Europe has survived 3 energy shocks in 4 years. The only way out is to stop buying power from its enemies | Fortune
https://fortune.com/2026/03/25/europe-3-energy-shocks-in-4-years-what-to-do-next/
Nah, we’ll just buy gas from US and postpone electrification of transport couple decades. What could go wrong?
Thank you! We just do not do enough fracking here yet.
I would electrify my transport in a heartbeat, if only it wasn’t so fucking expensive. Like ~30k€ for cheapest Kia BEV? Not even speaking about more “premium” brands. How tf should I get that with mediocre eastern european salary?
I love my BYD dolphin
It was the cheapest car I could find, and it cost about €17,000
Yup, but in Poland there are still small fraction of evs…
Renault is government company, why they dont want to sell evs cars cheaper? Is it really necessary to make bigger profit than from ice?
You meant Renault? They made the Zoe back in 2014, then made the Megane only electric, made the Spring through their Dacia subsidiary, now the 5, and they are launching the new Twingo generation as only electric. This makes them cover all EV segments, from the sub 20.000 euro electric car to the 60.000 one through alpine. They use more and more European made batteries and motors. Out of all the European car makers Renault and Mercedes are the ones that are the most pro electric now.
Yup, but why electric model is more expensive than ice one? Because of government subsidies?
The new twingo is the exact same price in constant euros as the first gen twingo that came out in 1993.
Besides that, prices of EVs are not more expensive over 5 or 10 years despite the shown price because you run them at a much much cheaper price : electricity is often cheaper than gas, the only real cost you would have to pay is tires and shock absorbers, breaks pads and disks get used a lot less because of regen, no belts or chains, no spark plugs, no oil change, no exhaust, no turbo, no belts driven AC, no starter motor, no alternators etc… All those things that cost a lot in mechanic repairs for most cars.
Citroen ec3 was 2x more expensive than ice version…
European evs are ridiculously expensive in comparison to for example Tesla
Tesla’s start at over 30.000 euros! That’s not a cheap car by no means!
Plus: there is a huge problem at the top of Tesla. It’s not the subject here but I cannot close my eyes on Greenland’s fate just for a car. I have the same reservation over Tibet or the Uyghurs for other brands.
Don’t buy new. The second hand market for EVs is great. 3-4 year old cars with over 200 miles range for £12-15k, and lots of them.
Maybe in UK?
There is a second hand market where I live (Czech rep), but it’s still not cheap. We’re traditionally a country where others’ used car end up. Same with EVs, but re-sellers ask a premium for this “brand new technology” and yada yada yada… The cheapest of Swasticar model 3 (first production year 2019, with over 200k km, smaller battery) I could find is over £15k. Kia EV6 similarly aged and (ab)used? Hand over well over £20k…
That sucks, but could you buy in a neighbouring country. If you save enough it could be financially worth it.
Obviously UK would be of no use. Stearing wheel in the wrong place.
Have you considered the Dacia Spring? It should be fine for short-medium range trips and it costs “only” 20k
I own a Dacia, I want a cheap car with no luxury. But but the Spring is just a bad car. Poor charging, poor range, can’t accelerate at highway speed. Those are not luxuries. It was the first electric car at this price range, but now there are better competitors.
Yeah, it’s gimped too much. Especially the first generation with weaker motor feels barely like shopping bag on wheels… It could work for work/school commute for me, but apart from that? Visiting parents in different region? No. Weekend family trip? No. And honestly I don’t want to spend that much on something I can’t use for more purposes than just daily commute.
Thanks for the insight
Or, ya know, build on self-sustainable sources.
But nuclear is so bad!!1! Better burn coal and oil and “clean” gas!!
Renewables FTW, with a nuclear backdrop til we can phase out that too is the way forward IMO.
You know nuclear isn’t self-sustainable? Uranium is mined in only a few places.
Uranium-based nuclear power isn’t ideal, but thorium-based nuclear power shows a lot of promise, because thorium is both way more common than uranium, and way harder to weaponize.
It is the other way around though: because it cannot be weaponized, there was no incentive to develop an industrial reactor and a supply chain. The remaining technical and scientific challenges on this technology are non-trivial too as I understand, so it will be a few decades before we see one in action even if we took the decision to invest in it today.
Yeah but that’s still experimental, right?
Thorium reactor rely on transmuting thorium into a form of uranium, a form which itself can be extracted and weaponized…
And? You’re trying to argue it’s like oil?
So you advocate for coal, gas and oil until we can be 100% reliant on renewables?
That’s a bad faith interpretation of the above comment. We already can be 100% reliant on renewables. Nuclear is so clownishly expensive that it’s far cheaper to provide baseload power via solar, wind, batteries, and other energy storage mechanisms.
Well what will you use for power generation before we have enough renewable energy? You say it yourself: “can” be reliant. Yes but we are not, so what’s the way forward? Nuclear til we have enough renewables, or you know, my question : shall we burn coal up til then?
And nuclear energy is less expensive than coal, oil and gas IMO.
What are you on about? We don’t have the nuclear we’re talking about. This is about future plant construction. And new renewable capacity can be deployed in a fraction of the time that nuclear can.
France have upped their production massively, you don’t always need to build a whole new nuclear central to augment production.
There’s no option. Transitioning to nuclear will keep you burning stuff for 10-15 years whilst they’re built. Even SMRs will be 5-10. Renewables come online with a much smoother transition curve. You reduce burning stuff sooner, and we need whatever is quickest.
Still need batteries big enough to power global shipping etc. Nuclear can do that, even though building reactors takes time
It can, and I’m not anti-nuclear for all use cases. I just don’t think it stops us burning stuff soon enough.
No perfect solution, sadly. We’re also very late to start reducing emissions. And humanity doesn’t seem to be able to get their shit together and actually do something about it any time soon
This is the correct answer. Nuclear is not a perfect energy source, but it fills one big gap that we currently have with the renewable energy sources.
I would also say that gas can be an ok alternative in some situations. For example as replacement of a coal power plant if it is built together with solar and/or wind power. The gas power plant can increase the power when the renewables does not produce energy and be turned off during sunny or windy days.
What exactly is the big gap? Are you going to mention baseload, a concept that’s been obsolete for a decade? The baseload power demand, according to the according to its actual definition, is zero on many grids. Solar and wind produce energy Joule-for-Joule far cheaper than fission. And we have any number of ways of storing that cheap energy. Renewables are the cheapest form of baseload power. It’s not 2010 anymore.
Plus, if we’re talking national security, we’ve seen from the Ukraine conflict that every nuclear plant is a huge geopolitical liability. There have been many near misses and scares relating to Ukraine’s fission plants. Many have had to be shut down due to the risk of being struck. And hell, Iran’s plants are actively being targeted by US and Israeli air strikes. In a big war, your enemy can create an instant chernobyl in your backyard if they want. You can design a reactor to be intrinsically safe, but that doesn’t help if someone drops a ballistic missile on top of it. And yes, if you did this to a nuclear power like the US or Russia, it might provoke a retaliatory strike with actual nuclear bombs. But there are dozens of countries that have nuclear reactors but no nuclear weapons. For them, having nuclear power plants is a huge strategic liability. Far better to have innumerable solar panels and wind turbines scattered across the countryside than one big vulnerable reactor, an Achilles heel that an enemy can target to knock your whole power grid offline.
Solar and wind power are dependent on the weather to generate power, where nuclear power is not. I agree that there are many ideas on how to store the energy from solar and wind power, but how many of them is used on such large scale that it makes a difference on the grid?
Out of topic but do you have any data that shows that the baseload is obsolete? I have a hard time to believe that based on the definition from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/baseload
Baseload refers to the minimum level of demand on an electrical supply system over a 24-hour period, with baseload power sources being those plants that generate dependable power to consistently meet this demand.
Yes, but unless we figure out how to store a ton of electric energy, renewables are limited in use and somehow counterproductive as it makes energy cheaper during sunny days and thus making nuclear even more expensive (due to the fact that nuclear can’t be easily throttled). 🤷
Storing a ton is easy. It’s storing gigatons that’s hard.
Uranium is one of the most dense elements. It’s like 30x more dense than gasoline.
In practice you only need to store about a day’s worth of electricity, a few hours really. Solar panels are so stupidly cheap now that you can solve seasonal variations in production by just spamming solar panels. You deploy enough panels to meet your demand on a cloudy day in winter. Then the rest of the year you have dirt cheap abundant electricity. Maybe shut down some of your most energy-intensive industries on the cloudiest winter days if you must. Give everyone at the steel mill a week off and instead ask them to work longer hours in the summer.
And what about people living in extreme latitudes? We can use excess solar power during the summer to capture atmospheric CO2, use that to make synthetic liquid fuels, and the handful of folks living north of the arctic circle can just keep burning carbon-neutral diesel fuel forever. You could use small fission plants for these remote locations, but there’s unlikely to ever be enough demand just in the high latitudes to sustain an entire nuclear supply chain. Synthetic carbon-neutral liquid fuels would have many applications, so a supply chain could be developed.
For places up north connected to the grid, would it not be enough to send solar-generated electricity from sunnier areas to the south most of the time? (Although synthetic fuel burning sounds like a good backup plan for when the grid connection fails).
That’s happening but moving to renewable isn’t something you can just magically do
Unless we figure out energy storage, it will never be a solution.
Energy storage is slowly being figured as battery prices drop year by year
That’s nowhere near enough. It’s magnitudes away.
Nah, if you assume 6-12h of storage needed it’s close to break even. I’d say if prices of batteries get halved again, it’s solved
Can we do some calculations for worst case, ie winter week with clouds at best? How much does a single household consume when using heat pumps for warming? That would be at least 30kWh per day just for heating. Let’s round it to 40kWh pet day which makes 280kWh per week. Shall we add an EV car into equation? 140kWh? We are at 420kWh per week you might need to back up with batteries. Now multiply this number with millions of households. Or simply take a look at electric energy consumption in your country during winter days (when many don’t even have heat pumps and EVs) and you think there is enough batteries around and is simply a matter of price? Good luck with that. Wind and hydro would help to some extent, though.
When I said break even, I meant financial feasibility. Point is you can invest in solar power plus 12h of storage and this makes financial sense.
As for winter periods, noone expect solar to magically work in winter. Point is to reduce dependency on fossil and this can be achieved. You’d still expect strategic energy reserves and winter power to be delivered through fossil, due to avaliabliy and good energy density.
You could substitute fossil with wind power during winter, but that still requires storage.
Energy storage is a largely unnecessary. You only need to store a few hours worth of electricity. Solar panels are so stupid cheap that you can solve seasonal variations in solar production by spamming solar panels. You build enough panels to meet all your needs on a cloudy winter day. Then the rest of the year you have abundant cheap power.
The energy storage problem has been solved by stupidly cheap solar panels. People will whine about the footprint required, but the actual math shows this is just FUD.
See my answer to BlackLaZoR
The enemies of europe (and any other country) are billionares and politicians.
Politicans can be cool. Some are not. But you could be.
100%, especially from Poland perspective
if your words and your actions, which never seem to gel
will get you into heaven, i’d sooner be in hellOwed to a Hypocrite, a song about the dangers of preachers and politicians
Exactly, don’t buy from the usa, our once allie has shown open hostility.
Its pretty funny how little that narrows down your nationality
Non-usians is a pretty wide nationality.
And who would those be? Renewable energy independence is the only way.
Nuclear is a much better option in the short and medium term.
And renewable doesn’t solve the supply chain issue, a lot of materials for construction and maintenance need to be imported as well.
Nuclear is part of the solution. We shouldn’t rely on a single source of energy.
👆🏻 This is a key point.
No-one should rely on a single source; neither geographical location nor type of energy.
Europe is sharing both gas and electricity amongst countries, but also needs to generate more and use less.
Nuclear is a much better option in the short and medium term.
Nuclear is not a good option at all if you want to stop buying energy from the “enemies” such as the billionaires and politicians who will be in charge for it.
Nuclear takes decades to permit and build. You can build solar, wind, and BESS storage plants in 2 years, including permitting l, procurement, and construction.
The IPCC put it best: the fastest way to decarbonize and make independent the power sector is through renewables + storage.
We should hold onto the nuclear plants we have, and recommission the ones still standing (so long as they still operate safely), but all remaining efforts should be put towards renewables deployment.
Where do you store the waste? Nuclear is more expensive than renewables. Where do you get the nuclear material for the plants? Where do you get enough professionals to man these new plants? How to ensure the new plants you’ve build (fastly) are safe? How to ensure the plants are not easy targets for enemy attacks and sabotage?
It’s not a perfect solution, and ideally we would all be on renewable, I am not disagreeing with you there.
But a full renewable grid in Europe is simply not realistic with the tech we have now. A full nuclear grid is.
Keep researching renewable and nuclear (fusion would be the ideal option, even above renewable), but use the best we have now.
We have uranium in Europe. But we can also import it from many countries all around the globe, ao strategically much more diversified than rare materials needed for renewable.
Educate new professionals. Build them securely, not fastly. Still a better time perspective than a full renewable switch. Plants will always be easy targets, nuclear or not. Modern plants do not catastrophically fail like Chernobyl. Do yoh really think France has not thought of the security implications with their plants all over the country?
Now for nuclear waste… Yeah, it’s a problem. Also being researched. But it is little waste. It’s manageable until we have the right renewable tech or nuclear fusion.
As for the cost, again, it is expensive upfront, cheap to operate, cost efficient to renew.
Your talking points are twenty years out of date.
Not too sure why this comment got downvoted.
Grid balancing is no joke - you’ll likely have new nuclear up and running before you rebuild the grid of an entire nation (which is needed for renewables to take the lead).
Let’s not forget, lithium for batteries, a key element in a renewable grid (to help offload and balance) is also not widely produced in Europe. Water batteries could work, but those are not small projects.
Nuclear is your “short” term because renewables (grid rebuild) are still a long term project.
Trump was driving trade diversification around the world with the idiotic tariffs, and now, with the illegal war against Iran, he’s creating a resurgence of interest in renewables and EVs. Exact opposite of what he says he wants but maybe not so bad in the long run.
That’s a really positive outlook and I love it.
Except that a bunch of people on the other side of the planet are dying because of this.
Maybe he was always a democrat plant 😂
/s
He definitely has the intelligence of a plant.
I feel like it should have been clear to everyone since at least 9/11 and the aftermath but no one in leadership has made the obvious case that renewables are great for national security and not just the environment. Really shameful loss for humanity.
I was of the opinion that after 9/11, if the USA was actually interested in security, we would have invested in alternative energy.
Instead we invested in death and oil. Like always.
The technology is there. We need solar, wind, batteries, hydro-storage and nuclear, which is hold back by fear and costs driven by bureaucracy. What we lack is political capital and supranational coordination. We need to scale up production and learn from the Chinese. The demand for batteries is there.
In Denmark, we have been investing heavily in solar panels and windmills the last few years, which is awesome! Electric car purchases have also exploded.
Now we just need to do away with out pig production and we will have more fields to place solar panels on and there will still be plenty of space to turn former pig feed fields into wildlife reserves so our nature can recover from the damage these pig farmers have done to our country. It’ll take time, but I’m optimistic about our green policies in the future. We are heading in the right direction.
There’s no reason why panels can’t be in the same fields as the pigs… the lowest point of a panel can be higher than a pig…
The fields are not used to have pigs walking around. They are used to grow pigfood. Pigs in Denmark are being kept in massive indoor industrial compounds where they never see the sun. The sows are strapped to the ground with metal bars to be nonstop feeding machines for piglets.
We are around 6 million people in tiny little Denmark. We have over 40 million pigs who are produced for meat and all of them, ALL OF THEM are being exported to other countries, Italy and Poland, for slaughtering and the meat is sold to other countries. That transportation pollutes the environment and is entirely unnecessary. It is animal abuse and environmentally unsound to send them to other countries to get slaughtered. The farmers do this to save money because slaughter houses are cheaper in Poland.
The pig shit produced is so massive that farmers break the laws every spring and strat fertilizing the fields before the night frost has ended. This is illegal because the frost keeps the shit frozen on the ground, the ground cannot absorb the fertilizer and this means that when everything thaws, the excess nutrients and water will run off and straight into creeks and lakes and pollute the water there.
Pesticides used on the fields that are used to grow pigfood - not human food - pig food is also seepinging into the ground and is now polluting our ground water along with the excess pig shit which is fucking insane because we used to have naturally clean ground water and now we are facing a future were we might have to spend billions to keep the ground water clean if the farmers aren’t stopped.
Every year, thousands, if not millions of pigs die before ever seeing a butcher. They have no space, they get sick. The farmers fill their food with penicillin to the point that now several diseases have started to show resistense to penicillin which has the potential to develop into a health crisis for humans all over the fucking world, bro. If penicillin stops working, we are fucked.
Our coastlines are as good as dead at this point. There is no aquatic life left due to farmers polluting the land with their pig shit. Several species of animals are close to extinction because of the farmers. Especially several types of birds because there aren’t enough insects for them to eat and their habitat has been taken over by industrial farmers.
Over 60% of all Danish areal is being used for farming and most of that is to grow pig food.
But that is not enough. There still isn’t enough food for the pigs. So what do the farmers do? They import soybeans from South America where local soy farmers have to cut down rain forest to grow more soy beans to meet the demand. The soy beans are transported by container ships which we all know are some of the biggest polluters in the world. All to feed fucking pigs that no Dane will ever get to have.
Danes, btw, get to have the bad, left over pork while the prime stuff is sold to other countries.
It is also contributing to the housing crisis in Denmark because the big industrial farms have helped kill the countryside life in Denmark. When everything smells like pigshit in the countryside it’s already not fun to live there, but there are also no jobs because pig farmers will not hire Danes to work on their farms because they would have to pay us more and actually care about our well being. They instead hire guest workers from poor countries to work with the pigs and get ammonia poisonings because the air in those stalls is filled with pig pee vapor. At least the workers can go outside at some point, but the pigs live in that air their whole lives.
Now that you know the basics of industrial pig farming in Denmark you may think: gosh, this must be a super lucrative industry since all this shit is being done to the animals and thr environment to keep up production. They must stand for at least 60% of the Danish BNP, right? That’s what my best friend thought when I told her about how pig farming works in Denmark.
Less than 1%. Less than fucking 1% does this POS industry contribute to the overall Danish BNP.
But how in the hell has it been able to get this far, you may think.
Because of a political party named Venstre who has historically been a farmer party and fought for farmers. The level of lobbying going there is disgusting. The farmers pay them so much fucking money to keep the public ignorant about what is going on and they have been successful in the past, but not anymore. There has been a recent movement to expose pig farmers and they have been successful. The Danish public is fucking outraged because they were lied to.
I have avoided eating pig meat as much as possible for at least ten years because I found pig farming unethical, but even I didn’t know the true magnitude of this insane industry until four or five years ago.
When I learned that they contribute less than 1 fucking percent to the BNP while taking up over 60% of our land to grow fucking pig food for 40+ million pigs whose entire lives are suffering while our wildlife and nature is dying out - I went from being against pork to wanting it absolutely outlawed here. Get that shit out of my country.
Take the pig fields back, turn them into nature and solar parks. Fuck pig farmers.
Thanks for taking the time to write this out.
This is fucking insane and shows that lobbying and the practice of paying for political outcomes should be outlawed and, more importantly, the adherence to the laws needs to be controlled and failure to do so needs prison sentences or at least complete repossession of the offenders business.
Yep. The good news is that our Dutch neighbors whose country has a similar setup to us, have cut their pig production by a third recently and the plan is to further cut into it. That is what we need to do in Denmark too. Cut it down until it is phased out entirely and continue to promote sustainable farming.
In time I also hope we will be able to take a look at lobbying because the farm lobbying is the most extreme case we have here. We just had the election here in Denmark and Venstre has had their worst election result EVER. The party is over a 100 years old and used to be one of the biggest parties in Denmark. They ruled my country all the way up through the 2000s where means were given to farmers, tax money, given to them, special agreements that gave farmers carte Blanche to pretty much do whatever they wanted and even the smallest attempt at putting restrictions on them by left leaning governments had them throw temper tantrums. This is the general case for all European industrial farmers.
Back then it worked because farming is a cultural heritage type of thing and part of the Danish identity so these industrial farmers (and the politicians who support them) who actually helped kill the old farming culture have used the image of the wholesome farmer as a shield against all criticism towards farmers.
The anti-industrial farmer movement in Denmark is huge and multifaceted. A lot of this is also paving the way for Danes to sort of grieve over the identity we have lost which is reflected in fiction and art. There is a lot of authors writing about the shift from farming culture to the modern middle class and the effects it has had on the Danish self image. The fact that this is being reflected in art at the same time as the pig issue has exploded is almost poetic.
It was a matter of time before we would have to recon with all of this and the fact that we are finally here is pretty exciting, because it has really gotten out of hand. I legit remember my dad as early as the early 2000s and maybe even the 90s talk about how farming was going to destroy our country if it wasn’t regulated so I grew up with a pretty intense disgust for big farming while also growing up right next to one of legit, romantic old timey farms where the farmer knows and loves his animals and treats them well. A dying breed. So yeah, I have a complicated relationship with farming, but I hope for an support sustainable farming and want Venstre to actually support those instead of helping indsturial farmers climb to the top and hoard their wealth for themselves while legit farmers end up having to sell their land to the big farms so they can destroy my country for no reasons because it’s not even a profitable industry for anyone but the few hundred pig farm owners in my country. It’s fucking ridiculous.
I’m saying this only because Donny keeps calling them windmills and nobody wants to be like him - they’re wind turbines, not mills. There is no grain being crushed as there would be in a mill.
Donny and the Danes. Yeah, it’s quite amusing but they’re the natural evolution of a windmill. Vindmøller are fine for me
That may be the case in Danish
Dutch, but it’s incorrect to call them mills in English.Dutch = the Netherlands
Danish = Denmark.
If you’re going to be a Poindexter about windmills, then at least get the language right of the country you are criticizing.
I’m also terribly sorry that we don’t call them wind turbines and that it triggers you that we call them windmills because of trump. We called them windmills decades before Trump even knew what they were and we will continue to do so.
Removed by mod
Thank you. I just don’t appreciate to be told that the way we refer to windmills in my country is wrong because trump says it. I found that pretty insulting and gave the energy back.
We call them windmills where I live.
Do you know what the penetration percentage is of urban solar is in Denmark? Think of applications like rooftop solar, parking canopies/carports, façades, etc. Or even applications like brownfield?
Asking because there are many land uses in the world where solar could serve as a secondary function, all the while providing power exactly where it’s needed: in urban load centers.
Ground-mount solar on fields across the countryside would certainly help, but many solar installations rely on gravel to cover the ground underneath the panels, or low-growth native seed to reduce the amount of mowing needed over time.
Placing solar in urban contexts allows our countrysides to be rewilded and made polycultures supporting native wildlife. Ground-mount solar can introduce monocultures that don’t support native wildlife.
I don’t know a lot about the subject so I asked my boyfriend who knows way more about solar energy.
Paraphrasing him, the short reply to moving solar panels into cities is a no.
The longer answer is a multitude of reasons, but the main one is weight. Most house roofs, especially in older buildings will not be able to carry the weight of solar panels. The return from having solar panels on roofs in the city will also not be as good as if they are in the fields because the panels can’t move and maybe some roofs are placed in bad positions for optimal sun intake.
He also mentioned higher risks of fires due to the space between the roof and the solar panels, potentially feeding a fire with oxygen and making harder to put out the fire.
Due to the nature of a city layout, the solar panels would also be peppered out in a bigger area than if they were all collected on one plain field. This also means difficulties with maintainece which also costs more time and money than if you keep them in a field.
Keeping them in a concentrated area in a field is the most optimal solution for now. Maybe in the future, if solar panels have their weights significantly reduced, it will be a viable option to place them on roofs in cities. As for now, the best we can do with urban solar panels is to have them in mind when new buildings are raised and several contracting companies apparently work on this already, so things are happening. But many big Danish cities have old buildings, some are hundreds of years old. Its not uncommon to find houses here that are between 200 ans 400 years old.
I would like to add, that if we did like they have in the Netherlands and close down one third of our pig production, we would be able to secure more wild life areas that we have had in a hundred years and still have land for solar panels to spare.
To me it isn’t an either or with solar panels and nature. We could have both. Currently we barely have space for either because the pig farmer take up all the space to grow pig food.
I don’t think people understand how actually insane it is with the farming here. There is not one place here where you don’t see fields. They take up all the space. If we shut down their industry, there would be more space for nature while the space needed for solar energy wouldn’t even take up a 10th of land. I don’t have the actual numbers of space needed for solar panels, but it would be ridiculously low. I am way more interested in having the pig food fields confiscated by the state and made into protected nature. That is where the true gain for nature lies.
Also: According to my boyfriend, the current energy production in Denmark which is covered by solar panels and especially windmills is around 60%. We aren’t far from having reached our goal for sustainable green energy so the solar panel fields are literally nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Rebutting your LLM’s points:
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“Older” houses in much of Europe are often made of stone, newer are frequently cinderblock, and the roof beams in both are massive. They’re holding up tile and slate roofs - the weight of solar panels is a rounding error, and not the concern it is with shoddy US stick-frame construction. So if that’s the “main reason” we’re doing pretty well already.
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Sub-optimal angle just means the panel doesn’t produce AS MUCH power as it theoretically could. Not that it produces none, and many sub-optimal placements are still financially viable. Beyond that, any south-facing roof available is going to do very well.
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Fire risks are again much lower on the very common hard-surface roofs. And that same space that allows the oxygen in also separates the fire from the roof, so the only things burning are the panels themselves and the fire soesn’t spread as it might with a ground-based installation which, by the way, also has air under the panels and are often over grass.
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Higher installation and maintenance costs are partially offset by the fact that the cost of land purchase and taxes are €0. That was already covered by the building’s main use. Then you can add the social and financial benefit of keeping those fields in food production. Moving away from animal agriculture would not only mean more food available locally, but also for export as crop yields in other places fall due to climate change.
Finally, the whole framing presents a false dichotomy. This doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition - both-and is an option. We can have solar panels on buildings AND in fields. We can convert growing fields from feed production to food production AND put solar panels on the former pig farms that can’t support crops. Particularly in warmer climates (maybe less applicable in Denmark) we can even raise the solar panels a bit higher AND still grow crops underneath (Agrivoltaics)!
You don’t know what you’re talking about and the fact that you discredit my boyfriend’s words by calling it an LLM is pathetic.
Bye 👋
Sorry about the LLM thing - I literally thought “boyfriend” here was used with a wink and a nod to mean an LLM in the same way that people on some forums say “my dog” to mean themselves.
As far as not knowing what I’m talking about though, I’ve spent times on both sides of the Atlantic and used both rooftop and ground based solar where appropriate (though not grid tied) to good effect.
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- More nuclear power plants
- more renevables
- more public transport and evs
Do you kbow where Europe get it’s uranium to power these nuclear power plants from? No? Let me tell you: We import it from countries like Kazakhstan, Niger a bit from Canada. France, one of the biggest nuclear powered countries imports it’s uranium from Russia. This is exactly the same as with oil and gas. So tell me: How do nuclear power plants help us, if we have to import the fuel?
Do you know what are the resources we have in Europe: Wind, water and sun. To be fair, we have cole too, but this is one of the dirtiest ways to produce energie.
The only way out are renewable energies.
I know I know.
But fuel is small money factor in comparison to importing lng to gas power plants.
You dropped half of your w
It’s called “reduce, reuse, recycle”
nuclear power is very geopolitically sensitive and very expensive. It is a target to get Chernobyled if war or civil unrest happens.
So there’s no need for subsidies money because the epic capitalism Invisible hand private market “just needs permission to go green”? This might be one of the dumbest “conclusions” to an article I’ve read in a while. I hope this entire thing was written by AI.
Its published in Fortune, I’m curious what you expected when you clicked on the link.
A bit more of a guide on energy independence than just a mostly vague history lessen with an incoherent conclusion
To be fair, the permitting and environmental impact process is crazy and is really holding back deployment. If the government gets out of the way of renewable projects the growth would increase massively.
Some of the process might be necessary. However, it should be the government’s burden to bear, not the applicants’. The process should be as straightforward and simple as possible on the applicant end.
Exactly, that’s how it should be but it isn’t. Wind power has to do an environmental assessment on birds when it’s only 1/6000 deaths. Offshore wind needs to show effect of the noise on marine wildlife when fossil fuels and farminc poison the water.
Here’s a UK example, maybe unfair to use UK as an example but this is how it is for one of the largest wind producers in Europe.
Mandatory almost always
- Planning Statement
- Site Layout Plans and Drawings
- Environmental Statement (EIA) [almost always required at this scale]
- Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment (LVIA) [politically critical]
- Ornithology Report [required if any bird sensitivity; very often triggered]
- Ecological Impact Assessment (EcIA)
- Noise Impact Assessment (ETSU-R-97)
- Transport Assessment
- Grid Connection Offer / Electrical Layout
Conditionally required
- Design and Access Statement [required in England for most major developments]
- Habitat Regulations Assessment (HRA) [if near/impacting SAC/SPA/Ramsar sites]
- Shadow Flicker Assessment [if residential receptors within ~10 rotor diameters]
- Construction Environmental Management Plan (CEMP) [often required pre-construction condition; sometimes submitted upfront]
- Peat Management Plan [if peat soils present; critical in Scotland/uplands]
- Heritage Impact Assessment [if within setting of listed buildings / conservation areas]
- Archaeological Survey Report [if potential below-ground remains]
- Flood Risk Assessment [if in flood zones or drainage impact possible]
- Hydrology and Hydrogeology Report [if affecting watercourses, groundwater, or peat]
- Aviation Impact Assessment [if within radar/airspace consultation zones]
- Socioeconomic Impact Assessment [if material local economic effects claimed]
- Community Consultation Report [mandatory for DNS/major schemes in some jurisdictions; strongly expected]
- Decommissioning Plan [often secured via planning condition but sometimes included upfront]
But it can also be blocked by these:
- Local Planning Authority (LPA) [primary decision-maker; can refuse planning permission]
- Secretary of State / Planning Inspectorate [can overturn or refuse on appeal or call-in]
- Statutory Nature Bodies (e.g. Natural England, NatureScot, NRW) [can object on ecology/HRA grounds]
- Local Community / Parish Councils [political pressure; can trigger refusal]
- Environmental NGOs (e.g. RSPB, Wildlife Trusts) [strong objections, especially on birds/bats]
- Ministry of Defence (MOD) [radar / aviation objections]
- Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) / NATS [airspace / radar interference]
- National Grid ESO / Distribution Network Operator (DNO) [can delay or deny viable grid connection]
- Historic England / Cadw / Historic Environment Scotland [heritage objections]
- Environment Agency / SEPA / NRW [flood risk, hydrology, pollution concerns]
- Highways Authority [can block due to abnormal load transport constraints]
- Landowners / Rights Holders [access, cable routes, lease issues]
- Aviation Stakeholders (airports, heliports) [radar / flight path conflicts]
- Public Inquiry (Inspector) [can recommend refusal after appeal]
- Legal Challenges (Judicial Review) [can quash approval post-consent]
Needless to say, spending millions on reports and assessments when it can be blocked anyway by some rando NIMBYs sucks. Then there’s also the fact that the UK grid needs tooooons of investment just to accommodate these new developments.
So all of these reports are not really an issue when you’re making a massive power plant where the price of the plant dominates the cost. The process makes a bit of sense for large scale installations but the amount of work you need to put in for a modest 20MW wind farm in absolutely bonkers.
So yeah, if the government would get out of the way the whole process is a piece of cake and we can have full grid saturation incredibly fast.
Or, you know, you could stop making enemies.
It’s not that easy. E.g. Europe was on good terms with Russia. It is not like Europe decided to become an enemy of Russia, Russia attacked an European country. Of course we should question ourselves if we should have trusted Russia in the first place.
The only way out is to become more enery independent by using more renewable energies.
Oh, yeah let Russia do whatever they want. Useless troll
That’s not remotely what they said. Useless troll
Can’t see the connection?
Hm, must be plain dumb I guess
Go back to Reddit
Part of the problem there is that they’re vassals of the US so unless they change that relationship somehow, they’re tied to US foreign policy. And the US loves making enemies. Makes it easier for politicians to give juicy contracts to their buddies who make bombs. Plus if European gas imports get disrupted, it just makes them more dependent on imports from the US. As the empire declines, the vassals are just going to get more and more fucked.
Please elaborate.
them’s fightin’ words
laughs in Icelandic
Do Icelandic people power their cars with electricity from geothermal? I’m not in Europe but where I live 94% of our electricity is hydroelectric, yet the vast majority of cars are still using gas/petrol. So even if we are independent on electricity, and it’s somewhat clean, we still import oil to power cars and trucks.
It was mostly a joke. Most of our vehicles are still fossil fuel powered. EVs are pretty popular but I think they’re still less than half of sales.
Stop buying solar panels anf wind turbines from China, then? I‘m afraid things really aren‘t that simple but I agree we need a long term plan yesterday.
Well, we actually produce our wind turbines - and most wind turbines outside of China (https://sopuli.xyz/post/30659580).
And it is different with solar panels than with oil & gas. If China stops exporting the panels today, well, the ones we bought will continue working for decades. If oil and gas stop flowing, we will run out of them in months, if not weeks.
You seem to be conflating energy with energy generation/conversion equipment, one of these is a consumable they are not the same
You seem to think there is absolutely no reliance on China by buying and relying on their tech. Or that it doesn‘t fuel their next invasion all the same. It does.
Besides, if you think buying turbines, panels and storage systems from China in 2026 is a one and done deal you‘re mistaken. They know how they work. They can shut them off if we sanction them. And they will give us many reasons to sanction them sooner rather than later.
And yet I still think we should buy them because we simply are out of alternatives. I also feel confident we can eventually turn them on again if they press the kill switch. And on top of that we will re-develop a domestic renewable energy industry that will make us much more independent.
But it will be painful. We will supply our enemy with money for their next war until then. I have no illusions about that.
When’s the last time China invaded. Next invasion lol
Even if that was the only option, which it is not; a tank of gas is used up and must be replenished constantly, a solar panel is like a free gas station that lasts a really long time. Like a really long time. Gas? Use it and there is no gas no more, and you have to buy more gas, again and again and again.
So if china one day stops selling solar panels, we’ll have decades of time to figure out what to do, not days or weeks.
EU literally destroyed its own nuclear energy. You had energy, eurotards killed it youself.
Lithuania had nuclear power plant, eu entry condition was to dismantle it.
Go ahead. Buy 750 billion worth of propane from trump instead
Latvia never had a nuclear power plant. Lithuania did, in Ignalina, that started operations back in 1983. It was also the same design as the one in Chernobyl, with the same design flaw, and that was only addressed after the disaster in '86. The building didn’t have a proper containment structure, so yes, the recommendation was to shut it down.
The problem is that the plans for replacement never came to fruition, and decommissioning costs went through the roof. All due to incompetence of the government.
Everything was fixable. They just didn’t want competition in, and now energy is just super expensive. Same design still operational in Russia and causes no issues
Yes, Russia is famous for its safety standards and care for her peoples welfare.
It is though. They have universal healthcare and working social system. Electrical and utilities are lowest prices on the planet
Is universal healthcare why hiv is spreading rampantly and the life expectancy is at the bottom half of the world, one of the lowest for a developed country?
There is universal healthcare and a working social sytem in theory, not in practice. That doesn’t even account for the loss of life from the way where over a million are, avoidable, dead. They aren’t values, they just churn them like meat to grind.
People are seeking to flee Russia, not move there.
