gas are projected to fall as a whole, although coal is still expected to grow:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-fossil-fuel-emis...

Isn't it better to allow a few luxury cars that are taxed to oblivion? As long as there aren't too many cars, the city can be pleasant, and it's a nice source of revenue.

While this isn't the best way to address the issue, the US is way too dependent on gasoline/diesel for transportation. It's not sustainable.

Here's the list:

1 Fable 5.1 38.8%

2 GPT-6 Astra 33.8%

3 Gemini 3.8 Flash 31.2%

4 GLM 5.3 28.8%

5 Grok 4.6 23.8%

5 Muse Spark 1.3 23.8%

7 Kimi K3 18.8%

8 GPT-5.6 Sol 16.2%

See number 4, 5 and 7.

The US produces light oil that's easier to refine and hence more profitable to export since it has many buyers.

The US refines heavy oil that's harder to refine and hence more profitable to import since it has few buyers.

China's economy is one of the least dependent on oil and gas. Electricity is mostly coal, renewables and nuclear. Transport is increasingly electric (including trucks). Chemicals are moving from oil and gas to coal.

If global oil and gas prices rise, Chinese electricity and transport prices are largely unaffected, unlike the rest of the world. Even the US doesn't have that kind of resilience.

However, China is a net importer of oil and gas, while the US is a net exporter, so when it comes to trade the US is the main beneficiary, although it mainly benefits one single sector.

No, gas has always been the most expensive source of electricity. Take a look at the German merit order from 2018:

https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...

Nuclear is cheapest, then lignite, then hard coal, and then gas. Germany phased out the cheapest option first, now continues with the second, and is expanding the most expensive.

The obvious choice would have been to do what China and India are doing - phase out gas power first and focus on electrification. But Europe did the opposite.

If you study the heat pump adoption in various European countries, you will quickly notice that it's connected to the price ratio between electricity and gas.

The EU has a carbon tax on electricity but not gas. This pushes people towards gas heating. Germany has much higher taxes on electricity, although it does at least have a carbon tax on gas.

If a carbon tax on electricity makes people use gas heating, that's carbon leakage.

Germany became a net electricity importer after shutting down its final nuclear power plants in 2023.

On top of that, heating still runs mostly on gas, which won't be fun this winter. Due to the inefficiency of gas heating, there will be less gas available for Germany's gas power plants.

Now imagine if Germany's dream of hydrogen vehicles, where most hydrogen comes from gas, also became a reality...

You certainly could use an alternative to gas heating during the upcoming winter. It doesn't look like Qatar will be able to deliver.

The EU has a large problem with carbon leakage from electricity generation to oil and gas use.

For example, gas heating is exempt from the EU carbon trade, so people are encouraged to use that rather than electric heating. In countries like Germany, gas heating is popular largely for tax reasons.

If it costs only €1 billion to extend the lifespan by 20 years, then nothing else can compete with it. The capacity is 1 GW.

Did Germany plan to increase electricity consumption? Gas heating is still king there, and Germany famously promotes hydrogen (mostly from gas) over battery vehicles.

With hindsight, it wasn't a very good idea to shut down 6 of 12 nuclear reactors. Still much better than the situation in Germany, but that's a very low bar.

It will be interesting to see how the Rolls-Royce SMR project works out. Since it appears to be impossible to build anything cheaply in the UK, this will be the real test.

Yeah, I blundered a knight and still managed to win.

It's not unprecedented given that GLM 5.3 Flash was better and cheaper than GLM 5.2.

The main reason why electricity is expensive in Germany is because it's taxed to oblivion. Even when wholesale prices are negative, electricity costs about three times as much as gas.

Now you might ask why electricity is taxed to oblivion. Some don't like nuclear or coal. Some prefer oil or gas. In the end, there's a majority that wants electricity to be expensive.

If that's the case, then why do all European cars have AC? There's an anti-electricity sentiment, but that's a very different thing. It's why most of those anti-AC places use gas heating.

>Of course, it's only that simple to replace one heat source with another, why wouldn't anyone do it already?

In most European countries, electricity is taxed much higher than gas. Those taxes eat a large chuck of the efficiency gains from a heat pump, and then it's not worth the effort.

> But let's not forget that energy is also on average a lot more expensive in Europe than in the US. The cost plus environmental concerns, which seem to fair less high in the public conscience on the other side of the Atlantic, have also been reasons why people were not keen on AC units in the past.

The price of energy in Europe is largely determined by taxes and policy costs. Gas is mostly unencumbered. Electricity could be as well. It's a political choice to make electricity expensive.

Furthermore, given that many Europeans couldn't care less about the negative externalities of gas heating, it's very hard to argue that this is a major concern for AC, especially when AC is already mainstream in cars.

The problem with monopolies is that they can hike prices at will. This has certainly happened with district heating in Sweden. You can't do that with AC and solar.

It's a little bit more complicated than that. In a hypothetical EU without political intervention, Chinese EVs would be available without tariffs, and those would probably sell very well without any mandates.

> But this is also why the EU is aggressively pursuing and building up alternatives

Unfortunately, this couldn't be further from the truth:

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/12/head-of-iea-roasts-euro...

Here are some specific numbers:

https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/many-building-r...

The EU is heavily investing in renewables, but mainly to phase out coal rather than gas, and it's absolutely not electrifying its economy.

You can see this in the EU Emissions Trading System. It covers about 40% of all emissions, but leaves out buildings (dominated by gas) and transportation (dominated by oil). Since electricity is covered, it actually encourages oil and gas over electricity.

Furthermore, member states like Germany are resistant to taxing gas higher than electricity:

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/17/germany-warns-...

Despite the wars in Ukraine and Iran, gas is still encouraged over electricity in many European countries.

China and some other Asian countries have adopted the opposite approach. They aim to replace oil and gas by all possible means, including coal (although it's not the preferred choice).

No, those are caps on the interchange fees paid to the issuing bank. Card transactions have other fees as well.

Cursor got bought for $60B. This is simply how AI companies are valued.

Regarding air conditioning in Europe, I suspect that there are other interests at play given that there has been zero pushback against air conditioning in cars.

Air conditioning in buildings is likely viewed as a threat to gas providers as most modern cooling devices also have a heating mode that competes directly with gas heating.