in the northern hemisphere during the winter months, the sun doesnt shine for long enough for solar to do much. the EU could put a bunch of solar in northern africa but it’s not a stable part of the world - you dont want your primary energy generation in an area that constantly experiences unrest.
geothernal is great for iceland but doesnt help anyone else.
there arent enough wind turbines to support everyone, and there’s not enough storage capacity for it to matter anyway.
nuclear power is efficient and safe but many EU member states are scared of it.
hydro is an option but you’d have to dam every waterway - but it wouldnt generate enough electricity to cover everyone.
woodgas is another option but it’s not that efficient. coal or lng are the only real options the EU has during the winter months - or, you know, let folks freeze.
Last year the EU produced 42% of its electricity with renewables. 18.9% of it with wind and 8.0% with solar. There is also a 24.5% share of nuclear, which is probably going to stay stable. That leaves 31.9% fossil fuels. So we have to a bit more then double wind and solar installations in the EU. That is entirly possible to do. Especially with offshore becoming as cheap as it is and we still have a lot of rooftops without solar.
About storage there is a wonderfull thing called electricity grids. The worst days for wind last year wind made up a bit less then 10% of electricity production. That is of an average of 18.9% over the entire year. For solar it is worse in wind, but luckily wind makes up a lot of the rest. Combined that means that the worst days still have 13% wind + solar EU wide. So about half of average. As soon as you extend it to a week the worst ones are at something like 17% of wind + solar. So with a strong enough grid we get pretty close. As soon as you add a bit of storage to the grid and overbuilt wind and solar a bit, renewables work just fine.
Honestly we are pretty close to solving it. Most EU countries are at over 50% clean electricity today. Even better Putin caused massive built ups of clean power generation. We are going to be fine, if we continue in that field.
there’s not a lot of options.
in the northern hemisphere during the winter months, the sun doesnt shine for long enough for solar to do much. the EU could put a bunch of solar in northern africa but it’s not a stable part of the world - you dont want your primary energy generation in an area that constantly experiences unrest.
geothernal is great for iceland but doesnt help anyone else.
there arent enough wind turbines to support everyone, and there’s not enough storage capacity for it to matter anyway.
nuclear power is efficient and safe but many EU member states are scared of it.
hydro is an option but you’d have to dam every waterway - but it wouldnt generate enough electricity to cover everyone.
woodgas is another option but it’s not that efficient. coal or lng are the only real options the EU has during the winter months - or, you know, let folks freeze.
Last year the EU produced 42% of its electricity with renewables. 18.9% of it with wind and 8.0% with solar. There is also a 24.5% share of nuclear, which is probably going to stay stable. That leaves 31.9% fossil fuels. So we have to a bit more then double wind and solar installations in the EU. That is entirly possible to do. Especially with offshore becoming as cheap as it is and we still have a lot of rooftops without solar.
About storage there is a wonderfull thing called electricity grids. The worst days for wind last year wind made up a bit less then 10% of electricity production. That is of an average of 18.9% over the entire year. For solar it is worse in wind, but luckily wind makes up a lot of the rest. Combined that means that the worst days still have 13% wind + solar EU wide. So about half of average. As soon as you extend it to a week the worst ones are at something like 17% of wind + solar. So with a strong enough grid we get pretty close. As soon as you add a bit of storage to the grid and overbuilt wind and solar a bit, renewables work just fine.
Honestly we are pretty close to solving it. Most EU countries are at over 50% clean electricity today. Even better Putin caused massive built ups of clean power generation. We are going to be fine, if we continue in that field.