TLDR: Mainly good news as power generation from natural gas has dropped significantly, largely replaced by renewables, despite rise in electricity prices during the energy crisis has partly discouraged both industrial and residential consumers from switching to electric alternatives. Energy-intensive industries reduced gas consumption either despite economic challenges, but are still struggling.
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Electricity generation from natural gas has fallen by 26% since 2021 […] While some initial switching in 2022 involved coal or oil, renewables have been the main replacement, with their share of total power generation increasing from 39% in 2021 to nearly 50% in 2024. The decrease in total electricity generation has also contributed to lower gas demand, as the EU’s overall electricity consumption has declined since 2021.
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While the overall manufacturing industry has remained stable (-1% since 2021), energy-intensive sectors such as metallurgy (-11%), non-metallic minerals (-15%), and chemicals (-10%) have seen sharp declines, largely due to high energy costs affecting competitiveness.
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sharp rise in electricity prices during the energy crisis, which has partly discouraged both industrial and residential consumers from switching to electric alternatives. Additionally, low economic and demographic growth and the decline of energy-intensive industries have contributed to an overall reduction in energy demand, slowing down the need for electrification. This suggests that, in the short term, electrification is not yet driving the decarbonisation of final energy consumption at the scale needed to replace natural gas entirely.
I’m not entirely opposed to high electricity prices, since it incentivizes people to lower their electricity consumption (should be complemented with a flat sum that’s paid out to everyone for financial balancing; i.e. the German “Klimageld” idea). Though that doesn’t really work when manufacturing moves to other countries with lower electricity prices (and probably dirtier electricity in most cases) like China.
Steel and other materials don’t grow on trees and we can’t become carbon neutral if demand for materials and energy keeps rising. At least until we’re able to fully electrify ore mining and metal smelting, but we’re very far from that.
As usual, the only thing keeping humanity back is… Humanity.
Petty differences and ancient squabbles that turn deadly over the years has turned humanity into crabs scuttling around a bucket.
We have the capability to feed, house, and clothe everyone on the planet. We have the capability of electrifying every industry on earth.
The only things keeping us from doing so are “it’s expensive” or “the logistics are too complex”
All of which sounds to me like children whining “it’s too haaaaaard” when told to clean their room.
By no means am I saying you are wrong, we are very far from all that. It’s just our own fault.
I mean, when it comes to food, housing and clothing it’s not even that. That shit is cheap in the really poor places where it’s needed most, and the logistics aren’t too bad if you were to imagine away wars and give a bit of flexibility on edge cases.
Clothing has mostly been solved by accident, even; all that unusable president Harris swag and similar has to go somewhere.
Steel can be done reasonably well with hydrogen. Plastic (assuming landfilling at EOL), aluminum and glass should theoretically be no problem. Concrete is apparently the hardest, just because it produces non-fossil fuel emissions as it roasts and a giant spinning kiln is difficult to reliably and durably seal.
Of course, all this stuff costs money, and takes time.
It depends on the availability of hydrogen. We don’t really have hydrogen in the required amounts right now, especially not green hydrogen as opposed to hydrogen that is made from fossil fuels. Maybe the recent discovery of geological hydrogen in France will play out positively, that would be a big stroke of luck.
Ah yes, “white hydrogen”. As you’ve probably heard, blue hydrogen is also an option - you crack it off natural gas like normal, but then sequester the resulting carbon. I guess I’ll just repeat the line about money and time, though.
There are things that are harder to figure out. Landfill space is limited, but there’s no other obvious way to destroy plastic without turning it into emissions, and recycling is very limited. Refrigerants are hard to stop from leaking, and although we’ve switched to ones that don’t kill the ozone layer, none of them are totally harmless AFAIK, and the one that’s really trendy is literally just high-pressure CO2. Speaking of the ozone layer, sending endless rockets through it probably isn’t great.
It still feels like we’ve turned a corner, now that the energy all these green processes need isn’t coming from fossil fuels. Before that it would have been rendered a little pointless.
While I am skeptical of biogenic hydrogen because as best we know it’s another fossil fuel with limited availability, albeit one that doesn’t hurt the climate much.
Blue hydrogen otoh is an incredibly sketchy proposition. Between the extra energy needed and the leaked CO2, there is apparently zero to negative benefit to it over regular gray hydrogen. (There is a study on this but it’s a few (sub-5) years old and I am too lazy to find it right now.)
Given that older refrigerants have warming potentials of multiple 100x or even multiple 1000x worse than CO2 or propane, that is massive progress. Some of the older refrigerants are PFAS in addition.
Does that assume you’re using external fossil fuels for the power? I don’t see how that could add up otherwise.
Yes, it’s definitely progress, but it’s not perfect.
I think so, yes. It would be easier to be certain if I had the study right now. But even so, it appears that even in other studies, blue hydrogen is estimated to only reduce emissions by up to 25%. That’s not nothing, but the vast majority of permissions continues, even though blue hydrogen is likely massively more expensive than gray hydrogen.
Fwiw, acoustic heat pumps are in development right now and they work without a refrigerant gas. That should fix the issue. :) For the moment, though,
But still probably cheaper than green hydrogen, at least in the short term. If you crack natural gas down to heavier hydrocarbons, burn them for the needed power and push the resulting CO2 into a deep reservoir there’s no theoretical emissions. If the reservoir isn’t as permanent as it seems or if the pipes leak obviously that changes, and compressing the CO2 can be difficult if the gas is even a little sour, so there’s hurdles, but none of them seem like a deal-killer. That is, if a hydrogen economy is actually supported enough by regulation in order to develop.
Last I checked, megnetocaloric heat pumps were beginning development for commercial use. I’m really excited about that one, because the only moving part you need is a small pump to circulate the working fluid, and the fluid itself could be anything.