Solar and Wind Overtake Fossil Fuels in the EU (semafor.com) 60
Wind and solar power overtook fossil fuels last year as a source of electricity in the EU for the first time, a new report found. Semafor adds: The milestone was hit largely thanks to a rise in solar power, which generated a record 13% of electricity in the EU, according to Ember. Together, wind and solar hit 30% of EU electricity generation, edging out fossil fuels at 29%.
The shift is especially important with the bloc's alternative to Russian LNG -- Washington -- becoming increasingly unreliable and willing to weaponize economic tools. The US Commerce Secretary threw shade at the bloc's renewable push during Davos, warning that China uses net zero goals to make allies "subservient" by controlling battery and critical mineral supply chains.
Still, renewables now provide nearly half of EU power, with wind and solar outpacing all fossil sources in more than half of member countries. "The stakes of transitioning to clean energy are clearer than ever," the Ember report's author said.
The shift is especially important with the bloc's alternative to Russian LNG -- Washington -- becoming increasingly unreliable and willing to weaponize economic tools. The US Commerce Secretary threw shade at the bloc's renewable push during Davos, warning that China uses net zero goals to make allies "subservient" by controlling battery and critical mineral supply chains.
Still, renewables now provide nearly half of EU power, with wind and solar outpacing all fossil sources in more than half of member countries. "The stakes of transitioning to clean energy are clearer than ever," the Ember report's author said.
Devil you know? (Score:2)
The US Commerce Secretary threw shade at the bloc's renewable push during Davos, warning that China uses net zero goals to make allies "subservient" by controlling battery and critical mineral supply chains.
I wonder what the argument is here.
Is it that countries have no way to be truly independent therefore they might as well save money in converting to less pollutant tech?
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It is not clear that we will continue building them at the current pace once the bubble bursts. Also, considering that LLMS are something like 5 orders of magnitude more power hungry than the human brain for equivalent tasks, it seems like there's a lot of room for improvement in power efficiency. A couple of orders of magnitude more efficient and the power usage becomes pretty negligible. Of course, all of the investment into AI facilities also becomes an obsolete sunk cost that we are pretty much all guar
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We already have greatly improved AI chips.
Optical Processors like Chinas Tai Chi and Tai Chi II.
They roughly are a million times faster per Watt than conventional GPUs and TPUs.
Re: Devil you know? (Score:2)
Who is we? Most of humanity doesn't want them.
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It is not like EU couldn't make batteries. For example Finland has several sand and water batteries. Instead of storing electricity, those batteries store heat. It works extremely well, because there are often windy days during the winter when extra wind power is produced. That electricity is used to heat sand or water which is then distributed later as a heat to the homes.
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I think they are using quantum entangled sand so you don't have to actually move it.
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You should nitpick when it makes sense ... and not when it does not.
We are talking about batteries, that store electricity. That was plain obvious, right? Autist?
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If you enjoy nitpick, there is also Energy Dome from Italy, CO2 storage that can produce electricity.
https://energydome.com/co2-bat... [energydome.com]
But it doesn't really matter that much do you store energy as electricity or heat in conditions similar to Finland, because heating consumes so much energy and energy demand is much higher during winter. So less (foreign) batteries are needed when heat storage is used.
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We are still talking about electricity ... and batteries that store electricity :P ...
Hence the fear mongering about China and Raw Earth materials
A pile of sand is not imported from China, neither does it intentionally contain raw earth materials.
And in general (there are exceptions), it is not used to revert the heat into electricity again. However that would make sense, if the storage is big enough and hot enough.
I read about a few of those super hot sand storages, might be that was in Finland, too.
Heat storage [Re:Devil you know?] (Score:2)
It is not like EU couldn't make batteries. For example Finland has several sand and water batteries. Instead of storing electricity, those batteries store heat. It works extremely well, because there are often windy days during the winter when extra wind power is produced. That electricity is used to heat sand or water which is then distributed later as a heat to the homes.
This is insanely inefficient as a way to store energy for any use except low-grade heat.
But, yes, if heating your house is what you want to use energy for, if you have intermittant power, just heat up any well-insulated thermal mass when you have excess power, and tap that heat when you don't.
Works also for air conditioning-- if you have a large, well insulated water tank, you can run a refrigerator on solar power to chill the water when the sun is shining, and use the cold water to keep your house cool dur
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This is insanely inefficient as a way to store energy for any use except low-grade heat.
The sand is really hot. Hundreds of degrees C. While the thermal battery in Finland is presently used for district heating, it absolutely can supply high-grade heat or steam for industrial purposes. Presumably you could use the steam to generate electricity too, but if it's electricity you want, you're probably better to charge a big battery or pump some water up a hill. https://www.iflscience.com/the... [iflscience.com]
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This is insanely inefficient as a way to store energy for any use except low-grade heat.
The sand is really hot. Hundreds of degrees C.
That's not a particularly high temperature by thermodynamic standards.
While the thermal battery in Finland is presently used for district heating, it absolutely can supply high-grade heat or steam for industrial purposes. Presumably you could use the steam to generate electricity too, but if it's electricity you want, you're probably better to charge a big battery or pump some water up a hill. https://www.iflscience.com/the... [iflscience.com]
Yes, this last statement is accurate. Storing electrical energy by heating a thermal mass is a terrible way to store electrical energy.
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It is not like EU couldn't make batteries. For example Finland has several sand and water batteries. Instead of storing electricity, those batteries store heat. It works extremely well, because there are often windy days during the winter when extra wind power is produced. That electricity is used to heat sand or water which is then distributed later as a heat to the homes.
EU could make any kind of batteries it wants. Experience shows us that the EU largely waits at the finish line, picks the winner, then taxes or fines the hell out of them.
Re:Devil you know? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The US controls fossil fuels, a consumable and lifetime system dependence.
2. China controls supply chains need for new deployments.
However China does not control the sun or wind. So go with fossil fuels and have an untrustworthy partner who could turn off your energy supply anytime for any reason, or go with a renewables system supplier who could delay the role out of new generation. A pretty easy choice, even before you look at the economics of the two options.
<rant>Is it just me or do other people get pissed off with trump calling wind turbines windmills? Does he really not know what a mill does? And his FUD around them is so outrageously wrong it makes my brain hurt. The sooner that loser's speeches stop being 'news' the better.</rant>
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The US could mine almost any of the "rare earth" minerals it needs. We've chosen to outsource the pollution and ecological damage.
There are strategic advantages to using up potential enemies resources before using your own. Part of the reason why I am against the US being the big exporter of petroleum that it is.
Re:Devil you know? (Score:5, Insightful)
<rant>Is it just me or do other people get pissed off with trump calling wind turbines windmills? Does he really not know what a mill does? And his FUD around them is so outrageously wrong it makes my brain hurt. The sooner that loser's speeches stop being 'news' the better.</rant>
Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills.
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Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills.
I would pay to watch trump on a horse attacking a wind turbine and falling off.
Re: Devil you know? (Score:2)
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I would pay to watch trump on a horse attacking a wind turbine and falling off.
According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, he (supposedly) very severely bruised his left/other hand at Davos just bumping it on a desk, imagine what riding a horse would do to him - or him doing any of the Rambo-like things on various MAGA posters.
Re: Devil you know? (Score:2)
Insert Krieger quote here. You know which one.
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Nitpicking on:
o What you call a wind turbine, is technically not a turbine.
o Windmill is a common term for a "wind turbine"
Nitpicking mode off.
A turbine is something completely different than what we use/see as wind mills.
Nevertheless no one complains about calling them wind turbines, despite the fact they aren't any turbines.
So, why can you not cope with it, that we have no perfect fitting name, and some prefer to call them wind mill?
We Germans used to call them Wind-Anlage, where Anlage is a synonym for
Re: Devil you know? (Score:2)
What you call a wind turbine, is technically not a turbine.
They extract work from a moving fluid. Theyâ(TM)re turbines.
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That is not the definition of a turbine.
A turbine has a compression stage, a expansion stage, usually a burning chamber, and the exhaust stage: where the actual energy is extracted. The whole thing is a turbine. Not a single rotor.
A single rotor is a rotor or a fan or a propeller, not a turbine.
Re: Devil you know? (Score:4)
That is not the definition of a turbine.
Yes it is. Technically speaking even a water wheel is a turbine. You're talking about gas turbines, which are heat engines that just happen to have a turbine in them.
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Sorry, then the English usage of the term is different than the German and science usage.
What we put up as wind turbines, are rotors. A gas turbine does not happen to have turbines in it. It has a set of fans. Big difference. The whole thing is set of fans, not a set of turbines.
So "technically" you are wrong. It is just modern habit of speech to call them that. But alas speech/language is changing ...
Historically, a mill did not need to mill. It was a general term for wind or water driven "engines" aka "ma
Re: Devil you know? (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, then the English usage of the term is different than the German and science usage.
I read engineering at university, not science, and something that extracts work from the movement of a working fluid, be that water, steam or air, is a turbine.
What we put up as wind turbines, are rotors. A gas turbine does not happen to have turbines in it. It has a set of fans. Big difference. The whole thing is set of fans, not a set of turbines.
Technically a gas turbine has rotors and stators in it. Fans put work into a fluid to create flow, which is quite literally the opposite of what a turbine does. Gas turbines take in a working fluid, usually air, (optionally) compress it in the first stage, add heat, and then extract work in the expansion stage. Even that part of a gas turbine is not technically a turbine, since the energy being extracted from the fluid is not purely coming from its kinetic energy.
So "technically" you are wrong. It is just modern habit of speech to call them that. But alas speech/language is changing ...
"Technically" I am correct. The best kind of correct. Those big spinning things we build outside to make electricity from wind are turbines.
Historically, a mill did not need to mill. It was a general term for wind or water driven "engines" aka "machines" which wold do what ever ...
I didn't read history, but I'm comfortable in assuming that "mill" meaning a large piece of machinery (and later the building housing it) is merely an extension of "mill" meaning a simple machine that grinds corn; the latter was probably the first - and only - large piece of static machinery for a very long time. Cotton mills, steel mills, etc. came much later. I don't know much German but "mill" as in "steel mill" probably translates to "Werk". In modern times steel mills are now called steelworks. Funny how sometimes our mongrel language shows its roots.
Pretty common and close to "milling" is lifting hammers and let them drop to crush something, or even use it in an automated smithery.
Wrong again. Repeatedly striking a piece of metal to change its shape is forging (schmieden). It might happen in a place referred to as a "steel mill", but it's not milling (fräsen), which has its own specific meaning in the context of metalworking. Oh, and by the way, water wheels that were used to power trip hammers are also turbines.
The famous dutch wind mills: every one calls them that. They were wind driven pumps. They did not mill grain, except of course, those who were build to mill grain ... no one would call them a turbine, though.
In the English-speaking world we call them windmills because they look exactly like the kind we used to mill grain. Or it could just be that "mill" was being used to describe any large, static piece of machinery at that time. We can leave that to the etymology students. No-one may have used the word "turbine" but that doesn't change the fact that by the technical definition the spinning part that takes energy from the wind and uses it to turn a shaft is a turbine.
Please, just stop digging yourself into a hole.
Oh, and before you bring it up, those big things in fossil/nuclear power stations (or on ships called Turbinia) are called steam turbines but aren't "technically" turbines either. They're heat engines.
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I read engineering at university, not science, and something that extracts work from the movement of a working fluid, be that water, steam or air, is a turbine. ...
Nope.
A standard water wheel, is not a turbine.
Ooops
As long as you have not multiple levels of fans in an encasing: it is not a turbine.
Sorry for your misunderstanding.
Re: Devil you know? (Score:2)
That's a jet turbine engine. Only one of its parts is a turbine.
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What you describe is a gas turbine engine. It is colloquially called a gas turbine, but this is not the correct designation and the actual turbine is only a part of it.
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Yes, the actual turbine is inside of the mantle that is encasing the turbine :D
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I guess my issue with trump is windmill and the those wind power generation devices, that I will refer to for convince sake as as wind turbines, is the juxtaposition of them. Here in New Zealand we have hundreds of wind turbines and only one operational windmill I know of. The wind turbines have a very industrial feel to them but the windmill gives off
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You should go at the end of the night and count the dead bats!!
New Zealand is on my travel list on the top. So I will remember your windmill :D
A shame, I never was in a windmill in Germany or Netherlands ...
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I don't see much market for windmills as most milling is done using electric motors. They can be a good tourist attracti
Re:Devil you know? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no actual argument other than continuing to create a nationwide reality distortion field.
Renewable energy has to fail, it must, because to acknowledge it means that conservatives would have to implicitly admit that it's actually economically viable, that climate change might be a teeny bit real, that carbon might actually affect the atmosphere and that the liberals might have actually been right about something and they may have been wrong.
That cannot be allowed to happen no matter what is staring the rest of the world in the face. If they could have been so wrong about this for so very long then some people might suspect they have been wrong about other things. That's what this is about, authoritarian regimes require complete message control over everything.
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In the future, production will probably diversify, with mining in Africa, Canada, Australia, etc.
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Rare earths elements are required for magnets in wind power generators,
No they are not. We did not use rare earths for centuries in those magnets.
It is just convenient to have them, as that makes the magnets stronger in relation to size/weight and in case of cars the engines more efficient.
I believe China has more than 60% of the production of rare earths elements.
Depends on the chemical element. China is leading in refined minerals. But it imports most of the raw materials from Australia and Chile. I wond
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China dominates REE production, accounting for about 69% of global mining and 85% of refining. The Bayan Obo mine in Inner Mongolia is the world’s largest REE deposit, supplying elements like neodymium and dysprosium used in high-tech industries.
- (October 14, 2024) https://businesscraft.se/busin... [businesscraft.se]
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Again: it is not required. You can do it without.
Required means: there is no other way.
Your mine example is mostly about neodymium and dysprosium. Lithium however, they mostly import from Australia and Chile.
Of course you could call it "required" if your whole production process is focused on a certain set of "things" which you settled on long ago, and can not easy shift away from.
Example the new electric engines BMW is using and the Donut engines, there is another company that escapes me at the moment: hav
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You mention a considerable amount of elements.
Not a considerable amount of mass.
And you are wrong, except for Neodymium, the other elements have no use in an electric generator. /FACEPALM
Dysprosium is paramagnetic.
Praseodymium can be used together with Neodymium to make high power magnets. No idea if it is used for generators in wind turbines.
Terbium - interesting but pointless.
Europium - paramagnetic, pointless for generators.
Yttrium - paramagnetic, see above. Interesting in strange ion configurations.
Sam
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Wind turbine blades only rotate at around 8-16 rpm. This is far too slow to generate electricity, hence the gearbox. But a gearbox usually only lasts 7-10 years
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Generators in a wind turbine are not heated. So no need/usage for dysprosium.
And so on ...
I do not see your point.
Wind turbine blades only rotate at around 8-16 rpm. This is far too slow to generate electricity, hence the gearbox. But a gearbox usually only lasts 7-10 years.
So: what has a gear box to do with rare earth elements?
Obviously: nothing
With stronger magnets, thanks to REE, you can remove the gearbox and use a direct drive wind turbine.
Nope. As the stronger magnet does not influence the rotating sp
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REE are used in modern wind power. They make electricity production more compact and efficient, and reduce maintenance.
There are two types of wind turbine generators, the older geared wind turbine that requires a gearbox to get the speed up to 1000 rpm, and then the modern direct-drive wind turbine, with a simpler design and strong REE magnet
Re: Devil you know? (Score:2)
You only need enough magnet to excite a coil in order to have a generator. Generators like that got a lot more efficient recently so they are viable.
declining production (Score:2)
The EU has seen declining electricity generation since about 2021, and an end to increasing electricity production as of about 2008. If you keep closing fossil plants, the share from other plants will increase, even if you don't build any more "sustainable" plants. Here are some interesting charts: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/... [europa.eu].
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https://www.researchgate.net/f... [researchgate.net]
This graph could be more up-to-date (2016) but it already shows the EU having rising per capita on a falling amount of energy per capita, and steeply declining energy consumption per $1K of GDP.
No kind of energy generation is going to beat not having to generate it at all.
Perhaps they also have decreasing industrial output in energy-intensive products, but the rising GDP per capita and dec
duh (Score:2)
EU isn't energy independent and has a very serious security risk in times of economic retaliation, trade embargo, blockades, and war.
Between Russia and the US, I'm guessing Europe wishes it would have gotten ahead of this years ago. But better late than never I suppose.
Make everyone buy American (Score:2)
Like the USA did with military power and weapons sales, he means. Translation: The USA is sticking to fossil fuels so they can 'control' their own factories and electricity supply: While, simultaneously choking on the toxic fumes and paying the higher cost of electricity generation.
The countries that move to cheaper, cleaner electricity will waste less money on caring for poisoned people and and spend less on manufacturing.
The result is, the USA wants war: Not merely for imperialism; more land, mor