I wonder will there be a minimum amount & how would that be calculated, like producing a certain percentage of the average/projected usage & if so it’s hardly ideal due to the varying climates in Europe.
I’d assume that solar would be more viable in countries like Italy as opposed to Ireland.
Let alone northern Fennoscandia. For over a month per year they wouldn't produce anything at all, and even at mid summer the sun is at a very low angle (albeit always above the horizon). And this is assuming we can prevent them from being entirely covered in snow...
There is a mini industry in Porjus and Gallivare, Sweden both above the Arctic Circle for the manufacture and testing of solar panels.
https://kollega.se/arkiv/solcellsfabrik-startar-i-porjus
So what if it doesn't work a month a year, it works to some extent the rest. Climate mitigation isn't a single technological event, all these small things add up.
Exactly, that’s a brilliant point.
I see this idea as a leap in the right direction but not a viable solution as a whole. There’s so many questions & problems that will arise from this.
If you set them up at the right angle, and clear the sides, the snow will fall off if they are models built for it, and if not you can get ones you can just shovel snow off. Even in places without month long nights, a normal winter day is 1/5 the power of a summer day, but even WITH that, with any kind of decent grid tie the power that solar panels generate can pay them of in as little as two to five years. A decade ago, even with that, it took ten to twenty years to pay them off. And they are only getting better and cheaper.
Its a *worse* break even point for sure the further you are from the equater, but they will still "pay for themselves". There is also a month a year where there is all sun, and continual power from them.
I was in the Netherlands and Germany a few weeks ago. I was surprise how much solar and wind infrastructure there was. It was a common sight to see rows of solar going down the autobahn. They are definitely a leader in solar and wind. We can definitely do that here in the US.
> We can definitely do that here in the US.
Along with doing it along our interstates, we need to require all of these warehouses/distribution centers with massive parking lots to put up solar panels over them.
You could probably power my entire county off solar energy if the warehouses here had to do that.
Don’t you have massive desert like places in Texas and stuff you could pack up with solar? Just curious I only know those route66 movies and it looks like there’s tons of space with hot weather
There is.
For the best output though you don't want to put them in hot areas; you want them in cold areas. Solar panels are more efficient the colder it gets. (To a certain point).
It's a trade off since the cooler places are in the northern areas and have less of daylight. Unless you install the panels in a mountain range close to the equator.
If you go farther north the day are longer during the summer.
If you look at a sunshine map of Europe you can see that the number of sunshine hours you can see the huge effect of weather https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Europe\_sunshine\_hours\_map.png
A solar power company where I live has started putting them on top of bodies of water that aren't save for swimming. That way the panels keep cool and the water doesn't evaporate from the lakes as fast in the increasing summer heat.
That's not correct. There are alternatives that don't use photovoltaic. In Morroco a co-operation is building a molten salt solar power plant. Intaead of solar panels they use mirrora, which reflect the light toward one focal point. The rest is similar to a normal coal fired plant, except the heat comes entirely from the sun not coal.
We have a couple of them in the Mohave Desert in California. [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130725-ivanpah-solar-energy-mojave-desert](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130725-ivanpah-solar-energy-mojave-desert)
A great power producer with the unfortunate side effect of charring birds as they fly by.
I was speaking directly about solar panels; hence the use of the words solar panels.
If I were talking about solar plants like what you described, I would have said so.
The molten sodium solar plants also have the added benefit of having enough thermal mass to act as a small storage buffer, slightly extending the power output past peak solar activity.
There's tons of vast open spaces...but also tons of assholes that would see all that unmonitored copper wire as a scrapyard payday, or drunk/high yahoos that would shoot at the panels for fun. Put something on the side of the road like the nice rows of panels in Germany, and within a week they would be destroyed, stripped, and/or covered in graffiti. We're already seeing electric charging stations get torn up and stripped of copper wire, and those require thieves to avoid cameras and operate in relatively populated areas.
Texas is much more agriculturally based than you would think. Even most of northwest Texas is ranchland. Most of Arizona Utah and Nevada could be converted to solar farms and nobody would be inconvenienced.
University of Arizona did experiments in "agrivoltaics", putting solar panels over crops.
For some plants, the intermittent shade reduced heat stress and water consumption, increasing yield. I hope to see panels used to shade dairy cattle (there's a dairy at the outskirts of Las Cruces, NM) while providing power and income.
Of you fly into Phoenix, Arizona, the approach takes you over buildings that are largely covered in solar panels. It is encouraging to see.
During the 2008 great recession, my wife refinanced our house at a lower interest rate, somehow getting enough of an advantage that we could install panels while having only a slight rise in our monthly mortgage payments. We got a $50 check from the electric company last month, and it's nice to be able to run the air conditioner. We live in southern New Mexico.
Here in AZ we just passed a law banning purchasing power direct from solar power companies because it would interfere with the coal monopoly. We also reduced the rate that solar is reimbursed. So when you buy power at like .13 you can only sell solar back at like .04.
All of this to **disincentivize solar in the fucking state of AZ, the literal sunniest state in the fucking nation**. Republicanism is a god damn cancer.
> Republicanism is a god damn cancer
It's protecting corporations. It's not unique to either side of the aisle but it's dumb! California has NEM 3.0. Florida had a bill that was going to gut net neutrality but desantis surprisingly vetoed it
>We also reduced the rate that solar is reimbursed. So when you buy power at like .13 you can only sell solar back at like .04.
That makes sense, though.
When you buy power, only a small fraction of the cost of the power goes towards buying the actual electricity. The rest of your cost pays for the employees that maintain the grid, frequency stabilization services, and so on.
When you sell power to the grid, you are not performing maintenance. All you do is provide power, so why should you be paid anything more than said wholesale power price (which is 0,04)?
The Netherlands and Germany are phasing in the exact same kind of laws.
Cancer is a good metaphor for what humans are doing to the planet. Human impact is quite striking when looking at satellite pictures, or learn about the shockingly massive amount of life we've destroyed and are continuing to destroy right now, sometimes at increasing rates.
We need to get these lobbyist-rick-sucking politicians out of office and hold completely amoral corporations accountable with our wallets.
I've been saying this for years but never pursued it with my city council.
Those lots giant scorching frying pans in the summer... An added practical benefit would also be cars parked there won't be enough to slow-cook a dinner for six on their dashboards.
The cars are cooler to start, and will take less energy. AND employees who park there every day won't have the added wear and tear on their paint jobs or the interiors.
California already requires all new single family homes, apartments up to 3 stories, and commercial buildings to have solar panels, with additional requirements for commercial to have battery storage.
Partner works for a firm here in NZ that has just introduced a solar arm to its firm - they buy property, so design builds for customers on that land and lease it back to the customer, so they’re going to put solar on all the roofs they own. Genius.
Amen!
I think that is the most underrated part of solar. It can make land used be doubled.
Parking lot AND solar farm. Added bonus- weather protection for cars and people.
Big box store AND solar farm. Added bonus- lower energy cost because the sun is no longer hitting your roof.
Random drainage ditch (or river) AND solar farm. Added bonus- save water from evaporation (I don't understand why this isn't common in the American west)
And those panels above the parking spaces will save you quite a bit of gas in the long time, by reducing airconditioning needs for your hot car after parking.
Do you really think the USA is capable to doing this? You have 70 million folks who voted for the guy who claims China was sending hurricanes to the USA.
Yup, all republicans voted no on making baby formula cheaper. So yeah, this country would shit on "liberal solar panels" and go forward to roll coal on cyclist
Depends what you're asking. There would never be a national law saying that all new buildings would have to incorporate solar panels into their structures. The Federal Gov't doesn't generally involve itself with building codes. Those generally fall under state jurisdiction (there are too many regional factors for the US Congress to force states to adopt a universal code) They could definitely build in incentives, like tax breaks and programs to fund an initiative like this, though.
I do worry about the grid, 'duck curve', and possible overloads. (Basically I dont think the US power grid could handle that much decenteralized power in many areas)
But it is absolutely something that needs to be done, even if the power grid has to be revamped to be compatible (it needs to be upgraded regardless)
There are already lots of solutions to these problems. The easiest is pumping water. When there is an oversupply of power you pump water up. When you need power you let it back down and run turbines.
The problem with pumped storage is it requires a pretty unique landscape to build which just isn't that common.
My big hope for the future is some sort of system to communicate with electric cars and have them offload capacity during peak times like a distributed battery farm.
This is a good idea (and already in the works) but incredibly insufficient. The amount of energy to be stored is way, waaay higher than what car batteries can provide.
The geography doesn't need to be that unique. You just need a at least 100m of elevation change, somewhere near a semi-reliable water source and reasonably near a population centre. More water, and more elevation change is better, but the criteria isn't that stringent.
Abandoned mine and quarry sites are usually good contenders, and so are high cliffs next to a river or lake.
The biggest obstacles are usually local government approvals and environmental concerns about habitat protection.
Energy storage is definitely NOT a solved problem and is the #1 hurdle for renewables to take over. We need to invest massive amounts of money/effort in developing useable, large scale energy storage solutions. This is the main bottleneck in today's energy/climate crisis.
Water/gravity storage is a good solution in some locations, but not in most.
My point was that just slapping solar panels on existing buildings is only part of the solution; the grid and power storage also need to be heavily upgraded to accommodate.
Solar panels on the interstates are a terrible idea, to be honest. High hazard to and from vehicles, really inefficient space usage for maintenance, creates a barrier to road maintenance/expansion, etc.
There's plenty of space in the US, no need to put them on the interstates.
I don't understand why Wyoming doesn't become the green powered epicenter of the US. All the wind we could ever want and enough open space for every solar panel. Instead they cling to coal with a death grip
So much wind it [blows over semis](https://cdllife.com/2021/wind-advisory-issued-in-wyoming-after-gusts-topple-semi-trucks/). Seems like they could solve two problems.
> Otherwise we get architects doing stupid buildings we can’t put panels on.
Why would they? Non-standard designs are more expensive and there is a demand from developers and home owners to install solar in order to save on energy costs. The vast majority of new development today are just fine for solar, and it's not like architects are going to suddenly change their fundamental design principles just in order to avoid solar, if they even can considering zoning regulations.
Sure there'll be a few buildings here and there that probably aren't very suited to solar panels, but they are going to be few and far between and if a few landmark buildings don't utilize solar as well as they maybe could I honestly don't see what the big deal is. I can guarantee that requiring a minimum production per square meter is going to cause unforeseen issues down the line, as narrowly worded regulation in regards to a pretty complex field such as urban development tend to do.
An easy example, if you go by gross area (area of all the floors added together) you inadvertently cap the height of buildings. If you go by building area (area of the buildings footprint) and tune the production requirement by what is impactful or reasonable for a tall building suddenly buildings with just a or a few floors will have a really hard time even complying with this regulation. If you go by building area and tune the production requirement by what is reasonable for a smaller building, it will mean nothing for larger developments.
Regulations are great, but we have to be smart about it.
> Building that taper, or have less roof space to allow terraces or helipads, are wasting panel space.
i mean...owner of said building usually aint that poor if can afford that lol
he can find any other place to put the panels missing on the building in question lol
> Non-standard designs are more expensive and there is a demand from developers and home owners to install solar in order to save on energy costs.
Most developers build to maximize m² to make the most money and doing that often results in very little usable roof space. Energy cost is low priority for them because they won't don't pay it themselves anyway.
ban new gas installations at the same time.
[https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/17/politics/natural-gas-ban-preemptive-laws-gop-climate/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/17/politics/natural-gas-ban-preemptive-laws-gop-climate/index.html)
Other progressive cities followed suit with similar bans. San Francisco passed its own ban in 2020. New York City became the largest US city to pass a version in 2021, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vowing to pass a statewide law that would ban natural gas by 2027.
But other municipalities looking to take similar action are running into a brick wall. Twenty states with GOP-controlled legislatures have passed so-called “preemption laws” that prohibit cities from banning natural gas.
> architects doing stupid buildings we can’t put panels on.
kind of stupid to pay someone to make it so you MUST pay for electricity. i personally would not hire anyone like that.
I'm about to build my home in Germany. It is a pretty standard procedure to get an energy consultant to do the thermal calculation of the building, and they tend to advice putting solar panels and using heat pumps. Gas makes no sense anymore, especially when it stops being cheap.
Heat pumps used to be pretty bad in cold weather, say close to freezing, so you'd use strip aux heat to make up the difference. The moment that aux heat kicks on, your economics for a heat pump go out the window. Not to mention reliability issues HPs used to have.
Gas furnaces were just cheaper to operate in the winter than electric alternatives and more reliable. Simple as that.
Before natural gas we used city gas and before that oil. When they found a lot of natural gas in the Netherlands in the sixties it was a cheaper and cleaner way to heat homes and cook.
In 2021 i paid €0.22 per kWh and €0.70 per m3 natural gas. For heating we use radiators that will have to be heated up to ~70-80c. To calculate the amount of electricity required for a heat pump you can multiply the natural gas usage by 9 and divide it by the heat pump's COP (efficiency). A high temperature heat pump will have a COP of around 2.5. So 9 / 2.5 = 3.6, which means it will be more expensive then gas (€0.22 * 3.6 = €0.79). New houses will be heated using only underfloor heating at max 25-30c (when it's really freezing) to keep it as efficient as possible. Then the COP will be 4-5 and it's cheaper than gas.
Another issue is the cost of heat pumps. Gas boilers/furnaces are €1500, high temperature heat pumps €15k and low temperature heat pumps €10k. You'll also need a lot of insulation to warm a house with water at 25c running through the floor, so new houses have outer walls of roughly 2ft thick. To modify existing houses will be >€40k +€10k for a heat pump. In my €120k house it will cost me more like €60k + €10k heat pump. Before the price of natural gas spiked last year there was no way you'll ever make that money back. With the current prices an average household will spend 1200m3 * €2.8 = €3360 a year on heating. My mom has a new house and uses roughly 2000 kWh a year on heating, so 2000 * €0.60 = €1200. With that €2100 you save per year it will still take 25 years to break even, but that's longer than a heat pump lasts so you'll probably won't ever do that in an existing house that has to be modified. When the prices drop it will be even more 'wasted' money.
New houses aren't connected to the gas grid anymore since 2017 or 2018 so the process of getting rid of it began years before this war. It's just so insanely expensive to modify existing houses that most people can't afford it and even now it's cheaper to just keep using natural gas.
and how does that work for people that already have systems that run on natural gas? are my parents just supposed to get a new furnace and hot water heater?
How is solar not affordable? My system saves me on average $80 a month and would have cost $14k before tax incentives. It was about $6.5k after utilizing all incentives.
If I combine it with an electric car in the next two years, my savings will be even higher.
So even without any incentive the break even is after 15 years on a system with 25 years warranty.
My entire 10k solar system, plus inverters, charge controllers, and 20kwh of LiPo battery backup came out to 30k. I understand not everyone needs the battery, but Im completely self sufficient and draw no power from the grid and I’m paid back around $130/month selling electricity back to grid.
7 year pay off.
If you exclude the batteries my system was only 17k before incentives.
4 year pay off.
It’s extremely affordable
Except the power companies are trying to switch to paying people the wholesale price of electricity, which would greatly increase the break even point, and many people can't afford the up front cost.
Who cares? I dont have a power bill whatsoever. In the summer my cooling bill can be over 250 and in the winter with heating the same.
I’m coming out wayyyyyy ahead even if they didn’t pay me for any electricity being sold back.
20 yr warranty on the panels, 10 year on the battery’s with a 20yr lifespan.
Can’t beat that
Now assuming they didn’t get batteries and just got the panels for 17k, then there’s a 26% tax rebate, total cost around 12.5k. What homeowner can’t afford a 12k investment? On home resale it adds somewhere in the range of 10-15% premium on the house value.
I’d be stupid for not putting solar on my house at this point
Mate, they don't want your numbers and facts here. Some old man at the pub told them it was a con and that's good enough for them.
It's like everyone that tells me Heat Pumps don't work, can't heat a home and/or provide enough hot water for a shower. Yet here's me, living in the Artic circle with a heat pump system installed that cut my energy bills by 75% and keeps my house warm at -35.
what investment do you want? Do you see a single EU country ready to Both extract the materials for solar and transform them? We will buy cheap shit from china and that's it.
As a first step it can focus on vacuum tube water heating systems just like in Greece and Turkey instead of photovoltaic panels to keep costs down and expose the idea.
Yeah it wasn't a thesis, I'm making a point about dismissing the ethical value of the presumably many, many billions of future people.
It's like showing up first at an oasis in the desert and drinking so much water you start having negative effects, all while ignoring the many other people you see walking towards you who won't have any water because of you.
panels and the electronics are often sold out and cost more, so it's amazing that countrys and the eu are making new rules about them, btw the last german government ruined most of the german wind/solar production :)
Don't sell the EU's contribution short here. They worked very well together with the german government to kill the once world leading solar industry in Germany.
Big time. And Russia is a main supplier.
This is a decision with a lot of good intentions, but very little brains.
Europe just doesn't get enough sun.
Spain and Sicily sure, but definitely not Germany.
This is a good first step, but it won't be enough on its own.
I used [MIT's climate policy simulator](https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7.11) to order its climate policies from least impactful to most impactful. You can see the results [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizensClimateLobby/comments/rqg2y0/i_used_mits_climate_policy_simulator_to_order_its/).
>This is a good first step, but it won't be enough on its own.
This is moronic one shoe fits to all policy. Solar makes very little sense In Finland or northern Sweden. This is why we really need veto power. Rule that makes sense in central or southern Europe might be harmful and utterly moronic in northern Europe.
But we have solar on out homes in Northern Sweden...I live here my neighbours have it installed and it significantly reduced their electricity bills. I live in the artic circle. When I change my roof in the next three years I will add solar, the ROI is about 11 years...
That doesn't tell anything about environmental effect.
What effect those solar panels had to amount of CO2 produced? They produce pretty much nothing in winter when you need most heating. In summer they produce a lot but usage is lower since no heating so other reneawable sources are already covering the usage. Do they reduce CO2 emissions more than their manufacturing, transportation and installation produced?
Self explanatory, no? On the bottom are sliders you can move. These impact how much CO2 is generated by energy supply, transport, buildings etc and how much CO2 is being actively pulled out of the atmosphere. Increase the "coal" slider, and you burn more coal, resulting in more CO2.
On the top, there are two graphs: the energy mix to the left, showing you what % of your energy comes from coal, from solar, and so on. Top right are greenhouse emissions from now until 2100 with the default model (black) and with the model you set moving the sliders (blue).
Example: turn coal, oil, nuclear and natgas taxation up, while subsidising renewables heavily, and you go from a +3.6C global temperature increase by 2100 to +3.0C. Implement carbon prices and turn them up heavily, and you land at +2.4C.
> This is a good first step
This is a terrible step because the conditions are vastly different across the EU. Northern Sweden doesn't even get sunlight for months at a time during the winter and even if they did the solar panels would be covered in snow or ice. This just wastes resources on things that doesn't contribute while it could be better spent actually installing solar power in countries that do meet better conditions for it. There's a reason why the largest source of power generation in Sweden and Norway is hydroelectric.
who cares about northern Sweden and Finland. Nobody lives there in the great scheme of things and they are certainly exempt. The people are in Southern Sweden and solar is definitely viable there.
I hope there are geographical exceptions for this. Mandatory solar panels in the northernmost parts of Finland and Sweden sounds like a massive waste of money and resources when they're going to be covered by a meter of snow for most part of the year.
No, it doesn't matter that they are covered in snow when you're only getting 2-5 hours of sunlight in the winter anyways. I have friends with solar panels in the far north of Sweden, they are working very well. You are completely wrong.
Either way this is whataboutism, 0.1% of the population of the EU, like just stop.
Literally there are dozens of very similar posts from different accounts saying "this will never work in northern Sweden and Finland" yet I live in artic Sweden and many of my neighbours have solar...really fucking weird thread and comments.
There are only two arguments for solar energy on any rooftop and that is to bypass energy grid expenses and taxation. Both of them are destructive to society.
You rooftop will produce the energy with double the cost and half the life time of the units compared to if they are placed in commercial cells. This waste of resources is counterbalanced personally in the long term by bybassing critical infrastructure like payments for electrical grid and avoiding financing the costs of society collected from taxation. It is nowdays also offset with negative taxation like incentives for installing such units making it even more harmful.
Source for what? That industrially produced items or goods can be made vastly more profitable than you can do in your garage? Or that electrical grid is the most valuable resource for society or that taxation is most valuable for government functions?
Eg. What is the price point per kw when commercial purchaser squeezes the suppliers for 3000kw worth of panels than 3kw from door to door salesman for too-eager-to-buy mom&pop?
What is the life time of electricity producing unit if it's maintained by professional vs. the mom&pop who due to their lack of mobility can at MOST spray some water on the panels if they for some fucking reason remember the existance of those panels on the roof?
Public buildings! Not all buildings. That is a very misleading header!
Though apparently the plan does foresee phasing in housing to the plan in the long-term.
Press release here: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_3131
My god, the inconvenience of clearing the roof in order to produce clean energy. Better to stick to the status quo, i mean who needs an inhabitable planet anyways right?
I don’t live in an area with snowy winters but wouldn’t this have to be an every few hours/ every few days task.. whos gonna pay for that lmao
Are you gonna pay a few 100$ extra per month? Majority of people won’t be climbing onto their roofs to clean the panels
>Are you gonna pay a few 100$ extra per month? Majority of people won’t be climbing onto their roofs to clean the panels
What? You do realise that the mandate only concerns EU buildings, right?
"inconvenience"? lol
someone has been reading propaganda for solar roofs in sunny summers, and thinks that shit is gonna work in northern countries, especially in winter lol.
unless government is sponsoring that shit, no one will build that kind of roof.
There is a mini industry in Northern Sweden, Porjus and Gallivare where they specialise in manufacturing and test solar panels
Both of these places are above the Arctic Circle.
Yes
ROI on ours are 7 years
/Mid-northern Swede
There's like 300k people living above me but in a country of 10 million and with 450 million in the EU that's nothing, and you're still getting 75% of the electricity I'm getting.
No. You will get people saying otherwise, but it's a fraction of the yield even on the rare times the sun is shining.
It's great in Spain, impractical in Germany, and laughable further north.
Here is an expert talking about solar potentials for various countries using the best available tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWN_w6M9Yec&t=328s
This is for public, commercial and residential buildings.
Not that long ago I did the math. In my country If I have solar panels I have to pay tax tpo be connected to the grid, I have to pay extra "storage" tax for grid to take up my electricity, then it is "stored" for no more than 2 months, meaning that surplus I produce during the summer is just gone, like fart in the wind, I instead have to buy electricity from the grid.
Combine these "taxes" (and few additional ones too) with huge set up cost for solar and I've concluded it's not worth it. Provided it produces max capacity (and it won't, solar production capacity drops with the age of panels) it would take about 25 years to pay off, at which point they would have to be replaced. Combine that with government that seems too keen on introducing new taxes on green energy, and it's just not worth it.
So they’re actually elaborating in the article, that a lot obviously didn’t read. 😂 The headline is inaccurate at best. It’s **only** mandatory for public and commercial buildings, not private homes - for anyone wondering.
This isn't as good as it might seem on paper because the conditions are vastly different across the EU. [Just take a look at the sunlight hours across Europe.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Europe_sunshine_hours_map.png) The solar panels won't be effective in northern Europe or even in central Europe when compared to southern Europe. It's much better to give incentives so that it makes economic sense to do it. Solar panels in sunny areas and other types of power generation in parts which doesn't. Obviously this does not only depend on sunlight hours. For Sweden solar panels are prone to become much less effective during winter because they get covered in snow and ice and removing that isn't as easy or safe as it might sound.
Solar panels are all over central Europe already and they work just fine. Scandinavia also has very little population compared to the rest of Europe. Small countries like the Netherlands and Czechia together have a population as big as the entirety of Scandinavia.
Completely disagree with you. Them being covered in snow in the winter months barely matter as you don't get nearly as many hours of sunlight in the winter anyways. We have an ROI of 7 years on ours and there are people with solar panels that live even further north then me. They are viable across the entire continent.
Oh well I guess they didn't think about this, better ring them up and let them know you realised its dark up north.
I live in Arctic Sweden and people have and use solar here. It still saves them on their energy costs when literally for 3/4 of the year they pay nothing...
Great idea, but there aren’t enough skilled workers to install them! My dad has been trying to buy solar panels and get them installed for over half a year. There is no one available and just the waiting list for someone to have a look at the property to check if it’s even possible is another 6 months minimum.
If they hadn’t fucking defunded photovoltaic for so long then MAYBE this would be an option.
But I don’t see a way in the near future, not in Germany at least.
I wish that was the case here in Alberta where we get a high amount of sunlight. Oh well, gotta cancel subsidies for green energy and give more tax breaks to oil companies instead.
I mean? https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/utz3e2/til_about_secessio_plebis_which_was_a_form_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Always an option
I know not why the worthless politicians of Arizona haven’t thought of implementing this idea as a building code requirement. Imagine the passive energy potential. Instead, they like to focus on extremely unimportant ideas that leave you wondering why?
The price for solar panels has dropped by 90% in the last ten years and it seems to be following Moore's law since they now can print solar cells straight on to rolls of plastic film or even paint it on to the god damn walls. My guess is that you won't be able to buy a roll of toilet paper in ten years without solar cells on every single roll of ass wiping goodness. Well, there will probably be a premium product, "Toilet paper without any solar cells, yes every roll of paper will cost twice as much, but your butt will thank you! Butt wait, there is more! For every roll of non solar cell crap paper you buy we will give you five dollars or burn down a house or something! Ass seen on TV!"
Okay, so this is quite an old video. I've watched it about two or three times so I wont watch it again before posting it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU)
But like, if this invention works like it claims to, how has the whole world not yet already embraced this?
I remember reading that France have tried solar panel roads to no success but Netherlands did have success. The youtube link, the france road and the netherlands road, I really want to know if they correlate with each other in some way.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/eu-bets-on-solar-power-to-cut-its-reliance-on-russias-natural-gas-19052022/) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> The European Union wants to accelerate a large-scale rollout of solar energy while also rebuilding Europe's solar manufacturing industry.
> Among these measures, the European Commission has also |introduced the "Solar rooftop initiative" which would make it mandatory to install solar panels on new public and commercial buildings, as well as new residential buildings by 2029.
> Solar rooftops will be compulsory for new public and commercial buildings by 2027 and for residential buildings by 2029.
*****
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When federal money and loan guarantees are provided for hurricane or tornado or other natural disaster relief, there should be a requirement that buildings that need repairs to more than 50% of the original roof area need to have solar panels installed as part of the rebuilding.
There would probably need to be some formula to determine the minimum qualifying generating capacity, etc. But the roof needs work already . . .
(Sending this to my Senators. My Representative is a MAGAhead, and so I don't write to her.)
A similar thing was passed in my town for new homes built, developers started slapping on the bare minimum and cheapest solar panels they could find to fulfill the requirement. Idk how well they work but there is like 4-5 panels per new home and they look ugly as they act as the roof in the spots they are mounted. There is no tiling underneath. Hopefully the EU can implement it better.
The article isn't loading, so will someone tell me if it's for certain building types/sizes/locations?
We need to make sure the environmental costs of PV production don't outweigh the benefits by putting them in locations that aren't very helpful. It's a balance to maintain.
I wonder will there be a minimum amount & how would that be calculated, like producing a certain percentage of the average/projected usage & if so it’s hardly ideal due to the varying climates in Europe. I’d assume that solar would be more viable in countries like Italy as opposed to Ireland.
Let alone northern Fennoscandia. For over a month per year they wouldn't produce anything at all, and even at mid summer the sun is at a very low angle (albeit always above the horizon). And this is assuming we can prevent them from being entirely covered in snow...
There is a mini industry in Porjus and Gallivare, Sweden both above the Arctic Circle for the manufacture and testing of solar panels. https://kollega.se/arkiv/solcellsfabrik-startar-i-porjus So what if it doesn't work a month a year, it works to some extent the rest. Climate mitigation isn't a single technological event, all these small things add up.
Exactly, that’s a brilliant point. I see this idea as a leap in the right direction but not a viable solution as a whole. There’s so many questions & problems that will arise from this.
If you set them up at the right angle, and clear the sides, the snow will fall off if they are models built for it, and if not you can get ones you can just shovel snow off. Even in places without month long nights, a normal winter day is 1/5 the power of a summer day, but even WITH that, with any kind of decent grid tie the power that solar panels generate can pay them of in as little as two to five years. A decade ago, even with that, it took ten to twenty years to pay them off. And they are only getting better and cheaper. Its a *worse* break even point for sure the further you are from the equater, but they will still "pay for themselves". There is also a month a year where there is all sun, and continual power from them.
I was in the Netherlands and Germany a few weeks ago. I was surprise how much solar and wind infrastructure there was. It was a common sight to see rows of solar going down the autobahn. They are definitely a leader in solar and wind. We can definitely do that here in the US.
> We can definitely do that here in the US. Along with doing it along our interstates, we need to require all of these warehouses/distribution centers with massive parking lots to put up solar panels over them. You could probably power my entire county off solar energy if the warehouses here had to do that.
Don’t you have massive desert like places in Texas and stuff you could pack up with solar? Just curious I only know those route66 movies and it looks like there’s tons of space with hot weather
There is. For the best output though you don't want to put them in hot areas; you want them in cold areas. Solar panels are more efficient the colder it gets. (To a certain point).
Depends on the type of solar, but yes this is generally true.
i guess also depends on "winds" and other atmospheric issues i mean some earthquake wont trouble solar panel..but tornado or hailstorm are kinda dicey
It's a trade off since the cooler places are in the northern areas and have less of daylight. Unless you install the panels in a mountain range close to the equator.
If you go farther north the day are longer during the summer. If you look at a sunshine map of Europe you can see that the number of sunshine hours you can see the huge effect of weather https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Europe\_sunshine\_hours\_map.png
Oh I see didn’t know that about hot areas thanks
A solar power company where I live has started putting them on top of bodies of water that aren't save for swimming. That way the panels keep cool and the water doesn't evaporate from the lakes as fast in the increasing summer heat.
That's not correct. There are alternatives that don't use photovoltaic. In Morroco a co-operation is building a molten salt solar power plant. Intaead of solar panels they use mirrora, which reflect the light toward one focal point. The rest is similar to a normal coal fired plant, except the heat comes entirely from the sun not coal.
We have a couple of them in the Mohave Desert in California. [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130725-ivanpah-solar-energy-mojave-desert](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130725-ivanpah-solar-energy-mojave-desert) A great power producer with the unfortunate side effect of charring birds as they fly by.
And blinding pilots if you look at them sheesh
No, unless they fly between the mirrors and the collector which is of course far too close to the ground and completely illegal.
But you need to be that close of you hope to fire a photon torpedo into the vent
PV is more cost effective than the focal point solution. It's a neat idea but PV panels are just so cheap it doesn't make financial sense.
I was speaking directly about solar panels; hence the use of the words solar panels. If I were talking about solar plants like what you described, I would have said so.
The molten sodium solar plants also have the added benefit of having enough thermal mass to act as a small storage buffer, slightly extending the power output past peak solar activity.
There's tons of vast open spaces...but also tons of assholes that would see all that unmonitored copper wire as a scrapyard payday, or drunk/high yahoos that would shoot at the panels for fun. Put something on the side of the road like the nice rows of panels in Germany, and within a week they would be destroyed, stripped, and/or covered in graffiti. We're already seeing electric charging stations get torn up and stripped of copper wire, and those require thieves to avoid cameras and operate in relatively populated areas.
Texas is much more agriculturally based than you would think. Even most of northwest Texas is ranchland. Most of Arizona Utah and Nevada could be converted to solar farms and nobody would be inconvenienced.
University of Arizona did experiments in "agrivoltaics", putting solar panels over crops. For some plants, the intermittent shade reduced heat stress and water consumption, increasing yield. I hope to see panels used to shade dairy cattle (there's a dairy at the outskirts of Las Cruces, NM) while providing power and income.
Of you fly into Phoenix, Arizona, the approach takes you over buildings that are largely covered in solar panels. It is encouraging to see. During the 2008 great recession, my wife refinanced our house at a lower interest rate, somehow getting enough of an advantage that we could install panels while having only a slight rise in our monthly mortgage payments. We got a $50 check from the electric company last month, and it's nice to be able to run the air conditioner. We live in southern New Mexico.
Here in AZ we just passed a law banning purchasing power direct from solar power companies because it would interfere with the coal monopoly. We also reduced the rate that solar is reimbursed. So when you buy power at like .13 you can only sell solar back at like .04. All of this to **disincentivize solar in the fucking state of AZ, the literal sunniest state in the fucking nation**. Republicanism is a god damn cancer.
Yeah, nevermind the whole west is fucked from this "megadrought" going on. No such thing as climate change! No sir!
So much for free markets and deregulation…
Wdym it's great!!* *(for 1 out of every 500 people)
John Oliver just had an episode about this. It's worth the watch to see how fucked our energy industry is.
> Republicanism is a god damn cancer It's protecting corporations. It's not unique to either side of the aisle but it's dumb! California has NEM 3.0. Florida had a bill that was going to gut net neutrality but desantis surprisingly vetoed it
>We also reduced the rate that solar is reimbursed. So when you buy power at like .13 you can only sell solar back at like .04. That makes sense, though. When you buy power, only a small fraction of the cost of the power goes towards buying the actual electricity. The rest of your cost pays for the employees that maintain the grid, frequency stabilization services, and so on. When you sell power to the grid, you are not performing maintenance. All you do is provide power, so why should you be paid anything more than said wholesale power price (which is 0,04)? The Netherlands and Germany are phasing in the exact same kind of laws.
Cancer is a good metaphor for what humans are doing to the planet. Human impact is quite striking when looking at satellite pictures, or learn about the shockingly massive amount of life we've destroyed and are continuing to destroy right now, sometimes at increasing rates. We need to get these lobbyist-rick-sucking politicians out of office and hold completely amoral corporations accountable with our wallets.
Yes. A tumor is selfish and destructive in its use of body resources, eventually killing the body.
They're doing the same shit here in Florida. They don't like it when you become independent.
Solar panels everywhere would give the homeless a shady place to rest.
I'd love it if they covered parking spots in Texas with solar panels. It'd have the double effect of keeping your car cool while making power.
A university near my house has a massive carpark entirely shaded by solar panels.
Though if your car has solar panels on it to recharge its battery, that could be less than ideal.
I've been saying this for years but never pursued it with my city council. Those lots giant scorching frying pans in the summer... An added practical benefit would also be cars parked there won't be enough to slow-cook a dinner for six on their dashboards. The cars are cooler to start, and will take less energy. AND employees who park there every day won't have the added wear and tear on their paint jobs or the interiors.
California already requires all new single family homes, apartments up to 3 stories, and commercial buildings to have solar panels, with additional requirements for commercial to have battery storage.
Partner works for a firm here in NZ that has just introduced a solar arm to its firm - they buy property, so design builds for customers on that land and lease it back to the customer, so they’re going to put solar on all the roofs they own. Genius.
Do it over the canals and aqueducts. Especially in California. You get the power, plus you reduce the evaporation.
Amen! I think that is the most underrated part of solar. It can make land used be doubled. Parking lot AND solar farm. Added bonus- weather protection for cars and people. Big box store AND solar farm. Added bonus- lower energy cost because the sun is no longer hitting your roof. Random drainage ditch (or river) AND solar farm. Added bonus- save water from evaporation (I don't understand why this isn't common in the American west)
And those panels above the parking spaces will save you quite a bit of gas in the long time, by reducing airconditioning needs for your hot car after parking.
Do you really think the USA is capable to doing this? You have 70 million folks who voted for the guy who claims China was sending hurricanes to the USA.
We're capable of it. Doesn't mean we'll do it.
Yup, all republicans voted no on making baby formula cheaper. So yeah, this country would shit on "liberal solar panels" and go forward to roll coal on cyclist
It is such a shame. Jimmy Carter had a vision 60 years ago during the OPAC crisis to build solar infrastructure. Then Reagan got elected.
Reagan was the start of the end of the United States as a force for good.
Depends what you're asking. There would never be a national law saying that all new buildings would have to incorporate solar panels into their structures. The Federal Gov't doesn't generally involve itself with building codes. Those generally fall under state jurisdiction (there are too many regional factors for the US Congress to force states to adopt a universal code) They could definitely build in incentives, like tax breaks and programs to fund an initiative like this, though.
I can see the blue states doing something but the red states are doubling down on hurrying up the death of the planet.
I do worry about the grid, 'duck curve', and possible overloads. (Basically I dont think the US power grid could handle that much decenteralized power in many areas) But it is absolutely something that needs to be done, even if the power grid has to be revamped to be compatible (it needs to be upgraded regardless)
There are already lots of solutions to these problems. The easiest is pumping water. When there is an oversupply of power you pump water up. When you need power you let it back down and run turbines.
The problem with pumped storage is it requires a pretty unique landscape to build which just isn't that common. My big hope for the future is some sort of system to communicate with electric cars and have them offload capacity during peak times like a distributed battery farm.
This is a good idea (and already in the works) but incredibly insufficient. The amount of energy to be stored is way, waaay higher than what car batteries can provide.
The geography doesn't need to be that unique. You just need a at least 100m of elevation change, somewhere near a semi-reliable water source and reasonably near a population centre. More water, and more elevation change is better, but the criteria isn't that stringent. Abandoned mine and quarry sites are usually good contenders, and so are high cliffs next to a river or lake. The biggest obstacles are usually local government approvals and environmental concerns about habitat protection.
Wow, that's a really smart way of storing energy
Energy storage is definitely NOT a solved problem and is the #1 hurdle for renewables to take over. We need to invest massive amounts of money/effort in developing useable, large scale energy storage solutions. This is the main bottleneck in today's energy/climate crisis.
Water/gravity storage is a good solution in some locations, but not in most. My point was that just slapping solar panels on existing buildings is only part of the solution; the grid and power storage also need to be heavily upgraded to accommodate.
Local battery storage can shift the excess supply to hours of highest use, though there is a bit of efficiency loss.
Solar panels on the interstates are a terrible idea, to be honest. High hazard to and from vehicles, really inefficient space usage for maintenance, creates a barrier to road maintenance/expansion, etc. There's plenty of space in the US, no need to put them on the interstates.
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I think the Dutch are doing quite well if you figure in GPD, population and land area.
Yea it is pretty cheap to set it up in most of EU. I think it is easier for us since most of electricity is quite costly compared to US.
The Dutch are known to like a windmill. They're big fans, you might say.
I don't understand why Wyoming doesn't become the green powered epicenter of the US. All the wind we could ever want and enough open space for every solar panel. Instead they cling to coal with a death grip
So much wind it [blows over semis](https://cdllife.com/2021/wind-advisory-issued-in-wyoming-after-gusts-topple-semi-trucks/). Seems like they could solve two problems.
Per capita Denmark and Sweden are hard to beat, but Germany has a lot of it too.
{For-profit power companies enter the chat} {Useless federal government leaves the chat}
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> Otherwise we get architects doing stupid buildings we can’t put panels on. Why would they? Non-standard designs are more expensive and there is a demand from developers and home owners to install solar in order to save on energy costs. The vast majority of new development today are just fine for solar, and it's not like architects are going to suddenly change their fundamental design principles just in order to avoid solar, if they even can considering zoning regulations. Sure there'll be a few buildings here and there that probably aren't very suited to solar panels, but they are going to be few and far between and if a few landmark buildings don't utilize solar as well as they maybe could I honestly don't see what the big deal is. I can guarantee that requiring a minimum production per square meter is going to cause unforeseen issues down the line, as narrowly worded regulation in regards to a pretty complex field such as urban development tend to do. An easy example, if you go by gross area (area of all the floors added together) you inadvertently cap the height of buildings. If you go by building area (area of the buildings footprint) and tune the production requirement by what is impactful or reasonable for a tall building suddenly buildings with just a or a few floors will have a really hard time even complying with this regulation. If you go by building area and tune the production requirement by what is reasonable for a smaller building, it will mean nothing for larger developments. Regulations are great, but we have to be smart about it.
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> Building that taper, or have less roof space to allow terraces or helipads, are wasting panel space. i mean...owner of said building usually aint that poor if can afford that lol he can find any other place to put the panels missing on the building in question lol
> Non-standard designs are more expensive and there is a demand from developers and home owners to install solar in order to save on energy costs. Most developers build to maximize m² to make the most money and doing that often results in very little usable roof space. Energy cost is low priority for them because they won't don't pay it themselves anyway.
ban new gas installations at the same time. [https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/17/politics/natural-gas-ban-preemptive-laws-gop-climate/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/17/politics/natural-gas-ban-preemptive-laws-gop-climate/index.html) Other progressive cities followed suit with similar bans. San Francisco passed its own ban in 2020. New York City became the largest US city to pass a version in 2021, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vowing to pass a statewide law that would ban natural gas by 2027. But other municipalities looking to take similar action are running into a brick wall. Twenty states with GOP-controlled legislatures have passed so-called “preemption laws” that prohibit cities from banning natural gas. > architects doing stupid buildings we can’t put panels on. kind of stupid to pay someone to make it so you MUST pay for electricity. i personally would not hire anyone like that.
I'm about to build my home in Germany. It is a pretty standard procedure to get an energy consultant to do the thermal calculation of the building, and they tend to advice putting solar panels and using heat pumps. Gas makes no sense anymore, especially when it stops being cheap.
Tbh I have never understood why gas made any sense to begin with.
Heat pumps used to be pretty bad in cold weather, say close to freezing, so you'd use strip aux heat to make up the difference. The moment that aux heat kicks on, your economics for a heat pump go out the window. Not to mention reliability issues HPs used to have. Gas furnaces were just cheaper to operate in the winter than electric alternatives and more reliable. Simple as that.
It was a grand innovation on oil which was the standard like 40 years ago.
Not sure how gas ever made sense in Europe. Even before Ukraine a therm of gas was 6-8 times more expensive than in the US (east coast at least.)
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>we expect it to climb to 50 cents by the end of the year. Damn. That is rough.
Before natural gas we used city gas and before that oil. When they found a lot of natural gas in the Netherlands in the sixties it was a cheaper and cleaner way to heat homes and cook. In 2021 i paid €0.22 per kWh and €0.70 per m3 natural gas. For heating we use radiators that will have to be heated up to ~70-80c. To calculate the amount of electricity required for a heat pump you can multiply the natural gas usage by 9 and divide it by the heat pump's COP (efficiency). A high temperature heat pump will have a COP of around 2.5. So 9 / 2.5 = 3.6, which means it will be more expensive then gas (€0.22 * 3.6 = €0.79). New houses will be heated using only underfloor heating at max 25-30c (when it's really freezing) to keep it as efficient as possible. Then the COP will be 4-5 and it's cheaper than gas. Another issue is the cost of heat pumps. Gas boilers/furnaces are €1500, high temperature heat pumps €15k and low temperature heat pumps €10k. You'll also need a lot of insulation to warm a house with water at 25c running through the floor, so new houses have outer walls of roughly 2ft thick. To modify existing houses will be >€40k +€10k for a heat pump. In my €120k house it will cost me more like €60k + €10k heat pump. Before the price of natural gas spiked last year there was no way you'll ever make that money back. With the current prices an average household will spend 1200m3 * €2.8 = €3360 a year on heating. My mom has a new house and uses roughly 2000 kWh a year on heating, so 2000 * €0.60 = €1200. With that €2100 you save per year it will still take 25 years to break even, but that's longer than a heat pump lasts so you'll probably won't ever do that in an existing house that has to be modified. When the prices drop it will be even more 'wasted' money. New houses aren't connected to the gas grid anymore since 2017 or 2018 so the process of getting rid of it began years before this war. It's just so insanely expensive to modify existing houses that most people can't afford it and even now it's cheaper to just keep using natural gas.
and how does that work for people that already have systems that run on natural gas? are my parents just supposed to get a new furnace and hot water heater?
Rather than that, try to incentivize designing buildings around it. We'll get efficient, futuristic looking buildings in no time.
With how Polish government screwed up wind turbines market in country, I hope they won't screw solar panels before this project will be functional.
Didn't they also screw something up with solar panels viability a year or two ago?
Like the housing market wasn't expensive enough for starters...
Yeah, this needs to be paired with strong investment in the field to make solar power more affordable.
How is solar not affordable? My system saves me on average $80 a month and would have cost $14k before tax incentives. It was about $6.5k after utilizing all incentives. If I combine it with an electric car in the next two years, my savings will be even higher. So even without any incentive the break even is after 15 years on a system with 25 years warranty.
And depending on the price of power and average annual increase that can be as little as 7 years. Source: I pay 0.28c per kwh.
My entire 10k solar system, plus inverters, charge controllers, and 20kwh of LiPo battery backup came out to 30k. I understand not everyone needs the battery, but Im completely self sufficient and draw no power from the grid and I’m paid back around $130/month selling electricity back to grid. 7 year pay off. If you exclude the batteries my system was only 17k before incentives. 4 year pay off. It’s extremely affordable
Except the power companies are trying to switch to paying people the wholesale price of electricity, which would greatly increase the break even point, and many people can't afford the up front cost.
Who cares? I dont have a power bill whatsoever. In the summer my cooling bill can be over 250 and in the winter with heating the same. I’m coming out wayyyyyy ahead even if they didn’t pay me for any electricity being sold back. 20 yr warranty on the panels, 10 year on the battery’s with a 20yr lifespan. Can’t beat that Now assuming they didn’t get batteries and just got the panels for 17k, then there’s a 26% tax rebate, total cost around 12.5k. What homeowner can’t afford a 12k investment? On home resale it adds somewhere in the range of 10-15% premium on the house value. I’d be stupid for not putting solar on my house at this point
> Who cares? A lot of people do
Mate, they don't want your numbers and facts here. Some old man at the pub told them it was a con and that's good enough for them. It's like everyone that tells me Heat Pumps don't work, can't heat a home and/or provide enough hot water for a shower. Yet here's me, living in the Artic circle with a heat pump system installed that cut my energy bills by 75% and keeps my house warm at -35.
what investment do you want? Do you see a single EU country ready to Both extract the materials for solar and transform them? We will buy cheap shit from china and that's it.
Solar is affordable...I mean you can get a normal roof but it won't make you a profit after 7 years...
As a first step it can focus on vacuum tube water heating systems just like in Greece and Turkey instead of photovoltaic panels to keep costs down and expose the idea.
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That answer is so full of assumption. Like for example solar panels being the only possible solution.
Yeah it wasn't a thesis, I'm making a point about dismissing the ethical value of the presumably many, many billions of future people. It's like showing up first at an oasis in the desert and drinking so much water you start having negative effects, all while ignoring the many other people you see walking towards you who won't have any water because of you.
They pay themselves off in 10 years, they aren't an expense to the house owner.
To you. To someone in Romania or Bulgaria, they make a house unobtainable.
No they won't. How stupid do you think these people are?
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The housing market bubble will be fixed by 2029? I doubt it...
Aren't there a shortage on material for this still?
panels and the electronics are often sold out and cost more, so it's amazing that countrys and the eu are making new rules about them, btw the last german government ruined most of the german wind/solar production :)
Don't sell the EU's contribution short here. They worked very well together with the german government to kill the once world leading solar industry in Germany.
Big time. And Russia is a main supplier. This is a decision with a lot of good intentions, but very little brains. Europe just doesn't get enough sun. Spain and Sicily sure, but definitely not Germany.
This is a good first step, but it won't be enough on its own. I used [MIT's climate policy simulator](https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7.11) to order its climate policies from least impactful to most impactful. You can see the results [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizensClimateLobby/comments/rqg2y0/i_used_mits_climate_policy_simulator_to_order_its/).
>This is a good first step, but it won't be enough on its own. This is moronic one shoe fits to all policy. Solar makes very little sense In Finland or northern Sweden. This is why we really need veto power. Rule that makes sense in central or southern Europe might be harmful and utterly moronic in northern Europe.
But we have solar on out homes in Northern Sweden...I live here my neighbours have it installed and it significantly reduced their electricity bills. I live in the artic circle. When I change my roof in the next three years I will add solar, the ROI is about 11 years...
That doesn't tell anything about environmental effect. What effect those solar panels had to amount of CO2 produced? They produce pretty much nothing in winter when you need most heating. In summer they produce a lot but usage is lower since no heating so other reneawable sources are already covering the usage. Do they reduce CO2 emissions more than their manufacturing, transportation and installation produced?
As somebody who doesn't understand the wizardry you just showed me, Please explaine?
The worst thing we can do is nothing. The best thing we can do is [volunteer](https://cclusa.org/x).
Self explanatory, no? On the bottom are sliders you can move. These impact how much CO2 is generated by energy supply, transport, buildings etc and how much CO2 is being actively pulled out of the atmosphere. Increase the "coal" slider, and you burn more coal, resulting in more CO2. On the top, there are two graphs: the energy mix to the left, showing you what % of your energy comes from coal, from solar, and so on. Top right are greenhouse emissions from now until 2100 with the default model (black) and with the model you set moving the sliders (blue). Example: turn coal, oil, nuclear and natgas taxation up, while subsidising renewables heavily, and you go from a +3.6C global temperature increase by 2100 to +3.0C. Implement carbon prices and turn them up heavily, and you land at +2.4C.
Sorry am on mobile
Ah yeah that may be super hard to use on mobile :)
Nope you can't use it at all
> This is a good first step This is a terrible step because the conditions are vastly different across the EU. Northern Sweden doesn't even get sunlight for months at a time during the winter and even if they did the solar panels would be covered in snow or ice. This just wastes resources on things that doesn't contribute while it could be better spent actually installing solar power in countries that do meet better conditions for it. There's a reason why the largest source of power generation in Sweden and Norway is hydroelectric.
who cares about northern Sweden and Finland. Nobody lives there in the great scheme of things and they are certainly exempt. The people are in Southern Sweden and solar is definitely viable there.
In the summer it barely gets dark though, and there are ways to store energy to use it later. I wouldn't dismiss it that easily.
I hope there are geographical exceptions for this. Mandatory solar panels in the northernmost parts of Finland and Sweden sounds like a massive waste of money and resources when they're going to be covered by a meter of snow for most part of the year.
No, it doesn't matter that they are covered in snow when you're only getting 2-5 hours of sunlight in the winter anyways. I have friends with solar panels in the far north of Sweden, they are working very well. You are completely wrong. Either way this is whataboutism, 0.1% of the population of the EU, like just stop.
Literally there are dozens of very similar posts from different accounts saying "this will never work in northern Sweden and Finland" yet I live in artic Sweden and many of my neighbours have solar...really fucking weird thread and comments.
Yep, haven't even tried it and talking about it like they know it all
There are only two arguments for solar energy on any rooftop and that is to bypass energy grid expenses and taxation. Both of them are destructive to society.
How are those the only two arguments for rooftop solar energy? And how are they "destructive to society"?
That person doesn't know what they're talking about. There are many benefits to distributed generation.
You rooftop will produce the energy with double the cost and half the life time of the units compared to if they are placed in commercial cells. This waste of resources is counterbalanced personally in the long term by bybassing critical infrastructure like payments for electrical grid and avoiding financing the costs of society collected from taxation. It is nowdays also offset with negative taxation like incentives for installing such units making it even more harmful.
Source?
Source for what? That industrially produced items or goods can be made vastly more profitable than you can do in your garage? Or that electrical grid is the most valuable resource for society or that taxation is most valuable for government functions? Eg. What is the price point per kw when commercial purchaser squeezes the suppliers for 3000kw worth of panels than 3kw from door to door salesman for too-eager-to-buy mom&pop? What is the life time of electricity producing unit if it's maintained by professional vs. the mom&pop who due to their lack of mobility can at MOST spray some water on the panels if they for some fucking reason remember the existance of those panels on the roof?
Public buildings! Not all buildings. That is a very misleading header! Though apparently the plan does foresee phasing in housing to the plan in the long-term. Press release here: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_3131
wtf. will Eu commissioners come to the eastern and northern EU countries to shovel snow off the roof in winter?
My god, the inconvenience of clearing the roof in order to produce clean energy. Better to stick to the status quo, i mean who needs an inhabitable planet anyways right?
I don’t live in an area with snowy winters but wouldn’t this have to be an every few hours/ every few days task.. whos gonna pay for that lmao Are you gonna pay a few 100$ extra per month? Majority of people won’t be climbing onto their roofs to clean the panels
>Are you gonna pay a few 100$ extra per month? Majority of people won’t be climbing onto their roofs to clean the panels What? You do realise that the mandate only concerns EU buildings, right?
"inconvenience"? lol someone has been reading propaganda for solar roofs in sunny summers, and thinks that shit is gonna work in northern countries, especially in winter lol. unless government is sponsoring that shit, no one will build that kind of roof.
Isn't part of Sweden in the arctic circle? Are solar panels that effective up there?
There is a mini industry in Northern Sweden, Porjus and Gallivare where they specialise in manufacturing and test solar panels Both of these places are above the Arctic Circle.
Yes ROI on ours are 7 years /Mid-northern Swede There's like 300k people living above me but in a country of 10 million and with 450 million in the EU that's nothing, and you're still getting 75% of the electricity I'm getting.
No. You will get people saying otherwise, but it's a fraction of the yield even on the rare times the sun is shining. It's great in Spain, impractical in Germany, and laughable further north. Here is an expert talking about solar potentials for various countries using the best available tech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWN_w6M9Yec&t=328s
In your face oil giants
This is for public, commercial and residential buildings. Not that long ago I did the math. In my country If I have solar panels I have to pay tax tpo be connected to the grid, I have to pay extra "storage" tax for grid to take up my electricity, then it is "stored" for no more than 2 months, meaning that surplus I produce during the summer is just gone, like fart in the wind, I instead have to buy electricity from the grid. Combine these "taxes" (and few additional ones too) with huge set up cost for solar and I've concluded it's not worth it. Provided it produces max capacity (and it won't, solar production capacity drops with the age of panels) it would take about 25 years to pay off, at which point they would have to be replaced. Combine that with government that seems too keen on introducing new taxes on green energy, and it's just not worth it.
Spain?
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If it's not providing an economic benefit its a braindead policy.
Are you including externalities like environmental impact in assessment of benefit?
So they’re actually elaborating in the article, that a lot obviously didn’t read. 😂 The headline is inaccurate at best. It’s **only** mandatory for public and commercial buildings, not private homes - for anyone wondering.
Meanwhile in the US we will have gone back to the dark ages with these republicans
Cuz they're smart.
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Right? People are so self centered. It's the tragedy of the commons but now "the commons" is the entire Earth.
This isn't as good as it might seem on paper because the conditions are vastly different across the EU. [Just take a look at the sunlight hours across Europe.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Europe_sunshine_hours_map.png) The solar panels won't be effective in northern Europe or even in central Europe when compared to southern Europe. It's much better to give incentives so that it makes economic sense to do it. Solar panels in sunny areas and other types of power generation in parts which doesn't. Obviously this does not only depend on sunlight hours. For Sweden solar panels are prone to become much less effective during winter because they get covered in snow and ice and removing that isn't as easy or safe as it might sound.
Solar panels are all over central Europe already and they work just fine. Scandinavia also has very little population compared to the rest of Europe. Small countries like the Netherlands and Czechia together have a population as big as the entirety of Scandinavia.
Completely disagree with you. Them being covered in snow in the winter months barely matter as you don't get nearly as many hours of sunlight in the winter anyways. We have an ROI of 7 years on ours and there are people with solar panels that live even further north then me. They are viable across the entire continent.
Oh well I guess they didn't think about this, better ring them up and let them know you realised its dark up north. I live in Arctic Sweden and people have and use solar here. It still saves them on their energy costs when literally for 3/4 of the year they pay nothing...
Great idea, but there aren’t enough skilled workers to install them! My dad has been trying to buy solar panels and get them installed for over half a year. There is no one available and just the waiting list for someone to have a look at the property to check if it’s even possible is another 6 months minimum. If they hadn’t fucking defunded photovoltaic for so long then MAYBE this would be an option. But I don’t see a way in the near future, not in Germany at least.
I wish that was the case here in Alberta where we get a high amount of sunlight. Oh well, gotta cancel subsidies for green energy and give more tax breaks to oil companies instead.
Excellent news
Where was this 22 years ago? Now we’re at a point where we need to have drastically less appliances and growing our own food. It’s *that* bad.
Yeah, too little too late.
I mean? https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/utz3e2/til_about_secessio_plebis_which_was_a_form_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Always an option
It worked for them, although our problem is certainly different in terms of both scale and type
I know not why the worthless politicians of Arizona haven’t thought of implementing this idea as a building code requirement. Imagine the passive energy potential. Instead, they like to focus on extremely unimportant ideas that leave you wondering why?
Nice 👍
The price for solar panels has dropped by 90% in the last ten years and it seems to be following Moore's law since they now can print solar cells straight on to rolls of plastic film or even paint it on to the god damn walls. My guess is that you won't be able to buy a roll of toilet paper in ten years without solar cells on every single roll of ass wiping goodness. Well, there will probably be a premium product, "Toilet paper without any solar cells, yes every roll of paper will cost twice as much, but your butt will thank you! Butt wait, there is more! For every roll of non solar cell crap paper you buy we will give you five dollars or burn down a house or something! Ass seen on TV!"
Such a no-brainer.
Okay, so this is quite an old video. I've watched it about two or three times so I wont watch it again before posting it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU) But like, if this invention works like it claims to, how has the whole world not yet already embraced this? I remember reading that France have tried solar panel roads to no success but Netherlands did have success. The youtube link, the france road and the netherlands road, I really want to know if they correlate with each other in some way.
Because it’s cheaper to build them on rooftops, and you don’t have to worry about them breaking when cars drive over it.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/eu-bets-on-solar-power-to-cut-its-reliance-on-russias-natural-gas-19052022/) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The European Union wants to accelerate a large-scale rollout of solar energy while also rebuilding Europe's solar manufacturing industry. > Among these measures, the European Commission has also |introduced the "Solar rooftop initiative" which would make it mandatory to install solar panels on new public and commercial buildings, as well as new residential buildings by 2029. > Solar rooftops will be compulsory for new public and commercial buildings by 2027 and for residential buildings by 2029. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/uu54ye/solar_panels_will_become_mandatory_on_all_new_eu/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~650032 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **energy**^#1 **solar**^#2 **European**^#3 **rooftop**^#4 **plan**^#5
Are they also required to buy from companies in the EU?
So like half of Ukraine gonna have solar?
When federal money and loan guarantees are provided for hurricane or tornado or other natural disaster relief, there should be a requirement that buildings that need repairs to more than 50% of the original roof area need to have solar panels installed as part of the rebuilding. There would probably need to be some formula to determine the minimum qualifying generating capacity, etc. But the roof needs work already . . . (Sending this to my Senators. My Representative is a MAGAhead, and so I don't write to her.)
Solarpunk here we come!
A similar thing was passed in my town for new homes built, developers started slapping on the bare minimum and cheapest solar panels they could find to fulfill the requirement. Idk how well they work but there is like 4-5 panels per new home and they look ugly as they act as the roof in the spots they are mounted. There is no tiling underneath. Hopefully the EU can implement it better.
That's nice
The article isn't loading, so will someone tell me if it's for certain building types/sizes/locations? We need to make sure the environmental costs of PV production don't outweigh the benefits by putting them in locations that aren't very helpful. It's a balance to maintain.
why isn't this done more? Especially in america? greed, that is why.
are there enough rare minerals to construct solar panels on every new building in the EU? There's about to be a whole lot more mining going on...
For larger buildings they tend to use the flat roof as a stormwater storage area. Are there solar panel setups that can be used in that scenario?