Boy, it’s all very well to have those Green Dreams of making us all free of Evil Oil&GasCorp International, but when someone punches you in the nose and says, “No more oil!” you’d have to be completely stupid to keep on with the foolishness. Take Germany, for example:
Germany is considering reopening some of its decommissioned coal power plants in the hopes of getting a handle on its ongoing energy crisis. The reopening of shuttered plants is seen as an option as the country struggles to ween itself off of its addiction to Russian fossil fuels.
However:
However, the RWE head was keen to emphasise that no U-turn on the phasing out of fossil fuels was occurring, and that the stop-gap measures being suggested did not represent a rollback of the country’s climate change plans.
“It’s not a backwards roll, but at most a step aside for a limited time,” the energy Tsar said.
Uh huh. Till the next crisis, when they’ll have to step aside again, and again, and again, when that back-and-forth is going to resemble a country two-step dance competition.
Morons. And lest we forget, most of their problem is being caused by their panicked overreaction to the Fukushima meltdown and the resulting knee-jerk shutdown of all their own nuke power plants. Morons times two.
I thought Germans were supposed to be pragmatic and logical, but clearly I’ve been misinformed.
You never know when the next tsunami is going to wash up over the Alps and hit Germany.
“Germany is considering reopening some of its decommissioned coal power plants”
Good fricking luck with that. I work in the chemical manufacturing industry. 30+ years now. Been involved in a few decommissionings too. Once you shut something like that down, you can’t just “reopen” it. It don’t work that way. Depending on size, scope, and how it was shut down, it could take years to get a plant up and running again.
Not to mention, usually when something that big gets shut down the scavengers show up. I worked in a unit with an obsolete DCS (plant computer control) system. Vendor wouldn’t support it any longer. When cards failed, we shutdown. We were literally shopping for parts on eBay. When we heard of another unit with the same DCS system getting decommissioned, we ran over there to steal as many parts as possible. Fact of life, people steal from the dead.
So yeah, it’s one thing for politicians to say just reopen those plants we made you decommission. It’s a whole other thing for it to actually happen.
if they did it like the way they decommissioned the LNG and oil fired plants in the Netherlands, they mothballed them and kept a caretaker crew on site for minimal maintenance and security duties in order to ensure they can be reactivated when needed.
That prolongs the period until the plant becomes unsalvageable by potentially several decades.
That all depends. The bigger the piece of equipment, the higher the chance it won’t restart when you hit the button. Pretty much rule of thumb for all 480 volt and larger motors. That’s for something you shut down last week and need to restart this week. When you decommission, at least here, we drain all fluids, including lubricating oil and everything is left dry. Bearings flat spot and rust. Mice and other critters get in and gnaw on wiring. Snakes, ants, bees, etc. love them some nesting spots in insulation. Especially if there’s ethylene or propane vapor, draws them in big time. Decommission also requires air-gapping. That is, all systems are purged and open to atmosphere. Nothing closed where pressure could build. That invites rust, moisture, mildew, bugs, etc.
To shut a plant down but maintain it for quick restart is very expensive and requires more than a minimum crew. But then again, I’ll respect the fact that you might have more info on how Europeans do things versus me here in the states.
And my point about other plants sneaking in and scavenging parts still stands. That happens whether management admits to it or not. I’ve been part of midnight supply crews.
The biggest problem with the ‘Go Green’ environmentalists is they are constantly demanding we give up our current energy production and depend on technologies that realistically do not yet exist. It would be like Green Energy proponents in the 17th century demanding civilization give up sailing ships before steam power had been invented. We currently have 200 years worth of oil on US territory right now. How many people don’t think we can come up with SOMETHING to efficiently replace oil in those 200 years? I’m confident we will probably have something like fusion or fuel cell technology that can run cars, planes, and trains within 50 to 100 years. Don’t demand we return to the stone age now just because you don’t like the current use of fossil fuels with nothing to adequately replace it at present.
Using logic and history to argue with the Watermelons is like reading erotic poetry to a dog: it may satisfy YOU, but it’s completely wasted on the dog.
My dad would say “There you go again. Trying to insert logic and reason into an otherwise emotional argument”
Zerohedge apparently has an article out too that most/all of these green groups are seeing serious funding shortfalls. In an unsurprising development, it turns out the Russian state owned oil&gasco has been donating to them for decades to suppress domestic energy development. Comintern anyone?
And there YOU go, connecting all the proper dots again…
We can’t have any reality here…..pass him the bong.
Just as the “peace movement” with their anti-NATO protests of the 1980 was funded by the KGB…
As were the communist (and other socialist) political parties in Europe, most of which have now rebranded themselves as “green” parties.
you’re right about not being able to restart large production systems.
Two of my family members work(ed) in the electricity generating industry either on nukes or dirt burners. Wind, solar, and other “green” energy production have significant problems including the basic fact that wind and solar depend on inconsistent input. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow when you need power. Storing power during peak production for use during peak demand requires expensive batteries that are bad for the environment when manufactured and routinely cannot be reused. But as has been said above, there we go again bringing logic, reason and science into an emotional argument.
I’m glad that these Watermelons are losing their funding. I hope their ideology is met with derisive laughter.
We didn’t replace our lighting source from whale oil and kerosene to electricity at the behest of a government bureaucrat. we changed because someone created a better good or service. The Free Market quickly determines winning and losing goods and services. Let it work. The public will determine which goods and services they will pay for and at an acceptable price. If the public doesn’t like the good or service at the price then they’ll choose something else.
JQ
the greenies will have learned from this to not just decommission those powerstations before the next crisis, but dismantle them so they can’t be put back into operation.
They’ll already have realised that their grand plan wasn’t as well thought out as they thought it was, and should have included a lot more explosives and wrecking balls for their “green energy transition” to be successful in destroying the continent.
Unlike Germany, US nuclear plants decided to bite the bullet and implement changes to systems and procedures to mitigate the effects of the Fukushima event. The utility I worked for spent over 100 million dollars on three nuclear stations to meet USNRC guidelines for continued operation. I think that, in the long run, Germany is going to regret their cancellation of nuclear power as a viable energy source.
I don’t know anything about power generation or working with large mechanical systems, but I can be a grammar and spelling Nazi.
“Ween”?
I’m not an engineer or architect or whatever you need to be to figure it out, but for the modern windmills, I read somewhere that the energy needed to manufacture the materiel, the fuel you need to run the equipment needed to install it, the concrete, etc., the energy output for the expected lifespan will never cover the cost. Not to mention the loss of habitat that is covered in concrete, and the deaths of uncounted thousands of birds. Anyone?