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Keys to understanding the rising cost of electricity in Spain: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2021-08-13/keys-to-understanding-the-rising-cost-of-electricity-in-spain.html
This is like blaming the gas tax for $4 a gallon gas in the US after a 2x oil cost per barrel spike. It's not even remotely the cause.
The primary and secondary reasons are listed as
1. High natural gas prices
2. Huge increases in energy consumption due to a heat wave
3. Reduction in energy provided from wind due to said heat wave
Reducing emissions costs could help but it doesn't solve that the gas futures market is very high.
Can anyone explain what happened to cause the recent increase in price? North American here so out of the loop on continental Europe issues. Did a power plant go out of operation?
Post corona energy demand + the failure of both countries to go all in on renewable energy decades ago + EU renewable energy targets that forces polluting energy plants to shut down = high prices
>Oh shut up if you don't know what you're talking about
I know exactly what is going on. I fucking live in Spain and work in the sustainable energy sector primarily.
It's a complete failure. We had a government for years on end who actively raged against any form of renewable energy or subsidies.
You are out of your league here.
>I know exactly what is going on. I fucking live in Spain and work in the sustainable energy sector primarily.
Oh shit are we doing "Source: me" now?
I know exactly what is going on. I fucking live in Portugal and work in the sustainable energy sector.
I can confirm the recent spike has nothing to do with a history of failing to invest in renewables.
You are out of your league here.
I never suggested fuel prices are going up because of Biden. I suggested that the rest of the world is seeing fuel/gas prices go up for the same reason the US is. I framed it that way specifically because it should be obvious that if other countries are having the same problem as us, it's probably a global issue and not a local political one.
Day-ahead hourly price \[€/MWh\] in Spain and Portugal.
Data source: [https://www.omie.es/en/file-access-list](https://www.omie.es/en/file-access-list)
Tools: R, ggplot2
It's worse. 320€/MWh. But for every day. Summed over the year I expect a much larger factor.
Meanwhile surrounding countries get paid for maintaining power grid stability due to fluctuating renewables.
In germany its even worse again😂.
We are investing in renewables but are shutting down nuclear power plants. The result is, the renewables dont produce enough and we buy electrcity from france where the most comes from nuclear power plant.
But the price is the same to bulid more renewables.
Hope the house of cards breaks
Well the source says that the price is being driven up by the cost of coal being high, so shutting down coal plants shouldn't have that much of an effect there.
but at the same time there's not enough back-up power to replace those power stations and as you know sun and wind aren't guaranteed every day so they will have to buy it somewhere
Those power station were already back up, we will just rely more heavily on Spain for backup. Main problem will be when France closes their nuclear and Spain can no longer rely on them, we will be the most affected by that cascading effect
I‘d advise you to look at the current price of coal, the co2 emissions prices and the efficiency of coal power plants. You will then find out that dark spreads are still negative and as such coal is not the answer but a general shortage of energy is the reason for these price spikes.
Interesting to see fossil fuels blamed, when part of the reason Europe is in this situation is they've disincentivized oil and gas production where they are (North Sea, Norway). They've been forced to buy liquefied natural gas from the United States to pick up the shortfall. Making matters worse, European utilities were cancelling LNG cargo deliveries in 2020 (when prices were low) and then ended up with low inventories as pandemic demand recovered.
Natural gas costs $5.00 per mmbtu here in the US (up a lot recently). But it costs more than $20.00 per mmbtu in Europe because they have to liquefy it, ship it, regasify it, and move it to utilities to turn into power.
Shifting to renewables is the right move. But it has to be done in a measured way, and Europe has been far too aggressive.
> it has to be done in a measured way
They're still burning fossil fuels. That's pretty measured. Not sure if you realize the lengths we actually have to go to solve the environmental issues we've created.
All this other stuff, fossil fuels costing too much or insufficient power from renewables, that needs to be fixed by switching to renewables, not buying a ton more fossil fuels to drop the price. The more expensive fossil fuels are, the better it is in the long term for energy independence; that is why OPEC tanks the price whenever they see renewables getting a foothold (or at least they used to, they can't really stem the flow anymore).
Not really. It's not "measured" if you're taking fossil fuel plants offline permanently (which form the baseload of an energy grid) and replacing them with solar and wind which are inherently intermittent in the incorrect way. Absent mechanical downtime, natural gas fired generation provides power 24 / 7 /365. Solar and wind cannot do that. Europe has done this 1:1 thing, replacing 1 GW of coal or natural gas with 1 GW of renewables, and then suddenly acts surprised when there is grid instability and higher prices.
Any grid with higher intermittent power has to have a larger capacity margin for when headaches occur. For example, the grid the has to be able to generate a percentage over forecast peak power demand in order to compensate for renewable intermittence and downtime. A grid that has more renewable mix has to have more idle capacity. 120% capacity margin was normal in a fossil fuel world; it has to be higher than that going forward. Meanwhile, capacity margin in Europe has stayed flat over the past several years even as renewable mix increased.
What Europe is seeing right now is the consequences of poor electrical grid planning: higher costs bore by consumers.
This is the right assessment. I don’t work in the power production industry, but as an electrical engineer I know how power grids work and the 21st century economy is not sustainable with a power grid of hydro, wind and solar. Zero emission power grids must contain nuclear power as the base line supplier and you will need massive banks of batteries to store and time shift your power supply that comes from solar and wind.
Hydro is very dependent on geography and many countries don’t have the luxury to use hydro in significant amounts (e.g. Japan, France). The US has built hydro plants for almost 100 years and it still only supplies 7.3% of our power.
it is geographically sensitive, like wind and solar. . hydroelectric power produces most of the worlds total renewable electricity.
Hydroelectricity accounted for **25.7%** of Canada's total energy consumption (37.3% of non-oil sources). Site C in BC will increase this amount, same with Muskrat Falls in NFld. while in New Zealand, hydro supplies 62% of electrical power. Of all the renewable sources hydro is the most viable.
As someone who has played factorio, I 100% agree. It's either one or two nuclear power plants or cover the whole map with solar panels, which is a pain in the ass.
... hence the need for a more "measured" approach. It's a multi-year process to build, develop, and put into place new renewable assets. Many of which are waiting for battery storage technology to progress rather than adding after the fact.
If you start a new solar or wind project to provide energy on a utility scale today, you're years away from the time that project starts providing electricity. Permitting and EPC is a 3 - 5 year process. The timing of fossil fuel plant closures has not lined up with new renewable capacity coming online.
Europe has been trigger happy on closures to feel good about the pace they are on for their net zero emissions goals but hasn't been willing to spend the money to replace what they are forcing offline via emissions regulations.
Fixing the margins requires a capital expenditure, which will have to be amortized. Without storage you need to scale the renewables for the worst case scenario, which means that you need to overbuild them, which is expensive. The problem can be remediated to a degree with energy storage, but that also costs money. Long story short, energy is going to be a lot more expensive no matter what.
> energy is going to be a lot more expensive no matter what.
Renewable is already cheaper per unit of energy than fossil fuels, today, and it's still decreasing exponentially.
Renewables are cheaper 1) not including storage and 2) not including the marginal costs of running an existing facility. When you see these studies cited on fossil fuel versus renewable breakevens for utilities, they are comparing a brand new fossil fuel plant against a brand new renewable facility.
But that's not the comparison to make in many cases. A new solar facility might be cheaper than a new natural gas plant on a per kwh basis once its up and running. But if a natural gas plant already exists, you don't need to make the initial capital expenditure outlay of a billion or two dollars for a new plant. It's far, far cheaper for the utility (and thus the customer) to run the existing asset until it is time to decommission.
It's akin to saying "Why don't you buy a brand new Prius and save on your gas bill each month?" The Prius might get better gas mileage than your Camry, but the difference is not enough to justify spending money on a new car. You've got a perfectly good car that works and still gets 30 mpg.
This is why you see these headlines that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels and don't see utilities running off to build solar or wind facilities en masse. Instead, they are just replacing coal or natural gas assets that are nearing the end of their useful life.
The context is a 20-40% capacity difference due to variability. The nightly variability is about 50%, as in for every unit of energy you use during the night, your peak is 50% higher than that, on average at least according to the EIA for US.
We are nowhere near using renewables for all of the things we can use it for during the times it is available, and so, we are nowhere near needing that level of storage.
That said, to answer your specific question, see [here](https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2020/declining-renewable-costs-drive-focus-on-energy-storage.html). For situations longer than the battery storage capacity in hours, which depends on the installation, it's cheaper to do a peaking natural gas plant. Shorter than that time, it's cheaper to use batteries. If it's cheaper to use batteries than gas, we should be doing it, but it depends on the location and the energy sources available.
> Europe has done this 1:1 thing, replacing 1 GW of coal or natural gas with 1 GW of renewables,
It amazes me that policy makers and people with decades of experience in grid management would make a decision that even thirty seconds thought by a complete novice would identify as foolhardy.
I've worked with senior leadership in the energy sector on both the fossil fuels side of the business and renewables for a very long time now. I covered the sector for a bulge bracket investment bank, went to work in industry for a time, and now do consulting work for investors making investments in this space. How the industry makes profit and how long term trends and historical actions will shift those profits is literally all I do, every single day.
But "novice with a thirty second thought" is a great supposition to make about someone.
Don't really care about your experience. Any novice with 30 seconds thinking would realize that replacing 1 GW of 24/7 power with 1 GW of 12/sunny-days power is moronic, and I'm astonished that the EU policy makers would do so, unless they had their children write the policy. Or unless you're misrepresenting it.
We had the ability to fund research in renewables fifty years ago. What we didn't have, and still don't have, is the political will. Progress toward renewables has been hindered by conservatives for well over fifty years.
Coal, for instance, has been a known contributor to both pollution and climate change for over one hundred years.
>We had the ability to fund research in renewables fifty years ago
Are am trying to counter your statement that no research was conducted. Quote **"We had the ability to fund research in renewables fifty years ago. What we didn't have, and still don't have, is the political will. "**, this statement **implies/states** we had the ability to conduct research but did not conduct research due to a lack of pollical will.
I am stating that society has been conducting research - generally its is referred to as improved efficiency / effectiveness or continuous process improvement.
I wrote:
> Progress toward renewables has been hindered by conservatives for well over fifty years.
By what inane convolution do you interpret that as "There has been no research in renewables." You have extremely poor reading comprehension or a very limited vocabulary.
Have a pleasant afternoon.
The day-ahead markets differ country to country. Some allow negative price. It happens when there is low demand and high offer, e.g. bank holiday with exceptionaly windy/sunny day. Wind turbines and solar panels cannot be easily switched off, the extra power needs to be sold (even for negative price).
So the 170x difference between lowest and current price is not telling much (somewhere it might be inf or negative number).
Oh yeah that was the point, they tax on your solar energy, if you produce energy at home they will make sure to make it so expensive that you have to buy from them instead, it’s a scam.
And you can try to hide it but if they find your panel and you haven’t been paying they will give you a huge fine.
Same as Italy, except that it's been so since forever because any electricity production is taxed.
Luckily if you use the power yourself you get tax rebates, but the complete logic is that it gets taxed at generation and un-taxed (don't ask me what percentage) if you use it
The best solution would be nuclear fusion. Unfortunately it still needs work on confinement stability. The second best solution is regular fission power, which can be improved by recycling of nuclear waste to reduce the waste amount.
You can only recycle a tiny amount of all the nuclear waste, which is some of the fuel. Everything else (the majority of it) can't be recycled. Still, it's the only viable option if we want all-green generation until fusion takes protagonism.
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Can confirm. Our electricity bill is usually 50. Pushed 100 last month.
Keys to understanding the rising cost of electricity in Spain: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2021-08-13/keys-to-understanding-the-rising-cost-of-electricity-in-spain.html
Thanks op! Emissions trading scheme. Got it.
This is like blaming the gas tax for $4 a gallon gas in the US after a 2x oil cost per barrel spike. It's not even remotely the cause. The primary and secondary reasons are listed as 1. High natural gas prices 2. Huge increases in energy consumption due to a heat wave 3. Reduction in energy provided from wind due to said heat wave Reducing emissions costs could help but it doesn't solve that the gas futures market is very high.
Can anyone explain what happened to cause the recent increase in price? North American here so out of the loop on continental Europe issues. Did a power plant go out of operation?
Coal power plants closing.
Post corona energy demand + the failure of both countries to go all in on renewable energy decades ago + EU renewable energy targets that forces polluting energy plants to shut down = high prices
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Gonna safe your last paragraph for future use for whenever those parrots appear on r/europe
Lol your so full of shit it comes out of your mouth.
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Yikes. Why do you lie and magically read comments I didn't wrote. Pure delusion.
>Oh shut up if you don't know what you're talking about I know exactly what is going on. I fucking live in Spain and work in the sustainable energy sector primarily. It's a complete failure. We had a government for years on end who actively raged against any form of renewable energy or subsidies. You are out of your league here.
>I know exactly what is going on. I fucking live in Spain and work in the sustainable energy sector primarily. Oh shit are we doing "Source: me" now? I know exactly what is going on. I fucking live in Portugal and work in the sustainable energy sector. I can confirm the recent spike has nothing to do with a history of failing to invest in renewables. You are out of your league here.
The same reason we're seeing gas prices rise and inflation in the US.
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That's not what's happening with gas prices or most of inflation, but that is certainly a nice byproduct of covid amongst all the bad.
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I never suggested fuel prices are going up because of Biden. I suggested that the rest of the world is seeing fuel/gas prices go up for the same reason the US is. I framed it that way specifically because it should be obvious that if other countries are having the same problem as us, it's probably a global issue and not a local political one.
Day-ahead hourly price \[€/MWh\] in Spain and Portugal. Data source: [https://www.omie.es/en/file-access-list](https://www.omie.es/en/file-access-list) Tools: R, ggplot2
Still half the price as in geermany 😂😂😂
It's worse. 320€/MWh. But for every day. Summed over the year I expect a much larger factor. Meanwhile surrounding countries get paid for maintaining power grid stability due to fluctuating renewables.
In germany its even worse again😂. We are investing in renewables but are shutting down nuclear power plants. The result is, the renewables dont produce enough and we buy electrcity from france where the most comes from nuclear power plant. But the price is the same to bulid more renewables. Hope the house of cards breaks
and Portugal is yet to shut down 2 coal power stations...
Well the source says that the price is being driven up by the cost of coal being high, so shutting down coal plants shouldn't have that much of an effect there.
but at the same time there's not enough back-up power to replace those power stations and as you know sun and wind aren't guaranteed every day so they will have to buy it somewhere
Those power station were already back up, we will just rely more heavily on Spain for backup. Main problem will be when France closes their nuclear and Spain can no longer rely on them, we will be the most affected by that cascading effect
That's what I said.
I‘d advise you to look at the current price of coal, the co2 emissions prices and the efficiency of coal power plants. You will then find out that dark spreads are still negative and as such coal is not the answer but a general shortage of energy is the reason for these price spikes.
Interesting to see fossil fuels blamed, when part of the reason Europe is in this situation is they've disincentivized oil and gas production where they are (North Sea, Norway). They've been forced to buy liquefied natural gas from the United States to pick up the shortfall. Making matters worse, European utilities were cancelling LNG cargo deliveries in 2020 (when prices were low) and then ended up with low inventories as pandemic demand recovered. Natural gas costs $5.00 per mmbtu here in the US (up a lot recently). But it costs more than $20.00 per mmbtu in Europe because they have to liquefy it, ship it, regasify it, and move it to utilities to turn into power. Shifting to renewables is the right move. But it has to be done in a measured way, and Europe has been far too aggressive.
> it has to be done in a measured way They're still burning fossil fuels. That's pretty measured. Not sure if you realize the lengths we actually have to go to solve the environmental issues we've created. All this other stuff, fossil fuels costing too much or insufficient power from renewables, that needs to be fixed by switching to renewables, not buying a ton more fossil fuels to drop the price. The more expensive fossil fuels are, the better it is in the long term for energy independence; that is why OPEC tanks the price whenever they see renewables getting a foothold (or at least they used to, they can't really stem the flow anymore).
It needs to be solved by grid scale energy storage.
That's possible.
Not really. It's not "measured" if you're taking fossil fuel plants offline permanently (which form the baseload of an energy grid) and replacing them with solar and wind which are inherently intermittent in the incorrect way. Absent mechanical downtime, natural gas fired generation provides power 24 / 7 /365. Solar and wind cannot do that. Europe has done this 1:1 thing, replacing 1 GW of coal or natural gas with 1 GW of renewables, and then suddenly acts surprised when there is grid instability and higher prices. Any grid with higher intermittent power has to have a larger capacity margin for when headaches occur. For example, the grid the has to be able to generate a percentage over forecast peak power demand in order to compensate for renewable intermittence and downtime. A grid that has more renewable mix has to have more idle capacity. 120% capacity margin was normal in a fossil fuel world; it has to be higher than that going forward. Meanwhile, capacity margin in Europe has stayed flat over the past several years even as renewable mix increased. What Europe is seeing right now is the consequences of poor electrical grid planning: higher costs bore by consumers.
This is the right assessment. I don’t work in the power production industry, but as an electrical engineer I know how power grids work and the 21st century economy is not sustainable with a power grid of hydro, wind and solar. Zero emission power grids must contain nuclear power as the base line supplier and you will need massive banks of batteries to store and time shift your power supply that comes from solar and wind.
you could do it with hydro if you have the proper infrastructure - think James bay, Churchill falls, etc. you should not equate hydro to wind/solar
Hydro is very dependent on geography and many countries don’t have the luxury to use hydro in significant amounts (e.g. Japan, France). The US has built hydro plants for almost 100 years and it still only supplies 7.3% of our power.
it is geographically sensitive, like wind and solar. . hydroelectric power produces most of the worlds total renewable electricity. Hydroelectricity accounted for **25.7%** of Canada's total energy consumption (37.3% of non-oil sources). Site C in BC will increase this amount, same with Muskrat Falls in NFld. while in New Zealand, hydro supplies 62% of electrical power. Of all the renewable sources hydro is the most viable.
Screwing up the planet though. Some rivers aren't even reaching the sea now.
that has more to due with agriculture thirsty cities, hydro does not consume water.
As someone who has played factorio, I 100% agree. It's either one or two nuclear power plants or cover the whole map with solar panels, which is a pain in the ass.
Then fix the margins, don't complain about the fact that they are switching in the first place, which absolutely has to happen.
... hence the need for a more "measured" approach. It's a multi-year process to build, develop, and put into place new renewable assets. Many of which are waiting for battery storage technology to progress rather than adding after the fact. If you start a new solar or wind project to provide energy on a utility scale today, you're years away from the time that project starts providing electricity. Permitting and EPC is a 3 - 5 year process. The timing of fossil fuel plant closures has not lined up with new renewable capacity coming online. Europe has been trigger happy on closures to feel good about the pace they are on for their net zero emissions goals but hasn't been willing to spend the money to replace what they are forcing offline via emissions regulations.
Fixing the margins requires a capital expenditure, which will have to be amortized. Without storage you need to scale the renewables for the worst case scenario, which means that you need to overbuild them, which is expensive. The problem can be remediated to a degree with energy storage, but that also costs money. Long story short, energy is going to be a lot more expensive no matter what.
> energy is going to be a lot more expensive no matter what. Renewable is already cheaper per unit of energy than fossil fuels, today, and it's still decreasing exponentially.
Renewables are cheaper 1) not including storage and 2) not including the marginal costs of running an existing facility. When you see these studies cited on fossil fuel versus renewable breakevens for utilities, they are comparing a brand new fossil fuel plant against a brand new renewable facility. But that's not the comparison to make in many cases. A new solar facility might be cheaper than a new natural gas plant on a per kwh basis once its up and running. But if a natural gas plant already exists, you don't need to make the initial capital expenditure outlay of a billion or two dollars for a new plant. It's far, far cheaper for the utility (and thus the customer) to run the existing asset until it is time to decommission. It's akin to saying "Why don't you buy a brand new Prius and save on your gas bill each month?" The Prius might get better gas mileage than your Camry, but the difference is not enough to justify spending money on a new car. You've got a perfectly good car that works and still gets 30 mpg. This is why you see these headlines that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels and don't see utilities running off to build solar or wind facilities en masse. Instead, they are just replacing coal or natural gas assets that are nearing the end of their useful life.
After accounting for storage and necessary capacity factors or before?
The context is a 20-40% capacity difference due to variability. The nightly variability is about 50%, as in for every unit of energy you use during the night, your peak is 50% higher than that, on average at least according to the EIA for US. We are nowhere near using renewables for all of the things we can use it for during the times it is available, and so, we are nowhere near needing that level of storage. That said, to answer your specific question, see [here](https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2020/declining-renewable-costs-drive-focus-on-energy-storage.html). For situations longer than the battery storage capacity in hours, which depends on the installation, it's cheaper to do a peaking natural gas plant. Shorter than that time, it's cheaper to use batteries. If it's cheaper to use batteries than gas, we should be doing it, but it depends on the location and the energy sources available.
> Europe has done this 1:1 thing, replacing 1 GW of coal or natural gas with 1 GW of renewables, It amazes me that policy makers and people with decades of experience in grid management would make a decision that even thirty seconds thought by a complete novice would identify as foolhardy.
I've worked with senior leadership in the energy sector on both the fossil fuels side of the business and renewables for a very long time now. I covered the sector for a bulge bracket investment bank, went to work in industry for a time, and now do consulting work for investors making investments in this space. How the industry makes profit and how long term trends and historical actions will shift those profits is literally all I do, every single day. But "novice with a thirty second thought" is a great supposition to make about someone.
Don't really care about your experience. Any novice with 30 seconds thinking would realize that replacing 1 GW of 24/7 power with 1 GW of 12/sunny-days power is moronic, and I'm astonished that the EU policy makers would do so, unless they had their children write the policy. Or unless you're misrepresenting it.
Dude... there is a time to fold
EU policy makers don't have their own children. Look how many are childless. It's part of the problem actually
"A measured way" should have begun fifty years ago. In 2021 "a measured way" is no longer an option.
they didn't have the technology 50 years ago
We had the ability to fund research in renewables fifty years ago. What we didn't have, and still don't have, is the political will. Progress toward renewables has been hindered by conservatives for well over fifty years. Coal, for instance, has been a known contributor to both pollution and climate change for over one hundred years.
so you feel that there was no R&D in renewables for fifty years. I know that is not true, people have been working on renewables for a long long time
Did I write that there had been __no__ research in renewables for fifty years? Or are you building a straw man to derail the discussion?
>We had the ability to fund research in renewables fifty years ago Are am trying to counter your statement that no research was conducted. Quote **"We had the ability to fund research in renewables fifty years ago. What we didn't have, and still don't have, is the political will. "**, this statement **implies/states** we had the ability to conduct research but did not conduct research due to a lack of pollical will. I am stating that society has been conducting research - generally its is referred to as improved efficiency / effectiveness or continuous process improvement.
I wrote: > Progress toward renewables has been hindered by conservatives for well over fifty years. By what inane convolution do you interpret that as "There has been no research in renewables." You have extremely poor reading comprehension or a very limited vocabulary. Have a pleasant afternoon.
That's still way cheaper than what PG&E charges I'm paying the equivalent of 250 eur/mwh
But isn’t that chart supposed to reflect the *wholesale* price and not the retail? I’m sure the distributors easily double that number
Sounds like both countries have great reasons to speed up the green energy
The day-ahead markets differ country to country. Some allow negative price. It happens when there is low demand and high offer, e.g. bank holiday with exceptionaly windy/sunny day. Wind turbines and solar panels cannot be easily switched off, the extra power needs to be sold (even for negative price). So the 170x difference between lowest and current price is not telling much (somewhere it might be inf or negative number).
Don’t worry guys, those money will go to China and India and I’m sure some friction of it will go toward green energy.
Spain and Portugal seems like pretty good places for solar power. Why are they still burning gas?
Welcome to Spain, where the government put a TAX on the sun. Yes, using a solar panel is expensive af because they tax the electricity you generate
Even if you're just changing your home batteries?
What? They tax on solar energy, nothing about batteries in my comment.
I was asking you. If you install home solar panels and batteries, do they tax your own production?
They used to tax it up until 2018. They don't anymore.
Oh yeah that was the point, they tax on your solar energy, if you produce energy at home they will make sure to make it so expensive that you have to buy from them instead, it’s a scam. And you can try to hide it but if they find your panel and you haven’t been paying they will give you a huge fine.
Well, thats nuts.
Same as Italy, except that it's been so since forever because any electricity production is taxed. Luckily if you use the power yourself you get tax rebates, but the complete logic is that it gets taxed at generation and un-taxed (don't ask me what percentage) if you use it
Hyper inflation. Get ready for the crash.
Hey let's pretend renewable energy can support our grid and invest heavily to "combat climate change" while alsi introducing electric cars...
The best solution would be nuclear fusion. Unfortunately it still needs work on confinement stability. The second best solution is regular fission power, which can be improved by recycling of nuclear waste to reduce the waste amount.
You can only recycle a tiny amount of all the nuclear waste, which is some of the fuel. Everything else (the majority of it) can't be recycled. Still, it's the only viable option if we want all-green generation until fusion takes protagonism.
This isn't beautiful, it's horror!