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[–] 36 points 2 days ago (7 children)

All it took was an orangutan to start a war for the conservatives and liberals to suddenly like heat pumps.

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  • [–] [S] 23 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    That's the reason why I love the current situation. Only elevated prices and unpredictable volatility can switch the world off of fossil fuels IMO, because there's way too many powerful people profiting off of it for it to be a natural transition. The situation has so very clearly spiralled out of control that the orange cunt can't contain it, naturally, him being borderline retarded, he won't be able to get out of this mess on his own. And as long as the price is as high as it is, demand destruction will take care of fossil fuels. That's why I'd like for it to stay that way, such that demand destruction will be maximised. Fuck fossil fuels, objectively superior technology has been available for a long time. It's time to end this nonsense.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    I love the current situation

    Privileged. Think about the millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Iranians etc. dying for a pointless global conflict.

    And about the billions of tons of CO2 and forever chemicals released by warfare.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    tbf the Ukrainians don't have much choice in the matter.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    As opposed to the Iranians who were also attacked?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago

    as opposed to the Russians, didn't realise you wanted me to list them all. As you hadn't mentioned the orange pedo, I wasnt going to bother bringing him up, everything he does is from a command from his russian midget controller anyway, so really irans' being attacked by russia so putler can get the decrepit shit baby to blame ukraine for the fucking diesel prices & use up his stocks of missiles do they cant go to defending Kyiv from the carpet bombing of their civilians.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    Not just that, but Iran and Ukraine are also attacking fossil fuel infrastructure directly.

    The other part is that really low prices are also good, because they lower investments into fossil fuels and the bribing budget of the fossil fuel industry. There is a decent chance we get those again as well, when the wars end. The organge cunt seems to have allowed Venezuela to enter the market as well.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    Everyone using a heat pump also reduces gas demand which lowers the gas price.

    So basically a heat pump is not only good for yourself but also for everyone else, even if you don't look at the climate.

    That will of course switch when there is such a small number of households using gas that the grid will be a lot more expensive for those. But by the time we are at that point we can probably afford to gift them some heat pumps too.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    reduces gas demand which lowers the gas price.

    if only gas prices followed supply demand economics we learned in Grade 8.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    They kinda do, but it's not as easy as we learned in Grade 8 because there is greedy investors, cartels and a worldwide market with all kinds of different players involved (including states that try to keep the price low for voters and others that try to get it even higher for their leaders' pockets.

    And of course a 20% decrease in supply doesn't mean 20% increase in price, but the price will increase until there is 20% less demand, which doesn't happen because whole countries are dependent on gas as they did not invest in renewable energy.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    Grid costs are already something like 20%. So the lower gas prices, due to lower demand will be matched by higher grid costs. That is as long as the gas stays cheap and there are no other issues with the LNG supply or so.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 days ago (7 children)

    Quick! Someone comment how those don't work in places where very few people live anyway!

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Scandinavian countries have had heat pumps since forever

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  • [–] 25 points 2 days ago (15 children)

    Denmark has separately cut electricity taxes specifically for heat pump households

    That is an interesting take for countries that still have high electricity taxes due to generation using fossil fuels. The long-term effect of shifting use to electricity should offset the short-term increase in usage.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 days ago (12 children)

    In moderate climates it is more efficient to burn gas to produce electricity then use that to run a heat pump, than it is to burn gas directly.

    Gas power plants are about 35-60% efficient depending on whether they're a cheap inefficient peaker or Rankine, or a pricey CCGT plant.

    Heat pumps have a COP of 2.5x to >5 depending on outdoor temperature and series.

    Good gas furnaces/boilers and the grid are both upwards of 90% efficient.

    So a 40% efficient gas plant driving a COP 3 heat pump produces 1.2x the heat that you get from burning the gas directly. That's close to worst case and you can also run your grid on other fuels.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

    Also, you need to burn gas only when there is no wind blowing in the winter. Which does not happen that often around the North Sea. Adding modern batteries, gas might be needed 2% or 3% of the time. Which means 97% of CO2 eliminated cheaply, and fast.

    Though, adding wave power to complement wind would be nice, since the sea surface then provides free energy storage and energy transport to the shores, and waves in North Sea winter get easily 6 meters high.

    They even had to invent some crazy engineering to access wind power plants in typical winter weather - see "Ampelmann Gangway" at YouTube..

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago* (2 children)

    With wind, at least all the moving parts tend to be well above water, only exposed to salt spray (though that's still pretty nasty).

    Tidal and especially wave have moving components exposed to water, often right on the wind-water line. That makes them corrosion and maintenance horrors.

    There have been plenty of demonstration wave & tidal plants that have produced power, but I think the operation record is about two years, most much less.

    Building and scrapping your plants every year or two is neither cost nor energy efficient.

    Solar, hydro, geothermal, and wind are much nicer to deal with.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    Tidal and especially wave have moving components exposed to water, often right on the wind-water line. That makes them corrosion and maintenance horrors.

    True, the environment is not easy, and a lot of detail problems need to be solved.

    But ships solved the same issues.

    The charm of wave power is that the ocean surface is the storage medium. The surface stores and transports the energy to the shore.

    This is a very powerful principle.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago

    Ships haven't really 'solved' the same issues. They're dry-docked at regular intervals (about every 5 years?), have minimal moving components below the waterline, and get the props cleaned by divers more frequently.

    They are also capable of travelling to dry-dock under their own power and deliver a lot more revenue than your average wave turbine would, so the costs of dry-docking them aren't as significant.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Electricity can relatively easy be generated almost infinitely. We will run out of gas sooner or later.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    Absolutely. The point is that even when people say "ha ha, your [heat pump | EV] still actually runs on gas/oil/coal to make its power" - you're still using less gas/oil/coal than you would with conventional gear, even if the power grid was 100% gas/oil/coal. Which it's not.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    The point is to remove gas dependencies one at a time, so the impending forced transition is as painless as possible.

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  • Absolutely. The point is that even when people say "ha ha, your [heat pump | EV] still actually runs on gas/oil/coal to make its power" - you're still using less gas/oil/coal than you would with conventional gear, even if the power grid was 100% gas/oil/coal. Which it's not.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    The Danish β€œelectric heating” tax system works in a very low level way. A normal household is set to use around 4000 kWh of power for non-heating operation. Anything above that is just not taxed. This is the same for any form of electric heating, not just heat pumps. Also, January 2025 the government turned tax for electricity to the lowest that EU allows, so no special treatment for using more than 4000 kWh - now everything is with low tax. This deal was set to run for two years, so we will see if the old taxes come back at New Year.

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