Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands ask the EU to come up with an end date for fossil fuel car sales, with the option for member states to go even faster. permanentrepresentations.nl/permanent-repr…
To support this "the current CO2 emissions standards must be strengthened significantly to accelerate the transition towards zero-emission road transport.", and manufacturers should be incentivised to develop and produce new zero emission vehicles.
The 9 member states also ask the EU to strengthen infrastructure for zero-emission mobility. "This will foremost require an extensive deployment of public charging."
"Ensuring that EU’s road transport policies and regulations are fully in line with the new 2030 target and the target of climate neutrality by 2050 will also provide predictability to the automotive sector", ..
.. enabling it to develop technology for zero-emission vehicles and thus support the decarbonisation of the entire transport sector."
A week with two faces, in German electricity production:
Hardly any wind in the first half, with quite some coal and gas running. Then a sudden change on Wednesday followed by days with lots of wind, completely squeezing out fossil electricity.
Yesterday morning, 20 GW of solar PV and 44 GW of wind power covered 90% of Germany’s electricity load (71 GW). Together with nuclear, bio(gas) and remaining fossil electricity, 15 GW was left over for electricity exports.
The blue line shows the share of all renewables in Germany electricity production over the course of the week (right axis), reaching up to 81% yesterday morning.
As a percentage of electricity *consumption*, renewable came very close to 100% both then and in the preceding night.
There are around 270 million passenger cars in the EU+UK.
Assuming they drive around 12,000 km/year and use around 800 liters of gasoline/diesel for that, their final energy demand is around 8 MWh/year each, and 2,000 TWh in total. That’s around 1/6 of total final energy demand.
If you’d replace all of them by electric cars, those would use 2-2.4 MWh/year each, so around 600 TWh in total.
This would reduce EU+UK final energy demand by over 10% (from 12,000 to 10,600 TWh), and increase electricity demand by 20% (from 3,000 to 3,600 TWh).
So just this passenger car replacement would drive up the share of electricity in EU+UK final energy demand from 25% (3000/12000) to 34% (3600/10600).
OK, that was back of the envelope. Would be nice to redo with more precise numbers, but should be in the ballpark.
The shrinking electricity use of Dutch households, thanks to efficiency. By 2018, the annual consumption per household had already decreased by 15%, from its peak in 2012. A year ago, the PBL agency estimated it would drop by another 10% in 2019 and 2020. cbs.nl/-/media/_pdf/2…
Latest estimate from @statistiekcbs for 2019: 2,730 kWh per household. Higher than the PBL estimate, but still 16% lower than the peak (3,250 kWh in 2011, according to CBS).
The 2020 consumption will probably have increased due to corona (more at home), but the trend is clear.
So 20% of Dutch households can buy an electric car and charge it at home (I assume 2,500 kWh/year), and average household consumption here will still not be higher than it was in 2011-2012.
Long live LED lighting ;! (and other efficiency improvements).
Who’d have thought?!
The Netherlands led Europe in new wind capacity installed in 2020: +2 GW (1.5 GW offshore, 0.5 GW), ahead of Germany, Norway, Spain, and France!
Also, this was 13% of the EU+UK+Turkey total. Admittedly in not a great year overall.
H/t @VeraBrenzel / @Vision23
Wind power capacity additions in Europe (incl. Turkey) have stagnated around 12-17 GW/year for 9 years in a row now...
.. but @WindEurope sees it moving into the 20 GW/year range from this year onwards (‘realistic expectations’).
Weird headline in our village newspaper: "No nuclear power plant". Turns out that Utrecht's provincial council has asked all municipalities whether they'd like to host a new nuclear power plant in their area...
Sensible answer from our alderman: "No. First of all, we think nuclear energy is a matter that would benefit from some national coordination. But we don't have an industrial zone or cooling water either."
Adding "We haven't done specific research into this issue, but we do know from a recent opinion poll that 28% of our population is 'to some extent' open towards this form of energy" :)