Huh? What prevents you from installing them "all at once"?
The downside is obviously a long stretch of no sun, and for Europe winter being both low solar production and high energy demand due to heating which the soon-to-be-cheap grid scale batteries don’t really fix. The logistics of PV don’t seem difficult though - it seems by far the easiest of the power generation methods, even if the synchronization can get a bit tricky in a large grid.
Because manufacturing isn't there to do everything at once. You install say 50gw per year, each year. In 30y you need to replace first 50gw batch and so on
Msoft understands the position very well, that's precisely why updates are so bad. Windows is just an entrypoint. The actual critical parts are office suite, teams, visual studio & stuff - they are the cash cows and can't be easily replaced, hence windows will be picked even if it's hated
Co2 tax is less about externality and more about putting this extra money into renewables. When ren are underperforming but bidding low prices, they will still be compensated by the merit order which is artificially bumped even higher with CO2 tax.
And the worst thing is other regions like US or China don't have such a tax, causing industry offshoring. It's a noble case to want to subsidize ren sector, but this method is hurting EU more than helping
They could put the money into renewables, but there's nothing mandatory about that policy choice. The idea of a Pigouvian tax is to eliminate the market distortion negative externalities create. In general, you want to tax things you don't want, like pollution, not things you want, like productive work.
yes, but since this tax is done only at EU level, it causes industry offshoring and $ redistribution. EU could have just subsidized ren more instead of this tax. This way electricity/production prices would be lower while ren tech still supported
Very weak arguments there. Adding distortions is ok because other distortions exist? Non sequitur. Tariffs don't currently do everything therefore they cannot ever solve the problem? Also a non sequitur.
Europe, especially central and eastern away from the coasts, is in the unenviable position of being the renewable energy armpit of the world. So their choice is either not be competitive in energy-intensive industries in a renewable world or continuing to be competitive in a fossil-fuel-doomed world.
This dilemma leads to various kinds of magical thinking, like "nuclear will save us" or "climate change isn't real".
for nuclear at least we know what final result may look like, in France. We know both costs and timeline to achieve decarbonization. We also know more or less the same about Germany which took a different path, starting from 2000 under red-greens and schroder and continued by cdu. To me it sounds much more magical to hope DE will have anytime soon abundant cheap hydrogen to firm it's 80GW+ of gas plants according to Fraunhofer's ISE plan.
Imo CO2 tax should be gone to alleviate this, especially when China and US dont have it. This just causes offshoring.
If you want electrification, you need cheap electricity. If you want more ren, you put more incentives there instead of overtaxing fossils to make own industry uncompetitive
But the energy from windmills doesn't have a CO2 tax (it did at some point) and it frequently provides most, if not all, of the Danish energy (electricity) consumption. There's ONE coal fired power plant left in the country and it's scheduled to close in 2028. I get that we then have gas and garbage incinerators for heating, but we are getting electrification and lower prices.
I frankly don't care what the US and China is doing, because they're doing the wrong thing. You're arguing that because you neighbour is throwing trash in the street you want to be able to do the same. I'd much rather make environmental demands of the products being sold to be from else where, and have them live by the same rules, allowing everyone to benefit.
Co2 tax is just an indirect subsidy for renewables. When prices are low those are subsidized through cfds. When high- through merit order artificially pumped by co2 tax. This isn't bad per se but it affects negatively final consumer prices and industry which is bad.
Problem is not about the neighbors throwing trash. Unilateral co2 tax means industry relocates to regions where it's not present. In your analogy it would look like you are sending trash to US to deal with it.
DK is lucky to be able to get firming from nordics, but not everyone can do this. And from what I remember Norway already said one of the interconnectors will not have extended license at EOL
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